Enduring the Long Haul

Summary:
It's a fact of life, that we endure hard times, whether it's searching for a first time job or that elusive one we can't seem to find. It's never easy and sometimes it's all too public when we're "running on empty".

Positive Thinking

Are you Happy?

Optimism or Pessimism

Kindness

Faith

Dignity



Positive Thinking

Positive thinking's been around since the story of
Pollyanna, when she played the glad game and a lot of people still think that's what positive thinking is
-- pretending not to notice when bad things happen to good people.

Martin Seligman, a professor of Positive Psychology at the University of Pa. and the author of the book Authentic Happiness states that "It's not positive feelings we want, we want to be entitled to our positive feelings. Yet we've invented myriads of shortcuts to feeling good; drugs, chocolate, loveless sex, shopping, television are all examples."

"The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to get to positive feelings rather than be entitled to those feelings by the exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads legions of people who in the middle of great wealth, are starving spiritually."

Think of some of Hollywood's most notorious young stars, think of highly paid athletes, of singers and actors, who though they have everything regular people think they could want, have nothing and are out of control.

"Positive emotions alienated from the exercise of character leads to emptiness, inauthenticity, to depression."

I have a friend who was on disability pension, could not pass by a store without buying something, anything, no matter what it cost, just so she could say she could buy something. Eventually she ended up going through bankruptcy, for a second time and when it was discharged, what was the first thing she did, got another credit card. She doesn't acknowledge she's ever wrong and even though she's never gone that long without anything, she still has to buy herself something to fill the void. She's a very negative, cynical unhappy person and I find when I'm around her too much she turns me into one as well.

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Are you Happy?

Which leads me to the first question in enduring the long haul. Are you generally a happy, optimistic, proactive person? Or are you always negative, cynical, jaded and reactionary? Which answer you truthfully give will play a part on how you approach your long haul as you search for your job.

Take this little test the Happiness Quiz

Now tally your score and divide by four. My score was 23 and came out to be 5.7

According to Seligman" The mean for adult Americans is 4.8 . Two thirds of Americans score between 3.8 and 5.8".

"Psychologists wonder if each of us has our own personal set range for happiness, a fixed and largely inherited level to which we invariably revert."

"The bad news is that like a thermostat this set range will drag our happiness down to its usual level when too much good fortune comes our way. ... The good news, however, is that after misfortune strikes it will try to pull us out of our misery eventually."

Let me cite a personal example. My brother is 7 years older than I am and last November we both had heart attacks within two weeks of each other. Although my brother has always been successful in school and at work he quits when he can't be first or number one. He actually had a competition going with me as to who had the lowest blood pressure until I reminded him that there was no competition, we were both ill. He's always had heart and kidney problems, having his first heart attack in his early 30s so it wasn't a huge surprise he had another heart attack.

I was never the student he was, I was a plugger, got the occasional A, more B's and a few Cs throughout high school and university. If I came last in something, which more times than not I did, I'd make a joke of it and just keep going. I am more resilient than he is when stress happens and he and I both know it. My brother after his heart attack is still feeling unwell and complaining a lot. He sees himself as quite the victim. On the other hand my cardiologist said to me in January, Miss Seger, despite all your chronic health problems, you have no damage to your heart or kidneys, you are a very healthy happy woman.

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Optimism or Pessimism

My father used to say that if he'd placed us both in a room full of horse manure, my brother would moan and complain it was not fair and why did bad stuff always happen to him. Whereas Dad said my daughter on the other hand would look for the shovel because under all that manure, there had to be a horse or a pony somewhere.

So optimism or pessimism plays a huge part on how you will react to when you come back to your normal level of happiness and that again affects and effects your personal attitude while you are job hunting.

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Kindness

"Seligman's students wondered if happiness came from the exercise of kindness more readily than it does from having fun. After a heated discussion in the class we took an assignment for the next class to engage in one pleasurable activity and one philanthropic activity and write about both."

"The results were life changing. The afterglow of the pleasurable activity, hanging out with friends, going to a movie, eating a hot fudge sundae, paled in comparison with the effects of the kind action. When our philanthropic acts were spontaneous and called upon personal strengths, the whole day went better. ... The exercise of kindness is a gratification in contrast to a pleasure. As a gratification it calls upon your strengths to rise to an occasion and meet a challenge.

Kindness is not accomplished by a separate stream of emotion like joy, rather, it consists of in total engagement and the loss of self-consciousness."

Similar to Brandon's Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, Living Consciously, Self Acceptance, Self Responsibility, Self Assertiveness, Living Purposefully and Living with Integrity, Seligman has broken down the codes of most major religions and philosophies into the following six: Wisdom and Knowledge, Courage, Love and Humanity, Temperance and Spirituality and Transcendence.

Seligman has a test for your 24 strengths and virtues you might to take at to see which strengths you have mastered.

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Faith

My friend Charles in Alaska when discussing the long haul wrote to me that although he's never really been out of a job that long, even though he picked up his family who were in Southern California and moved them all to Alaska a few years ago, that if he was in that sort of a situation he 'd know that he'd rely on his faith to get him and his family through the long haul.

And Faith does indeed play an important part on your well being , whether you believe in God or the Universal Force or a Higher Power or not. It's a faith that you are valued by someone , whether it's God or your family or friends or family pet, if only to get up in the morning and make sure your family or pet or roomie or friend is fed.


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Dignity

Robert Fuller writes in All Rise - Somebodies Nobodies and the Politics of Dignity that "Religion is at once society's consolation and its divider. As individuals we turn to religion for solace. The concept of the soul invests our existence with a kind of transcendence with the harsh reality, but also provides us with a certain dignity. For that reason alone religion cannot be omitted in discussing a dignitarian world. ...Religions all over the world teach the sanctity of human dignity. Theistic religions go further and proclaim the existence of a personal caring God. Given the supreme importance of dignity and our own spotty record of according it to each other, it's the rare person, who when all worldly options seem exhausted has not wished for divine intervention.

In extremis, even skeptics are apt to question, if not suspend their disbelief. Under dire circumstances, they too are prone to hope, if not pray for some sort of superhuman or supernatural source of respect. As "the dignifier of last resort" God comforts us on all the stages of life's way." ..." The passage to a dignitarian world will take time and it will not always be smooth. .... But despair is unwarranted. The universe cares as much as we do. It has a heart - our very own. We are at once compassionate beings and model builders, the questing knights of the Arthurian legend. In that eternal pursuit lies the imperishable dignity of humankind."

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