Unemployment figures continue to rise. The word ‘layoff’ has become a boogeyman, a spectre waiting just outside our door to snatch away all we hold dear. Every time the next round of layoffs is announced, each of us imagines ourselves in that position.

You know how it goes. The boss calls you in, hands you the slip of doom, and tells you he had to get rid of someone. "Fine," you sniff with cardboard box in hand. "I never liked this place anyway."

But then comes the really hard part. After you’ve loaded up your things, said goodbye to the vending machines, and been escorted down to the curb, you realize you’re gonna have to tell someone about your forced explusion. If you’re married, your spouse’s face appears in your mind. You will have to tell them you failed. When times got tough, you couldn’t make the cut. Why, the shame is almost more than you can bear.

I’ve been there before and it sucks. But there are some things you can do to manage the heartache of getting the boot. Try these five exercises and watch your laid-off stress fly away:

1. Kick the Cat/Dog/Hamster - Ah, nothing like a little physical action to loosen up the old nerves. And that cat has had it coming for months, using your pool table as a scratching post. So get a running start. Kick with all your might. It’s up. It’s GOOD. Now doesn’t that feel swell?

2. Take a Day Off – That’s right. You didn’t get laid off. You took a vacation. A well-deserved vacation, now that you mention it. When all those non-laid-off shlubs are working their tails off in cubicle-land, you can do whatever you want. "Sucks to be you!" you can cackle as you drive away.

3. Watch an Inspirational Movie – Crying is good for unclogging the emotional plumbing. Try watching a movie about a born loser who gets kicked around but then hits the big time. Think Rocky, Rudy, or The Pursuit of Happyness. Picture yourself in the lead role. Shake your fist at the man. Shed tears. Finish carton of bon bons. Repeat several times.

4. Work Out – Give stress and self-pity the boot with a hearty workout. Swim ten miles. Scale a mountain. Anything to bring back that sense of accomplishment. You will be flying so high on endorphins that you may forget you have no money.

5. Get a Hug – Nothing chases away the bluebirds like a good embrace. Maybe it’s your spouse, your kids, your mom, or your cousin Larry. Sometimes you just need someone to put their arms around you and tell you it’s going to be okay. That’s right. Let it all out.

Seriously, a layoff is just the beginning of a new chapter in your life, probably a good one. So tackle it with a little self-pity, a dash of avoidance, and then go back out to take on the world.

This morning I drove through MCDonalds drive-thru (because that’s what you do at a drive-thru- you drive through). I was amazed to find that no one was in line. In fact, the parking lot was pretty much empty, too. I began to think that I had forgotten an important holiday but soon found a voice on the other side of the order screen thingy. In less than a minute, I had paid for and received my food. Down the street, I opened my bag, unwrapped my Sausage McMuffin and bit into it. It was merely warm and dry. The muffin was hard and the meat slightly tough. All of my cresting McAnticipation was out the window.

That’s when an interesting, silver-lining idea hit me. We always complain about long lines, but, with fast food, long lines are good. Short lines are bad. Why? Because if you are in a short line, you have a higher chance that the food you ordered has been sitting under a food lamp, unwanted, dried out. Long lines, however, force the restaurant to prepare fresh, sizzling hot food for you.

So, in this time of gloom and doom economic news when you are just trying to get your money’s worth, you can smile when you pull up to a fast food drive-thru and find a long line. You may have to wait longer, but your food will be fresh off the unabashedly greasy grill, you will have spent your money wisely. And that is a pretty good silver lining.

You know, it’s hard to tell sometimes if the media is enjoying the flurry of bad news that has engulfed us, if it has grown tired of reporting on it, or if they are really holding back on telling us the really bad stuff. Sitting in front of any news channel for thirty minutes is guaranteed to give anyone a panic attack. Everything seems so out of control, certainly out of the control of the Average Joe. After months of seeing such a bleak scene, many are seeing rainclouds on every horizon.
 

But today I had an idea not about rainclouds, but about umbrellas. You see, life in this universe of ours isn’t easy. We can’t control the vast majority of things happening around us. The one constant of life on earth is that rainclouds will come. And, sorry to say, we will be mostly helpless to stop their approach.
 

At this moment in history (to borrow President Obama’s favorite adverbial phrase), people are feeling the rain. For the first time in a long time, Americans are starting to remember what rainclouds look like. Our first instinct is to say, "I don’t like this. I want to go back to chilling in the sunlight in my pool chair." We want to run and hide and mourn the loss of said pool chair. We have an overwhelming urge to kick reason and innovativeness out the door and to just scream bloody murder for the entire world to hear.
 

But that is where umbrellas come in. You can’t stop the rain from coming, but you can buy an umbrella and open it. Just because most things are out of our control, that doesn’t mean everything is. We can do a lot to control the things immediately around us. We can learn to be frugal (look it up in Wikipedia). We can learn to organize our lives and cut our waste. We can learn to put away more than a little something for a rainy day.
 

If there is one that is sure, it is that rainclouds pass. Don’t bother freaking out. It’s a waste of time, air, and usually resources. Trust in your ability to solve problems. You will be pleasantly surprised at who you’ve become when the clouds clear.