Have you seen the movie "Up In The Air" with George Clooney? Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a "Termination Facilitator," whose job it is to fire people when their bosses don't want to do it. Bingham has a standard line that he feeds to all those he is terminating. He tells them that some incredibly successful entrepreneur was sitting exactly where they are now after being terminated and that person went on to create fabulous wealth.
Bingham is, of course, feeding them a line and they know it. At the same time, he's telling the truth. Crisis really is danger and opportunity and we get to choose which it will be. I was thinking about this because a 70-year-old friend of mine house sits for dog owners who go on vacation and don't want to board their dogs in a kennel. During lunch the other day, she mentioned how much she enjoys taking care of the dogs.
"It makes me feel needed," she said. "When you get to be my age, no one really needs you. The dogs need me." The next day, I saw another friend who owns an insurance agency, has three kids and is very active in various non-profit organizations. I told him what my 70-year-old friend had said and he responded that with all his responsibilities he would love to be able to take a break from being needed.
Then there's my third friend who was laid off from her previous job and has been out of work for at least one year. She thought she was needed at her job but, as it turns out, she wasn't. She has been having a very tough time dealing with not being needed.
Happiness and success in life, as Ryan Bingham might tell us, depends on what we do when we can no longer do what we were doing. What will we do after we are 70, the kids have left or we lose our job? The only thing in life that we can absolutely count on is that whatever we are doing now will end.
As the old saying goes some make it happen, some watch it happen and some ask, "What happened?" We get to choose which approach we will take when what we are doing inevitably ends.
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