Tech Is Eating My Job, So Now What Do I Do? from Michele Martin on Vimeo. In response to yesterday's post on how technology is eating your job, Deborah Gabriel commented: So, Michele, I cannot argue with your research data as mine confirms it. What I want to hear are solutions. Solutions are what interest me, too, so I went to video to explain how I think we, as individuals, can deal with the this issue in our careers. Some Resources For Clarifying and Connecting The G+ Technological Unemployment Community Martin Ford's Blog Andrew McAfee's Blog For Creating In A Whole New Mind (book summary), Dan Pink suggests 6 right-brain "senses" that humans do well and that we should build upon. This is a good starting point for creating a plan--which of these skills could you develop?  Consider these 3 ways to create your own job  Look at this advice on job crafting.  Check out 5 Ways to Find Work When There Are No Jobs, which offers some additional good advice. I'd love to hear from you on this topic. Who are your "Go-To" people for staying on top of all things technological (not just social media)? Which are your favorite sites? What else can we do to deal with the impact of technology on our careers? 

One of the things I decided to do as I began exploring the concept of career resilience was to begin collecting stories from people about how they've applied the 4 patterns of reslience (Clarifying, Connecting, Creating and Coping) to their own work lives. To that end, I put out a call on my social networks for volunteers who were willing to share their stories and one of the first people I heard back from was Sheri Ponzi, an artist, teacher and guide running several online programs.   As part of my plan to continue stretching myself, we decided to get together for a Google Hangout interview to talk about Sheri's career path and her experiences in developing resilience through the "4 C's." Although there were some audio issues (for which I apologize) Sheri's story is really instructive for those of us looking to develop our own career resilience. For me, there were a few key takeways from the discussion: Sheri's "career crisis" came about in part because she had stopped paying attention to the 4 patterns and they basically caught up with her. This to me is more evidence that we need to work with these patterns on a regular basis.  Sheri has made particularly strong use of the Connecting pattern, both as a way for her to develop her own personal resilience, but also as a career/business strategy. Her online courses bring together several instructors, each of whom contribute their own particular assets to the projects. Sheri is making it win/win for everyone.  This idea of looking at how to build relationships and collaborate with others as being key to resilience is something I talked about in my recent post on limiting beliefs and Sheri's experience reinforced its importance to me.  Connecting can also be a powerful way to help other people develop their own patterns of resilience. Sheri talks about how by bringing people together for her online course, she's now seeing them go off to teach courses on their own. A lovely virtuous cycle.  Sheri has made great use of the Clarifying pattern, too, focusing on her own strengths and assets and then looking at how she could use technology and her connections to create her own employment opportunities. Her's is an excellent example of how all of these patterns can interact together to synthesize the right option for you.  Sometimes you have clarity, but you need courage to take the next step. For many people, courage is forced upon us when we have to face a huge challenge in our lives. But if you meet the challenge head-on, with clarity, then you can create something that's amazing.  Talking with Sheri and hearing her story was a really powerful lesson for me. Hopefully it will help you learn more about resilience too.  Related articles Do You Network to Build Your Career Resilience or to Get Your Work Done? Career Resilience in Action Career Resilience for Entrepreneurs

  One aspect of career resilience it's important for us to keep in mind is the need to have multiple options. This is particularly true when it comes to our finances, where we need to be far more entrepreneurial than we've been in the past. It's fine to rely on a single source of income (your job) when that source is very stable. But jobs are anything but stable anymore. In fact, they may be the least stable thing going on right now.  Last week Harold Jarche wrote that we are in a post-job economy:  I have been observing for quite some time that most work is getting automated and outsourced, while only complex and creative work remain valued, and therefore wealth-generating for those who do it. The construct of the JOB highlights this problem, because jobs are designed around work that can be copied and workers who can be replaced, but anything that can be reduced to a flowchart will be automated. Relying on the job as society’s main wealth-sharing mechanism is a major mistake in the network era, but one that politicians and many others continue to make. We are entering a post-job economy. And in Forbes Magazine, Dave Maney makes a compelling case for the death of jobs.  Imagine for a moment that you’re a company and you’re going to an imaginary store to buy labor solutions for tasks you need done. If it’s 1980, there’s pretty much one item on the shelves, albeit in two different sizes. The boxes are labeled "employee", and there’s a big box (full-time) and a small box (part-time). You need something done that needs any amount of supervision and interaction - those are pretty much your choices. Now stroll into the labor solutions store today. You’ll immediately notice an astonishing array of choices on the shelves: Full-time and part-time employees are still there, to be sure, but now they are joined by outsourcing, crowdsourcing, freelancing, social media methodologies, software automation…and more, and all in a million different permutations and varieties. Collaboration has become increasingly frictionless, meaning increasingly costless. As a result, the one thing that is absolutely certain about the store’s inventory of labor solutions: The largest, most unwieldy, most expensive, most regulated, riskiest, and least flexible box in the entire place is, without question, the full-time job box. In an era of economic flux and uncertainty, what box is going to be favored? The big box might sell, but only under a set of very particular circumstances. Sane companies will buy every other box first - and they have been, and it’s showing up in our economic statistics month after month after month. I agree wholeheartedly with this analysis and it's something I've been blogging about for awhile. Putting all your eggs into one basket (your job) is a recipe for career rigidity and financial problems in the future.  The resilient careerist will recognize this new reality and start working now to diversify possibilities for him/herself. I suggest taking a lesson from the solo entrepreneurs among us--those of us who have been managing multiple streams for awhile in order to make ends meet.  Learning From Solo Entrepreneurs In a recent post entitled The Right Mix of Income is Your Safety Net,  Kivi Leroux Miller, one of my favorite nonprofit business people,  does a nice job of laying out how she manages muliple income streams within her small business. When her business was new, it looked like this: Steady Clients - I had two clients that I worked for nearly every month. Intermittent Clients - I had several clients who gave me a few projects per year. Magazine Articles - I wrote articles for trade magazines. Online Courses - I taught several online courses through my websites (business writing and writing nonprofit annual reports, at the time). Tip Sheets - I sold tip sheets on various writing topics through my websites. In-person Workshops - I taught workshops through the Duke University Certificate Program in Nonprofit Management. Advertising Revenue - I ran Google AdSense ads on most of my websites. Affiliate/Reseller Revenue - I ran ads for affiliate program products on most of my websites. As it has evolved, the mix has now shifted into this: Webinar Series and E-Clinics- I offer a weekly webinar series with a subscription fee at Nonprofit Marketing Guide, and also teach webinars almost weekly at CharityHowTo. We also offer more in-depth online training via two-week e-clinics. Mentoring Program — I offer a six-month group Mentoring Program for nonprofit communications directors. Coaching Clients — I work with three clients currently, helping them work through marketing challenges and develop their marketing teams. Public Speaking — I present more than a dozen workshops and keynotes each year, and am paid for almost all of them. Book Royalties — I get checks twice a year from my publisher. E-Books — We sell a few e-books online. Kivi's mix is based on her particular interests, passions, skills and the changing needs of her clients. But it's still an instructive combination of products and services that can be an effective jumping off point for your own planning.     Your Path to Diversification If you're currently working, think of your job as your own version of Kivi's "Steady Clients." This gives you a baseline source from which you can build out your other options.  Then look to your passions and skills to find other potential revenue streams. Are there skills you use at work that you might also use with customers? Don't forget your hobbies and other interests when thinking about sources of income. Are you a fantasic cook or an artist in your spare time? Maybe you can turn these hobbies into paying opportunities.  As you develop ideas for side gigs and potential products, don't make the mistake of assuming that they must bring in huge amounts of money. You're looking for diversification. Some strategies will be more financially lucrative than others, but all can combine to create a safety net for you. Also, I've found it's a good idea to be methodical about this. Lay out all your possibilities and then start prioritizing. Which of these options do you have the will and resources to work on now? Which are opportunities for the future? If your job is particularly demanding, you may want to focus on finding passive income sources where you create a product to sell and then focus on marketing and selling it. E-books and online tutorials are examples of this kind of passive income opportunity.  Eventually, your side gigs may become your full-time work. This is how I've developed in my own career and I know it's how Rosetta Thurman's career has evolved too. It may also be that you continue to work at a job, while also doing things on the side.  The point is that your career becomes more resilient when you weave for yourself a safety net of multiple income streams and opportunities so that you are less dependent on a single job or client.  I've found that there's an added benefit to this approach that allows you to further develop your skills and talents in ways that best meet your own, individual career needs. By diversifying your career portfolio, you develop new capacities and new connections, building your career resilience.  While I know that it's tempting to see your job as your single source of financial and career salvation, I promise you that this will eventually be a problem. Resilience is about diversity and one of your greatest opportunities for resilience lies in diversifying your sources of revenue.  You must be an entrepreneur when it comes to your career, so start thinking now about how you can build new possibilities for yourself. 

There are two labor markets nowadays. There's the market for people who have been out of work for less than six months, and the market for people who have been out of work longer.--The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment   Many laid off workers I know decide they want to "take a break" in between jobs, especially if they got some severance. Big mistake! In today's job market you simply can't afford to do that. Too many potential employers are only interested in you if you're currently employed or have only recently been laid off.  Here's a money quote from an article in the Atlantic on some research into the impact of long-term unemployment on your ability to find a new job: As long as you've been out of work for less than six months, you can get called back even if you don't have experience. But after you've been out of work for six months, it doesn't matter what experience you have. Quite literally. (my emphasis) There's only a 2.12 percentage point difference in callback rates for the long-term unemployed with or without industry experience. That's compared to a 7.13 and 8.95 percentage point difference for the short-and-medium-term unemployed. This is what screening out the long-term unemployed looks like. In other words, the first thing employers look at is how long you've been out of work, and that's the only thing they look at if it's been six months or longer. (my emphasis)    That's right. The longer you are unemployed, the harder it is to find a job. In fact, your best likelihood for finding a job comes in the first few weeks after you've been laid off. That's when your skills are freshest and when people are most willing to help you out.  I'm in the process of working on a series of posts about things you need to do when you get a lay-off notice, but here's the one piece of advice I want you take right now: If you lose your job, your # 1 priority needs to be finding another one, ASAP.  Don't take a break to rejuvenate. Don't take time off to figure out your next move. Don't say "I'll take the summer to be with the kids and then look for a job in the fall." You. Will. Be. Sorry. Even if you think you want to start a business, I still encourage you to put some time into a job search. You don't know how your self-employment efforts are going to go and believe me, it's easier to start a new business when you're not freaking out about how you're going to pay your electric bill.  I've worked with too many people who have put off job searching until it was too late. You cannot afford to lose a single day in this process. The time to look for a new position is yesterday. 

Patterns, not problems, will ruin your business. . . "Problems aren’t the issue. Problems are the work."              --Dr. Henry Cloud As I've been thinking and writing about career resilience, one of the main points I've been emphasizing is that resilience is about the patterns we build into our lives. We tend to think of our careers as being very event-based, but in reality, the events we experience are a product of the patterns we've created in our careers. When we have positive patterns, we are more likely to experience positive career events. When our patterns are negative, then we will have problems. This post from Dan Rockwell on breaking destructive business/leadership patterns go me thinking more about the issue of career resilience as a series of patterns. The quote above, from Henry Cloud, is from Dan's post and I think it applies equally to our careers. Here's what I know for sure: It's not the individual problems in our careers that will break us. It's the patterns we've set up in our lives that will be our undoing.  Three Typical Destructive Career Patterns In my work with people, I continuously see three persistent patterns of destructive behavior:   Having no career goals beyond those set for us by our current job. This creates a pattern of dependency on our company and supervisors that can make us stale and irrelevant when the world shifts. We focus on becoming really good at the job we have today, only to find that it's no longer needed and no one else wants someone with those skills.  Living in a career silo. All of our connections are in one industry. Any reading or professional development we engage in is related to our narrow industry and occupation. To the extent that we become aware of things happening in other industries or occupations, we automatically tell ourselves "well this won't impact me or my field." Career siloes keeps us blind to the developments happening in other areas that eventually will impact our own work. They also put a career straitjacket on us, limiting our options when change eventually comes.  Crisis-managing our careers. There are two times when I'm most likely to hear from someone about their career development--when they are so crushingly unhappy with their jobs that they can't take another day and when they've been laid off or fired. I rarely (if ever) hear from people when their careers are going reasonably well. Yet one thing I've learned in therapy (which applies in most other parts of life too) is that crisis management doesn't work. It just makes us lurch from crisis to crisis. We do our best work  when things are relatively stable and we aren't feeling afraid or anxious.  These three patterns are not the patterns of career resilience. They are patterns that lead to career rigidity. And career rigidity is the last thing you need in today's economy. Inflexible people and inflexible careers are a recipe for disaster when the landscape changes so quickly. Breaking Your Destructive Patterns So how to break destructive patterns? First, you have to be aware that patterns are in play. Look at your career thus far and ask yourself if you are managing it according to one or more of these destructive patterns. Specifically, ask yourself: What are my career goals? To what extent are these goals tied up with my current job and/or my current company? If I lost my job tomorrow, how would those goals change?  How siloed is my career? Am I connected to people in other industries/occupations? Do I read and learn broadly? Do I try to expose myself to many experiences and communities?  When am I most likely to think about my career and do things to actively manage it? Do I do this all the time or is it only when "big" things happen, like when I'm unhappy or I'm worried that I'll lose my job?  Spend some time really considering these questions, looking at previous career experiences and how these patterns might have contributed to their creation. Try using the Career Stepping Stones activity in conjunction with these questions.  Once you have a clear picture of the extent to which you've been engaging in these more destructive patterns, start looking for ways to change your habits and bring in new, more positive patterns. In particular, look at how you can find ways to incorporate the patterns of career resilience into your work and life. How can you focus on Clarifying, Connecting, Creating and Coping on a regular basis?  Your final step is to actually implement new behaviors in support of these more positive patterns.  Don't just think about what you could do differently. Actually DO things differently. Awareness is not enough. Planning is not enough. Change only comes when you act on what you're thinking.  As part of this implementation phase, it's important to connect with other people who are working on the same sorts of changes. Often it's the people we are currently connected to who will hold us back from changing our patterns. They worked as connections for us in our old ways of being, but they may no longer be our best companions for this new career work we want to do. We need support and encouragement to persist and that often comes from connecting with new groups of people. This will have the added benefit of building one of your resilience patterns--Connecting.  Here's what I've found as I work to build my own career resilience. You cannot control all of the career events you will experience in your life, but you can create patterns that will minimize destructive events and the impact of those events on your career. Remember, it's not the problems that will kill you. It's the patterns you've created that lead to those problems that will be your undoing. 

As I've been talking with people about the idea of career resilience, I've also started collecting stories of how these individuals have incorporated the patterns of resilience into their lives. Over lunch a few weeks ago, one of my learning professional friends agreed to share her story (anonymously) through email. She's one of the many people I've talked to who is who is expressing her resilience by developing a small business with multiple income streams. She is a resilient entrepreneur. Here's her story: A story of career resilience, or "I’m the greatest star…" We are, in many ways, the stories we tell about ourselves. So when Michele asked me to share my story of career resilience, I hesitated. The career story I tell is not one of resilience or triumph over adversity; it’s one of choice and deliberate action. I don’t generally share the harsh details and existential pain I encountered along the way, but I instead stick with a narrative - also true - of a satisfying and successful career built on self-reflection and deep knowledge and skill building. I decided to tell my story anonymously because I don’t necessarily want to be seen as a resilient person; I prefer to be judged on my current skills and accomplishments. But for this purpose, I’ll tell some of the parts of the story that are balled up and tossed in the wastebasket - not forgotten, but not in the story either. In a 30-year career that has also been marked with accomplishments, I have encountered just about every set-back you might name. I have been fired, laid off, reorganized out of a job, demoted, and pushed into "retirement" in a role shuffle. I have had to keep "proving myself" for new bosses even though I kept the same job. I can clearly remember tears of despair and frustration during some commutes, and I can still feel the sting and shock of surprisingly negative performance reviews. I have wrestled with the hard questions… How did I get here? How could this happen to me? What do I do now? Here’s the main thing. I’m still standing, and currently enjoying the work I do every day. (It’s a shame how few people can say that.) Moreover, I have a solid reputation in my field (on a national level) and people who I deeply respect also deeply respect me. I have worked very hard to ensure that set-backs don’t keep me down for long, and I have refused to let others define me. Along the way, I have indeed relied on - and had opportunity to fine tune - my career resilience. When Michele discussed her career resilience patterns with me, they resonated on many levels. I am happy to share some stories to underscore how these patterns can help others gain some resilience as well. Clarifying The most rewarding step I’ve taken in my career is to get very clear on what my talents are and what I want to be contributing in my work life. By analyzing what makes me energized and what brings me down, I have been able to gain perspective on my skills and come to a deep understanding of the ways I might apply them in how I make my living. I know what kind of work gets me in the "flow" state - and I know the strengths that I contribute to that work as well as the weak areas that I need to mitigate along the way. Another critical, mental-health-supporting bit of clarifying is that I have developed my own standard of excellence. I know my field very well, and can define what quality work looks like - and so I am much better able to respond when others might try to tear me down. I certainly listen carefully to constructive feedback, but I am also able to recognize when those giving direction don’t share my standards and perspective - which puts their feedback in a different light. Connecting Being an introvert, this pattern is actually tricky for me. But I have learned to initiate invitations for lunch, to plan ways to start conversations, and to reach out to those with whom I think I might have a mutually beneficial relationship. I have to set goals for myself so that I don’t let too much time go by without expanding my network and staying in touch with contacts. The best advice I’ve gotten in this regard is to be generous. I don’t worry so much about how a relationship with another person might benefit me - I try to do what I can to help others - to listen, to share resources, to offer advice, and to make connections if possible. You don’t have to believe in karma to endorse this as a good strategy- studies show that helping others does come back around in a positive way. Creating Like Michele, I think we have to get better at creating jobs for ourselves. In the last turn of events, I took a HUGE risk to go out on my own because I knew deep in my heart the kind of work I wanted to be doing, and I knew that I could best be doing that work in my own consulting practice. It’s not the first time I’ve invented my own job. I created the department that I worked in for ten years, and the role was very unique - I don’t expect to ever find it on a job board. For a time, I was also able to create a "portfolio career" - a combination of part time jobs that added up to the right balance of different kinds of work that I wanted to pursue. These things don’t always last though; either the organization changes, or my own needs change. So I try to keep myself open and ready to create new opportunities along the way. Even now, I have my mind and heart open for new possibilities. I have also tried to create a rich and complete life that works for me… family time, work hours, leisure time, vacations, community involvement, spiritual practices, exercise, and so on. We have a tendency to think of "work life" and "personal life" as if we have two lives to live… and we have just the one. I’ve learned it’s important to take time to craft a way of living that suits me. Coping I imagine my standard coping mechanisms are much the same as other people, although I am an introvert so they tend to be more sedate strategies. I escape into reading books, and can sit for hours absorbed in a good story. I love walking - especially at the beach, along the riverfront, or around the paths of a local park. Walking clears my head, and I try to get out almost every day. I love spending time with my family and friends, and getting out of the house (and home office) to see other people and recharge my batteries. I have to say, though, that when my resilience is really being tested, I cope best with Barbra Streisand blaring on my car radio. Sing along with me: "I’m the greatest star. I am by far, but no one knows it…" "Nobody, no nobody is going to rain on my parade." "Why settle for just a piece of sky?" Seriously, having those small snatches of lyrics playing in my mind has gotten me through many a dark day. They injected just that small bit of mental fortitude that made clarifying, connecting, and creating possible. 

  Knowing that I've been doing a lot of writing and thinking about career resilience, fellow career coach Scott Woodard recently pointed me to a Seth Godin post on the topic. A few things from Seth's post stood out for me, further underscoring the points I've been trying to make here.  First, he says: Most of the time, we build our jobs and our organizations and our lives around today, assuming that tomorrow will be a lot like now.   This is something I see many of us doing--assuming that what has happened before will happen again. It's a big argument I get from people about the impact of technology on our jobs. They argue that we've always created more jobs when technology disrupted us before, so we should expect that to happen again.  But if there's ONE thing we should have learned from the last few years, it's that tomorrow will NOT be like today. The only thing we can depend on is that we live in volatile times, which means that prediction specific events is getting harder and harder to do.  Another quote: Intentionally stripping away dependencies on things you can no longer depend on is the single best preparation to change. This is a challenge for folks, I know. But it's necessary. Dependencies can get in the way of our ability to be resilient because they limit our opportunities to respond to changing circumstances. Think carefully about what you are dependent on that you can no longer depend on. Jobs as your single source of income is one thing that comes to mind. Being rewarded for blind loyalty in the workplace is another . .  Third key quote: Invest in a network. When your neighbor can lend you what you need, it's far easier to survive losing what you've got. Cities and villages and tribes with thriving, interconnected neighborhoods find that the way they mesh resources and people, combined with mutual generosity, makes them more able to withstand unexpected change. And yes, the word is 'invest', because the connection economy thrives on generosity, not need. (my emphasis)   This is what I've been saying about Connecting as a key career resilience pattern. It's crucial. What Seth points out, though, is that it needs to be connection based on being generous, on sharing and paying it forward, not connection when you need something. It's relational, not transactional.  Finally: We're tempted to isolate ourselves from change, by building a conceptual or physical moat around our version of the future. Better, I think, to realize that volatility is the new normal. Putting all your eggs in one basket and watching the basket really carefully isn't nearly as effective as the other alternatives. Not when the world gets crazy.   Isolation and trying to insulate yourself from change aren't going to work. Change is coming anyway and you won't be prepared. The "moat" approach is a recipe for disaster.  Career resilience isn't about "putting all your eggs in one basket and watching that basket really carefully." It's about building the right patterns into your life now that will allow you to respond to a volatile future. The more we focus on our capacity to respond to change the better off we'll be. 

What's Your Layoff Plan? from Michele Martin on Vimeo. A big part of career resilience is being prepared for what work throws at you. The more prepared you are when something bad happens, the better you'll feel. One work event more and more of us are having to deal with is a lay-off. Sometimes you'll see the writing on the wall and can plan for a lay-off. More often than not, though, it will come as a surprise. I know people who thought things were great on Monday and were being escorted from their desks on Friday afternoon. Honestly, you just never know.    In today's video post I go through what you should have in place to avoid being blindsided in the event of a lay-off.  These are some tips that will help you jumpstart your job search so you don't end up in the ranks of the long-term unemployed.  A couple of follow-up comments to the video: I mention in the video the need to have contact information for your network. What I mean here is that you need to have this information accessible to you from a place outside of your job. If all of your contacts are in your work Outlook, you need to do something about that now.  You may not get a chance to access that info. Related to this, make sure that you can access your LinkedIn account via a personal email address. You do this by going to Settings and then selecting "Edit/Add" next to "Primary Email account." Be sure to add a personal email address and then if you get laid off, make that your primary email.  Finally, for your personal business/networking cards, you need to have your home contact information, not your work contact information on those cards. The point is that people are able to reach you outside of your previous employment.  Additional Resources 6 Easy Steps to a Great Elevator Pitch---Via Tim Tyrell-Smith  Moo--My favorite place for business cards.  More on having multiple income streams  

More things seem to be changing in my world than ever before, but I can’t quite put my finger on it, let alone know how to adapt. So let me try to put my finger on it: We now live in a 401(k) world — a world of defined contributions, not defined benefits — where everyone needs to pass the bar exam and no one can escape the most e-mailed list.--Thomas Friedman, It's a 401(k) World  As I've been exploring career resilience and trying to talk with people about the shift that they need to take in their attitude toward their careers, I've been struggling with how to get it across to people that showing up is not enough anymore. That they can't just keep their heads down and hope that if they just follow directions, they will be OK.  Now I see that Tom Friedman nails what's going on in an editorial from a few days ago: Something really big happened in the world’s wiring in the last decade, but it was obscured by the financial crisis and post-9/11. We went from a connected world to a hyperconnected world. I’m always struck that Facebook, Twitter, 4G, iPhones, iPads, high-speech broadband, ubiquitous wireless and Web-enabled cellphones, the cloud, Big Data, cellphone apps and Skype did not exist or were in their infancy a decade ago when I wrote a book called "The World Is Flat." All of that came since then, and the combination of these tools of connectivity and creativity has created a global education, commercial, communication and innovation platform on which more people can start stuff, collaborate on stuff, learn stuff, make stuff (and destroy stuff) with more other people than ever before. What’s exciting is that this platform empowers individuals to access learning, retrain, engage in commerce, seek or advertise a job, invent, invest and crowd source — all online. But this huge expansion in an individual’s ability to do all these things comes with one big difference: more now rests on you. If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone. But if you’re not self-motivated, this world will be a challenge because the walls, ceilings and floors that protected people are also disappearing. That is what I mean when I say "it is a 401(k) world." Government will do less for you. Companies will do less for you. Unions can do less for you. There will be fewer limits, but also fewer guarantees.Your specific contribution will define your specific benefits much more. Just showing up will not cut it. (My emphasis)  This is the thing. Each one of us is placed in the position of either steering the ship of our own aspirations and development or of having those decisions made for us by companies and organizations that aren't going to have our best interests at heart. It will be virtually impossible for you to thrive, and possibly even survive if you aren't willing to take a more active role in your own development.  I don't entirely agree with this shift. I'm personally troubled by the fact that the belief seems to be that we all need to figure it out on our own and that if we aren't actively contributing to the economy, we can forget about having any kind of safety net or supports. I aspire to something different as a way of life. BUT, I'm also aware of reality. And we have to always plan for what is, not what we wish could be.  Right now, we are living in a world that REQUIRES you to be self-motivated and in charge of your own career if you hope to maintain any level of security or stability in your work life. Even with self-motivation, it will still be a rockier road.  As Friedman points out in his piece, it's difficult to get the information that's needed to make good decisions about developing your competencies even when you are taking charge of your career.  Friedman also points out the value of many of the things I've been talking about here in terms of the 4 resilience patterns of Clarifying, Connecting, Creating and Coping:  "Just as having a 401(k) defined contribution plan requires you to learn more about investing in your retirement, a 401(k) world requires you to learn much more about investing in yourself: how do I build my own competencies to be attractive to employers and flourish in this world," said Byron Auguste, a director at McKinsey and one of the founders of Hope Street Group, which develops policies to help Americans navigate this changing economy. "As young people rise to that challenge, the value of mentors, social networks and role models will rise." . . .  When I say that "everyone has to pass the bar now," I mean that, as the world got hyperconnected, all these things happened at once: Jobs started changing much faster, requiring more skill with each iteration. Schools could not keep up with the competencies needed for these jobs, so employers got frustrated because, in a hyperconnected world, they did not have the time or money to spend on extensive training. So more employers are demanding that students prove their competencies for a specific job by obtaining not only college degrees but by passing "certification" exams that measure specific skills — the way lawyers have to pass the bar. Last week, The Economist quoted one labor expert, Peter Cappelli of the Wharton business school, as saying that companies now regard filling a job as being "like buying a spare part: you expect it to fit. To see where you need to invest, you need Clarity about your strengths and the opportunities around you. Mentors, role models and social networks are the heart of the Connecting pattern.  And "passing the bar" means Creation--creating value and creating structures that allow you to continually renew and refresh your skills.  The biggest change, though, that we're going to have to deal with is ensuring that we all recognize the profound way in which the world has shifted. It is not enough to just show up anymore, ready to follow orders. Only those who become active creators of their own careers will be able to survive, let alone thrive, in this new, hyperconnected world.  The question is, how willing are we to accept this responsibility for ourselves? How well are we communicating this to our children and to the other young people in our lives?   

  Many of the people I talk to and many I work with are in pain about work. They have been treated poorly by toxic bosses, stressed out colleagues and uncaring organizations that regard them as  disposable.   Job requirements are constantly shifting and they live with daily uncertainty about the stability of their jobs. And as I've discussed before, the quality of many jobs from an employee perspective is trending downward, with expectations at all-time highs and wages and working conditions at some all-time lows.  I work with a lot of people who are unemployed and their lay-offs have been handled poorly, leaving them bitter and angry about work. The job search process itself is a daily exercise in rejection and humiliation and the longer people are out of work, the worse things become.  I know I'm not helping things either, talking about how technology is eating your job, how we live in a 401(k) world and encouraging you to have a lay-off plan.  I'm trying to communicate with you about the realities of modern work, to encourage you to make changes now, but these realities are bitter pills to swallow for many of us and only add to the fear.  So I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of sanctuary and how we need some sort of safe space to develop our career resilience and heal our relationships with work. Many of us are caught up in anxiety and stress  (sometimes without even realizing it because the pace is so ridiculously demanding) and we need a break from this cycle. It's difficult to replace unhealthy career habits with healthier ones if we don't give ourselves the space to breathe.  As I've thought about the work issues so many people face, the ways in which work has become a source of ongoing anxiety, pressure and toxic relationships, the concept of sanctuary has continually popped into my head. It has seemed, in many ways, the necessary container for the transformations we need to go through to adjust to our changing work circumstances and develop the habits that will allow us to thrive.  A sanctuary is safe space, a refuge from outside dangers and pressures. It is a source of help and comfort, giving relief in times of difficulty and protection from the outer world.  You are not meant to live permanently in a sanctuary. It's a way station for a particular time of your life. It gives you the sustenance and support you need to carry on when you're ready to resume your journey.  There are few sanctuaries available to us in modern life that will allow us to heal and grow strong. We also have a peculiar distaste for the idea of retreat into sanctuary. It might mean we can't hack it at work or we feel we don't have the time for such luxuries.  But as I see it, sanctuary--safe space--is increasingly critical to our ability to thrive in this strange new world. We cannot live indefinitely in fight or flight mode. We need a break to re-group and restore before moving on to the challenges and opportunities that await us. And we need connection to people who understand and support our need for safety and who can provide us with the resources to continue to the next phase.  Resilient people recognize when toxic emotions and experiences have eroded their ability to respond well and take steps to heal those places that have been injured. Seeking sanctuary when you need it is not a sign of disease. It's a healthy response to difficult circumstances.  I think we need more sanctuaries and more opportunities to recognize, acknowledge and work with the changing dynamics of our jobs. We need safe space to mourn what has been lost and to look for the opportunities in our new circumstances. And we need support and resources that will help us continue on our journey.  Where do you find sanctuary in your life? How do you use it to heal and restore?