Job Loss? Next Steps

When you life changes what is best way forward? Here’s a good idea.

Hi, everybody. Sylvia Lafair here with some tips for what happens when the direction you were going has a do not follow this side road. Dead end. It’s when we have a job loss or we’re pretty sure that things are going to be downsized. It’s a strange time, crazy time for everybody, but it’s not the first. The roller coaster ride of life just seems to go on. But here’s an idea. If you’ve lost your job and you’re sitting there going, what do I do now?

My suggestion is to do something so totally different from whatever you do in the day. Just one thing. It’ll begin to get your mind into a new framework for saying, oh, I never thought of it that way before. Let me give you an example. One of the things that I learned years ago was to deflect the emotion when does something else. So, you know, I love reading and I love reading nonfiction and I love reading novels, but I don’t like reading cookbooks.

I don’t like reading anything about mathematics. I don’t like anything about weight lifting. So what did I do when I had a job loss many years ago and it kind of kicked me in the gut. I started looking at now you can do it online. And those days I went into a bookstore and looked at the magazines and I started picking up books about things that absolutely I had no interest. Modern mechanics and how to fix a car. And what do you do if you want to gain a lot of muscle weight?

And what happened as I read these books was all of a sudden I began to have other thoughts about that. Looks interesting. That looks interesting. So if you do this just to create some space in your mind for something new, new things will happen. I promise you that new ideas will come to you when you’re falling asleep, when you’re walking. Many of us are doing now is our best way of exercising masks on, walking outside, looking at the computer.

You don’t have a mask when you’re sitting at your own computer. But what happens that’s so critical is you want to create the energy of something new. So it’s not an end all, be all. But when you’re at that moment, when you’re feeling the most sorry for yourself. Simply get online and follow the route to something totally uninteresting to you. Before this day, I promise you, you will find some magic that happens. It happens to all of us.

So give it a go. See what happens. Let me know. And call me if you need some extra cheerleading. I have a ton of ideas for you. We’ll get through this. We’ll get through it together. The world will look different, hopefully in a healthful, positive way as we move through this strange time of everybody having to find something new in their lives. Thank you so much to your success.

About Sylvia Lafair

As a curious kid, I was fascinated watching how often people would make the same mistakes and complain about the same upsets time after time. I observed it in family, neighbors, at school and even in books and films.

As I grew older I saw how specific experiences become behavior patterns that people lived by yet barely noticed. It was “same stuff, different day,” just like in “Groundhog Day.”

My fascination with the power of personal and cultural patterns deepened after my father died from a sudden heart attack when I was 14. The cause? Constant conflict at work.

My determination to understand what happened and why led me to an amazing discovery: unresolved family patterns follow us to work. That’s what was behind the stress my father carried throughout his career.

Work stress became the enemy.

My search for more answers became my passion, to find ways to transform outdated, ingrained patterns that destroy health and the joy of success.

Now, I do what I do to prepare, liberate and empower leaders and teams — and to ensure no one need lose a loved one over unresolved conflict and stress at work.

Ready to take your leadership to the next level?

Take the leadership quiz>>HERE<<

Find out why kind of leader you are and how you can break through the barriers holding you back!

— Sylvia Lafair PhD — founder of Creative Energy Options (CEOInc.) and the world’s leading authority in Pattern Aware Leadership Development, Top Global Leadership Guru and award winning author of Don’t Bring It To Work.

Read Sylvia’s columns in INC.com and The National Business Journals