How the unemployed stay unemployed because they do not try.

If you want to catch fish - maybe you need to go fishing.

I had coffee with one of the most successful businessmen that I know in our region. He told me an astonishing story about unemployment.

He said he was asked to speak to a group of local people from a needy neighbourhood about the problem of local unemployment. When he arrived, there were about 50 people assembled to see what solutions he could propose.

He asked how many of them were unemployed. Virtually all hands went up. 

He then asked how many of them had actually knocked on a door that week to ask for work? 

No hands went up. Not a single one.

He then sighed and shared with them a simple plan. He said they could all come by his office where he or his personnel would help them compile a decent curriculum vitae. With this, he said, they were to then go and knock on just one door a day for the next week - and ask for work. After that they could all meet again and see how things had gone.

At the end of a week, the promised meeting took place. This time only about half of the original number was present. The rest didn't bother to show up.

My friend then asked how many of them had succeeded in getting a job that week.

All hands went up.

Every single one, who had bothered to try, had landed a job that week!

He marveled as much at this story as I did myself. We, who are capitalists by nature, simply cannot understand how unemployment is driven by the weak desire to make decisive effort. 

Afterwards it seemed a lot like fishing to me. Life has taught me that there are three kinds of fishermen. 

The first kind of fisherman has a lot to eat because he is up early and goes home late - and puts a lot of effort into fishing, both during good times and bad times. When things go badly, he does not get overly discouraged. He simply keeps on trying until things get better.

The second kind of fisherman has little to eat because he only goes fishing when he feels like it, or when he has a notion that the fishing will be easy that day. 

The third kind of fisherman is always starving because he simply does not fish at all. He is always telling you that the fishing is poor this time of year. The weather is too bad to go out. The sea is too dangerous. Or that he has tried already and the fish did not bite then, so why should they be biting now? 

He will also tell you that he doesn't have any bait, and it is too late to find some now because the tide is not right and the rocks are submerged. Often he will even not go fishing because he will tell you that the best fishing spots have already been taken by other fishermen. Sometimes he will even be resentful towards them, and blame them for his own misery.

For these, and and a hundred other reasons, the starving fisherman will remain starving because he will always be able to rationalize why staying home and doing nothing is the only thing that he can do. 

A wise man, who had experienced both wealth and extreme poverty, once wrote in his autobiography that when you do not have work, you already have a job: It is now your single and sole job to rise every morning and spend six days of every week from morning till night to look for work. That has become your job! Look for work the way you would look for treasure. Put your energy and enthusiasm into it. Fix your appearance and polish your presentation. 

Do what it takes to keep doing your job of finding employment until you have employment - even if it is a bad job to start with. Even the smallest minnow can become the bait by which to catch a bigger fish later on.

Become a fisherman again by spending all your waking hours by the water's side. 

Image: Wikipedia.