Every morning this last week or so, we in the US awake to news that values in world markets have fallen yet again. And at the end of the workday, we hear about how our own markets continue to drop.

Notice I am not using words like plunge, plummet, crash, dive. The media are using them enough. One story this morning has it that General Motors is teetering. “How it goes for GM is how it goes for the country” is an old saying that we may see tested now. There’s a gallows humor now among friends and co-workers who are saying to one another that now they’ll never be able to retire.

So while times are scary, and I’m mostly addressing this to those in job search right now, I’m going to ask you to ignore what’s going on and be in denial.

Huh?

Certainly if you’re a financial planner or stockbroker, denial is impossible. But for most people, “keep on keeping on” is the best path. Companies are still hiring. Clients are still interviewing, jobs are still being posted. There are many healthy companies that are creating things we all need and that others are still buying.

I say this because there’s a temptation among those in job search to sit back and wait. Many tasks in job search take energy to do them, and it’s easier to say, with all this bad news swirling around us, “Let me see what it will be like after the holidays” or “Maybe I should take time off now because I’ll need that time and energy when things really get bad”.

Don’t do either of those. First, everyone in job search waits until after the holidays to job search, so beat the rush by continuing your search this fall and into the holidays if necessary. But aside from that, I would recommend some healthy denial right now. As in “Everything is fine, I’m going to just keep doing what I’m doing”.

Denial because if you become obsessed with all that’s going on, your worry will start to filter into your psyche and your language , and then you’ll start telegraphing that in your interviews and networking meetings.

The person who gets hired is the one who is “steady as she goes”, whether you’re a CEO, secretary, Project Manager, or social worker.

So take it one day at a time and keep up all that great activity. You have gifts that some lucky employer out there needs, now you just have to let them know you’re there.

In last night’s VP debate, moderator Gwen Ifill asked both candidates, “What is your Achilles heel?”

Essentially, what Ifill was asking was, “What’s your weakness as it relates to your work?” She was the only questioner during what really was a nationally-broadcast job interview for Vice President. It was interesting to see how each job candidate handled it (don’t worry, I won’t get partisan here!). Senator Biden first joked “only one?”, then answered fairly straightforwardly. Governor Palin answered by talking about stances she and her presidential candidate take on a couple of issues.

First, why do interviewers ask this seemingly dumb question? I mean, who wants to admit what their weaknesses are? Except, “they” do ask it. They ask it for a few reasons. They want to know how well you know yourself. And they want to know, frankly, what you will say and how you handle it. At times, interviewees answer as if they are in confession, giving a list of things they just aren’t good at. Or they bring up something that is so central to the job that they suddenly destroy their chances for the job. And a snarky “Oh, I am a workaholic!” just doesn’t answer it and is viewed as so much BS.

Second: So how do you answer it? You do need to be prepared, and your answer can’t be about your tennis game but about your work. So think about those things that you’re really not strong at. We each have a list; no one is above being human. Now choose one weakness that is NOT central to the main functions of your job. For example, a Project Manager would not choose “time management” — and if you’re a PM with this problem, uh oh — instead,  you could choose “public speaking to huge groups”. THEN, talk about how you have that problem under control or are working on it, if you are: “But I’m getting more experience at that and am getting more and more comfortable as time goes on.” Anyone serious about their career is always sharpening their saw.

If you blank, or need more time to think before you answer, you can start your answer by talking about something else, but you must bring it back to an answer to that question. Otherwise, you risk being seen as evasive. While politicians might be able to get away with an answer that doesn’t really answer the question, and it’s a method that political leaders of all stripes use, it’s tough to get away with it in a normal, real-life interview.

On November 4th, it will be interesting to see who the American people decide to hire.

Recently I was using my car’s GPS system to get to an appointment in a part of Minneapolis I still don’t know well. AlI was going fine when my GPS told me to take the next right. Problem was, it was a one-way street coming toward me, not away.

What to do? After a second of panic, I realized that since traffic wasn’t heavy, and I had a pile of maps with me, that I could punt without the help of electronics. So I took the next right instead, expecting that I’d have to pull over and check the map or even circle around somehow. But I just kept going. I had to take a few more turns to get where I needed to be, and found my way, but along the way, I looked off to the side to discover that I was right by the exit ramp to the highway I usually take back to the office from here. I’d discovered a better route than the one I’d taken many times before. Which also meant I’d found a better way to get to this destination.

All because the direction of the street had changed before the GPS database could be updated.

It’s really the same with careers and jobs. We get blocked from what “should” be the next step in our career, by the perfect job that goes to someone else. And we panic: will we ever attain that goal? Well, maybe you’re supposed to take a different route than you expected, to reach a different goal than you’d chosen. And you just don’t know it yet.

It’s been said that life presents us with the same lessons over and over again until we learn them. The person who sees repeated career obstructions as a personal plot against him to reach a chosen goal may miss a fabulous new career path, one that fits better. Another person who won’t let go of a stale job in a dying field is yet another example of a person who won’t look off to the side to see something that might be more fulfilling and with more future. Keep your eyes open to these pointers telling you, “Check out this other thing”. Is it time for you to be open to change? Have you been missing the lessons meant for you?

Consider getting lost what it might really be: a gift. It just may get you to a better place.

Almost 20 years ago now, on a humid August morning during which one little storm after another rolled through the area where I lived south of Boston, there was all at once a flash, a crack, and a boom of thunder that told me the garage end of my house had been hit by lightning. It set the garage on fire in an instant, and smoke boiled its way under the screened porch roof into the windows. As I called 911, my quick-thinking fireman neighbor ran around closing the slider and the windows to reduce the amount of smoke damage. The firetruck finally arrived — minutes really do seem like hours when flames are threatening to reach the can of gasoline you keep in the garage for the lawn mower — and the firemen put the fire out in short order.

The first thing you check is your insurance policy and yes, it covered lightning damage. But it would be months before everything would be normal and routine again. Why did this happen?, my then-husband and I wondered aloud. In just days, he was about to start graduate school, and now he and I had to deal with firemen marching through our house feeling the walls for hidden flames, and complete strangers roaming our yard to see the damage and insurance adjusters and repair people. Our life had been turned upside down. Why did this happen? Why us?

Frustration turned to anger as we had to live for a while with the smell of smoke permeating our house, and fried wiring, and our inability to do any repairs until the insurance company made its decisions. We knew it could have been far worse but that seemed little consolation at the time. The lightning had hit the ground in the middle of the woods behind our house, raced along a vein of rock underground, exploded out of a raised-bed garden wall and split itself into two, carving jagged paths in the lawn and coming back together again just as it hit the garage. Lightning does not hesitate. It gets there and does its job. We found clumps of sod on the garage roof later. We were without power for days, as was the whole neighborhood. Worst of all, we were left with a sense of vulnerability. If lightning could hit our house, what else might happen?

The insurance company came through with a good check. To fix the smoke damage, we hired a couple from our church who had a cleaning business doing that, so they benefited. Another church member rewired our house and was thankful for the extra work. But who would rebuild the garage? We were at a loss.

That was, until another church friend asked if he could do it. Les had a background doing such work. He had lost his wife Nina to a sudden heart attack a couple of months before; she was part of the core of the church and everyone was devastated. Les was a wounded soul without her and no one knew how to console him. He was one of those old timers who could redo his plumbing as well as he could write an insurance policy, and he was just a good guy, so of course we said yes. He refused to talk about how we’d pay him for his time, putting it off until later.

Les took down the garage board by board because he could reuse some of the boards for other projects. He hand-dug the addition to the concrete pad so that it would meet the new building code. He rebuilt the garage, doubling its original size. He took time on details with wood that enriched the look, making it the nicest part of the house. It was a beauty a couple of months later when he was done. “Doing this for you helped me more than it helped you”, he said in the end, refusing payment.

It was only then that we realized why the lightning hit our house and not someone else’s. All that time and energy spent being frustrated, even angry, and wondering why, why, and why us?, and months later, when we saw that Les was healing, we knew why: it happened so we could help Les. And we actually were thankful for the lightning. Les remarried a year or so later and we liked to think it was in part because of this healing project.

So what does this have to do with job search? I think of Les and the lightning when a client, in great frustration, says “Why did I have to lose my job, why? Why me?” I tell them: “You may not know the reason now or even in a few months, but at some point, you will know it, and it will actually be a good one”. They’re usually surprised by this statement and doubtful, but they listen.

So I give them evidence that this is true, such as the story of the laid-off marketing manager whose extended layoff meant he could coach his son’s soccer team, and actually spend time with his son and daughter. During that time, he refined his career goals, deciding to go into a nonprofit, and eventually landed a job at a university. He told me “My layoff was a gift”. When he landed his new job, what faded was the financial pinch his long layoff presented; instead, he remembered playing a big role in raising his children. That was the gift, and one that his family will long remember and hold dear.

So if you are between jobs and making good use of this time, don’t decry it. Instead, see it as a gift. Because it is.

So many people from Massachusetts have been emailing me about my move to a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota, about six weeks ago. “Are you settled now?” and “Is it spring yet?” and “What do you think of your new area?” are common questions. Their inquiries are kind and caring, and I’m grateful for every one of them.

My answer: all is well. Yes, glorious spring is here. Only now do I realize that I was very “up” for this change, not only for moving closer to my stepsons and my husband’s new job (he’s having fun), but for a more balanced life. The cost of living here is 20-30% less (house insurance, car insurance, even dentists!) and housing, even 15-20 minutes from downtown Minneapolis, can be very affordable. Yet it’s a very literate and learned diverse city with, for example, the largest Somali immigrant community in the US. There are many transplants from all over the US and once here, they hate to leave. I’ve learned why: people are courteous and patient here, like many of us used to be before multitasking shaped us differently. So it makes for a gentler life. A few friends, still stunned that I’d actually leave the Northeast, relish learning about other cultures in the world — except those located between the two US coasts. And that’s too bad because they don’t know what they’re missing. I sure didn’t know myself, until now. This country is amazing to me all over again.

Other pluses: Customer service is amazing. Here, you are invariably greeted with, “Did you find what you came in for?” and if you didn’t, they insist on finding it for you. It’s so universal I’ve wondered aloud if they teach “Minnesota nice” in elementary school! However, I still can’t find really good thin-crust North End-style pizza and my frustration is mounting. I need to explore “the Cities” more to find it — it’s gotta be somewhere! I miss seeing the Red Sox news on the local channels but I’ll be seeing them when they play the Twins on May 9th here in Minneapolis, at a really decent price, and Boston.com keeps me pretty well informed on Manny’s pursuit of his 500th homer.

Here, when we chose our power company — and there’s real choice here, among four or five of them — we could also choose our source of energy. So we opted for wind energy; wind turbines (windmills) are a common sight here because there are healthy wind patterns in the north central US. In my eyes, their sight is a new aesthetic: catching energy seemingly out of the air, they represent freedom from foreign oil or gas, a beautiful thing.

And being able to live within 5-20 minutes of everything is a gift of time. My husband rides his bike to work in 45 minutes, door to door, and my new office is a 15-minute drive. People here view a 30-minute commute as the outer limits for time spent driving to work and one can see why: they want to put that boat on the lake, and they want to take the family out on the many bike trails and walking paths. They balance work and non-work time. It’s just expected. And it’s good to see — and to experience.

What are we doing with this newfound time? Sure, I’m doing more networking so that I can better establish the business here. (More about that in another blog entry!) We’re each doing more reading. And walking, and just chatting with the neighbors. We’ve joined a church, since now we don’t need to use the entire weekend for “recovery” time, and I’ll be doing some volunteering for a Congressional candidate who’s vying for an open seat.

So this new place is teaching me that no one part of the country leads in every way. Each part has its allure and I’m happy to discover that here.

Also: that there are other aspects to life than that one track of work. This is a revelation to this workaholic, and a challenge, as I’m thinking about what my life means outside of my work. It makes me realize that home is not a particular place, but rather, that it’s far more than a place: it’s that part of you that makes a place familiar.

Now all of this is not to say that my life’s mission, to help people find and do the work they were meant to do, and live more meaningful lives, is different; that is core to my being. But now I’m seeing what else there is out there that gives me, and others, purpose. And it’s teaching me that I need to add more questions for my clients about their lives outside of work. And they, too, need to think about non-work, too.

And that can only make my work with them a better experience — for them and for me.

Over the holidays and into the new year, I was jolted twice by news that refreshed my thoughts on mortality.

On Christmas Eve morning, Linda, a friend of Teri, a new client with plans to start working with me in early January, emailed me to tell me that Teri had been lost at sea off her sailboat in the Caribbean (those names are changed for the purposes of this blog). When I’d talked with Teri to set our appointment, she was bubbling over with her thoughts about her future career. This would be a combination of two types of work she’d done for 20 years, and I was excited to meet her and get started. She held great promise and I had no question she’d succeed at her new calling.

Then the news.

And barely days into the new year, a former co-worker was killed in a car crash. The newspaper said he’d had a heart attack that, of course, caused him to lose control of his car, then he was hit by a pickup truck on the driver’s side. He was only 50.

Both people had plans, friends, goals, appointments to get to, email to answer. And now they are gone.

The old saying “Man makes plans and God laughs” came to mind. Whatever your view of God or the universe, it’s a proverb that we should think about every day, because it reminds us that our time is limited. And that we should enjoy the time we have.

And it makes me think of people in jobs that are killing the joy out of their hearts, or who are working for soulless people whose own desires for life is a mystery. Or the person who’s between jobs and is frozen and can’t move in any direction. To those people, I want to gently but firmly ask, “What are you waiting for?” and “None of us knows how much time we have, so let’s get going here!” and “Don’t you know that a life covers a span of time and time is all we have so how are you going to spend your ‘time chips’ today? Are you going to spend them on that heartless wonder you work for, or are you going to change that and spend them instead on your family?”

Your career funds your life, in your wallet and in your heart and soul. Is your career funding your life?

It’s a new year. Make it yours, not someone else’s.

I was talking this past week with another career coach about how companies are demanding more and more and more from employees. And are getting it.

A client I’ll call Bob who wants to leave his current job talks of how his manager expressed extreme disappointment that Bob would not make himself available via computer on Thanksgiving Day for software developers at work in China, if they should need him. Bob was not having family in from out of town but claimed plans that he couldn’t break, because he was astounded his manager thought he’d readily be available on a holiday. Bob was normally available many weekends during the year on top of his usual 55+ hours a week, but this was a holiday and everyone was talking about their plans. His manager didn’t stop there: “So I assume you’ll make yourself available, then, the rest of the weekend?” Bob declined and is working even harder to find a new job. He says, “Whatever happened to boundaries around a big holiday?” and “They can’t pay me enough to live like that.”

Then there’s the 25-point list of desired tech skills that we see in software development job postings. The company is asking for things that rarely go together: either the client hasn’t lived long enough yet, or the shifts in their (very normal) career have precluded that they learn all 25 things on that list. Clients ask, “How can these companies find anyone who has all this stuff?” Depending on the local job market, they can.

Why do companies, especially software companies, do this? Well, what they’ve done is merged two or three jobs into one. This saves a huge amount of money, and it means that through extreme multitasking, the person can get many things done. These things may not get done very well, and the worker may not find it very satisfying, but hey, that person will be able to turn out something. For one salary.

There’s definitely a push-push-push of professionals today at a level that was once reserved for their very highly-paid executives. Some companies and industries will say “That’s how we work in this industry.” But it’s all by the seat of the pants and it’s panic-driven. It’s what Stephen Covey would call Quadrant I thinking, which is reactive, it’s operating in response to crisis, it’s putting out fires. It leads to burnout and exhaustion. There’s little investing in their people for future returns, which Covey would call Quadrant II, the kind of thinking and managing that’s proactive, re-creative, and into planting seeds for the future. Too few companies in any industry in the US are in Quadrant II. Shareholder demands create a “this quarter” mentality.

Maybe we can try something new: No work after hours. This might mean that people can actually get away from their work for possibly half of their waking hours (based on a typical six hours of sleep that many get today), so that their brains get a rest and can be sharper when they actually do sit down to work. That would still allow for a nine-hour day at work.

Pulling people away from their families over and over again creates Burnout City: downright poor management of time and people. It hurts professionals and their families, who feel caught and exhausted and never quite dis-engaged from their work. And companies lose good people.

Over time, no one really wins.

Sometimes people aren’t comfortable doing a job search when they’re gainfully employed and their job is “OK”. Not great, but “OK”. They feel they are being unfaithful to seek out or to consider another opportunity. Thus they put it off, even if the handwriting is on the wall, even if the layoff e-mail has gone out.

OK, I’m supposed to say that’s admirable. But today, I don’t say that. I say “That person is being reactive and is not managing his/her career”. Today, I say “Why aren’t you advocating for yourself?” What are they waiting for — someone to painlessly hand them a new job?

Instead, they, you, need to be thinking ahead, for yourself, all the time. In some parts of our country, that’s essential to career health.

So yes, I’m suggesting you be unfaithful, if you want to use that term. I’m suggesting you say you have that dentist appointment when you really have an interview. I’m urging you to network with people all the time, even occasionally on your company’s time, because when else can you do this? When done judiciously, this is necessary sneaking around. And you have to do it in order to protect your best interests.

Maybe my own experience colors my view: Almost 30 years ago, my dad put in for a transfer with his company (Sears) from New York to Florida. He’d been there over 20 years, and was unabashedly loyal: he was even on the company’s regional sports teams, and our home had only Sears products. The company culture for years had been “we’ll take care of you”. Except, that culture was changing in the late 1970s. Suddenly everything was “Don’t take it personally, it’s only a business decision”. So they denied the transfer and he was stunned, heartbroken. How could this happen after all he had done for them?

And I’ve seen so many clients today in the same position. It’s all too rare to have someone approach me to say “I’ve got to get out of there while things are still good, because I’m seeing the signs that they won’t stay good, for me at least.” But that’s what more people need to see, and need to say.

Why should you put loyalty second to your career? Because that’s how you put yourself — and your family — first. You need to advocate for yourself in today’s career. Your town won’t do it for you. Your neighbors, your Aunt Lucy, and last of all, your current company won’t do that for you.

The day a company says, “John, we’re thinking of laying you off, what do you think?” is the day I’ll change my mind.

For all good (and some dumb) reasons, companies have to reorganize, reassign, and reduce. They call these business decisions. Because they are.

In the end, by taking control of your career, you are making a business decision for you and your family, your future. Your career funds your life. It’s what’s necessary for you and you must advocate for yourself.

They company or organization will find someone to fill your position, and they’ll go on just fine.

You have to make sure the same thing happens for you. And only you can do that.

You call in tears, or close to it: The Perfect Job went to someone else. After all this time, after all the networking, after all the networking group meetings, after all the mental reframing and resume re-writing and interview practice, after all the interviews, after all the thank-you notes, after canceling the sailing trip so you’d save the money, after the family talks about tapping the 401Ks, after all your hoping and daring not to think that you’d get this job for fear of jinxing it, you didn’t get it.

You use the word devastated. As in, I am devastated. You ask, How could they not pick me? It was perfect for me. How could they? And then: what do you have to do these days to get them to see how good you are?

I could tell you to buck up and put this behind you and remind you about those other prospects and those other interviews, and how I understand because I’ve been there, too, but I will save that talk for another time. For now, I listen. I groan with you, for you. I say useless things like “I feel so bad that it worked out this way, with all that you have to offer.” I let you vent and vent, and let you talk about your family beginning to doubt you, about how you are beginning to doubt you.

Then, when you pause, I gently interrupt to tell you that I don’t doubt you, that you have the same skills and successes and talents to offer that you did before you got their rejection e-mail (yes, that’s how they do it now). You listen but I know your pain isn’t letting you take it in.

You’re human: you want to avoid pain. But there is no avoiding this. A wise woman once told me, There is no way around pain, there’s only through it. I hated the comment at the time, but later realized she was right. The only way to deal with it is to look it in its face and say OK, here you are. Because then, and only then, it will finally go away. Trying to avoid it only makes it a bigger presence in your life.

So right now, your pain is preventing you from really hearing good things about yourself. But after that lump in your throat goes away (it will) and you grudgingly decide, Well, I have no choice, I’d better move on from here, I am betting you cast your line about and remember my words. And I am hoping the words serve as the first little breeze that starts to refill your sails and which gets you to realize, and say, I’ll be OK after all.

When I probe a client for the reasons they want to leave their current job, I sometimes hear, “I want to leave because things have changed there… they no longer treat people like they did years ago.” And: “They are cutting back on our benefits.” And: “They’re outsourcing so much work to people in other countries now, my team’s jobs might be next….” Mid-level managers as well as executives bring up these issues.

Then I ask a few more questions. “Do your friends in the field tell you what’s happening in their companies? How similar or different is it there?” The client admits their friends are saying similar things, but that it’s not as bad at these other companies.

To which I say, “yet”. That’s because these changes are ubiquitous. Companies are cutting benefits such as pensions; even municipalities (e.g., Worcester, Mass.) are dropping health care for those employees 65 and over, essentially saying that Medicare will have to take care of them. Competition and mere survival is driving the changes.

The temptation to escape such change is totally understandable. Who wants to worry about losing good benefits or losing a job? So, the thinking goes, let me leave this place and go somewhere where change is further away.

Except eventually it will catch up to you, at the new place or the one after that.

So what to do? Continue to learn new skills, go to seminars, keep your network alive between job hunts, adapt, stay ahead of the wave of change. Change will always be licking at your heels so don’t try to flee from it. Instead, stay in control of you, which is truly the only thing you can control. Keep yourself marketable. And if you don’t want to, then consider retiring or changing your expenses picture so that you don’t need to work.

So when should you leave if it’s not for the above reasons? Here are a few things to look for: If you’re getting bored on the job, if you feel like you’re coasting on the job, if there’s little new challenge, if the company stops investing in or developing its people, if the company is losing sale after sale and isn’t changing things to fix the situation, if your company or organization is putting out less-than-cutting-edge products or services.

Those are the real signals, the early warning signs that you should leave, if you want to continue your career. And these warnings usually appear well before the ones that tell you things aren’t the same.

Yes, I hate to tell you, things have changed. They won’t be the way they used to be, either where you are now or on your next job. They never will be again.