My successful friends and I also faced job losses, health issues or international moves in the past. I observe how when we are pulled out of our program of going to work and caring for family, we open up to change.

It is more difficult to change when you are not forced to. When we feel healthy enough we don’t feel like watching our diet or go to the doctor for a check-up.

It is harder to make an effort to learn when you have a well-paid managerial job. The reason for this is not always time. Learning occurs when we stretch outside of our comfort zones but who will do that unless he or she is pushed a little?

Where are the risk-takers, who voluntarily expose themselves to learning situations that keep their brains active? Is an international career and transition into another culture one of those potential stretches you could do? Is it running your own company? Or becoming a mentor to a more junior professional in your industry?

In today’s global and digital world, do you still want to depend on an “employer” and make your self-worth dependent on a title such as “Vice President” or “Senior Manager”? Is that really driving you? Is another suit, car or holiday really going to make your life so much better?

We believe at GPT that we need to deconstruct “career”. If you think about your own professional life, you might be experiencing automation, the death of industry and uberization. Have you asked yourself if you will still have a “retirement” in 20 or 30 years?

Maybe you won’t even stop “working” because your work gives you purpose.

Being a Gen-X, I believe in ‘work hard, play hard’ and at the same time, I would like to make a contribution to the world.

Why would you use all of your energy to make a multinational more successful?

Do you really want to spend hours discussing words on a presentation or numbers in a business case?

We could go on and become the ”Walking Dead” of the workforce.

We could also say that we develop ourselves into the leaders that we really want to be.

Instead of thinking about our next promotion, more money, and the next career step, we could think about what we would like to contribute to the world. We could brainstorm a vision: why do we get up in the morning? We could think about how we can improve society, our company or even our neighborhood. We could write down what we would do every day for a better world. We could paint it, photograph it and have a vision board (on Pinterest).

Would that not make you happy and be better than “making a living”?

Kind regards,

Angie Weinberger

P.S.: related to this topic is also this short blog post from the Middle Finger Project