Many people have lost their jobs during this pandemic through no fault of their own.

For my book, “We Got Fired! ... and It’s the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us,” I interviewed 29 people who landed on their feet and excelled after they were furloughed or given a pink slip. These were high-profile people, often fired in a very public arena. To sum up each of their inspirational stories, I asked everyone what advice they would give to people looking for a job.

Pat Mitchell was the first woman president and CEO of PBS at the time. She had been working as a researcher/writer for Look magazine when it went out of business.

Her advice was: “Be determined ... I was determined not to give up. I figured it would all come around if I could find a way to survive financially while I stayed focused on what I wanted. It didn’t come easily. If you look at my resume, it seems like one exciting jump from one run to the next. Every one of those moves was somewhat of a risk. Some didn’t work out as I planned or hoped. I didn’t follow a straight line to get where I am, but I never went backward either.”

She added: “Seize every chance you have to learn. It’s amazing how many skills we seem to acquire by accident.”

Bernie Marcus was CEO of the Handy Dan Home Improvement Center chain when the parent company declared bankruptcy. Marcus was fired by a vindictive board even though the Handy Dan division was not in bankruptcy. “They threw me out of my office and put bars on the door. They searched my files. It was pretty terrible -- one of those corporate things. You hear about them, but you don’t really know what they are like until you live through one.”

He was convinced to drop his lawsuit against the company by a mentor who encouraged him to get on with his life. Another friend advised him to open the store he had always dreamed of. And that’s how The Home Depot was born. He was fired from a top spot in hardware retailing and went on to redefine the hardware industry.

Billie Jean King, winner of 39 women’s tennis Grand Slam titles, experienced a series of career setbacks. She said: “Have faith and believe in yourself. It’s OK to feel what you’re feeling. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. This was one of my weaknesses. I was embarrassed to ask, but I’ve since learned that people want to help. Develop skills and try your best.”

King, who became the first woman in any sport to earn more than $100,000 in prize money in a year, added: “Understand delayed gratification. We live in a society of instant rewards. You must learn your craft and earn what you get. It takes a lot of work and sweat, but you have to be willing to pay the price.”

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg told me that he first had a vision for his Bloomberg media empire the day he was fired from Salomon Brothers. He and 62 other partners were summoned to a conference center and told the firm was being merged into another company.

One message from Mayor Bloomberg really stuck out: “People remember two things in life -- who helped you on the way up … and who kicked you on the way down."

Lest you think these examples don’t relate to your situation, stop and think again. These folks could have wallowed in self-pity, spent fortunes in lawsuits and harbored bitterness that would taint their future job searches.

But they chose a different path. They traded on their strengths and determined to forge ahead. And they didn’t give up. That’s the most important lesson of all.

If you would like a free copy of my book, “We Got Fired! ... and It’s the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us,” visit www.harveymackayacademy.com/fired to complete a form to download the eBook.

Mackay’s Moral: Tough times don’t last; tough people do.

A group of 50 people was attending a seminar. For a group activity, the leader gave each attendee one balloon and asked each person to blow it up and write his or her name on it with a marker. He collected all the balloons and put them in another room.

Then the attendees were led into that room and asked to find the balloon with their name written on it within five minutes. Everyone was frantically searching for their name, colliding with each other. It was utter chaos.

At the end of the five minutes, only a couple people had found their own balloon. Now the leader asked each one to randomly collect a balloon and give it to the person whose name was written on it. Within minutes everyone had their own balloon.

The leader said, “Everyone is frantically looking for happiness all around, not knowing where it is. Our happiness lies in the happiness of other people. Give them their happiness and you will get your own happiness.”

This story, from the publication Bits & Pieces, illustrates that we generate more happiness by working together and helping each other than we do working independently.

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is an often-quoted phrase in the United States Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson. But Jefferson avoided defining happiness, choosing to leave it to the individual to determine his or her own meaning of the word.

I say happiness is like your shadow. Run after it and you will never catch it, but keep your face to the sun and it will follow you.

“A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes,” said the late Hugh Downs, whose television career spanned half a century, including years as co-host of “Today” and “20/20.” I suspect his thousands of interviews gave him a unique perspective on life and happiness.

The pursuit of happiness is mankind’s favorite sport. Happiness is in the here and now, not in the someday. Decide to be happy now. Only when you make a deposit into life will you reap the reward of life. You will reap the quality of life in proportion to the quality which you plant.

I’m a firm believer in the adage, “A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery while on a detour.” These days, given current events and uncertainty, just getting through the day can feel like an enormous task. Happiness seems elusive when you don’t know what the coming days will bring. But that’s the point at which attitude is everything.

Happiness is subjective. What makes one person happy -- reading, exercising or bird-watching -- may make another person decidedly unhappy.

An Indian fable tells us about a mouse that, like all mice, was afraid of cats. A local wizard empathized with him and offered to help the mouse dispel his fear. So, with the mouse’s blessing, the wizard turned him into a cat.

The cat, however, was afraid of dogs. So the wizard did his thing and turned the cat into a dog. Afraid of tigers, the dog was soon turned into a tiger.

The wizard discovered the tiger was afraid of big-game hunters, and exclaimed in disgust, “You’re hopeless! What you need is a change of heart. And that I cannot give you.”

If we want to be happy, a change of heart might be required. As Japanese philosopher and poet Daisaku Ikeda put it: “Genuine happiness can only be achieved when we transform our way of life from the unthinking pursuit of pleasure to one committed to enriching our inner lives, when we focus on ‘being more’ rather than simply having more.”

Mackay’s Moral: The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.

A friend was flying from San Francisco to Los Angeles. After a 45-minute delay in taking off, they then had to make an unexpected stop in Sacramento. The flight attendant announced there would be another 45-minute delay, and if they wanted to get off the aircraft, they could re-board in 30 minutes.

Everyone got off the plane except one gentleman who was blind. My friend noticed him as he walked by and could tell he had flown this flight before because his guide dog lay quietly underneath his seat. Just then the pilot approached the man and called him by name.

“Keith, we’re in Sacramento for almost an hour. Would you like to get off and stretch your legs?”

Keith replied, “No thanks, but maybe my dog would like to stretch his legs.”

All the people in the gate area came to a complete standstill when they looked up and saw the pilot, who was wearing sunglasses, walk off the plane with the guide dog! People scattered. They not only tried to change planes, they also were trying to change airlines!

Unfortunately, perception equates to reality for many. But perception and reality have very different meanings. The problem happens when perception becomes a person’s reality. They see what they expect or want to see, disregarding what is actually true.

Psychiatrist Jim Taylor said: “Perception acts as a lens through which we view reality. Our perceptions influence how we focus on, process, remember, interpret, understand, synthesize, decide about and act on, reality. In doing so, our tendency is to assume that how we perceive reality is an accurate representation of what reality truly is.

“But it’s not,” he adds. “The problem is that the lens through which we perceive is often warped in the first place by our genetic predispositions, past experiences, prior knowledge, emotions, preconceived notions, self-interest and cognitive distortions.”

For example, take a car accident. You can ask several people who witnessed the accident what happened, and many of them saw it differently. That’s why eyewitness identifications often become issues in crime investigations. The National Academy of Sciences recently convened a panel of experts to undertake a comprehensive study of current practice and use of eyewitness testimony, with an eye toward understanding why identification errors occur and what can be done to prevent them. Bottom line, they found that eyewitness accounts are often wrong.

An article in The New Yorker magazine cited psychologist Elizabeth Phelps, who concluded in a 2011 study that when an event is particularly exciting or traumatic, the memory is seared into the brain, often at the expense of the peripheral details. The focus of the witness’s memory is on the action that took place and not on the circumstances under which it took place, making it difficult for a jury to refute what a witness claims to have seen or heard. But as Phelps’ study showed, just because witnesses are confident about their version of events does not mean their accounts are accurate.

Businesses and organizations need to pay attention to how they are perceived by customers and prospects. Does your target audience see your signature products as innovative, well-priced, useful and available? Are customers swayed by comparison advertising that presents your goods as inferior or not worth the cost?

In reality, you may have the best products, the best people, the fairest prices and still have a negative perception. One bad online review can rapidly sway public perception and destroy years of building a good name. The most difficult part is that the review may not even be true. And you have to work harder than ever to repair the damage, not necessarily knowing where the information is coming from. It’s not fair, but it is reality.

Be aware of your public profile and use every option available to keep your reputation positive. Put customer service at the top of the list for every employee, from the factory floor to the sales force to the executive suite.

The issue of perception is not a recent phenomenon. Look back to the days of second-century Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who observed: “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I see some truth in that statement. A couple thousand years later, we are still at the mercy of human nature!

Mackay’s Moral: Be careful not to let your perceptions be based on deceptions.