Getting fired from a job is one of the most challenging things to happen to anyone. I was once furloughed from my cybersecurity gig in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was tough going through that experience. Navigating the aftermath of a layoff can be traumatic and lonely as people might begin to act awkward around you like you did something wrong. Some of your so-called friends would desert you like you have a disease, and others would ask you insensitive questions like “What did you do?” and others would not even reach out at all because they did not know what to say. It might not seem like that right now, but your firing is an opportunity for a rebirth, recalibration and a setup for your triumphant comeback.
Life will happen to us all at some point, whether getting fired, getting a divorce, losing a loved one or a health/financial crisis. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong (Murphy’s Law). The key to navigating the vicissitudes of life is to keep the challenge in perspective; nothing lasts forever; this too shall pass, and you will overcome this present storm. As author, Jim Rohn once advised ” “Don’t wish it was easier wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge wish for more wisdom”.
We all have a choice in life: either get better or get bitter, look in the mirror or stare at the window, focus on what is within your control or get in the weeds of things beyond your control. Getting fired is challenging as an employee, and it can even be more problematic when it happens to founders of companies. Entrepreneurs such as Ted Turner (CNN), Steve Jobs (Apple), and Rob Kalin (Etsy), among others, have been forced out of companies they started either as a result of a merger, corporate leadership tussle, or difference in vision. In his memoir, Call Me Ted 1, American Entrepreneur and founder of Cable News Network (CNN) Ted Turner describes the pain of losing one’s job, especially when you get pushed out from the company you started.
Psychiatrists will tell you that the two most traumatic things that can happen to a man are going through a divorce and losing his job, and these two things were happening to me at the same time. And I couldn’t sell my stock as the company’s value plummeted. I was like Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, watching all that gold dust slipping through his fingers. It was a terrible time for our family, and with the other problems that I faced, it was almost too much. I developed anxiety that was worse than anything I’d experienced before.
Psychiatrists will tell you that the two most traumatic things that can happen to a man are going through a divorce and losing his job.
An opportunity for a rebirth
I see guys who work at the same company their entire lives guys exactly like you they clock in and they clock out and they never have a moment of happiness; you have an opportunity, this is a rebirth, if not for you do it for your children.
In the movie, Up in the Air, actor George Clooney is a travelling corporate downsizer named Ryan Bingham. In one of his termination sessions, he asked an employee he was about to fire named Bob, played by actor J.K.Simmons, some thought-provoking questions. Bob had accepted the job some decades earlier, making $27,000 per year and subsequently gave up on his dream of becoming a chef. After watching Bob lament about how he was going to survive without his job, Ryan asked him the following questions:
Ryan Bingham : Your kids’ admiration is important to you?
Bob : Yeah of course
Ryan Bingham : I doubt they ever admired you
Bob : Hey, asshole, aren’t you supposed to be consoling me?
Ryan Bingham : I’m not a shrink I’m a wakeup call.
Ryan Bingham : You know why kids love athletes?
Bob : Because they screw lingerie models.
Ryan Bingham : No, that’s why we love athletes. Kids love athletes because they follow their dreams.
Bob : well I cant dunk
Ryan Bingham : But you can cook.
Bob: What are you talking about?
Ryan Bingham: Your resume says you minored in French Culinary Arts. Most students work the frier at KFC. You bussed tables at Il Picatorre to support yourself. Then you got out of college and started working here. How much did they first pay you to give up on your dreams?
Bob: 27 grand a year.
Ryan Bingham: When are you going to stop and do what makes you happy?
Bob: Good question.
Ryan Bingham: I see guys who work at the same company their entire lives guys exactly like you they clock in and they clock out and they never have a moment of happiness; you have an opportunity, this is a rebirth, if not for you do it for your children.
How much did they first pay you to give up on your dreams?
In We Got Fired!: . . . And It’s the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us 2, author Harvey Mackay chronicles the story of highly successful people who turned their firing story into an opportunity for reinvention, rebirth and more tremendous success.
Here is a list of how the most admired and successful people turned their firing into an opportunity for a rebirth and reinvention.
- Joanne Kathleen Rowling, aka J. K. Rowling, was fired from some secretarial jobs because she was found writing creative stories on her computer. She used her severance to write Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone while her daughter took naps. When she ran out of money, she received a grant to finish the book. Today, due to the popularity of Harry Potter books, movies, action figures, and more, she is a billionaire.
- President Richard Nixon fired the late Archibald Cox as the first Watergate prosecutor. He returned to Harvard as a distinguished law professor.
- David Halberstam was fired as a reporter for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. He went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.
- Daniel Barenboim was fired as the head of the Bastille Opera in Paris. Today he is the music director of both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the German National Opera in Berlin.
- The U.S. secretary of the interior fired poet Walt Whitman when he found a copy of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass by his desk. Once considered an obscenity, Leaves of Grass is today ranked as a masterpiece of American poetry. Wealthy Europeans who recognized.his genius during his lifetime rescued Whitman from poverty.
- Wolfgang Mozart was fired as a court composer by Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg. The composer moved on to Vienna, where he completed the mature masterpieces among his forty-one symphonies and twenty-seven piano concertos, along with several of the greatest operas of all time—including Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute.
- Shirley Temple Black was fired as a “washed-up” child star by Hollywood mogul Lew Wasserman. When she started crying, Wasserman shoved a box of Kleenex her way and said, “Here, have one on me.” She went on to become the first female chief of protocol at the White House and an ambassador to first Ghana and later the Czech and Slovak Republics.
- Jack Kemp never would have run for Congress if the San Diego Chargers hadn’t cut him. After a stellar thirteen-year professional football career, including a Most Valuable Player Award in 1965, Kemp represented the Buffalo area and western New York for eighteen years in the United States House of Representatives, then served four years as secretary of housing and urban development. He was picked by Senator Bob Dole as the Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate in the 1996 presidential election.
All the Best in your quest to get better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.
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