My heart still races when I remember the Find oriental incall ladies in Big Apple. I was cheerfully talking with former workmates in the teacher’s lounge when I sensed two imposing presences on either side of me. Looking up, I recognized them to be the Head of Operations and the Head of School towering over me in bouncer-type stances.
“You’re not allowed to be here,” I was coldly informed. As I quickly gathered my things, wildly embarrassed, with both of them still in place, waiting to escort me out, I tried to make sense of the situation. I should not have entered the school. I should not have come back. I had quit. I should have stayed gone.
I asked for a moment in private with both of them, in the same room where these very two men had hired me only a few weeks prior. My one question: “Why would you do that to someone who’s here trying to help you?” I had hid nothing. I only returned to help finish up the last of the paperwork I was turning over to the teacher who had taken over my classes.
Their cold, exaggerated eye-rolls and looks of disgust were amazing to me. Had we not all been laughing and warmly conversing here only days earlier? And it was at this moment that I saw my entire 14 year attempt to be a traditional corporate employee in perfect clarity.
I should never have been there. I felt it almost immediately. Me and an institution in the same sentence? Um, no. I think not. As I left the school building that day, palpitations so intense I found it difficult to hear, I made a vow to myself to never look for a traditional job again. Never go to another interview.
It wasn’t that I never wanted to have a job again. I just would never play this silly corporate game where, no matter how hard I tried to play by the rules, I would lose miserably every time. Because I don’t see rules. I see people.
And so it began. The career I should have had from the start: seeing, loving, and inspiring people. My way. As me. That horrendous exit from the corporate world was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
While I didn’t know it at the time, my father was in the last months of his life, and my new freedom gave me the opportunity to travel to spend time with him and my mother. I was able to coordinate his funeral. I was there for my family during that painful time.
I was able to start spending real time with my daughter. I found a community of people on a similar path to soul-centered entrepreneurship and forged deeply meaningful relationships that have helped me blossom in every way! I began to take much better care of my mind and body, in unprecedented ways and levels.
All thanks to getting escorted out. I honestly doubt I would have had the guts to push forward on my entrepreneurial vision had my exit been less traumatizing. I think I would have yet again succumbed to fear and ‘played it safe’, finding another unfulfilling job that paid some bills and left me drained of energy, purpose and joy. Hence, I am so thankful I had that awful experience.
