What Getting Laid Off Taught Me

A few months back, my day job was eliminated. I joined the hundreds of thousands of laid-off employees who were now seeking new employment.

At first, I felt like a failure, like a fraud, and a phony. After all, I have this platform here in which I write about career content. How is the author of all of this content going to look if he is seeking employment and can’t maintain his day job? It really bruised my ego at first, which is dumb because I would be the first one telling everyone to knock it off, pick themselves up, and go forth. But when it happens to us, it’s a little harder to listen to our own advice for some reason.

One day, after I had mentioned it a few too many times that I felt like a fraud for being laid off, my wife finally put it into perspective for me. She said, “If anything, this makes you even more relatable. You are going through what so many people are going through and will go through, and the experience you will have now as a result of this will only make you that much better.”

She was right. I couldn’t see it in that moment, but the truth is, this experience for me has only given me so much more perspective to be able to learn from and to be able to help support the careers of others.

The more I sat with it, the more I realized that getting laid off did not take away my credibility. It added to it. It gave me a front-row seat to the exact uncertainty, frustration, anxiety, and doubt that so many people feel when their career suddenly gets flipped upside down. I know what it feels like to refresh your inbox too many times, waiting on a recruiter to write you back. I know what it feels like to have great conversations and still not know where things stand. I know what it feels like to have a strong resume and still wonder if anyone is going to see the full picture.

That experience matters.

There is a massive difference between giving advice from a safe distance and giving advice after you have walked through the fire yourself.

I can tell someone to be resilient, to network, to stay visible, to keep their confidence, and to not let rejection define them. Those words mean something different when I have had to wake up and apply them to my own life.

The funny thing about hard seasons is that they rarely feel useful while they are happening. When you are in the middle of it, you are not thinking about the lesson, the growth, or the future version of yourself that will be stronger because of it. You are thinking about today. You are thinking about the uncertainty. You are thinking about how long this is going to last and whether you are handling it as well as you should be.

That is usually how growth works. It does not announce itself when it shows up. It does not tap you on the shoulder and say, “Hey, this painful thing is actually going to make you better later.” It just feels heavy. It feels inconvenient. It feels unfair. It feels like something you would have gladly skipped if given the choice.

Then, over time, something starts to change. You get a little tougher. You get a little more empathetic. You become a little more grounded in what actually matters. You start to see people differently. You start to listen differently. You start to realize that the setbacks you once wanted to hide are often the same experiences that allow you to connect with someone else on a much deeper level.

I do not think we always realize how much our experiences are shaping us while we are living through them. The layoff, the rejection, the bad boss, the failed interview, the missed promotion, the company that did not see your value, the season where you felt completely stuck. None of it feels like a gift in the moment, and I would never pretend that it does. But those moments carve something into us. They give us perspective. They give us scar tissue. They give us the ability to stand in front of someone else one day and say, “I know exactly how this feels.”

That is the part I am trying to hold onto now. The difficult seasons are not just interruptions to the story. In many cases, they are the parts of the story that shape us the most. We may not see it while it is happening, and we may not appreciate it until much later, but the things we survive often become the very things that make us stronger, wiser, more relatable, and more useful to the people we are meant to help next.