"Bad" can pay off

Sanatana’s “We’ll see…” post stimulated several of my “we’ll see” memories. One in particular came to mind I’d like to share.  I was hired as an independent contractor on a project that was going to last about 8-9 months.  A few weeks into the project, the client called to say they had to scale back on the whole project which meant my time would be reduced to about 4 months; a drastic hit to my anticipated 8-9 months’ pay.

I immediately jumped to “this is bad,” and my mind started spinning, “I need to get on the phone and start shaking some trees.” I got out my contact list, eager to make job search calls. After all, I couldn’t just sit back and wait for someone to call, and no one would call me because everyone thought I was tied up for the next 8 months. But as my mind was whirring, and I was in “all systems go” mode, something within me seemed to be holding me back from making the calls. I just wasn’t feeling the push to start shaking the trees. It didn’t make sense to just continue on as if nothing had happened, but I couldn’t ignore or push against what my inner self was quietly saying, “Just wait.”

Well, I did wait, sweating bullets, but then we got a client phone call saying there was a big company shake-up, new people were in charge, and it was all systems go for a new event that would take me well beyond my original 8-9 months’ booking. Honestly, I couldn’t believe it. The thing that was so “bad” turned out to be very good.

I learned a couple of big lessons from that experience: one, not to be so quick to judge something as “bad,” and two, paying attention to my inner voice that pushes against what my logical mind-voice is saying literally paid off.

Over the years, I’ve had numerous “bad” situations that turned out to be extremely rewarding, both personally and financially – experiences I would have missed out on if I’d ridden the Tilt-A-Whirl of my logical mind.