Mindy Thomas

Reengineering Your Life After a Career Disaster

People are reengineering their life everyday as a result of being hit with a termination notice.

Not only has the rug been pulled out from us financially, emotionally and spiritually, but our very core of being is damaged. It’s like getting diagnosed with the Big C. It’s a psychic sledgehammer, is it not?

Both kinds of awakenings – a termination notice or a cancer diagnosis – serve as wake up calls. If you have been given either one of these notices, I am sure that you will agree that they follow the four-step pattern of death and dying and divorce. At first, resistance and denial tend to be the first reaction. Then, anger. Finally, we move into grief and acceptance of our new chapter in life.

In a very similar manner, the closing chapter of a carefree lifestyle or a career can awaken us to a new perspective and a world of new beginnings. Many people, including myself, have realized that the death of our career we held so dearly can be a rebirth and a blessing. In effect, it forces us off the bleachers where we have been playing it safe. It pushes us to think about and discover a new way for ourselves or a better way. And many times, it turns out that it was the best way to really get us into the game . . . Like Zig Ziglar once said, “it’s not where we begin that counts, it’s where we end up.”

Ultimately, what will be the most stable component in the world of work is you. Simply put, if you can marry your next steps in your career with your interests, multiplying that by your special God-given gifts we have all been blessed with, we have a chance to get out of this chaotic corporate revolving door. Choose a profession or a business that you can excel in and that contributes to your mission. Find an industry that is trending up, an organization that needs your expertise and let’s move towards you becoming the CEO of you.com.