Greetings friends.  Given the state of the economy today, women are asking me over and over, “What can I do in my professional life and career to help me deal with what may be coming down the pike for me, including a lay-off?”

While each individual’s situation requires its own evaluation and game plan, it’s critical to take three essential steps that will allow you to thrive through change, not be crushed by it.  For those who’ve read my book, these three steps will be familiar, but they bear repeating here.  They are:

1) Step Back – to gain an empowered perspective

2) Let Go – of thinking, assumptions, and behaviors that hold you back and keep you stuck

3) Say Yes! to yourself, and to knowing that you have the power you need to thrive, and achieve your life visions

How to begin:

1) Step Back to Gain an Expanded, Empowered Perspective

When things around us seem to be falling apart, we can feel out of control.  We often see ourselves as victims of a fickle world, powerless to affect positive change.  However, this is not the case – I believe we are active co-creators of our lives, and that we have much more power to direct our lives than we are aware of. 

How can you connect to that power then?  By gaining a new perspective on what’s happening to and around you.  This suggests that it’s time to stop in your tracks, and take a long, honest look at where you are professionally.  Do you love your job and your career?  Would you be terribly sad to lose it (except for the money it provides)?  Do you feel it’s aligned with who you truly are? 

If the answers to these questions are “No!”, then now’s the time to begin on a path of expanding yourself in ways that make financial, professional, and emotional sense. 

What new training can you embark on now, that would energize and stimulate you?  What new skills can you acquire, or new projects can you embrace at work, that will help you stretch and strengthen, but also allow you to move in new directions that will be more meaningful to you (and therefore more valuable to your employer and your career)? 

If you feel shaky at work because it doesn’t reflect you, then you might indeed be the one who is selected for a layoff.  It happened to me after 9/11.  Outwardly very successful and a strong contributor, I was included in the downsizing, I believe, because this position and company was the worst fit in the world for me… absolutely wrong, and it showed.

So use this time now to take back the reins, and look at your career as something that you can shape, build, and direct.  Step back to realize that you have more power than you think.  Get on a path of aligning yourself with your work.  It will show, and you’ll find greater security (internally and externally) in the knowing that you are, happily and finally, in synch with what you do.

Stay tuned for Steps 2 and 3!

Many happy breakthroughs,
Kathy