This guest blog was provided by Leanne Wakeling from LG Inspires
The world of work is changing. At the Festival of Innovative Ideas hosted by Lighthouse Business Innovation Centre in 2015, a professor from the Australian National University presented that by 2025 up to 80% of the jobs we were currently prepared or training for would disappear. We are going through one of the biggest transitions in business and the way we earn our income in the last 250 years. For those who may have been sitting quietly behind their office desk in their cushy big organisational job, things are changing.
“we live in a time when both demographics and the very nature of work are undergoing a dramatic shift. Rapid technological change, automations, globalisation, and offshoring all serve to shrink industries and spawn new ones at what feels like an ever-quickening pace.”
As we transition further into the Information Age, as this new phase is known, and artificial intelligent, software and information technology are taking a bigger and bigger role, in order to optimise the opportunities, we must be paying attention. One of the most effective strategies is seeking to work out how to position ourselves so that we are not caught metaphorically sitting on our hands when the time comes and our big cushy organisation decides to reshuffle and downsize and we find ourselves out of the familiar, though dying employment safety of working for somebody else, and into the rollercoaster adventure of figuring out what do we do next.
Amongst the biggest myths when it comes to these rolling changes is that we have no influence in the process. What I am here to say is, that is only true if you wait for someone else to make the decision for you. The alternative is to create the future YOU want, live life on Purpose, take charge, and what I mean by that is, instead of waiting, watching, and worrying, now is the time to think about, what are my options? Instead of waiting until there is no choice, waiting until that redundancy notification arrives, waiting for the crunch time of your position is no longer required and out you go, stepping up and exploring who you are and what you have to offer the world is one way to keep ahead of the possibilities.
We live in the most globally connected world in time. We are no longer necessarily limited to finding a means of earning an income that relies on those we live close to. For example, over the last three and a half years as a life coach I have served people all over the world, literally. I have supported a new coach in the Canary Islands, a graphic designer in Israel, and engineer in Switzerland and a parenting coach in Canada to name a few. The technology that is impacting our ability to sustain old world work is also empowering us to create new opportunities and ways of doing business.
I am curious, do you know what you really want to do with the rest of your life? Have you ever spent time to consider, you’re likely to be living for the next 30 plus years and how do you want that to look like? Traditionally, most of us just go into auto, following a safe, comfortable and familiar pathway. What that means though is that we also don’t take the time to consider what could life really by like. Sure, there may be risks in stepping out of our comfort zone, and the truth is there are even bigger risks in staying with what we consider familiar, because that too is disappearing. For some of us, the comfort of an industrial age style career already has one foot out the door.
In order to change the balance into our favour, and live a satisfying and joyful life, getting clarity around what we really want our Ideal AVERAGE Day (link to opt in Ideal Average Day workbook) to look like, not a holiday ideal day, rather that day you could live on repeat like Groundhog Day. This enables creating a life that you love, by focusing on where you want to be heading, identifying how you want to be living. Dream big, this has not limit except those you impose on yourself. Amazingly, when you write down what you want in a crystal-clear manner, your subconscious mind starts supporting you making choices, will this opportunity get me closer or take me further away from attaining that Ideal AVERAGE Day.
Having defined the long-term picture, this same process can be used for getting clear on your vision of the results for 2019. Again, go big, this isn’t about limiting yourself to what you could achieve now, we can grow amazingly in a year, so pick a goal for the person you are growing into, rather than who you are right now. What mission are you on, in order to become that new person to achieve your vision for 2019? What are the standards you and your business need to aspire to, attain and sustain in order to conduct the mission to reach the vision? What are the values you need to have to enable the standards?
I happen to love the process of Values Elicitation as a means of power boosting what you are doing, it’s a deep dive into your personal beliefs and values and takes several hours. Rather than looking at values as core to who we are, considering them as qualities that we can prioritise to support the particular activity that we are doing in that moment, or for that season of work. For instance, you are about to be doing something that may not be your favourite thing though is essential, you could be reluctant and annoyed, or you could adopt discipline, tenacity, commitment to completion as the values empowering you to master that season. What are the attitudes of the person who has achieved that vision you have set for the year? Begin living them now so that they become habit in that person by the end of the year.
As the saying goes, Success in an Inside Job. What that means is in order to succeed, improving the relationship we have with ourselves is key? Our inner game influences how we cope with challenges, how we accept, or not, feedback, whether we can implement changes. Far too many of us get caught in worry about what other people think. This prevents us from taking the steps needed because we fear not being good enough or being rejected for changing. However, when we release ourselves from the fear of judgement, accepting that everyone has an opinion, it’s an opinion, not necessarily truth. Only we can make it true by agreeing. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt “No one can make you feel bad without your permission”. It’s appropriate to listen to feedback/opinion, and then sieve it through a few filters before accepting or dismissing it. 1. Is the opinion true? 2. Do I agree with the opinion? 3. Is it something I can do something about? If the answer is no to any one of these, then move on, let it flow on through, if the answer is yes, then take action and do something about it.
If you’d like to learn more about any of these concepts, then come on over and join me on Facebook, Create the Future of YOU – Live life on Purpose. Where we are looking at all things to enable, empower and experience the journey to a great quality of life.
Leanne Wakeling,
Coach, Mentor, Facilitator
Chief Encouragement Officer
LG Inspires.
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