Are You Clinging To The Myth About Job Security?

Job security is a myth that must be replaced by the reality of ability security! But the very reasons that make jobs insecure—obsolescence, automation, decentralization, company mergers and the like—are in themselves symptoms of progress and greater productivity, and therefore more security.

Changes can vary between painful and disastrous for the man who is unprepared for them, while the man who is prepared welcomes them for the opportunities they provide.

And the changes will be coming faster. Some of the Department of Labor statistics suggest that within six years one out of seven of us will be employed in a job category that does not exist at the present.

When a university teacher repeated that prediction to his class it was greeted with groans accompanied by bitter cracks such as “How can you study for a career if it is not going to be there?”

The teacher’s response: “You are not selling the label put on a chosen career, but the intelligence and talents of the man who chooses it. Your career label can change, but there will always be a demand for your abilities.”

We no longer have the luxury of believing that the college degree has us set up for life. Occupational security exists only when confidence in known abilities exists. It is only through being your best self that you can live up to your potentialities.

You are well on your way to performing at your best when every morning you can face the day filled with expectation instead of resignation.

The added factor is that what is best for you is best for the others around you. The successful man is not he who gets ahead by climbing over others, but he who gets ahead by producing the values that are of service to others.

Remember that you will not be the only one who is producing services of value. If no one is competing with you, if you never have to dig to find the best that is in you, you may never know just how good your best might be.

Never worry about the competition. Worry produces fear and hate, and fear and hate can take up so much room in your mind and so color your thinking that you cannot present your best side at all.

The Chinese proverb “A bit of fragrance clings to the hand that gives flowers” also goes for the verbal or written bouquet. Say something nice to someone, and a bit of its niceness will cling to you. The man who finds good things to say about others will find others saying good things about him.

And while one man saying a good thing to another is only one man expressing an opinion, when a lot of men begin saying good things about one man, you have got a consensus.

This is not “do-gooder” advice that I am thrusting at you. It is cold, practical business advice. When you speak well of and to your associates, they will think and speak well of you. Look for what is good in others, and they will look for what is good in you.

Let us carry that one step further. To repeat, the successful man is not the one who climbs over others but who is of most service to others. The higher you go, the more people you can serve, and to be practical about it, the more people you will have serving you.

It is rather discouraging when the average employee is not giving you their best abilities. Your own success is being slowed down by the inertia of employees who are living to punch the time clock on the way home to freedom.

This will not be the case if you have made a habit of recognizing that best that is in you, and the best that is in your associates. The best employer is the man with the best employees, and he doesn’t get them until he learns how to recognize and appreciate a good employee when he has one.

This valuable educations starts when you begin to look for the best qualities in your associates. Then when you get your promotion, you will be able to use their best qualities in support of your own, and the executive with that kind of support has at least twice the strength of the executive who stands alone.

In this world the real shortage is in the number of people who know how to use their best abilities for the advancement of themselves and others. When you prepare yourself for progress, you are preparing to double your earning power while doubling your hours of leisure. When you prepare yourself for a label, such as a title on the door, you are saying you want to leave things as they are.

Now which do you really want—all the fantastic wonders of the future, or the world pretty much in the condition your father has it now? The entire career to which you thought you had devoted your professional life may have been merely a preparation of your talents for this new job you were really born to do.