Why I was glad I got fired

…said no one ever. Who wants to be fired from a job in the middle of a global pandemic when you have a mortgage to pay, kids to feed, & bills that have due dates?

But actually… that’s exactly what I thought…. I was glad I got fired.

I was at my sales job that I loved for exactly 10 years, 4 months, 1 week, 4 days and 7 hours (and probably a second or 2, but who’s counting???) when I got the call. I had already had a feeling it was going to happen, I had been dreading it for weeks and months. There had a been a corporate takeover, a global pandemic, and various other inner workings of the organization that I’d have been a fool not to think that it could happen to me.

And then it did.

So after I hung up the phone with HR, I immediately started drinking a nice cold glass of Savignon Blanc…ahhh, now THAT was better.

For the moment anyway.

Then the reality set in.

And the tears and questions started coming: Why me? Why now? Why not that other co-worker of mine that was there less time than I? I dialed back in my mind to see if there was something I had done, something I had said, that put me in the bucket with the 15 other people they had fired that day.

And perhaps it was….or perhaps it wasn’t. I could merely have been a name on a page that got randomly picked or it could have been intentional…I’ll never know.

And let’s be honest. This wasn’t the first time I had been fired (it sounds more dramatic that way), let go, laid off, made redundant….there’s many ways to phrase this,… but there had been numerous jobs in my career that, truth be told,…. I …. had … been … fired.

So, LUCKY ME, I already knew how that felt. But it still didn’t make it easier, it only made it a little bit easier because I knew what feeling to expect in my head, my heart, and my stomach.

Either way, here I was again, fired (laid off, let go, what have you) and I had 2 choices:

1. Be sorry for myself and continue to drink that glass of Savignon Blanc

2. Or pile my hair on my head in my signature bun & figure out my next steps (while continuing to drink that glass of Savignon Blanc)

Can you guess what I chose?

Now let me tell you….the choice was not easy, who doesn’t want to spend a week or 2 wallowing in their world, telling themselves that they just needed a little bit more time to “get themselves together” and “let’s think about this tomorrow”….

OF COURSE THAT’S WHAT I WANTED TO DO!!!! That’s a perfectly normal feeling to have. And I certainly had that feeling too, except, I’m a bit of a procrastinator by nature and I knew that if I waited to jump on this opportunity to finally pull myself out of that procrastination habit I had lived in for so long, I knew it would take over my being, and that, my friends, would not have been a good thing.

So, I grabbed my laptop the next day at 7:30am and madly started typing out a resume that I hadn’t updated in over 10 years.

And I landed a phone interview that very afternoon and a job interview with that company a week later.

And although I didn’t actually get that job, it showed me that no matter what life throws at you, you can make 1 of 2 choices:

You can Fight or you can Flight (Flee, Fly, what have you).

And I chose Fight.

I’m happy to report that 2 MONTHS after being fired (laid off, let go, what have you), I am working at a wonderful company that I love, that keeps me fulfilled and busy, has great benefits and more perks than I thought I could ever have imagined. And I actually enjoy getting up every day to go to work.

Had I not been fired from the job I loved (or thought I had loved), none of this would have happened, because I know ME, I would have procrastinated about dusting off the resume and looking for something better and I know ME, it never would have gotten done.

So, thank you Universe for having me finally emerge out of my procrastinating habits and for showing me that a big change not in my control can lead to even bigger changes that I can control (stay tuned for more on that).

So, thank you Universe for having me fired.