A Positive Imperative

Reacting to the pandemic, thousands of businesses were forced to close, or create some type of hybrid way of continuing in the face of uncertainty. Millions of people lost their jobs, causing mountains of worry over finances, on top of worrying about the spreading coronavirus. In some places around the world, this continues to be true. When you lose your job, for whatever reason, you can be thrown for a loop.

If your skills and experience are in great demand it might not bother you much. However, if you work in an industry that is having hard times dealing with an ever-changing landscape, or being forced to reimagine the future once thought fairly secure, you may wonder how you are going to survive.

In fact, you may spend a lot of time imagining all the terrible things that could happen to you and your family if you don’t find work soon. And if you can’t imagine these things, then you can simply turn on the television news, or check out your news feed, and you can see it in glorious, living color.

It is important to know that those things you are imagining, over and over again in your mind – those negative pictures of poverty, doom and gloom – have a great deal of power. Neuroscience research points out that negativity has a stronger influence on our perceptions, beliefs, attitudes and memories. Our negative vocabulary is even more richly descriptive than our positive vocabulary. All of this affects the decisions we make. It is easy to see how we inevitably move toward and become like what we think about.

So, avoid dwelling on the disastrous possibilities of unemployment. Instead, put your mental energy into imagining not what you don’t want, but what you do want. See yourself energetically and confidently moving into a new work situation. Affirm yourself as a valuable employee with transferable skills and an excellent “can do” attitude. See your family growing closer as you support each other to mutual achievement. It’s almost a positive imperative for you.

Ultimately, you want to train yourself to stop the negative thoughts before they can get a toe-hold, and create a dominant picture that is positive and reinforcing of the future you want. You will automatically behave in ways that will bring about success. Have confidence in the fact that this is how your brain is made, and use this as a springboard for your future.