Fully receiving the gift of a layoff

Today I got news that my company is going through a restructuring and I’ve been made redundant.

While I’d like to say it came as a surprise, I have been feeling the gentle whispers of something looming over the past couple weeks. The energy suddenly felt different one Monday morning.

The day I joined the company, they had just gone through a round of layoffs. Then, a few months in to my employment, more layoffs. I’ve seen my fair share of departures, and so it always felt like my time would come eventually.

Today it came.

And although I would have preferred to have not been dumped over text, I am feeling quite grateful for the closure for multiple reasons.

I am a person who feels deeply. And while I can find ways to rationalize and motivate myself to push through, the feeling of constant instability was not good for my nervous system. It is exhausting trying to do the mental gymnastics required to convince my highly perceptive being that everything is going to be fine.

I am also at a point in my life where I was feeling that my day-to-day was not a match for who I’ve become, so I am looking forward to having some time to reflect upon what I want my next step to look like and move from that place.

I am genuinely excited to explore some new paths that I’ve been dreaming up over the past year. I now have some space to invest time into my own musings and see where they lead.

Layoffs are tough and uncomfortable. They thrust you into the unknown, and with unknown comes fear.

But with unknown also comes possibility.

So, while I do have moments where the “what if” leads me down a path of fear, more often than not I can shift my mind to focus on the potential within this time.

What if I saw this time as a blessing instead of a burden?

What if I saw all the opportunities available to me instead of focusing on the restriction?

What if, instead of immediately trying to recreate what I had, I gave myself space to discover what I actually want next?

I’ve been through a layoff before. This time, I am in a much better mental state to navigate it and make the most of the unexpected gift I have been given:

The space for a reset.