Glen Gould delivers motivational job-search advice to a Job Seekers group, using Proverbs and ants as a metaphor for hard work. He urges listeners to stay motivated, work constantly, help others, and write down goals before bed.
Chapters
Well, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. That's right. How is everyone today? Woo-hoo! There we go. Now we're talking, right? Yep. Well, I am so excited to be here at Job Seekers. I get to speak here 4 or 5 times a year. How many of you have ever seen me speak before? Right? Okay, so we didn't drive off everyone. That's great. This morning I want to talk to you a little bit about ants. And so I've prepared a— I like to go through the scriptures and find something that applies to what we want to talk about today. And so this scripture came to mind, and it is Proverbs 6:6-8. Go to the ant, O sluggard, consider her ways and be wise. Without having any chief officer or ruler, she prepares her bread in the summer and gathers her food in harvest. Will you join me in prayer? Father God, thanks today for these folks that are in this room, for this opportunity to be with them, and for the opportunity to just share ideas and enrich lives. Lord, I pray that today the words that I would speak would be the words you would have me speak. That they would fall on the ears that are open and hearts that are willing, that we will together move forward and enrich everyone's lives, that we would leave here today encouraged and equipped to be successful in the job searches that we are going through right now. And Lord, we just ask that you would put blessing on everyone in this room, and especially those who are seeking, and this ministry that Dave is running. In your name we pray, amen. So, um, I don't know, when I looked at that, it was kind of funny because I fell on this verse at a particular time where I was having a little bit of trouble getting motivated. I, um, I know that most of you here are seeking employment. I have news for you: you're always seeking employment. Every day is a new day. Every day is a new opportunity to find new ways to be successful and to bring value to the people you're working with. So whether it's you're currently employed and seeking that next opportunity or whether you're seeking a new opportunity here today, do not be discouraged because it's an ongoing process. But I was having a little bit of trouble getting motivated. I'm going through a little bit of a change in my life right now. As Dave mentioned, I'm with the Newton County Chamber. At least until the end of this month. I am moving along in my career. I've decided to move out of the chamber business and focus more on my Y Strike Clean pickup and delivery service that we built a couple of years ago, and it's doing extremely well. And so I'm kind of in that funk. It's kind of that middle period. You ever been there before where you kind of like, you got a job, but you don't have a job? And I'm really not— sometimes I'm just not proud of the way I'm performing because, hey, there should be some urgency here, right? There's some work to be done. Do you feel that way sometimes in your job search? You know, it's, I don't know, I just can't seem to find urgency. Well, I was intrigued by ants. And the reason I was was the scripture, of course. But I want to give you a little bit of context on the scripture real quickly. First of all, it comes following some verses regarding being a good steward. It talks about lending, be responsible to yourself. Don't— I don't know if you've heard those verses before, but it's never a beggar nor a lender nor borrower be. Uh, talk about stewardship, to give rather than to lend money. If somebody comes to you and they need something, then in the Bible it suggests you might as well just give it. And I don't know if you've ever listened to Dave Ramsey or not, but he actually says if you've ever loaned money to people, um, you really given it to them. You know, if they give it back, that's a different story. And then, uh, it talks about acting now. And this was very interesting to me. It said, give not sleep to thine eyes. And in that particular verse, it's talking about settling an issue with a brother and/or a sister in the Lord. But what really struck me was, is I thought about, well, we've all seen ants, right? You drop a little crumb on the ground at a picnic party and all of a sudden, a couple seconds later, you see a bunch of them. Here they come. And one of them is always first. And he's always trying to grab that chip or whatever it is by himself and just drag it along. And sometimes they're successful. They're very industrious little beasts. And when they need help, they get help, right? They work in tandem. They rarely rest. This amazed me, but depending upon who you believe on the internet, by the way, Let me be the one to break the news to you. Everything on the internet isn't true. If you didn't know that, yeah, I'm sorry to kind of ruin that for you, but, uh— Hey, I saw on Facebook the other day Abe Lincoln said, "Don't believe everything you read on the internet." Exactly! He did, he did, no doubt. And we all know Abe was there when it was invented, just like, um, that other guy. But I'm gonna go. No politics this morning. Not likely. But anyway, so the interesting thing is ants rarely sleep. Depending upon what type of ant, they've done studies. Do you know that the typical worker ant sleeps in 8-minute segments twice a day? 8-minute segments twice a day. Can you imagine? Now, some of you are doing the same thing because you can't sleep, right? You're frustrated, you're worried, you're troubled, all those things, and you lay in bed and boy, you're really tired until your head hits the pillow. And so we're going to talk a little bit about how to overcome that too before we're finished today. But if you want to believe on the, on the fire ant side, they say that they, they make it through the day with several power naps of, again, 8 minutes. So it's an interesting thing. They— if you don't sleep much, you have a lot of time to work on stuff. Right? Just for what it's worth. And the other thing is that all but one really is in the business of serving. You realize that they all serve the queen, the leader. So we'll come to that in a second. So I'm going to share with you a couple of things that you ought to just take from the ant, first of all. Prepare to carry a tremendous load. Now, you might be carrying a tremendous load because you're seeking a position right now and things are getting difficult and challenging and all that. But the truth is, we all have a tremendous load to carry. Every single day, it's our job to represent ourselves, our family, our Lord in society and to be willing and able to be above and beyond the troubles that we're facing right now. Be willing to carry a tremendous load. You also need to work together to accomplish things. That's what this group's about. If you— do we have any first-timers today? One? Okay. For what it's worth, we probably have more than that, but you know what? There are people I can ask if they raise their hand. I could ask them if they wanted free money and they won't raise their hand. There are those people, right? I didn't ask that question. But anyway, that's what this group is all about, is working together to carry this load for the greater good for everybody. You know that our whole society is better off if we're all employed. Right? We all have money to spend, we all have— we have the ability to pay our bills, we have the ability to invest in our community, and we have the ability to give as well. And I'm going to encourage you not to rest for extended periods of time. And what that means is, is that When you kind of take in the middle of the day to go do something that's a personal issue. Yeah, those things have to be taken care of, but isn't the middle of the day the prime time to be talking to people who are working that might be able to hire you? I mean, I used to have a, I used to have a trainer who taught me, Glen Gould, the thing you should never do is set the phone down on the receiver. Now we all have different phones now, right? I mean, they don't sit on the receiver, but imagine if you will Just don't ever set your phone down. It should always be working. You're either calling somebody or researching something online or whatever the case may be. You should be working constantly at the task of finding a position or at helping somebody you know find a position. Now, that can be just as valuable to you because here's the news: you need wins. When you're in a search like this, you need to win every once in a while. You need to get that good call. You need to get that good email. You need to, you need to finally get through that gatekeeper to that person who has the ability to make a decision. Those small wins start to add up. Well, a win for somebody else is a big win for them, and it's a big win for you because now they are more engaged. And not only that, you know it can be done. So helping others is very, very important. And then I want to encourage you that you have to serve one master. And it's interesting because the Bible— if you're not one of those who reads it a lot, and I wish I read it more, but I have made it through it more than once— it's an interesting thing. Most of the verses in the Bible, you can take them to all sorts of different things in life. So when it says serve one master in the Bible, of course, you know, we're talking about to serve God, correct? But also, if you're working for someone, you should serve them exclusively. Now, who do we all work for in this room? At some point in time, we work for ourselves, correct? You're the CEO of your own personal services corporation. You need to serve that master properly. Would you hire you? Based on the work you're doing to find your job, would you hire you? Don't tell me about your skills. Everybody's got skills. Don't tell me how great you are with people. Everybody's got great people skills. Don't tell me how much you care. Everyone cares. But when no one's looking and it's all up to you, can you be counted on? Would you hire you? Something to think about. Be a good servant to you. As a master. So I want to encourage you to think about the ant today as you're going through your day. Are you industriously working as much as you can? Work harder than you think you have to. One of the biggest blessings we have in this country is that things come pretty easily to us. So when we're in a situation like we're in looking for position, it's, it's, it's Dennis that's coming, "Wait a second, I don't get this. Life's pretty good in this country." Why am I struggling right now? It shouldn't be this way. I shouldn't have— nonsense. Nonsense. Nobody owes you anything except for you. Work harder than you think you have to. Help others achieve their goals. I'm telling you right now, one of the best things that will happen if you help somebody in this room today figure out how to get to somebody or connect with somebody, do you know that when I stand in front of a group, I get 10, 15, 20 times what I give, and I try to give a lot, because what I get is great ideas. "Oh wow, I hadn't thought of it that way." When I get to talk with you and see the things that you're going through, I— you know what? I met you and I didn't even know that that existed. I can apply that in my life here. It's amazing if you'll help others. Don't rest. And I've written here, write down your goal at night. Your brain has an amazing power. Your whole body does, but one of the great things about sleep is this: When you go to sleep, your brain rests, recharges, and solves the problems you give it at night. So if you go to sleep troubled with a bunch of problems, what'll happen is you'll be restless all night long, you won't sleep very well. So if you've got a lot on your mind, here's what you need to do: write down one before you go to bed. And it should be something that you're going to do tomorrow. And you should write it in the present tense. I'm going to ace that interview tomorrow. I'm going to make that phone call tomorrow. I'm going to meet the right person tomorrow. Whatever it may be, write it down. One thing. Let your mind work on one thing while it's asleep. You'll be amazed at the progress you'll make. And I want to once again urge you to serve one master. And that one master right now for you And I'm not discounting God because God is the master we're all serving. Please don't get me wrong. But that one master for you today is a job search. That one master for you today is you. Serve your job search with dignity and honor and with hard work, and I assure you, it'll shorten quite a bit. And I thank y'all for listening to me this morning. Hope you have a great day, and I hope I can help. Alright.
