Why you need to get fired, like me

NATHAN Cera was sacked from his first job in radio after just three months, and his second not long after. But he says he was glad he was fired, and you should be too.

‘I’ve been fired from all but one job’

PARENTS these days seem to assume love for their children means protecting them from feeling any negative emotion. There’s no pleasure to be had in failing or being rejected.

If this is you, you’re doing your child an incredible disservice.

I’ve been working in radio for just on five years and during that time I’ve been fired from all but one job. Not great statistics by anyone’s standard.

But let me go back for a moment. I’m 28 and my parents were fairly overprotective growing up, and attempted to ensure pain and disappointment were not part of my upbringing. There wasn’t anything my three brothers and I went without. We grew up thinking we were the smartest and best-looking kids in the world.

As such, I try incredibly hard to avoid any feelings of failure or rejection. Oh, the guilt! Failure means that I didn’t succeed and that I should feel negatively toward myself.

But what if you need failure to succeed?

I lost my first job in radio after three months on-air. I was working as a Music Director and Announcer at Hot FM in Bunbury, Western Australia. It was shocking — like, sitting outside the station crying on the kerb — shocking. My partner had just started a new job and we had signed a six-month lease. Our life was flipped upside down with the handing over of a “we’re no longer continuing with your probation” letter.

As someone who’d rarely faced failure I was flooded with thoughts of denial: “This doesn’t happen to me, surely not, this workplace doesn’t get me!” At the time I blamed my employer (who was sacked not long after I was). Looking back, the real reason I got fired was due to non-performance that arose from believing I was above the job.

But when my fantastic parents and in-laws drove down and packed our stuff up for the trip back to Perth (even though my room at home had been converted to a gym cardio area) I realised an invaluable lesson. Whatever happens, I will survive.

My second firing was much worse. I was working on breakfast at Sea FM on the NSW Central Coast and my contract was approaching its end date. I got the usual “you’ll know as soon as we do if you’re staying on, things look good, don’t stress mate”, right up until the moment they said, “we’re no longer continuing with your contract”. And again the shock — Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2: Die Harder — shock.

The reason for this firing, as far as I can tell, was less about performance and more about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. My breakfast radio co-host of the previous two-and-a-half years had been promoted to Adelaide so I was working with a fill-in. Another person in the company, with a much larger profile, was doing demo shows with a girl in the network and was looking for a spot for their new show. From a business point of view, it made sense to put in a ready-made show with established chemistry and a larger profile than it did to find me a new co-host. Thus my contract wasn’t renewed.

Driven by a desire to not go out on someone else’s terms, I got back up. I took a pay cut, received a demotion and joined the opposition. The lesson this time: humility. You need to be prepared to take a few steps back because you never know how close you are to one of life’s U-turns, bumps or detours. And I stumbled upon an utterly fantastic group of people at Star 104.5 on the Central Coast, who were willing to take a chance on someone who had a tarnished record. I learnt more in three months working as the Mornings Announcer and Music Director at Star than I had in the last four years.

Getting fired hits your confidence and I’ve wanted to give up many, many times and have often thought I’ve got nothing to offer. But you must always bring yourself back to why you started in the first place. For me, there’s nothing better than seeing someone get some joy (however small) out of something I’ve done or said. That is my driving force and motivation. If you’ve found that which makes you tick, you must stay the course no matter how many knock-backs you receive. If you haven’t found what makes you tick, work hard to realign your life with your deepest values.

My Dad always says, “you’re either moving forward or you’re dead”. And that’s how I try to live. The alternative is lying on your floor crying — which I’ve done many times — and that’s just a little sad.

You’ll have heard this many times from your parents: “we just want to give you everything that we never had growing up”. That protection and will to provide comes from a place of love but it assumes there’s nothing to be gained from going through “negative” experiences.

Emotions, though, are neither good nor bad. Every circumstance we find ourselves in presents an opportunity for growth and development. And falling down cultivates one of the most important traits of success: grit.

Now I’m not saying drop your kid 20km from home with a paperclip and box of matches and see how far they get. But try praising their effort rather than their results. “I’m incredibly proud of how hard you studied for that test” instead of “fantastic work getting 98%”. Life’s more about the effort than the outcome. Let your kids fall and fail. Success is the monkey bar you grab after losing your grip twenty times.

So what’s the latest? After three months at Star I was approached to do radio in Adelaide! After each failure a better opportunity has presented itself. As much as you think life should and will go your way, sometimes it just doesn’t and acceptance of this is the only way through it. What I’ve learnt from all these firings is that the only thing you have control over is yourself. While being fired can be totally beyond your control and take you by surprise, how you react and what you do next is completely up to you.

If there’s one certainty in life it’s that you’ll fall. When you do, how much practice do you want to have at getting back up?

Nathan Cera has recently taken a full time role at Mix 102.3 in Adelaide. Follow Nathan on Twitter @nathan_cera