My Job and Life Stink – Help?

Question: My job and life stink. Companies going out of business, layoffs all over. I worried I’m probably next. I’m stuck. If my life were a story, it would be a Greek tragedy. I just keep getting blocked, at work and personally; obstacle after obstacle. Any of your experts have any pick-me-up advice, for business and/or life? Something appropriate for these times?

Answer: What you’re really asking is, “How the <bleep> am I going to get out of here?” And I suggest you are in a great place.

You Are Not Alone

Everyone has been where you are. You’re not alone.

Even now, people reading this are either thinking the same thing you are, going through it, gone through it, or are empathizing with you.

Most of us humans get in fixes like this in our lives and you might currently be there, given everything that’s going on in the world. I’ve sure been there plenty of times in my life, like when I was nine and we lived in a shack in the country, paid no rent, water from a well out back, and all we had left to eat was white bread sandwiches of sugar and butter. Or when I was homeless in Los Angeles, thanks to the cult of Scientology, when I was much younger.

Photo courtesy Future2Hope

You mentioned “Greek Tragedy” in your question. Why do you think people express themselves, their hopes, aspirations or even business presentations in stories? Why have stories been the heavenly coin of the ages—providing hope, comfort, inspiration and moving people to great actions?

Because stories are life. In business or life, stories move people … move them forward in their thinking and actions. I know a little about your frustration. Been there. Done that. Done it again. I also know a little about story and stories. I teach, study, and live it. Make my living, and have for many, many years, with stories, writing, rewriting, editing, and commenting. Here’s something that may help you.

I teach a story structure where I have combined thoughts from three great thinkers of story structure.

Aristotle’s Poetics – A three-act structure. Simply stated, every story has to have a beginning, middle and end (which was just a savvy observance by Aristotle; he wasn’t a playwright.)

Shakespeare’s five-act structure - which was arranged that way to accommodate breaks by royals at court performances.

Joseph Campbell’s story matrix – which was an examination of stories on his part (he wasn’t a story-maker.)

Why is this important to me?

This melding together and synthesizing of styles and structures into one? Simple.

How the BLEEP Am I Going to Get Out of Here?

In all successful stories, ones that resonate, both with the heart and economically, there comes a moment at the end of Act Two (end of the middle of the story) where there is the “deepest dilemma” that a hero or heroine reaches.

It leads to the “how the hell will they get out of this?” situation. In the old “get your hero up a tree and throw rocks at him” way of creating a compelling script, this would be a “this next big rock will kill him” situation.

Seems to me that’s where you’re at right now.

The hero or heroine of the great stories always hits a seemingly dead end at the conclusion of Act Two, yet somehow manages to come through that and triumph. When that triumph comes, it brings something Campbell called an “elixir” that benefits the broader society. If you succeed in your job or your life with helpful and/or memorable works, you’ll do that. You will break through and triumph.

Take a Leap of Faith

Photo courtesy Rocking Rob

There’s one catch in the structure I teach—the hero or heroine has to have a transformative catharsis that usually begins in the middle of Act Two when he or she takes a “leap of faith” in fighting the battle that could result in losing “everything” (a job, a lover, a partner, whatever).

By taking that leap of faith, they learn they can succeed and they get over whatever internal battle that has been holding them back and keeping them from winning that bigger battle that the movie is about. Or your life.

Switch Off – Back On

I’ve dealt with and studied a lot of interesting people and things in my life. One thing I’ve found is that when I delve deeply into people’s stories—both successful and unsuccessful—at the “bottom” of their stories or a problem they have, I discover that they had hit a point earlier in their lives when they had “switched off” an aspiration or whatever and felt “there was nothing they could do about it.” I’m sure you’ve experienced things like this.

Once you’re looking back, however, it’s easy to see some times that you could have done something about it, and that you fell for an illusion, the illusion of the “deepest dilemma.”

Get in Touch with Your Inner Hero

So … all this is to say that, if you’re thinking about packing it in, if you think you can’t make it, you’re not being heroic. Maybe there is something within you that needs to be healed before you can make it. Maybe it’s an attitude, maybe you need more education, maybe you’re better suited doing something else in life that will make you happy, but you CAN do something.

You always can.

I have had periodic times when I cycle through the gloom and then come out realizing yet again that any current problem might just be an Act Two ending, that Act Three is right there waiting to be won, and that I just need to get on with the story. Each time, I try to make sure that within myself there isn’t something I need to fix that could be holding me down in the dilemma.

You might be at your life’s Act Two ending.

Don’t give up.

Don’t think it’s over.

It’s not.

Unless you think it is.

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