So, you got laid off

So, you got laid off.

If you are in a state of shock and grief, honor those feelings and let them flow. Don’t read this now. The wound is too raw to explore the perspective I’m offering.

If you are grieving, but starting to ask yourself “what now?” Then, read on.

This is you…

You’ve been thrust into a void. Years of preparation, thousands of hours of hard work, hundreds of missed moments with friends / family due to long work days.

Now the world is telling you that you’ve failed.

Your ego recoils at seeing that not only are you not untouchable, but you are expendable. You’ve become a sacrificial lamb to please our modern God—The Shareholder. 

You try to make sense of it. Why me? Why that way? Why?

I don’t have good answers for you. Possible explanations may include the terms shareholder value, dwindling profits, economic headwinds, etc. I’ll let someone else tackle those questions.

Let’s talk about what this means for you.

Are you hurting? Good. That means you cared. It means you showed up and believed in what you were doing, cared who you were doing it with, and were building towards something.

What is that “something” though? Do you know?

The Default Path

You’ve probably spent years, and perhaps decades, following what Pathless Path author Paul Millerd calls the “default path.” Study hard, get a good paying job, climb up the ladder, work for a few decades, then retire and enjoy life.

While this “default path” has evolved many variants over the past few years, it is still anchored around the common wisdom of pursuing higher education, and entering the corporate world. 

This is the path I’ve learned myself and followed for most of my adult life.

Somewhere along this path, we go on auto-pilot. We stop questioning why we are on the path in the first place. All we know is that any detour is scary—like going off-roading in a Hyundai Elantra (apologies to Hyundai fans).

We go on this path for so long that our identity fuses with our work. We become one with it. This “makes sense” because for decades you spend at least half your waking day working.

There are moments where this path feels great: You deliver on a project, you get a pat on the back from your boss, you get promoted. Each of these milestones are ways the world tells you, “you are worthy.” They all feel like coronations—victories in your heroic journey through life.

However, situations like getting laid off can make us feel like we’ve been thrown into the sea with all our insecurities and anxieties biting at our ankles like sea monsters determined to take us down to the darkest depths. 

You feel like you are drowning.

Existential Openings

Philosopher Andrew Taggart mentions “existential openings;” moments that force us to reassess our lives far more deeply than we have done after being on auto-pilot for so many years. You can experience these moments by the “way of wonderment,” where we encounter such deep awe and inspiration that something clicks for us. The other path is the “way of loss,” moments of crises and loss…like getting laid off.

You’ve found the way of loss—but you’ve arrived at an existential opening. One day, you may realize that all the pain and fear you experienced on the way of loss was a fair price to pay compared to the richness you found by walking through that opening.

What will you do with this existential opening? Are you ready to ask yourself the deep uncomfortable questions about your life you’ve been running away from for years? You are not the only one who has run away from a deeper level of introspection (join the club). But you can choose to stop running.

If you reset your nervous system, embrace a exploration mindset, and redefine your identities, you will emerge more aligned with your values, more resilient, and with a better idea about the work you want to do. Most importantly, you’ll have developed an identity that stands proud and tall, independent from your 9 to 5. 

Reset your nervous system

In his book DeepWork, author Cal Newport highlights how the modern work day is designed to prevent us from taking on complex, focused work. He found the average knowledge worker spends 30% of their time on email and another 30% on team communication and internet activities.

The modern work day looks like infinite loops of context switching, urgent replies to non-urgent pings, playing minesweeper with your browser tabs to find the one you need, all while the world around you is going at a hundred miles an hour, or approximately, the speed of your toddler as they reach the TV remote they shouldn’t be touching.

These infinite loops wreck our nervous system. We put our body in fight-or-flight mode as if we were dwelling in a cave full of grizzly bears. And we think that this is “just how it is.”

Let this moment of forced stillness be a chance to unlearn the franticness you’ve become accustomed to. What that reset looks like is not a one-size-fits-all. However, in this liminal space you are in, where work is not part of the daily equation, you can start catching your breath.

Notice those moments of silence. The stillness of not having to answer that ping right now. At first, this will feel like boredom. You may even feel ashamed that you are “doing nothing.” Yet, you are doing something. You are building immunity to an unsustainable rhythm (so that you can recognize it better next time), and giving your mind room to wonder and ponder.

You are ready to explore.

Embrace an exploration mindset 

A mindset of exploration is powerful and uncomfortable. It’s the antithesis of the concrete nature of the professional world. It’s opting to see everything around you with curiosity, reassess what you thought was certain, and accept you don’t have all the answers. 

The best thing you can do in this mindset is to practice what executive coach Jerry Colonna calls radical self-inquiry. 

Colonna explains that radical self-inquiry is when we look at the mirror and turn our “untamed hungers and unruly compulsions into moments of self-compassion and understanding.” It’s asking yourself questions that feel heavier than the one bag you optimistically stuff all your groceries into.

How do you start this process of radical self-inquiry? I suggest you set aside some time and attempt to write a page for each of these three questions found in Colonna’s book, Reboot: 

1) How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?

2) How did my relationship with money first get formed? How did that relationship shape the work I’ve chosen and my definitions of success and failure?

3) How does that impact my own view of worthiness?

In addition to radical self-inquiry, a mindset of exploration is practiced by seeking unfamiliar experiences and formulating experiments. Is there a hobby and/or area of interest that you’ve created dozens of excuses against exploring? What do you have to lose by revisiting that now? Can you think of an activity that makes you say “no way,” that you can try at least once?

The goal here is to expand your zone of serendipity and create enough momentum in your life to keep you from a state of grief and loss that can easily pull you into depression. You can try doing something completely new and foreign, like taking a dance class, or perhaps you decide to pick up a pencil again and draw portraits like you used to in high school.

The more you invite novel experiences into your life, and approach them with a mindset of exploration, the more likely you’ll be able to find activities and ideas that align with your values and give you a sense of purpose.

Now you are ready to focus.

Redefine your identities

Eventually, a mindset of exploration is going to lead you to activities that speak to your soul. You’ll know this because you’ll feel it in your body (which is why it’s important to reset your nervous system—so you can catch this signal).

Then, the inner monologue will kick in.

“Ok, playtime is over. You may feel better, lighter and all, but it’s time to get serious. This is the way it is.”

Do not let ego pull you back. Your ego is coming from a place of kindness. It wants to keep you safe. But it’s also sensing that you are ready to rely less on it. It tries to hug you back when you need to open your arms. Do not let it.

Instead, learn to negotiate your fears and be intentional about the identities of this new you that will serve as the foundation for the actions you will take from this point forward.

The best way I’ve been able to negotiate fears is using a fear setting exercise popularized by Tim Ferriss. You can use this worksheet to get started. This journaling exercise forces you to name your fear, identify the worst case scenario, ways to mitigate it, visualize the benefits of taking action, and the cost of doing nothing. I used this exercise last year to make the leap and take a sabbatical which I’m currently enjoying.

Once your fears leave your head, you may realize that what you thought was a dragon was actually a firefly.

After taming your dragons fireflies, you can converge around the identities that feel most aligned to your purpose. The ones that your body feels and that stood out to you in your exploration phase.

Converging around your new identities is key. This will help you create consistent action that will align with your values. The more congruent your actions are to your values, the higher your self-confidence. You kickstart a virtuous cycle. It’s the most important insight in James Clear’s #1 Best Seller Atomic Habits.

During my 2022 annual review, I decided that one of the guiding identities for me in 2023 would be: I am a writer. Committing to this identity means establishing a few habits; writing daily, being more thoughtful about my information diet, learning to deconstruct and study writing that I find interesting, etc. If I want to sustain this identity, these are the things I get to do (and apply the graceful discipline scale to manage nasty inner monologues).

If these habits feel like chores, then you haven’t found an identity that is really aligned with what you want yet. Sustaining your identity through these habits should look like work to others, but feel like play to you.

Onwards

I recognize how painful this moment is. I have not experienced the same circumstances. But I’ve lost myself—I’ve given everything to my job; out of pride, out of love, out of fear.

I’m currently on leave from my current job to reassess my relationship with work, money, and worthiness. You can read some thoughts on how I’m approaching my sabbatical here. 

Everything I’ve shared above has worked for me. It has pulled me back from one of the darkest places I’ve ever been in my life and made me optimistic about the type of life I can create. 

I also understand that everyone has their own caveats and hurdles: some of you may have multiple family responsibilities that make thinking of anything other than survival a vain luxury. Some of you had your migration status wholly dependent on your job. For you, this wasn’t a rug pull—you got thrown out of an airplane with a trash bag that you are supposed to use as a parachute.

Do know this: If you find yourself in a situation where you can reset your nervous system, explore, and redefine your identities; you owe it to yourself and to the world to go on that journey.

I can’t wait to see where you go.