Читать книгу The Every-Year Itch - Kirsten de Bouter Shillam - Страница 11

YOUR FUTURE YOUR WAY

In 100 years from now

Your bank balance will be irrelevant

And so will be your insurances, your policies, your pension

Your disagreements, your portfolio,

the colour of your hair.

Only that which money couldn’t buy

Could have changed the world

You once occupied

Rendering you immortal

Depending on what you sowed

Introduction

There is too much talk about the changing world. You must have been knocked unconscious not to know that there has been a rapid development in all fields over the last 15–20 years. Our lives aren’t the same and there is no sign it’s slowing down. Most importantly, turning around and going to back to when life “might have been simpler”, “where you could all crowd round the TV” and “rewind your cassette recorder”, is not an option.

It’s never what happens but how you deal with it, that really matters. Except for the fact that most of us have not been adequately prepared for what’s happening. We have our roots firmly in working with pen and paper, owning things that you can actually see and hold, climbing the ladder of success chronologically in order to gain a result somewhere near the top. Life –so we were told – was organised around a pattern. You go to school, you do your best, you gain a qualification, you find a job that offers you good benefits and security. You work hard, get a promotion and put aside money for a rainy day. A number of weeks a year you go on holiday, until you reach the age of 65.

IT'S NEVER WHAT HAPPENS

BUT HOW YOU DEAL WITH IT,

THAT REALLY MATTERS.

It’s a simplification, but many people based their plans on these assumptions. Fundamentally knowledge was power. For this reason, you attended school and the higher you were educated, the more chances you had to do well in life. Things were structured.

In today’s world, knowledge is everywhere and accessible to many more people than ever before. It’s not so much the knowledge that gives you power, but what you can do with it and who you can reach. Anyone can have knowledge at their fingertips, achieve some kind of result, but who can create meaning, do something amazing with it, think outside the famous box or motivate a community of followers?

There is permission in today’s society for people to take the initiative, start their own company, work from a shed or become a digital nomad. Age, background, education or previous experience are not necessarily featuring in the top three of absolute requirements anymore.

SO, WHERE IS THIS GOING?

This chapter looks at the cause-process-result lesson. A blind focus on the results of life reduces the prospect of living considerably.

Apply the creative brain and follow your personal compass to find the way to your itch. Not waiting for instructions, but trusting yourself as your buoy.

WHAT GOT US HERE

IS NOT GOING TO GET US THERE

The cause–process–result lesson

When we meet new people the question “What do you do?” seems to supply us with endless information about who the other person is. Only, does what someone does for a living really define them? Is that who they are or is that just a question that helps to categorise someone?

I worked for some time with a client who from the outset would try to catch me off guard by asking unusual non-result-based questions. “What do you think is the ‘nature’ of this day?” he would ask, or “What have you learned today?” and “What would you change tomorrow?” Conversations were interesting and thought-provoking, teaching me to think beyond the standardised script of getting acquainted.

The focus always used to be firmly on the result. You can compare a result. It’s tangible and we know what to do with it. We have learned what is a good and what isn’t a good result. When you are motivated to do something (the cause), then you go through a process to get to the all-important end result. A result would be quantified in terms of money, a mark on a test paper, a job title, but also the car you drive, the house you live in and the people you know. It’s a one-way, chronological road to an end stop. We have been conditioned to get to that result as quickly as possible and for the result to be as big as possible. My father used to say – albeit jokingly – “You get a title or letters behind your name; failing that you will have to become famous.”

I realised early on in my coaching practice that the all-important end result wasn’t really what it promised to be. Many clients with bags of so-called results, with seemingly perfect lives (to the outside world), perfect jobs (according to their CV and personal profiles) and perfect social lives (according to their social media profiles), appeared all too often lost or inwardly confused. After some time it doesn’t matter how many medals you have gained, if you haven’t noticed one part of the road that got you there. You might as well stand at a conveyer-belt, with a trophy box at the very end of it. Eventually the box is full and the trophies gather dust. It’s a dead-end road, not a journey. Interestingly, in sport the term “hitting a wall” means running out of glycogen to keep going. Extreme fatigue. Just accumulating results can have a similar effect; it’s meaningless in the end. You hit the wall.

We will always find ourselves somewhere on the tightrope between cause, process and result. The motivation to do something and the need to know how successful it was and how it measured against your last attempt, will always be a fundamental driver. However, learning from experiences and creating meaning happens in the process. It has longevity to it, because the lessons you are taught can be applied in other situations. Rushing for the result is a one-stop shop. You can gather results in life, but be no richer for it. The accumulation of worthwhile experiences always has a greater sum total than a collection of stand-alone results. By engaging in meaningful processes, you evaluate, develop, grow. It brings you to a different kind of result. One where there is no wall, but where you are freshly motivated to move to the next step. There the cause-process-result flatliner becomes a cycle in which you can be continually re-inspired.

RESULT IS A SWEET . . . DO SOMETHING WITH IT DON'T HAVE A SHELF OF DUSTY SWEETS

EAT THE SWEET

ENJOY, DEVELOP, GROW

AND BE INSPIRED

The consumer mentality

The result-based perspective goes hand in hand with a consumer mentality. We have all been conditioned to be consumers in one way or another. By being a consumer you are not in the process of actively putting in, or part of the innovation or the solution. Instead you are standing at the end of the line, consuming or being consumed. There is no responsibility to take, no accountability. You can afford to be a spectator, a user of goods and services which –if not up to your expectations–you can complain about and get your money back on.

In the result-based consumer world we associate formal education with status and earning potential. The higher the status, the more money, the more you can consume. It’s an adding up of life that doesn’t work so well anymore. Not least because consumerism leaves its casualties along the way, both environmentally and by generating groups of ‘have-nots’ or ‘deserve-nothings’. That’s wasting valuable resources all round. In time, the planet will have nothing left to give and certain groups of people will be convinced they have nothing worthwhile to give.

In the world of tomorrow new approaches and different perspectives are vital. There is more than one way of doing something and driving to a consumerism orientated result alone is elitist, and not sustainable. Instead of feed me wifi, feed me ready-meals and restaurants, feed me brands and shops on every corner and online, you can be part of the solution. You can honour your talents. You take the lead in your life by making conscious choices, collaborating and taking responsibility for the outcome. It’s an inspiration to be a pioneer not a puppet. Whether you only affect things in your own life or on a bigger scale, the ripple of this vital, self-starting initiative will eventually create a wave.

Keep moving forward

Nobody can afford to stand still; you blink and you have missed the next opportunity. Sometimes it is so tempting to go back to what feels safe and familiar; it’s so much easier to let go and wait for instructions.

NOSTALGIA = LOST AGAIN

If you re-arrange the letters of the word N-O-S-T-A-L-G-I-A, you get “Lost Again”. Keeping your eyes firmly to the future is more essential than ever before. You can create your future and play an active part in the communities you treasure and the causes you support.

Read the signs of the time. The cause-process-result sequence is not the only way to get ahead. There are far more innovative ways to move forward in business, collaborating across physical, social and psychological borders. There are opportunities to find new ways, maximise technological options, draw on various cultural skills, execute environmental and social awareness with an emphasis on sustainability, inclusion, diversity, regeneration. Business can reinvent itself. Are structures like the 9–5 day useful? Does business need to happen in large office blocks which people waste time getting to by being held up in traffic? Do there need to be more options for people to engage at work other than a standard contract? How can waste be reduced whilst tapping into the resources of the people in organisations? Thinktanks are needed to pivot and play with these pressing issues.

Learning can happen in other places than schools and universities, with other means than books and exams. Apprenticeships, mentors, exploration, travel and exchanges, to name but a few. If children and young people can find their way by first discovering their natural talents, then the organic and guided development of that will see new emerging self starters not defined by marks out of ten.