It’s not a good idea to get too hung up on the idea that something as negative as losing your job could happen to you. However, it is important to prepare to some degree for a twist down the road that can happen to absolutely anyone. Your future in your career is never assured, after all, and if you’re caught off-guard by a job loss, it will hit you all the harder. Here, we’re going to look at ways you should be prepared to deal with job loss and how to make it out the other side.
Be good to yourself
Losing your job is a highly stressful time for just about anyone. Whether or not you were made redundant or fired because of something you did within the job, try not to blame yourself too much for it. Deal with the stress by taking practical steps to help you improve your health instead. Exercise and a good diet go a long way to helping with your mental health. But that’s not to say you shouldn’t avoid the topic, either. Talking about your experiences and even writing them down can prove cathartic. What’s more, they give you a little distance from your stress, getting it out in the real world rather than keeping it stuck in your head. That gives you the space to make more practical choices.
Have a financial fallback
While you’re still employed, you should take what opportunities you can to make sure that you’re financially supported even if your income were to suddenly dry up one day. https://www.moneycrashers.com has a lot of advice on how to prepare your finances for the possibility of unemployment. Emergency funds, debt reduction strategies, and having an “unemployment budget” at the ready can make it a lot easier to switch to a different mindset financially. There are long-term strategies to consider, too, such as diversifying your income by putting money aside for investment purposes. You should try to set up a financial fallback of some kind, as you never know when you might have to rely on it.
Accept what’s available
Asking for help can be difficult for a lot of people, but when it comes to having food to eat and energy to keep the lights on, you should be willing to swallow your pride a little. Getting unemployment benefits as soon as you can will lessen the strain of losing your job immediately. But there are also charities and grants that help struggling people meet the financial demands of everyday life, such as helping you catch up with late rent payments. There are specific grants for helping with childcare payments, paying medical bills, and much more, so be thorough when looking at both government and private programs locally and throughout your state.
Hold the right people to account
It’s a good idea to invest in income protection insurance while you’re still employed. This insurance is primarily there to help you keep an income if an accident or an injury takes you out of work. However, if an injury or illness is caused by the workplace, you don’t necessarily need to have income insurance. Instead, you can use services like https://www.fmelaw.com to claim disability insurance from your employer. Workers’ compensation laws exist to ensure that employers take their responsibility for the health and safety of their employees seriously, but there are still many who try to skip out on the bill when they fail to do that. For that reason, it’s a good idea to simply have the right legal assistance in your contact book should you need to reach them in future.
Keeping yourself going
If you’re not injured or ill and out of work for that reason, then you should look at opportunities to sustain yourself while you’re out of work, too. More and more, people are finding themselves freelancing and working for themselves through the internet when they have difficulty finding a traditional place of employment. So, how do you better prepare yourself for the possibility of working for yourself in the future? Focus on the skills you can build now, especially if there’s workplace available. Build the skills that make you much more likely to get hired elsewhere, but also skills that you can use to sustain yourself. Written communication and remote administrative assistant skills can land you a lot of work online.
Get out there
As soon as you’re ready and able, you should start tapping into the network that you’ve built throughout the years. The majority of positions that open for new employees in companies aren’t available in any listings. Having a good rapport with the right people, and using your network of friends and family can help alert you to many positions that you miss if you stick only to the most traditional routes for finding employment. To help you rely on that network in future, you need to start building it now as recommended by https://www.linkedin.com. Networking is a valuable skill for a wide variety of reasons, but helping you advance your career is the most important one.
Make it routine
When you’re unemployed, you should strive to make finding a job your job. Simply structuring your approach to finding work can make it a lot more effective. This means scheduling set times throughout the day for searching for positions, working on your resume, getting directly in touch with potential employers and more. Don’t be afraid to contact companies you would like to work for, even if they don’t have any positions currently being advertised. It’s important to “get ready” for the working day, too. Getting dressed, having a healthy breakfast, and following your morning routine will help you keep the productive mindset that can make it easier to keep going even if sometimes you feel like you’re making very little progress.
Not every story has a happy ending and not every period of unemployment is simple to escape. However, with the tips above, you can better cope with the very real chances it might happen to you one day.
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