Recently unemployed or laid off? Try this...

How many people do you know in the last 6 months who have lost their job? I was recently speaking with a friend in Nashville who was going through such a transition. He had good tenure and a good record of performance with the company yet was still let go. With an unexpected change like that we all will run the gambit of emotions from shock to anger to denial, resentment then worry, uncertainty, chaos moving into acceptance and then excitement of a new opportunity. See, the question is not "if" you will go through these emotions because we all will it's "how fast can you move through them?"

To speed that process up ask yourself these questions and start writing them down.

What is the change? Describe it completely and write down everything your thinking about the change itself as soon as you can.

What does it mean to you? Say you lost your job, your gut feeling inside, does it mean the end of your job, the end of your world, a great injustice to you, an opportunity to try something new you've always wanted to do or a forced hand to start to look for something different? What is your initial mind set? Write it down.

Where are you looking? When you answered the above two questions where is your mind set? Are you making these judgments based on looking in the past, present or future. Write it down.

What can you control? Influence? Not Control? This is where we tend to put ourselves in the worst positions to quickly move through the emotions of change. List ALL the things that deal with this situation that you can control, then jot down the ones you may not completely control but do have influence in, finally list the things that no matter what you do they will not change. Your focus should at the first moment be solely centered on category 1 until everything is marked off then move to the influence category. Put everything you have into marking those two lists off and chances are you will be out of the chaos stage and into acceptance before you have a chance to worry about the things you cannot change or control. And you know what they say about worry, "it's like a rocking chair, it may give you something to do it just doesn’t get you anywhere."