Five years ago today, I experienced what
to that point had been the most frightening situation I’d ever encountered. It actually
still ranks up there in the top two or three in my mind. At 30 years old, with
young family and the bulk of my professional career with the company, I lost my
job. No explanation, no “thank you,” just an abrupt “your services are no
longer needed,” and out the door. It was a cataclysmic fall from a meteoric
rise…and probably the best thing that ever happened to me.
I can’t blame the company. I mean, I
could, and I did, for quite a while after my “meeting” that morning. I’d never
been dismissed from a company before, and to have it happen without as much as
a reason why shook me to my core. After all, I’d done everything that had been
asked of me. I took every position asked of me, dealt with the “slimming down”
of the management team, took on tasks once handled by three supervisors. To an
extent I saw it coming, especially since I was asked to come in on a day I wasn’t
scheduled. But regardless of how much I prepared, the result was still
shocking.
I spent many hours (okay, years)
brooding over this, feeling as if I’d never accomplish anything ever again.
Being the personality type that I am, that many of us in EMS are, I needed a
reason why. Why, after so many years of success, was I suddenly un employable
by the company I’d been at the longest? Why, after doing everything I was asked
to do (and more, in my opinion), was I put to the curb? Where did I go wrong? I
still don’t have an answer, and I probably never will.
In the end, it was a rude awakening that
nothing in life can be taken for granted and that I was way too comfortable in
my position. Looking back, I see now that I was ignoring warning signs that
probably started almost a year earlier. I was getting subtle messages that
things needed to be changed, yet I did nothing to heed those warnings. I’m much
more attuned to those little messages now, though sometimes I need to hear them
a couple of times before reacting.
I also learned that feeling sorry for
yourself for any great length of time isn’t going to change things. It isn’t
going to get your job back, and it isn’t going to help you move forward. It’s
only going to make you more miserable and restrict you to seeing that which you
have achieved, not what you can still accomplish. It took me way too long to
learn that lesson, and I probably lost more than one job opportunity due to my
state of mind. Since then, I’ve doubled down on my chosen career field, made
decisions to pursue certain opportunities while letting others wait. I’ve
opened myself to more opportunities, especially ones that are outside my
comfort zone. And while I haven’t achieved the rapid successes that I had in
the past, the victories are considerably sweeter because I’ve opened myself up
to something new.
