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This week's Life note wisdoms gained and shared,

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having walked the layoff path. Welcome to Life Notes from Chair 17,

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a podcast dedicated to sharing life stories,

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wisdoms and inspirations as we navigate life's journey,

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post chas to share thoughtful perspectives and insights from her own life journey.

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As well as those of special guests, contributors tune in for thoughtful conversations about lessons learned wisdoms,

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gained experiences, had and inspirations shared.

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Find us where you get your podcasts and be sure to hit follow or subscribe,

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so you never miss an episode. Now enjoy this week's episode.

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All righty. Welcome back in friends to another episode of the Life Notes from Chair 17.

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I'm your host ch Thank you once again for finding me in this little corner of the podcast universe.

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As always, I'd like to thank our returning C 17 ers for your continued support and tuning in each week.

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And if you are joining us for the first time,

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maybe having found us on one of the major podcast platforms or via our website out on life Notes from Chair 17 podcast.com.

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A warm welcome to you. Thank you for wanting to check us out.

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We hope you like what you hear, you'll want to continue to tune in.

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Also want to say thank you to those of you who have given feedback on the previous episode,

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which was a special one for us. It was our 17th episode and we got to talk about the true inspiration for the naming of this podcast,

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the original chair 17. It was fun to record.

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So I'm glad to have had that land with some of you and you enjoyed it.

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But for this episode, I will say it's a little bit of a different shift and a little bit of a different vibe.

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I wanted actually to spend some time sharing some notes,

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some life notes for what I have learned or from what I have learned during the times in my life where I have been handed a layoff notice.

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And this episode is particularly inspired by the fact that at the time of this recording,

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we are heading once again into the new year and there is a fresh round of layoffs happening in various industries and some of which have affected a couple of people in my immediate circle.

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Uh not at the same company, but their companies are and have laid them off.

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And for some of those folks, it is essentially happening to them after they have worked at that company for over 30 years.

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So they are just now facing a layoff for the first time while also not necessarily being in a place where early retirement or retirement is an option.

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So perhaps this episode isn't for everyone,

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but if it can provide some helpful wisdoms or inspirations,

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or maybe a sense of reassurance and lifting of spirits to those who might be having to sort out what is next?

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That is, of course, what we like to do here always on the podcast and to be fair,

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I really actually always thought I was going to be one of those people that worked somewhere for a very long period of time and for the 1st 10 years of my career that actually was seemingly going to be true or it,

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it felt like that was going to be true. I was at the same company.

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Uh I had moved into different roles,

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but also to be fair, it was a slightly different era where one didn't really bounce around every two or three years,

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which is kind of what we do now.

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Um I wasn't, I was sort of,

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we were moving in that direction,

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but it wasn't quite the norm that it seems like it is today.

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And so I always kind of joke that my career feels as if it's worked in reverse from what happens today.

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So I was very stable and set in the 1st 10 years of my career.

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And then as I've gotten older, I've actually spent more time moving around versus moving around early and then settling later and to set the back story,

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I actually have faced being laid off three times.

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So the first time I thought it might happen actually for a full year before it did.

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And it was indeed driven by economic factors in a recession.

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So sort of standard fare,

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uh hitting a bad economy and, and having to go through a recession and I was not in the right industry when that hit.

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The second time actually was a bit more unique.

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I had learned some things having gone through the layoff ones before.

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And as a result of that,

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I paid more attention to what I would call the tea leaves of how organizations work.

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And that led me to figuring out I was going to be laid off before there was an official plan to tell me.

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So that's a little bit of a unique situation.

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Not everybody goes through that or even has the ability to sense that.

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But for me that second time I did and the third time was really unexpected and it is often what I would say a lot of us are experiencing nowadays or is perhaps the most common.

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Uh you go in maybe for a regular one on one meeting.

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And in my case, that was true. I thought I was going in for,

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you know, the weekly check in with my manager.

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At the time I opened the door, there was both my manager and a human resources representative and I remember saying out loud before I even sat down,

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so I'm being laid off again.

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Not my first rodeo. I had already been through it.

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The signs were very similar. So I kind of knew what was up.

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The minute I walked through the door. And I will say though in each of these moments without fail,

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all of them were jarring.

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They were very emotional for me. I sort of felt as if I had some,

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you know, I had done something wrong or maybe I had failed in some way.

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I knew that actually wasn't true because this was not a performance based termination.

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And all of my performance evals were fine.

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So I knew that that wasn't the case.

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And yet it still felt as if a really sudden and abrupt stop to something that had become a really big part of my life.

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And for the first two, I can say that we collectively or what I'm going to call collectively as an employee population on the whole.

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We're not really talking as openly as we are nowadays about how to recover from a layoff.

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There wasn't quite the social networking platform or connections that we have now and even amongst those platforms,

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I don't really feel as if the professional job searching and job coaching kind of niche of those platforms had really come into what it is today.

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So when I got this news about losing my job,

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it was, it felt more isolating and it did take a a different toll on me personally.

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But nowadays, and specifically,

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if you are on or you are familiar with linkedin as the professional networking platform that it is there tends to be a very open share when you are affected by a round of layoffs.

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And I believe this is for two reasons.

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One, it's part of how we as affected employees process what has happened to us.

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It and, and it's generally within a supportive network that can help lift our spirits pretty much at a moment in time when we are not feeling great,

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we might feel pretty low, pretty stunned,

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pretty shocked. And secondly,

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it also becomes an important step in beginning to find maybe what's going to be next for us because that same network often is the one we turn to and rallies to help us get to next.

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And more often than not when you do see those posts,

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they are thoughtful. They are generally very reflective of an employee's time with a given company.

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Often talking about the impact their time at that company has made.

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And the general gratitude for the experiences,

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connections and people that it has brought into their lives.

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But there are people who choose to post a different type of post where let's say it's not really coming from a good place.

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And it is my opinion that revenge posting on linkedin is really not a good look.

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And there are people in the professional space dedicated to this,

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that would agree and tell you it's not the right approach to dealing with the layoff.

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I, in my opinion would call it unprofessional and also potentially very damaging to one's brand,

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which is something you need to be very mindful of.

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As you move through your career, you wanna really protect you,

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your brand yourself. And so it might seem very obvious,

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but I would highly recommend not doing that,

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not revenge posting.

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Uh Especially if you do it just after you receive notice of a layoff,

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that old adage of sort of waiting maybe take a beat,

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pause, reflect come back then post when it's not in such a raw place.

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Uh because I think it will reflect better on you and it won't necessarily damage your brand uh in the eyes of other people that might be interested in hiring you or wanting you to come work for them.

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Uh We say there is still that saying then it's a good one that you do get more with honey than you do with vinegar.

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So it's hard though and I will acknowledge it is hard to quell the emotions that you go through when you are handed the layoff notice because it does feel really hard.

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It does tend to be and stay very raw as you learn that you are now no longer part of a place that had really become such a part of you.

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And oftentimes especially nowadays,

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this can feel as if it's being done in a very abrupt way and a very automated way.

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There might not even be much of a human interaction.

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If at all, you might only get it in some sort of,

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you know, slack message or some sort of email or some sort of,

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you know, group text or you can't log in in the morning because your access has been shut off.

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Or maybe you can't get in the door of the office because your badge doesn't work anymore.

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There's a whole bunch of different sort of nonhuman ways.

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We have seen employees find out that they do not essentially work at the company anymore.

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And I will say it's my opinion that the companies that have seemingly abandoned that human quote unquote resources part or component of easing an employee through a reduction in force notice.

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I really wish they would rethink that because it reflects more on their values and not in a good way.

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I know that we're predominantly in a virtual working environment a lot.

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Now that was very much changed during the pandemic.

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It does help to have someone in the room with you or at least talk you through it,

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whether it's on the phone or in a zoom or something than to just abruptly accidentally find out you don't have a job because you read a message somewhere or you can't get into the building.

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And so it's in that moment really depending on how you find out that in the words of one of our favorite life mantras,

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you really should give yourself permission to have the feels as we might say after you receive the news,

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not go out and revenge post about it.

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But the fact that it could, you could feel grief,

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you could feel frustration, sadness,

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annoyance, fear, doubt,

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whatever it might be for you, that is 100% normal and it is something we need to make sure.

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I think my opinion again,

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we should do and we should not pretend like we don't have some sort of feelings or are affected by this because in the end,

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I feel that does a disservice, we're like pretending we're not affected and then it will build and generally show up somehow else.

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It's not an excuse to wallow or stay stuck in those fields.

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But for many of us,

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there is indeed a grieving process that comes with being laid off and it is ok that we have to sit with the fact that something we have committed a good chunk of our time to over a certain period of time is suddenly up and gone and we need to give ourselves some space and some time to,

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to process that and go through the feelings about that.

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And yeah, once we do that there is something that also starts to emerge or what I have found that starts to kind of come into being true and it could be sounding really corny or really cliche,

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especially if, you know, this is fresh and it's something you're going through right now.

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But when one door closes,

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another one tends to open and there's a different way to think about this that I recently was inspired by re-watching Harry Potter in the order of the Phoenix.

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And when Luna love good says things have a way of coming back to us if not always in the way we expect.

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And what I mean by that or what I'm alluding to is,

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yes, the one door closes,

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another one opens does tend to be true,

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but it doesn't necessarily mean that that's easy or it's something that happens overnight,

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but it does happen over time because generally speaking,

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we're not, a lot of us are not going to be laid off one day.

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And magically we have a role or a new role or a new place within the next week and everything is right again,

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with the world, there's going to be a selected group of people out there where that is probably going to happen because they have a particular skill set or they have a particular set of connections that can help them find their new place that fast.

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But for most of us, we have to and arguably should take the time to think through what it is,

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we are going to do next and we have to kind of go through this process of maybe letting go of what was sitting with the uncertainty for a bit and then beginning to work to find what is going to be our next spot.

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And when I say work, quote unquote in my experience,

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that means a couple of things. It definitely means asking for help from your network.

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However you define your network,

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it means taking a really thoughtful look at what it is that you have been doing and asking yourself,

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is that something that you still want to do?

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And if the answer is yes, how then does a plan come together to getting you back into that?

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Who can help with polishing a resume or making connection and bringing us back onto the path that we feel we just kind of got knocked off of.

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But if the answer is no, and the answer is,

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you know what? I don't know that I want to be on that path anymore,

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then the moment really does become one where we are potentially aiming to make a change.

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And if we do want to make the change,

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we have to kind of define what that change looks like.

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And we have to kind of define and set ourselves up to be successful with that change and that can take a number of different turns,

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it can take more time. My approach has always tried to make it incremental so that we don't feel overwhelmed of trying to do it all at once.

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But we take baby steps to get towards what is ultimately the change we're trying to make because we have to remember that making a change can often be much harder and it can certainly be harder at first,

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maybe even not initially what we were expecting or thought it was going to be.

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But if we have that courage and determination to do it and we stick to it,

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it can oftentimes lead us ultimately to what we are wanting to do.

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And we oftentimes hear people say that as a result of the job lay off it and,

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and the self reflection that folks do in that time,

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it's led them on to this great new path that they found and are so glad they did.

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But it took some work to get there and it took some time to get there.

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But the catalyst to that change was actually the job loss.

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And in thinking about if you're going to go down any kind of new path,

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whether it is your own path or it's with a new company,

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the most, one of the critical pieces I've had to really work on myself during the times I have been going through,

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this is to really fight back against giving up or doubt.

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It can be super hard because there's going to be a lot of time,

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a lot of downtime where those doubts and the negative talk can kick in.

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And especially as more time elapses when we still haven't found what it is we're going to do next.

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That talk really starts to get on a repeat talk track.

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And then again, it doesn't matter whether it's, I'm trying to get back to doing similar kind of work with a new company or I'm going to go out on my own.

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The spirits and your spirits are gonna get low.

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And that is ok because it's a normal part of this process that you go through.

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And I sometimes think what we do is we overcompensate and we try to spend all day,

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every day trying to find that new door,

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the ones closed behind us. And we're desperately trying to find the new one,

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but we really can't do that.

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We have to time box our efforts to find next with efforts that are also going to help us recharge our energies and keep us in the right frame of mind while we are trying to find the new door,

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because it is really easy to lose it and sort of lose perspective and to start to stress and to worry because the bills still have to get paid and life still has to go on.

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But we really are no good to ourselves.

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Even in the times of uncertainty, if we cannot carve out moments to keep us in balance.

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I certainly made the mistake of not doing that during one of the periods of layoffs.

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And it took a really hard toll on me.

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I lost £15 from stress. And I vowed I would never do that again.

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So know that it is ok to want to hold out for something,

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but it is also ok to come up with some interim plans to get you to what you need to do to remain in a good space while you find what it is you ultimately want to do.

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It can be a stressful time no matter what way we slice it.

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But in the stress and in the weirdness,

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we still need to take care of ourselves and to find our balance and to embrace what's going to come next.

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Because as the old saying goes, we cannot direct the wind,

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but we can adjust our sales or surfer girl.

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And me actually likes this particular saying which is we cannot stop the waves,

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but we can learn to surf.

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So there we go. Not quite a top 10 list,

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but it's some of the things that I think about and have thought about in the times when I have faced a layoff.

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And hopefully they might be bits of inspiration or wisdom that can help those who find themselves in the spot,

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get through it and know that it's going to be ok on the other side as always be kind to yourself.

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Take it one hour at a time, one day at a time and I will see you next time.

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Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Life Notes from chair 17.

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Remember to follow and subscribe. So you never miss an episode.

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We'll see you next time.