Figuring Out Which Way Is Up
There’s a reoccurring theme in the conversations I’ve been having lately.
Uncertainty has always found its way into the room when I’m working with founders and solopreneurs, but the intensity of it feels different right now.
The questions are sharper, the pauses are longer, the emotions underneath are palpable.
People are trying to figure out which way is up, and I mean that in a very literal sense, they’re trying to find a way to surface for air.
We are living through one of the most disorienting moments the professional world has seen in years.
Oracle laid off an estimated 30,000 people in a single email, sent at 6am.
Amazon made its announcement at 5:30am to 16,000 employees.
Meta is reportedly planning reductions of up to 20% of its entire workforce. This is somewhere in the region of 15,000 people, while simultaneously committing $135 billion to AI infrastructure.
Block cut 40% of its headcount. In just the first two months of 2026, AI was cited in over 12,000 job cut announcements in the US.
Not as a distant future threat, as the stated reason, right now.
There’s something worth sitting with in those timings. 6am. 5:30am. No conversation, no warning, just an email arriving before most people are fully awake.
A generic email telling them that years of their working life have just been reorganised out of existence. Whatever the business rationale, that’s a statement about how people are valued inside those systems.
A lot of people received that message loud and clear, even the ones whose jobs weren’t touched.
The digital economy, which many people built careers and businesses around, has been hit particularly hard.
Coaching, consulting, training, facilitation — these are the kinds of services that organisations stop buying when uncertainty bites. I’m watching that happen in real time, and I know I’m not the only one.
The conversations I’m having sit across three distinct places.
There are people inside organisations who are waiting to find out if their role still exists. Watching colleagues disappear. Wondering whether to stay and find out, or leave before the decision gets made for them. Not because of disloyalty, but because they’ve watched what loyalty gets you and they’re not sure the trade still makes sense.
There are solopreneurs and founders who made the leap, some recently, some years ago, who are now watching revenue and opportunities dry up in front of their eyes, questioning whether they read the situation correctly, whether the timing was wrong, whether they should consider going back.
There are people who just got the call, or the 6am email, and are standing at a crossroads they didn’t choose, trying to work out what comes next.
What I’m hearing underneath all of it, regardless of which side of that fence someone sits on, is a deeper frustration.
People want to feel like they matter inside the structures they give their working lives to. For many, that experience is getting harder to find.
In the absence of it, the pull toward building something of your own, toward reclaiming some agency over your time, your work, your contribution — makes complete sense.
Entrepreneurship is not the solution for everyone. But because the human need driving it is real and it deserves to be named.
This is the world my SOULpreneurs live in. The founders, solopreneurs and purpose-led builders who aren’t just chasing revenue but are trying to build something that reflects who they are.
Right now, that world is being tested just as hard as any other.
I’m in this too. Not in exactly the same way as everyone else, but I’m not sitting outside it with a clear view.
I’m developing new resources specifically for this community right now, partly because I believe in the work, and partly because I can see what the people in my world are navigating and I want to be useful inside it.
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That’s not a comfortable admission, but it’s my honest one.
What I keep coming back to, in all of these conversations, is something that gets very little airtime when things get hard.
Everyone reaches for the cognitive response first. The spreadsheet, the market research, the list of options, the pros and cons. I’m not saying that’s wrong.
It’s a reasonable and often necessary response to real pressure, but it’s incomplete.
The cognitive mind is extraordinary at processing information. It is much less reliable at providing orientation. Those are different functions, and we tend to confuse them when we’re under stress.
Orientation is not about knowing what to do next. It’s about knowing who you are in the situation you’re in…
What you actually value.
What you’re genuinely willing to move toward.
What kind of life you’re trying to build and whether the decisions in front of you serve that or erode it.
It’s what I work on with people through something I call the Inner Compass — not as a concept to think about, but as a practice to return to, especially when the noise gets loud.
When everything outside is shifting, that inner clarity is essential. It becomes the most stabilising thing you can access.
The conversations that help people most right now are not the ones that resolve the uncertainty.
Nothing resolves that from the outside. They are the ones that help someone locate themselves inside it.
To know their own ground well enough that the noise, as loud as it is, doesn’t take over.
That’s a different kind of work. Deeper than tactics and maybe less satisfying in the short term. But it tends to be the thing that makes the next decision, whatever it is, one that actually fits you.
What are you using to find your bearing right now?
I’m Earl Talbot, known as The Resilience Guy. Recoded Resilience is a system through which I guide entrepreneurs and leaders to build from alignment, create from inspiration, and craft a sustainable life on their own terms. Living on purpose, as a SOULpreneur.
This piece was developed with the assistance of an AI language model, used as an editorial companion. The ideas, experiences, and voice are entirely Earl’s — the AI supported the process of shaping and refining them on the page.