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Chapter One: Breaking Free
That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be
“Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.”
— H. Jackson Browne
Job hunting is tough, isn’t it? You’ve looked for weeks or months on the job boards and in the want ads, go to support groups, read books that supposedly help multitudes of other people get hired, network like crazy, and email, snail mail or fax hundreds or thousands of resumes.
But nothing is happening, and you wonder what’s wrong with you. This doesn’t make sense. You’ve done everything you know to find a job, but you’re still unemployed. Or you got a job but it wasn’t what you really wanted, and you had to settle for whatever you could get to bring some money in. You’re all set to jump the minute something better comes along, so you go back to reading the want ads.
STOP! Searching for a job the same old way will only get you more of the same results you’ve been getting. If you want different results, you’ll need to make some major changes – not only in what you do to get a new job, but more importantly, in what and how you think – about yourself, your employment situation and the job hunting process in general.
You may not realize it, but your thoughts, feelings and beliefs are so powerful they can help you get, or hinder you from getting, that dream job, regardless of what else you do.
No More Same-Old Same-Old
Whether you have never worked, are looking for your first job out of school or have many decades in the workforce, you have a core set of beliefs about what you have to do to get hired.
These beliefs form the job-hunting process you know, use and are convinced should work, whether it actually works for you or not. Let’s call this process the “Traditional System.”
But just because you believe something is true doesn’t make it true in fact; it’s only true in your perception, which is why it’s called a “false belief.” For almost 2,000 years, people believed the earth was the center of the universe, but they didn’t realize they were only at the center of their observable universe.
They assumed what they saw was all there was to see, agreed that that was how the universe worked, and couldn’t accept any other possible alternative. As a job seeker, you are no different if you believe:
- You have no control over what job openings exist, which companies are hiring or who they’ll pick to hire.
- You have no control over what kind of work you can get hired for.
- You have to do specific things, say certain things and act a certain way to get employers to read your resume, meet you or hire you.
- Getting hired is a matter of luck or knowing someone.
- Your potential boss calls all the shots, and all you can is wait, hope and pray.
Whether you realize it or not, your thoughts, feelings and beliefs are “manifesting,” or “demonstrating” in your life all the time. For example, if you talk about how hard it is to get a good job, that’s what you’re going to experience because that’s what you believe.
You may think you are merely commenting on a condition in your life, but you are actually creating and holding that condition in for you to get a good job because you believe it is.
The good news is if you want to change your life, all you have to do is change your thinking, and your life will automatically begin to change. The bad news is that changing your thinking is not as easy as it sounds.
This book will teach you the “Contrarian System” of job hunting, which will help you change the way you think about yourself, the people you will encounter and the process of getting hired from an entirely different perspective.
Because some Contrarian System ideas may seem a bit strange at first, you may resist them. You may even get angry because they have challenged some of your core beliefs about how job hunting should be, or pushed some very sensitive buttons you didn’t even know you had.
You may have years or decades invested in the Traditional System, so you may find it hard to let go of your traditional beliefs about job hunting because they won’t let you go easily.
This book will teach you why it’s so important for you to take charge of your thoughts, how you can intentionally change your negative thoughts to positive ones, and suggest specific actions you can take to identify and remove the barriers you are creating that are stopping your success from rushing toward you.
In every chapter, you’ll find “Reality Checks” – no-holds-barred, straight-forward advice or commentary. While they may seem jarring, they are meant to help you shatter some long-held beliefs and assumptions you may be holding that are working against you.
For Recent Graduates
Congratulations on getting your degree, and welcome to the real world. As a new or soon-to-be graduate, you may have very little or no real-world work experience and few credentials, and probably expect a challenge in getting your first full-time job. This is often the case for liberal arts majors, those in the social sciences and others who require graduate school to complete their education.
On the other hand, graduates in accounting, finance, business, engineering, science, technical or other professions often have an easier time getting hired right from school because their studies have made them “work-ready.”
But if you’re like most liberal arts or nontech grads, you probablyhave a hazy idea about what you want to do for a living, have few or no practical work skills, and turn up your nose at boring, routine and low-paying entry-level jobs.
Reality Check: Without viable work skills, you will probably only get hired for boring, entry-level jobs that pay just-over-broke salaries because you don’t know enough yet to qualify for anything else.
With time and training, you can move upward and onward, but first do whatever it is you are paid to do at those dull and mind-numbing jobs. Take every chance to learn something, no matter how trivial or insignificant it may seem because it could prove invaluable one day.
At this point in your career, you’ll find out very quickly how little you actually know. Keep in mind that careers aren’t born and don’t die with one job; they’re made over time with a series of jobs in a specific industry, and you can always change your mind.
Despite what you may now believe, most people don’t work in the field they majored in, don’t stay with one company for a long period of time, and will switch careers at least once.
The Very Visible “Hidden Job Market”
You may have heard that a mere 15% of all currently available jobs are ever advertised and the other 85% are in the “hidden job market,” whose secrets are revealed to only a chosen few.
But nothing is, or ever can be, hidden from you. In fact, everything you could want or need to get the job of your dreams is either right in front of you or is at your fingertips. It was only “hidden” from you because you couldn’t see it, didn’t realize it was there or didn’t know how to use it.
What the Traditional System means by “hidden jobs” are those positions not advertised, publicized, posted or made available to the general public; in fact, they may not even exist yet.
In reality, companies are constantly hiring, whether or not they have formerly created a job, posted a want ad or talked about it informally. Every company has problems, and because they have problems, they need people to help solve those problems.
And because conditions affecting companies are constantly changing, the needs of companies are constantly changing. This means there is an infinite amount of employment opportunities at an unlimited number of companies all the time.
Reality Check: The only reason you will get hired is because the people hiring you believe you can help them solve their problem. Stop thinking you’re “filling an opening;” you’re not. You’re solving a company’s problem, and by solving their problem, they will solve yours.
Whether or not a job exists now is irrelevant; what matters is that a company has a problem. And since they haven’t yet come up with a solution to that problem, they will hire the first person who they believe can help them solve it, which could easily be you.
A Fish Story
As a job hunter, you may feel like a salmon swimming upstream. You and hundreds of other salmon are on a quest to beat the odds and get to the top of the hill. You knew the trip would be difficult, but you never expected it to be so exhausting.
You not only have to fight the current for hundreds of miles and be constantly on the lookout for danger at every turn, but you also have to deal with intense competition for what little room there is from all the other salmon in that crowded stream right along with you.
It’s a long, brutal fight against the current, so you can’t ever lose focus or give up your will to win. Lots of salmon don’t make it – you’ve known many who haven’t – but you’re determined to succeed, no matter how difficult it is or how many sacrifices you have to make.
You worry you won’t make it before your strength gives out. You want to stop pushing yourself so hard, but you can’t because others are relying on you. So, to give yourself a boost, you talk to your fellow salmon along the way.
“Don’t give up,” they caution. “If you get knocked down, pick yourself up and get back in the fight against the current. You have to be tough if you’re going to make it.”
With a sigh, you continue on, and slowly you realize that something about the stream has changed. Instead of being wide open, free-flowing and deep, the stream has narrowed, is now clogged with rocks and boulders, and the water level is shallow.
Like the other salmon, you are forced to slow down and pick your way carefully through the narrow inlets of water between the stones. What’s worse, at times you find it difficult to stay completely underwater. “Oh, great,” you murmur. “I’m easy pickings for whatever predator comes along. This is all I need on top of everything else.”
As you wait your turn to go through a gully, hoping you’ll be alive when you get on the other side, you remember a story a trout once told you. The story sounded ridiculous, but the trout was a reliable source, so maybe there’s something to it.
The trout said that any salmon who breaks from the pack and swims to the shore will turn into a human being, and they could do absolutely anything they dreamed of, including getting to the top of the hill without effort.
“Could it be just that easy?” you wonder. “If the trout is right, I’d have to do something no salmon in his right mind would do – swim to the shore. I’d have to change the way I’ve always thought about what I have to do to get to the top of the hill.
“But if I swim to the shore, who knows what could happen? I could get caught and end up as somebody’s dinner! What if there isn’t enough water for me to breathe when I reach land?
“Worse of all, what if the story is made up and I’m the butt of someone’s joke? If I do this crazy thing and don’t turn into a human being, everyone will laugh at me. I don’t want to take such a risk. That lousy trout – I never did trust him.”
You’re so tired and frustrated, torn about what you should do, and now you feel even worse because you’re mad at the trout for suggesting such a thing. It’s all too much for you, and you’d just rather give up.
But you’re sick of fighting the current, you’re sick of all these rocks in your way, and you’re sick of the whole thing. “Enough is enough, I’ve had it,” you say to yourself. “I don’t care what happens to me or what the other salmon think; it can’t get any worse than this.”
The other fish stare at you incredulously as you break from the pack and start swimming toward the riverbank. Some cynically call after you, “Just who do you think you are?” and “Where do you think you’re going?” but you ignore them.
With the shoreline nearing and the ridicule of the other fish filling the water, you push yourself forward. And as your fin touches the land, to your astonishment, your real self emerges. The story was true! You’re not a salmon any longer; you’re a human being with the power of the Universe within you.
Incredibly, you stand upright and feel the warmth of the sun and a gentle breeze on your new body. Your gills have become lungs filled with air, your fins are arms and legs, and your scales have become skin with clothes.
Best of all, you now can see clearly straight ahead, instead of sideways through the distorted lens of water. Looking down, you see a path laid out at your feet leading through the brush away from the shore. It looks so peaceful, so natural and in a strange way, so right, as if it had been waiting for you all along.
Briefly glancing back at the salmon still fighting the current and picking their way around the rocks, you brush the branches aside and begin to walk, laughing with pleasure as the leaves crackle under your feet, the sun hits your face through the canopy of leaves overhead, and the birds chirp you a welcome.
When you were a fish, you were so busy pushing your way through the water that you never noticed the beauty of the water. The sensation of simply being alive now is incredible and you’re overcome with immense joy and deep gratitude for this moment.
The incline along the path is so gradual and the journey is so pleasant that you don’t realize you’re making progress up the hill until your path merges briefly with the paths of other people.
These strangers are happy to see you, and gladly point out paths you didn’t know about. Some paths go around the hill and have brief resting spots, others twist and turn, and some even go on to other hills, and they’re all good.
Having someone help you up the hill is a new experience for you. When you were a salmon, it seemed everyone was either trying to eat you, competing against you for a position in the stream, or trying to stop you in some way because if you gained, they lost.
But these strangers, now your friends, are glad to know you. While they are helping you along your path, you are helping them along theirs in some way, even if you don’t know how, so you both benefit from knowing each other.
This happens several times along your journey, and each encounter is uplifting and encouraging, moving you both along your respective paths with renewed strength and fresh insight.
And then, when you least expect it, there you are at the top of the hill – refreshed, confident, encouraged and empowered by your journey and those you’ve met along the way.
“This is great!” you say out loud. “I had no idea getting to the top of the hill could be so easy and enjoyable. I have to tell the other salmon!”
You rush back to the stream, shouting to the salmon: “I’ve discovered something wonderful. You don’t have to swim against the current to get to the top of the hill anymore. All you have to do is swim to the shore!”
“Swim to the shore? Are you crazy?” the salmon cry out. “Swimming against the current is how we get to the top of the hill. This is the only way we know to get to the top of the hill! THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO GET TO THE TOP OF THE HILL!!”
You used to think that way too, so you understand how they feel, but your experience up the hill has changed you. You now know your past is not your future, and you’re not a victim of random events.
You now know you can choose your response to whatever life brings you, and that the Universe supports every one of your choices. And you know that what is true about you is also true about every other salmon, even if they don’t yet know it.
It warms you to know that all salmon have within themselves an infinite number of streams and an unlimited supply of hills – each with multitudes of paths which can be joyous, fulfilling and rewarding, if they allow it.
You want all the salmon to understand that they don’t have to struggle or compete for anything anymore, and that lack and limitation exist only in their minds. And you want them to know each one of them can experience the same kind of incredible transformation you did simply by changing their thinking, so you press on.
“I know you were taught to do it that way,” you say. “But if you would just trust me and swim to the shore, a whole new way of seeing life will open up before you.
“You will be able to do things you never dreamed of, have experiences you never imagined and best of all, you can get to the top of the hill without effort. I was an ordinary salmon just like you, and I did it. If I could do it, so can you.”
Most of the salmon laugh at you, ignore you or shout obscenities at you. Clearly, you’re insane or a troublemaker. Just who do you think you are to claim you have a better way to the top of the hill?
“Leave the safety and security of the pack in the middle of the stream and swim to the shore? Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous?” they say to one another.
“Salmon have been swimming against the current for as long as there have been salmon. If there was a better way to get to the top of the hill, one of us would have thought of it by now.”
The older salmon caution the younger ones to follow their example and play it safe: “Why take chances? Besides, whoever heard of a salmon becoming a human being? What nonsense! That person up there claiming to have been a salmon is crazy.
“Look, there are some things you just can’t change. You were hatched a salmon and you’ll die a salmon, so you’d better just accept it and make the best of it.”
A few of the salmon pause to hear what you have to say, but the others urge them to keep on swimming. “You’ll be better off forgetting that nonsense,” they say. “Sure, it’s tough fighting the current and trying to make headway with all these rocks in our way, but that’s just the way it is.
“Getting to the top of the hill is a full-time effort, and no one ever said it was easy. If you work hard enough long enough, don’t give up and have some luck, you’ll have a fairly good chance of possibly making it to the top of the hill alive and in one piece. That’s the best you can hope for.”
With a sigh, you start to turn back toward the land, and then you see it. Out of the hundreds of salmon in that crowded stream, a few adventurous spirits have broken from the pack and are swimming toward the shore.
And as each one stands upright and begins their inward journey to their true selves, you smile. |
