I think this lyric from an obscure murder ballad pretty well describes a person’s initial feelings after having been fired.
- I’m dead.
- My life is over.
- I’ll never (fill in your own bucket list here).
When someone is fired, one normal response is similar to grieving over their job and themselves. For most people, there’s an understandable drop in confidence and as well as financial security.
The Chicago Tribune had excellent article recently with coping tips for those who have been laid off. I hope you’ll click through to gain additional understanding of the difficulties and potential actions to help either yourself or your friends.
I also could have used a hospital as the headline since after either a serious illness or losing a job, there’s a period of regaining your health and strength before getting back into the mainstream. Using either starting point, people need to:
- Reduce any anger about your job loss,
- Regain energy and a positive outlook,
- Refocus on your values and strengths,
- Resume working, this time on finding your next opportunity, and
- Reach out to others.
I summarize this litany as get more active sooner. This simple sentence sounds easy, but it’s not. There are many issues to consider and either limit or eliminate before this can happen.
As soon as a person can regain their “health” and reach out to their professional and personal networks, the sooner they’ll generate support.
Closing note: I heard this lyric during an evening of murder ballads at a Halloween fund raiser at Caffe Lena, the historic folk club in Saratoga Springs, NY. I describe the lyric as obscure since I couldn’t find anything about it via Google. So maybe it’s obscure; or maybe I wrote the thought down incorrectly. Regardless, when I heard this I immediately thought of how difficult it is to recover from being fired.