Does an accident count? The large contract I'd worked on for years got won by a new company. I had a job offer from Subcontractor Company A that I wanted to work for. But I wanted just a little bit more money. Like, literally 5k more so I wasn't taking their initial offer would have been great. So, I sent my resume to the Prime Contractor asking for an irrational amount of money. Figured they'd counter with "lol no, but how about X?" and I could use that to get a small bump at least from the Subcontractor. Then the word came out. The Subcontractor would get no slots on the new contract. Either the Prime picked me up or I'd be out of a job. Eep. I found out later the Prime wanted to drop me like a hot potato, but the customer went to bat for me, so I got an offer late in the evening after spending the day hearing about all my coworkers getting offers. It wasn't quite for the irrational amount I'd asked for, but I jumped at the chance to sign the offer. It still ended up being, by far, the biggest increase in my salary of my career.

The real best decision, though, was leaving my job. I had been talking to people for years about the future of work being online and freelance and such. So, I decided to just quit my job and see what happened. Turned out to probably be the best thing I could have ever done. My income dropped a lot, sure, but I learned probably 10x as much in 2 years as I had in the previous 15 years combined. The anxiety of being entirely freelance and chasing money wasn't really my cup of tea, but it certainly put me in a much better position when approaching employers with that experience at my back. Not to mention the psychological confidence knowing that no matter what happens, I won't starve.