"Whew -- being unemployed is a lot of work!"

"Whew - being unemployed is a lot of work!"

Agreed! Being unemployed is a lot of work! No question about it. I remember being unemployed -- if you have ever been fired from a job, you may well recall the emotion surrounding the event. While I learned many 'things' from being fired, these five 'things' seem to stand out the most these many years later...

F  ree! Freedom! Free forever from a place I did not like, nor would I have ever left if not for my firing. Favor, that's what the president of the company did for me...a big favor! He did for me what I could not do for myself...at the time. Although at the time, I was in such a state of feeling-sorry-for-me, myself, and I that I couldn't begin to find, see, focus, feel or figure out what a gift I'd been given. Fired. Favor. Forgiveness.

I  ntrospection: Intellectual and Intuitive. Inward. It is hard to look inside yourself and to reflect upon yourself for a number of reasons...1. you may not like what you see / find 2. you may need to change some things and 3. you might need to get some help...which brings me to another "I" thought..."I can do this on my own." Having been there, done that (mostly the hard way), I now know that "I" really can't do much of anything on my own. I have come to believe that it is a much greater measure of your "strength" than it is of your "weakness" to admit "I need help!"

R eality. What is your reality? Maybe your life, career, or job isn't going according "to plan." Plans change. Plans get derailed. Plans get shelved. Plans get screwed up. Plans fall through. Innovative plans get made. Plans take shape. Ideas get imagined. Plans get implemented. And no matter how grand (or humble) the plan, you are the root. You are ultimately responsible for 'the plan'. And as of last Droid check, there's still no Career and Life Redux App. Back to reality...where resilience and resolve really do drive your roadmap to the future.

E  xcellence, essential, education and energy...several 'e' words come to mind; these happen to be four of my favorite.

~ What essential elements do you need to help you move forward with some degree of success? (What do you need to succeed?)

~ How committed are you to excellence and does your habit of excellence permeate all things you, or only a select few?

~ As I have written before about education, Knowledge is a Weapon: Use It To You Advantage. How is your educational artillery holding up through these times of turbulence?

~ And energy...you can have multiple degrees, MD, JD, MBA, BS, BA, AA to GED...multiple degrees are just that...they don't equal energy! In a sea of competition whose energy level runs the range of amazingly abundant to appallingly absent, what can you do to recharge your batteries with some newly found energy?

D  ecide. Do. Done. Three simple words. Decide. Do. Done. And the difference, clients have taught me, is the geography that exists between the decide piece and the done part. It's in the "do" phase where the snag seems to surface. Decide. Do. Done. The next time you decide upon a SMART career goal, do it and don't stop until it's done!

Fired. Between jobs. In transition.

"Whew -- being unemployed is a lot of work!"