Finding Happiness After a Job Loss

In May 2022 my boyfriend Stephen and I were in this midst of preparing his house for sale. We were excited about our new adventure of selling his house and living together for the first time. We were also awaiting the arrival of his first grandchild who was to be born any day. Our lives were full of expectation and we were on top of the world.

Stephen, who is always cracking jokes and specializes in deadpan humor, began one of our many daily conversations with an unexpected disclaimer: “I’m not joking, OK?” His more-serious-than-usual demeanor convinced me that he was serious and I had a moment of panic, wondering what could be so bad that he needed to use such a serious tone.

“I’ve just been laid off.”

Those dreaded words never come at an opportune time. Few people are ready to hear such news. For most people, I think, there is a moment of panic when we first get laid off (or when our spouse/partner does). Our thoughts can drag us into a dark place as we ruminate about our unexpected and unwanted situation:

Will I be able to find another job? How are we going to pay the bills in the meantime? What will I do if my job search stretches beyond my financial resources?

Although financial worries are perhaps the most frequent concern for the recently unemployed, they are by no means the only issue to face. Losing a job may rob us of our identity for a time. We may feel awash in feelings of ‘who am I now’? We may worry about what our spouse thinks of us or whether our friends view us a failure for having lost our job. Others may look at us with pity and, even if they mean well, we may sense that they see us as “less than” for the loss.

Even if we disliked our job, being free of it can cause of wave of unexpected emotions. When I left my corporate job — even though it was by choice — I spent many years wondering if I was as “worthy” as a retired person as I was when I was a “productive” member of society.

My doubts led me to jump into a web business which I didn’t enjoy just so I could fake myself into believing that I was worthy of taking up space on this planet. Worse, because my business made just a fraction of what I made at my corporate job, I couldn’t simulate joy by spending money to distract myself from the emotional turmoil going on inside of me.

It was in the midst of this time, feeling like an utter failure at life, that I began researching how I could be happier. I was surprised to learn that my circumstances didn’t have to define my happiness. In fact, I learned that happiness and life circumstances actually have little to do with each other. My happiness — and yours — depends more on what is going on in our minds than it does on what is going on in our lives.

When Stephen lost his job, I already had a head start on how he (and I) could find happiness, even in the midst of loss and the unknown. I put into practice what I knew about happiness science to help us navigate this unexpected life event.

If you’re facing a job loss and having your own sort of crisis because of it, now is an excellent time to begin your journey of finding happiness in spite of your circumstance. If you’re wondering where to begin, I’ll offer a few tips in this blog post to get you started.

Don’t Panic!

Easier said than done, right?!?

I’ve been laid off myself and I’ve listened to others tell their stories about losing their job. What I’ve learned from my own experience and from the many stories I’ve heard is that we make our best decisions about our future when we don’t panic.

If you’ve recently lost your job, your first inclination may be to panic or, at least, to allow yourself to get wrapped up in fear. That’s a perfectly natural feeling, but not one that you must entertain.

After experimenting with many ways to calm myself during stressful situations, I found that what works best for me is to keep asking myself a simple question:

“Am I safe in this moment?”

The key is to define “safe” in a fundamental sense. Am I at risk of dying right now? Am I at risk of having to sleep outside tonight? Am I at risk of not having enough food for my next meal? Am I at risk of being physically harmed in this moment?

If the answer to those fundamental questions is ‘no,’ then I can relax (even if just a bit) and begin the work of dealing with my longer term safety. Even if I only have a roof over my head for tonight and enough food to fill my belly until morning, that gives me several hours to work out a plan for finding shelter and food for one more day.

Most of us aren’t immediately in danger when we lose our job. Fear of the unknown can lead us to think we are in danger when we actually are not. When our emotions are in overdrive, we may feel unsafe, but feeling unsafe is not the same as being unsafe.

Count Your Blessings

Though in losing your job you may feel that your world is crumbling around you, the first thing you must focus on is what is going right, not on what is going wrong.

In the case of Stephen losing his job, we began by counting our blessings.

We had a roof over our heads, food in the fridge, and a warm bed. We had friends who allowed us to tell our story and helped us to deal with our myriad of emotions at the time. We had each other and a commitment that we would get through this challenging time somehow.

We were grateful that we didn’t need financial help from family or friends, but if we’d been in that situation, we did have folks that would have loaned us money to help us get through the rough patch. Knowing we had a safety net, even if we never used it, was comforting.

Assess Your Situation Accurately

After Stephen lost his job, we looked at our existing savings, investments, and potential for other income. We examined our expenses to see how much money we needed each month to cover our routine living expenses. We factored in non-routine expenses, such as eating out, gifts, and a trip to visit my family across the country.

We determined what was essential and what we could put off (such as the trip) if we needed to do so. We assumed that we’d have to adjust our lifestyle, even if only temporarily, but after an honest inspection of our finances, we realized the adjustment would not be the drastic cutback that we initially assumed it would be.

Examining our finances honestly eased our minds because no matter what we found, we could come up with a plan to address it. If we had found our situation to be dire, we would have adjusted as needed in order to get through until Stephen found a new job. As it turned out, we decided to adjust our lifestyle in ways that we didn’t have to, just in case his unemployment lasted longer than we expected.

Adjust Your Living Expenses

Even though we had planned to sell Stephen’s house before he got laid off, the profit from doing so played a big part in our overall strategy to adjust our living expenses. Selling Stephen’s house gave us some breathing room as he moved into my smaller house (with its associated lower expenses).

We made several other choices which lowered our costs and allowed us to breathe more easily as we navigated our new life minus his salary. We sold my car, put off some nice-to-have purchases, and limited the size and scope of our gift giving.

With the extra time Stephen had (and with more together time), we began cooking more and eating out less. We decided to paint my house ourselves rather hiring someone to do it. When we discovered a major leak in our master bath shower, Stephen agreed to take on the significant task of tearing out the old shower, repairing the leak, and putting in a new shower surround.

In the case of adjusting living expenses, we took advantage of the old adage “time is money.” While we often think about this in the context of saving time to save money, it’s also true that we can use our time to do tasks that save us money.

Come Up With a Plan

After you’ve calmed yourself, assessed your situation, and adjusted your living expenses in the short term, you need to come up with a long-term plan for your future. Keep an open mind when drawing up your plan because you may have possibilities that you hadn’t initially realized.

For most folks, the foundation of the plan will be in finding another job. If this is the case for you, then you need to spend as much time finding a new job as you did working at your previous job. Sometimes people balk at this level of time commitment in finding a job, but if you are relying on your job to fund the rest of your lifestyle, you must give your job search at least as much attention as you gave to your job.

When I moved to Austin (Texas) several years ago, I explored the world of temp work. Since none of the companies I talked with had jobs in my field (software engineering), I decided to try whatever they did have, just for fun. Among other jobs, I worked as a receptionist for a high-profile attorney’s office, for a psychiatrist, and for a technical college. I was offered full-time work at all of these places. Though I wasn’t in the market for a job at the time, what I learned is that folks who are dependable and friendly will often be offered a permanent position if there is one available.

For folks who work in tech (and possibly other fields), contract work is another possibility. Much like my experience in accepting temp work, I know of several people who were offered full-time positions after working a contract position for several months. If you are experienced in your field, easy to work with, and reliable, chances are excellent that you’ll be offered a full-time position when one opens up.

Finally, think outside the box when looking for work at a specific company. I personally know a woman who “found” a job when she was volunteering for Toastmasters. She was an Area Director and was responsible for overseeing the Toastmasters club at that company when someone was impressed by her speaking skills. She was offered a job without even having applied for it!

Depending on your situation, you may choose a plan that doesn’t include finding another (corporate) job. When a friend of mine lost his job, he decided to try his had at freelancing. Because he had a specific technical skill to market, he was able to leave full-time corporate work to create his own schedule and to choose clients that he enjoyed working with. For my friend, losing his job became the catalyst for finding another working situation that was more suited to his preferred lifestyle.

After I left my corporate job, I fully planned to take another job, but after many false starts, I realized that my heart was no longer in software engineering. I considered changing my career, but deep down, I knew that what I really wanted was to be retired. With that in mind, I assessed my finances and found that changing my lifestyle considerably (by cutting back expenses) would allow me to get by financially until I reached the age where I could collect Social Security and/or begin taking money from my retirement account.

Regardless of the plan you choose, it’s not only OK but it’s encouraged that you modify your plan down the road. It’s rare that we come up with a plan that works from start to finish. But having a plan in place gives you something to work toward and, in the process, you’ll accumulate more information that will allow you to readjust your plan as needed.

Focus on Forgotten Joys

When things are going as planned, we tend to get wrapped up in the tedium of the everyday. We often forget about the things that bring us great joy as we fixate on the mundane instead. When our job is stripped from us, we suddenly find the ability to focus on something besides our well-worn routine.

Even if we begin by focusing on our difficult, reactionary emotions, without the constraint of a job we can begin to explore our emotional world more fully, including focusing on what brings us joy and makes us feel whole and grounded in the world.

In Stephen’s and my case, what initially felt like horrible timing with his layoff turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We had time to visit our families for more than few days and we finally made the long trip to visit my family where we had the joy of seeing my brother before his death. Had we not been sidelined from our usual everyday lives by the layoff, we might have missed those precious times with our families. We made memories that will last a lifetime, in part because of an unexpected and unwanted job loss.

What do you enjoy besides your work? Do you have a loving family? Do you have a cherished pet? Do you have a hobby or other activities that has been long-forgotten in the hubbub of your busy life? Whatever brings you joy, take time to focus on that during your unexpected “vacation” from work.

Learn How to Be Happy No Matter What

While losing your job may be unsettling at first, it is a tremendous opportunity to learn how to be happy in difficult circumstances. Life is a series of ups and downs, joys and sadness, but how you feel about the ups and downs determines your true experience, not the events that happen to you.

If nothing else, find gratitude in the opportunity that losing your job will provide. You may not see how it’s possible, but if you commit to finding the good in every situation, you will discover a level of happiness that you didn’t know was possible.

If you’re not sure where to begin, read some of my earlier posts on gratitude. Commit to spending time each day to find the positives in your life. Begin by being grateful for the “little” things that you may not have noticed when you were scurrying to work every day.