Put One Foot In Front Of The Other

It’s the Christmas season with snow, holiday decorations, lights, carols, and layoffs,

The end of the year isn’t all fun and Christmas games, but so what. Even if you don’t celebrate the Christmas spirit, you have to admit it’s definitely a mixed bag of extreme highs, and extreme lows. Some are happy, some are angry, some are just waiting to go home and get out of the rat race for a little while – either by choice or due to some unfortunate circumstances. The latest round of layoffs usually add a dash of misery to the holiday season, What a great time to roll these spirit crushing announcements out. It’s been a common trend year after year no matter what the current state of politics happens to be on any given year. If you’re just starting your career – get used to it. It happens to be a fact of work life for many.

So what do you do? If everything is going great in your world then enjoy it. If you just got walked out the door – have a christmas cookie. It’s the holiday season, who can get upset with all these festive lights and Christmas music? Even old Ebenezer Scrooge didn’t layoff Bob Cratchit just before Christmas. All Bob really had to do was bring his own bucket of coal into work if he wanted to turn the heat up. That sounds reasonable enough by today’s standards.

Well, well, well, old Ebeneezer doesn’t sound so bad nowadays, and Jacob Marley, well he sounds like he had way too much free time.

As every door shuts behind you another opens – or something to that effect. Maybe you’re tired of going in one door and out the other. Think of Christmas as a time to be thankful for what you do have going for you, and maybe start thinking about what’s really important in life. No matter how bad things are – there’s always someone who has it worse. That’s kind of depressing, but I do think about that now and then. Maybe you’ve got everything you need right in front of you and you don’t even realize it. If you didn’t lose your job this festive season, but you secretly kind of wish you had – you’re not alone. Lots of people think about changing their current job situation every day. This could be an indication that you might be looking for something a bit more exciting and fulfilling to do with your talent, your skill. Everyone has talent, everyone has skill – not everyone has discovered theirs yet, but it’s there. If you’re breathing, you’ve got potential. If you think you’re too old, then what do you consider the upper limit in age?

I’m thinking there might not be one.

This Christmas season remember you somehow made it this far, you must be doing something right. Be kind and helpful to others – if you can. Kindness is a rare commodity, being civil to others is a good start. Some of the best advice can be found in stop animation Christmas Classics – As Kris Kringle sings in “Santa Claus is coming to town” “Put one foot in front of the other” and soon you are walking out the door! Don’t take that too literal. Just remember that if you decide to start a new career, start your own business, update or add new skills – you have to start one step at a time. I relate everything in life to hockey, so if you expect to skate, expect to fall a few times….but get back up as quickly as you can.

Christmas isn’t about getting presents, or shopping, or office parties. It’s about hope. Hope is great, but I prefer “Trying” You can hope all you want for a better future, but if you don’t try, you wont get there. Trying is hard,

but who said you can’t have fun while you’re at it?

Sometimes a hot cup of cocoa and a Christmas cookie can be a great motivator.

Merry Christmas


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