Staying on Top When Your World's Upside Down

“When something ends – a job, a relationship, one’s good health – you just don’t stand by and wait for something good to happen. You can’t depend on luck or anybody else to pull you out of the situation. You must use your own efforts to push a new door open, kick it open if you have to, using that setback as an inspiration to move ahead and make a new beginning for yourself.”
Arthur Pine: One Door Closes, Another Door Opens

The miners came to Grand Canyon looking for gold and jewels. Instead they found asbestos, uranium, and a little bit of copper. Most of them went away broke and broken-hearted. The door to unimaginable wealth had been closed on them. But a select few opened another door. They had empty bunkhouses for miners who were no longer there, mules to carry up the gold they never found, and one of the most spectacular views on earth. They opened the door to the tourism industry and became fabulously successful.

One of the doors that has closed on millions of people is the employee entrance of their former employer. Most of them, not being independently wealthy, must find a new door to open, or to kick open. There are two essential steps to finding and opening that other door: perception and action. You have to see the opportunity and then, more important, take action to pursue it. Here are some of the questions to ask when a door closes on you:

What resources do you have that can be redirected? Don’t just focus on physical resources, include personal resources such as your education and ambition.

What needs are there, or can be created, toward which you can deploy those resources?

What dreams have you been putting off due to the requirements of making a living?

What actions can you take to get started right now?

What obstacles will you need to overcome?

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

Alexander Graham Bell