A scenario like a fairy tale: you are doing a job that you are extremely dedicated to and about which you are enviably engaged, your proactivity at the workplace can be an excellent example to all your colleagues, and you are proud that such a well-known and powerful company name is on the business card under your name.
The amount of work assignments you manage to complete every day is amazing, which is why your boss constantly gives you praise and recognition. You are a favorite among your colleagues, and even your clients are very satisfied with your work. It seems that the situation cannot be better than it is right now. However, your boss, like a “bolt out of the blue”, suddenly announced that the company no longer needs you, and that the whole engagement that you gave and which filled you so much, suddenly stops. The fairy tale from the beginning of the chapter suddenly turned into a horror.
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What is happening to you at that moment? A huge series of physical and psychological reactions suddenly occurs in your body, due to which it practically falls into a state of shock. More precisely, it falls into the same state in which it would end if you had just experienced a serious traffic accident, or witnessed some great tragedy. According to the official definition, shock is a psychophysiological state that arises in response to a frightening or traumatic event, which in itself causes a strong emotional reaction in the person who experienced it.
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Some of the symptoms of the state of shock are the inability to experience emotions (so-called “emotional dullness”), a feeling of “separation” from your own body, a reduced ability to perceive events in your environment, and even the experience that things happening around you are not, in fact, real. .
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Let’s start from the beginning – why was your reaction so violent in the first place?
In order for a worker to be productive and happy at his workplace, he needs to show a certain level of commitment to the work he does. As a rule, the better and more successful that worker is in his job, the higher his engagement. When it reaches a very high level, it often happens that we begin to perceive work more and more as an integral part of our lives, and even ourselves.
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And it is quite logical – we invested a lot of time and effort in something that we built with our own knowledge, skills and abilities. In fact, it often happens that over time we begin to perceive that work as part of our own identity.
Identity, psychologists say, is the “deepest” level of our psyche.
It contains our fundamental rules of life by which we live, beliefs that we consider to be the only correct ones, and our values - what is most important to us in life.
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Essentially speaking, our identity answers the question “who am I?”. Precisely because of this, it is easy to conclude that identity is something that cannot be changed so quickly and easily, no matter how much we might want it to.
Here’s an example: we know that our physical appearance is one of the integral parts of our identity. So imagine waking up the next morning as a person of the opposite sex, a different race, or with visible physical deficits. Could you “just like that” accept that? Of course you wouldn’t.
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Yes, the bad news is that it really takes a long time for a change to happen at the level of our identity. However, the good news is that, once this change occurs, it is long-lasting and radical.
What does that have to do with the job loss we’re talking about in this column? It’s about not waking up the next morning as an employee of the company you used to work for, but waking up in fact as a person who has “lost” a part of his identity. And of course you won’t be able to accept that today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. Give yourself as much time as you need, because that period just needs to be somehow “pushed out”.
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Psychologists say that when we lose a loved one, we go through four stages of grief before coming to terms with reality and fully accepting the situation as it really is.
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The sudden loss of a job that represented such a large part of our lives can certainly leave us with the same or similar consequences. Therefore, it is certainly worth noting what are the four stages of dealing with a sudden dismissal in which we can find ourselves.
#1 Denial
The phase that will appear on the first morning when we get up and realize that today, after all, we are not going to work. We will begin to wonder if this really happened to us, or if it was just a bad dream, and if we really understood our employer correctly when he told us that our employment contract was ending.
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#2 Anger
Since we are rational beings, the denial phase cannot last long. After becoming aware of the reality of the situation, it is quite common to feel frustrated or even angry. We will be angry at our boss for firing us, at our colleagues who didn’t stand by us, maybe even at the state that couldn’t do anything about it.
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#3 Bargaining
The third phase occurs with only one goal: to protect ourselves and to avoid facing loss, and then we are almost ready for anything. Maybe we’ll beg the boss to take us back, we’ll suggest working double shifts, or we’ll express our desire to do even the most hated jobs. However, unfortunately, to no avail.
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#4 Depression
In this phase, we most often hit rock bottom, and a series of negative thoughts overwhelms us. We start to think that life has no meaning anymore, or that we will never find another job, which can negatively affect our motivation and self-esteem. It is definitely recommended to seek professional help if this phase lasts too long.
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By the end of the fourth stage, people usually begin to accept the reality of the situation. Then their optimism slowly begins to return, they begin to look at alternative options, and they even manage to find something good in all that “horror”.
It is at that moment that the change of identity that we mentioned a moment ago takes place – we “separate” from the company where we worked, ready to integrate a new life page into our identity.
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Losing your job suddenly is never easy to experience, especially when you identify so much with your company, or when you put so much effort into your workplace. However, there are a few steps you can take today to better prepare yourself for these and similar challenges in the future.
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Be aware of the fact that this scenario can happen to anyone, including you. Because, unfortunately, nowadays nothing is “set in stone”, including the security of your job.
Accept change and uncertainty as normal way of working. The fact is that the sooner you learn to function in such an environment, the more prepared you will be to face challenging situations, and the more likely you will act smarter and more thoughtfully in the event of the worst.
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Make a preventive “back-up” plan. It can be alternative employment, going into private entrepreneurship, moving or something similar. If you really put effort into that plan, you’ll essentially get two good things: you’ll know exactly what to do in case the worst happens, and over time you might like your plan so much that you won’t wait until you get fired to put it into action.
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You regularly work on yourself, on raising awareness and developing your own talents and abilities. Not only will you gain very useful insights into what you’re good at, but you’ll improve your own motivation in the long run.
It’s never too early or too late for personal branding. Today’s digital age and social networks allow you to present yourself to other people as an expert in a certain area – and the more you communicate in this way, the greater the chance that you will “stumble” on the next business opportunity.
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Work on networking and expanding your social network. In today’s business world, contacts are one of the most valuable resources, and it is these contacts that can find you your next job.
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Once the worst happens, however, try to see the situation from a different perspective. What else could that situation mean? How else can you look at her? Why is it good that she turned out exactly that way? Because, after all, when emotions have completely calmed down, people most often say that getting fired is, in fact, the best thing that happened to them in their life.
Source: www.sitoireseto.com
