Losing Your Job in Style

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One of those things about life that's bittersweet is that endings do come, but when they do, you can be truly free to say and be who you really are.
I have a rare opportunity as a friend this week as opposed to being an “expert.” A friend of mine lost a job, so it’s time to step in to help like a buddy does. It's not a time for sciency stuff and "how-to" advice. That can all come later, but for now, we can all learn from this primal experience men have.
On first glance, my friend is utterly unphased, although underneath the outer experience, I’m sure he feels a little on edge about what to do next. It’s unnecessary to deal with the touchy-feely emotional stuff anyway, knowing what you likely know by now about the circuitry of masculine instinct if you've been following along in my materials.
We don’t need emotional processing and hugs nearly as much as we need answers, a plan, connections, and a spurring to action – or sometimes even a full-on “kick in the pants” as an old journalist friend once told me.
We’ve all been there – whether we were fired, quit a job because it just wasn’t right for us, or at least were thinking seriously about quitting a job. Downsizing, layoffs, the creepy politics of corporations in which we sometimes don’t know where we stand with the boss, or what financial pressures the company is under – it’s not the fact of the matter that bothers us as men so much as the UNCERTAINTY of whether the resources of labor we put into an effort will lead to financial reward and stability.
 
How to End Things
One of the frequent topics I notice coming up among men is the concept of "how to end things." That's the point of uncertainty. Do we just "chuck it all in the garbage" and start fresh? Do we try extra hard to keep the job that's threatened? Do we try to find exactly the same kind of position? Do we move or relocate? Or stay put, "circling the wagons" while waiting for the economy, and our fortunes, to cycle back around to prosperity?
The operative concept here is that of "sunk losses."  That's the thing that always impairs men - that they have labored on something and been taught ever since we were small boys that the amount of work effort we put into something is going to be the amount of reward and happiness we get back. It's all an investment. Everything is an investment in life.
When we make bad investments - whether in a job, a corporation, a boss, or a woman, it more than burns when the investment doesn't "perform" - when it doesn't give back in equal measure to our effort.
And so many men find themselves frozen in their tracks because of this - self-intimidated out of one of the prime feeders of masculinity - your freedom to decide, to act, and to live on your own terms.
I think of the old second installment of the Star Wars film series - the time that mercenary Han Solo, the ultimate science fiction symbol of the entrepreneurial career man - is frozen, encased in "carbonite" by his enemies.
Only in the case of your own private carbonite, the enemy is YOU, and your seduction by the masculine illusion called "sunk losses."
You don't have to defeat the concept of sunk losses in order to quit things. You only need to learn the lesson that there really is an equally valuable resource you get back from walking away from them: the educational experience - the skill - built from the masculine initiation that their crisis CAUSES.
 
You Will Learn Through the Years
One of the things I notice about my friend is the generational difference between being a man in one’s twenties versus thirties versus forties (he’s barely in the latter.)
When I was in my twenties and changed jobs, it was this terrifying, harrowing experience. You’re just out of school and you’ve been fed all your life the illusion that hard work equals an exact amount of reward for the labor. You’re just starting out and have no savings. You don’t know what in a world a guy does to switch positions (for one, you have no business contacts yet to solicit for other opportunities.)
It’s just you against the world. And it’s a major initiation in life.
Underline that word, initiation.
Somehow you get through it, settle into something a little better of a career fit, and you swear you will never let yourself go through that wasteland period of life again.
Ah, but you will. Your thirties eventually bring that along, if even in the form of your own dissatisfaction at how your life is going.
This time around you may not be fired, but YOU want to fire your boss or your firm.
You swore you would never go through that uncertainty again, but you feel pulled toward something much bigger than you’ve ever considered doing before.
You dabble in exploring other positions, places and people, and while you might not be quick to take the plunge – sooner or later you will have to.
Maybe you are even fired before you can quit – you actually have the Observing Ego I talk about in the MindOS Mastery Course to recognize that others in the office “just know” you have already mentally left the position.
Especially the boss. He has a really advanced Observing Ego or he wouldn’t be doing what he does.
 
The Last Straw
Barely edging into your forties it may happen one more time – the yearning for something even greater than before, more focused on your exact needs and nature than ever before. You might even be thinking of becoming an entrepreneur.
You feel you’ve paid your dues, but have no illusions anymore about your rewards exactly equaling your labor efforts and resources.
As you consider yet another transition, or go through an unforeseen downsizing, you feel a brief sense of dread, or shock as in years past, but something new is now in place and you may not have a name for it. You feel an unexpected calm this time, and that surprises you.
Maybe for the first time, you see utterly no downside to the downsizing, the firing, or the urge to quit because by now you truly have what I call your “masculine mission” we cover together in the Mature Masculine Power Program.
When I was in my twenties and it happened for the first time, I couldn’t have ever guessed at what really matters in what you do for a living, and who you are as a man. There are twin concepts that tie together so perfectly, and are so ancient in the species, it is not a random happenstance, or “luck,” or even your own experience or cleverness.
It’s so ancient, automatic and built into your very instincts that no matter who you are, you can absolutely COUNT on these forces seeing you through – each and every time you go through a career crisis.
It’s such an exciting and powerful concept I can barely contain myself – and so I built it right into the Mature Masculine Power Course as one of the foundations of that program.
 
"Get Initiated," and Win
It goes like this:
Just like a woman’s body is meaningful to her, and helps define her sense of self and identity, your career livelihood means the same to YOUR identity.
Yet when it is threatened, to the “uninitiated man,” it feels as if your very life is in danger when your career is in danger.
Luckily our forebears knew about this, and for eons have had formal “initiation ceremonies” which ushered boys into the world of men.
They underwent such rituals, experienced fear – even terror – and emerged on the other side as men with a name, a title, the tools of mature masculinity, and a mission to follow for the rest of their lives.
They were given a specific ROLE, perfectly suited to their nature, their personality, their experience, and their natural talents.
Today we don’t have such formal rituals anymore. And it shows. Men are confused and don’t know what to do in the thick of a dismal economy.
Enter the Mature Masculine Power Program.
 
You Are All You Need To Get Started
When I was in my twenties, all the things I thought would see me through in my career had failed me – the degree, the diploma, the teachers, the idea of the corporation as surrogate father – none of that was real or lasting.
The strange and unsettling insight that the only thing I could rely on was ME, ME, ME took a couple decades to morph from terrifying to freeing. In fact it is the only way I would want it.
It’s the fact that without you having to do anything at all – any training program, any advisor, any special connections, none are needed – you have a built in masculine instinct to pursue this ancient process of finding just the right role, title and what can only be described as a MISSION for yourself.
One suited only to you and for which only you in all the world can deliver on it as you do.
The key is to learn that the “failures” and “wastelands” of life are absolutely necessary “initiating experiences” in and of themselves. That without them you cannot grow, cannot discover your mission, clarify it and pursue it as a man.
My friend more than knows this at a gut level. He knows there is a science to it all – that it can be analyzed with precision, deconstructed, planned, strategized, and executed on in the same way you know how to drive a car.
Within 24 hours, he knew he was going to move out of middle America and into NYC. Doesn’t know what his new “position” will be, but that’s not necessary. He already knows his mission instead, and the positions, revenue, benefits and perks ALL follow THAT.
You don’t need to worry about this, EVER. Because it’s already hard-wired into you as a set of instincts. If you care to learn the precise logical steps, methods, processes and principles of mastering the skills of finding, initiating and executing on one’s mission as a man, well that took years of development to build into the training course I’ve made for you, called the Mature Masculine Power Program.
 
A Team is All You Need to Keep Moving Upward
It's something every man needs to do once he's dicovered his mission in life. He really can't do it alone.
Part of the point of initiation into mature masculinity is not only that you have a role in society, a title and a set of tools as a man, but that you ARE after all part of that society. You have a role, but it fits into the overall function of the TEAM of males.
Even to the ancients, the team would be on a hunt together while the individual hunters may hide in the trees in isolation for a time.
Individual men may exhibit valor on the battlefield unmatched by another individual, but he would not be recognized, successful, or even have the opportunity if he was not on the team called the army, or the village warriors, or the tribal defense.
We need isolation, solitude, and individual accomplishment as men and yet we need the surrounding context of a team to belong to.
Enter our most valuable and inexpensive service: the membership of the Men's Psychology On Demand - a set of forums and weekly two hour LIVE phone calls with my staff and myself that thousands of men participate in, support, exchange ideas, and "team up" on with the same set of instincts we have as men for eons.
Go there NOW, and take your mission beyond just getting started. Take it to solid upward progress, security, and power.