Getting Fired

I am super excited to finally be launching my book The Art of Getting Fired which has been in the making in my mind for over 20 years! When getting fired happened to me all those years ago, there was no literature on it, nobody I could talk to, and I felt completely alone. I have been carrying these overwhelming feelings that there needs to be stuff written about this out in the world, and then I finally found the courage (and the time) to write a book that captures my experiences. Since being fired early in my career, I’ve progressed up the ranks to management which has put me in a position to fire others, and I’m glad to be in a position now to write about both perspectives. When you’re getting fired, you don’t just want to hear about other people who have been through the same, but you’re also going to want some background and knowledge of the process from an employer’s point of view.

Getting Fired

I’m glad to be older, wiser, and with the benefit of life and work experience to bring to this book. What a very different book it would have been if I’d written it in my early 20’s after I’d just been fired. Perhaps still beneficial if nothing for getting across a shared experience others might have suffered, but without all the interesting stories and insights. I can imagine there would have been an element of wallowing in my pity, and painting a very vivid picture of my pain as that was where my headspace was at the time. The wounds were raw and I had not worked through all the feelings and meaning behind the events. Nor had I yet experienced the beautiful gift it brought me of increased confidence and greater risk taking, which took some years to evolve.

My drive for writing this book came from wanting to ease the suffering of others going through the experience of getting fired, even if in some small way. One of the key ways to tackle feelings of shame is to have knowledge that you’re not alone, and that many others have gone through what you have. And this was the importance of sharing the examples in my book. We should be talking about it like it’s a perfectly normal thing to experience in one’s life. Perhaps you failed in a job, or perhaps you didn’t but your manager thought you did, either way it is a hard pill to swallow that you or others didn’t think you were good enough. It’s easy to say you shouldn’t worry about the opinions of others but we do as it goes to the core of who we are as human beings. If you do read the book, and you have the experience of getting fired, and you take comfort in knowing you’re not alone, then consider talking about your experience with family and friends. The more we all talk about it, the more it is normalised.

Whatever the reasons are for getting fired, why should it define your talent or potential? Perhaps it was due to some mistakes you made, or someone else’s opinion about you, or some other reason but why should that put a mark on the rest of your working life? It need not have to except for the expectations and labels we put on ourselves. Some of the most successful people in the world have been fired (conversely some of the most incompetent people in the world have escaped being fired), so it’s time to stop making assumptions about what it means to be fired, and take control of the dialogue in our minds.

Jayne Brooks

#gettingfired