9 things to do when you've been laid off (or are in isolation?)

I wrote this post 5 and a half years ago, after a mass layoff at a company we all loved, but now we're even more massively all in quarantine, and many of us have also been laid off. I thought this article might be helpful!

Some of my colleagues who got laid off at the same time as me have been having a bit of a rough time with the roller coaster.

After a chat one day, one of them said, "you should be a life coach!" Well, thank you for the compliment. In the meantime, I thought I might as well share some of the strategies that are working for me, and hope they help you too.

Here are some things to keep your chin up and help you get ahead happily when you're laid off. Some days you might need one of the strategies and none of the others. Another day, you might cling gratefully to another. Being laid off is a roller coaster, but it has many pleasant treats along the way. Here’s my way to ride it.

Things to go crazy on: Your time is your own – treats abound! Take this time to revel in the people you really, really like, naps with the cat, walks with the dog, and projects that you haven’t had time for recently. You are allowed! Wallow in that.

Things to limit: spending, junk food, and negativity

1. Be happy

Some people may think this sounds trite, but it's not. Make a conscious choice to keep your spirits up. Be happy by deciding to be happy. When you’re happy, you can make good things happen in your life.

It has been fashionable in our society to wallow in misery – well, don’t. Choose to laugh at the absurdity of life and the difficulty of the challenges handed to you. People who can laugh at their own misfortunes are resilient. They’re better to take on the challenges life throws at them, and bounce back.

Many wise people have noticed that it is not circumstance that makes happiness, it is simply our decision as to whether we are happy with what we have, or not. I have noticed that often, the more money a person has, the more they seem to think that is an important part of who they are. You know what? You have a lot more wealth than simply the money in your bank account. Learn to make an accounting of all those other things. If you can realize how much you have, you will be happier. Guaranteed.

Suddenly, with a surprise layoff, you have a huge, wonderful gift. Better than money. It’s TIME. It’s something that, unlike money, we can never get more of. You’ve been given time. What are you going to do with it?

You now have a chance to make your work life exactly what you want it to be.

How do you do that? Start by spending a week or two simply enjoying all the things and people there are in your life to enjoy. Don’t go hunting up all the people who might help you get a new job, in a calculating way. Go look up and spend time with all the people who make you feel good. That will be more profitable in the long run.

For example, I got my most recent job not through all the job hunting I was doing, at all (and I had been frantically putting dozens of hours a week into job searching), but through a referral from a guy I met internet dating! The job that led to was better than most of the ones I had applied to, anyway.

So the two number one things to do when you get laid off are to:

• spend time with the people you enjoy
• spend time doing the things you enjoy

This will have two benefits:

• it will make you feel better
• it will bring you better success than anything else you can do

[Extra tip: And what if you don’t have people you enjoy? I’ve been through that stage of life. The thing that I have found that works best is social meetups. Groups arise these days through facebook and through meetup.com where you can casually and easily get to know groups of people with certain interests. It’s easy to dip in with no obligation, and try different groups on, like trying clothes in a shop. Here, again, I encourage you to do this in ways that you enjoy. I myself haven’t ever really clicked with people I tried to find in business-related meetup groups, but have found like-minded, very brainy people who love math and science jokes and history and kind of match my politics (and have similar careers) in an outdoor recreation association, a historical cooking group, at yoga-related events, and in a steampunk events group. Make your social life about things you enjoy – that’s the way to happy connections that might very well lead to work later. Don’t try to force it. Just think about what makes you happy.]

2. Eat well

Now is not the time for dieting or for binging on junk food. Take care of your body. Eat really good foods. Nuts, fruits, fresh foods, meats. Make sure particularly that you are getting enough good oils and enough protein.

Don’t let yourself binge on carbohydrate-laden processed food for more than about a day, because that won’t make you feel any better in the long run. While some carbohydrates can seem to elevate our mood in the short run, over the long run a lot of that eating will just make you feel sick.

But do spend a little money on healthy items that will make you feel good. Pomegranates are in season right now. Their red luscious ripeness reminds me of how much abundance is available in this world – if we choose to see it. When I eat a pomegranate, I am grateful that I’ve got enough time to just sit there, eating this time-consuming item. While you do that, contemplate all the other incredibly abundant aspects of your first-world life. If you’re reading this, you’re accessing a computer. You’re living better than billions.

3. Exercise

You probably don’t need me to tell you that exercise is a well-known antidote to stress, but I’ll remind you anyway. It will make you feel better. Just do it. (Caveat: don’t push through injuries – find alternate exercises if an injury is holding you back, but do move a little every day – you have time now! Make sure to make this a priority.)

4. Count your assets

As I mentioned before, I don’t mean just your financial assets. Count your skills and abilities, and every single professional connection that yo

Write those people, skills, and connections down. A well-known strategy for creating more success, happiness, and abundance in the world is this exercise: write down all that is good. If you want more good, write it down as if it already exists. Write down a list like that every day until it happens. This seems simple, but it is incredibly powerful.

Count the roof over your head, your spouse (if you’re lucky enough to have one), your family, your friends, neighbours, and connections, your health, your access to health care, your comfortable life. Count the joys in your day and the things you are able to do for others, the skills you’ve gleaned, and all your past accomplishments – helping to tile the church roof or build the neighbour’s deck just as much as drafting a document that created change at an old workplace. Count every little thing that is good or brought you or others around you satisfaction.

On the flip side, and equally as important for success, recognize your detractors. If you have friends or old colleagues who want to hash over bad things that have happened over and over, or family members whose conversation is full of fearful garbage about how you’ll never get anywhere ever again, choose to spend less time with those people.

Create a boundary line and let them know that you are not taking part in negative conversations. You need to stay happy, positive, and hopeful to build the best next opportunities for yourself.

5. Think of your budgets

A little retail therapy is fun. And hey, you’ve got time to stroll the mall Christmas shopping. Binge a tiny bit, but, the same as with the food, and the negativity/grieving, don’t overdo it. Overspending results in lingering worry that you don’t need. Make a challenge of keeping track of your budget, the same way you keep track of your food when you are on a diet.

6. Get ultra-organized

Think you don’t need that daytimer now that you’ve left the job? Just the opposite! Keep track of who you have met, who you have talked to, what you said, ideas that you have had.

Write down positive things that happen every week. Write down your spending. And keep track of your accomplishments.

In my case, I’m slowly poking along, working on developing new resources to extend my technical writing teaching. If your last company needed that service, other companies will need you too! Shine up your resumé.

And after the first few days or weeks of grieving the lost job and taking care of yourself, be strict with doing something positive and forward-moving every day. It doesn’t really matter if the positive thing was “spent the afternoon teaching my son how to make a wooden box” or “sent out six e-mails to old friends to let them know where I’m at.” Just do something good and measurable that moves you forward, and write it down to keep track.

7. Volunteer to help someone else

Within a day of being laid off, I realized that my severance holiday covered the Christmas season. I have a friend who owns a store, and the Christmas season is always a stretch on staff. Since my severance agreement says that I get severance pay as long as I don’t work, I offered to help her out in her store, but she couldn’t pay me – perfect for her! And perfect for me, because it feels good to help a friend and be out of the house.

You can even volunteer, in big and small ways, for people that you don’t know. One sure-fire cure for depression is to do something good for someone else. It can be as small as holding the door for someone, or shovelling the neighbour’s walk. Or it might be as big as helping your relatives and friends with their tax returns. Instead of waiting until you need to help someone to get out of depression, prevent depression by sharing around some of the gift of the time you have been given with other people. You will be glad that you did.

8. Get information

Make sure that you know all the logistics of how your severance pay, and, potentially, employment insurance, will work. Then make a plan for what you have to do to keep bread on the table. Knowing all the facts will help keep panic at bay, and keep you confident that you are fine. You are strong, and able to keep the threads of your life together.

9. Analyze your situation, and realize that it’s pretty good

If you’re feeling unhappy about being laid off, take a step back and think about why. Is your ego hurt because you were laid off? Are your emotions feeling hurt? Unfortunately, in our society, people do tend to love to feel bad for you and commiserate with you, and well-intentioned friends may actually create a much worse mental situation for you.

Reframe your situation to make those hurts go away. Yes, they laid you off, while they chose to keep other people. That is true. But you can imagine all sorts of hurtful reasons that they might have done so, that are probably not true, or, even if they are true, really don’t matter.

You could choose to analyze it and decide to be persecuted, true. Or you could just shrug and say “severance holiday!” and carry on.

Do you really, seriously have financial problems that are going to reach up and swallow you?

Probably not. If you do, then make plans to handle it, but don’t panic. If it’s a mortgage on a house, well, do you really need that house? Could you downsize? Could you sell the house and rent instead? You could. In our society we tend to think that our material possessions, like houses and cars, are “essential,” but when it comes down to the real brass tacks, possessions are not important, not even your house.

There are only two crucially important things in your life: your people, and your own happiness. Material possessions and wealth, even if temporarily lost, can be regained. Time with your children, if squandered, can not be regained. So, especially when you are laid off, relish in the joy of the time you have. Make the most of it to be with your people. Make the most of it to create a new, wonderful life.

Compartmentalize searching for your next job into certain hours per day, and decide to be happy in the other hours of the day. Force yourself to be happy. Choose happiness, or at least choose to act cheerful. It will reflect on the people around you and make everything better than a choice to sink into gloom will do. (Remember: gloom or happiness: it is a choice. And if you don’t believe me, at least accept that you can choose to act gloomy or happy. So, choose to act happy.)

Many people in situations that others view as horrible (for example, extreme poverty) achieve happiness, while many people who seem to have everything achieve misery. All the money and professional success in the world are not as important as the people around you. Hold the people you count as your family close while you have time to do so.

You have extra time to be with your friends, neighbours, or children who matter to you, to maybe volunteer at their schools, to create memories that will last their lifetime and yours. The little jobs that you might never put on a resume might be the ones that make you remember this period of being laid off as one of the happiest of your life.

Being laid off with severance pay is, essentially, a gift of time. And in this world, we can always get more money, but we can never get more time. So use the time in your severance holiday to create and enjoy the maximum happiness possible. That will be a gift not just to yourself, but to all around you, too.

Best of luck on your new life! Let me know how it goes, and any comments you have on this article. You can reach me at christabedwin at gmail.com.

(Caveat: if all of this advice to be cheerful just doesn’t help, then please seek professional help for depression. But keeping your chin up in the first place, getting out of the house, choosing to be grateful and write that down, and choosing to help others, may all help you to avoid depression in the first place.)

(Caveat 2: If you can’t get away from the ego-filled but very common ideas that your job was more important than your family (easy to believe if you felt forced to spend more time there) and that your house is more important than your happiness, then you might be destined for misery as long as you don’t have a job. I encourage you to spend a little time re-thinking that, and maybe writing, “my family is more important than my job” and “my happiness is more important than my possessions” every morning, in private, if you need to. You could build on that with “I’m so grateful for my loving spouse,” or “I’m so grateful for my helpful neighbours,” and “I’m so grateful for the amazing gifts of my children. I love my son’s kindness. I love my daughter’s intelligence.” And so on. If you are able to do that writing, you will become happier.)