In today’s unpredictable economy, it is not unsual to find yourself out of work when you age 40 and older.  The first question is: What can you do? I personally went through the experience of having a career gig of nearly eleven years brought to an end later in my career. I learned that there is quite a lot you can do when you’re 40 plus and you find yourself out of a job.

To help benefit you, let me share the lessons that I learned from this overwhelming experience. I won’t attempt to coat this with sugar. In all honesty, I believe that anyone who writes from experience about getting downsized later rather than earlier in their careers should be real and level with you if nothing else: This hurts you. In fact, it hurts you a lot. I think that it feels similar to falling down and hitting your head on the ground.While playing soccer in high school, I fell on the playing field and hit my head, so be assured that I know what I’m writing about and I am not being merely metaphorical. The difference is: I woke up in the hospital with amnesia after my soccer accident in high school. Decades later, after I was kicked out of a large organization where I had worked for nearly eleven years, there were moments when I sure wished for the removal from everyday life that amnesia brings, but that’s not how it was for me.

I wanted to do anything else but remember the feelings of being told that my professional services were no longer needed where I worked. I hurt. I was insulted. I felt angry. I needed to recover. While I did not wake up in the hospital this time, I did wake up, quite literally, in other crucial ways. I knew deep in my heart as I walked dazed from the office building on that fateful day after being downsized that this certainly was a major crossroads experience.

I also knew that no matter what else might be true, this much I knew absolutely: It is not what happens to you in life that matters most. How you respond matters far more.

It turns out that how you respond to finding yourself suddenly out of work in your 40s and up is crucial to whether you recover. When I just had entered my 40s, I went through a difficult divorce that taught me how to recover when life gets tough. There was never a single moment that I felt any lack of confidence about my ability to survive life after divorce. That was the key to my recovery. That helped me through the loneliness and the pain.

And, that is the key if you, too, want to recover. Believing down deep in your heart and soul that you will survive being unemployed late in your career is essential. It will help you through the loneliness and the pain.Everything else is secondary. Other blog posts in the future on this site will deal with those secondary issues. But, first things first: You must find your own way to arrive at the genuine belief that being booted from a career job later in life is an experience that you will learn from and survive. Only after this first step should you attempt to use the Internet to help restore your career. I would also strongly encourage people over 40 to aim for careers that involve the use of the Internet as I have done.

The reality that you create for yourself within the space between your ears can be far more important that the material world that is without.

This may sound like the sentiments found in a George Harrison song. So be it. These are wise truths that can save you from a lot of damage that you otherwise may do to yourself.