Handling Unemployment with Resilience
I have a mid-sized house plant that’s a few years old. In my last flat, it got plenty of year-round sunlight. It thrived easily despite my inconsistent care and too much time in a pot that was too small. I didn’t need to pay attention to how it grew and changed through the cycle of the seasons.
My current flat seems bright and airy, but it’s becoming clear that the light isn’t enough for this plant year-round. There’s an explosion of growth in the summer when the days get long; then over the winter, the slow, agonising loss of all that growth.
The amazing part is how the plant is trying to adapt to its changing circumstances. It manages to conserve energy and stay alive through adverse conditions. Once it’s able, it comes back stronger.
This year, resilience has begun to feel like a buzzword, used as shorthand for “strength” or “grit”. Our shared definition of what resilience is seems to involve being stoic and strong.
The psychological definition of resilience continues to evolve as social scientists discover more about how we think, feel, and operate. However, it can’t be neatly equated with strength and grit. Resilience isn’t about tenacity or fortitude; it’s also not about suffering or endurance. It’s about recognising challenging situations, resting and recharging, and then regaining equilibrium. Instead of running at things in panic, resilience softens and steps back.
In the career sphere, it can feel hard to give ourselves permission to soften or to rest.
Why isn’t “workaholic” a bad word yet?
We’re only as valuable as what we accomplish. We’re only worth as much as we have.
When our labour — and by extension, we ourselves — became a market commodity, we lost hold of the broad conviction that we have inherent status and value.
In societies with stronger socialist values, this hyperfocus on production and consumption can be tempered (but let’s be honest — not erased). Thanks to the social contract we share with each other, we’re obligated to make personal concessions for the benefit of our communities. Because we don’t “take home” everything we earn, it becomes harder to equate our personal worth with our possessions.
Contrast that with systems in which our main obligation to our communities is to be unreliant on them. We take care of ourselves and measure ourselves by what we have. We are what we earn. In a system like this, “workaholic” is a compliment. Resting and recharging isn’t encouraged because it’s time not spent producing or consuming.
There’s a simplicity to the second system. The transactionality of it maps neatly onto other concepts that we know well, like “I can exchange money for other objects I want”, or “other people will be impressed if I am the smartest/fastest/strongest/most attractive”. The tidiness, the if-this-then-that-ness of it has a fundamental appeal.
If life was also tidy, this could all work well. For some people, particularly those with one or more kinds of privilege, it does work well enough for a while. The trouble is that life feels like, at best, a challenge that can get messy sometimes. At worst, it’s a perpetual disaster-in-progress. Occasionally, we can control the challenges and disasters. Sometimes, we can influence them. But most of the time, we’re helpless. In a global pandemic, we’re definitely helpless.
Job loss and resilience
Losing employment can feel like a disaster-in-progress situation. Because our sense of worth can get tangled up with our social status, unemployment can trigger feelings of loss, helplessness, and anxiety.
So many factors contribute to how challenging job loss feels and is. Wherever you’re at, there’s an opportunity to approach the challenge from a place of resilience rather than suffering.
4 tips for how to handle unemployment with resilience:
- Remove your self-worth from the equation.
Try out some gently counter-capitalist ideas: get rid of the notion that you are what you earn. Forget about what your accomplishments are supposed to say about you. Stop measuring yourself and your value by your salary or job title.
Instead, make a list of all the qualities you like about yourself that aren’t related to what you produce or earn. Ask your loved ones if you need suggestions. - Get real about your circumstances.
Take a long, hard look at where you’re at. This could be uncomfortable but it’s important. How connected are you to your community? What’s your financial situation? What are your resources and what are your obligations or commitments?
Finally, how much influence do you have over your circumstances? If it’s the dead of winter and there’s just not enough metaphoric sunlight, it’s probably not the time for wild growth. - Figure out where you can let go.
In order to be in recovery mode, you’ll need to let go of production mode. Maybe that means letting go of your timeline for finding new work and focusing instead on figuring out what the right work is for you. What can you discover during this time about yourself and your priorities, passions, and talents?
Maybe you don’t have the luxury of taking time off before looking for a new job. This could come with many other feelings: rejection when you’re not invited for an interview, frustration with the job market, or anxiety about the future. Letting go in this sense means practising emotional self-regulation. (This is hard work, but it’s worth it!) - Rest and recharge.
Do things that you enjoy and that make you feel good. Focus on things that enhance what you like about yourself; if you wrote “funny” on your list of positive qualities, spend time with people who appreciate your sense of humour.
And take care of your body as much as you can: good sleep, good food, and movement are as close to magic as it gets.
Resilience is something you can practise.
Unemployment can feel like an open hand or like a fist, depending on how privileged your situation is — but even more so, depending on how you choose to handle whatever situation you’re in.
Find the space, however large or small, to rest. This is a chance to reconnect with your intrinsic value and recharge for whatever growth is coming next.
~ Harvard Business Review: Resilience Is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure
~ Scientific American: What is Homeostasis?
~ Psychology Today: Resilience
