What Does it Take to Live a Life You Love?

I’m back from my whirlwind speaking tour through the Midwest. The two professors with whom I’ve been having so much fun collaborating for almost three years (Drs. Byron Waller and Heather Zeng, photo attached below) and I facilitated six workshops at Governors State University near Chicago and were featured speakers at the Wisconsin Careers Conference in Madison.

Two of our presentations focused on the 21st century world of work and how dissimilar it is from the way we were always told the world and our lives would look. For example, did you know that:

• Between one-third and one-half of the U.S. workforce is freelancing, which includes temporary, contingent, casual, contract, part-time, adjunct, and consultant workers.
• In 1994, 70% of the labor market was comprised of core positions: full-time jobs with benefits. In the 2000’s this shrunk to 40%.
• One in four workers in the U.S. has been with their employer less than one year.
• In 1960 the average employment tenure was 22.5 years. In 2004 it was 3.6 years.

What does this all mean? Reid Hoffman, co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn and author with Ben Casnocha of the book The Start-Up of You, in his interview with Thomas Friedman of The New York Times says,

“The old paradigm of climb up a stable career ladder is dead and gone. No career is a sure thing anymore. The uncertain, rapidly changing conditions in which entrepreneurs start companies is what it’s now like for all of us fashioning a career.”

This is an article worth reading! As we continually highlight at Centerpoint, there is no longer a ladder to climb. We are here to help people navigate the uncertainty of the world in which we now live.

So Are You a GenFluxer?

The February 2012 edition of Fast Company Magazine addresses this issue too in its article, This is Generation Flux. Not based on a demographic, GenFluxers understand the necessity of embracing ambiguity and find freedom, even joy, in recalibrating their work and lives on an on-going, lifelong basis. How comfortable are you when there is constant change all around and about you?

An interesting side note: I will be facilitating a workshop at the Washington State Nonprofit Conference in May. The title that I proposed and was accepted at the end of last year is A Future in Flux: Enhance Your Ability to Navigate Uncertainty.

This brings me back to the support we are providing to the Seattle Center’s P3 Learning project: People • Passion • Purpose. 

When the 25 Passion Voyagers had concluded their Passion Search workshops here at Centerpoint, most had the question: Now what? Since there was no longer an external structure for them to contain their focus and efforts, they had to create their own framework for the next part of the journey. This subsequent part of the plan needed to arise intrinsically, from the inside out. As they check in with themselves, the question is now: What do I need to continue on my path of passion and to realize my vision?

Instead of waiting for something to change “out there,” what choices do you have right now that will enable you to take the next, immediate step towards being able to live a life that you love?