Life After a Layoff: One Year of Letting Go and Healing

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me to talk about, well, my anniversary. So, let's get started.

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This week, we're going to be talking about my anniversary. This is definitely an Identity pillar topic, since it's actually the anniversary of my being laid off from my last job.

Recall that we have the Five Pillars system, the Five Pillars of Life and Aging. Those are the underpinnings of how people generally view themselves. I often talk about how identity doesn't change as you age; it's really the balancing between the different pillars that affects things more than anything else. So when I talk about identity and the constancy of it, that piece of your mind that really defines how you perceive yourself, those aren't just words that I made up. That's the life that I live. It's really a conscious decision, how I choose to perceive myself, and we'll see how that plays in just a minute.

And just a reminder: if you go to 7EveryMinute.com/five-pillars-freebie, you can get the Five Pillars diagram and a bunch of material that goes along with it to help you understand how we explain our overall personality and our approach to life through those five pillars.

So, with some notice, I was told last year that Halloween 2025 would be my last day of employment with my former company. I'm sure it was a budget thing, or that was part of it, and certain people had offered to try to intervene. But to put things in perspective, I'd been saying since 2003 that I had to get out of the industry I was in. So it was about time to make a change.

To be clear, this isn't knocking the company or anything else, but obviously it was time to make some life changes. And indeed, as the day came, I backed everything up on my computer, cleaned up what I could, and sent my computer off to that great computer recycler in the sky.

So, November 1st, 2025, I was free to do whatever I wanted. And what I wanted to do was devote myself full time to this, the podcast and the community of older adults who are retiring or going through other significant life changes.

There was only one issue. I didn't realize how stressful the job had actually been, and it took me quite a while to calm down and really start to focus outside of the constant drama and fire drills that can develop in a large corporation.

But no real identity issues, per se. I've managed large teams and large projects before. However, it was typically under the auspices, or the umbrella, of another company, where I was a contractor. And one of the things about working as a subcontractor is that many of the details of a business are handled for you.

Again, no problem, except I'm already kind of detail-challenged, especially with the focus issue from the multi-year fire drills and constant reprioritization. Maybe you can relate to some of this sort of work experience. I hope not, but perhaps you can. And I can tell you that your whole psyche gets tuned to looking for fires, and it stops paying attention to anything less than, well, basically some sort of existential emergency.

So, a few months into being unemployed, things were starting to coalesce. Sort of. Well, not really.

Then came the difficult part, where I had to let some people go for different reasons. And the remaining people totally stepped up, immediately and without prompting. Thank you very much. Awesome crew!

And that's when it really hit me. What I'd been interpreting as floundering was actually growing and healing. I know a lot of people talk about “healing,” but my brain needed a good rest, and literally a brain dump.

Seriously, I almost never think of my previous company, their products, or even their line of business. I realized that for many years I was working there while working on the podcast. That overlapped by five years or so, and I had this cognitive dissonance between what was paying the bills and what my vision was. I didn't hate the company. It just wasn't relevant anymore. And clearing it out made space for this: the podcast.

Another interesting thing happened after the staff layoffs. I really changed how I viewed myself. Suddenly, that view was far more consistent and aligned than it had been in a very long time.

There's a reason I talk about your life vision a lot, and reenvisioning your future, and working towards your vision. This podcast and this community and our courses have been my passion for years, but I didn't feel I was able to really apply myself, because I had to keep so much space in my head for my former job. And it truly did require a lot of space. I'd be typing the script for the podcast while, in the back of my mind, thinking about that day's engineering challenge that needed to be addressed after the podcast.

But that's what's changed for me. And the reason it changed was because I was able to reenvision my exact same skill set, those same talents and characteristics, and fully apply them to something I was totally passionate about. It was finally letting go of something that no longer fit my vision. Nothing is more invigorating than that, quite frankly.

My dear mentor, Pat Flynn, formerly of Smart Passive Income, recently sold his company in its entirety and is starting a whole new business. But he's often said that before you can say yes to something new, you have to say no to something else.

And what I had to let go of was being an employee of a company that worked in an industry I wasn't enthralled with. I didn't hate it. I don't think it's evil. But it's just not consistent with my life vision.

I've been talking about this podcast to some of my close friends for nearly a decade. I received a certificate in neurocoaching specifically to support this community and our courses. And while there are a number of other non-financial older adult content creators and teachers as well, there are only a few who also emphasize our core principle, which is this: at 60-something years old, you don't suddenly need to be reinvented. You just have to recognize all the power, strength, and experience you already have, and how to use that to live a fulfilling life.

So, dear friends and listeners, this is really all about you. If you've recently retired, or been retired for a bit, or had a big life change, how are you feeling about the path that you're on? Have you sat down recently and thought about what your ideal life would look like? What's your life vision?

Because your vision is your life compass. It points to what you want to accomplish, how you want to live, and how you want to make that happen.

You probably wouldn't decide you needed something from the grocery store and just start driving around, unless you wanted an adventure. You'd likely have some idea where you wanted to go. Life is exactly the same way. You can drift for a while and have an adventure, but then you'll probably want to get something specific done. In our case, perhaps it's finding a beach to retire to, finding a place where you could teach English and make friends, or living closer to the grandkids. Whatever it is. But without that plan, that compass, that vision, you won't know how to get there, and even worse, you might not recognize it when you arrive.

We're now putting together some short courses on how to update or create a life vision for this phase of our lives. I can tell you from personal experience, working from a place where you know your destination is much easier than trying to build the road as you go.

Along with that, we're going to be expanding the Five Pillars of Life and Aging introduction. We did a really short introduction just to give an overview, and we're going to be doing a much more in-depth course on that. So stay tuned for those.

Remember that there's nothing stopping you from continuing to grow and enjoy the life that you envision. That can start today. Absolutely nothing is in your way.

So that's it for the evening. Again, remember the freebie: 7EveryMinute.com/five-pillars-freebie. Like I said, it's a little short course, an overview of what the Five Pillars are about. It explains how our lives are shaped by five major influences, and how we can balance, and perhaps rebalance, those as we age. So again, check it all out at 7EveryMinute.com/five-pillars-freebie.

And as always, remember, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. See UKR7.com, which supports the people of Ukraine, or WCK.org, World Central Kitchen, for two international sites. And of course, local charities can always use a hand, and even just a simple smile can change someone else's day for the better in ways you can't even imagine.

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting and useful, please pass it along. Please subscribe and hit that like button. Have a great week. Remember to live the life that you dreamed of, because that's the path to true contentment.

Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com.