Going on a Bear Hunt

Are you familiar with the children's book We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Rosen and Oxenbury?  If you don't have kids or if you've never read it, it's a cute story, apparently based on a camp chant, about a father taking his kids on an outdoor adventure that takes them through many obstacles.

If you want to watch the author acting the whole story out (4:30), click here.

Here are the first lines of the book:

"We're going on a bear hunt.  / We're going to catch a big one. / What a beautiful day! / We're not scared. / Oh-oh! Grass! / Long, wavy grass. / We can't go over it. / We can't go under it. / Oh, no! / We've got to go through it!"

The family continues their adventure through the grassy slope, across a river, into thick mud and a dark forest, through a snowstorm and finally come upon a cave with a bear who chases them back through their obstacles to home.

Each complication is met with the same chant:  "We can't go over it. / We can't go under it. / We've got to go through it!"

This story is what a job search is like: You can't go over it, you can't go under it, and I would add one more:  you can't go around it.  You have to go through it - eventually everybody has to go through it.  Yet so many job seekers continue to try to figure out a way to go over it, under it or around it.  They don't want to:

• do the hard work.
• make the phone calls
• network
• get support
• move past their fear
• perfect their resume
• practice, practice, practice for interviews
• be open to a new approach or feedback

And by the time they figure out they have to go through each one of the above, they've wasted a lot of time.

Don't be one of them.  Accept that you're going to 'stumble and trip', as the story says, and have the courage, just like the family in the story, to go through it.


Brenda