What Color Is Your Parachute?

FIRST IMPORTANT ATTITUDE FOR SURVIVAL WHILE OUT OF WORK

Some years ago, when I was doing a lot of counseling, not just about careers, a friend of mine asked me if I would be willing to see someone he knew. Her name was Mary. She had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, or MS. She had been to a wide range of medical specialists: neurologist, psychologist, internist, you name it. They all had declared there was nothing they could do to help her with the disease. My friend said, “Would you see her?” “Sure,” I said, “but I’m not sure there’s anything I can do.”

The next day my friend brought her over. She walked very stiffly up the front sidewalk, came in, sat down, and after exchanging a few pleasantries, I got down to business. “Mary,” I said, “what is multiple sclerosis?” “I don’t know,” she said, in a dull voice. “Well, then,” I said, “that makes us even; because I don’t know, either. But here’s what I propose. I’m sure that a huge proportion of whatever MS is, is out of your control. There’s nothing you can do about it. But that proportion can’t be 100 percent. There’s got to be some proportion—let’s say it’s even just 2 percent—that is within your control. We could work on that. Do you want to begin that journey?” She said yes. Over the next few weeks she improved, and finally was free of all symptoms (typical of the disease, for a spell, but this lasted for a very long time), and now—free of all stiffness—she became a model on 57th Street in New York City.

This story about Mary illustrates an important attitude: in any situation we may ever find ourselves, no matter how much we feel we are at the mercy of vast immutable forces that are totally beyond our control, we can always find something that is within our control, however small, and work on that. Sometimes that may only change a little, sometimes it may change a lot. You just never know. But what we do know is that by working on even that 2 percent, it saves us from a feeling of complete powerlessness.

This certainly applies to any time we are unemployed, particularly if it drags on and on. To paraphrase the above, addressing it to job-hunters: I’m sure that a huge proportion of the situation you are facing, is out of your control. There’s nothing you can do about it. But that proportion can’t be 100 percent. There’s got to be some proportion—let’s say it’s even just 2 percent—that is within your control. You can work on that. Who knows what a difference that may make!

So this brings us to our

First Important Attitude for Survival While Out of Work: While you are out of work, and feel you are up against large forces that you are powerless to change, determine to find something that is within your power to change, even if it’s just 5 percent or only 2 percent of the total; find it, and throw your energies into it.

Some examples of what is within your control when you’re out of work: getting more sleep; drinking more water (we almost always need more water than we think we do, but that’s water, not just fluids); walking more; reading the book 14,000 Things to Be Happy About;[8] doing more studying about advanced job-survival skills (reading this manual, more than once); getting into a supportive community with other job-hunters, if you haven’t already; doing a detailed inventory of yourself, using the Flower exercise in chapter 13; learning to become more observant of the world around you; listening harder to other people; and talking more to successful job-hunters, to quiz them about what they did, step by step, to find work.

In whatever circumstances we may find ourselves in life, attitude is everything. We must never ever give up.[9] There is always something we can work on.

SECOND IMPORTANT ATTITUDE FOR SURVIVAL WHILE JOB-HUNTING

There is a book out there with a clever title: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.[10] When we are unemployed during hard times, and for long times, that’s an important thought to remember.

Some people think that any suggestion that there may be something that a job-hunter is doing wrong, is essentially “blaming the victim” for the situation they are in. This is nuts. Self-introspection is the way to improve any company, any marriage, any nation. And any job-hunt.

Looking forward and not backward, asking, “Is there something I could be doing better?” is often the pathway to saving that company, marriage, nation, and job-hunt!

When unemployment is dragging on and on, everything should be on the table for examination. We need to question all assumptions. Assume we are in a new world. Rethink all our strategies. Revisit everything we think we know for sure, and ask if in fact things have changed. Think whether there is something new we need to learn, remembering always that before we can learn we sometimes need to unlearn (some things).

So this brings us to our

Second Important Attitude for Survival While Out of Work: We need to assume that nothing that worked before will necessarily work now. We need to reexamine every job-hunting method there is (next chapter), and reconsider whether there is a better way that we could be going about this.

In whatever circumstances we may find ourselves in life, attitude is everything. We must never shrink from doing the hard work of rethinking our whole strategy.

THIRD IMPORTANT ATTITUDE FOR SURVIVAL WHILE JOB-HUNTING

I recall a talk I heard many years ago, that made a deep, lasting impression on me. It was a doctor speaking; a doctor turned researcher, as it happened. He was reporting on a study that some colleagues had made of healing, at the hospital where he worked in New York City. They had long known that some people healed faster than others, but now they wanted to find out why.

So, as I recall, they searched through their records of recent patients to find matched pairs: essentially two people of the same age, with the same background, the same basic health record, who had undergone the same procedure or operation in that hospital. One member of each pair healed faster than the other, often by far. The doctors therefore questioned each pair at length to find out what was different about the person who healed faster. The common explanations that would occur to any thoughtful layperson proved to have no correlation with the rate of healing. Was the one who healed faster more optimistic than the other? No. Well, then, was it their habits: eating, sleeping, exercising? No. Was it their family history? No. Was it their status as single or married? No. Was it a belief in God? No. Well, then, what was it?

It turned out that those who healed faster believed that everything that happened to them had meaning, even if they didn’t know what the meaning was, at the time. They believed that nothing meaningless ever happened to them. The ones who healed slowly did not believe this. This was independent of whether they believed in God or not.

The reason this talk made such an impression on me was because it demonstrated that what we are thinking actually can influence the body. It seemed to follow that it could influence our minds and spirits also.

I was also struck by a part of his report that said, “…even if they didn’t know what the meaning was.” Apparently, just to believe that nothing about our life is meaningless is a powerful idea.

So, here we have it: