Help Wanted: Apply Within
by Alan Powitz • Lynbrook, NY

“You’ve been a great employee… a real asset to the department, and the company. We really need you, but we just don’t have the money in the budget to keep you here. I’m sorry. If things turn around we’ll give you a call. Good luck to you.”

Those dreaded words are being uttered in offices all around the world every minute of the workday. Maybe you’ve even been on the receiving end of them. Somehow our inclination generally is not to jump for joy. But maybe it should be.

“That’s crazy,” you say. “I have to feed my family.” True enough. Most of us have had to take care of ourselves and our families for a long time. So much of our focus is on survival that we never get around to living our dream. As Wayne Dyer points out in his film, The Shift, we tend to wait until there’s a crisis, until our life is crumbling around us, before we reassess things. This may be that opportunity. It’s knocking at your door right at this very moment. Brush aside the panic long enough to take stock of your life and re-evaluate your direction.

We have a tendency to identify our self with our achievements and possessions. It seems perfectly natural to feel shame when we’ve lost our job, as if we’re a total failure. And if we’re out of work for awhile and our material acquisitions begin to vanish, our status seems diminished as well, and our entire self esteem can decay right before our eyes.

But this doesn’t have to be the case. There is something inside of us that may be completely untapped. That dream we’ve always had, but never had the opportunity to develop: our life’s purpose.
Many years ago I worked at a multi-billion dollar corporation. The head of my department was loved by everyone who worked for him, but he was replaced by someone who promised to save the company a lot of money. I had heard an author on a radio program called New Dimensions, discussing the hidden opportunity within this apparent crisis. After the dust settled I sent my former boss a copy of that author’s book, Fired for Success: Turn Losing Your Job into the Opportunity of a Lifetime. My boss had always wanted to buy a boat and take fishermen out on day trips. I don’t know if he ever fulfilled that dream, but I do know that it really opened his eyes to his incredible good fortune. Had I sent him the book a month earlier, he would never have read it. He was too involved in seeing the situation as a disaster.

This is a difficult economy to find a job in. It’s also difficult to start up a business right now… but when you already have a job that pays the bills, you may not be able to quit it to follow your dreams. If you’re out of work and can’t find another job, this may be that once in a lifetime chance to fully explore the possibilities, and even get help from those tax dollars you’ve been complaining about paying all these years! Wayne Dyer points out that you know when you’re living your life’s purpose when you feel some deep sense of satisfaction in what you’re working at.

When confronted by a caller who declared, “We have to worry about the bills, right?”, Eckhart Tolle’s response was, “No, we don’t have to worry about the bills. We do have to pay the bills, but we don’t have to worry about them.” So how do we shift from worrying to being at peace, when our circumstances seem so precarious? When you are living on purpose, you have enthusiasm, you feel alive. It takes some inner work to move past the fear, into confidence. You need to believe in yourself and the benefit you can bring to others when you’re pursuing your life’s purpose.

You may not be in a position to abandon the work that’s been paying the bills all along. As they say, don’t quit your day job. But while you continue to search for a new job, take the opportunity to explore your truest purpose. Start a daily meditative practice to clear out the negativity and replace it with some greater motivation to benefit others by pursuing your dreams. What seems like a complete disaster may turn out to be the gift of a lifetime!

Alan Powitz is a free lance writer and editor, available for all forms of corporate promotional materials. He is also a therapist, using dharma principles, hypnosis, and tools derived from The Option Process and EFT, to help clients overcome fear, anger, issues with relationships, family, work, self confidence, and other life challenges. Visit his website at www.TrulyAwake.com, or contact him at info@TrulyAwake.com or 516-528-8944.