So many outcomes seem out of our control. Decisions are made that change our companies, our jobs, our lives—decisions we feel helpless to affect.
But if you can accept some uncertainty and believe in yourself, there will always be alternatives available to you. You will always have a choice no matter what the situation.
At first the pictures were thrilling, and he called everybody around him to come see. Watching the local evening news, William Morales saw a close-up of a wall he personally had covered with graffiti. Then came the details. William’s brother was dying in a local hospital after getting in a shoot-out with police next to that wall.
William sat watching from his jail cell and cried.
And he found a purpose. Over the course of the next few months, another inmate taught him to read. Then William applied to take classes in prison to help him earn a high school degree, and then came job training.
His efforts earned him an early release, and he immediately began looking for ways to help the next generation of young men avoid the kinds of lives both he and his brother had led. William set his sights on a program to bring neighborhood children and police officers together, to forge positive relationships and bring role models into the children’s lives.
“When I grew up, I looked up to the drug dealers, the big boys. They were the people who were tangible to me. When I look back at my brother’s situation, at my situation, I see that a failure to communicate is what killed him. That’s why I dedicate myself to this.”
When he’s not working with children, William is back hitting the books. He’s working on a degree in criminal justice, with an eye toward law school. “I think that’ll reinforce my natural advocacy skills. I’d like to take my programs on a larger scale.”
When layoffs are announced, everybody is disappointed. But some people are overcome with woe while others are thinking of the next step. Self-image and acceptance of risk accounted for more than half of the reaction of workers who faced significant change in the workplace and were more important than the nature of the changes themselves.
Judge, Thoresen, Pucik, and Welbourne 1999