For the employees of Bear Stearns, news of the company’s demise is as bad as it can get. Of the more than 14,000 people on the payroll, most expect to be laid off soon, with no prospects for other jobs. In addition to the unemployment issue that they face, many employees took huge hits to their investment portfolios due to the plummeting of the company’s stock value. So, with jobs that are about to disappear and savings that have evaporated, what should they do now in order to survive, especially in these precarious financial times? In fact, the financial and emotional uncertainty of being unemployed is a scenario which countless people have faced as companies continue to merge and reduce costs.

Barry Moltz, a leading business consultant for hundreds of corporations, government agencies, and prestigious universities, including General Electric, Capital One, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Federal Reserve Bank, and Harvard Business School, believes the first thing Bear Stearns employees, and anyone else who finds themselves in a similar circumstances, should do is forget the fairy tale. “Our careers are not linear,” Moltz says. “Things occur unexpectedly and bad times happen. It is fine to grieve disappointments, even wallow for a bit in the grief, if you need to, but eventually, we have to bounce to the next decision we have to make.”

Moltz, who is also the author of BOUNCE!: Failure, Resiliency, and Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success (John Wiley & Sons), notes that contrary to traditional wisdom, failure is not the worst thing that can happen to us and that it’s merely a part of the career lifecycle. “By learning to bounce through a repetitive process of ’success and failure, failure and success’, we develop a resiliency that ultimately determines which of us succeeds,” he says. “Letting go of the shame of losing and the enlarged ego that comes with winning big is the first step.”

Barry Moltz is available immediately to shepherd Bear Stearns’ employees, as well as others who find themselves facing a major shift in their careers and financial health, through this crisis, and also to discuss why it is sometimes best to embrace failure, even when it’s painful. We look forward to hearing from you soon about the possibility of an interview.