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titleYes, there is life after redundancy

subject date03-07-2025

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caption@P@ 1 72 gm0214red3_ P72 - 72 2013-12-05T12:14:08+11:00

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titleYes, there is life after redundancy

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caption@P@ 1 73 goodpsychology.photography corbis Narelle Lee 57, Sydney At the time of my redundancy I was an investment manager in the property sector. I thought of myself as a good corporate soldier and my identity was very wrapped up in my job. I’d been with the company for 11 years and thought redundancy didn’t happen to people like me. I was working on a deal that was worth around $250 to $300 million when I got my notice, giving me my final day of work. It arrived in the internal mail in an unsealed envelope. I was upset but I got a good payout and thought, ‘I have all these skills. I am terrific. I can walk into another job.’ But that didn’t happen. If I’d heard, ‘You’re too qualified’, one more time I’d have hit someone. It was only later I realised that was an age filter excuse. I was 52 and a corporate woman over 50 is a rare species. Miserable because I felt I’d lost who I was, I put on weight. Old colleagues and contacts treated me as contagious and didn’t even seem to want to have coffee with me, and then one December day I was in a shopping centre when I spotted a Salvation Army officer. On a whim, I asked if they needed help and ended up volunteering. I sorted out food hampers then worked in their office. It was very humbling. I’d see mums with five kids who had nowhere to sleep that night and it gave me a very different spin on how abundant my own life was. I picked myself up and did lots of studying including neuro-linguistic programming [ a discipline that looks at the relationship between how we think, communicate and patterns of behaviour], life coaching, hypnotherapy and various business communication and leadership courses. Eventually, a headhunter found me a job with the City of Sydney council. Although that wasn’t the perfect fit, I identified another role that was and ended up running their properties. However, I’d identified so many issues in the co

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titleYes, there is life after redundancy

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caption@P@ 1 74 and was teaching pre-natal classes in my spare time. Now I had time to refl ect on what had happened, I realised that whereas media had always been a slog – every new story and job was hard to get – with yoga everything always fell into place. Opportunities arose without me having to chase them. I thought, ‘Maybe this is the path I’m meant to walk down’. I always did a relaxation at the end of my classes and soon after someone mentioned how much she enjoyed them. ‘You should record them,’ she said. She introduced me to a music producer and we ended up making two CDs. Then another friend introduced me to someone who made videos so I did a pre-natal and post-natal yoga DVD. After that we were asked to do a series of infant massage videos for Huggies which also ended up being sold to a company in Vietnam. When I fell pregnant with my third child, I became more aware of the pressure on mums so had an idea for a book about being kind to yourself as a mother, incorporating yoga and relaxation exercises. The fi rst publisher I spoke to snapped it up and Mother Me (Macmillan, $30.95) was published. As my reputation grew so did the invitations. I never had to advertise and I became a lecturer on yoga courses, spoke at seminars and ran workshops on natural childbirth and infant massage. Recently my dad, who is a very youthful 77, told me he couldn’t do without his 10-minute morning exercise routine. I said, ‘Where did you get that idea from?’ and he replied, ‘I just copied you!’ I’m always so short of time, I often have to grab 10-minute opportunities to exercise or do yoga. I thought there must be lots of other mums like me so my latest project is a series of 10-minute body-toning exercise DVDs. While I didn’t see it that way at the time, I now think losing my job was the best thing that ever happened. I still do some media work but today’s world is so changeable you need to

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titleYes, there is life after redundancy

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caption@P@ 1 75 Michelle Brown 41, Melbourne I started working for Boeing when I left school. I was an engineer and worked making aeroplane parts. I loved it so much that even after we had children, my husband stayed at home so that I could continue working. I’d been there 18 years when we were told that our latest project required us to work 10-hour days, Saturdays and public holidays. Two months later I was thanked for my work and retrenched. I was informed of my entitlements and escorted off the premises. The company employed very good human resources support. They gave me good advice on things like training and refreshing my skills as well as on financial planning. My husband and I worked out how much we needed to live on each month, how long our savings would last and what would be the minimum wage we could accept to survive. Four weeks later, he found a job. I was left at home. My youngest son didn’t like it that much. I wasn’t as much fun as Daddy and didn’t cook as well either. I liked it even less. There are only so many times you can rearrange the pantry. I was grateful for the TAFE Cert IV course I was doing in Training & Assessment, which at least still gave me somewhere to go, new people to meet and homework to do. After three months, I’d had enough of being a housewife so found a part-time job. I also went to a conference where I ran into someone who was looking for a consultant. I went to work for him and now have a variety of manufacturing clients who need help streamlining and improving their processes. But I have also donned another hat. While off work I read Timothy Ferriss’s book The 4-Hour Work Week (Ebury Publishing, $29.95). He talks about reigniting your passions and setting up businesses that still earn money even while you’re asleep or away. I’m an avid artist and craftswoman so I started a website called mixedmediaart.net, sharing tec