Keeping Your Head After Losing Your Job (28 page)

I go to a health club several times a week, and I get onto the treadmill, turn on the television, or listen to my iPod—and I don’t even notice other people. If I notice people, it’s whether they might be using a weight-lifting machine I want to use. My goal is to exercise, not keep score of the people at the health club. But what if someone thought, “There’s someone really out of shape! And they are exercising!” Why would that thought bother you, if you are out of shape you already know that? If they think there is something wrong with someone out of shape exercising, then—well—they are irrational. Why should you care about that? Keep in mind that the purpose of exercise is to take care of your health, not to gain the approval of strangers who, by the way, are not really thinking about you.

“I can’t afford to join a gym”:
Why do you need a gym to exercise? Why can’t you watch an exercise program on the television or internet or borrow a DVD and just do it at home? Why can’t you go for a long walk—or even go jogging? Do you have a bicycle? Go for a ride (and wear a helmet). You can stretch, do sit-ups, run on the spot. You can get a football and go to the park. You can also check the websites of the parks departments of your town. There may be some facilities that are free. There are lots of free activities that are available, if you are willing to look into it.

“I don’t want to exercise”:
That makes sense, especially if you think it will be unpleasant, painful, and a waste of time. But the real question should be, “Is exercise something that could be good for me?” and “Am I willing to do some things I don’t want to do in order to improve myself?” In fact, almost every chapter in this book asks you to do things that you might not want to do—even things you are inclined to think are a waste of time. But, again, you do a lot of things you don’t want to do. I’m willing to bet the behavior that helped you make progress in your life involved behavior that you didn’t really want to do—behavior that might have been hard, unpleasant, and frustrating. Pride comes from overcoming obstacles.

Do it.

EXERCISE: BENEFITING FROM EXERCISE

Avoid becoming passive while you are between jobs by acting on the following points:

•
Exercise is a great way to counteract poor health and the risk of depression.

•
Your period of unemployment might lead you to become more passive—to exercise less. This will negatively affect your health.

•
Do an honest evaluation of your current exercise program.

•
In the past, when you did exercise, how did it affect your mood?

•
What are the advantages—short term and long term—of exercising regularly?

•
What are the excuses that you are telling yourself that keep you from exercising?

•
How would you challenge these excuses?

•
Try an experiment: exercise regularly for two months and evaluate how you feel.

12

TAKING IT TO THE FUTURE

What if you decided to use everything you have learned in this book for the rest of your life? You’ve gone through lots of exercises, learned a lot of techniques, tried dozens of new ways of thinking, behaving, relating, and confronting the challenges in your life. It’s been hard at times—perhaps it’s still hard. But you have learned something. Why stop here?

I’ve been encouraging you to think about planning and taking a proactive and positive approach to this time between jobs, using as many techniques and strategies to empower yourself during one of the most difficult times in your life. I hope these ideas have been helpful to you. But aren’t they good ideas at any time? Wouldn’t this be a new way to approach living life every day?

In fact, when I have presented these ideas at talks I have given, or in speaking with journalists, or counseling patients, the response has been the same: “These are things that you should be doing for the rest of your life. This is good advice no matter what you are going through.”

Right.

Keeping your head—a new way of life

You might look at this time between jobs as an opportunity to take your life back, to take control of your own destiny and make every day a day that you are empowered. In fact, it is a way of life. Perhaps the time between jobs was a wake-up call that you can think, behave, choose, and feel in different ways. Perhaps this has been a time when you had to overcome some of the most difficult obstacles you have had to face. We often can become stronger—and wiser—when we are challenged, when life makes it difficult for us. We can practice our power in life when our back is against the wall and there seems no way out. No way out—except
through
the difficulty, always moving forward.
You don’t get past it unless you go through it
.

It may be that no one will ever really know or appreciate how difficult this time has been for you. But it also may be a time when you have surprised yourself with your ability to handle difficulties that you thought you would never have to face. This may have been a time when you were tested. And you learned. And you grew.

Using your new understanding as you move on

So how can you take this new-found knowledge forward? How can you use these ideas to make the rest of your life as good as it can be? Why stop now, why leave your training, your experience, and your growth behind you? Perhaps this time between jobs is a platform for propelling you to a better way of approaching all of the problems you will have to face. Perhaps this wasn’t a setback, perhaps this was an opportunity. Perhaps this was a new beginning.

That will be up to you. It always is, by the way. You always have choices.

Richard is a case in point. I had known him a few years before, when he had gone through a break-up in a relationship. At that point, he was ruminating, dwelling on what it meant and why it had happened to him. He was isolating himself, depressed, self-critical, and indecisive. He had become passive and felt helpless and hopeless. But during that time—many years before—we worked on all of these self-limiting behaviors and thoughts, and he broke through it and overcame his depression. A few years later he found a new partner and married her; she was much better for him. They had two kids, and things seemed to be going well. Then he lost his job. He came back to see me for a “refresher” course of therapy. “Let’s see if we can use all the ideas we used before to help you cope with this time between jobs,” I said.

We used most of the ideas in this book. He did his homework and worked on himself every day. After a few months, he found a new job. The period between jobs was hard at times, but Richard took the “bait” of my challenge to use it as a time to grow, to take charge, to make every day better, to take action and to take his life back. Of course, there were many times when he worried about money, how he would take care of his family, and whether he would get a job again, but he got through it. He worked on his life when he wasn’t working at his job.

As his friends and family watched him during this time, they recognized how hard he had been working, how much he stayed in his game. They said to him, “We’ve never seen you handle something as well as you handled this. It was amazing. You were the best you’ve ever been.” In fact, his time between jobs brought him closer to his wife, strengthened his marriage, and made him realize how much he loved his kids. It also made him recognize that he wanted to get his values and priorities straight, and that what was most important to him were the relationships and commitments he had to people—and they to him.

Richard also realized that money was less important than he had thought. He knew time was valuable because you could use it wisely—like spending time with your kids and taking care of yourself—or you could waste it brooding, feeling self-critical, or complaining. He learned that he could lose his job but he would never lose himself, never lose his ability to make choices, and do the difficult things. “I learned that I was capable of doing things I never thought I would be able to do,” he told me. Overcoming obstacles helped him overcome some things about himself. He was not defeated by the time between jobs. He learned that he had the power to make his life better.

Your future

So let’s think now how to take this to your future. Perhaps you have a new job, so you think, “I’m glad that’s over.” That makes sense. You want to move on. But what will you take with you that you can use? How can this experience of living between jobs help you make a better life?

How can you keep your momentum, moving your life on the best course, keeping your mind on remembering everything that you have learned so far? You don’t have to leave the time between jobs behind. You can take the lessons to the future.

Your right to your feelings

Let’s start with your right to your feelings. In Chapter Two, I described how you have a right to feel sad, angry, anxious, confused—and even relieved. How can you validate your feelings in the future? You don’t need to shove your feelings to the side, nor do you need to feel embarrassed about your feelings. Things may be better when you get a job—perhaps they are getting better now.

But there will be other experiences that will lead to quite a range of feelings: losses, disappointments, frustrations, and obstacles. No matter what you accomplish or how hard you work on things, you have a right to the way you feel. You will always be human, won’t you? You will always have emotions, and always have needs.

The most useless and invalidating thing to say to someone is, “You shouldn’t feel that way. Snap out of it.” You feel what you feel. You are human. And you will continue to be human. But you may have learned from this book that, just as you can validate your feelings and be compassionate towards yourself when you are down, you also have the ability to think, choose, and act in ways that can change the way you feel. Your feelings are not your destiny. They are a marker of where you are at one moment in time. And the next moment is up to you.

You can take action

You’ve learned in Chapter Three that you can either remain passive and isolated, waiting for the world to change to suit you, or you can take action. There is always some way to improve the present moment. There is always something to do. As long as you are alive, you can set goals, choose to act differently, and test out your ideas by doing something. Life will not get better by waiting. During the time between jobs, you had a choice between doing nothing or doing something. Every day was a day when you could make choices. The same holds true for the rest of your life. When you take action, you change reality. And when reality changes, your thoughts and feelings may follow.

Don’t wait for it to get better. Make it better.

You can continue to build your self-esteem

In Chapter Four we discussed how you can build your self-esteem by examining some of the negative, distorted thoughts that plague you. Using the techniques that you have been practicing, you can identify your negative thoughts, examine the kinds of distortions you are using (for example, discounting your positives, labeling yourself, and selectively focusing only on the negative), and give yourself credit for what you do.

You can ask yourself, “What advice would I give a friend?” You can think about putting yourself on your side, rather than putting yourself down. This has been very important for you during this time between jobs, but it will also be important for the rest of your life. The great thing about giving yourself credit is that you are always around to support yourself. You can always choose to be on your side. Carry that thought forward.

Leave rumination behind

You learned in Chapter Five that you can get stuck in your head, worrying about the future, ruminating and regretting the past. When you are spinning your wheels in your mind, you are not moving forward. You are going nowhere—and to make matters worse, you are miserable in the process. You’ve learned that just because you have a negative thought doesn’t mean you have to spend the entire day and night brooding over it. You can treat repetitive negative thoughts as background noise that you hear with one ear but choose to ignore as you make choices about acting and relating in more productive ways.

During the time between jobs, you may have found yourself hijacked by the noise in your mind. If you used my ideas effectively, you have set your mind’s noise aside, assigned worry time, considered whether brooding or worrying was going to be productive, and decided to focus on effective problem-solving and action, rather than digging a deeper hole with your thinking. And this is exactly the choice you will have in other areas of your life in the future. You can always ask what the productive options are, what actions make sense. And you can always learn to accept what you cannot control.

Avoid the victim trap

It’s natural during the time between jobs to ask, “Why me?” In Chapter Six we saw how easy it is for any of us to get stuck in the victim trap. In fact, a lot of really unfair things happen in life—and unfair things will happen again. It’s sometimes an unfair world, and some people may have bad luck at times—some more than others. But you have learned that you can spend a lot of time thinking of yourself as a victim, or you can spend less time. I am confident that no matter how hard you try to make things work in the future, something unfair and unpleasant will come your way. I wish it were otherwise. I wish the good guys finished first. But it’s not set up that way. Dealing with unfairness will be a challenge for you in the future. Again, you have a choice as to whether you want to spend your time and energy fixing the blame, or commit to fixing the problem. The important piece of wisdom is to recognize that you have a choice.

Put money in its place

Money is important and it’s nice to have. It’s better than not having money. I know, I grew up poor; we were on welfare. I know what it is like to be hungry. That’s why I pause before I eat, to give thanks, to realize that I am lucky, to know that it could be otherwise. But just as money is important, it’s also important to put money in its place. In Chapter Seven we looked at how budgeting, planning, and being careful about money are almost always good ideas. But we also learned there are a lot of things that are free; wonderful things, human things; experiences and emotions that don’t cost you anything.

Some people have told me that during their time between jobs, they learned there are people and experiences they need to pay closer attention to. In taking it forward, try remembering this every day—what is there in your life that is wonderful and free? I like to think that the fact I can walk, talk, think, laugh, cry, embrace, be embraced, love, listen to music, read, learn and grow—all are wonderful, all free. All mine. Take that thought forward.
Put money in its place and replace it with what is priceless.

Seek support from your partner and family

In Chapter Eight we saw how unemployment can pull you apart or bring you together as a family. I recall when I got married, the minister commented that the ring symbolizes you are no longer one person, but two who complete each other. That can be the way both of you cope together with this time between jobs. But as we saw, you both have responsibilities: you, as the unemployed person, have the responsibility to make an earnest effort to look for a job, and your partner has a responsibility to support you when you are coping adaptively. Both of you need validation because it is likely that you will have feelings of anxiety, anger, confusion, and sadness. You are human, and this is a difficult time.

You will want to discuss the difficulties you face, but the style you use will make all the difference. Creating time and space for opening up, rephrasing what the other says, identifying the feelings behind the message, validating the point of view and the emotions that your partner has, and asking how you can help, are all part of effective communication and part of being a partner. It will be hard for both of you, and you may have tension. That’s natural. If you use the ideas and techniques in this book to cope with that, you will have an opportunity to be better together during this time.

Live in the Now, not in the future

A comedian once said, “I live in the past. The rent was cheaper.” That’s the only reason to live in the past. You’re not moving forward by looking into the rear-view mirror. In Chapter Nine, we saw how you can make your life better now, in the present moment, doing something that keeps you focused on today, where life is lived every day. During the time between jobs, it’s natural that you would worry about the future, or dwell on what happened to you in the past. But every day is an opportunity to take charge of the present—and to let the future take care of itself. You can take this forward by treating every day as a new day, a new chance, a new plan. You can practice mindful breathing, focusing on your breath coming and going. Taking it in and letting it go. Even as you move forward and take it to the next stage in your life, you can remind yourself to stay in the Now of the present moment, notice what is around you and appreciate what is happening. You don’t want to sleepwalk through life. What is happening now
is
life.