The Difficulties

At any point in your life, you are going to face significant adversity. It’s apparent that the way you face those challenges is far more important than the challenges themselves. The economy is bad. Finding jobs is hard. My sister and her husband are laid off. My uncle was recently laid off along with half the work force at my father’s place of employment in a small town. Here’s a quick list of companies that have laid people off:

Caterpillar, Target, Best Buy, 3M, Microsoft, Ecolab, Starbucks, Phizer/Wyeth, Disney, Sprint Nextel, General Motors, Texas Instruments, Home Depot and IBM. That’s not anywhere near a complete list of bigger corporations slashing jobs. These companies cut big numbers, but that’s only the start. Small businesses are cutting jobs too! People forget this. The unemployment rate is climbing and our President is doing his best to turn it around (btw the bonuses that Wall Street handed themselves are deplorable, people are starving and paying what little they have in taxes to cover this kind of thing–how can these people sleep at night?)

The difficulties are there. They always are. But having a negative outlook and woe is me attitude about it isn’t going to do a damn thing. I’m impressed with my class and how they’ve addressed the adversity. Sure, we’re all a bit more stressed, but overall people are resolute. You should be too. Every generation goes through ups and downs. This is only one of many tests we’ll face as a nation over the next era. This only means you have to be that much better, that much more focused on being better than the competition and building real value for the stakeholders of your organization. Sometimes that’s your stockholders, sometimes that’s your kids. My family hasn’t complained despite being hit hard by this market crisis. No one is going to come along and give you a hand out; complaining is little more than a waste of breath. The hard work of American families will overcome this with persistence; I’m sure of it. I have the luxury of being in school during this, but I’m taking it as a challenge to work as hard as my family and be ready to lend a hand wherever I can otherwise.

Good luck to everyone who has lost a job out there. We point out 75,000 layoffs in one day. The human brain isn’t geared to understand that type of number in terms of each one being a person with hopes, fears, dreams and potentially a family that depends on their income. My heart goes out to you.