Losing Your Job
Losing your job hurts. Let’s be honest, it sucks. You always thought you’d keep working and be part of an organization. You toiled away at your job, worked honestly, dedicated your time for the company.
Then one day someone decided that they did not need you anymore. You are called into the office and told that your services are no longer needed. There are words spoken. Something to do with the company valuing the time you spent and the dedication you showed. But the company is moving in another direction and your services are no longer required. This is good-bye.
It seems to hit you like a ton of bricks. You cannot believe what is being said. This morning you were planning to do a lot of things. There were calls to be made, progress reports to be checked, projects to be updated, schedules to be managed. All of those suddenly seem trivial.
You are no longer interested in the affairs of the company. After all the company did not care about you, why should you care about it. You may even want to lash out and destroy something (in extreme cases someone). You are angry, sad and afraid.
You are angry because you feel a covenant has been violated. There was an agreement between you and the company. You will work for the company to contribute to its growth and the company in turn will contribute to compensation, protection and professional growth. Now as the time comes to reap the benefits of this association, the company ditches you.
You are sad because you invested in the company with your efforts and your time and you developed an association with it. You loved coming to work for the people you got to meet, the challenges at work, coming up with solutions. You enjoyed the routine and not so routine matters that came up with it. Now that routine is no longer there. Those associations and bonds you built up seem to have disappeared into thin air.
And you are afraid. You had a pretty good idea of what you expected from your work. You also knew what and how it would contribute to your life. Now, the future is murky. You do not know what the future holds now. What are you supposed to do now? Where will you go? What does this mean for you, your family?
These are all normal emotions people go through. You are not the first and you probably won’t be the last. Learn to make peace that these emotions are normal. Your feelings of anger, sadness and fear are Ok. Feeling this only shows that you are normal. You are human.
What matters now is not what has happened but what will happen. How will you gather yourself? How will you rebuild? This moment is not the end. In fact, take it as an opportunity for a new beginning. You can build something new, something better. This moment is the beginning of your new journey. It is up to you to make it better than the previous one.