Job Loss Recovery Expert Nan S. Russell

Job Loss Recovery

• Get Clear: Who Are YOU?
  We often forget this basic truth. A job is what you do, not who you are. It's easy to get these mixed up. Many of us do. I know I have. We tend to define who we are by what we do, often equating our value as a human being with the money we make, the responsibilities we have, or the results we achieve.
• 4 Things to Know About Your Job Loss
  Look up the unemployment rate on the day you read this. Now reverse that percentage. You've been thinking about how many people are unemployed. Start thinking about how many are employed. And while you do, add these four thoughts to it.
• Hit Pause! Take a Break from Your Job Search Today
  Yes, that's right. Take today off. No job hunting. No interviews. No follow-up. No chores. No tasks. No worrying. No planning. No fretting. Today is a "Pause Day." A pause day is a day to renew ourselves, and draw an emotional line in the sand between what was and what will be. Today is that day for you.
• How to Get Your Job Search Unstuck
  Almost everyone who works has experienced job loss. If job loss hasn't happened to you yet, count yourself lucky and expect that at some point in time you probably will experience a job loss, too.
• Packing Light for Your Future Career
  Travel season has arrived. My travel goal is always to pack light. But typically that evaporates before I ever leave the driveway. Despite thoughtful planning, I pack more than I need, feeling encumbered and oppressed during the trip. It happens with job-loss, too. We bring too much baggage with us.
• Changing Your View Changes Everything
  You can wait for perspective, or you can develop it. Like an architect taught to design by looking at something within a narrow context first, and then viewing it from wider and wider angles, we can learn to see our own life situations from different and wider vantage points; we can grow "new eyes," as it were.
• We ALL Need Help Sometimes
  There's something about asking for help that gets many people stuck after job loss. Maybe you don't want to seem foolish. Or stupid. Or dependent. Or needy. Or imperfect. Maybe you think you should know how to maneuver this unfamiliar landscape called "unemployed."
• How to Recharge Your Week to Recharge Your Job Loss Recovery
  Sometimes it's a struggle to stop the worrying about bills, obligations, and what the future may hold. Sometimes the emotional despair of job loss can cause us to withdraw, reduce our efforts, or keep us stuck. When that happens, it's time to recharge your emotional energy with positive action.
• 3 Tracks to Accelerate Your Recovery from Job Loss
  Reconnecting with your core, finding your inner strength, and seeing the world anew with enthusiasm may not be on your to-do list after job loss. But they should be.
• Job Loss Questions for Career Success
  No matter why you've lost your job, it's unlikely your instincts are as fine-tuned as the lobster's. Growth for a lobster is risky. Shell-less and hiding from predators for nearly two months until a new shell is formed, the lobster knows instinctively it must endure this process again and again to survive.

• How to Take Your Power Back
  It's easy to mentally replay the day you lost your job. "It's not personal," they said. But it sure felt personal. The years of company loyalty are of no value now. The things you did for "them," of no importance. Erased. Gone. Eliminated. Like you.
• Coming to Terms with Change: Letting Go
  You know the date you became unemployed, got married or divorced, had a child, moved across the country, or lost a loved one. These life occurrences mark significant change. Transition follows change.
• Missing Key to Your Future: Trust
  From sophisticated Ponzi schemes to broken promises made by company leaders cashing multimillion dollar bonuses while jobs are slashed, it's hard not to join the cynics, skeptics, and doubters when you're unemployed through no fault of your own. Broken trust can break your spirit, impale your emotional well-being, and scar your heart.
• Don't Play the When-I-Get-a-New-Job Game
  Operating as if life is on-hold, some people play the "when-game" after job loss: when I get a job, when finances get stronger, when things get back to normal, then, my life will start, again. Then, I'll take care of myself; then things will be fine; then I'll be happy, again.
• Recapturing Your Work Zest
  How do you regain that sense of enjoyment, gusto, eagerness, enthusiasm, passion, pleasure, and delight about your work? That is, after-all, what work-zest evokes. Regaining your work-zest is a key to regaining your future.
• Re-Start Your Job Search Momentum: Take Positive Action
  Perhaps you're thinking in a few weeks you'll focus once again on job hunting. As long as you have that severance coming in or funds to pull from, what's the rush? It's tempting to take it easy from time to time.
• 3 Evergreen Keys to Job Loss Recovery
  One thing is clear: twenty-first century success won't be guaranteed by a particular major, a certain profession, a specific job title, or the latest skill. It won't come from discovering the right next job, industry, company, or idea. Those are moving targets.
• Reclaiming Career Prosperity
  As you transition from the emotional upheaval of job loss to reclaiming your career prosperity, don't budge from focusing on four needs that will help you reclaim the future you desire.
• Time for a "Mental Diet"?
  In 1881, the New York YWCA's proposed typing lessons for women brought protests citing, "the female constitution would break down under the strain." How many women believed that and didn't sign up?
• Handling Job Loss Worries
  What if the money runs out before I find a good job? What if I have to take a pay cut? What if I have to accept a job I don't like? What if I can't pay my bills and have to file bankruptcy? What if no one hires me? What if I have to change professions? What if … what if … what if?