US – Friday, July 30

Stomaching change in post-layoff mode

CAREERS AND WEALTH. So, the axe has finally fallen. The pink slip has been issued and now days are structured around the “Today” show and “The Tonight Show,” with a few fruitless career Web site searches between. It leaves the unemployed feeling stunted, hopeless and alone. Those feelings are natural, so natural in fact, that science can provide a neurological explanation for the feeling of debilitation.

“The brain takes up a disproportionate amount of the body’s energy. Thinking is actual work, which is why people who are chess masters sweat,” explains M. J. Ryan, who describes herself as an expert on life changes and has written many books on the subject.

“What the brain does to be a good citizen of the body is to conserve as much energy as possible by creating habits,” she says. “You don’t have to think about driving your car anymore, right?  So, we have these deeply grooved pathways in our brains to doing the things that we’ve already done because the brain cells that fire together, wire together.”

Ryan explains in her book “AdaptAbility” (Broadway, $19) that the brain’s inclination to create these pathways makes change especially difficult when the patterns are interrupted.

“Your brain says, ‘That’s so much more work to have to do something different,’” she says. “And the part of the brain that’s in charge of the stress response is always scanning the environment for two things: Is this safe or dangerous; is it painful or pleasurable?”

Given that a layoff usually inspires a painful reaction, Ryan argues that those feelings can paralyze the ability to be creative with the next career move.

“If that fear reaction is strong, we lose capacity to think rationally, so we don’t make good decisions,” she says.

But understanding our hardwiring can also assist us in overcoming it. 

“This is why I say change is not the enemy;  fear is,” Ryan explains. “That is why we have to learn to relate to change,  so that we’ll be able to think as creatively about our choices as possible.”