“A job can be taken from you. Your value cannot.”
Nearly two years ago, I learned that lesson the hard way.
One conversation. That’s all it took. One meeting, one decision made by someone else, and twenty-five years of building, sacrificing, achieving, and leading suddenly felt like they had been erased. Not because they actually were, but because that’s what our minds do when life blindsides us. We don’t simply lose a job. We convince ourselves we’ve somehow lost ourselves.
If you’ve ever been fired, laid off, divorced, diagnosed with something you didn’t ask for, watched a relationship fall apart, or had life completely ignore the five-year plan you color-coded in your planner, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Our brains don’t politely say, “Well… this is unfortunate.” No. They go full Broadway production.
“You’re a failure.”
“You’ll never recover from this.”
“Everyone else has their life figured out except you.”
“You should’ve seen this coming.”
It’s amazing, really. Our inner critic (the asshole in our brain) has absolutely no chill.
This week I was thinking about the nearly 800 healthcare professionals who unexpectedly found themselves unemployed. My heart hurt for every single one of them because I remember waking up the morning after my own termination wondering who I was if I wasn’t a CEO anymore. It’s an unsettling question because somewhere along the way many of us stop introducing ourselves as people and start introducing ourselves as job titles.
I’m Allie. No… wait. I’m a CEO. I’m an executive. I’m a nurse. I’m a leader. I’m a partner. I’m a mom.
I’m…And then one day one of those titles disappears, and suddenly it feels like someone yanked a Jenga block out of the bottom of the tower. Everything wobbles. We don’t just question our career. We question our worth.
The irony, of course, is that a résumé has never been able to capture the best parts of us anyway. A résumé can tell you where I worked. It can’t tell you about the nights I sat beside frightened families. It can’t tell you about the leaders I coached through impossible situations. It can’t tell you about the tears I cried in hospital bathrooms so my team wouldn’t see me fall apart. It certainly can’t tell you about integrity, resilience, compassion, courage, or the thousand invisible moments that actually define a leader.
Those things never disappear because someone changes your employment status.
This week I read something that completely reframed the way I think about these unexpected detours. Instead of viewing them as failures, what if we simply looked at them as… recalculating?
Immediately my mind went to Siri. Have you ever noticed Siri is emotionally stable? You miss your turn. “Recalculating.” You accidentally drive three exits past where you were supposed to get off. “Recalculating.” You ignore every single instruction she’s given you for the last ten minutes because you know a shortcut. “Recalculating.”
Never once has Siri screamed… “Well, congratulations, Allie! You’ve completely ruined your life! You clearly weren’t cut out for driving. Pull over immediately and surrender your driver’s license because this is embarrassing.”
Nope. She just…“Recalculates.” No drama. No shame. No existential crisis. Just… new information.
Then I started laughing because it reminded me of one of my favorite family stories.
Years ago, when I was still married, we took our eight-year-old godson on a trip. We had the GPS on for most of the drive, and after listening to it announce “Recalculating” for what felt like the seventeenth time, he leaned forward from the backseat and asked my now ex-husband with complete innocence, “Hey, Nino… why does she only say ‘recalculating’ when you’re driving and never when Nina drives?”
Y’all…I nearly died. I laughed so hard I thought I might actually pee in my pants.
Poor kid had absolutely no idea what he’d just done. He wasn’t trying to roast my ex. He was simply making an observation based on the available data. Unfortunately for my ex-husband, the data was… compelling. To be fair, my ex was many wonderful things. A NASCAR driver was not one of them. The GPS spent more time recalculating his routes than actually giving directions.
That story still makes me laugh because kids have a remarkable ability to state the obvious without realizing they’ve just delivered the funniest line of the entire vacation.
But the older I’ve gotten, the more I think that little GPS voice might actually have life figured out better than the rest of us.
When something unexpected happens, it doesn’t assign blame. It doesn’t spiral. It doesn’t decide the destination is no longer possible. It simply acknowledges reality and creates a new route. Recalculating.
What if we did the same? What if losing a job wasn’t proof we had failed but simply information that our route had changed? What if divorce wasn’t the end of the story but a recalculation? What if becoming an empty nester, surviving cancer, navigating menopause, losing a parent, starting over at forty, fifty, or sixty wasn’t evidence that we’d somehow fallen behind?
What if life was simply saying…“Okay. That road is closed. Let’s find another way.”
Looking back now, I can honestly say that while I would never have chosen to lose my job, I also wouldn’t erase what came after it. I wrote a book. I started a leadership consulting business. I’ve stood on stages I never imagined standing on. I’ve coached leaders, launched programs, started a podcast, and found a voice that corporate America accidentally helped amplify by trying to silence it.
Do I still have moments where I wonder what comes next? Absolutely. I’m still searching for the next chapter in my professional journey. Some mornings anxiety shows up before my feet even hit the floor. Some days I have to work really hard not to let fear write the story.
But here’s what I know now that I didn’t know two years ago. I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t finished. I wasn’t failing. I was simply…Recalculating. Maybe you are too.
If life has taken an unexpected turn recently, resist the urge to let your inner critic grab the microphone. It has terrible navigation skills. Instead, take a page from the most emotionally regulated voice most of us hear all week.
Take a breath. Look at where you actually are. Adjust your route. Then keep driving. Because a detour is not the same thing as a dead end.
Sometimes it’s simply the road that finally leads you exactly where you were meant to be.
