IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT YOU.

I received a message from a past client last week. The subject line was “Things work out.”

We had worked together since the start of 2020 for about 1.5 years. I supported her throughout her job search, and also when she landed an exciting new job, got laid off from that job, restarted and redesigned her consulting business, bought a new home, and added to her repertoire an amazing gig as a university instructor, among other life-giving things.

These days, she finally feels in her groove, living and working with her values and true nature leading the way.

But this isn’t to tell you about any of that.

It’s to tell you about a different set of Things that Work Out.

—

She had written to me to say that when she got laid off in 2020, she took an interview for a job that came her way through a recruiter. It was a great salary and the title she wanted. But she turned it down.

There were flags for her in the interview process, and she knew from our hard work together that it wasn’t truly aligned and she wouldn’t be happy in the role.

(I hadn’t even known this all happened!)

In her note, she told me that she occasionally thought about that role and whether it was right for her to reject the offer; not seriously, but just in daydreams — (as we can do every now and again when we’re learning to discern what's correct for us).

Then, flash forward to December 2021.

She’s at her industry association’s holiday party. She’s introduced to a man and notices he works at the company she had interviewed with. Soon after, she realizes he was the one hired into the role that she turned down.

She asked how he liked working there. Casual.

He said:

"This opportunity fell out of the sky. I had just been laid off. My wife was giving birth to our twins any minute. We had just bought a new home. It's been a wonderful job and I'm so thankful...it came at exactly the right moment. I don't know where we'd be now if I hadn't landed it!"

And just like that, she received a full-circle confirmation that the choice she made was right. Not only for her and her life – but also for the life of the person that the job was better made for.

It’s rare to get to see the ripples of your decisions delivered back to you so directly.

Especially the choices that you know in your heart and gut are right for you to make, but that your fear tells you would be selfish, ungrateful, privileged, irresponsible, or something else of the sort.

And so you choose what is safe and familiar, again and again, all the while never getting to know what you are really made of and what you are really made for.

But consider that others actually benefit (often in ways you will never find out) when you orient yourself to work that feels authentically good to you.

If you can line yourself up to the experiences that are a YES – these decisions are for others as much as they are for you.

Because whatever is not a YES for you is going to be the YES for someone else. Someone who needs that YES to appear. Someone who is praying for their YES to arrive.

In this way, you never have to worry about losing out.

When you let go of what’s not working, what you’ve outgrown, or whatever is not the best fit for you, you give space for the right person to fill up that spot.

And whatever is a yes for you, well – the world gets to receive a taste of that magic.

Full circle, always.

Like what my client said as she wrapped up her email to me:

“It’s all connected and so neat.”

Yes.
It is.
 

All love your way,

Gloria