“Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.”

- William James

Of course, James was talking about a much grander scale of things than I am here, but I’m going to twist it to my situation anyway. Losing my job did feel like ultimate disaster, I loved that job. But I have managed to gain much in the past month and a half – I gots a lot more skillz goin’ on than I did before I was laid off. I’ve done many hours worth of extra training, I’ve learned new applications, and much more about the ones I already used. I’ve done research about marketing, communications, and social media, and I’ve got long lists of more that I intend to do. Someone would be lucky to hire me now, I’m about as highly motivated to keep learning and growing my skills and experience as I can possibly be; and I’m determined to do better, be better, and live better than ever before.

When you’re unemployed and job hunting, you have no choice but to self-examine, which is why the job search becomes demoralizing, you are forced to see your weaknesses. But there’s no reason to wait for disaster. So – how are your job skills? Are they really as good as they could be? When was the last time you did any extra training in your field? Have you done any networking, are you on LinkedIn? How do you compare to others in your field, could you compete if you had to?

I don’t mean to depress anyone, what I’d like to do is inspire someone to feel positively about their ability to keep growing and expanding. You can do it, and you don’t even need to lose your job to make it happen.