The unthinkable has just happened. Your boss calls you into his office with that grumpy, sour, Monday morning look on his face and you know, just by looking at the unattractive bald spot on the back of his head as you follow him down the hall, that something isn’t right.
Sure enough, you’ve just lost your job.
What are you going to do? You’ve been training in your field for the last five years, and none of the other companies that do what you do in your area are hiring. You start putting in applications with companies across the country, but no one bites. Fact is, reality bites.
This has happened to countless people. I’d be willing to bet that every single working person you know has been laid off at one time or another; some, repeatedly. There are those who have been able to find another job in their same industry, but a great many have had to retrain to do something totally different, and it has been a hard adjustment for them.
What if this happens to you? What if you had to enter a field that was completely foreign to you?
Read a book.
You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you? I bet by now you think that reading is my answer to everything. Well, you’re just about right. Reading is the answer to a great many things, and that’s why I push it so hard.
Head down to your local library and hop on the computer. Go to the search page, and put in your new line of work. Say you’ve decided to breed mink. Put “mink breeding” into the search field and two seconds later, you’ll find the Dewey Decimal number for mink breeding, and a list of all the books the library has on that topic and related ones. Those books will lead you to books at the store, or to online articles that can be just as useful and, for the most part, are free. You can even purchase e-books on just about any subject in the world.
I know it sounds like I’m making light of a subject that is very painful to a lot of people. We’ve been unemployed a number of times and I’ve had to learn to see humor in everyday situations to make it through. Losing a job doesn’t have to be the end of the world, although it does throw things off kilter for a while and cause a great deal of stress. (Did you know you can find books on stress-relieving yoga?) Think of it as an opportunity to learn something new, and then get at it. I have a feeling you’re going to be a great mink farmer.