Reinvent Yourself and Survive!
What do you do when life doesn’t go your way? Well, a good option is to reinvent yourself. You may have to take this step due to a crisis.
However, this isn’t a requisite for wanting to set a major change in motion. In fact, making important changes away when you aren’t at a critical point in your life can help you prevent or avoid situations of great anxiety and stress.
Imagine that you’ve been working in a company for five years and you feel very comfortable there. During that time, you’ve never taken any courses or learned anything new. You got used to the job and just settled for going to work every day and getting paid at the end of the month.
However, you got to work one day only to discover that you’d been fired. The company had been generating losses for some time now and had to make cuts – that included reducing the staff. Suddenly, a great chasm opened up in front of you.
In a situation like this, you could start to feel great stress and anxiety. It would be quite easy to let it drag you down into a deep depression. Thus, because there’s no other option, the time has come to reinvent yourself in order to survive. After all, you need to cover your basic needs (food, shelter, hygiene, etc.).
Could you have anticipated this situation? That’s what we’ll be talking about today.
Getting out of your comfort zone to survive
Your comfort zone brings you peace of mind and is an attractive place to be. You feel safe there, until, one day, you’re fired or your partner leaves you. Suddenly, you need to take action and look for alternatives that you hadn’t thought of before.
This is decidedly uncomfortable, but it’s also a time to wake up to reality. You’d been living on autopilot for some time.
However, as we touched on before, only leaving your comfort zone when circumstances dictate isn’t a good option. Why? Because, in addition to the stress of trying to find a solution to the problem, you also have to deal with the anxiety of dealing with the unknown.
That’s why it’s a good idea to try and take preventative action, creating new opportunities before your needs demand it.
Reinvent yourself and create new options
Reinventing yourself doesn’t mean changing your life essence or your personality. Instead of only training yourself in something new when you’re unemployed in order to get a new job, this could be something you do on a reasonably regular basis. This way, you won’t get stuck in a rut and you’ll be able to create alternatives and even anticipate change.
- Training helps you to grow. It permits you to acquire knowledge that won’t only give you degrees and diplomas. It will also give you skills that will be useful for the company you’re working for or for future job opportunities.
- Acquiring new knowledge has its rewards. Specializing in, or learning, something when you’re older (preferably something related to what you normally do) could help you get a promotion or find a job with better prospects.
- You don’t have to be unhappy in order to start this search. There’s nothing wrong with perusing new job offers that have come on the market or having a look at apartments or houses up for sale. This could lead to great opportunities and you’ll be able to make inquiries or apply while navigating through calm waters, rather than the storms of life.
Plan B
Reinventing yourself has another big advantage – you’ll always have a plan B (and even a plan C, D, or E). Throughout your training, and from the knowledge you acquire or the opportunities you manage to take advantage of, you’ll realize that you’re creating alternatives in case your current situation changes.
In fact, you can even anticipate that change by acting on it first. You can go for an interview for a job with a similar salary, but one which gives you the chance to develop new skills that interest you, or that gives you contact with people who could help you achieve your goals.
Don’t wait, keep going
As you’ve seen, sometimes, the circumstances of life mean that you may find yourself in a difficult situation with few resources available to you. On the other hand, you might be stuck in a rut. You don’t look for a promotion, you settle for your current salary and the often tedious routine you carry out on a daily basis.
If you carry on like this, then your life will always be the same. If you continually repeat the same things, you’ll most likely get the same results.
Thus, anticipating what may happen is a good policy in life. You can still make career plans while working for someone else. This will give you two work world perspectives and also a lifeline if you happen to be fired.
Have you ever reinvented yourself in order to survive? How many times have you done this simply for the pleasure of learning, specializing in a certain area, or creating new options? You don’t need four hours a day. In fact, a half an hour a day can help you start to get proficient in a new language or a new skill. Don’t wait, it’s time to learn!
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
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- Mira JJ, Vitaller J, Buil JA, Rodríguez J. Satisfacción y estrés laboral en médicos generalistas del sistema público de salud. Aten Primaria 1994; 14: 1135-40.
