One of the worst parts of any jobseeker’s day is having your employment status questioned – whether it’s a loving “How’s the jobhunt going?” from your mum, which makes you want to cry and say “Great, Mum. Just great. That’s why I called you from under my bed to ask if a four-hour twitch is something I should bother checking in the mirror”, or a hilarious jibe from one of your friends, which makes you a bit like this:
Get out from under your bed. It’s dusty and cobwebby and after you read what Abe Lincoln went through you’re going to feel like a big ol’ pile of silly.
This is the opening passage of the chapter entitled “Disappointment” from the book Emotional Equations by featured TED speaker Chip Conley:
“When Abraham Lincoln was seven, he and his family were forced out of their home and he had to start working to help support his parents.
When he was nine, his mother died. As a child, he was kicked in the head by a horse, and once he nearly drowned.
Throughout his life he suffered from malaria (twice), syphilis and smallpox.
At age twenty-one, he failed in business.
At age twenty-three, he ran for the state legislature, lost his job, and was turned down for law school.
That same year he started another business on borrowed money, but a year later he was bankrupt.
At age twenty-six he was engaged to be married, but his fiancée died; soon afterward, his only sister died in childbirth. He hit an emotional low and took to his bed for six months.
At age twenty- eight, he was defeated as speaker of the state legislature.
At age thirty-three, he ran for the US House of Representatives and lost. He tried again at age thirty-nine and lost again.
He ran for the US Senate at age forty-five and lost.
He tried for his party’s vice presidential nomination at age forty-seven and lost.
And lost again for the US Senate at aged forty-nine.
Despite all this, at age fifty-one Abraham Lincoln was elected the sixteenth president of the United States.”
So guys, with all the respect in the world…how’s the jobhunt going?
I’ll leave you with Louis CK being hilarious as the ultimate down-and-out jobseeker:
