Using the economic downturn to reevaluate your life’s choices
Nancy’s whole career has been in pharmaceutical communications. After watching round after round of layoffs at her firm over the past two years, her ticket finally came up in February. She went from a high level, lucrative management position to unemployment overnight. Stories like this are playing out across the country by the thousands. Good skilled workers lose their jobs and find strong competition for lesser positions. Seemingly secure financial futures based on real estate and stock investments disappear overnight, leaving uncertainty and worry.
But listen to Nancy:
“Ironically, this may be one of the greatest gifts I have received in my life — not because unemployment is a gift but because this gave me a forced opportunity to evaluate where I am in my life and if I want to continue on this path. In fact, I had been increasingly stressed out by and unhappy with my job for some time.”
Is it just blowing self-help smoke to say this was a good thing? Is Nancy just some crazy exception? Not in my experience.
Losing a job can be a shattering loss of identity and purpose, or it can be an opportunity to assess your true calling and look for a better fit.
Losing your nest egg can be a wrenching loss of stability and security, or a lesson in how attached you’d become.
Losing status can be humiliating, or the beginning of real humility.
[Read the rest of What Works: Losing your footing and finding the ground at bustedhalo.com.]
