[突发]漳州龙海小型船只突遇大雾触礁 致2死2失踪

It's Monday. Chances are, you are unhappy at work. You're not alone. 70% of Americans are unhappy with their job (Gallup 2013). Hell, you are probably reading this while at work. 

Should you hide this window behind a spreadsheet? No! Keep reading. 

I was fired once. It was terrible. It was also the best thing that ever happened to me. That's why I want to share my story.

I want you to be so motivated by the end of this article that you slam your desk and start thinking about what makes you happy - but not motivated enough to stand on your desk, quit your job and ask "who is coming with me?!" It's a fine line. Leave a comment and let me know how I did. 

If you got fired today, what would you do?

You never know how great you are or how great you will be until you are challenged. You never know how far you will push yourself until you are forced to do so. I'm often asked how I became an entrepreneur and I always say "it was an accident." That's true. This was never the plan.

The plan was to get good grades, work for a great advertising firm, move to a big city, get my MBA and eventually make six figures. 

I got the good grades. But no advertising firm wanted to hire me. I did zero networking. I knew no one. I was another name and G.P.A. on a piece of paper. I didn't stand out and didn't understand why someone didn't think I was special. 

Note to college students: Don't worry about your grades. They don't matter. Worry about your network. That matters. 

So, like many Americans I started working jobs rather than creating a career. I worked hard but my heart wasn't in it. And it showed. 

When you were little did you dream about being the Assistant to the Regional Manager? Did you want to be the next Dwight Schrute? Of course not. Almost all of us have aspirations but life gets in the way. Sometimes we settle. We take what's present and available rather than what might be possible and attainable. 

One day, while working a job I didn't love, my boss asked me to their office. I WAS FIRED. I could lie and tell you that I was surprised but I wasn't. I didn't fit.

I went home, ate some mid-afternoon ice cream and asked myself if I was a failure. Was I? I went through the five stages of getting fired.

Anger, Ice Cream, Daytime TV, Acceptance, Revenge (The emotion, not the TV show). 

I wasn't a failure. That's what I told myself. 

I knew I had a particular set of skills - skills that made me dangerous in my field. But I hadn't thought about how to apply them on a national/international scale. I had been too worried about how to apply them to my local job. I wasn't thinking big enough. 

Being fired motivated me. For the first time, I wanted to prove someone wrong, multiple people wrong. I still do.

Great people are motivated by "no." They don't get fired, they get fired up and that fuels them every day. 

Steve Jobs was fired from Apple. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school team. Drake was told he could never dance again after he was in a wheelchair.

I'm not Steve Jobs. I'm not Michael Jordan. I'm not Drake. I couldn't be more average on paper. If I can do this, you can do this. That's the one takeaway I want you to get from reading. And thanks for still reading. 

The day after being fired I woke up with a red-hot, burning passion to succeed. I kept it 100. I assessed my skills. I mapped out my existing network. I determined what I was great at doing, what I was ok at doing and what I didn't want to do.

I focused only where I was great. If I was an app I wasn't trying to be Facebook, I was trying to be Instagram. I wanted to do one thing exceptionally well. If you try and be a full service agency it's easy to get lost in the crowd and hard to beat established competition with 1,00o employees, 50 locations and $500 million in business. 

Then, I focused on my network. I knew I needed to know more people.

Where you are going, you cannot get there alone.

I knew I needed to connect with the right people. I didn't ask for things, I provided value. If I wanted to get to know someone, I interviewed them for a blog piece. That blog piece then became a tweet chat, Mashable article, Washington Times column. Nothing happened overnight. All the change was incremental. But one day I woke up and I was on a Forbes list. Damn. I didn't expect that.

I didn't stop when I got there. I kept going. That only motivated me more. Two years later I was the Best Business Blogger in the world (Shorty Awards 2015), an award previously given to Guy Kawasaki - one of my idols.

In my acceptance speech, I echoed what I'm saying right now. We live in a digital Wild West. If you want something, it's there. You just have to reach far enough to grab it. 

It took years, a lot of meetings, a lot of interviews but I finally reached where I wanted to be. I have the six figure job but it's more than that - it's a career. I didn't have to leave Grand Rapids, Michigan. I didn't need to get my MBA. I have an amazing family - a fiancé that I would run through a wall for like the Kool-Aid Man, a bonus daughter that makes me feel joy I didn't think was possible and parents that told me every day I could be whatever I wanted to be.

All I needed was a swift kick in the ass and something to motivate me every day. 

I'm not satisfied. I may never be. Every time I reach a goal I create a newer, larger one. I don't always succeed. I fail a lot. But I don't stop. And every day I push the ball forward, I make progress. I make a connection. I connect a dot somewhere. Every day I get closer to my goals and further from what I used to be. I don't want to go back there, to the cubicle farm, to watching a clock and waiting for it to be 5PM. 

So, ask yourself this; "If I got fired today, what would I do?" Your answer may surprise you. Your answer may motivate you. 

*This message is approved by Jeff Barrett. Results may vary. If you experience a layoff of more than four months, please consult a recruiter.