Actions to Avoid
You lose more than just your regular salary when you lose your job. Status, routine and your social network, for example, can quickly disappear, along with less tangible assets like self-esteem, purpose and identity.
As the reality of your situation hits you, you might feel sad one minute and annoyed the next, and it can be tempting to vent your frustrations. However, reacting on impulse is almost always a bad thing, and it can make an already difficult situation even worse.
Here are some actions to avoid.
Becoming Openly Angry
Venting your anger at managers and colleagues when you're told that you've lost your job might make you feel better temporarily, but it will damage your career in the long run.
Your employer may be reluctant to give you a good reference and a decent severance package if you leave "under a cloud." And if you cross paths with your former colleagues later in your career, they'll likely remember your aggressive behavior.
It's far better to leave gracefully, with your dignity and integrity intact, than to "burn your bridges" before you've even left the building.
Criticizing Others
Once you have left, never criticize your manager, your colleagues, or the company behind their backs, as they may hear about your comments. Talking trash about them can make you look unprofessional, bitter or disloyal.
Also, in doing this, you may unwittingly sabotage your replacement's chances of making a success of his or her new role – it may unsettle him, and make him unsure about whether he's made the right choice.
Taking it Personally
If you were laid off, you might feel that you lost your job because you weren't good enough, you did something wrong, or your "face didn't fit." But, no matter how personal it feels, the chances are that your departure really wasn't down to you.
Companies routinely downsize and restructure as business circumstances change, and sometimes they have to let people go. Bank of America, for example, laid off 30,000 people in September 2011, and IBM laid off twice that number in 1993. In these instances, job loss isn't down to personal failure, and you shouldn't beat yourself up or feel needlessly guilty if this is the case.
However, when losing your job was unquestionably your fault, there will likely be several issues that need to be addressed so that you don't repeat the same mistakes. We'll look at some of these in the next section.
Meanwhile, you should try to guard against self-pity. Even the best people get fired – take Steve Jobs at Apple, for example – so avoid dwelling on your situation and focus on creating a plan to move forward.
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/recover-job-loss.htm
