Unemployment 'Benefits': Surviving Unemployment With Attitude

November 10th, 2009 |

If you’re one of the ten-percent-or-more of the developed world that is unemployed due to the worldwide recession, you may not have realized that there are notable unemployment benefits far beyond claiming checks.

Don’t get me wrong. Having an empty bank account kills your security. Having potential employers tell you that you are not worth hiring kills your self-confidence. Sitting around wondering what you could be doing with your life kills your spirit.

What you might not realize is that it’s not only possible to survive unemployment — it’s possible to thrive. In fact, it’s possible to be without a job, but not be unemployed.

You see, ‘unemployment’ is more than just a check-mark next to the box on the form at the local welfare office. It’s an attitude. If your spirit, security, and self-confidence have been stomped on by your lack of productive activity, lack of usefulness, and lack of income, it’s time to change those elements in your life by creating your own personal supply of unemployment benefits.

Productivity
Everyone has the potential to be productive. Productivity is commonly measured by corporate standards these days — your effect on some huge conglomerate’s bottom line — but that’s a trap. Productivity simply means this: did you do something today that brought value to someone else’s life?

If you sit on your butt and watch reruns and read forums and complain about your life, you’re not productive, and you know it. Find someone that you can help, and help them. It doesn’t matter if you’re helping your neighbor dig fence holes, or helping someone ignorant in a subject to better understand it by posting in a valuable manner on a forum online.

When you bring value to other people, they tend to want to reciprocate. More importantly, your spirit — by which I mean, your inner assessment of your own value — improves. Unemployment benefits like checks and job training can’t do that for you.

Usefulness
This is different than productivity in a key way. It’s possible to be useful, but not productive, by knowing valuable things and not sharing or using that knowledge. It’s possible to be productive but not useful by doing ‘busy work’, burger flipping, or creating things that no one will ever see.

In order to be useful, you have to apply understanding. Many people feel useful in discussions they have online, because they are applying their understanding of something to a discussion. It’s rarely productive, but it’s useful.

You can’t see the unemployment benefits like the improvement your own feelings of usefulness by helping a neighbor dig post holes — unless you have a deep understanding of that particular art that will actually make the job more efficient or otherwise better.

Income
Of utter importance in the struggle against unemployment is to understand that income does not mean a job. It doesn’t even necessarily mean recurring, predictable income. In today’s environment, that’s becoming a luxury rather than a rule.

In order to create income, you COULD do any number of short-term things like sell items on Ebay or Craigslist, or contact temp agencies and pray that something stuck.

But by far the best route to take is to combine productivity and usefulness with your income creation. Find someone that has a problem, to which your personal understanding has a direct and useful application. Offer them your productivity in assistance with that problem, in exchange for money. Seeing offers like this come through is something you just can’t get from a job — it’s strictly one of the best unemployment benefits there is.

If you happen to be a liberal arts major, for example, you can often find work writing, creating graphics, or generating other forms of technical or creative art at places like Odesk.com, Elance.com, or Craigslist.com. The work will be piecemeal, at first, but places like Odesk give you the opportunity to get a reputation for your work, which will lead to more work.

If you’re skilled with a specific form of labor, like welding or automotive maintenance, you can start with Craigslist — post a “work wanted” ad, and search the “help wanted” ads. Again, you probably won’t get a long-term job — but everything you do that combines productivity, usefulness, and income will break you of the stigma of unemployment.

Once you’re free of that looming aura of fear, doubt, and helplessness, your attitude will change. Ironically, it will become easier to find a job with your new outlook — perhaps the most startling unemployment benefits of all!

Articles on this site have been acquired from a variety of sources. No content on this site should be considered financial or legal advice.

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