The truth is that life does not always match our ideas regarding what we think we deserve. Sometimes, we get even more.
The last time I needed to look for a new job, the worst thing happened to me. I’d been let go from my senior role with a global marketing company and had just sent out a flurry of emails to my likeliest prospects. Immediately, just as I’d hoped, I got a response back. A competitor wanted to talk with me as soon as possible. So why was that the worst thing that could have happened to me?
In brief, while I pinned all my hopes on the position materializing, I was not so much wooed as dangled. There was just enough communication on their part to make me think this job possibility was always on the verge of coming to fruition. After several months, they just kind of faded away—and I’d lost precious time in the job-hunting process.
But rudeness, disorganization, indecision and disrespect aside, the worst thing was not how the company treated me. It was, rather, that I allowed myself to concentrate all my hopes on this as the one opportunity I was sure was destined to save me. I hadn’t taken the opportunity for introspection to see if continuing in the same type of position was what I actually wanted to do, nor had I pursued other possibilities.
Sharing my story with friends, I began realizing how often so many of us focus on the one thing we think we really want or think we need to have, be it a particular job, a living situation, relationship or even the perfect volunteer opportunity. Only when the one thing that is meant to be right for us crashes and burns do we finally open ourselves up to, well, everything else.
In my case, the lead that eventually connected me to my new job came from someone I’d met at an industry conference, long before I’d been downsized from my job. He was starting a website in the social marketing arena and I remember thinking at the time “what a cool idea.” Of course, at my age and stage in life, I never seriously thought about starting a new career—let alone one situated in cyberspace. In fact, the field in which I eventually landed hadn’t even existed when I’d originally set my career course years ago.
Nevertheless, I dug up his card and gave him a call. In less time than it had taken for my first prospect to return a single one of my calls, I was hired. Once I stopped fixating on “the one job” and opened myself to exploring the possibilities, I realized that fate was afoot, after all, delivering an opportunity to me that exceeded even my wildest expectations.
The truth is that life does not always match our ideas regarding what we think we deserve. It is true that you may have to dig deeper and network broader, stretching yourself to think increasingly out-of-the-box. But the good news is that when you open yourself up to the wider range of possibilities, while you may not actually get what you think you want—you may well get more.
