Why Losing Your Job Could be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You: Five Simple Steps to Thrive after Redundancy

Hello, I’m Eleanor. My book story starts with coffee and cake. After 23 years of corporate life, I got made redundant, from a job I loved. So it was a shock. But when I started going to interviews, and being asked the question ‘why do you want this job?’ the voice inside me wanted to say ‘I don’t want this job’ but I had no idea what I did want, or how to get it.

And so my exploration began. I researched how to be self-employed. And came up with 12 ridiculous business ideas I could try. I tried three. Two failed. I met a friend for coffee and cake. Standard redundancy coping mechanism. We chatted about how hard it was to find support to do something different, I joked that there should be a handbook to help with being made redundant. I then joked that I was going to write it. Then I stopped joking and got on with it.
And from a blog, a community, a small idea is now a book (and a business), spreading a bit of hope at a time you don’t feel like there is much to smile about.

From the blogs, and community I gathered insights and case studies about how it feels to be made redundant, and posed the question, how could we make this a good thing? I soon discovered there were common themes of the people who felt like losing their job had been a good thing. I wrote the book on the themes that came up and the experience that people described going through, as well as my own observations. But a side step from an expert self-help book I also added humour and my own stories, with the aim to make reading the book like a chat down the pub (or cafe).

Every week I get messages from people who instead of eating cake, and making jokes about businesses they should start, have read my book and felt inspired to just get on with it.

As one reader put it ‘you were a nobody like us, and you decided to be a somebody, somebody who helps others like you’. I’m proud of my ‘Nobody’ status.

You don’t have to be a Professor or have a big social media following, or have letters after your name, sometimes you can just follow your heart, use your head, get a bit uncomfortable and allow yourself to dream. Dream that life can be a different way.

My book is not about losing your job and becoming an overnight sensation, it’s about finding optimism, hope and ambition in a time of struggle. And believing that you can live life in a way you choose.

I’m now a proud portfolio careerist, taking on projects as opportunities arise, developing opportunities when space is created. The book helped me change the way I am. And my hope is the book provokes others to think differently about redundancy, the gift they never knew they wanted.

Why Losing Your Job Could be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You (Published by Penguin Business) is available to buy on Amazon. 

Connect with Eleanor: LinkedIn – Twitter – Instagram

Winners of The Business Book Awards 2021 will be revealed online on Tuesday 25th May 2021.