Recovering from a Layoff
A layoff may be a bad thing (nobody laughs at losing their job unless they have something else to fall on), but it isn’t the end of the world. And it shouldn’t be the end of your world. Of course you will be depressed and dejected, but time and self-motivation can help you recover emotionally.
Detailed below are four tips on how to recover emotionally from a layoff.
1. Release your emotions
Bottled up feelings are poisonous to the body and to your emotions. This is why you need to release them as soon as possible after the layoff. Maybe that was the only job you had and the layoff is weighing down on your heart and mind. Do you feel like crying? Cry.
Crying or grieving for a little while will help to release your sad or negative emotions and soon you’ll be free of them—free to think about the future, since you’ve accepted the fact that being laid off isn’t the end of the world or your world.
As a remainder, don’t spend too much time grieving over your jobless situation. Get over it, then get ready for a new job.
2. Find the positive side to the layoff
After releasing your emotions, you should take stock of yourself and your potential. Why were you laid off? Business was bad? Was it the economy? Were there other workers laid off? What about those who retained their jobs and survived?
Honest answers to such questions will give you a clearer picture of your layoff, your joblessness and you’ll seek to improve yourself as a prospective employee, you will make yourself more employable and retainable—experience always counts, right?
3. Reinvent yourself
Seeing a potential positive side of the layoff will also motivate you to develop yourself as a prospective employee. And in th same vein, you should reinvent yourself.
Acquire more skills, sharpen yourself as a professional and make yourself more employable and invincible to future layoffs. Become an employee who business owners cannot afford to layoff no matter how bad the economy or business becomes.
Reinvent yourself to make yourself somehow layoff-proofed.
4. Be comforted and nursed
During your days of joblessness; days after you are laid off, do allow yourself to be comforted by loved ones; be they friends or family. Their love, affection and sympathy can comfort you and nurse the layoff pains out of your system and soon, you’ll be ready to take on a new job—one in which you getting laid of is less and less possible.
