BECOMING unemployed can cause significant emotional distress. But if it happens during a worldwide pandemic, it adds distress upon distress. It’s never been more important to protect your mental health. Try to compose yourself because when you panic, that's when things go haywire. Here are five things to help you get up off your couch and make something happen.
Gather your bearings together - Let yourself feel what you feel. Allow yourself to process what just happened. Take a day or two or an entire week if you must. Recuperate and gather your closest friends and loved ones (via digital if necessary).
Avail of your SSS employment benefits (Philippines) – The SSS is ready to pay up to P1.2 billion for the unemployment benefit of workers affected by the layoffs and closures. It's called the unemployment insurance or involuntary separation benefit. It's a cash benefit granted to cover SSS-eligible employees who were involuntarily separated from employment. This includes domestic workers and overseas Filipino workers, provided they are not over sixty years old at the time of the lay-off.
Fix Your Finances – Now more than any time else in the world, try to be keener about your cashflow. Do the simplest things you can like canceling subscriptions you can let go, cook meals and contact your banks if you can negotiate payment plans for your mortgage and loans so your bills won't be lump summed.
Learn new skills; attend free courses and webinars – You eventually need to make yourself more marketable because the world we're going to be living in in the next few years will be more cut-throat. But do not only try to learn things the way the world was. Instead, try to learn things with the way you think the world is going to be. Do your best to get ahead of the curve. Audit your field and think about the spaces and the places where you think there will be a need for you in the future. Start investing in yourself for that necessity.
Side hustle – Opportunities are gone. But it also means there are new opportunities that have not been taken yet. Thus, we need to find out what those are. Like, nobody knew at the start of the pandemic that big space for making income would be selling ube-cheese pandesal online, right?
Losing one's job is never easy. Always remember that you don't need to rush and go back to the ring right away. Sometimes, we could go into something with high-speed but if it's in the wrong direction, it will cost us more time. Slow and steady pace to the right track is the key.
Stay active. Until our next chat!