Are You Tougher than a 91-Year Old?
After a thief punched 91-year old Rite Aid clerk Flo Critelli in the chest last week and knocked her down, she insisted on finishing her shift saying she didn’t want to just “sit there and be bored.” Flo even drove herself home and said if the cops ever caught him, she’d like to “smack him.” You go, girl.
This story made me think how tough we all need to be these days living lives that are more complex and demanding. Hopefully you’ll never find yourself in any physical danger, but whether you’re faced with a financial crisis, health crisis or family crisis, brushing yourself off and resolving to move forward can help you feel more in control.
On the job search front especially, staying tough and seeing things through is the best way to face adversity and make progress towards a solution.
1. Stay in the game. It’s easy to feel discouraged if you’ve been looking for months and don’t feel your efforts have been paying off. It’s also easy to start making excuses to slow down and stop looking. But benching yourself will at best, leave you bored, and at worst, make you feel like a victim.
2. Exercise your power of choice. Every day we make thousands of decisions–where we go, what we eat, what we do with our time. The decisions we make out of habit and the ones that tend to keep us in our comfort zone. That’s why job seekers spend so much time on job boards even though networking is a much more effective strategy. Choose to make decisions each day that stretch your comfort level. Make that phone call, attend that networking event, or strike up a conversation standing in line at Starbucks.
3. Seek out information and use it. The saying that knowledge is power isn’t quite accurate. It’s really the application of that knowledge that will help improve your situation. There’s a lot of great career advice out there, but instead of waiting to find something that will transform your life in one shot, taking lots of small steps and putting this advice to use little by little will help you make faster progress.