Why Losing My Job Was the Best Day of My Life. A Manifesto.
“We have to let you go”.
I sat in a windowless conference room and could not believe what I was hearing. My director continued on and his words bounced off the indifferent walls, punching me in both cheeks on their way to the floor. A perfectionist and a top performer in all of my prior endeavors, I felt shock, disbelief, panic, resolve, and at last, relief.
Here is why.
I worked at a top notch company, aggressive, fast-moving, chaotic, full of Harvard grads and future McKinsey consultants. At this behemoth workplace, ‘eat or be eaten’ was the law and I had never been hungry enough for another human. Fear-based management was the norm and I both witnessed and experienced anxiety attacks on a regular basis. Work-life balance was at best ignored and at worst laughed at. At this company, we were glued to our iPhones, available 24/7, always competing on who would answer emails the fastest, who was ‘driving results’ and ‘getting cross-functional alignment’. At this company, as in most of corporate America, numbers were what had mattered. This quest for more profits year after year was starting to crush me.
So I was let go. The kick that we most sorely need often comes from an unexpected direction. The truth is, I never completely believed into what I was doing. I could never properly fake excitement in endless…
