This is a true story. I have changed irrelevant details to protect the client’s anonymity.
Trudy had been an executive for leading nonprofits. She admitted that in her late 50s, her performance started to decline and was let go from her most recent position. So, no surprise, she was ecstatic that, age 62, she landed another executive position.

Alas, a year later, she was fired again. The precipitating incident was her overreacting to a supervisee, but her boss later told her, “That was just the last straw."

Trudy, of course, was devastated, “Fired from my last two jobs, high-level jobs, and 62 and overweight,” I’m going to be a bag lady.”

First, we discussed whether she wanted to tighten her financial belt and she agreed. She also agreed she needed to stop filling her emotional hole with shopping, overeating, especially at fancy places, and so on. She decided to get a roommate to live with her in her $4,000 a month apartment and to sell her nearly new top-of-the-line Prius that she was still paying off and replace it with an old but well-checked-out Toyota.

To get out of the house, make some money, have some structure and a chance to meet a romantic partner, she took a part-time job as a retail clerk at REI.

While Trudy wished she could retire—“I’m tired"—she knew that if she lived on her Social Security and that part-time retail job, she’d very likely run out of money, so she reached out to everyone in her network to see if she could get consulting gigs. None of them had any leads but she ended each conversation with, “Would you keep your ears open for me and if I’m still looking in a month, would you mind if I circled back?” They all agreed and that started a trickle of consulting work: a month here for $5,000, two months there for $7,500 and so on.
Before her first engagement, now that the firing’s wound had largely healed, it was time for me to ask her, “Any lessons you want to learn from your previous two jobs that will help ensure your success now?” It came down to obvious things such as maintaining perspective, making clear she’s open to feedback, plus having a mole to keep her apprised of how she’s really perceived. Obvious and basic but then again, most such lessons, in retrospect, aren’t rocket science.
Trudy’s efforts to meet a romantic partner, even for the short-term, failed but with her newfound free time, she deepened relationships with friends she had neglected  plus new ones she met at dog Meetups, in her consulting gigs, and at REI.

I asked her how her self-rating on the happiness scale has changed from when she had big jobs. Despite having been fired from what would be her last and best job and still not having a romantic relationship nor having lost weight, she said, “Before, I was about a 6. Now I’m a 7, maybe a 7 1/2."

Takeaways

After age 40 or 50, our self-appraisal of competence tends to stay fixed even if our competence has declined.  If you were to honestly chart your performance over the past five or ten years, what would the trend look like? If the trend is down, do you want to improve a skill? Change your attitude? Look for less demanding work?  If you don’t know what to improve, is it time to ask trusted colleagues for feedback? They can provide anonymous feedback using 15five.com.
After people get fired or “laid off,’ they tend to go into denial and may, ironically, increase spending. Should you maintain, decrease, or even increase yours? The latter may seem odd but occasionally it's okay, for example, when, a person has been so responsible that, for decades, has socked away lots of money because it’s felt like the right thing to do. Such people, after getting fired, might be justified in rewarding themselves with a perhaps long forgone material desire.

I had a client for whom that was true. He had always loved to swim but rarely did because it was time-consuming to get to the club, change clothes, swim, shower and get dressed again. When he got “laid off” from his most recent job, he had a swimming pool installed in his backyard, which he loves and is something he’d have never done had he not been terminated.

Often, after a devastating experience such as being fired, it’s wisest to channel the anger and fear into action. Sometimes, as with Trudy, it’s taking a job she could get instantly, even though it paid poorly, and working on losing weight, and reinvigorating her effort to meet a romantic partner. I had another client who was fired as a senior chemist for a major supermarket chain and the next day, took a job at a Starbucks located in the local Barnes & Noble.

Sometimes, an older person feeling “tired” isn’t necessarily a manifestation of aging. Unhappiness or lack of success on a job can, drip by drip, fatigue a person. Even a low-level job, as long as it’s filled with lots of little wins, can be restorative.

Older job-seekers do have disadvantages, and it’s not just bias against wrinkles. Their skill-set may not be up to date, their energy may be low, they may be expensive compared with a 20-something. But older people do have advantages, including the one Trudy used: They’ve had the time to build a network. Every job seeker, but especially older ones’ first move should be to think about the range of jobs they’d consider and then ask everyone in their professional and personal network if they know someone who might be willing to chat about possible employment in one of those areas. Importantly, the first reach-out to a network usually fails. It’s just too unlikely that at any moment in time, someone in the network will have a useful lead. But the odds multiply if, at the end of each reach-out, you, as Trudy did, ask, “Would you mind keeping your ears open and, if I’m still looking in a month, would you mind if I circled back?”

Motivational speakers, movies, TV shows, and magazines live on stories—true or exaggerated—of people whose lives were a 0 and now are a 10. That’s far from a typical result. But it is quite possible to take a life that was a 6 and, despite a firing, end up a 7 or 8.