Oct. 22, 2025
A Job Loss You Didn't Want & How To Move Through It - Part 3
Part 3: ((How to subscribe: go to cherylpfischer.com/bonusepisodes or subscribe on Apple Podcasts)) When a job loss happens—especially one you didn’t choose—it can feel like your confidence and direction vanish too. But once the shock starts to settle, it’s time to begin something powerful: your mindset shift. In this private Mindset Deep Dive episode, I’ll help you take the next step after grief and grounding—moving from “Why did this happen?” to “What do I have going for me right now?...
Part 3:
((How to subscribe: go to cherylpfischer.com/bonusepisodes or subscribe on Apple Podcasts))
When a job loss happens—especially one you didn’t choose—it can feel like your confidence and direction vanish too. But once the shock starts to settle, it’s time to begin something powerful: your mindset shift.
In this private Mindset Deep Dive episode, I’ll help you take the next step after grief and grounding—moving from “Why did this happen?” to “What do I have going for me right now?” You’ll learn how to use your strengths, skills, and even your dreams to begin climbing out of uncertainty and into possibility.
BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:
✔ How to identify and reconnect with your current strengths and skills
✔ Why understanding your financial situation can calm your brain and reduce fear
✔ How curiosity, creativity, and self-trust guide your next career chapter
✔ Four categories—skills, finances, interests, and dreams—that help you shift from hopelessness to momentum
🎯 OMG Moment: You don’t have to know your next step to start moving forward. You just need to see what’s already working for you right now.
Take Action
Set aside quiet time to journal through the four categories—skills, financial assets, interests, and dreams. Don’t overthink or judge what comes up. You’re gathering clues about what’s next, not making decisions yet.
Why This Episode Matters
Job loss can shake everything you thought you knew about yourself. But it can also be a reset—a chance to rediscover what lights you up and where your confidence lives. This episode will help you shift your mindset from loss to opportunity, and start seeing that even in uncertainty, you already have what you need to rebuild with clarity and calm.
🎧 Be sure to join me next time for Part 4 of our series, where we’ll explore how to rebuild self-trust and take your first practical steps forward.
Text me to ask a question - I'll answer on the podcast!
🌸 Liked this episode? Share it with fellow Gen X women navigating hormone balance, an empty nest, and/or self-confidence!
🫶 Love this show? Leave a review to help more women over 50 find us.
💡Want support through menopause, mindset shifts, or midlife transitions?
- Join the collective by subscribing on Patreon or grab the bonus episodes!
- Book a free Mindset Coaching / Intro Call: cherylpfischer.com/coaching
Let’s talk midlife body positivity, self-talk, and redefining aging for women — without the “midlife crisis” narrative.
Connect with Cheryl, Midlife Coach: Instagram | LinkedIn | Website
00:02 - Setting The Stage For Mindset Shift
00:48 - From Emotional Tools To Options
01:40 - Inventory Your Skills
02:27 - Assess Financial Cushion
04:05 - Explore Interests Without Judgment
05:20 - Revisit Past And Present Dreams
07:03 - Create Conditions For Creative Thinking
08:47 - Design Your Ideal Day And Week
10:17 - The “I’ve Always Wanted To” Prompt
11:14 - Spot Patterns And Confirm Direction
13:12 - Closing And What Comes Next
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Hello, and welcome back to our September mini-series, moving through a job change that you did not want.
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So we have talked about the blame, the comparison, the worry, the anxiety that hits initially.
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We've talked about venting.
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We've then in the next episode talked about how to honor your feelings, how to create calm for your body and brain.
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So now we're ready to climb out of this and start working on a mindset shift.
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And so I have some ways that you can do that in this episode.
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And then following this episode, we'll go into self-trust and some practical steps.
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So we want to climb out of this situation where we feel like we don't have any options, or we feel hopeless, or we feel like there's no solution.
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And so from episodes one and two, you have emotional tools, and those tools are meant to help you kind of let all the stuff out and calm.
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So now we want to start looking at okay, what do I have going for me right now?
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And that's the phrase that I want you to have in your head as we try to shift your mindset.
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We recognize something bad has happened.
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This is not good.
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This is not what I wanted.
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Absolutely.
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Let's start shifting forward.
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What do I have going for me right now?
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So you're thinking about what your skills are.
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And maybe those skills are related to being in an office.
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Maybe they're related to the actual tasks that you have done in your work.
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Maybe you're particularly skilled in a certain type of analysis or a certain type of program, or you have a certain license, or maybe they're interpersonal skills or creative skills, creative in a visual way, creative in an idea, big idea way.
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Brainstorm, start making a list of the skills that you have going for you right now.
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Next, what is your financial situation?
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So maybe you have a few months, or gosh, maybe even more than a few months of pay still coming that allows you to take a breath as you're going through this process of trying to figure out what's next.
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Maybe that's not the case, but you have a partner who's able to take on the financial burden temporarily.
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Maybe that's not the case, but you do have some savings that you can access when needed for the next little while.
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So take a look.
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And remember, when you're going through this process, you're trying to find what do I have going for me?
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Because if we kind of fall back into this is awful and horrible and I can't blame blame blah, it's not going to get us anywhere.
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So run back to episode one and two as needed if that happens, because it's yeah, we're human, right?
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It might happen.
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But then we want to say, okay, what financial assets do I have going for me right now?
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And you might know right away what period of time you're really comfortable with as far as the time you're figuring this out.
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You might not have as good of a sense of that, but if you have a sense of the financial assets that you have that will help you to go through this period and hold you over, that's going to help again calm your brain.
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So we've got skills, we've got financial assets.
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Next, I want you to think about your interests.
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Things that you find intriguing, things that you're enthusiastic about, things that you're curious about, things that you would choose to learn about and work with more time than you are now because you find them so intriguing.
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And this can be anything.
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So the goal here, when we're saying what do I have going for me right now, is to just brainstorm without judgment, right?
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Any skills when you were thinking about that?
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I mean, maybe you're skilled in making coffee, write it down.
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That might not be relevant to the job you end up doing, but what do we know yet, right?
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Any interests?
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Maybe you have an interest in reading about World War II.
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Write it down.
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Write down what you find intriguing, what you're enthusiastic about, what you would always be doing if you could, what you want to always learn more about.
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You just never know what connections you're going to see.
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Write it down.
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And then the next category, and there are four, this is the fourth of four, is dreams.
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And we can kind of do this in two ways.
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It doesn't matter the order.
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Think back to when you were younger.
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And depending on what period of time you remember the best, it's up to you.
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It could be when you were, you know, in middle and high school and you were thinking about what you wanted to be when you grew up.
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It could be when you were in college or when you were early 20s and you had some dreams.
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Whatever period of time works for you, did you dream about what you would be doing with your life or how your days would look or who you would be working with?
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If so, write it down.
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Don't judge it, write it down.
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Then let's bring ourselves to the present, right now.
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If you allowed yourself really to just dream about your ideal job, your ideal business, your ideal day, what comes to mind?
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And even if these are scattered thoughts and you're not quite sure where you're going with it, write it down.
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The goal is to create this base almost journal or notebook of what you have going for you right now.
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And those dreams are part of what you have going for you.
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Because if we can figure out a way to work that into what you're doing, even if it feels similar, then you're gonna have so much more passion and enthusiasm for it.
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So skills, financial assets, interests, dreams.
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Now, when you're trying to do this process of brainstorming or writing things down, you probably aren't gonna be able to sit down and just in one chunk of time fill in all of those things.
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And even if you are, I'm gonna suggest that you go through this process a few times because you're probably going to have more ideas.
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So, what you want to do is go back and think about what we learned in the previous episode.
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How do I calm my body, calm my brain?
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So it might be tapping, it might be meditation, it might be taking a walk.
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Do something to calm your brain and your body, and then sit down and think: skills, financial assets, interests, dreams.
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And ideally, you're in a quiet space, you're comfortable, you're not in a hurry.
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If you don't have time, don't do it right now.
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We want our brain to be so comfortable that it feels okay to think creatively.
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Think big.
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Think about stuff you like.
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And our brains are very self-protective.
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They won't do that if you are in a stress state.
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If your nervous system is riled up, you're not going to be able to get the creative thinking going that you would like to.
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So if it's really just not working for you and you're staring at a blank piece of paper, try again tomorrow.
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That's okay.
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All right, so that was our initial four categories.
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Once you have a start to that, then we want to dive further into that creative thinking.
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And I'm going to give you a few more kind of prompts that I want you to brainstorm about.
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So, first one.
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Whatever you end up doing going forward, what does your ideal day look like?
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Now, maybe you don't know right at this moment.
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Will you be going to an office?
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Will you not?
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What will you be doing at the office?
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Anything you can think of of how you want your workday to be.
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Anything.
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There's no wrong answer at all.
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Anything that comes to mind, what's my ideal workday look like?
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Number two, ideal work week.
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Now, you need a break on the weekend.
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So ideally, it doesn't matter whether it's Saturday, Sunday, or it's Monday, Tuesday.
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Ideally, you have some time off.
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But the work week, what does that look like in your ideal picture of your life?
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And again, there's no wrong answer.
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This could be anything.
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The point is to brainstorm it.
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So maybe you're even writing these things down on paper or in your note or in your document now so you can come back and think about them later.
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Ideal day, ideal week.
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Anything that comes to mind, write it down.
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And then the next one is I've always wanted to fill in the blank.
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I've always wanted to, whatever comes to mind.
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Now, I think probably most of us are gonna think of fun things when we say always wanted to.
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And I mean, maybe that's not necessarily related to where you're going with your job, but I say write it down because it's gonna put you in a happy space thinking about things you've always wanted to do, whether they're job-related or not, which is good for your body and your brain.
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And you never know what kind of job idea might come out of realizing I always wanted to just be surrounded by animals.
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Oh, how could I work with animals?
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Just to give you an example.
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Come back and do it again tomorrow.
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Write down what comes to mind.
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And then as we kind of wrap this brainstorming up, I want you to start to look for patterns.
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So if we go back to the what I have going for me right now list, if we think about these ideal, always wanted to lists, are you seeing anything where you had an interest in it?
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And it's part of your ideal day or week, and you kind of always wanted to do something related to that.
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And maybe some of your skills, maybe, maybe they could translate.
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Maybe we're still talking about a very broad category of job.
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Or, and let's address this piece: maybe you want another job doing exactly the same thing you were just doing, and you have this job change happening to you that you didn't want, but you loved your career.
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I still think this process is worth doing as an exercise to make sure that whatever you end up going into, it really is what you want.
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And at the same time, you might have thought, as I was saying all of this, well, I already know because I was happy.
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I already had my ideal day and my ideal week.
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I was happy.
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That's fine.
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That's good, and that's confirmation that as you move forward in the hunt for a new job or business, you are on the right track.
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So it's still worth doing.
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And you will see patterns right away because you'll be writing about things that you are very well aware of what you want to do.
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So this will work for some of you in an interesting find the patterns kind of way because you really weren't sure what you wanted to do.
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And for others of you, it will reinforce that you know what you want to do.
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And that's a very big piece of the mindset that we need to have when we're going into job hunting.
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So that is today's episode.
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I'll see you again soon.
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