According to the 2004 U.S. Job Recovery & Retention Survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management and Career Journal, it’s a staggering 75%. Approximately 35% of all employees are actively job searching and another 40% are passively searching.

If it were in my power to grant happiness, good health, and financial security, they would be yours in abundance at this moment. However, that is not the case; but I can assure you that there is one who can - YOU! And, for some, therein lies the problem.

Having spent years researching street people (a/k/a homeless), I am forced to report that the ones I spent time with were right where they wanted to be. As Barry, a twenty-year veteran of the streets put it, "You see, it's like this. I'm the smarter of the two of us. I put you in charge. It's up to you, not me."

"People 'died' all the time.... Parts of them died when they made the wrong kinds of decision-decisions against life. Sometimes they died bit by bit until finally they were just living corpses walking around. If you were perceptive you could see it in their eyes; the fire had gone out...you always knew when you made a decision against life...The door clicked and you were safe inside-save and dead."    -Anne Morrow Lingdbergh

Since I have everything to gain by helping people and absolutely nothing to lose, I’d like to do so as soon as possible. But first we must get past the past. Everyone has had his or her share of back luck and heartache. Believe me, I can relate to the feeling that life hardly seems worth living at times.

Not that long ago I was a guest on a television talk show and out of the blue the host says, “Bob, believing in God and things like guardian angles comes easy for you. You’ve lived the good life. I mean, you’ve lived in mansions, owned your own airplane and traveled whenever and wherever you pleased. Most of us will never know these things.”

Without thinking of the consequences, I said, “That’s true. I have lived the good life. But we must remember that everyone has had their share of heartaches and disappointments. I came home and found my wife and little poodle dead from gunshot wounds; I’ve had five back operations, inoperable cancer, and I’m a Vietnam veteran whose aircraft was shot down twice in the first thirty days. So I’ve had my share of heartache, too. But accepting the fact that it's human nature to be more concerned with our own toothache than the plight of ten thousand helped me move on with my life."

“The happy and efficient people in this world are those who accept trouble as a normal detail of human life and resolve to capitalize it when it comes along”   -H. B. Lewis

“Up to a point a man’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movement and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of this life into the sort of thing he wishes to be… Everyone has it within his power to say this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow.”   -Louis L’Amour

Just reading these words, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow, gives me a feeling of power and optimism. I believe that plugging oneself into these positive receptacles whenever and wherever they find them is the key to a good, happy life. It’s also my belief that my new book, Toto Coelo is one of these receptacles.

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