Chief Change Officer - From Loyalty to Layoffs: How Benedikt Oehmen Turned a Career Nightmare into a Mission to Help People Navigate Layoffs and Corporate Downsizing

Episode Date: September 15, 2024

Every day, it seems like you can’t escape news of layoffs, corporate downsizing, or restructuring. Today’s guest, Benedikt Oehmen, has been directly impacted by it. Benedikt spent 17 years with Blizzard, a market leader in creating epic gaming experiences. In today’s workplace, loyalty to employers—or even employers’ loyalty to employees—feels like a relic of the past. So, how was that experience for him? For the most part, it was positive and enjoyable. But then, things shifted. Hearts were broken. Hopes were shattered. Now, Benedikt is turning that experience into something powerful. He’s built a full-time practice to help others navigate similar challenges of layoffs and downsizing, offering a shift in mindset and sharing the principles from his book, where he lays out his “Big Three” strategies for stepping out of the shadows and moving on—better, faster, and stronger. Episode Breakdown: 2:53—From Physicist to Gamer at Blizzard 5:13—From 17 Years of Loyalty to Facing Layoffs: When Blizzard Prioritized Profit Over People “I started with Blizzard in 2005, and by 2018, after 13 years, the focus had shifted from creating epic experiences for gamers to just making more money.” 13:51—Breaking Free from the Corporate Overlord: Coaching Passionate Geeks on Their Own Terms “Bound to a corporate overlord who tells me what to do and where my priorities are. And all my efforts basically go towards making rich people even richer in a sense." 19:38—From Panic to Possibility: How to Flip Career Transitions into Exciting New Opportunities 24:21—Learning in Disguise: How the “Big Three” Turns Mistakes into Milestones “Being kind to me is all about self-acceptance, embracing the good things in our life and not looking at what we think we are missing.” 29.38—From Five Minutes a Day to a Finished Book: How Tiny Steps Lead to Big Wins 35:47—From Kindness to Saving the World: An Elevator Pitch for a Life-Changing Book (tiny.cc/Big-Three-Goodies) -- "the Art of Meaningful Change" is freely available for download “It’s like a tabletop that we built ourselves with different aspects, and we choose how we want to play our game of life on top of that tabletop.” 39:37—Self-Compassion Isn’t Selfish: Why You Need to Put On Your Oxygen Mask First “It is in a sense egotistical, but egotistical in service of helping others.” 43:54—Nuggets of Wisdom for Navigating Layoffs: From Setback to Bounce Back “Be aware of that mindset. If you’re in the mindset of ‘this is the end of the world,’ then that’s where your reactions and thoughts will lead you.” Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Benedikt Oehmen Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. A Modernist Community for Growth Progressives World's Number One Career Podcast Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI Top 10: GB, FR, SE, DE, TR, IT, ES Top 10: IN, JP, SG, AU  1.3 Million+ Streams 50+ Countries

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation. Every day, it seems like you can't escape millions of layoffs, corporate downsizing, or restructuring. Today's guest, Benedict Uman, has been directly impacted. Benedict has spent 17 years with Blizzard, a market leader in creating epic gaming experiences. In today's workplace, loyalty to employers or even employers' loyalty to employees

feels like a relic of the past. So how was that experience for him? For the most part, it was positive and enjoyable. But then, things shifted. Hearts were broken. Homes were shattered. Now, Benedict is turning that experience into something powerful. He's built a full-time practice to help others navigate similar challenges of layoffs and downsizing better, faster, and stronger. Welcome, Benedict. Welcome to our show.

Hello. Thanks so much for having me. I'm feeling very honored among all your distinguished guests to be here. Through this book and your coaching practice, you're helping people through career dilemmas, layoffs, and various forms of corporate downsizing. I'm sure many listeners are eager to hear more about your insights, your philosophy, and your approach to these challenges. But before we dive into that, could you share a bit about your own story? Where are you originally from in Germany? What brought you to France? And what did you do there? Let's start with your background

and then we'll explore different parts of your experiences in more depth. Okay, sure. Sounds great. So I'm born in Germany, close to Cologne and Düsseldorf, so in the western part of Germany. In 2001, I moved to Heidelberg to study physics and did my bachelor's degree there in physics and asked myself, what do I actually want to do with this? Once like in real life. And my brother made me aware that Blizzard, which was one of my favorite gaming companies, or Z, my favorite company of all time when it comes to games at the time and still is he said hey

they're looking for support staff for the game master for the in-game customer support that's all let's take the semester off of physics and see how the real world looks like working for a real company in france close to paris and so i sent my CV, I had an interview and said, awesome, when can you come? And then basically took the semester off, started at Blizzard. I loved it so much that from the half year I was taking off originally, that quickly became one year. Then I changed from customer support to community management and communications. And then I stayed for 17 years total instead of a quick semester and then going back. Wow, you've stayed with one firm for 17 years, taking on multiple roles.

Talk about loyalty, in today's workplace, loyalty to employers or even employers' loyalty to employees feels like antique. Premium, high value, but very, very few people truly understand the value. How was that experience for you? Tell us about how your roles evolved over time. You mentioned that you study physics, which I have to admit, I know nothing about. I've always thought people who study physics are super smart. But then, in a gaming company, you were dealing with customers, working with people, and creating games. How did all of that come together for you? Okay, so I started in customer support, so basically helping players in our premier game at that point, World of Warcraft, if they had any issues in-game.

Then I quickly transitioned into community and communications, where the team that I worked in is the linchpin between the community and the game developers in the States. It's like they're communicating back and forth. We try to get the game closer to the players, but also understand the players' needs better to feed that back to the developers, especially for the European market and the seven languages that we were looking after. I really loved that part because for me, succeeding together, that's where my heart beats.

And it was in this position, we were responsible for making sure that together with the community, we were creating the most awesome gaming experiences for all players. And that really fascinated me. I loved it. And that's why I gravitated to it so strongly. As I stayed in that team, I became more and more experienced with the subject matter. I started training other new community managers that joined us for different games and different languages. So I naturally grew into a managerial position, where then later on, I had my own team of

seven people for the seven different languages that we were looking after. And I helped them do the jobs that I did in the past, but for their specific language communities. It was really a magical time. Like we couldn't believe we got so lucky to be working at the single best company in gaming and having this for a job, making money with it and basically having this second family. Away from home, we all felt like we found a second family in Blizzard because everybody was excited and passionate about the same things

and we spent time together doing work and then we played together after work and we saw each other on the weekends for drinks and parties and other things so it was really our entire world where the people at Blizzard and the jobs that we were there for doing. And that changed somewhat over the years as Blizzard emerged with Activision, which is a big publisher in the gaming industry.

And the priorities for Blizzard, to our eyes started to shift going from how can we make this the best most engaging experience for our players to how can we make more money with this and how can we make this graph go up more quickly and money is after a couple of years, everything that we heard in discussions, which was a strong departure from the original values that brought me to Blizzard, making the most epic experiences with gamers for gamers. Then it came in 2018, so a long way. So I started in 2005. So 2018 was then 13 years in that there was an announcement

saying hey we need to save money globally and in our office here in versailles specifically we need to reduce our overall amount of people by 30 percent and that was a shock to us because we many of us we started with blizzard as our first company and as i said it really felt like a family and all of a sudden we were to say goodbye to a third of that family and we didn't know if we were impacted ourselves so a lot of different and difficult emotions came up for everybody we we felt shocked oh how can that be like we've been doing so well and i thought we are still doing well and yeah it was a really hard time for everybody involved and people had many different reactions because in France, after the announcement, it took about a year before that reduction actually took place. So there was a phase for about half a year, three quarters of a year, where people could volunteer to leave

so that the 30% would be filled up with volunteers as much as possible. And during that time frame, it was getting increasingly difficult because a couple of people said, there's too much pressure. I don't want to deal with this anymore. I just want to get out. And they left ahead of time. I, for myself, decided I wanted to stay around

to help my team through this process. And it turned out my team was completely gone at the end of the process because they reduced the entire community team to one person instead of around 10 which was of course a big change for me i i took it as an opportunity to say okay good this part of my career is done let's transition to somewhere else in the company. And I went from a publishing to a production environment and localization. So the translation of our games and started there as a manager, helping the team over there, the German and Italian team in particular,

to transition through what we were going through, because now they also lost about half to a third of their co-workers and now they needed to do more with less resources so there was a lot of change management to be done somewhere where i thought great i can make a positive difference here for the people to actually remove roadblocks make their lives easier so they can get the stuff that do best, they can get that done with as little interruption as possible. And that actually worked quite well. But then in 2020, the second shoe dropped

and they announced, hey, we are going to close the Versailles office completely. It was super tough. And everybody that remained in the hopes of being able to keep on with Blizzard, then those hopes shattered. Now everybody was faced with, okay, what am I going to do now? And in that environment, I sat down with my team and said, okay, it is what it is. We all have to go through these five stages of grief again that we just passed through the year before with many of our friends leaving. But we'll come out of it

on the other side. And once you're in a good space to think about it i want to have a discussion with each of and every one of you what you want to do moving forward after blizzard and what we can do right now to get you started on that journey towards a prosperous future where you feel fulfilled and happy and have a good job even after Blizzard. And that's, in a nutshell, were my 17 years at Blizzard. So if I look at your journey, it seems like for the most part, two-thirds of it, your time at Blizzard was quite positive and enjoyable. You had the right kind of culture, a great team, and you were learning through different roles. But then something changed. Like the trigger point was the merger, new policies, a shift in business direction, and ultimately a change in the overall culture.

That's when a lot of changes started happening for you personally, as well as for the team and the things you care about at this company. Over time, especially around the COVID period, you found yourself trying different things, staying engaged in the firm, but the whole environment kept shifting, becoming less familiar, and no longer the right fit for you. With the downsizing and layoffs, it sounds like that was the moment when it became clear that it was time for you to move on. And now you're channeling that experience into your current practice, helping others who face similar challenges and layoffs. At what point during or after your time at Blizzard, did you have that testimony like, hey, I've been through this tough experience. Why not turn it into a way to help others?

Was there a specific moment that made you realize this is what I want to do? This is my new mission. Yeah, so that was definitely towards the end of my time at Blizzard when I was exploring more and more coaching techniques and more and more workshops with my team to really empower them to take charge of their own destiny and do so with hopefully a more positive outlook on their own abilities and their own future. And it really starting to make a

difference for them, but also for me. In that moment, I realized, wow, like coaching, I really resonate with that. Not telling people what to do, but listening to them where they are right now, where they want or need to be in the future. And then together explore that possibility space of what they can start doing right now with a long-term view, but very small and iterative steps right now

to get to where they need to be. And that's when I discovered for me and said, hey, after the time at Blizzard, I'll have some time and I have some resources. I'll get certified in coaching. I want to know more about that and I want to be able to do it professionally. And during the following year, I did then exactly that. And that's what convinced me doing that course with other coaches. Wow, yes, this is really what I want to do moving forward

because I'm not bound to a corporate overlord who tells me what to do and where my priorities are. And all my efforts basically go towards making rich people even richer, in a sense. And now I have the freedom to work with people that share the same values, that are geeks like me, which to me just means they embrace what they love without reservation and they're not afraid of showing it so people who do that they don't need to be gamers they don't need to be nerds or anything but they're just unapologetically passionate about what they're doing and those are the people i love working with because that is my background and that's the life that I lived at Blizzard and I will forever be thankful for having had that time and the opportunities that Blizzard afforded me to grow into that person that I am today who is a lot more safe in his own abilities and okay not having a normal nine-to-five job,

but being my own boss and having my own company and living a little bit outside my comfort zone and pushing against it steadily. So yeah, I'll forever be grateful for that. And it led me to where I am today and it's a really exciting space. So yeah. It sounds like your journey into coaching was part of your own self-discovery where you eventually turned that interest into a full-time

practice. Now, when it comes to career transitions, people handle them in different ways. Whether the transition was triggered by downsizing, layoffs, involuntary resignation, or simply wanting to do something different, not everyone sees it in a positive light. Some people see transitions as a failure or setback, while others see them as opportunities for growth, while others see them as opportunities for growth. Personally, I see career transitions as growth opportunities, though I admit that there was a time in my life when I didn't. I used to see them as personal failures, which made the process really tough for me. But back to you, now that you've built a coaching practice and have been working with people, what do you think causes some individuals to struggle with seeing career transitions as opportunities? Why do some people see it as a setback or even feel resentment towards making a change?

So to me, it comes down to your point of view and how you choose to engage with that event in your life. That event being you are parting ways with your former employer, either by your own choice or you're being forced to because you have been laid off or the company is no more and we can choose to look at that and say oh my god this is the worst thing that ever happened to me what am i going to do now this is the most scary thing that ever happened to me in my life i'm being thrown out of my comfort zone i had this nice little place where i was good at

what i was doing and it was comfortable and i made money and that allowed me to survive and live my life and that's then people if you look at it like that then yes it's very scary but you can also choose to look at this energy in your body that you feel this being scared as, oh, there's energy in my body. I'm kingly all over. I'm excited for what lies ahead. So instead of looking at what you lost, it's, oh, wow. So I'm not bound to this company anymore. What other opportunities are there for me?

What is it actually that I'm passionate about? What is it that fulfills me? And is there maybe a better fit for me out there than what I have been doing previously? And if you look at it from that perspective, then change is exciting. Because now you enter this world of opportunity and the five stages of grief, you get through them a lot more quickly and rapidly than when you look at it from the other side of being scarce and having that anxiety and if you have that for the first time yes it's completely normal to be scared because you lose your safety net and that will always be scary especially if you have to provide for your family and for your children the more you get exposed to it right the more you are getting used to

nothing in this world is 100 safe nothing is being granted or forever then you get into the practice of building that resilience and asking yourself, hey, what if tomorrow my workplace changes or my position at work or my responsibilities, or I don't have a job anymore? What can I do right now to prepare myself for that eventuality and the change that is very likely to come in the future at some point. And if you look at it like that, then you can prepare yourself each day a little bit with stuff that makes sense for you in the future. And that may start with looking at what am I actually passionate about? What is it that I want to do with my life? And how does it overlap with stuff I can get paid for? And then you can start building accreditation and you can do research and you can develop yourself into that direction that when the moment comes and you're suddenly thrown out, you have a system in place.

You're already on the road to something new. You're just like, okay, cool. That was great. I'm very thankful for the experiences. I'm taking all the good things I can from it that helped me learn and grow and become the person that I am today. And with that set of skills and experiences, let's move forward to the next thing. You've designed a framework called the Big Three.

Can you elaborate on that? How do you use these three principles to help your client take better control of their careers and future? So the Big Three is really something i discovered during my last stages at blizzard and then the year after when i was getting my coaching certifications and i was writing the book and they are all about being kind present and open and for, it's a framework that when we just stick to those three simple things,

everything else falls into place. So being kind to me is all about self-acceptance, embracing the good things in our life and not looking at what we think we are missing. So what we talked about previously is this point of view, right? It helps shape this point of view to a place where we have possibility instead of restrictions. And then being present is all about enabling that self-motivated and self-driven behavior. Because we look at where are we right now?

Where is it actually that I want to go in the future? What are the challenges in between? And who do I have to become to, as a consequence of being that person, I will overcome these challenges in my way. And that's then where being open comes in. And we put systems and habits into place to become that person, our future selves that will overcome all these challenges that we currently face one step at a time. And the beautiful thing here is it's a different road for everybody,

but it's always the same framework. And for me, I saw it really work in my work with my former team and colleagues, being kind to them and myself saying, hey, this is a difficult position we are finding ourselves in. It's okay to take time to process it. Once you're in a good position to talk about it, let's be present and see where you are right now, where do you want to go and what can we do right now to help you get you there and then in the being open part we put specific trainings and

certifications and actions into place that you can do little by little to build towards that goal and it's not that overwhelming anymore and you'll find a new job simply as a consequence of putting that behavior into place so that is what's a big three all about and how they work for me in a professional life it's also then how i build my business saying hey being kind to myself it's the first time creating a business i'm going to make a lot of mistakes and that is okay mistakes are just learning in disguise in the end so looking forward to making them because i will learn a lot of from them and then looking at if i want to be at that space and have a successful company of for myself and a successful business.

What does that look like? And what are the steps that will get me there? And right here, right now, what are the first steps I can start taking? And then being open to putting systems into place for myself to do a little bit every day to become that person who then has that successful business. Talking about the book, how I tested my thesis, saying, hey, I've never written a book before. I always wanted to, but it was always too scary. I just discovered the big three.

Let's try it with this book. And what happened is I reframed, I want to write a a book into I want to become an author. And an author is just somebody who writes a little bit every day. So I started with five minutes. Five minutes became 10, 15, two hours, three hours a day. And after three months, the book was done. The first proper draft was done. And it was like realizing, wow, it really works. Like I broke down this super demanding and challenging and threatening goal. Like it was still there, the end goal of writing a book. But since I reframed it to I'm becoming an author now and I'm doing a little bit every day, it just accumulated with time and developed as a consequence. And there I saw I'm onto something because the big three did not only work for myself

at work and creating my company, but also creating this big milestone achievement of actually writing a book. And that's where I then doubled down and said, this is awesome. This is what I want to bring to the world and help people overcome their own challenges and achieve their own goals using this framework that not only works for your career development, but also for your personal development

and other goals you may have in your life. You shared a story, which is exactly what I wanted to ask you about. How you've framed or reframed your perspective on becoming an author. You took what might seem like a huge project, publishing a book, and broke it down, you could have easily said, wow, I don't know how to create a book. I've never done this before. But instead, you started by telling yourself, I am an author, and you redefined what that means. Authors write things every day, even just a little at a time.

Once you embraced that mindset and committed to writing consistently, things started to fall into place. It didn't take a year, just had to stick with it day by day. One week turned into two, and before long, it became a habit. I told myself, I am an author, so I write. And eventually, you've got half a page, then a full page, 10 pages, 100 pages, and boom, you've got a book. So at the end, it wasn't so intimidating after all, right? Yeah, so the beginning is definitely the hardest part because you feel tempted to, A, judge yourself that, oh, what I wrote isn't really good or i didn't write enough and that's again

where the big three come in and first among those the big three is be kind to yourself as hey what am i doing right now like being present is what did i just tell myself i just judged myself again no i said i write a little bit every day. Five minutes are enough. My goal says nothing about what I write needs to be good. So I'm doing what I set out to do and it's working. And then as you continue that day by day and you put, for example, for me, it was after breakfast, I would activate the PC and I would write a little bit. That helped me a lot to have the system in place to automate not having to think about when I was doing my writing, but I was doing it automatically after breakfast. So I cleaned the table, activated the PC, wrote a little bit, and only then I would check my emails or call my family or whatever else I had planned for that morning. And having these systems in place to help you automatize the beginning is super powerful. Because as you do a little bit by bit, as you just said, at some point you realize, oh, I already wrote 10 pages.

This is awesome. I'm getting stuff done done and that is actually how you find motivation or i shouldn't say find how you build motivation because a lot of people say oh yeah i'm lacking the motivation i can't seem to find it motivation is not something that lies around in the wilderness and you stumble upon it like oh now i'm motivated awesome but you build it through past successes where we fail often is that we try to do the initial steps we try to make them too big and then we fail at it and say ah guess i failed no no motivation to go further and then we stop so we really need to start super small

like as small as you like and you keep building upon it little by little it's like compounding interest right we need to put some money to the side and earn interest on it and then that can grow with time but if we don't put any money or if we if we try to save up a million first before we put it into the savings account it's not going to work because that initial goal is just too big and that was for me the main insight start small continue small and first and foremost be kind to yourself during that process and keep on being present where your head is at

and also celebrate those small wins because this is how you build motivation for yourself to keep going. Your book is called The Art of Meaningful Change. For anyone listening, by the way, this book is available for free. Reach out to me or Benedict

if you are interested in reading it. I have to admit, I haven't finished the entire book before this interview, but I will. It's 133 pages with 13 chapters packed with valuable insights, just as good as any book you would find in a bookstore. Yet, Benedict, you are offering it for free, which is such a great service to your audience and to our audience. If I were to ask you to summarize the main themes in just three to five sentences, an elevator pitch, so to speak. How would you do it?

Also, who is your primary target audience for this book? What impact do you hope to make on their lives if they pick it up, read through it, and finish it? What kind of change are you hoping to inspire? Yeah, so first off, thank you so much for your kind words. That's very touching to hear. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking an interest and having started reading it. In a nutshell, the book is a structured gathering of my thoughts and lived experience, I would say, on how being kind, present and open are key for me to living a fulfilled life.

It's my personal journey that I visualize with a concept that I call the game of life. It's like a tabletop that we built ourselves with different aspects and we choose how we want to play our game of life on top of that tabletop and it really starts with the smallest but most profound of actions or behaviors which is kindness on which everything else in the book rests and it pretty much ends with our combined ability to save the world so it's a very holistic approach to how i see life and how we can play it it's and on our own terms so that there's this elevator pitch idea what the book is about and so when i wrote the book i really didn't have a target audience in mind it was for me mostly a way to get the accumulated knowledge of 17 years of leadership development at blizzard plus the coaching practices that i

was doing plus my own reflections and trainings that i did i wanted to bring all of that into one place because for me there's so many great books but they only touch on one specific aspect of leadership or of life or its personal development or its professional development. I really wanted to have a holistic piece of work that serves as a first stepping stone into an overview of everything, basically from being kind to saving the world. What does it actually mean how can we go

about it as a species in in one coherent book and that's really what i i needed to get out of my head and onto paper and that's how the book was formed i think it will appeal to wide range of people i'm having a lot of personal stories in there so it should be very relatable and engaging i hope and i targeted i think specifically at former versions of myself who i look at and said oh yeah they can probably benefit they're going through the same challenges that i had to face and they're interested in the same things there's probably some here something in here that is meaningful to them that makes sense to them and yeah that's for the and i think so your last question was for the impact i think that for me is the most straightforward i just want people to have

that clarity of mind and the ability to be more kind present and open with themselves and one another because everything else from being a slightly better spouse or co-worker to our teams to this generational change really then comes as a natural consequence of that mindset and the behavior that we are exploring together in that book. And yeah, it was several questions. Did I answer all of them? Yeah, that's pretty much it. Be kind to yourself.

Those big three principles really hit home. At the end of the day, I believe we often overlook self-compassion. We are raised in cultures that encourage us to do things for others and meet their expectations. Of course, we should care about others, but many of us don't care enough about ourselves. It's easy to be kind to a co-worker when he or she makes a mistake. Oh, it's fine. Let's fix it. But when we make a similar mistake, we are overly critical. Why did I do that? I should have known better. We beat ourselves up for small errors. And that's where the imbalance shows.

We are not as kind to ourselves as we are to others. It doesn't make sense, does it? We treat others with compassion, honesty, and kindness, but then turn around and be overly harsh on ourselves. It's not selfish to treat yourself with the same kind and same level of care. If we're too hard on ourselves, we end up causing more harm. And that's just my personal take from both my experience and what I've observed. Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head with

what you just said and for me the best picture to visualize that is when we in an airplane emergency and so oxygen masks come down they tell you put your mask on first before you help anybody else. And they tell you that because if you're unconscious or dead and no help to anyone, on the contrary, you're demanding help from others all of a sudden instead of taking care of yourself. And that is the exact same thing with the big three and being kind to yourself first. If we burn ourselves out looking after everybody else, but not our own well-being and our own health and our own needs, then we cannot look after the others down the road because we are in need of help ourselves.

And that's also something I needed to learn as a manager and a leader not to spread myself too thin trying to accommodate everybody around me all the time but also saying hey this is the time i need for myself this is what i need to get done and once this is in a good space and i'm actually able to help other people, then we go full force on that. And then, yes, let's go. But I need to take care of myself first because that's a prerequisite for me being able to help others. So it is, in a sense, egotistical, but egotistical in service of helping others.

And that's where the difference lies right instead of just being egotistic for our own gain we are egotistic so we can keep performing at our highest level in service of others and that's also something that that just fell out of me when like they discovered coming out of the big three when I was actively practicing it more and paying attention to it and the dynamics around it. And where I found for myself, this is really a framework that works for my entire life. And as a side story as well, it's also how I managed to meet and marry the love of my life. But that's a different story. We'll save that for our next episode when you have more time.

Before we wrap up, can you share a couple of nuggets of wisdom for those who are currently facing tough situations like corporate downsizing or layoffs? Some might be in the middle of it. Others may see it coming. Or perhaps they've already experienced it. No matter where they stand, what advice would you give them on what they should or shouldn't do to help them move forward stronger and better?

First and foremost, you need to remember that this is temporary. So this is a temporary setback. You will get through that. And again, that's where kindness for yourself. You need to allow yourself to see a brighter future for yourself because if you're in the mindset of this is the end of the world then that's where your reactions and thoughts will lead you to so be aware that many people have gone through what you are going through right now before many are going through it right now and there are support networks around

you can reach out to friends and family and others who have gone through similar experiences to just have that safe harbor in a sense to at least talk openly about it and reflect out loud this is what that change means to me this is a challenge that comes along with it where do i need to be what are the steps in between here and there what's the next specific small thing that i can start doing and as you realize this that this this situation is neither permanent nor pervasive nor personal targeted at you, you get step by step into the practice of doing a little bit every day and you get yourself out of this whole step by step. But you will not find overnight new employment or create your own company.

That is the consequence of all your small accumulated actions and you will get there and it is like the book will write itself like in my example so you it it will come out of your efforts as a consequence of your mindset and your behavior but first and foremost be kind to yourself. It's okay to feel bad. Your emotions are just telling you that this was something important that you lost and it's okay to grieve it. And it's okay to take your time

to go through the five stages of grief. But if and when you're ready, no, this is not permanent. You'll get out of there and you have tools and practices at your disposal to keep going and build that brighter future for yourself. Benedikt, thank you so much for your encouraging words. This is exactly what we need when we face obstacles and struggle to see a way through. Yeah, thank you so much for giving me an opportunity

to talk about all these things that are near and dear to my heart. It was very great being here. Thank you for the listeners who sticked around to the end. Very much appreciated. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget, subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media.

I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.