In 1933, during his inaugural address, Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

He went on to say, "Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men."

And, they were dark days indeed. 1932 was a difficult year. The Great Depression was in full swing, the number of unemployed reached 13 million and wages were 60% less than in 1929! One of the popular songs of the time was, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?". Then on September 12th a large crowd of unemployed in Ohio, near starvation because county authorities cut off relief, stormed local grocery stores and stole the food.

Roosevelt understood one of the fundamental paradoxes of survival: If we seek our own life, we lose it; if we lay down our life, we find it. In the business world, we find that those people that are willing to serve others will, in the long run, be successful. But it can seem like a risky strategy to take.

The concept of "locus of control" and "focus of purpose".

There are only four possibilities:

• The Victim: External Control/Internal Purpose.
  • Victims believe that they have no control. The control exists external to them. For example, following Katrina, many of the "victims" looked at it from the perspective of, "It was a hurricane! What was I supposed to do? I can't control the weather!".
  • Victims have an internal purpose. They may believe that they are in "survival mode" and "just looking out for number one" when fact, they are actually in "victim mode". I recall the image of a woman being interviewed following Katrina on CNN. She was standing hold the hand of her young daughter as she was being interviewed. She demanded, "When is George Bush going to bring me food and water?!" It stuck me as odd that she didn't say anything about her daughter.
• The Bystander: External Control/External Purpose.
  • They may want to help but they can't.
• The Exploiter: Internal Control/Internal Purpose.
  • When control and purpose are both internal, watch out! After Katrina we all were taken back by the folks that were breaking into stores and looting. It was as if they were saying, "Hey! I have the power at last to do what I've always wanted and it is all about me! I'm going to get my big screen TV. It's on sale!"
  • In the business world, people like this may look successful for a time but it won't last. Greed will become their downfall. In some respects, greed got us into our current economic mess. When they fall, the greedy fall hard.
• The Thriver: Internal Control/External Purpose
  • These are the people that thrive when times get tough. They recognize that they still have control. They are the ones, like Viktor Frankl, that will say, "No matter what happens, they can never take away my ability to chose how I'm going to respond." They are the ones that recognized after Katrina that they could make a difference in their local situation.
  • The folks that have impacted me the most were the ones that believed that it wasn't about them. I was forever changed by people that, despite losing nearly everything they owned, would give the shirt off their back (even if it was the last one they had) to meet the needs of someone else and make them feel loved and appreciated.
  • In business, people that strive to make other people successful, become the most successful of all.

Author Karen Salmansohn mentioned, when discussing the keys to surviving job insecurity and loss, that "If you ask depressing questions, you will get 100% depressing answers".

Therefore, I will conclude by posing a couple of positive questions for you to ponder:

• Who would you like to work with victims, exploiters or thrivers?
• How would your job change if you committed to keeping the perspective of a thriver?
• Realizing that you do have the power to impact your local situation, what can you do today to make someone else successful? Specifically?