The Day I Got Fired From My Company And Finding What I Was Missing

Written By: Brad Pedersen

In 2017, I was fired from a company I had co-founded.

Thirty years in the toy industry, gone. The shock left me disoriented, where I didn't know who I was without that title, without the constant motion of building and scaling and traveling the world to close the next deal.

But after the dust settled, something unexpected happened. I realized I'd been handed a gift.

For the first time, I had the opportunity to truly design the life I had always wanted. I could choose where to invest my time instead of letting my calendar decide for me. Kelly and I moved from Toronto to the interior of British Columbia; a place we'd always dreamed of living. I designed a life around using my experience to start new businesses, pursuing adventures and being present with the people I loved. My parents were aging and living nearby, and for once, I wasn't on a plane to another continent or stuck in back-to-back meetings.

What I couldn’t have known, was that both my father and mother would pass away just a few short years later.

It was as if God disrupted my very busy life to shake me and wake me up letting me know that sacred time was slipping away. I was given a chance to be fully present and to invest real, significant, quality time with two people that I loved and cherished. They were also people that for many years, I had carried around a sense of guilt, because of my busy schedule, I was never around.

Looking back now, I can see it clearly.  It was a moment when God winked; interrupting me from what I thought I wanted….to give me what I truly needed.

It gave me the chance to capture the photo above; just four years ago, of my wife Kelly and I with my mom, dad, grandma, and our dog Indy. Today, only the two of us remain.

The Math That Changes Everything

Sahil Bloom tells a similar story in his book The 5 Types of Wealth.

He was living in California, chasing ambition, climbing the ladder. One night over drinks, an old friend asked him how often he visited his parents.

"Once a year," Sahil said.

His friend asked how old they were. Mid-sixties, Sahil replied.

Then his friend did the math out loud. "Okay, so you're going to see your parents fifteen more times before they die."

That realization hit him like a freight truck and shortly thereafter he adjusted  his life plan to be able to invest more time with his parents.

Most of us live like time is endless. We say we’ll visit later, slow down when work settles, reconnect when life calms. But the math doesn’t lie; there’s a limit. The visits, the bedtime stories, the dinners… they’re all numbered. There will come a time in our lives when we will do something for the very last time.

I’ve always had a hard-charging personality; driven, head down, pushing forward. And it is because of that, that I’ve often been too stubborn or too busy to pause and see things clearly. 

But life has a way of intervening. Sometimes it’s a disruption we didn’t choose; sometimes it’s a friend doing the math at dinner. Either way, the truth remains:

We don’t get to make up for lost time.

The Myth of Catching Up

If you are like me, you probably have justified that your busyness is what is required in the moment and you have tried to convince yourself that you will make it up later.

We think we can cram for the exam of life the way we did in college. Miss the lectures, skip the readings, then pull an all-nighter and somehow pass. 

We believe we can skip months of workouts and make it up with one brutal week at the gym. 

We think we can be absent for years and make it up with one amazing vacation.

But life doesn't work that way.

We cannot trade one mega-deposit for a hundred missed small ones. A two-week trip to Disneyland doesn't compensate for being emotionally unavailable all year. A weekend retreat doesn't replace showing up for dinner every night. An expensive gift doesn't replace our presence.

Everything we do in life compounds…either for us or against us. 

The life we want, the relationships we want, they're built in small, consistent deposits over time. Not in the grand gestures, or in the  future promises but in the daily choice to show up.

Tiny Handprints

There's a poem I came across, written by Colby Sharma. It's told from the perspective of a young child:

"Sometimes you get discouraged because I am so small and always leave fingerprints on furniture and the wall. But every day I'm growing. I'll be grown up someday. And those tiny handprints will surely fade away. So here's a clear one, just so you can recall exactly how my fingers looked, when I was very small."

As I read those lines and reflect on my life it is a stark reminder of so much of what I missed along my journey.  Those tiny hands don't stay tiny and the bedtime requests don't last forever. The moments when our kids want us around, really want us, they have an expiration date.

It’s easy to tell ourselves we’ll spend more time with our kids once things settle down; after the next round closes, the product launches, or the right COO is hired. However what I have learned is that if we don’t take initiative and act on life, it will just keep moving along with or without us and before we know it, life will be the one acting on us.

The weeks slip into months. The months slip into years. The years slip into decades. And before we know it, those children with tiny hands who we thought would stay small forever are grown up and gone.

The Redesign

Here's what I learned after being fired, from losing my parents and from finally slowing down enough to see what mattered.

Ambition is not the enemy. I'm not suggesting we quit our work or sell our companies or stop caring about growth. Ambition is good, it's powerful and it's also what built everything we're proud of.

But unaligned ambition is dangerous.

When our ambition is disconnected from our values, we are likely to end up rich on paper but poor on life.  We build things that won't ultimately fulfill us. We achieve milestones that afterward we still feel empty. Because in many of our pursuits, we will sacrifice the relationships that matter for outcomes that don't.

The gift I was given, unwillingly and painfully, was the chance to redesign my life and instead of just professing my values, start to live them.  

What Are We Really Building?

Some of us are building a business at the expense of our marriages. Some of us are building wealth at the expense of our health. Some of us are building a resume at the expense of relationships that will determine your health and vitality when we're eighty.

I'm not asking us to choose between success and significance. I'm asking us to align them.

Because here's the hard truth; we will not get another chance at this day. We will not get another chance at this season with our kids. We will not get another chance to sit with our aging parents and hear their stories one more time.

Time is the one resource we cannot recover. We cannot buy it back. We cannot work harder to create more of it. We can only choose how to invest it.

This isn’t about feeling guilty over time that’s already passed; it’s about cultivating awareness. It’s an invitation to pause, take stock, and ask whether the way we’re living today reflects the person we hope to become tomorrow. We can’t roll back time….but we can choose to wind it forward with intention.

Final Thoughts: Reflect and Realign

I don't know what your version of getting fired looks like. 

Maybe it's a health scare. Maybe it's a relationship on the brink. Maybe it's just a quiet, growing sense that something is off; that we're winning in one area and losing in all the others.

Whatever it is, use my story of warning to not wait for life to force the redesign. Don’t  wait for the math to become undeniable or for the tiny handprints to have faded.

Take a hard look at where your time is actually going. Then ask; Is this aligned with what I say I value and what I believe will matter most?

Because at the end of the day, the greatest dividends come not from our portfolio, but from the return on relationships; where the dividends on love and the return on experiences will always outlast those generated by dollars. 

In the words of Henri-Frédéric Amiel: “Life is short. We have so little time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.”

So this week ask ourselves:

• What investments are you making today?
• Are those investments giving you the greatest possible life returns?
• Where could I use our time to build more relational wealth?

If you're ready to move from striving to thriving, and from self-focus to purpose-driven living, visit www.fullspectrumlife.com to explore our Guided Mastermind. It's not for everyone, but it is for accomplished business leaders who are ready to go beyond success and step into a life of true significance.

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