Dear Lola,

I am a 38 year-old failure in life. How can I overcome this disability? I have never held a job for longer than a year, and my job currently is in daily danger of being fired. I am a new travel agent, one of my many 'career paths' and daily I screw up (beyond belief) people's travel reservations. I have worked as a hotel housekeeper, at McDonald's, Kmart, Burger King...you name it. My problem is that I am not the brightest star in the sky. My intellectual light shines very dimly. But I need to work. I have kids. Help. How can I think better? I really need some advice. Please help me.

Sincerely,

Diana Frambach.

P.S. I hope you get this message because I don't know how to work email.

-- Anonymous, January 20, 2000

Answers

Hey Diana

Please don't think your a faliure because your not I promise - are you perhaps being a little hard on yourself?

I obviously don't know the extent that things are going badly for you at work but I had these thoughts as I read your letter.

1) If you think that you are going to mess up - it increases the likelihood that you will mess up . I know when things go wrong for me at work I sometimes panic and then things get worse. My advice to you would be to try to stay calm when taking reservations and don't be afraid to ask people to repeat things.

2) you might want to make a list of things you find difficult in your job and then discuss them with your boss (make a meeting so that you don't have any distractions whilst your talking) Ask for extra help or training if you are finding a particular piece of office equipment / office proceedure confusing .Let your boss / superior know. If he/ she doesn't know the the situation they might assume you are being willfully careless. If they know what's up they can help you.

3)Maybe your'e finding it hard to cope bringing up children and working at the same time that would make the best of us mess up. _ can your family / a friend help out by looking after the children for a few nights whilst you get some R & R?

4) Examine your strengths - every one has things they excel at (even you I promise). Maybe you need to re-evaluate your career and re- train. Could you study part time in order to get into a job you'd love rather than one you don't? A lot of people find they mess up in ther jobs because they are bored. Boredom easily leads to errors.

4)Have you considered counselling to renew your feeling of self worth. It is an incredibly easy pattern to start 'being down on yourself' which sometimes requires help to break.

Please try to be more gentle and loving to yourself : )

All the best,

Bali

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

Hi Diana:

A few things to consider:

1. There are plenty of people who don't "blossom" until later in life. Van Gogh didn't paint until his late twenties and Henry Miller never wrote a thing until his forties. He too, could not hold a job, never holding one longer than a few months at a time. He just needed to find his calling.

2. You should really look into ways to bolster your self-esteem. Not only does it play an integral part in your performance, but it is the foundation for a satisfying existence. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and you should really try to focus on your strengths and do what you can to accept and/or neutralize your weaknesses.

3. This comes to the point of the type of work you do. You may just have problems dealing with a fast moving environment with lots of variance in information. That has to do with thinking and personality styles, not intelligence. You should think about things that you do when you feel most comfortable and capable, and look for positions that have similar tasks and environments to the times when you are feeling this.

4. See if you can somehow reduce your fear of making a mistake. Hesitancy is often at the root of errors. Also, it a psychological fact that we have limitations to the number of things that we can process in our mind at once. If you are taking up some of these resources with feelings and thoughts of doubt, you are actually limiting the number of mental resources to do the job. Basically, you are trying to think of two things at once: your job and your doubts.

5. A recent study showed that truly incompetent people are far more likely to think they are doing a good job than are the people who are actually competent at their jobs. Competent people tend to think they are incompetent. This is a case of ignorance being bliss.

6. Remember that you don't have to measure up on somebody elses scale. Determine what makes you happy and fulfilled and concentrate on that. We don't all have to "make it," whatever that means. Believe me, if you look around yourself I think you will find that you already have made it in your own way.

Kelly.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

Diana,

Get in the habit of carrying around a spiral notebook with hard cardboard in back. Write the date at the top of the page, and write down anything you don't want to forget. If there is an employee manual, get some PostIt Notes out of the supply closet, or buy some, and mark any pages you use over and over again, and write down why that page is important.

Diana, you have to trust yourself. You're 38 years old, so you must be doing something right. Kurt Cobain was a millionaire before he was 30, and all that money didn't stop him from taking his own life. Money and success don't make your life less painful. You have all of the answers you need, if you just let yourself know this. There's more to life than just what we can see. Have faith in yourself, in your destiny, and in the destiny of your children.

Don't forget that you are irreplaceable. From what I understand, the most important thing a child needs is to know that someone wants them. It sounds stupid, but there are a lot of weathy parents who don't understand this. That's why no one is better suited to parent your children than you.

Do you have any friends who go to church? Churches have people who listen to problems all day. Maybe there's someone there who's helped someone in your situation. Maybe they'll know the right thing to say to you to let you know you're going to be fine.

And remeber, there isn't anything anyone else can do, that you can't do. My father is an immigrant who doesn't have a third grade English reading level, yet he scrimped and saved, and put 4 sons through college. You are capable of anything, if you just let yourself.

-- Anonymous, January 27, 2000

Diana,

I got your e-mail, and I'm replying in the forum, to keep my response honest. You're alone on a raft, with no land in sight. I'm not qualified to help you, however a message from a stranger may give you hope that one day you'll set foot on dry land. Or, like the song, at least be able to say, "I'm not alone in being alone."

Life on a raft is much more sane than the real world most of us live in. On a raft, there's no confusing the wake we leave behind, as we drift along, for our real selves. In the real world, we carry around the pain and suffering of our past. We don't know not to look for ourselves in our unhappy wake.

I will stop here, before I cross any BS line (if I haven't already).

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2000