Start the countdown... to normal.

Congratulations to the winners of last night's OzLotto. It was certainly a tense half hour in thousands and thousands of households last night across Australia, as we all gripped what was certain to be possibly the winning ticket, our imaginations working feverishly overtime on what we could spend our new fortunes on.

But...as normal luck would have it, the draw left us all (bar three people) as non-winners. So easy to get excited, and just as easy to forget. Everything was the same as it was before and after Packed to the Rafters. Apart from that half hour of our lives we lost to watching Packed to the Rafters.

Without our abilities to recover a neutral, functional state of mind, each high and low would be utterly disabling. We'd probably stumble around through life as though we were on a tall ship on rough seas, just using the walls for support. However, the reality is that our own version of normalness does resume in time, and we just get on with the business of being ourselves. You don't hear of many people becoming highly successful venture capitalists or property magnates after winning Lotto - it happens, it's spent or sunk into funds, and then a state of (relative) ordinariness descends again.

The same is true for our work. It's exhilarating to be offered a position you were trying to contain your hopes for, sending up a little murmured prayer to the Job God (is he taking a sabatical at the moment?) now and then for good measure. But even so, once you settle into a new job, tackle new challenges and resume a routine, normalness sets in again. It has to - if we maintained a state of mindless excitement that we were the one picked to do this role, we would probably not be doing it for very long - singing showtunes to your neighbours and colleagues is walking a fine line. So in time we just get on it.

Likewise, the sorry experience of losing your job is crushing. Naturally. It is our duty to our clients who undertake the TalentWax program to identify the physical, social, mental, emotional and spiritual blows that becoming unemployed brings with it, and talk through that experience. Our clients are often relieved to know that they are not alone, and there should be no embarrassment in crying, having a doona day or just wanting to get away from it all for a while. In sharing this process, our duty is also to let that normalness find a way back. It might be a different kind of normalness for a while - sharpening up one's finances and staying busy while looking for work - but the "old self" is still there once the shock and grief passes.

So perhaps for now, our mantra will be: bad things always come to an end. Bring on the normal.