You've been laid off from your job or you have to give up your job to move where your spouse has taken a new position. That's bad news for you and your established career path. You can feel sorry for yourself because of it. You can try to find a new job as similar to your old one as possible (difficult in hard economic times). The third option is to take a personal inventory and possibly go off in an entirely different direction. Losing your job is traumatic to your ego, your wallet, and your family relationships. However, it can be an opportunity to take a new approach that will give you unimagined long term benefits. I know that for many years I felt that I was so busy overcoming the daily hurdles of my job that I didn't take enough time to think about what I wanted out of life. If you have lost your job, you suddenly have that time to think. Set aside your fears (not easy), and think about what you would make you satisfied more than what you had been doing. What skills from your past job or training would you like to use? Who in your business dealings network has a different job that you would like to try? What product or service did you purchase from a vendor that you could make or do better than them? Are you willing to invent a new job by going out on your own? Do you know someone else in a similar situation who would be a great partner in an independent startup effort? Do you have or are you able to get sufficient resources to sustain yourself while you try something new? Davidson's Doctrine as presented in my book, DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life should be applied to your situation. Think of a possible new start direction, and assume that you have already decided to pursue it. Think about the necessary steps along that path, and take a few that don't require much effort or cost, such as printing business cards and letterhead. How does it feel to you? If you assume that you've decided on that direction, do you feel comfortable about it? Will you be bothered by what other people think of you for having gone that way? Do you start to see additional costs and difficulties that you hadn't realized would be involved?
You can take these first steps without declaring your new direction as a definite decision. Are you comfortable with it? Does it give you pleasure and/or an acceptable challenge? Does it promise economic or satisfaction rewards? If so, follow up those initial steps with an actual decision to go that way. If you are not comfortable with your assumed direction choice, discard it, and assume that you have decided on an alternate choice that appears promising to you. Take the first few steps and thoughts in that direction, and repeat the process until you have found an assumed career decision that is comfortable to you. It doesn't have to be ideal, just comfortable and satisfying to you. At some time in the future, you can always re-evaluate your outlook using the same approach if your initial direction doesn't turn out to be desirable for you in the long run. The Assumed Decision Process will tend to point you in a desirable direction in a shorter period of time than vacillating among all the possible alternatives or just trying to regain your original career situation in a bad economy.
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