When Maggie Mistal walked by Lehman Brothers in Manhattan recently and saw the daze and disbelief of the employees, the flashbacks came pouring in.

“I thought, oh my God, I’ve seen that look before,” Mistal said in our recent interview.

In fact, Mistal had not only seen it. She had been it.

Now a practicing career consultant with a weekly show on Martha Stewart Living Radio called “Making a Living with Maggie,” Mistal was one of 80,000-plus employees that lost their jobs at Arthur Andersen in the wake of the Enron scandal in 2002.

“When your firm falls overnight, it’s very, very scary,” she said. “You’re really operating in a state of shock. It’s so surreal. It’s almost like a natural disaster, but the building is still there. The clients you had, the people you worked with, it all disappears overnight.”

Had you told Mistal at the time that this very experience would serve as a springboard into an even more promising chapter of her life, she would have been dubious. But now she is all about bringing hope to those who are reeling in their careers.

“This could be not only a good thing, but a blessing in disguise [for a lot of people],” she said.

Mistal knows how skeptically some people are probably reacting to those words, but she also knows how true they are. She and her Arthur Andersen co-workers went through three months of not knowing if the company would be indicted. Morale naturally suffered, it was hard for people not to talk about it, and all the while they wondered if they should be aggressively pursuing other options.

“I literally had nothing to do at work,” said Mistal, who was a manager in Andersen’s business consulting practice with a focus on organizational development. “I could keep having wine lunches or I could control figuring out my own path. That’s why I became a coach. I went through my coaching certification [a teleclass structure through the Life Purpose Institute in San Diego]. I wanted that experience and I felt better once I got it.”

As so often happens in mass layoff situations, she and her co-workers had stayed in touch. So months after they were let go, Mistal put on a workshop for 20 of her Andersen friends to help them try to figure out their next move.

“That’s how I built my practice,” Mistal said.

She recently reconnected with a former Andersen co-worker who is now an animation film producer in India.

“He is so excited and passionate and savvy,” she said. “I never had a conversation with him like this before at Andersen. It took us to be shaken out of our tree to find what we were truly supposed to be doing.”

What does all this mean to the stunned worker who has just been laid off?

Mistal suggests rethinking things such as working for a pension when companies are less and less stable. Avoid a victim mentality. Stay in touch with co-workers, as even now a lot of her former Arthur Andersen co-workers are still working together in pockets in different places because they helped each other. Tap into your college alumni association for networking opportunities. Consider becoming a free agent. Instead of chasing the paycheck, do something you’re excited about.

“On Wall Street they’re always preaching diversification of assets,” she said. “How about diversifying your skills? What interests and talents might you find within your job that could apply elsewhere?”

The bottom line?

“You can look at it as the end of the world or the beginning of a new one,” Mistal said.

This, from a woman who recently debuted her cabaret show in New York and billed it “Believe in Your Dreams.”

From flashback to faint memory. Life goes on with gusto.

Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.