One fateful Friday the 13th, it was a day like any other: I was hip deep in performing a competitive analysis for a client, determining their place in the social media landscape… checking sentiment ratios, analytics from their site and other digital minutiae … when I was called into the agency principal’s office at 11:30 a.m. The president of the firm was blessedly direct when he said to me: “I have to let you go. I feel terrible about this, because you are doing a great job. You are doing exactly what you said you could do, but because we’ve lost this major client, I have to do what’s best for the long-term financial health of the firm.”

Just like that, I, along with three of my colleagues, found myself out of a job. Here are two quotes that I refer to whenever I’m faced with a life pivot:

“Genuine beginnings begin within us, even when they are brought to our attention by external opportunities.” — William Bridges

“What we call the beginning is often the end. …And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” — T. S. Eliot

I don’t know about you, but my ends are usually pretty stark. I don’t know if that’s because I’m obtuse, stubborn or just don’t like change, but each of my beginnings has as its demarcation a really apparent end. Such was the case with my leaving the agency.

That said, it’s a fact that there is ALWAYS a silver lining in each cloud and no great loss without some small gain. Our job is to pay attention to our opportunities for growth, even when they (especially when?) they are cloaked in pain.

Over the course of the years, I have since published books, completed a life training certification, moved to a major international city and begun an entirely new life path as a woman in her 50s. I continue to refine and align my identity and purpose—keeping what strengthens me and discarding that which no longer serves me.

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” — Bernice Johnson Reagon

For one thing, I believe wholeheartedly that we are never presented with anything too big for us to handle. If we have the ability to recognize the challenge, then we have the capacity to overcome it. Our challenge lies with identifying the skill(s) within ourselves that we have allowed to remain dormant or underdeveloped that will provide the means of our transition.

One of the things that helped me to distill my values and choices was the new economy created by my changing financial reality. Instead of viewing my new budgetary concerns from a viewpoint of scarcity or privation, I began to truly embrace expansiveness and creativity with the resources at hand.

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin-real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.” — Alfred D’Souza

Ding. Exactly this.

I understood this quote in theory for quite some time, but over the years, I have come to truly grasp and internalize its meaning. Obstacles are a gift. Uncertainty and obstacles represent the threads that form the tapestry of your life.

Embracing uncertainty has paradoxically made me more secure. It reminds me of the Apollo 13 mission and the crew’s use of leveraging gravity and momentum to slingshot their craft around the moon to get home. They employed a tactical use of energy to propel themselves forward from oblivion.

Our lives have ebbs and flows. Ends and beginnings are illusions. Starting over is nothing more than acknowledging The Pause before picking up your “thread” and continuing to weave your own story.

Begin now.

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