Life is full of surprises. Like going to work one day and being told your services are no longer required.

Most of us prefer a little more predictability in our affairs. We even come to demand that events follow a prescribed course, and when things stray from the script, we become angry and frustrated.

As British writer Samuel Butler was quoted as saying in the nineteenth century: “Life is like giving a concert on the violin while learning to play the instrument.” Much more recently, American author Saul Bellow likened it to “concertizing and practicing scales at the same time.”

Our feelings may get the better of us. Neil Anderson says we are responsible for our thinking and our beliefs.

“You are not shaped as much by your environment as you are by your perception of your environment,” he wrote in Victory over the Darkness. “If what you believe does not reflect truth, then what you feel does not reflect reality. . . . Remember: Your emotions are a product of how you perceived the event, not the event itself.”

What if you chose to perceive your joblessness as an opportunity for character building? Child psychologists talk about maturity in terms of “frustration tolerance” in everyday life. When I measure myself by that gauge, I shudder.

Ornithologists tell of the value of struggle in the birth of a bird. If the egg is punctured to “help” along the process, the hatchling is less likely to survive, failing to develop the requisite strength through the struggle of the birth process. The suggestion is not just that adversity and struggle are a normal part of life, but that they may be essential to life.

I recognize that this is not a  popular view today, but I believe it’s an important perspective for those wounded in the economic theater.

Speaker and author Tim Hansel described this perspective well in his book, You Gotta Keep Dancin’:

The big dream in our society is that if we work hard enough, we will eventually be able to experience a life without limitations or difficulties. It is also one of the biggest sources of friction in our society, creating disappointment, unnecessary suffering, and missed opportunities to live a full life. Some people spend their entire life waiting for that which will never, and can never, happen. . . . One of the greatest  tragedies of our modern civilization is that you and I can live a trivial life and get away with it. One of the great advantages of pain and suffering is that it forces us to break through our superficial crusts to discover life on a deeper and more meaningful level.

Another advantage of disadvantages is that we have the opportunity to be transformed by our suffering. Here is a question worth pondering: When it comes right down to it, is there any such thing as true earthly security? I think not. And I believe the reason is to turn our hearts toward eternal things. To quote the world’s greatest Teacher:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:19–21).

What are treasures in heaven? In work/life terms, I would  suggest they include Bolles’s triad of finding God, making the world a better place, and exercising your gift in your life mission.

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Our professional researcher for the Back to Work! book project, Steve Kipp, had this to share about what it means to be a life-giver:

Steve Kipp

This is a marvelous time to become a people-investment person—and to really mean it. Don’t get lost in the temptation only to network because of the eventual “boomerang” effect upon yourself in landing a future job.

We need to ask ourselves as we network, what’s the difference between Christian job searchers networking and the rest of the world? Do we take it seriously that it’s better to give than receive?

As we search for jobs, are we mindful of others’ qualifications and specific job types and do we forward them leads we have? Do we practice Galatians 6:10—“do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers”—both as networkers and as people in positions to hire?

Use a multi-faceted job search approach. Don’t rely upon single methods, and curb over-reliance on want ads, online posted notices, job boards, and job fairs. Develop an all-out “new media” approach—business cards to hand out at networking events and job fairs; a brochure about yourself; offer your networking “teammates” Web link opportunities, etc., to show you are a team player; aWeb site blog page or promotional page about who you are, your accomplishments, your vision, etc.

Beware the self-help gurus. Some of their message is based upon visualization techniques, “awakening your dream” as if you were a New Age realization adherent. These gurus focus on reinventing yourself using human potential movement, self-ist and/or New Age principles. Unfortunately, these overwhelm the Borders and Amazon and Barnes & Noble shelves.

Too many hungry job seekers, in trying to “reinvent” themselves or recover a lost identity or damaged self-esteem, embrace these self-help gurus’ suggestions uncritically. These advisers too often teach unrealistic positive thinking, failing to take into account economic realities. In the process they promote self-actualization and “it’s all about me”—the same kind of thinking that motivates thousands of wannabe American Idols to audition with no real chance of success.

And they encourage excessive self-absorption. Yes, unemployed job seekers need to take serious inventory of their strengths and weaknesses. But who does the vocational “calling”? You? Or God?

Often, our “ministry” has more to do with our co-workers than the actual job we’re doing. We need to continue to hear God’s voice through prayer, people, circumstances, divine appointments, etc.

Authors Dan Miller, John Maxwell, Bob Buford, and others all have some excellent things to say about using this opportunity to focus on significance (impact upon others), meaning, satisfaction, and fulfillment. This comes out best through serving others and being preserving salt and expressive light in the world, moving away from always attempting to attach a legalistic paycheck compensation to all of our service.

Even when we land a job, don’t forget the people we met while networking, especially those outside of Christ. They need encouraging, gospel-focused, Word-based follow-up—and just plain friendship, especially those still looking.
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We all know life-takers–people who impoverish our lives by their negative energy. These are often family and friends we’re kind of stuck with. Obviously, given a choice, we should seek relationships with life-givers, especially when we’re already in a vulnerable situation like unemployment.

To last week’s post on the subject, Tom D. turned the tables and asked how can WE become the life-givers for others. That’s a great question, and I applaud Tom for asking it. Let’s be honest: For most of us m0st of the time, our default mode is WIIFM–What’s In It For Me?

I’ve given this some thought and concluded that it is the on-ramp to a profound life principle. Let me illustrate:

In ancient times wise men throughout Eastern religions and Greek and Roman philosophies agreed on a principle of human conduct that was expressed in Rabbinic Judaism (Hillel) thus: “What is hateful to yourself do not do to someone else.”

Sound familiar? Yes, it’s the Golden Rule, which started out as a negative imperative–thou shalt not. Then along came Jesus Christ, who took it a step further into a positive imperative: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12 NIV).

Humble yourself, and you shall be lifted up. Give, and you shall receive. Etc. Truths so counter-intuitive that they could only come by revelation, and we have to work at grasping their depths.

So, what’s the application for the job search? There’s a lot here to consider. For now, I’ll leave it with the wise words of my friend and career coach Gary Hansen of Inspired Calling:

Let me ask you a key question, “Can your job search actually include serving God’s Kingdom?” The answer is yes, in fact, it must.

STOP asking people, “Can you help me?” or “Can you do me a favor and call …?”

START networking God’s way and simply ask people, “How can I help you?” or “How can I pray for you?” The truth is you can help every single person you meet.

What do you think? Does that provoke some thoughts of your own? It should. We’ll have some more to say about this, too.

You think you’ve got stress? Try dodging bullets for a living.

Concerned about an upsurge in suicides in the past year or two, the Army retained the services of an expert to help devise a response. Dr. Thomas Joiner, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, has done some of the most cutting-edge research on the subject in recent years. Joiner, whose own father committed suicide, has created a new model of behavioral theory that the Army is weighing. It involves three prime components:

1. Loneliness–a sense of isolation.

2. Worthlessness–the feeling of being a burden.

3. Fearlessness–one’s ability to overcome the natural fear of death.

Obviously, No. 3 is integral to being trained for warfare and not optional. So, the Army is looking to ways of combating and reducing the first two. These include building close-knit teams to ensure that soldiers never feel alone and giving troops a sense of purpose that increases their self-worth.

In my presentations I’ve added “Hopelessness” to the list. That’s for us civilians who might not be able to relate to Fearlessness. Not that it doesn’t happen. Joiner and other experts have found that fearlessness increases with age. As one doctor put it, “As people age, they are also more likely to develop (based on various life experiences) the fearlessness which transforms the simple desire for death into a plan for action.”

Work ever harder at maintaining and building your personal network. Seek “close-knit” relationships and activities that give you a sense of purpose.

There are some proactive things we can and must do to avoid some of these emotional pitfalls. And some of them require being very intentional because they’re counter to our natural impulses.
One of them is Resist isolation and relational deprivation. Fight the natural impulse to withdraw. Sometimes that means serving others and thereby increasing your own self-esteem.

Look to see how “the present is perfect.” This is a secular concept I learned in a professional coaching program that has such spiritual implications. The question you need to ask is if God really is in control, why is this situation good for me? Ultimately, every experience for believers is allowed as a means toward conforming our character to the image of Christ. But if you take the time to inquire, you’re likely to get even more specific answers.

I asked God, for example, why I kept getting beaten up in ministry. The answer I got was if you’re going to be a culture warrior, you have to toughen up. Ouch.

Seek out life-givers. Those are people we especially need to pursue relationship with. You’ve heard the saying, “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your relatives.?” And have you heard about the person who walks into the room and the lights dim? Choose friendships with people who brighten the room when they enter.

You need that. Choose life–and life-givers.

Healthcare Shmealthcare. It’s jobs, stupid. Health care, according to Gallup, isn’t even  No. 2 in the people’s priorities today. It’s No. 3, behind Jobs and the Economy.

However, in today’s Post-Democracy Period little things like the will of the people or the consent of the governed no longer seem to matter. Ready or not, open wide and say Ahh. Government health care, here we come.

The argument can be made–and I, for one, will make it–that No. 3 mutually excludes Nos. 1 and 2. In other words, get ready for the biggest budget-busting, job-killing entitlement program the world has ever seen. You think unemployment is bad now; just wait.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, many state unemployment funds are quietly drawing near to the end. The U.S. Treasury Department reports that 21 state unemployment funds are officially insolvent and another 16 are approaching that point within months.

Check it out.

Do you suppose the Obamacare plan has a death benefit for those of us who end up starving to death?

The law of large numbers

Ever stop to think why the classified ads are so unproductive a medium in the job search?
There may be a reason for that: Many times they’re the jobs nobody wants or nobody qualifies for–so, they have to advertise.

Here in Colorado, for example, I keep seeing the same ad in both the Denver and Colorado Springs papers for “Dog Sled Mushers” for Aspen. Apparently, no mobs are beating a path to mush the huskies and “enjoy the outdoors.”

The good jobs–ones that don’t involve being checked for ticks–usually don’t have to be advertised. My wife, for example, is the director of nursing for a long-term care facility. The facilities and the recruiters all know who’s who, and when a vacancy occurs, they get on the phone and call the usual suspects, including Mary Jane. Or a DON looking to make a move calls them. It’s called networking.

The wags used to say it’s not what you know, but who you know–and it’s still pretty true. It might be more accurate to say it’s who you know AND what you know. You still have to be qualified. And none of this is to say don’t read classified ads. Just don’t stop there–network. Sure, it’s more challenging if you’re trying to do it from the unemployment line, but all the more reason to work harder at it.

You can’t afford not to use the power of networking for both your professional and personal goals. The Internet social networking platforms like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In are demonstrating this power every day.

It’s the power of the Law of Large Numbers. If the average person knows 500 people, that quickly jumps to upward of 250,000—a quarter of a million—by the second degree of separation. Think of it. You may not know the hiring manager at XYZ corporation, but you probably know somebody who does—or somebody who knows somebody else who does.

In my personal opinion, if you’re not using Linked-In, you’re missing out on a very powerful networking tool for the job search.

As I contemplate the end of my unemployment benefits in May, I, like many others, am forced to confront the growing tension between ideology and real life.

A mounting chorus 0f voices frets that our super-sized extended unemployment benefits are starting to lose the nature of “temporary” assistance and are beginning to take on the form of yet another welfare program, increasing our dependency on government. Others argue that in terms of “stimulus” and “recovery,” these are the best dollars we’re spending.

Arizona Sen. John Kyle observed last week that job seekers’ efforts tend to become a heck of a lot more serious in the waning weeks of their unemployment benefits. This isn’t necessarily laziness so much as just facing reality.

In my state (Colorado) the operative word is “suitable” work. That is, I don’t have to forfeit my benefits if somebody offers me a job out of my field or for substantially less money than I’ve been earning within my field–or somewhere requiring relocation.

So far, I’ve been holding out for suitable work–a job in my field that pays close to what I’m used to making in a reasonable distance from my home. When push comes to shove and the safety net is gone, I’ll be flexing on those three conditions. My wife and I may have to live apart, like many military families.

That’s what you might call the microenomic view. Here are two opposing macroeconomic views:

• Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect… In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of Eurosclerosis, the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries.

• Another important benefit of unemployment insurance is that the benefits have helped keep many households in place. If there were no extended benefits, many of the 5+ million people now receiving extended benefits would be moving out of their homes or apartments, and doubling up with friends and relatives, or living in their cars or worse. Fewer households would increase the number of excess vacant housing units in the U.S. and exacerbate the housing crisis.

Here’s the interesting part. The first quote is from a liberal economist (Paul Krugman) and the second from a more conservative blog.

I told you it was getting complicated…

My word, Michelle Malkin just this minute posted on the same thing. Check it out here.

Q: In what sense could 36,000 more Americans losing their jobs last month be a good thing?

A: Only in the warped logic of a political hack like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose sole metric is a given event’s partisan political value. Like the unemployment numbers:

“Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good,” Reid said on the Senate floor Friday morning.

Like, you know, we should be grateful or something. Really good? Partisan wagon-circlers on the left quickly rushed in to chide us picky sorts that we all know what he really meant–i.e., at least it’s not in the hundreds of thousands anymore.

Except that’s misleading. The number is actually up from the previous month. So, whether we’re headed in the right direction is definitely subject to debate

Except your idea of affording benefit of the doubt is, shall we say, selective and strained. We could name names (George Allen and Trent Lott come to mind). Life must be so much easier when you’re unencumbered by the burdens of consistent principle.

Except Harry Reid’s problem isn’t just the fluke of an occasional verbal gaffe. (Even then, might we be excused for having slightly higher expectations of Senate majority leaders?) It’s a lifestyle. Here’s a small sampling:

• The jobs bill was a women’s safety issue because everybody knows unemployed men become wife beaters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9wzn6j3Ep4
• The party of Lincoln’s opposition to health care reform is morally equivalent to being pro-slavery:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djhUPOvC0po
• Reid said Barack Obama should seek and could win the White House because Obama was a “light skinned” African-American “with no Negro dialect” (unless he wanted to have one):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDl6gd4y65g
• “This [Iraq] war is lost.”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyDOAmJYFFA
• “One of the reasons we have the fires burning in southern California is global warming.”   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Iy3gTjNrKM

“Really good?” I’ll tell you what “really good” looks like to me: The November election for the likes of Harry Reid, who is headed for richly deserved political oblivion. But then, I thought the same thing when Tom Daschle went down–only to get Harry Reid.

This needs to stop.

With state-of-the-art information technology, virtual offices in dens and sun rooms are providing services that once would have required substantial leased space and maybe several support personnel. When two or more of these mini-organizations join forces for the purpose of a particular project, it is sometimes called an adhocracy, a strategic alliance, a virtual corporation–or just plain taking care of business.

Even stranger is the emergence of virtual products–custom-produced goods that do not even exist until customers order them and make the purchase. Increasingly, customers will be ordering them not from a store or snail-mail account, but through the vehicle of e-commerce. Already hundreds of thousands of Americans make a living buying and selling goods on EBay.

Some of these trends spell radical changes for the workforce itself. According to Mass Career Customization: “In the next five years, there will be a six million-person gap between the supply and demand for knowledge workers.” That’s good news for knowledge workers–a term coined by management guru Peter Drucker in reference to  medical professionals, teachers, engineers, scientists and growing ranks of people in the field of information technology.

Combined with other trends–a majority female workforce, the digital technology revolution, continuing changes in the traditional family structure–this projected shortage of skilled labor is giving rise to another trend, called “mass career customization.” This essentially means more flexible working arrangements such as compressed work weeks (10 on fours, for example), telework and telecommuting.

Total work hours for dual-earner couples are increasing. In 1970, couples worked a combined average of 52.5 hours per week. Couples now work a combined average of 63.1 hours per week. Expanding longevity and financial need are prompting more mature workers to stay in the workforce. By 2015, older workers will constitute 20 percent of the total workforce.

Work-at-home.org offers a thought-provoking list of hundreds of home-based business ideas–from Abstracting Service to Yard Sign Distributorship. Check it out.

If you lack natural discipline, I recommend importing some if self-employment is the direction you’re heading. Doors are wonderful things for screening things out. If people can’t take a hint, post a biohazard sign or some other toxic symbol on the outside.

If you’re the slow learner, try posting a picture of your former boss on the inside for a while. That’s always good for a reality check. If you don’t have  a picture of your former boss, hang a picture 0f Osama bin Ladin or Rosie O’Donnell or some other loathsome creature from your personal scare closet.

Set deadlines for yourself, just as you would when you worked uptown, and withhold incentives–food or work breaks–until you have reached them. But once you have met your goals and deadlines, take time to reward yourself. Now you deserve it.

If you are too driven and your family and friends  have forgotten your name, schedule some down time.  If you’re too busy to do that, you’re too busy. Go back to square one and revisit your personal mission–why you were put here on earth. It probably wasn’t to spend more time in the office.

Yes, there are downsides to the post-job lifestyle–or “de-jobbing,” as William Bridges call it–but the advantages are just as real. Ri Regina, a former technology manager, said that even though she’s an extrovert, the home office lifestyle suits her as long as she can manage to get outside several times a week.

“I love coming down here and sitting in my office,” she said, “and I have my dog sitting at my feet. I have my bayberry candle burning on my desk, I have my CD player with my collection of CDs from home and the library. I have wonderful music playing all day, the window open, looking at the soft snow falling.”

Roy Peterson, a former health insurance manager, likes the dress code and the commute:

There is a lot less wear and tear on you and your car and your clothes and everything else because yiou don’t have to do anywhere. There are two hours a day you save because you are not in a car just trying to get to the place that you are going to work. That’s a lot of time–10 hours a week.

So, basically, one advantage is you get a day a week back. And you don’t have to wear a tie.