About nine years ago I was applying for a job I really wanted when everything fell apart the day before the interview.
It was a couple of months after I started meditating and was the first real test of my newfound resourcefulness.
I’d just read The Power of Now and had adapted something from it into the following motto.
Take every situation as if you planned it that way.
Raining at a music festival? Time to dance in the mud. Flight delayed? Extra time for reading. These were all opportunities to surrender my preferences and see what the world was offering me instead.
I’d been a journalist for the previous ten years and was ready for a change. There was a big shake up at work and a product lead role came up.
I didn’t have any direct experience but had been wanted to change to product for a while and decided to go for it even though it was a long shot. My mentor at the time suggested going on the offensive.
Instead of a regular interview where my lack of experience would be overwhelming, I’d present my strategy for year one in the job.
The day before the interview, I overheard they were giving the job to someone else – a much more qualified candidate from another part of the business.
The old me would have thrown in the towel at this point. I’d have been too busy cursing my luck to think about changing my plan.
Instead, I stayed calm and looked for the silver lining.
If I’d planned for the job to go to this person instead of me, it would have been so I could apprentice under them instead of having to bluff my way through a job I wasn’t ready for.
Rather than a disaster, this could work out much better. All I had to do was convince them there was too much work for just one person.
A few tweaks to the presentation was all it took. At the end of the interview, I said I realised what was likely going to happen, but that with the other person’s product knowledge and my ideas and enthusiasm we could make a dream team.
By lunchtime the next day, there was a brand new role and they offered it to me.