Several years ago, while not yet a recovering HR executive, I found myself, like many who read my articles, out of a job. It was a particularly harsh experience. Not because I had never been laid off before. Of course I had.  Any HR person who claims they’ve never been laid off is either lying, intuitive enough to quit before it happens, or  so tactically locked in they have no hope of advancement.

The single most clarifying moment in my entire career, perhaps in my entire lifetime, was when I discovered that those things to which our minds connect are often not within our control. Our strongest memories are seldom of our own choosing. For certainly if I could make the mental connections necessary to remember in vivid detail the most wonderful times of my life and wipe the dark ones away like snow off the back of my car, then life would truly be wonderful.