One More Day Alive

Walt Disney was fired from his first job drawing farm animals for a farm journal. John van Hengle, the founder of St. Mary’s Food Bank, lost his advertising job and wound up practically homeless before finding his way.

Both of them changed the world.

Have you lost your job? Are you hurting financially, struggling to get back in the game? You are not alone. But your job loss could be the ultimate opportunity to find your true purpose and to realize that losing your job should not mean you have lost your value.

The unemployment rate in the United States is around 9.6%. That’s a staggering number. But it’s what happens after the job is lost that is the real tragedy.

We have been programmed in America over the last few decades to believe that we derive our value as a human being from our ability to make money. The idea we can find our “net worth” by adding up all our debts and assets and arriving at our value as a human being is preposterous.

Your real, innate value was made by God and that’s what inspires your economic value, not the other way around. Realizing that is the first step to getting back on your feet.

In fact that’s actually how capitalism is supposed to work. It’s not predicated on greed and selfishness but actually meant to inspire people to use their God-given gifts, ideas and abilities to provide the world with something it needs. They are then rewarded with what they need.  Or in the words of the late Pope John Paul II “the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs.”

Unfortunately capitalism hasn’t worked real well over the last few years because too many people were either cheating the system or simply looking to make an easy buck instead. Moral responsibility is an integral and irreplaceable component of both a healthy society and a healthy economy.

But therein lies an amazing opportunity to help set the system straight again. How do we do that? By doing what God put us here to do – to use our gifts to improve the world.

Every one of us has something the world needs, and by learning how to share that gift with the world for all the right reasons, we are rewarded with what we need eventually.

Your desire and ability to reach out to and contribute to the world is a divinely inspired asset that can and will still lead you to long-term and stable career success once you engage it. Finding your mission is finding the job or career that will allow you to do that.

Yes, it doesn’t always happen overnight, and it’s not always so easy. It took good old Walt a decade of struggling to make ends meet, and after John van Hengle lost his job, he did everything from lifeguard to bus driver to working in a soup kitchen before he found his calling helping the hungry, only after he came to know and understand hunger himself.

Not to be overly simplistic but God does work in mysterious ways.  Your value is assigned by God, and it is not rooted in how much you earn, but in HOW and WHY you earn. 

The world needs you somewhere and somehow right now.  Maybe it’s through a volunteer organization where you can obtain some of your needs in return or a part-time job or turning a favorite hobby into a freelance job. Get out there and find out how you can help because the world needs a lot of help.

That might not just help you to find a new job but a whole new career and greater happiness than you have ever known.

Chris Benguhe’s latest book, “Overcoming Life’s 7 Common Tragedies,” is available on Amazon.com. His website is www.OneMoreDayAlive.com.