April 1, 2003 – Don’t fall prey to the lazyweb bug and just use the auto-responder services of some Internet job sites to drive your career choices. Don’t relapse and go back to being a bobber in the lake, carried by whatever current drifts by. Target and target and re-target until you have selected companies showing the most promise. Go after them, and pursue them, until you land interviews with the decision makers at each.
Some years ago, I had the painful, but extremely beneficial experience of attending Dr. James Farr’s institute in North Carolina. Why painful? Because Jim forced me to look at perception and reality and understand the filters I was using to approach the world. These filters were being used to interpret the behavior of others towards me. Then, I reacted according to my emotional survival programming. Whew, heavy stuff!
Because I was wrongly filtering, and therefore misinterpreting most behaviors, I was reacting according to my “understandings” and approaching life with a cynical and negative manner. As I was going through the sessions, I was angry, frustrated and hated facing the reality of my fears. However, it was the most powerful and beneficial experience of my entire working career. Since that time, I have adopted a variation of FDR’s famous saying I once heard at a meeting somewhere. Here it is: Fear really means – False Evidence Appearing Real.