A Few Best Practices to Keep Your Sanity When You’ve Lost Your Job

Learning new skills, the push and pull of conflicting priorities, navigating various personality types, and finding common ground to achieve collective goals all contribute to what Maslow called my “Self-Actualization.” Change is a feature, not a bug, and being between jobs is an exciting opportunity for something new. But for many of my collogues in our cohort of the corporately departed, their job was integral to their identity, and the pain of their separation anxiety is palpable. Hopefully, the following will, in some way, help others in the way it has helped me.??

It's 5 PM, and hopefully, you've been treating the search for your next gig like a full-time job. The last thing you want to do after a day packed with fishing through LinkedIn, writing cover letters, refining the resume, and mock interviews is hit the gym, get on the bike, or go for a run. As professional job hunters, we often lead sedentary lifestyles, spending long hours hunched over our laptops, networking, and interviewing. Now more than ever, self-care practices such as maintaining a schedule, good sleep hygiene, eating well, exercising, optimizing your work environment, and maintaining a social life are crucial for your mind, body, and effectiveness.

Keep a regular schedule: Your time has value, and it is a non-renewable resource! It's easy to stay up late to binge-watch that reality show or make it to the next level of that video game, but in short order, it can become a slippery slope. Now you're getting to bed at 3:00 AM, getting up at 11:00 AM, and the day is half gone. You've missed an incredible number of opportunities; your circadian rhythm is toast, and you will never get that time back. For all intents and purposes, you have self-imposed jetlag. Set a reasonable bedtime and stick to it. Maintaining a regular sleep schedule is as important as getting enough sleep.

Get Plenty of Sleep: Now that you're aligned with your circadian rhythm (see above), it's time to practice good sleep hygiene . Your body craves sleep for some excellent physiological reasons. While sleeping, the neural pathways in your brain reinforce what you learned and experienced during the day, and a lack of sleep will impair that process. During sleep, your brain becomes more efficient at clearing waste material at a cellular level, giving you a fresh start when you wake up. The results of inadequate sleep hygiene can result in a host of health issues, including depression and hypertension, and can compromise your immune system.

Eat well: You have the local pizza joint on speed dial, book marked on your laptop AND phone. Resist the urge. Eating a steady diet of fast food will not only destroy your health but it will also drain your bank account. Instead of eating yourself to death, plan your meals. Go to the supermarket and buy fresh food. Not sure what to buy? Check out this article from Muscle and Fitness . As adults with fully formed frontal lobes, we all know not to go shopping on an empty stomach. (Chubby Hubby, Ring Dings, and Chips – YES PLEASE!... NO (ok, well, maybe once in a while ;) ) The right balance of sugar, fat, and salt may make for an awesome salted-caramel-whatever, but it's terrible for your health. Plan your meals, make a list, and resist the urge to buy (too much) junk food.

Tip: You can use chatGPT to suggest healthy meals AND make a list of all the ingredients you'll need!

Optimizing work environment: You're getting plenty of quality sleep, eating right, and now it's off to your home office to log into your LinkedIn profile and hit those job postings – You plop down on the couch. It might seem like the perfect spot – TV, comfortable, proximity to the refrigerator. You're blurring the lines between a workspace and your leisure space. Setting aside a separate workspace will help you get into the right mindset to be productive, remain focused, and get stuff done. Rather than hunching over your laptop on the couch or, worse, the Barcalounger, try the kitchen counter or dining room table, or if you have a spare room, set up an office. The best thing about having a dedicated work area is having the option of getting up and walking away from it when you're done for the day. You can also boost your productivity by adding a docking station , dual screens, and even a standing desk .

Daily exercise: The next best practice, arguably the most important, is getting outside and moving every day. The one thing we all have is a body. You only get one, you can't trade it for a new model, you must live in it, and it has a shelf life — the care and feeding of this resource matter. The good news is that small changes in your exercise routine will have significant benefits. The secret sauce is consistency. Do you start every day with coffee or some other beverage? Make it to-go, walk around the block, and maybe chat with the neighbors or listen to music. Whatever you do for exercise, do things that you like to do. Whatever you do, you don’t have to go nuts like me. My baseline daily exercise is an hour on a stationary bike while I watch the news in the morning. I mix it up in the late afternoon: I'll go for a run, ride, weight train, and, weather permitting, hit the trail on the weekend for a hike. In addition to staying reasonably fit, exercise works wonders for my temperament and serves as an antidepressant.

Human contact: We are social animals. Twenty thousand years ago, loaners were much more likely to meet an untimely death, and their DNA wasn't passed on to future generations. People who remained part of the tribe thrived, and many generations later, we are the latest iteration. Perhaps the worst torture humans have devised is isolating a person from the group. Loneliness can cause a host of health and cognitive issues, including dementia. Check in on your friends, join a meetup group, and schedule dinner and drinks with people you want to know. Maintaining social contact will increase your well-being and reduce stress.

The bottom line is to make small changes, which will yield big benefits.

Take care of yourself.

Ken