Look, everyone knows this old maxim, but I wonder do you ever think about it?

Consider this:

You are at University and your looking for a job, you need something to get you your food money or something of a bit of a life at least.

So you say in conversation (called networking), I'm training to become an entertainments manager. The Richard Rogers Partnership are my main target for instance.  You carry on, the company knows my value and respects me and is just one company I am seeking to work with.  Nobody actually knows you outside of this company or inside it for that matter. - You go on, I have buried myself in my work - (now then, your a first year student at a good university and having access to printers and the wonders of Microsoft Office, you print a business card with the words. "A. Taylor. Entertainments).

So you are in a bar chatting, you talk yourself up and present your credentials i.e. your business card.

I guarantee you will be accepted as an authority or practitioner of the entertainments industry.

Those, on the other hand, who have the lack of social skills and reluctance to push themselves forward, will be unnoticed. A nobody.

Unfair as it may seem, this is the reality of life.

Take mine for example, I am a specialist in customs practices (exports and imports) , Quality Management and Information Security, I have had teacher training, I have a BA in the Arts and BA in Laws and an HNC in Aeronautical Engineering  and an HND in Mechanical Engineering, great skill sets learned and practiced with success.

I had zero chance of going to University as a kid of eighteen because I didnt attend grammar school and failed my eleven plus AND Mum and Dad couldn't afford, for me to go and because they had the "bread" mentality of their children supporting the family money pot. So I had to work at school leaving age in a factory where, if I had stayed there would have probably killed me by now.

Bread Mentality - Everyone contributes to the happy home?

I joined the Royal Navy, achieved what I achieved and am proud to have served the late Queen, Elizabeth II.

I still sent money home to my mum and dad as they were in my first network and they despite the "bread mentality", helped me with my future challenges. However, in eighteen years outside of these institutions and despite my two degree achievements in life, I have experienced successes and failures and have fallen foul of jealous people who threaten your happiness because of their power, perceived greatness and because of their envious nature wont ever change and so myself and others like me must try and succeed elsewhere and where they will not because of the hatred they breed in their normal psyche.

Often times it all ends like a divorce and you go through five stages of grief. You know:

  1. Denial
  2. Anger
  3. Bargaining
  4. Depression
  5. Acceptance

Once your reach number five, if you have the belief in yourself and the resilience to recover, you start again; but, inevitably, if you are unlucky, you will meet another busy fool with power and it could start all over again.

This is because, and this is my fault. I did not rise in civilian circles the way I had successful rises in the services environment. In the former example, unless you are a qualified entertainments manager or architect or lawyer or accountant, the chances are you will not be listened to even though these professionals have no experience in the discipline that engendered by your associated and sometimes even vast experience, it about what they know and they don't know you.

So you need to know what the tricks are - so that you can play your cards right in life's plan.

  1. Keep a list of networked friends and when it comes to it, go to them in some way, don't plead poverty or need, because they will believe in you from what you have done, said or helped them with something in the past perhaps.
  2. Big yourself up - don't hold back on opportunities - make that "business card" for the future and target the job area you want to target whether it be setting up a new business in some capacity or finding that first position in the first or second year of University or in the job your are currently employed in.
  3. Manage your Curriculum Vitae or resume as they call it in the States - keep it to one page and massage the skills sets you have and can talk about and make them easy on the eye for the prospective reader/ interviewer.
Skills Sets to get that Job You want 

Get that business card made :

Play your cards right

Make it all work for you and target the area to make this all come true. Go for the highest educational and professional award that you personally can obtain when you are young. Make some money though and if you want to explore the World then go do it and get it out of your system and network some more in those circles and foreign lands.

Whether you are wanting to be something that will make you money and make your daily life happy with a balanced 'outside of work' ethic or as an architect, Chef or you may simply you have aspiration to run your own business, maybe as an entertainments manager you will manage the likes of any new oncoming Ed Sheeran or be the Simon Cowell of the new decade.

If you have sporting talent and have a wish to play football or Rugby for England; make people listen to you, take every opportunity to impress and keep yourself fit, sometimes you wont get on with the manager and you may be put out on loan so impress, impress and impress -but always do right by the people you have networked with  and when you get in the door, you will be listened you will be known and you wont end up with being "let go", weeping alone in stage 4 of the "five stages".

Sleep well with your dreams and others that seek to hurt you wont sleep at all and try to believe in yourself, karma, fate, tarot,  just plain luck or even the Sky Daddy himself.

Without belief you have no chance to make a good life work.

Finally, a simple degree achievement is just a door opener - so target those professions where people have to listened to you and be "one of the people they know" and then pay things you've learned forward as you get to my age.

If you do take my blog advice you wont experience the five stages at all, until it actually happens for real as a bereavement. Farewell for now and Happy Christmas one and all.

Poem  (To the Tune of the Traditional Christmas Carol)

non illegitimi carborundum

Silent night, lonely night.

When all seems lost, when all’s not right.

They found some hate, to bring to the show,

You brought them everything and then let you go

But they will sleep in unnatural peace

While you'll sleep in heavenly peace

Silent night, broken night.

Things won’t change, when nothing is right.

You will be stronger, though weeping alone,

They will be weaker, and crying at home

But you'll sleep in heavenly peace.

It’s they who will be fighting to sleep.