When it comes to life's big stressors, losing your job is right up there with getting a divorce or having a death in the family. It can be hard to pick yourself back up and move on with your life. Added onto all of the practical stresses of becoming suddenly jobless are a whole bunch of emotional ones: losing a job means a huge hit on your self esteem and your sense of worth.
But it doesn't have to be totally debilitating. If you do things right from day one, you can make your job loss into nothing more than a new page in your life. Lost your job or think you have a job loss looming? Read on for 5 important steps to handle being fired without losing yourself in the process.
Step 1: Allow Yourself some Down Time
When you find out you're going to lose your job, you may feel as crazed and directionless as a chicken with its head cut off. You know the situation is difficult, and you know you need to get started fixing it as soon as humanly possible. And so you try to do something --anything-- about it from day one.
But there's actually a grieving process involved with losing your job, and you have to allow yourself a little time to go through this. When you've lost your job, you need to take at least a day or two off from your life. Don't make plans, don't take action; just regroup and gather yourself together. That way, when you do take action, you do it right. And you won't say or do something that you'll regret later on down the line.
Step 2: Keep to a Schedule
Losing your job is bound to make you feel angry, frustrated, and un-moored. Your life used to look a certain way, and now it looks like something completely different. You're at sea. When this happens, a common reaction is to leave your old schedule behind and just float. You get up late. You take an hour to clip your toenails. You play around with Photoshop for a few hours, trying to get rid of that weird-looking mole that shows up on all of the photos on your internet dating profile.
Don't. Instead of allowing yourself to simply float, try to stick to your old schedule as closely as you can. Get up in the morning and do something constructive. Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at normal times. And don't spend more time than you normally might playing at unconstructive things. The more useful and in control of your life you feel, the better you'll be able to take advantage of the opportunities that come your way. And the better equipped you'll be to go out and find them yourself.
Step 3: Get Organized
When you know that you have a big task ahead of you (that is, finding another job), it can be difficult to know when to start. So you tend to dabble in this or that, looking for what you should do first. Don't dabble; get organized. Sit down with a pen and paper and write down a list of tasks that need to be accomplished in order for you to reach your goal. Just let your ideas run freely on the page. When you're done, sit down and decide what's most and least important. At the end of this exercise, you should have an intelligent, organized list of tasks to work from. When you know what needs to be done and in what order, you'll be working from a much more constructive place.
Step 4: Be More Active
Was there something you wanted or needed to get done when you were working, but you never had the time for? Or did you always want to get healthier and be more active? Now is the time. The more you do with your day --and the more you accomplish-- the more positive you'll feel about your life and your future. Start some volunteer work (also a networking opportunity), take on some paid part-time projects, work out, plant a garden, etc. You never know... your new higher activity level may you feel even better --and even more positive about the future-- than you did before your job loss.
Step 5: Stay Focused
When you're feeling hopeless, it can seem tempting to spend all your time playing World of Warcraft or tweaking your internet dating profile. But it's important to stay focused on your goal. Know that list you worked up in step 3 of this article? Chances are there's something on there that you could be doing right now. Look at finding new work as a job in and of itself, and you'll find that new job that much faster.
