This is my first published story ever. It shares in more detail my journey of leaving depression and my career in advertising to follow my heart and become a writer. This story first appeared in Chicken Soup For The Soul: Think Positive, 2010.
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I’m sitting at my office desk trying desperately to hold back my tears. My body is numb and I feel excruciatingly heavy in my chair. There is something in the air today that I can’t quite grasp, but I know today is unlike any previous work day. My boss comes over and asks me to come with him to Human Resources. As I follow him, my mind sprints to possibilities…I have been with this company for four years, and never once have I been called to a meeting with HR and my boss. I’m not due for a raise or a promotion. The only other rational reason I am being escorted is because they are going to fire me. I become acutely aware of all of my surroundings. The air is so thick, a knife couldn’t cut it. I hear a pen drop across the office, the sound seems to boom out of proportion to the cause, and I realize it is a reflection of my heart falling into my stomach.
I feel as if I might pass out, so I remind myself to breathe and keep moving forward. I am asked to sit down. As I slowly breathe out, my boss begins to tell me that he is pleased with my positive attitude and that I am always a pleasure to work with, but that the roles of the agency have changed and the demands of my position are no longer being met. As he talks, I find myself spacing out, watching his lips move, but in my mind hearing only static. I think to myself, “If you are going to give me the ax just do it, cut to the chase. The anticipation is killing me.” Then I remind myself that this might be the most pivotal moment of my entire life. It’s time to quiet the inner chaos and pay attention. I force myself to listen.
At that point, my boss turns it over to the woman who signed my hiring paperwork, and she need say no more than her opening sentence, “This is always so hard to do, but we need to let you go.” The tears I have been punching back all day free to the surface. As they look at me with sympathetic sadness, the water pores out. What they don’t realize is that these tears do not come from a place of fear or pain. They are tears of relief, of unbounded excitement! It is in this moment that I realize all of my positive thinking, and prayers have been answered! It is at this moment that I truly believe miracles do happen!
Let’s travel back in time to two years ago to help you better understand how my optimistic outlook released me from the dead end reality I had slowly created. I was walking home from work, I just worked four 15-hour days back to back and this walk was the only thing I had done for myself in the past two weeks. The movement filled gently on my bones. My time no longer belonged to me. My mind was in a panic, I reminded myself that I choose to work at the big glamour’s advertising agency in the big fancy city, but the burden had become cumbersome. As I scanned the Chicago streets, the faces became muddy.
I picked up my pace in hopes of getting home quicker, but I couldn’t hold the tears back anymore. Within seconds they popped to the surface. I made it home and burst through my front door. As I collapsed to the floor I was shaking and terrified. My face was now soaked with grief, tears of exhaustion and excuses. I look around and realized I was not living the life I was supposed to be living. I felt like a foreigner in my own apartment. Everything should have been different. My hopes and dreams were supposed to be apparent in this life, this place I had built to be my home. I was living my dream life, but it didn’t feel like my life! It was as if I was renting someone else’s existence.
From the outside it seemed I had it all. I was with a man who wanted to marry me, and I had just received my second promotion in two years. I was travelling the world through my job, working at a big name advertising agency in a big glamorous city, with a gorgeous loft I could call home. Why did what I thought I wanted feel so different in reality? I had hoped achieving these goals would make me happy and content. I should have felt alive and free. Isn’t that what was supposed to happen when people get what they want? Instead I only felt trapped, alone and terrified that it this was as good as it would ever get! I prayed out loud to God, to anyone that would listen… “Help me, please help me. I need you now.” Instantly the air around me changed, and a calm presence filled the space. I sensed angels wrapping their soft arms around me. My tears dried up, and everything was calm. I heard a voice. It was my voice, but it was as if it was coming from above, as if the same angels who were hugging me were guiding me back into the light. The direction was simple, “Follow your heart.”
When I woke up the next day I aggressively took stock of my current life. Listening to the voice, I knew I needed to overhaul my life from the inside out. I paid attention to my relationships with others and with me, my job, where I lived – everything. I asked myself how I could possibly make such large-scale changes? The gravity of the undertaking started to feel overwhelming, but I reminded myself that in life we always have a choice. Even if I couldn’t see a way out now, the one thing I could control was my thoughts, and I had to choose positive ones. Those thoughts brought me back to safety, and that was how the journey to my true self began.
Like puzzle pieces I broke apart every aspect of my life, determined to reconstruct it with positive energy and reinforcement. First I made a list of the things I wanted to do in my life, and I started to check them off. Focusing first on my health, I signed up for a triathlon. I lost 15 pounds in pursuit of that dream and kept the positive affirmations coming. I volunteered at animal shelters. I started to travel, read and write more. I prayed and began to meditate daily. Slowly I was peeling off the band-aids I had used to cover my crying soul. I was connecting with my true self and nurturing her for all of her athletic beauty. Everything around me began to change. My relationships became deeper, my self-confidence was stronger, and I even risked adopting an amazing dog, who became my favorite jogging and cuddle buddy. Even as the positive changes started having an impact, my job kept getting worse.
Like a thief in the night, the fear and magnitude crept back in. I couldn’t understand why the bathroom floor and I had resumed our detrimental friendship. I started to think that there was something really wrong with me, that I had a mental disorder, or something that was causing me to be so unhappy. I sought out therapy, even visited doctors; I was determined to fix me. Despite my efforts, every night I would return to the bathroom floor where I found my old familiar negative self, crying helplessly into the night. I knew I could no longer ignore the nagging in my heart. I stopped cold and said out loud, “What am I doing here?” I stood up, threw water on my face to wipe the tears away, looked at myself in the mirror and said, “This isn’t you or your life, and this isn’t who or what you want to be. So go get it.” I grabbed my cherry red lipstick and wrote on the bathroom mirror:
In the next four weeks I want
- $10,000 (either a raise, or a new job with pay increase).
- I want to live by my family and loved ones in Oregon.
I put the lid back on my lipstick and went to bed. I didn’t know how or even when these goals would happen, but I knew that if I held a positive outlook it had to be better than my current state. Every day for the next two weeks I looked at that affirmation on my bathroom mirror. When I went for jogs on the lakefront, I visualized Mt. Hood and the bridges of Portland instead of Chicago’s smoggy traffic. At work I put up pictures of Oregon, my future home, family members, and interior images of companies I wanted to work for. I thought of this as my mini dream board. Now, in the place that was causing me the most pain, I had a visual escape. It was only two weeks after I’d written my midnight affirmation on the bathroom mirror that I was called into the human resources office to be let go. As part of my release they paid me just over $10,000 as a severance, and less then six weeks later I was in Oregon, closer to my family.
I now feel more love then I ever imagined possible. I chose to turn my pain into a positive by focusing on the future. I manifested the life I truly wanted by holding positive thoughts and visualizing the life I needed. There can be beauty in a breakdown, but it is our job to be open to change and trust that miracles do happen. When we follow our heart it will never let us down, and having a positive outlook on life can turn our dreams into reality.
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Although I thought my life was off track, I was really being groomed for my future path, the life I am living today. Do you feel stuck and trapped by your life circumstances?
Here are 5 valuable lessons I learned from pursuing the wrong career path:
Everything is connected.
The skills you are learning in your current role are part of your future. You don’t have to know how it’s connected—just focus on what you are learning and the skills that are helping you become stronger, smarter, and more well rounded.
You aren’t off track.
You may feel as if you’ve taken a wrong turn, but the place you are right now was designed to help you learn more about your authentic self. Everything is happening for you, not to you.
The Universe will do what you cannot do yourself.
I was stuck in fear, and the universe nudged me by laying me off. This was a huge blessing in disguise. If you feel like you aren’t quite ready to take the leap, trust that the perfect timing will reveal itself. If you’ve been laid off or fired and you can’t get a job in the field that you didn’t really like, chances are, the Universe is closing a door so you can walk through a better one. Be open to new opportunities and pay attention to where you heart is guiding you.
Gratitude will free you.
You may feel like your job is pointless and you aren’t fulfilled, but finding the grace in your daily routine is a skill you can cultivate. Start by appreciating what isn’t working, like the boss or coworkers who don’t understand you or support you. Can you send them love? When you focus on being grateful for what you have, you will attract what you want.
Freedom is a mindset.
If you feel stuck, it could be because of your focus on how things aren’t working. Instead, focus on what you want.
FREE VIDEO TRAINING: If you liked today’s message, check out this free video training from my business mentor Marie Forleo, the founder of B-School. She shows you how to get unstuck and turn your passion into profit. Watch here.
ONLINE COURSE: Want to know exactly what steps I took to find my purpose and how you can too? Check out my Mind Body Green video course, Get Unstuck: How to Live a Life with More Passion & Meaning here.
