Laid-Off - 3 Counterintutive Strategies for Bouncing Back

 The platitude in healing circles is that we Americans have a tough time admitting that we are in pain.

However, that isn't the reality in the current plague of layoffs. Those I coach and provide Tarot readers to know they are in pain. Lots of it. That ranges from anxiety about landing comparable work to shame about losing a job.

For them the situation is how to manage that pain. Here are 3 proven steps to begin that journey.

SELF-COMPASSION

The first and most important step is an ability that most in America don't have. That's self-compassion.

In "Tarot for Change" by Jessica Dore that's assigned to the Strength card. It takes strength to love ourselves enough to take care of ourselves when The System says we haven't measured up (at least not enough to keep that job). So absent is this trait from our menu of healing that there is even the guide "Self-Compassion for Dummies" by Steven Hickman.

Sure, we can detail what we might have done or could have done in our overall career and that particular job to have prevented this reversal of fortune. Most career experts would recommend such an inventory. But along with that has to be the gentle embrace that as a human being we are myopic creatures. Much of what we see is by looking in the rearview mirror. In the Tarot the Two of Swords captures the reality of those blind spots.

SEEKING TO COMFORT RATHER THAN BE COMFORTED

The next step is getting out of ourselves. Pain tends to push us into withdrawal. We are driven to hide. What also falls away is our willingness to be there as a human being. During what was up to then assessed as the worst of times - the Industrial Revolution - novelist Charles Dickens recommended that what would get the society through was the milk of human kindness. 

Centuries before Dickens Saint Francis of Assisi articulated that ethos as consisting of reaching beyond our own pain in his "Prayer for Peace." In that prayer is a plea to allow the self-absorbed human being to seek to comfort rather than be comforted. In the 12-Step program Alcoholics Anonymous newcomers are assigned service work. Through that giving they position themselves to receive the gift of sobriety.

CLEAR THINKING, DON’T KNOW

The third step is to recognize that we are probably already changing - as we need to do. A change, such as the loss of a job, triggers more necessary change. Usually, as the Tarot's Wheel of Fortune card captures, that begins in the subconscious. Dore points out:

" ... change often begins with precontemplation, which is before you know that change needs to be made, and moves from there to contemplation, preparation, action, and ultimately through to maintenance ..."

The challenge is to let go of the past so the future can get underway. Not easy. That's because the past is all we know.

A useful ritual is to light a small white candle and three times a day say three times the Zen mantra: Clear Thinking, Don't Know.

Full Disclosure: Post-9/11 my industry collapsed, with it my business. I found mysticism to lift me out of the pickle I was in and be able to spot hope.

Tarot Card Reader. Medium. Intuitive Career Coach.

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