When I was in college I worked overnights on a Philadelphia radio station balancing a full schedule at school with a full-time, six day a week job in radio.

One night – I estimate it to be about 3 in the morning – I feel asleep on the air and let a song end without playing another. To this day I refuse to think about how long there was dead air, which is a no-no in radio.

Unfortunately my boss was awake at 3 am (too much caffeine?) and heard it.  The next day he called me in and handed me my walking papers.

I can’t tell you how devastating that was – first commercial radio job and I literally fell asleep at the switch.

But as painful and embarrassing as that was, it made me more motivated to find my next job which, fortunately for me, was in television at the ABC affiliate there – a job I would not likely had sought if I was still working in the job from which I was fired.

To this day I absolutely adore the man who fired me.  He was right.  He may have taught me a lesson about life as well as introduced me to myself.  No college course could do that.

When we are fired or not appreciated in our jobs, we lose self-esteem.  We are hurt.  We are angry and we are in a negative frame of mind.

This is going to sound awful, but many, many people who are dismissed from the work they do go on to something better.

And all of us can see this in retrospect, after the fact.

Here’s the trick:

The moment it happens, remember that being fired will eventually lead you to something even better.  It always does.

Just knowing this from day one – and remembering it every day — resets your life in a positive direction to bring even more success next.

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