I’ll bet you’ve only seen the bird escape the blundering coyote’s grasp, probably more times than you can count. If you missed the catch, you missed the point. No matter how many times the bird got away, the coyote had to win in the end because he never gave up. The bird was dinner, and only had to be caught once.
September, 2010:
You only have to win once
Reinventing ourselves
My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose – somehow we win out.
Ronald Reagan
Many of us were schooled to believe that we should find a profession by our mid 20′s, raise in the ranks for a couple of decades and then coast to a comfy retirement for the next couple of decades. Unfortunately, that is no longer how life works unless you work for the federal government.
Unemployed or underemployed? The answer to your problem is re-invention. Currently there are fewer opportunities to earn a living wage working for someone else than there has been since the great depression. There are, however, still plenty of opportunities if we learn to reinvent ourselves. Whatever skills you may have acquired may be offered as a freelancer, and that could even include skills from a hobby. Instead of futilely marketing yourself to every HR gatekeeper in the universe, you market yourself to someone who could use your skills from time to time, or offer products or services to the open market. The Internet has reduced the cost of self promotion to zero, if you’re willing to do the work. Is it easy? Hell no! But you just might find yourself earning a living working for the best boss in the world (you).
Learning from mistakes
One of the most indelible truths in life is that if you keep repeating the same mistakes, you’ll suffer the same results. One of my biggest mistakes has been to do deep analysis of what I did wrong and dwell on how I should improve. This can be very counter productive. It’s important to learn quickly and move on. Over anylizing past events insures that you’ll be too distracted to create a better future.