Originally published on LinkedIn in July, 2023.
One thing I wish I was told upon my first lay off—the biggest obstacle you will have to tame is your mind.
How you speak to yourself.
The rumination that ensues like a broken record. The anxiety that forces you to spiral into a dark hole of despair.
It takes so much energy to combat the following mental chatter:
“I got let go. F$%# I need to start looking for a job immediately. Double f#$% my resume isn’t updated. I don’t have time to refresh it, that’s time I can be spending looking for a job. Ughh, I can’t even decide what to do first. I’ve officially lost my mind. Who is going to hire me now? I’m totally desperate, and it’s going to show in the interview. That’s it life is done for. Yada yada yada, I’m one stop away from being homeless if I don’t pay my bills in time.”
BREATHE. Rewrite your inner dialogue.
“I got let go and I will be ok. I can always lean on my network, and do things one step at a time. My resume needs updating, this might take a minute to do. Maybe I will hire someone out to help, and in the meantime annotate the top companies I want to work for and build relationships within to get a gauge if they align with my values. This is a great strategy, let me see what other strategies I can find, maybe on Linkedin or I can build them myself, yada, yada, yada, oh look, there’s a friend reaching out to me with a lead.”
If you have a therapist, you’re probably already doing this with them. At the time I couldn’t afford one, so I had to journal, listen to podcasts, follow Linkedin job search coaches for advice, and so forth, to learn this along the way.
Hope this lil’ nugget of wisdom helps those in the thick of it ‘cause Lord knows it’s not easy.
