This week sees me finishing up my Amsterdam adventure, and rather than a big finish with an orchestral flourish and jazz hands I’m limping to the finish line, weary and battered.

CFS has been kicking my ass, and I’ve had to take some time out sick and be incredibly careful to pace myself.  There have been moments where I haven’t been able to move because it hurt too much, the room was spinning and my legs didn’t work, but I’m back on my (wobbly) feet and aiming for the finish line.

I’ve been asked to extend  my contract here, which was expected and something I’d traditionally say yes to.  But this is one man called Steve who’s putting his health first this time, so while I won’t see the projects through to the end I will be making a good choice.

Regardless of the manner in which I cross the finish line, what strikes me as most important is that I’ll miss Amsterdam.  As chaotic as the office is, I’ll miss my new colleagues.  I’ll miss having a 15 minute commute to work.  I’ll miss living in a laid-back city with a wide choice of things to do and places to go.  As sick as I am right now and as much as I’m looking forward to being home, I’ll miss living in Amsterdam.

And I think that counts for a lot.  It’s much better to leave something and miss it than to leave something and hate or resent it, right?  That feels like an important distinction, but with the fog seeping into my brain I can’t quite figure out why.

I’m writing these words at around 10pm having just been for a stroll along the canal by my apartment before I hit the sack.  It was warm, peaceful and beautiful out there.  Almost enough to stay for.  But I know that all the time I’m ill I won’t be able to enjoy this city as I would want to.  I can’t make the most of this place all the time I have to manage this illness.  I can’t make the most of any place while I’m ill.

I’ve been a good coach and accepted this illness, but I’ve realised that I’ve been a little too good at accepting this.  I’ve normalised it just a little too much, but it’s not normal.  As a coach I’m trained to believe that nobody’s broken and nobody needs fixing, but my body’s broken and it needs fixing.  So I’m packing up and heading home, and I’m already lining up medical appointments for when I get back .

I’ll be taking a little break from writing for a couple of weeks, but in the meantime, let me know what I can do to help you out and if you have a story about taking a leap of faith be sure to let me know.

So, it looks like I’m going to Amsterdam after all.

Just recently I told you how I turned down an offer from a leading digital agency based in Amsterdam.  Well, the idea of going out there never strayed far from my thoughts, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that there’s always something interesting in those thoughts that just won’t budge.  So I kept on talking with them, met with them a couple of times and I shot to the top of their most wanted list.

Then I thought, what the hell.

So all things being equal, this time next week I’ll be living and working in Amsterdam; for a couple of months to start with but if there’s another thing I’ve learned it’s that anything can happen.

I’m both scared *and* excited, which is a cracking combination and something I’m always advising people to seek out (unless the terror and exhilaration is because you’ve been asked to become the world’s first inside-out astronaut).

My hesitation around my health is still there and still valid, but if there’s yet another thing I’ve learned (is this “things I’ve learned” thing getting tired yet?) I can always make a decision that serves me well.  If my CFS flares up I’ll deal with it, just like I have in the past.  It’s not a question of finding the courage to do this, it’s simply a question of using and applying everything I’ve learned.

What I need is to live in colour, not in shades of grey or black and white as I have been in an effort to “contain” my health.  That means adding extraordinary value to you, and it means freelancing in ways that work for me, not against me.  It also means having more fun than a kid who owns every toy in the Whole Wide World because he’s just been elected Lord of Toys, is invited to every Birthday party for the rest of time and can have a bite of any cake he sees.

I have to make choices that reflect what matters to me.  My health matters, but my life matters more.

I recently had one of the world’s very best digital agencies all but begging me to go and help them out with a tricky piece of work for 6 months over in Amsterdam, one of Europe’s most vibrant and beautiful cities.  They offered to ship me over, help me find an apartment (and pay for it), and pay me my top whack day rate.  Plus, they’re a really good bunch of people doing some reall good and interesting work.

I didn’t even have to interview – they just heard that I’m among the best at what I do and decided to get me in.  I’m immensely flattered and grateful, and you’d think that it’s a no brainer, right?  Especially for someone like me who always talks about how important it is to be open to risk, opportunity and possibility.  I should have leapt at this fantastic opportunity that was handed to me out of the blue on a silver platter, and told you all about what a great example I am.

But I didn’t.

I effectively turned it down.

Why?

Because I’ve become conditioned to live within a smaller world.

It’s coming up to the 2 year mark that I’ve had chronic fatigue syndrome.  CFS is part of my life and like any other part of my life I have to accept it – even embrace it – or be ready to pay a cost greater than the disease itself.  In doing that, it limits what I do and how I do it. My condition isn’t as bad as Christine Miserandino’s, but I still have to count my spoons.

I’d love to go to Amsterdam, work on a great project, hang out with some good people and enjoy the city during Spring and Summer.  Sounds pretty amazing doesn’t it?

But I’ve learned 2 things.

1. To manage CFS I need to have things pretty carefully arranged.  I need to not be rushing around not knowing what’s going on; I need to have things in their place.
2. Sometimes CFS bites me hard, and when that happens I need to feel at home.  I need to be able to relax, with all the things around me that I might need while I stir myself back to life.

Those are the reasons why I felt it wasn’t right for me to rush into something that might not serve me well.  They say that CFS sufferers have the best chance of beating it for good within the first 3 years – and I’m determined to be part of that group.  The risk that I could have this for the rest of my life completely terrifies me, and I guess that fear and the reality of having to work with the condition are stronger than anything else right now.

So that’s why it feels a bit like I’m a fraud – telling you to do stuff that I’m not willing to do myself.  Perhaps telling you this will cost me some brand equity, but if I’m not honest with you then what the hell am I doing here?

The good thing is that I now have a great relationship in place with these people, and have something of an open door for when the time’s right.  For that, I’m immensely grateful.  For conditioning myself to live a smaller life, I can’t even be frustrated with myself.  I’m not frustrated, I’m not angry, and even though there’s a hint of disappointment I just have to acknowledge it openly and move on as best I can.

And I guess that’s what this post is all about.

James Cameron has comfortably beaten his own world record, as Avatar roars past Titanic to become the biggest grossing movie of all time.  Whatever your criticism’s, there’s no denying that he delivered something that’s redefined the term “blockbuster”, and if you’re looking for blockbusting success as a freelancer or entrepreneur, here’s a guide to doing things his way.

1. You Create a Game Changer

Avatar has set new standards.  New standards of story-telling, new standards of imagination and new standards of technology.  “You’ve never experienced anything like it, and neither has anyone else,” said the Los Angeles Times, but the impact is spreading far wider than Hollywood.  The technology developed to make Avatar is already being hired out to other film-makers, football matches are being shown in 3D, the first 3D TV channel is about to appear and it’s rasied the bar on production standards on films and video games.

Nobody in the world has seen a movie like Avatar before, and it’s Cameron’s refusal to play by existing rules and his commitment to innovation that made it happen.  He didn’t simply follow the rules, he created new ones.

2. You Risk It All for What You Believe

Jack and Rose risked everything they knew for love.  Jake Sully left everything he knew behind him for what he believed in.  Ripley risked her own life to kick that Aliens’ ass to ensure nobody else would get hurt.

James Cameron earnestly, fervently and confidently pursued his vision and put his reputuation on the line by developing and producing Avatar.  The risk was huge, but his willingness to step into the possibility were bigger.  You gotta welcome risk if you want to play big.

3. You Can’t Not See It Through

There were many twists, turns and setbacks as Cameron tried to get the project off the ground, and at times it didn’t look like Avatar would ever get made.  Perhaps other directors would have got demotivated, disillusioned or have given up, but Cameron always found a way to solve each and every problem.

His self-confidence and unshakeable personal commitment meant that he didn’t stop at the first hurdle and he wasn’t thwarted by the 100th.  When you make a deep choice to commit, everything you do counts towards the whole.

4. You Care About the Audience

Avatar has bust every box-office record going, but Cameron never went about the project with the aim of making the biggest grossing film of all time.  Front and center of Cameron’s vision was the experience he wanted to create for the audience.

That’s where his passion came from, caring deeply about the content and caring about the audience.  The fact that he cared is the only reason it worked.

5. You Don’t Do It Alone

From the very start Cameron knew he couldn’t get his project going by himself, and so he connected and nurtured his socks off.  Relationships were a key focus, and he recruited the best people to the project, from the entrepeneur who helped developed the camera technology to mentors and champions within the movie business who could advise, teach and support.

To deliver something great you need to recruit the right people to your team and create an environment where everyone can do great work.  Nothing worthwhile is done in a vacuum.

6. It’s Not About the Awards

Would James Cameron not have bothered developing and making the movie if he knew he wouldn’t win the big awards at the Oscar’s?  Of course not, silly.

Awards and recognition are great and the thrill of being honoured by peers or mentors is fantastic, but if you go about something with the sole aim of obtaining external validation, praise or recognition then the focus is wrong.

Put your focus on making the best darn product or service you can and place the value of what you’re doing on the project itself, not how someone else might judge it or compare it.

You won’t succeed in business without a healthy dose of self-confidence.  Here are 30 reasons why natural self-confidence is so critical in business and entrepreneurship.

1. Being low on confidence in a business meeting means that fear and anxiety will get in the way of delivering your point in the best way.
2. You’ll be excited to go out of your comfort zone to see what’s out there.  Confidence allows you to take off the blinkers and look at other opportunities you wouldn’t have spotted before.
3. You won’t be demotivated or disillusioned by set-backs and will be ready and able to find ways through.
4. Nerves are fine, but coupled with low confidence they can be crippling.  Feeling both nervous and confident is a great way to make sure you perform at your best.
5. Just 7% of your communication is down to the actual words you use.  55% is visual non-verbal (i.e. body language) and 38% is vocal non-verbal (i.e. tone of voice, rhythm, etc).  People always pick up on conflicting or negative signals, while confident non-verbal communication speaks volumes.
6. Confidence makes it okay to experiment.  It sets out the playing field in a way that makes it okay to try things out to see what works best.
7. Real confidence means that you’re fully prepared to take responsibility for what you do, there’s no need for blame and fault.
8. Confidence brings self-honesty with it – there’s no more lying to yourself about what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and whether you’re on the right road.
9. Networking becomes easier because you don’t have to worry about how you’re coming across or what other people think of you – you can connect openly and honestly without fear.
10. You’ll be ready to ask for help when you need it; you’re assured enough to know that asking for help doesn’t hurt you, it helps you.
11. Second guessing yourself stops – you don’t need to anticipate everything and constantly ask yourself “What If?”
12. You’ll know that your fears are part and parcel of the process of building a great business and see them as an ally rather than an enemy.
13. You’ll know the difference between real doubt and imagined doubt, and you’ll be primed to deal with anything that’s real.
14. You won’t feel like you can’t pick up the phone or send that email because the guy on the other side won’t want to hear from you.  Other people are part of business-building.
15. An easy, natural confidence makes it simpler for other people to trust you, your words and your offering.
16. You’ll be able to openly admit when you’re flogging a dead horse, and adjust your game accordingly.
17. You’ll have a more rounded view of who you are and what you can do, rather than being confined by titles or job descriptions.
18. When conflicts arise you’ll be able to deal with them objectively and in the interests of your business, rather than taking it personally.
19. Suggestions, recommendations and even criticism from other people all have their place in improving how your business operates – they don’t take away from what you do, they add to it.
20. You’ll be able to create a business with the right people involved, rather than assuming you have to include whoever you can get or giving in to low expectations about who you can work with.
21. You’ll understand that partnership and joint venture opportunities aren’t a threat to your customer base and business, they’re a valuable addition that can open up another market for everyone involved.
22. With natural confidence you’ll be better able to establish good rapport with colleagues, clients and contacts.
23. You’ll have complete trust in your own skills, strengths, experience and talents rather than doubting whether they’re good enough.
24. Relationships are at the heart of any business.  If you don’t have confidence in your interpersonal relationship abilities your business is flawed from the outset.
25. You won’t be scared to look at the numbers – finance might not be your bag but it doesn’t frighten the life out of you.
26. Confidence gives you the scope to set challenging objectives for your business, rather than setting easily met targets that don’t stretch or grow you or the business.
27. You’ll be able to spot those old sabotaging behaviors and stop them, the ones that always prevented you from playing big and succeeding.
28. You’ll understand that building a business is sometimes a long game and won’t get put off when things don’t all happen at once.
29. You’ll know the things that truly matter to you, and will shape your business in line with those things rather than cutting corners or following a meaningless path.
30. Being confident makes it easier to think in terms of what you can do rather than what you can’t do.

That’s the tip of the iceberg – what have I missed?

The naughties might be over, but that’s no reason to stop being naughty.  In fact, I downright encourage it.

While you certainly have to get in the game if you want to win, success isn’t necessarily achieved by playing by the established rules of the game.  Whatever you’re working on, whatever game you’re in, whatever you’re building, you have to ask 2 questions:

1. Who made these rules up anyway?
2. Why did I assume this was the only way?

Success isn’t achieved by following a well-trodden path, particularly as an entrepreneur.  You won’t win by playing by someone else’s rules or by assuming things need to be done a certain way.  By all means learn from your role models and mentors, but don’t blindly follow what they – or anyone else – has done.  They did it their way, and there’s no guarantee the same rules will work for you.

“Whatever you do, don’t read this book and take everything I say for word… Don’t ever be afraid to put your feet in that water, whether I’ve said a word about it or not.” – Gary Vaynerchuk, “Crush It”.

Success, particularly in todays tech-enabled world, is down to innovation.  Or in other words, success isn’t about how other people have done it, it’s how you want to do it.

That’s not to say you should tear around like a bull in a china shop or make outrageous claims about yourself that you simply can’t deliver on, but you have to give yourself permission to step out and break the rules.  You gotta be bold and brave enough to make up your own rules for achieving what matters to you, and to hell with what the establishment might think.

I have some fresh ideas in the works that I’m excited about, and while I continue to listen to and learn from the people I respect I’m also ready to put their advice to one side and make things up as I go.  It doesn’t matter whether I do what folks expect or not, and neither does it matter whether I go about things in the way I’d expect to normally.  What matters is that I play well and innovate.

I think this takes guts and confidence, and it’s why most budding entrepreneurs trip themselves up at the first hurdle.  It requires that you spend time being uncomfortable, because growth and change don’t happen while you’re sitting comfortably. The confidence to break the rules, to be happy being uncomfortable and to innovate by using everything you have and everything you are is what allows you to change the game.  And it can be learned.

Success is not about playing by the rules, it’s about being naughty.

What do you think?

Unemployment figures are hitting around 1 in 10 of the population, with some areas nearly hitting 1 in 5.  There are an average of 50 graduates fighting for a reduced number of vacancies, with around half not able to find work.

That’s some scary shit right there.

Getting turned down for a job sucks, I get that.  It’s happened to me a couple of times over the years, and I remember the considerable size and weight of the frustration and emotion that kicked up afterwards.

I remember feeling that disappointment in the pit of my stomach, and it’s all too easy to lose heart, motivation and self-confidence when all you’re seeing are rejection letters and daytime TV.

But you’ve gotta keep going and you’ve gotta keep working at it – so here are my thoughts on keeping yourself going and keeping your self-confidence intact.

1. It’s a process.
You have to trust that at some point you WILL find a job.  This recession, however deep it is and however long it continues, will end and things will pick up.  Your job hunt will end, and things will pick up.

You’re in a process, and the end of that process is walking into your shiny new job.  Some job hunts take longer than others, and sometimes it’s a numbers game.  Everything you do takes you further through the process and closer to the finish line.  Trust that.

2. Take a different view.
It’s so easy to beat yourself up about not getting a job.  Telling yourself that you’re not good enough at what you do, that you can’t compete because there are so many better people or that you must really suck at interviewing is only going to make you feel crappier than ever.

So you need to find a more useful way of looking at things, a different view that helps you rather than hinders.

It might sound corny, but what can you learn?  What can you take forwards to your next interview?  What can you do differently next time?

Every part of the experience can be valuable and can develop your skills in job hunting.  Look at each step as practice – everything you’re doing is improving your ability, making you a better player in the job hunting game and giving you a better chance of winning.

3. Keep living.
A lot of people put their lives on hold during an extended job hunt, and they suffer as a result.  Turning up to an interview when you’re emotionally and physiologically tired is like turning up to climb Everest in flip flops and a party dress. It’s not going to help you one bit.

You have to keep on doing things in your life that nourish your head, heart and body.  Balance your budgets as you need to, but keep prioritising the things that keep you topped up and energised.  See your friends and laugh yourself silly.  Hit the gym and eat well.  Read the books on your shelf and keep your mind challenged.

Don’t beat yourself up for not spending all your time looking for work and don’t feel guilty when you do something for yourself.  It’s your responsibility to keep yourself nourished.

4. Innovate and participate.
Chances are you’re already doing this, if so please forgive the egg-sucking 101 that’s about to happen.  If you’re not doing this, you need to move now.

Break the rules, please.  Don’t simply read the local press or scan the well-trodden job boards for openings and then moan how there’s nothing out there, and don’t simply go for the big, obvious companies.   Innovate.

I don’t just do 1 thing to earn my money, and every contract I’ve secured in the last 2 years has been through personal connections, and those connections have come about as a result of the effort I’ve put into building relationships with people.

Someone in New York looked at my LinkedIn profile back in April, and having nurtured that single connection it’s going to bring in over £40,000 this year.

Innovate different ways for you to connect to the people that you would love to speak with or work with, then participate your ass off.

5.Don’t blame yourself for what you can’t control.
The good news is that you can control around 50% of what happens in a job hunt.  The bad news is that there’s always some stuff (around 50% for you maths whizzes out there) that you can’t control.

A company might not win a contract that they were banking on to fund a new post.  A parent company might put a recruitment freeze on the companies in their group.  Your HR contact might go on vacation or on sick leave and the new guy might have a different way of doing things.

The point is to not attach yourself to the stuff you have no control over.  Absolutely put some effort into influencing things, but don’t make it your job to control everything that happens – you’ll drive yourself nuts.

“I’ve been struggling with one of my managers since my first day on the job.”

In high school and college I used to feel like I had a lot of confidence in myself and my abilities. But somehow I feel like this job has just stripped me of it over the past year. I’ve become quite, timid and no longer voice my opinion, etc. because this manager is so condescending and micro-manages everything. She talks down to me and my self-worth has really taken a beating from it.

I talked with her superior a few months ago, and things got better only temporarily. I’d love to get a new job, but a recession is definitely a hard time to do that and I feel stuck with having to make due for a bit until things pick up. If so, I need to figure out how to survive here. “  – C in Georgia

I hate it when I hear about situations like yours C, because it means there are still so many ‘managers’ out there who have no clue how to manage.  Just imagine how different things would be across the world if every one of those managers was either taught how to get the best from people or if they were replaced with someone who really ‘gets it’.

Anyway, me ranting about that won’t help you right now.  A couple of thoughts for you:

1. Don’t forget how you used to feel.  That confidence is still there, you’ve simply learned a pattern of behaviour where you don’t exhibit it because you’re not seeing the results or getting the feedback you’d expect.  Look at where you do feel that confidence today and how it feels – you have to keep that close to you and keep connected to it.

The fact that your manager talks down to you and makes you feel small, doesn’t mean that you are small.

Not one bit.  A lot of managers are scared silly (particularly in today’s climate), and they use strategies like condescension and micro-managing as a way of maintaining control and status.  That doesn’t make it the ‘truth’, it just makes it something that happens near you.

2. Yes, a recession is a tough time to find work, but that doesn’t mean it’s not out there.  You don’t say what it is you do, but it does absolutely no harm to start looking.

The best way to get a job these days is through people you know, not through ads in the paper or even job boards.

I think LinkedIn is a great tool for doing that, and I’ve got roles from it just by connecting with people and having people find me there.  You can use LinkedIn to research people in your field, to reach out to HR people in the organisations you’d love to get into and it also has job postings that never make it onto job boards.  The reason it works is that it’s a network based on trust and recommendation – and that’s worth its weight in gold.

But don’t forget the power of connecting with people offline too.  Who are 10 people you can have an interesting conversation with about your next move?  How else can you research what’s out there?

There are opportunities out there, so catch yourself when you say you’re stuck.  It might feel like that sometimes, but I guarantee you always have choices.

3. Okay, now it gets tricker.  Can you talk directly with your line manager?  A managers job is to create an environment where their staff can do great work – and you’re entitled to flag up where that could happen better.

Don’t criticise, simply state what would allow you to do better work, and give evidence of your work to support your position.  “How I’d love to do this is…“, “I fully understand that you want to get the right result, I really need to do it like this and I’ll keep you in the loop all the way.”

Don’t try to squeeze this conversation in as you pass each other in the corridor, grab lunch together or go for a coffee, sit down and talk like adults.  You always have recourse to go back to their manager if it comes to that.

If it comes right down to it and there’s nowhere else for you to turn, you owe it to yourself to get outa there.

You don’t have to tolerate bad management, and you have to put your own wellbeing first.

You know, the chances are that a move will help your career too.

4. One last thought for you.  I’ve found that it becomes more stressful and more damaging when I resist what I’m doing.  All the time I struggle and fight it, it hurts.  When I make a deliberate choice to throw myself in and do my best work, it becomes so much easier.

Look for the parts you’re resisting and make a choice to engage.

That doesn’t mean you have to forget about what you want to see happen or that you have to put off a job search, it just means you’re making your experience more fun and more valuable while you’re there.

My head nearly exploded recently.  It wasn’t pretty.

10 days ago the Headache from Hell descended, and it stayed with me for a full week.  Non-stop, unrelenting, eye-ball busting headache.  It felt like Joe Pesci had my head in a vice, and I was about as much use as a tit on a fish.  I had zero energy, couldn’t think straight and was sleeping for 14 hours a day.

Part of it was down to my whole post-viral thang (my body doesn’t co-operate when I want to push myself anywhere near 100%,which is sodding annoying, let me tell you), but a significant part was down to stress.  Your basic, slap me in the face and call me Shirley, stress.

Yes, even us coaches get stressed out sometimes.

My current freelance gig is crazy busy, with projects being thrown at me left, right and centre.  There are times – and this is no exaggeration – when I’m sitting at my desk talking with someone about a project, when a cue of 3 or 4 other Account Managers appears, each of whom want something from me immediately or have a fresh problem for me to solve on top of all the other problems already on my desk.

I’d wake up at night remembering half a dozen things I needed to do as soon as I hit the office in the morning, and then I’d wake up an hour later remembering something else that was way more urgent.

It’s full-on, relentless, demanding and highly pressurised work.  And for me, it crossed the line into stress.

Stress is a condition where you feel powerless in the face of what’s happening in your life, and somehow I’d let that happen.  Aren’t I supposed to know better?

Maybe, but this proves that shit happens and that it’s how you deal with things that makes the difference.  If only I’d remembered that sooner, I’d have acted sooner.

One morning last week on my way to catch my train, feeling exhausted, light-headed with my eyes blood-shot and burning, I said to myself, “Hold on peppy, this isn’t how I want things to be and this isn’t how I want to feel.  What’s missing and what am I going to do?”

I stepped up and out of the stress and drama, and here was my answer to my own question:

1.  I’ve done the same job many times before and sailed through.  That means I can do it again, with knobs on.

2.  It just doesn’t matter.  Being a Producer is something I’m good at and earns me some good money, but coaching is my ‘thing’.  No baby’s are going to die because an ad goes out late and no hospitals are going to burn down because the animation on a banner isn’t perfect.  I do my best work when I stop taking things so bloody seriously.

3.  I realised I’d stopped smiling, and I’d stopped smiling because I’d stopped having fun.  I needed to make my day fun again and that meant engaging with the work and with the people around me.  Stop resisting, start engaging – that’s what makes me feel like I’ve had a good day.

4.  Eat 8 portions of fruit and veg a day, to give my body a fighting chance.

5.  Go buy some jelly beans.  I love jelly beans.

This was a big reminder to me of how easily I can forget what’s important, and how much that can affect me.

All I did was remember I could make a choice.  And it’s made all the difference.

Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but things are getting pretty hairy out there.  Redundancies are increasingly commonplace, and there’s a good chance that you know someone who’s been laid off or that you’ve already been given a box for your desk plant and family photo’s.

The media are busying themselves with talking everything down and making things look bleaker than a moonless night in Minsk, but the fact remains that lay-offs are happening all over, and redundancy has the potential to shake your world apart and send your self-confidence crumbling to the ground.

I know, because that whole world-shaking, confidence-crumbling things happened to me.

Losing your job sucks, but it doesn’t have to affect your confidence and self-esteem.  Looking back to my own experience, here are my tips for finding your feet and finding your confidence after redundancy.

1. It’s not personal.

I was made redundant in 2001 when the Internet bubble burst.  I was on long-term sick leave for stress and depression at the time (I was a barrel of laughs, let me tell you), so the news came pretty hard and felt personal, like they were victimising me.

Of course, they were just looking after their business and did what they had to to keep it going.  It wasn’t personal, it was business.

It’s a cliché, but it’s true – if you’ve been made redundant they made your job redundant, not you.  You’ve lost your job, you haven’t lost your identity, you haven’t lost your values, you haven’t lost your experience and you haven’t lost the gazillion tiny things that make you you.

2. Use the space provided.

I was depressed before I lost my job, and continued to battle depression afterwards.  Without the space afforded to me by not working, there’s no way on Earth I could have climbed out.

The space I had saved me.

That space is worth its weight in gold, and it’s an amazing benefit of redundancy that you’d be foolish to underestimate.  You have the space to explore things – your hobby, your passion, your relationships, your next career move – your whole life is there for you to explore.

It’s an opportunity you can’t turn down.

3. Get back to what matters.

I used my redundancy to do a few things.  I watched a lot of day time TV (I still have nightmares), I drank a lot of coffee and I found a couple of cool bars.

A tad more important than those things, I also rediscovered and reconnected with the things I’d lost – the things that I really cared about and the things that I wanted to bring back into my life.

I wrote a novel, I trained to be a coach, I made new friends, I discovered my inner confidence and I laughed again.

I found a renewed confidence in the things that mattered to me that invigorated me from the heart out — I got back to being me, and discovered that I was okay after all.  It felt amazing.

4. Learn what you learned.

It’s understandable that you might want to draw a line in the sand and move on as quick as you can.  The bastards let you go so you’re gonna let them go too, right?

Don’t be so quick.  Look at the experience you gained from that job and look at what you can learn from it. The biggest thing I learned from the job I was laid off from is that I can never again squeeze myself into a box that’s too small for me and pretend that it’s okay.

Being able to learn and derive useful meaning from your experience is what separates you from a garden slug.  That and the whole opposable thumbs thing (that’s why you don’t see slugs driving cars).

My point is that if you simply draw a line and move on you’ll be taking away from your experience and side-stepping the opportunity to add to it.  By looking and learning you’ll be able to add to your sense of self, your life and your confidence, and that creates potential for real and important change.  It’s not to be sniffed at.

5. Don’t go back.

After my redundancy I eventually climbed out of my deep, dark hole.  On my way back up, my first instinct was to get a job.  I prepared my CV and launched it at every agency I could think of, trying to get a job doing the same thing as before.

What a brainless, stupid decision that was.

That garden slug might not be able to drive a car or open a can of peaches as well as I can, but it could have made a better decision than me.

I automatically thought I had to go back to doing what I’d done before, and it was only with the extra space I had that I slowly figured out what mattered and that I could do something else.

After redundancy, please don’t assume that you have to get the exact same job as before.  You don’t.

If you loved your job then great, (but even then take some time to look at what else you could be doing that could be great), but the point is use the opportunity to look for how you can move forwards, not how you can go back or stay still.

6. Get out of the drama.

When I was laid off I rolled around in the drama of it like a pig in shit.  How could this have happened?  Didn’t I do a good enough job?  What if I can’t get another job?  Am I washed up?  What did I do wrong?

Being in the drama of it all only did one thing – kept me in the drama of it.  Living in the drama of a situation isn’t helpful, unless you’re looking for material for a soap-opera or looking for publicity (hellooo Britney).

All the time you’re looking at the drama you’ll only see all the problems and you won’t be able to look at the solutions.

Get out of the drama and get real – that’s the only way to make good decisions.

Thanks Mr Redundancy.

At the time, redundancy hit me like a spade in the face.  Now, I thank my lucky stars for it, and shudder at the thought of who I might be today if it hadn’t happened.