You Gotta Wanna!

Since my last few blog posts, I’ve been thinking a lot about the question: “What determines if a person is unemployed or disabled?” This can consist of many factors: difficulty finding adequately-paying work after being laid off from a job; the often subtle discrimination due to race, economic level, appearance, gender, weight, age, criminal record, beliefs, lifestyle, physical, psychological or mental impairment because of abnormal conditions due to birth, environment, illness or injury; etc. But in spite of all these factors, some people who have lots of things going against them still succeed in life. What’s the deciding factor? You Gotta Wanna!

Much scholarly research has gone into the issue of what is sometimes called the “welfare trap” or the “poverty trap.” Various factors contribute to this: socioeconomic group, injury or illness, lack of education and more. In the article “Poverty Traps and Safety Nets” two professors at Syracuse and Cornell universities examined this question, and concluded: “The crucial insight of this emerging literature is that substantial vulnerability to poverty does not imply that people necessarily suffer poverty, just that they face real and costly risk, and that they likely behave accordingly.” In simple layman’s language, because you’re in a certain statistical category, you will likely be poor (or disabled – the two often overlap), but it isn’t necessarily so. You can break out of this trap!

Notice the phrase, “…they likely behave accordingly.” People tend to conform to the stereotype image they have in their mind of how those in their “category” are supposed to behave. This is the way we learn as a child, by mimicking others. The problem with this stereotypical behavior is that it results in passive, “go with the flow” living. To break out of these stereotypes, you have to start thinking and acting differently… creatively.

For example, a person may have a mental or personality trait such as dyslexia or anger that limits his/her ability to find and keep gainful employment. Another person may be of below average intelligence, or hasn’t completed a high school education, and thus is unable to find a decent job. Someone else may have had a brush with the law such as drug possession or shoplifting while a teenager, and now 15 years later is discriminated against in finding a good job. But…

People change! That person with dyslexia may have been labeled as unemployable due to this disability, but after trying unsuccessfully to get a job after high school decides to try attending the local community college, gets “turned on” reading Greek mythology in his Ancient Civilization course, starts studying the Greek language and eventually gets a Ph.D. in the Greek and Latin Classics. This may seem utterly impossible, but I know one such person with dyslexia: by the time he graduated from high school, he could hardly read, but he eventually earned a masters in Greek and Latin Classics, a Ph.D. in Theology, and went on to become a seminary professor.

The high school dropout with an IQ of 90 might take an aptitude test and find out she’s good at visual arts, so she takes some evening art classes and begins producing pottery and paintings. She sets up her own studio and becomes a well-known local artist.

The teenager who got caught with illegal drugs can’t find a decent job, works at a burger joint, gets laid off and goes on unemployment. This cycle continues for ten years, getting hired then fired and living on unemployment… around and around and around. Finally he gets fed up with this cycle, finds a lawyer who takes his case  pro bono (for free) and has his criminal record expunged. He goes on to be trained as an auto mechanic and is hired by the local Cadillac service department.

A beautiful young woman with a handsome fiance was in a car accident and injured her lower spine. The doctors did what they could – a couple surgeries and therapy – but finally they said she would never walk again. Her fiance leaves her. After sitting at home in a wheelchair for a few months, she decides to try physical rehabilitation. The rehab specialist sees she has the spunk to work at it, and after several months of hard effort at strength-building she is on her feet and taking a few steps by herself. She decides to go to university for a degree in logistics and at the same time take an intensive one-year course in rehabilitation of disabled people. She graduates with a university diploma and certificate in rehabilitation. She’s one of my best students, and I’m very proud of her!

The overweight girl who had a hard time finding friends developed a low self-image, so she kept on overeating to make herself feel better. But when the scales hit 500 pounds, she didn’t feel so good about herself. She was unable to get a decent job although she passed all the aptitude tests, so she got pregnant, had a baby and went on welfare. At last, she saw what she was doing to herself, joined the YWCA and started exercising and dieting. She lost 165 pounds, improved her figure and her attitude, studied programming for two years and got a well-paying job with a tech company.

All of these people were labeled “unemployable” or “disabled” for various reasons, but each of them defied the statistics saying that people in a wheelchair, or with dyslexia, or below-average IQ, or a criminal record, or overweight can’t hold a decent job. Two are individuals I’ve known personally, the others are composite sketches of characteristics I’ve seen in various people, some very close to me.

The government statistics say such people will hardly ever be able to function in normal society, so they are considered disabled. In my wife’s studies to become a vocational rehabilitation counselor, she learned that if a person is unemployed for over six months due to injury or illness, the probability of ever going back to work is less than 50%.  But YOU ARE NOT A STATISTIC! You’re not a mathematical average of a certain segment of the population, you are a person, a real, live human being with a will, worth and dignity! How do you break out of this “statistics trap”?

YOU GOTTA WANNA!

With all of these persons, the deciding factor is that they made up their minds to change: “You gotta wanna!” You must personally come to the decision point in your life where you choose to make a real life for yourself. When people are labeled “disabled” they begin to see themselves as passive, someone who is on the receiving end, who sits back and lets others take care of them. They fall into stereotype thinking. Recall the international symbol for a disabled person: a stick figure sitting back passively in a wheelchair. But a professor and an artist have changed that symbol: “Gordon Becomes First College in the Nation with New Disability Icon, Thanks to Philosophy Professor.” This new symbol shows the stick figure leaning forward, with its arms actively propelling the wheelchair forward. Get the idea? It breaks the stereotype image!

Statistics show that in Spain 57 percent of those under the age of 25 are unemployed. Similar statistics say the same for young people in Greece and Italy. These aren’t all lazy or dumb people, many have university educations and for months  have searched for a job in their profession. Many of them stay at home and draw social benefits, but some of them make up their minds to move out, go to Germany or England and get a job. The former are passive, they just let events happen to them; the latter are active: they have decided to change and have taken charge of their destiny.

A young woman had a very abusive childhood and spent many years in psychiatric hospitals. At last, she called out for help: “I’M ADDICTED TO PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS!” By making the effort to call for help, people begin to pay attention and offer help. A very important factor, the article states, is  that “it’s time for a ‘paradigm shift’ in the way mental health patients are treated and that diagnoses like autism and schizophrenia are neither valid nor useful. We should… be looking more at how social and psychological factors contribute to mental illness.” This means we should cut back on simply giving a person pigeonhole diagnosis, a pill, a hospital stay, or a welfare check, and start looking at what is going on in the person’s family situation and thought processes. Thoughts produce actions, actions produce habits, and habits produce a lifetime of success or failure.

What’s the stereotype view that “normal” people have about people with disabilities? Do you think they just sit around at home drinking beer, watching TV and feeling sorry for themselves? See the article “Driving the Disabled: Wheelchair-Accessible Transportation” – out of 54 million disabled people in America, only six million have trouble finding transportation, and only 1.9 million (that’s less than 4% of 54 million!) rarely or never leave home. The rest of them, about 40 million people with disabilities, find ways to get out of the house!

So let’s stop blaming the top 1 percent: “The 1 Percent Are Only Half the Problem.” Although the median income of the top 1 percent is $1,000,000, often inciting jealousy and the desire to raise taxes on the rich, the article states this “wouldn’t address the other half of the story: the rise of the educated class. Since 1979 the income gap between people with college or graduate degrees and people whose education ended in high school has grown. Broadly speaking, this is a gap between working-class families in the middle 20 percent (with incomes roughly between $39,000 and $62,000) and affluent-to-rich families (say, the top 10 percent, with incomes exceeding $111,000). This skills-based gap is the inequality most Americans see in their everyday lives.”

In other words, it’s a skills gap. Before the 1970s, an assembly line worker in Detroit could make a very nice living, but with increasing automation and foreign competition, factory jobs began drying up or not paying such high wages. To keep earning a decent income, low-income, unemployed or disabled people must break out of the stereotype-thinking, make the decision to find out what their abilities and interests are, get training in those areas, and then go after a career in those areas: “You gotta wanna!” You must make that choice, and take action on it.