LOST YOUR JOB? HERE'S HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT DIFFERENTLY.

A lot of people seemed to find this article helpful when posted previously, so I hope that this will be the case this time round.

Almost immediately after losing their job, many people set themselves to the task of finding a new one as the most important and urgent thing that they have to do. And they apply themselves to it all the time. But this approach isn't right for most people (assuming they have enough money to get by for at least a little while).

And so this post is NOT about how to find a new job.

It's to do with what SHOULD be some/many/most peoples' top priority after being made redundant.

And that is how you go about looking after yourself - and your family and other people that you care about.

Unless you do that successfully, a lot of damage can be done to you, your relationships with people who matter to you and - as well - your chances of finding a new position as quickly as possible.

I’ve lost my job three times in my life, worked with others who are going through/have gone through that experience and they and I have read the literature extensively.

The ideas below on how you can best look after yourself are just that – ideas. I’m not a psychologist or an expert in post-redundancy behaviouralism (if there is such a thing!).

I know enough though to understand that there's value to start people thinking about this - often ignored or under-emphasized - aspect of what it's important to do after losing your job.

Some of the ideas should be helpful, hopefully some people will be encouraged to review the other literature out there and I’m sure there will be some excellent comments with other suggestions from readers of this post

To keep it brief, here are just FOUR things to start with that you might benefit from thinking about…there are others of course. But this post though is not intended in any way to be comprehensive.

It's simply to raise awareness of the fact that focusing on looking after yourself and your emotions as your first priority will produce substantial benefits for you and for others.

So, here we go...

1         You’ll experience a lot of negative emotions at first

The first thing here is to remember that it’s OK, in fact it’s completely normal, to feel these feelings. Everyone who loses their job has some kind of (strong) negative emotions – whether it’s feelings of failure, fear, inadequacy, whatever.

But those feeling WILL go over time AND you’ll speed that process up if “you don’t feel bad about feeling bad”.

Secondly, as far as possible, don’t keep the feelings inside yourself. Any strong emotion (almost always) needs to be expressed. If you don’t let these feelings out in some way then your intellect won’t be able to start working out what you should be doing next

2         Talk with other people about what you’re feeling

This follows on from the second point above. Talking with someone – especially someone who knows you well and cares for you – is a safe place to let those feelings out.

You’ll start to feel better as you do this and – in many cases – you’ll start to pick up on some reassuring signals from the other person about what the future might look like.

You may, for example, simply benefit from realising that the person talking to you doesn’t see you as a ‘failure’ for losing your job, which will start to help your self-belief get back in place.

They may show that they care for you and that just you being you – with or without a job – is all that matters to them in your relationship.

They may, especially if they know you well, be able to think of things that you can do – outside of how you look for you next job – that will make you feel better (exercise more/spend time with your family/get rid of some of those long-standing household tasks that have been around forever and so on).

Regardless of the precise way in which talking will help, it'll help you come to feel better. Having a conversation about how you feel will make you start to feel more positive.

3         Be as open as you can be with people about what’s happened

Especially today, there’s a stigma associated with losing one’s job (although you should be aware that it’s much less than you imagine, and most people really will think exactly the same about you as they did before your job loss).

It’s not easy being open with some people, but hopefully there are some within your immediate family circle or close friends who you can talk to.

And by being open I mean simply telling them that you’ve lost your job, why it happened, what you’re doing now to look for a job, the impact your unemployment may have on your family circumstances and so on.

This is not emotional content anymore but just telling people about the situation you now find yourself in.

The benefits of this are at least two-fold.

Firstly, finding that you can be honest with people makes you feel more confident that the position you’re currently in is “OK” and makes your own confidence continue to grow.

Secondly, and I personally feel this is much the more important thing, it stops you ‘being an island’. I’ll give just one example of what I mean by this.

The second and third times I became unemployed my children were old enough to talk with us (myself and my ex-wife, still a good friend) about what was going on. And so instead of us “being an island” to our children, cutting them off from what was going on, we shared what was happening as part of the day to day conversations we’d have with them about other things - school, sports, their friends etc.

And the result of that was that our children understood WHY there was less money available for things they’d previously taken for granted. Why their Mum and Dad were not quite as cheerful-sounding as usual all the time!

And I know that this helped them a lot because of the way they responded.

They became an encouragement to me in my job search rather than a worry (none of this ‘I have to get a job before the children notice’ type of thinking).

They didn't worry their Mum - or me - about 'What's going on' or 'Will we be OK?'

They learned a little bit about the emotions she I went through too and became more empathetic and supportive as a result.

And, as another benefit, my eldest son (aged 13 at the time) immediately went out and started working at weekends to pay for his own things. He 'grew' up and became more responsible for himself. As did my other children in due course.

There are many other examples I could give that illustrate the benefits of this approach of not “being an island” to one’s partner, children, friends or others.

In every case, there's a major positive impact (different of course from example to example) on the person who has lost their job AND to the people they care about most.

4          How you feel will still go up and down as your search goes on

This may seem so obvious that it doesn’t need stating. But I’ve been surprised at how often I and others have ‘got to a good place’ in how we’re feeling about being out of work, and how the job search is going, and assumed that it’ll stay that way!

Only to find that it doesn’t of course...! But when that happens, I strongly recommend that you (as I've done in the past) go back to the first three ideas above – and the others that I hope you’ll read about elsewhere and hear from commentators on this post. And you’ll soon restore the balance.

In conclusion, the main point of this post - as I said at that start- is to underline that for many people their number one priority after losing their job shouldn't automatically be trying to find a new one.

It should be looking after yourself and your emotional well-being for your sake and the sake of others who matter to you.

Looking for a job will follow on later, and be more effective, if you deal with this side of things early and successfully.

Of course, there are far too many who can't afford the luxury of the approach I've put forward above, But for those who can, I suggest that you (as I was before) should be grateful and try to apply it.

Many thanks for your time                         Mark