In this modern world of high tech innovation, social media capability and communication networks generally, the urge to cut back is nowhere more prevalent than in business. When businesses or companies cut back, that usually means your job as an expense to the business may well be the first to get the chop. Your job is of course and expense unless you have something no-one else has got.
What this means for the masses as a whole and you in particular is that some “serious,” thinking time needs to be allocated every day until you have come up with your solution. That is, the solution to the challenge of whether you will stay employed or reach out and pursue your life’s dreams and your own brand of genius.
Now, the thing with retrenchment is that it’s a double edged sword; it’s double edged because firstly, the job you may lose and for which you may have given years of your life to survive and pay the bills, has also prevented you re-training yourself and acquiring new skills.
If there is one thing in this rapidly changing world that is clear, it is that the “specialist,” can be highly paid. There is a place also for the “generalist,” but that place is fast becoming obsolete unless you are a “general medical practitioner.”
With retrenchment looming large in your face, you will have only a specific amount of time to carve out something new for yourself. Now, the bad news is that in your assumption that you had a job for life, you have screwed yourself as Richard Branson might say, but only if you did not develop new skills.
On the other hand, the good news is that, now you have no choice but to recreate yourself and develop new skills.
You see, what you could not do because of your concerns for survival, retrenchment has done for you. If we cannot eliminate our ego before we die death will do the same thing for us as sudden retrenchment; that is, it will cut away the ego (aka mind) from our body and finally relieve us of all the tension, anxiety, jealousy, envy, anger, worries and a thousand other concerns. None of which we could manage whilst we were alive.
If you have ever had an illness or disease from which you thought you would never recover and in fact one which you felt you had only a short time to live, then you will know this to be a fact. And that is, you will face a big gap. That gap will come as such a shock that for some time your mind will not know how to function or react. That’s a good thing.
In the case where you have been warned that you’re being retrenched, although you will not get the taste of this gap and a taste of what it is to BE in a place where the mind has stopped, at least you can prepare for your life and recreate your future.
With retrenchment you have a couple of main scenarios, the first is that your job was boring and only a job for survival and the second is that you absolutely loved the job and now is the time to leave. In either case, rationalising or felling mistreated are just signs that you have not learned a valuable life lesson.
That lesson is perhaps, that “life is as it is” and no justification, rationalising, blaming, excusing or other mind games can take away the suchness of life and the need for all of us to be grateful for what we have and get on with it.
Warmly
Chris Borrett
Image Credit: FreeImages.com:Andy Molina
If by chance, you have not encountered my previous posts outside this blog, one of my favourites is about “How To Make A Decision and Stick To It”. You have the luxury of reading it by clicking here.