How to Launch a Post-Redundancy Fightback
For many folk being made redundant at 50 can mean a devastating loss of identity and purpose. The job was the central role in life and indeed we gave our life to it, did we not?
A friend, laid off at 50, despaired of finding work ever again. Moping at home, he had no idea what to do with his time. The threat of penury looms large. Pension plans are never all they’re cracked up to be. The state pension will become a rapidly receding tide for the post-boomer Generation-W.
Consider the age of 50. This man claimed what he had been doing for the last 25 years defined him. This is nonsense, it doesn’t. We are individuals made in the image of God, not a sales manager, an electrical engineer or a police officer. Whatever the job you were doing, however important they told you it was, always remember if you’d dropped dead in reception a replacement would have been rolled in with indecent haste.
Given the reasonable state of our health, modern medical science – assuming here in Britain you can actually access it – and the good fortune we have to live in the century where disease and injury is on the retreat, the average bloke should be able to live until he’s well over 80, if not 100. On this basis at 50 you’re only halfway through. At 60 another 30 or 40 years beckons bright.
Life is divided into phases. We spend our first five years as mewling infants. Another 12 years passes at school. Add on three years at university or college and it’s only at 21 we start on a career. Another five years passes, as we travel and bounce around between different ideas and departments. By about 25 or 30 the average chap has fixed on a good wheeze and sets sail. Paying off the mortgage, getting married and building a career is immensely stimulating.
However, as in my friend’s experience, nowadays whatever it is you’re doing could well be superseded by new ideas or technologies by the time you’re 50. Spare a thought for the poor chap who studied hard to become a fax machine service technician. Indeed I knew a guy man who was once a cassette-recorder engineer.
What to do at 50? Depressed, out of a job and living in times of tumult, the future may seem bleak on the surface. It need not pan out like that. Here are FIVE immediate suggestions.
- ADVANTAGE YOU Sit down at the kitchen table and make a list of all the advantages you have in your life. Here is a list I prepared for my friend.
- Live in Great Britain, the world’s greatest and most stable democracy, pace America. Has to be a huge advantage ol’ son.
- Good health – all those rounds of golf and games of squash count.
- In a good and supportive marriage – with a wide family? Excellent.
- Educated – maybe just an old polytechnic and a sink-estate comprehensive, but an education that is the envy of much of the world.
Expand the list to include other skills learned, outside-work interests, mortgages paid off, experiences – that adventure weekend in the Italian alps, etc.
2. FIT Resolve to get fit, both mentally and physically. Work-out and run or swim in the mornings – this makes for a great start to the day and now you have the time, use it. Exercise not only helps body and mind but it makes us feel good, balanced and resourceful. Build the day on the work-out. Develop mental acumen. Learn to meditate, to study and contemplate. Run a mile, read two chapters of a classic novel and feel you’re back in the game.
3. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT Start studying personal development. Perhaps you did this when you were younger anyway. Go back and reread those books: The Power of Positive Thinking, The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People and How To Make Friends And Influence People. Many more books like this crowd the shelves. Reading like this makes you feel better and calms us down. The art of these books is to encourage us to put ourselves out there and to start to move ahead once more. Nowadays there is a vast industry in success literature and personal development. Research the whole genre carefully and choose several books that suits you. Don’t just look for books that might appeal to people in their 50s and 60s. You are not in the twilight zone of grey hair and slippers, no way. Instead embrace the full glare of bright light as you limber up for the next and unexpectedly wonderful part of your life.
4. FAITH Whether you have a faith or not, now is the time to develop. Expand the spirit. Pick up the Bible, a commentary or two and several notable books from whatever to denomination that stands in your background or on the street you walk down. It’s been put there for a purpose. As a Catholic I highly recommend reading George Weigel’s two volume biography of John Paul II. Watch sermons and talks and put your problems to God. If you really don’t believe in this stuff and can’t see the point of it at all, do it anyway: Fake it till you make it.
5. VISIBLE Don’t hide away. Get out there and admit you’ve had a bit of bad luck. People like to help. I remember years ago a friend who was not yet 50 walked into the pub on evening. We all knew he’d be made redundant and a hush fell on the assembled company. Then a chap who ran a rail-lubrication company spoke up: ‘Hi Ian! ‘Kin ‘ell, do you want a pint or shall I hang on until the severance pay runs out? No HR manager or spouse will advise this nut yeah, get down the pub or rugby club and enjoy a bit of sympathetic back-slapping and camaraderie.
In conclusion, we are not simply the sum of our experiences, the victim of circumstance or background; neither are we identified by our work or initial skill. There is far more to the average human being than can never be realised in one life alone – that’s why it’s so important – if it all possible – to sign up for eternal life. Many is the person who, on being made redundant at 50, started a completely new career and did far better. Wise up, get fit, dress sharp and the opportunities will come.