It’s definitely a choice –

“What?” you ask. Happiness, of course.

Among the people I have met during my season of unemployment have been Howie Lyhte, an incredibly intelligent man who goes out of his way to share articles, tips, hints, with the rest of us who are part of the same list serves and groups. I think he’s been unemployed longer than I have; yet every time I see him, he is completely engaged with whatever is going on and has a welcoming smile on his face.

Another person I have come to know about is Dan DemaioNewton who is Director of Strategy and Business Development at Monster Worldwide. Pretty impressive job, wouldn’t you agree? Well, he has taken the time to create www.betterjobsfaster.org as a place where we work seekers can post resumes, share jobs, learn about upcoming meetings, and uplifting articles like the one that follows which I share with you on this Thanksgiving Eve.

Five Simple Rules to Be Happy

This story was sent to me by our fellow job seeker, Howie Lyhte. He was right, it did make me smile.  I’m sharing it with you in the hope that it also makes you smile and encourages you to focus on that which is most important. – Dan.

A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with his hair fashionably combed and shaved perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today.  His wife of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready.

As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of his tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on his window.

‘I love it,’ he stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.

Mr. Jones, you haven’t seen the room; just wait. ‘That doesn’t have anything to do with it,’ he replied. Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time.

‘Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged … it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful  for the ones that do.

‘Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I’ll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away.  Just for this time in my life.

Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw from what you’ve put in.

So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories!’

Thank you for your part in filling my Memory Bank.

I am still depositing.

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

1. Free your heart from hatred.

2. Free your mind from worries.

3. Live simply.

4. Give more.

5. Expect less.

To all the special people in my life, especially Bob, Kim, Kirt, Britt and GrandBeagle Reggie, thank you for helping fill my Memory bank account! – Diana

Thanksgiving Thoughts

While there are many emotions and personality traits that are important to well being, one particular emotion has been shown to enable people to cope better during life transitions. They are less depressed, handle stress better, are more satisfied with their relationships and lives, and exercise more control over their environments, personal growth, purpose in life, and are less likely to avoid a problem or abuse substances.

What emotion is this? Gratitude.

But this goes beyond just saying, “thank you” when someone holds the door open for you. True gratefulness comes from the conscious decision to recognize the blessings in your life coupled with the emotional feelings that accompany a thankful heart. It is having an “attitude of gratitude” which includes not only counting and taking joy in your blessings, but deliberately displaying pleasure and appreciation to others in word and deed.

One of the things I have tried to bring to Seacoast Peers for Careers is this attitude of gratitude. Each week I ask everyone to share a blessing from the preceding week. When someone new joins the group, I ask the person to share a blessing that occurred BECAUSE of being unemployed. It is so easy for gatherings of people who are hurting (and unemployment does hurt!) to turn into a gripe session with conversations turning negative, blood pressures increasing, and frustrations building. How much better it is to focus on the good things, the things that give pleasure and make our hearts full.

A study by McCollough and Emmons in 2003 had three groups of participants. One group recorded daily events, another wrote down unpleasant experiences, and a third wrote down things for which they were grateful. The gratitude group was more likely to help others, exercise, and complete personal goals. They also reported more determination, optimism, alertness, energy, and enthusiasm. The study further found the people who took time to deliberately record their gratitude were more likely to feel loved and found more kindness reciprocated. These grateful people were grateful regardless of whether or not something special happened during their day. They didn’t just have moments of gratefulness, they had grateful attitudes.

Grateful individuals place less importance on material goods and are less likely to judge their own and others’ success in terms of accumulated possessions. They were less envious of others and more likely to share their possessions with others relative to less grateful persons.

And finally, the study noted that those who regularly attended religious services and engaged in religious activities such as prayer or meditation were more likely to be grateful and more likely to acknowledge a belief in the interconnectedness of all life and a commitment to and responsibility to others. While gratitude does not require a religious faith, faith enhances the ability to be grateful.

All of this resonates deep within my spirit and my belief system and can be summed up with a quote from I Thessalonians.

“Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances.”

I believe this is the essence of having an attitude of gratitude. It’s all about choices …

William A. Ward, who wrote many inspirational maxims, said “God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?”

Think about that not just two days from now on Thanksgiving but each and every day.

 

 

Growing Numbers

The last few weeks have seen some successes for the members of Seacoast Peers for Careers empowerment group. We have had three “landings” in three weeks. In the language of those of us in “job clubs,” the word “landing” is used when someone finds a job.

One person was hired as a 90-day possible temp-to-hire in Boston and was hired on after only a couple of weeks. A very new member who joined us just days after her job ended made it to only one meeting before she got a job in Manchester in her very specialized field! The third had two very different interviews about two weeks ago, one with a small company, one with a major employer in the Seacoast. The larger company hired her, and she started Monday.

Our member who had gone an entire year without an interview had a phone and in-person interview with the same local company as well as an interview with a municipality. A new member had an interview yesterday that appeared to be his to lose as the position had not been advertised and a former colleague had recommended him for it.

While I didn’t get a second interview for the job I interviewed for a couple of weeks back and don’t have anything on the horizon, there are some stirrings happening around me that I have to sort through. Some may lead to interesting possibilities.

Things are looking up! Keep your fingers crossed for all of us!

Seven weeks and four interviews later …

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could have carried those numbers above into one job offer that I accepted? Unfortunately,  that’s not the case so far. In fact, I have not heard back from my one interview of the last few weeks.

So why did I mention four interviews in my title? Well, that’s because three of them involved media and not jobs.

On September 15, Foster’s Daily Democrat chronicled how Seacoast Peers for Careers came to be along with what it is doing to empower folks in their work search: “Dover woman who found herself jobless now helps peers get back on their feet”

I got my story told from its current vantage point and we got some good publicity for our speaker, Tracey Madden, who was going to talk about Informational Interviews. Well, we had over 20 people show up as a result of the article, a couple of whom have been back a few times. One of those folks was recently hired and another whose very first meeting was this past week told me today that she was interviewed, offered a job and starts tomorrow!

On September 30, another reporter spent nearly 90 minutes with our group gathering information for a series of articles on the economy and the impact of the recession. Part one featured views from UNH economists and other experts and appeared the following Sunday. The second part, “Job clubs help unemployed stay positive,” dealt with how people are reacting and appeared November 1. It contained info and comments from Michelle Hart from NH Works in Somersworth, NH, Nicole Tessier from NHNetWorks in Salem, NH, and Barbara Yates from Seacoast Work Seekers in Rye, NH, all of whom I know from my own job search.

As a result of that article, last week’s meeting had seven people with five of them being new. One woman drove about 40 miles to join us after a friend passed the article along to her. As we have seen almost every time we have had some new members, there are those who have just become unemployed, there are those who have been unemployed for a while and figured they’d now explore a group, and there are those who had been employed by the same employer for 20 or more years and were stunned when their positions were eliminated. It takes a while to come out of the shock and disbelief. It is helped by being in a safe place where people understand. And, boy, do we ever understand the emotional carnage that has occurred. As always, there is empathy, compassion, and encouragement as the stories are shared.

We’ve all learned if surviving unemployment is anything, it is a vast training ground in stepping outside your comfort zone and risk taking of all kinds.

And speaking of risk taking and stepping outside of one’s comfort zone, remember my exciting, scary, and enjoyable experience being on TV for CBS News The Early Show? Well, there’s going to be a follow up to The Job Squad. The fourth interview I had in the last seven weeks occurred the same day as the most recent newspaper interview. A video journalist from CBS came to the Thompson School at UNH to ask me a few questions and tape one of my classes.

Three of the original four from The Job Squad, Kelsey Nova, Jack Iannacone and I will be back on air sometime this month. New York City, here I come again.

The journey continues … -

It’s a numbers game.

I’m sitting here having reworked my resume yet again in an attempt to make it more user friendly. I’m modifying the functional format into one a recruiter I met recently calls “functiological” meaning that you list your skills and accomplishments under your chronologically listed places of employment and not simply rehash the job description.

Many hours later, it looks very different. This proved to be helpful. Now my facilitation at Seacoast Peers for Careers could be more prominently displayed, a definite asset for a particular job for which I was applying. We’ll see what happens as the closing date was Friday, October 9, 2009. The position would be working with adults developing careers skills, basic computer skills, counseling them, and offering support through a job club experience. Gee, doesn’t that sound like me? Here’s hoping!

I found that posting on one of the 12 search agents and 8 other sites I check almost daily.

Doing some quick math means that over the last 18 months of looking I have clicked my mouse at least 8000 times to read about an opening. It brings the total number of jobs I’ve applied for to over 130 (12 with one company alone).

Of that number, I’ve had only 17 interviews. And of that 17 only 8 potential employers followed up. Fortunately two of them offered me the part-time positions I currently hold, 8 hours a week at UNH and 7 students for the Virtual Charter School. I thoroughly enjoy both of these jobs and hope they can turn into something permanent.

That’s a lot of numbers and not really very good results. And I’m not alone with statistics like that. I have a friend who has not had one interview in a year of sending out applications. Another friend’s company is relocating putting 90 people out of work.

It’s still a very tough world out there.

I’m tired of all the numbers. All I want, like the other 7 million who are unemployed, is ONE good offer.

Wednesday is “build up” day …

In the work world, Wednesday is often referred to as “hump” day, implying that one is now on the downward end of the week — the better end of the week leading to the weekend and no work. That term has always disturbed me just a bit because I’ve never lived my work week waiting for the weekend. I do realize, that having been in a profession I loved is not the case for many people; and getting “out of there” is high on the list.

Continuing in my quest for on-going employment, I find myself looking eagerly for Wednesdays now, though, and not because it’s “hump” day. My reason is because it is the weekly gathering of Seacoast Peers for Careers, an empowerment group that I facilitate in the fellowship hall of my church in Dover.

We have some members who have come faithfully since our first meeting in June, and we have a few who have joined us in the last month as a result of seeing an article in the local paper. We’ve had speakers on a couple of occasions, but often we meet to share where we are in the moment. Sometimes it’s about a job lead; sometimes it’s about an entrepreneurial idea; sometimes it’s to help rework a resume en mass. Always it’s with laughter and a sharing of a “blessing” from the preceding week. The use of that word is most intentional because I think it helps us focus on the good that happens along the journey with some of the best experiences happening BECAUSE we were in the work search and, therefore, following a different schedule. It forces us to realize that although our bank balances may be smaller, our hearts have many opportunities to be full of joy.

Every Wednesday I know that the meeting has made a difference in the lives six to eight other folks who continue to be the face of unemployment in 2009. Every Wednesday I am energized emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually.

Every Wednesday I receive so much more than I give.

Job Clubs – Who knew I was a member?

I mentioned a couple of blogs ago that we had two guests at a recent Seacoast Peers for Careers meeting; one was Michelle Hart from NHWorks and the other, Laura Hedges, an intern reporter for the Portsmouth Herald. This was the first meeting at which we had a speaker.

Laura’s follow up article appeared in the Portsmouth Herald on Sunday, August 23, 2009, taking the theme about how “job clubs” are gaining in popularity because of the large numbers of unemployed. You can read the full article at http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20090823-BIZ-908230321. While I feel that “empowerment group” better describes us, I do understand the media’s need for an encompassing term for all the different types of groups, seminars, classes, and the like that are designed to help folks find work.

Laura let the voices of the group be heard which really reinforced the healing and empowering capability of the group process when it is done in a surrounding of safety, respect, and joy.

We had agreed that developing a LinkedIn presence as well as advertising those meetings at which we had speakers was something to explore. If the numbers increased, we would adjust. The gift that we have had in the instant camaraderie and trust that developed has empowered us to take that risk in order to help others in similar situations to our own.

… and risk taking is the only way to find opportunities for ourselves as well.

Labor Day Blues – Well, maybe not so much

While January 1 may be the start of a new year and July 1 may be the start of many fiscal years, ever since I started kindergarten at 4 1/2 years of age Labor Day weekend has been the official end of summer. Old habits of beginning class the day after Labor Day die hard.

In 1982 when I went back to full-time high school teaching, I was offered my job in the middle of August with a promise that I would sign my contract after the opening day meetings the day after Labor Day. Eleven years later when that position was subject to a reduction in force (a RIF), August found me in the doldrums as no position had yet been found.

I found myself reminding God that while I didn’t “really” need a job till the day after Labor Day, He could hurry up any time He wanted to. So, what do you think happened? Although I made frequent visits to the lab in Kittery and started teaching classes the last week or so of August, because the school board met only every other week my appointment wasn’t accepted till the day after Labor Day. And God smiled and gave me a wink that all was right with my world.

A year ago this weekend found me very depressed indeed as I was not going back to school. After so many years of my life functioning around Labor Day, I felt completely abandoned. My life was not the same, and I was lost.

Fast forward to August 2009, and there was still no full-time job in my future. My cries were, “God, are you going to have me go through a second Labor Day with no place to be?”

As you know, last Tuesday I began my 8-hour a week position at UNH. While it’s not full-time, God did answer my on-going prayer. The day after Labor Day (literally) will find me in the classroom.

Happy New Year!

Back in the Saddle

I started my little 8 hour/week for 16 weeks adjunct faculty position at UNH today teaching four sections of Computers in the Workplace.

Omigosh, did it feel good to be in front of a class after over a year hiatus. I have lots of work to do to coordinate three curriculum areas and the assignments that are in the required text and make sense of it all, but I am very excited to be at the Thompson School for Applied Science doing what I love – teaching!

My heart is full of gratitude tonight.

Is this possibly the new beginning I have been waiting for? I sure hope so.

Putting a Face on the Stimulus Package

I had an interesting phone conversation the other day. It started out with the usual pleasantries of “how are you feeling” and then proceeded to my hearing, “It’s awful. There’s not going to be an increase in Social Security this year. The government is giving away so much money and what good does it do to give handouts and where is it going to take us? And this health care thing, that’s not going to be good.”

I’ve heard lots of comments like that before, long before our current situation; and I have to admit that once or twice I’ve probably been judgmental about who gets benefit from governmental funding whether it’s federal, state or local. Based on my own story that many of you have been following, I’m now one of those getting benefit of a governmental program.

I calmly replied, “I’ve been looking for a job for 18 months and have been unemployed for 14. If it were not for the Stimulus, I would have run out of benefits last December and where would I be right now? I am very, very thankful that those funds have been made available. I know how they are affecting my ability to continue. And I am in a much better situation than lots of people.” We didn’t talk too much after that because there was a bit of discomfort on both sides.

I’m not weighing in on whether all of the decisions made or to be made are good ones, but I do know that there are faces attached to additional unemployment benefits, cash for clunkers, and the availability of health care for everyone in this country. Today, one of those faces is mine. And depending on how tomorrow turns out, another face might just be the one you see in the mirror each morning.

Makes it a bit more real, doesn’t it?