This whole idea is dead on — this book should be required reading.  I lost my job last fall, before all of the major lay-offs started.  I thought I couldn’t survive but I knew that I couldn’t keep living the way I had been.  I found myself saying, over and over, I have no choice — I have to find another (similar) job right away.  A lot of us are being forced to look at our lives now and realize that we weren’t making any choices, which is why we were miserable — I remember a sign in my college dorm that said "not to decide is to decide".  That was me, for years.