The sheer devastation that can come with job loss is well documented. Savings are wiped out. Retirement money is used to pay bills. Families lose their homes.
What about when you find work again? How does one rebuild, financially and emotionally, after such a blow? That is the focus of an interesting article worth your attention at DailyFinance.com:
Recovering from devastating financial loss can demand a radical shift in perspective, says Rabbi Benjamin Blech, 78, a tenth-generation Orthodox Jewish Torah scholar and author ofTaking Stock: A Spiritual Guide to Rising Above Life's Financial Ups and Downs.He published it in 2003 after turning his $50,000 nest egg into $7 million during the dot-com boom -- and then losing it all. Granted, he still had his house, his job as a professor at Yeshiva University and his pension, but the trusts he planned for his children, grandchildren and the university were wiped out
"We can't confuse our net worth with our self worth, but we often end up doing so because we absorb that from the culture," Blech says. "Even I was doing that for a while, thinking, 'Wow, I'm worth this.' I had to re-identify myself and say, 'I am a husband, a father, a professor -- what is my value to my family, to society?'
"The biggest challenge was not to lose self-confidence and become depressed, because then I wasn't good as anything -- and I had a lot to contribute," he continues. "I had to redefine my worth by a different standard, and to that extent, I thought it was an invaluable experience."
Blech coped with his loss by researching the philosophical and spiritual masters on the topic of money and meaning, as well as contemporary authors, humorists and celebrities, whose ideas he peppers throughout his cathartic tome. He is passionate about positive thinking: "To focus on fear is to allow it into our minds and hearts and potentially into our future," he says. "Say to yourself, 'I am going to get through this.' There are people who have gotten through much worse. There's an old Jewish saying that if 10 people brought bags of their problems and put them in the center of the room, each one would choose to take their own bag back."
Emotional recovery also requires a huge mental effort. "It's increasingly well-known that the brain [registers] not just absolute amounts but losses and gains," says Columbia marketing professor Eric Johnson. On average, losses loom twice as large as gains," leading to an effect known as loss aversion.
There is lots of good information here for those who are trying to start over after a period of unemployment. Head over and see if this article might assist in some way.
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