Layoffs and Opportunities

Our family has been hit by this recession and layoffs like so many others.  It is an emotional time and a time for reassessing our lives.  In a flash, there was shock, hurt, and a bit of panic, followed by anger, though tempered with an understanding that the decisions by the company were purely financial.  Then there came some depressive feelings with a realization that life is just not fair sometimes.  After the initial shock, here are some things that I have found can be helpful to feeling more in control of our own destiny.

 

 Take this time to review your past employment and see if it is a good time to make a change.  Look at this transition time as one that gives you an opportunity to get retrained, learn new skills, take a new direction.  There are lots of classes and books available to help you get started.  Just don’t sit at home and feel sorry for yourself.  Make it your job to find a job or new career.  Work at it every single day.

If you haven’t got one, create a budget showing all your income and expenses.  Where can you cut expenses?  Make some decisions that will help your bottom line.  Stop an unnecessary service or sell something you don’t really need.   If you have a financial planner, talk to them for advice.  Check out Suze Orman’s website for practical information that can get you back on track financially. 

You are in control of your time each day.  If you need to, make a list each evening that will help give you direction the following day. Then get started.

 

 

 If you haven’t received your COBRA information for continuing your insurance within a couple of weeks of your layoff, inform your employer’s Human Resources staff.  They make mistakes too and sometimes that can delay your COBRA information from arriving in a timely manner.  And we all know how important it is to keep that health insurance in effect, if at all possible.

 

If you are without health insurance and can’t afford to obtain your medications, look into Partnership for Prescription Assistance.  It is a cooperative for 475 Prescription Assistance Programs which have rolled their assistance opportunities into one-stop shopping that can be accessed through the web or by telephone.

 Apply for unemployment benefits, even if you were just reduced from full time to part time.  They may cover the lost hours and that will surely help your bottom line.  Your employer should give you information regarding this process.

 

 

Start posting your resume with online job hunting sites, like Indeed.com, Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, Craigslist.org, Care.com, snagajob.com, usajobs.gov.  If you know of other great sites, please add a comment below and share the information.

 

 

 If you are spiritual, don’t forget to let your beliefs and practices help guide you to a more assured sense of wellbeing.  Having a basic belief that things will be alright is essential now.  Mindfulness skills, meditation, praying, positive thinking, and giving to others are ways to help us focus on what we can do to help ourselves and others during this difficult time.

 

 

 Tell all your friends, colleagues, past and present, and family that you are looking for work.  There is no shame in losing your job.  That’s just the way of the world at this point in time.  It will get better.  Get signed up for LinkedIn and Facebook and let your social networking help you with leads.  If you have time, volunteer with an organization that inspires you.

 

 

 Plant a garden to help with the grocery bills.  It’s great therapy to get outside, and gives a sense of accomplishment when those plants begin to bloom and produce fruit or veggies.  

 

 

 

I know this can interrupt your sleep, but try deep breathing relaxation exercises or listening to calming soft music when hitting the sack and keep reminding yourself that even though things are not as they were, you can adjust and create a new life.  There is an end to this recession. 

 

 

There is a new beginning just waiting to happen.  Embrace the Possibility!

 

 

 

How to Cook Your Life

 

The video, How to Cook Your Life is comtemplative and inspirational. I find myself wanting to make bread now and to slow my thinking down and let things rise from my mind as the bread dough rises after being fed with all the ingredients it needs to nourish our bodies.
Zen priest and chef, Edward Brown talks about life through food preparation. As with everything we do, we can look at the way we prepare our food and eat our food and compare our actions in the kitchen with the actions we usually take in our lives. This documentary visits Tassajara Zen Center, Green Gulch Zen Center, and the San Francisco Zen Center as it instructs and inspires us to live our lives consciously and with purpose.
Edward Brown looks at the metal tea pots with dents and creases and likens them to our lives with wrinkles and troubles. They are what makes us who we are and we continue to be useful with any and all of our dings and dents. That’s a good, good thought to keep in mind as I age!  Sometimes I think I need to be that perfect shining tea pot that performs as if new all the time.  I have to remember patience and forgiveness, mindfulness and appreciation as I move through my days.  Oh yes, and don’t forget to breathe!

Sacred Sunday – What were we thinking?

Need a new fence

Saturday we trucked down to Lowes and bought materials to put in new fencing in the back yard.  We stacked the boards and started tearing out the old sections.  Our back neighbors moved out so we could get into that side with no hassle.  We thought “we can do this ourselves!”,  but by Saturday night, exhausted with the heat and physical exertion of digging into dirt that is mostly rock , Kelly said, “What were we thinking when we thought we could do this ourselves?”  We still have twenty-three more sections to go!   So Sunday we finished cleaning things up and made a call to our local landscaper asking for help with a big H E L P!  Lucky for us he can come by later this week and will have all three sides done in two days.  We would have taken weeks, (months?) if we hadn’t hurt ourselves in the meantime.  Thank goodness for those folks who do this for a living.  But it did provide a great opportunity to get in behind the lemon tree and rose bush to do some pruning and cleaning up in areas that were hard to reach with a fence in the way.
It’s so exciting to be getting this done.  We’ll be all new and fresh and our backyard will look great! 
I’m grateful for landscapers and the ability to pay them to do the work I can no longer manage. 

Gail

www.embracethepossibility.org

My Garden

    My grandmother had Hydrangea plants and I think of her every year when mine are blooming.  She was a hard working woman who loved to garden and produced flowers, figs, tomatoes and berries in her little backyard.  I remember she would pay my brother and me twenty-five cents to find and pick out tomato worms from her plants.   Those horns on the worms grossed me out, so my brother earned more cash than I did with that proposition.

Now I find peace and contentment in my own little backyard.  It’s small and simple and I creatively change it a little each year, adding birdhouses, new plants, or some treasured found object.  The lawn is a little worse for wear due to our sweet little terrier but it’s worth the price having her around.    Is my yard just an extension or representation of my life?  I do creatively change my own life a little each year, adding new things, thinning out the old, and enjoying each season and the change it brings.  Sometimes there is more mud and weeds than I’d like, but as I keep working on it, my life and my yard continue to bloom and grow.  Here’s to many more seasons of growth.

Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.  –Alfred Austin

All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar.  — Helen Hayes

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.  –May Sarton

Gail Brokaw, MA, CC 
Certified Life Coach
http://www.embracethepossibility.org