I wrote this reflection after realizing how much being laid off taught me about adaptability. Two years ago, I got laid off out of the blue. It taught me something important: resilience helps you survive, but adaptability helps you thrive. We often hear about how important resilience is, and while it’s true that resilience helps you keep going during tough times, if you aren’t adapting at the same time, you could get stuck in survival mode and find it impossible to break out of the situation.
Our team was doing well and hitting our targets, so the news was a complete shock. I was lucky that many of my colleagues were going through the same thing, and we supported each other through messages and coffee meetups. But as the days passed and my application tracker got longer, I realized applying for jobs didn’t feel like enough. I needed to do more than just find a replacement for what I lost. I wouldn’t have called it that at the time, but looking back, I can see I was reframing the situation, putting adaptability into action by changing my perspective and not getting stuck in my thinking.
I started not only applying for jobs, but putting my experience and skills to work writing articles, reaching out to my network, and growing my personal brand. I wasn’t just surviving the tough time by trying to get back to employment; I was proactively adapting to the situation and using my new free time to start building something for the future. If I had focused on resilience, I would have been bogged down in the day-to-day of job applications, waiting for interviews, and stretching my savings. But because I had this feeling of needing to do more, I was able to adapt to the situation and grow.
I was fortunate to be hired at an amazing company for a position with more growth opportunities than my previous job. But through this experience and by adapting to the situation and moving beyond survival mode, I gained more than my new role. By writing articles about marketing, I clarified my own thinking about my field and got better at articulating what I do and why I do it. By publishing more on LinkedIn and Medium, I took steps that built confidence in expressing myself publicly and sharing my views with the world. By starting this newsletter, I built a habit and audience that has been growing until now. Without this new confidence and openness to being more public with my life, it isn’t likely I would have started my podcast, which has almost 7,000 listeners in the last year.
None of this was pre-planned, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what the end result, or even the goal was back then. But with hindsight, there’s a clear chain of events that led to where I am today.
Adaptation isn’t always clear-cut; it can be messy. You don’t need to know exactly where you’re going to get moving. The important thing is to shift beyond resilience to growth. So next time you’re in a tough situation, try to remember to change your perspective, reframe the situation, and adapt to grow.
If you liked this, you might also enjoy:
- The Six Adaptation Skills We Need — practical ways to strengthen adaptability after major life changes.
- Stories of Adaptation — six real examples of people who rebuilt after unexpected shifts.