The relief you felt when you got laid off is data
How to stop playing a rigged game and do work that doesn't require performing.
You know that feeling you’re not supposed to talk about?
You got laid off. Underneath the fear and uncertainty, there was this moment of relief.
Last week I put up a LinkedIn post. Seventy people responded in two days.
Almost everyone felt the same thing you did: relief. Not just the ones who quit voluntarily. The ones who got laid off.
You’re getting pushed out into total uncertainty. No paycheck. No benefits. No schedule. And your first emotion is relief.
That tells you something about what you were enduring.
This isn’t about optimizing your LinkedIn profile or fixing your resume. This is about what to do when you realize the thing that was supposed to provide security was making you smaller.
You can’t “resume” your way out of this
You send out 180 applications. Get eighteen personal referrals. Nothing.
Nine months. Hundreds of applications. “I just assumed I’d be able to find something,” one woman told me. “This is not the pre-COVID job market at all.”
Recruiters are getting 3,000 resumes for single positions. That’s not recruitment. That’s a lottery.
Meanwhile, US independents went from 59 million to 76 million between 2020 and 2024. Thirty percent growth while the traditional job market collapsed.
The work still exists. Companies just don’t want the employment relationship.
84% of indies report living their preferred lifestyle (only 54% of traditional employees say the same). Independent workers earning over $100K went from 3 million to 4.7 million in four years.
69% of employers hired 1099s after conducting layoffs. They still need work done. They don’t want to employ you to do it. And that could be better for you.
(Note: I don’t believe everyone has to start a business or work as an independent. Even if you don’t, the reset I’m sharing here makes you better at work. Period.)
The deal was: give us loyalty, we’ll give you security. That deal broke.
So when you’re customizing cover letters and networking and doing everything right, and nothing’s happening—that’s not about your worth. The game changed. Your resume became irrelevant.
You can’t fix a broken system with individual effort.
Millions already made this transition. You’re joining a migration that’s well underway.
You can’t figure this out alone. The old model was individual competition. The new model requires chosen collaboration. You need people who’ve done this, and you need them now.
What did that job cost you?
Nineteen years at the same company. The day they tell you you’re laid off, you feel two things at once: relief and rage. Of course they picked you—you’re expensive. But also, how dare they?
People I talked to wrote it down.
Every boss who took credit for their work. Every company that dangled promotions for years. Every time they stayed quiet about something they knew was wrong. And next to each one, they wrote their part in it.
“I competed when I should have collaborated. I performed loyalty instead of being honest. I enabled it by staying.”
Things shifted when they stopped playing a game that was already over.
Grab a notebook. Start with resentment. Who or what do you still carry? For each one: what happened, how it damaged you (pride, relationships, ambitions, money, health), and what you did to keep it going.
You can’t change what you won’t look at.
Where did you compete unnecessarily? When did you perform instead of being real? How many times did you sacrifice what mattered for what looked good? Where did you stay silent when you should have spoken?
Write it all down.
Next: what you abandoned to fit the role. The skills you stopped using. The passions you set aside. The parts of yourself you compressed until they almost disappeared. What you’re capable of that has nothing to do with your job title.
Then: what you fear. Be specific. “I’m afraid of going independent” is too vague to address. “I’m afraid I’ll run out of money in six months and have to take any job that comes” or “I’m afraid people will think I failed”—those you can work with.
Last: what you can do when nobody’s watching. What you create for yourself. What problems you solve naturally. What people ask you for help with. Not your resume. Your capacity.
Find someone who made this transition and share what you wrote. Not a career coach selling a program. Someone who navigated from employment to independence and came out the other side.
You need their eyes on your patterns. You can’t see them clearly from inside.
The beliefs you need to abandon
You’re carrying beliefs that used to protect you. They don’t anymore.
Your identity as a job title—that goes first. When someone asks what you do and your mind goes blank because you don’t have a company name to offer, that’s the identity dying. Let it.
The belief that employers provide security? You just watched that collapse. The company that promised stability laid you off in a Zoom call. Security was always an illusion.
The scarcity mindset. The one that made you compete with coworkers for the same promotion, made you hoard information instead of sharing it, made you see every other qualified person as a threat. That served the company. It never served you.
The performance. You learned to behave a certain way to be “eligible” for resources. Dress right. Talk right. Agree at the right moments. Perform enthusiasm for initiatives you knew were doomed. You’re done performing.
The resentment toward people who still have jobs—waste of energy. They’re still in the trap. You’re out.
Status and prestige. The ego’s attachment to being able to say you work at a name people recognize, to have a title that sounds impressive at dinner parties. It cost too much. Let it go.
And the big one: the myth that work has to hurt to matter. That if you’re not miserable, you’re not working hard enough. That ease means you’re doing something wrong.
You believed these things because you had to. You don’t anymore.
What you’re building instead: work where you’re good at something real, not good at performing in reviews. Collaboration you choose, not hierarchy you’re assigned. Interdependence with people you respect instead of dependence on institutions that don’t respect you.
You measure success by whether you can look at yourself in the morning, not by salary or title.
Community over hierarchy.
Making things right with yourself
The first person you owe something to is you.
Take back the time. Employment took your mornings, your evenings, your weekends. It took your attention during dinner and your energy for everything else. Take it back.
The passions you delayed. “I’ll learn that when I have time.” “I’ll start that when I retire.” “I’ll get back to that someday.” Someday is now.
The relationships you let fade. The friend you kept meaning to call. The family dinners you missed. The partner who got the exhausted version of you. Rebuild those.
Your values. The ones you knew mattered but couldn’t quite live because the job required something else. Recommit to them.
Your creativity. The part of you that used to make things for the joy of making them, before everything had to be productive or profitable. Restore it.
Then work outward.
The colleague you competed with when you could have collaborated—reach out. The community you abandoned for advancement—go back. The projects you dropped because they didn’t help your career—pick them up again.
You were operating in a broken system. That’s not an excuse. It’s context. Now you’re not in that system anymore.
Watch for the old patterns
Every morning you’ll catch yourself reaching for the old playbook.
You’ll check LinkedIn to see who’s hiring. You’ll start composing a cover letter in your head. You’ll measure your worth by how much you got done yesterday. You’ll see someone else’s success and feel like you’re falling behind.
That’s the broken employment mindset creeping back.
Notice it. Don’t judge it. Just see it.
You’re seeking external validation again. Measuring worth by productivity. Competing when you could collaborate. Performing instead of being real. Trading autonomy for the feeling of security. Letting fear make decisions.
When these show up—and they will—say them out loud to someone who gets it. Then choose differently.
Write down what you’re living by now. Read it every morning. Make it yours:
“I create value by being myself, not by performing someone else’s script.”
“Community and purpose matter more than salary and status.”
“I choose work that serves life, not life that serves work.”
“My worth isn’t determined by productivity.”
Whatever words work for you. But write them down. Review them. Daily.
Helping others is how you help yourself
You think: first I’ll figure this out for myself, then I’ll help others.
Backwards.
The new model isn’t you alone in a room solving your career like a math problem. It’s interdependent by design.
When you encounter someone who felt relief getting laid off, help them understand what that means. Create space for people processing this transition. Share what you learned. Share what you’re still figuring out.
Not because it’s generous. Because it’s how the model works.
You can’t see your own patterns clearly. You can see theirs. They can see yours. You need each other.
Sixteen people can form 21.5 billion different combinations (noticed this recently at a retreat). That’s not a metaphor. That’s the actual math. Twenty-one and a half billion different ways to collaborate, create, solve problems, build things. No company’s org chart can map that possibility space.
The old model: you → employer → paycheck + community
The new model: you ↔ network ↔ multiple value streams
You felt relief when you got laid off because some part of you knew before your rational mind caught up. That relationship was extracting more than it provided.
You’re not broken. The system is broken.
Helping others navigate this is how you navigate it yourself.
I’m still having these conversations. If you’re recently laid off, worried about losing your job, or just looking to create a healthier relationship with your work, hit “reply”. I’d love to hear your story.