Why Losing Your Job Might be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You: Ten Steps to Start Breaking Free
Getting laid off can often provide you the perfect opportunity to make those career changes about which you've always dreamed, whether it's working for a large corporation or setting up shop on your own. In fact, once the initial shock of losing your job passes, you might just find getting laid off is the catalyst you've needed all along to break free from "JobJail" by reconsidering what it is you want out of your career (and maybe even your life) and by establishing priorities and a game plan for what comes next.
JobJail can affect you in good economic times and bad, no matter what position you occupy in a company, whether you are self employed, or even if you're the owner. When you're in JobJail, often times your current position doesn't generate sufficient income, you fear changing jobs out of loyalty, and/or you feel stagnated because there's no clear career path for advancement or room for professional development. Being in JobJail means that you feel trapped, drained, unfulfilled, unchallenged, or challenged to stay challenged at work. Your job suffers, you suffer, and so do your co-workers, employees, employer, and even your family and home life. You get complacent.
Getting laid off can change all of that. After all, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Your "new" job (because no one is ever really out of a job; not even those who are laid off) is to find your next RIGHT job and finally break free from the cycle of being trapped in one unfulfilling position after another.
Here are 10 simple exercises you can engage in right away to turn being laid off into the springboard you need to start breaking free:
1.Declare to yourself and to the world that you are going to make choices based on what you want to achieve from your career, not based on what you perceive others want you to achieve.
2. Answer, "When am I the most productive when working at my job?"
3. Answer, "When am I the most stressed when working at my job?"
4. Identify personal or professional activities that energize and interest you.
5. Identify personal or professional activities that leave you feeling drained.
6. Enlist the help of current and former colleagues, friends, clients, and business contacts you know you can count on for honest feedback and support by asking them what you do really well and what they consider your natural strengths to be.
7. Look at your previous jobs and compare those activities with your answers to numbers 2 through 6 above. Where is there congruence? Where are there gaps or inconsistencies?
8. Look at the big picture of what you want out of life and your career, and then narrow your focus to determine how you might apply this "big picture" thinking in pursuit of a job or business venture.
9. Pursue only those activities that align with who you are, your strengths, and your unique abilities.
10. Be honest with yourself. Stop being someone or something you are not and take ownership for your choices and the results (both good and bad).
Questions and Answers
A. Harrison Barnes, the owner and creator of Hound.com knows very well that it is the dream of every job seeker to have the best job in their hands.
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