You make a decision that you will not let your future be defined by one person’s actions in your past.
To be fair, that’s a lot easier to say than it is to do. It’s only natural to have your self-confidence shaken after such a horrible event, but there does come a time when you have to start moving on with your life and creating a positive future for yourself.
Personally I’d rather try and fail than not try at all and always wonder if I should have.
Why the hell would you fire somebody for being good at their job, and not possibly good at another job that they aren’t doing?
Plus, this is a normal worry for practically anyone who has worked a similar job all their life, and the fact that you would think it was justified to fire someone for having an anxious thought really astounds me.
Beth may have taken what you said well, but if I knew someone fired me for being worried about whether I could get a different job, I’m not sure I’d be able to not try to do something back, for the good of society if nothing else.
How would someone with an anxiety disorder do if normal anxiety is worthy of firing?
I’ve been fired (for not doing my job right, not for general assness) and I’ve been laid off. In some ways, it’s easier to recover mentally from being fired.
If you’d been laid off, you’d still have the same feelings of self-doubt and insecurity, compounded by the fact that they must have had some reason to pick you instead of that person over there. But you wouldn’t ever know the reason, and you’d be stuck wondering “what could I have done?” forever.
Instead, you had a clean break. Your manager didn’t like X about your performance. You know the job well enough to know that either a) your manager was a flaming idiot or b) your performance, in this case, was poor, and you’re smart enough not to let it happen again.
A lot of people are losing their jobs, and I guarantee they’re all shattered inside. Assess your skills realistically, and if you need to improve some area, work on it. Otherwise, get back out there and find another job.
Well, there are a couple of things.
You need an exit story. Just a quick statement why you left your last job. Just say your position was eliminated for economic reasons. No one will say otherwise.
Look at what you want to change. A lot of terminations have nothing to do with you. Still, try and look at why they might have chosen you over someone else and what you might want to work on or do better next time.
Take some time to get your head straight.
One thing that I’ve found is that any place I’ve been let go from ends up turning into a place I’d never want to work at again once I’m gone.
I wish I would have had this advice when I was fired in 2006. My hub had just returned from a 16 month deployment to Afghanistan and while he was gone, my work product took a major hit. New manager and voila, Ruby is toast.
I was told to never lie in an interivew. To the question, “Why did you leave your last job?” I answered truthfully. I was fortunate that after 5 months, a new company was willing to give me a chance.
I can tell you that getting fired totally took the wind out of my sails. I was devastated. No matter how many people tell you to not take it personally, it’s fucking personal! Most of us spend more time working than we do anything else. It’s hard to separate “work” from “life”.
The fact of the matter is that a significant part of your life is tied to work. I was at one company from 2004-2008. In that time my salary doubled and I received a significant promotion. I also had a lot of good friends there and some close ties with a lot of my coworkers. When my job disappeared, it became difficult to continue those relationships. People worked long hours at that company so they don’t have a lot of extra free time for hanging. Plus you don’t want to be the guy lingering around after leaving a place. Sort of like the guy who graduates from college but still visits his old fraternity a bit too often.
The point is, leaving a job even under the best of circumstances often results in major life adjustments. And until you start a new job, it puts you in a weird sort of limbo in life where it’s tough to make plans or start developing new relationships until you know where you will be and what you will be doing.