We Are Made to Overcome - Resilience When Work Falls Apart
You are not failing to recover. You are becoming someone new. And that might be the hardest, most important work you will ever do.
This was my story. I woke up on a Tuesday. I prepared the kids’ breakfast and got them ready for school. I dropped them off like I always did and walked to the nearby coffee shop with nowhere to go. Not because I was sick. Not because it was a public holiday. But because the job I had held for many years had ended. At first, it felt like I finally can use a break. After a few weeks, the reality sunk in. I was jobless.
I had updated my LinkedIn. I had sent out applications. I had smiled and said “I’m exploring options” to people who asked. But alone, in the coffee shop near to my HDB flat, with a second cup of coffee, I did not know who I was without work.
If you are reading this, you may recognise something of yourself in what I had gone through.
Maybe you are mid-job-hunt and the silence is starting to feel personal. Maybe you are still employed but dreading Monday with a heaviness you cannot fully explain. Maybe you were laid off and you keep replaying the moment they told you, wondering what you did wrong, even though the rational part of you knows it was not about you.
I want to say something to you before we go any further: what you are experiencing is not weakness. It is the natural consequence of being disrupted. And true resilience is not about bouncing back. It is about walking forward, even when you are not sure where forward is.
This was how I overcome, though this was written upon reflecting on the whole journey.
Step 1: Feel It
The part nobody gives us permission for
We seemed to be living in a culture that is quietly allergic to pain. Someone loses a job, and almost immediately, the people around them are already in solution mode. “Have you tried LinkedIn Premium?” “What about a career pivot? You can use Skillsfuture credits to learn new skills.”
All of these are well-meaning though in my perspective, many of these are often a form of unconscious practice (an escape from the discomfort of sitting with someone in their grief).
Wait a minute. Grief?
Yes because that is what a job loss is. Not just the loss of income but the loss of structure, of identity, of belonging, of the quiet confidence that comes from being able to contribute to some kind of purposeful work.
Brené Brown, renowned researcher and author on vulnerability, reminds us that we cannot selectively numb emotion. When we shut down the pain, we also shut down access to our own aliveness.
In our fast paced society, we are so used to being in solution mode, trying to think our way out of something we have not yet allowed ourselves to feel. But the feeling is not the problem. It is the doorway.
From an ontological coaching perspective, emotions are not noise. They are data. They are the body’s way of telling us what matters, what has been disrupted, and what we care enough about to grieve. Anger says something was violated. Sadness says something valuable was lost. Anxiety says we are standing at an edge without a clear path forward. None of these are signs that we are broken. They are signs that we are human.
So the first act of resilience is deceptively quiet. It is giving ourselves permission. Permission to feel what we feel, without rushing to the next step.
Step 2: Name It
Because vague suffering has more power over us (than we imagine).
There is a reason therapists and coaches spend so much time on language. When something painful exists only as a fog, a heaviness, an unease, a dread, it occupies more space than it deserves. When the moment we can name it precisely, something shifts. We go from being inside the fog to standing outside it, looking at it.
This is not merely a psychological technique. It is an ontological truth. Language shapes our reality. The words we use to interpret our situation literally alter what is possible for us within it.
So ask yourself: what exactly am I feeling?
Is it shame? Shame sounds like: I should have known. Why did I not see this coming and do something about it? I must be dense or stupid.
Is it fear? Fear says: I do not know if I can find a job. Who will want to hire me? I have not done a resume or gone for an interview for more than a decade.
Is it grief? Grief says: I miss what was. I miss the people, the rhythm, the sense of satisfaction from finishing the work.
These are different things. They call for different responses. And when you can name them, really name them, you begin to have some agency over them. You stop being at the mercy of an unnamed storm and start relating to a specific weather pattern you can actually navigate.
Question: If you had to name in one sentence exactly what is hardest about your situation right now, not the facts, but the emotional weight of it, what would you say to a trusted friend?
Step 3: Reframe It
I want to be careful here. Reframing is not pretending things are fine when they are not. It is not spinning a positive way of looking at the situation and hoping the discomfort will dissolve. That is not reframing. That is rationalising. And the feelings you bypass will find other ways to surface.
Real reframing is examining the story you are telling about what this means and asking whether that story is the only available truth.
Carol Dweck’s work on mindset draws a clean line between two kinds of observers. The fixed mindset observer looks at a setback and concludes: this is evidence of who I am. The growth mindset observer looks at the same setback and asks: what is this asking me to learn? One story closes. The other opens.
Here is a reframe worth sitting with: a layoff is almost never a verdict on your worth. It is an event. A business decision made under economic pressure, filtered through an org chart, executed imperfectly by humans who were also anxious about what they were doing. You may have been in the wrong industry cycle. You may have been in the wrong company culture for your particular strengths. You may have been simply, painfully, the wrong person in the wrong place.
The observer you are right now, exhausted, uncertain, questioning, is not the only observer you are capable of being. You have changed before. You can change the lens again.
Angela Duckworth’s research on grit tells us that the people who persist are not those who never doubt. They are the ones who do not let doubt have the final word. They hold their long-term purpose steady even when the short-term terrain is difficult. This is only possible if you have a story about yourself that can survive a setback, a story that is bigger than any single job. I remembered going through all the times that I successfully bounced back and allowing those experiences to channel courage from within. For myself, just knowing my name “Victor” means “Overcomer” gave me much hope and courage.
What is your bigger story?
Not your resume. Not your job title. But the thread that runs through all the times you bounce back and return to your best self.
Step 4: Shift It
From paralysis to a single and honest next step
Here is what I observe happens to many in career limbo: They go into frantic motion, applying to everything, saying yes to anything and go into hustling mode (often without direction), chasing urgency to outrun the anxiety. This is a form of being stuck, well-disguised as productivity.
Under pressure, many people go into certain unproductive behaviours, driven by their natural talents. The anxiety often narrows what we can see. Someone with the Achiever talent goes into ultra busy mode because stopping feels like defeat. Another with the Deliberative talent goes into over-thinking mode.
A shift is small, deliberate, and grounded in clarity about who you are, not just what you need. A shift begins when you reconnect with what is actually true about you and take one action from that place, rather than from the fear.
For Adeline (not her real name), who came to me three months after her retrenchment, the shift was not a new job application. It was a conversation. An honest conversation with a former colleague she trusted, where she said out loud for the first time: “I am not okay, and I also know I have something real to offer. Can I think through this with you?” That conversation led to a referral. The referral led to a project. The project rebuilt her confidence and started her on an upward trajectory.
What is the one small action you have been postponing not because you cannot do it, but because you are afraid? That is probably the shift worth making.
Step 5: Move Forward
Not back to who you were but into who you are becoming.
In positive psychology, one of key findings are that people who recover best from adversity are not those who return to their previous state. They are those who are changed by the experience, deepened by it, and who integrate what they have been through into a larger, more honest sense of self.
Moving forward is not the end of the resilience arc. It is the beginning of a new chapter, one where you carry more self-knowledge than you had before, more capacity for honest conversation, more clarity about what work actually means to you and what it does not.
This is not a comfortable place to arrive at.
It requires letting go of the version of yourself that was defined by the role you lost, or the salary you expected, or the career path you had mapped. And in its place, something quieter and more grounded begins to emerge.
For some people, the idea of becoming starts the moment they choose work that fits and not just work that pays. For others, it becomes a renegotiation of what “success” means, separating the identity they had borrowed from the system or culture from the identity is actually more aligned to their values. For others still, it is simpler: they return to similar work, but with different eyes. They know now that they are not their job. And that insight changes everything.
Resilience is a set of capacities we can develop. Feel what is real. Name it with precision. Challenge the story that says this defines you. Take one grounded step. And keep walking, not back to who you were, but forward into who you are becoming.
We are made to overcome.
Continue Reading - The Human Experience at Work Series:
And if the ontological framework in this article intrigued you, you may also enjoy the Ontological Coaching Series - starting with What is Ontological Coaching? A Guide.
Interested in working through a career or life transition with a coach? To explore 1-1 coaching, enquire here.
Written by Victor Seet
Activator • Communication • Strategic • Self-Assurance • Command
