How I Went From Unemployed to Having My Dream Job

image:salon.com
culled from:grassrootssuccess.net

My story begins 2 years ago in October of 2012 when I left the army after 6 years of service. I was an intelligence instructor with serious responsibilities and a job that gave me immense satisfaction. The army wanted to move me to a remote location when my wife and I wanted to start a family and to be honest I was over being in the army itself, so I made the decision to leave and rejoin the civilian world. I had a number of really great job opportunities and even had an offer with an extremely lucrative salary basically for having a security clearance.

Then on my day of discharge, things began to fall apart. I’ll go into why a bit later on, but it began with that lucrative job offer falling through because the company I was going to work for hadn’t disclosed that their contract was up for review. The best day of my life turned into the worst in the space of a conversation when I was told the job no longer existed. One by one, the other jobs fell through. Some I narrowly missed out on, I was almost the national intelligence manager for a large private company. I had managed to stay in the army for another month, but I got a letter from the personnel manager in the army explaining clearly that the army didn’t need me and I was on my own after that month was up.

So there I was after 6 years of service, unemployed. You wouldn’t believe how many jobs I went for in the ensuing month. It was hundreds. Here I was, a former soldier with an extremely important job and I couldn’t even get an interview with a supermarket to stack shelves. I finally managed to wrangle a casual job in a camping store which at least kept some money coming in and got me out of the house. To be honest, I was in a black pit of despair and depression. I felt humiliated – all the people I worked with expected the world of me because I was very good at my job and I had enough qualifications to rival a Colonel, and here I was working alongside teenagers that were still in school doing a job that required zero skill.

I basically hid myself away from the world for those couple of months. I stopped turning up to judo, I didn’t speak to all my amazing friends from work and I tried not to talk to my family at home too much. I was too embarrassed and depressed, only my wife really knew what was going on with me and thankfully she just kept trying to keep me up until things turned around. And finally they did turn around – I got a full time job in Sydney, albeit one in an industry I had no desire to work and for pay that was much less than what I was earning in the military (and was a shitload less than the jobs that I had almost gotten).

At that point though, any full time work was good. So I picked myself up and moved back in with my parents in Sydney, as my wife had to stay behind for a few months and finish up at her job. I think it was good for me, because I had to learn how to be happy again regardless of what job I had or what was going on in my life. I went to work, I went to judo after work and then I ate dinner and went to bed 3 nights a week, the other 2 I’d be at the gym. It was like living the life of a monk and I think it was good for me. I’d been doing judo for 10 years and the dojo felt like home and somewhere I was really in touch with myself.

When I started working at the new job, I already knew how to be successful subconsciously, because the army drills that into you. I turned up dressed to impress, I’d be at work early and I built solid relationships from day 1. I don’t know at what point it was, but I started watching motivational videos on YouTube. I downloaded them onto my phone and I would listen to them for hours a day. Eric Thomas and Les Brown became the greatest influences on my life, and I replaced the narrative in my head of bitterness, being a victim and whining about my lot in life to someone with an unshakeable will that couldn’t be stopped. I had a lot of horrible times in the army that matured me and really taught me to succeed, but it wasn’t enough on it’s own. Once I started to build that positive mindset though, things began to happen.

I thought, I know so much about success and building skill and I’ve lived it, but I’ve made some terrible choices – what if I could do it all over again? So I started writing. I started writing as though I was talking to my 20 year old self, telling him all the things he needed to know. I started up this blog and began putting everything I knew about success and building skill on it. I began spending time with and meeting other creative people, which further energised me. A few months ago at the place I worked a position in sales opened up and I jumped at it, because not only was it a promotion but it was a chance to get out of what I believed to be quite a toxic job handling insurance claims. During the interview the sales manager told me that he wanted me on the team and he wanted me to replace him in 2 years when he was ready to move on. This was despite having career salespeople on the team and me being a complete newbie.

At this time I’d seen a job opening on Seek for ex-military people and thought “what the hell?”, so I sent my resume and got an immediate call back. It was a huge job opportunity for a Fortune 500 medical technology company. I kept learning sales, kept writing my book and kept staying positive while that was going on in the background, because it was not a fast process. A friend of my wife’s gave me the opportunity to speak at her high school so I grabbed it with both hands. This was just a few days ago and I did 2 sessions where I spoke for 50 minutes to 16 year olds about how to be successful, how to find their passion and live their dreams in life. I told them my story of the last 2 years and why you should never give up on what you want out of life. The response was better than I could have possibly imagined.