Decades ago Coco Chanel spoke my future with these words:
“A woman who cuts her hair is about to change her life.”
I lived out Mlle Chanel’s words – cutting off all my long silky hair – when what I really wanted to do was change my relationship. Eventually, I did that too. And then my partner at the time and I both wrote songs about it!
These are those kinds of times.
One of my clients put it so simply in our last Creative Process Group: “I feel like I’m waiting on everything… to know where my life is headed.”
When life pushes us out of our comfort zones, we feel… well, uncomfortable. And when we're uncomfortable, we’ll do just about anything to make the feeling go away. “If I don’t do something right now, I’m going to jump out of my skin!” We act. We react. And often we regret.
We’re coming up on two years of this now. And 2021 proved my point, officially becoming The Year Everyone Quit.
Reshaping the Workforce.
Last year alone, 38 million people in the US alone left their jobs.
By December, 11 million of those positions were still open. Companies are raising wages to win them back, but many of those people have still not sought new jobs. So executives are starting to ask what else employees might be looking for. Answering the What question is not enough anymore. Now we must also answer the Why. The Big Why.
Redefining Ourselves.
The world’s #1 job site Indeed surveyed 1,000 people who’ve quit at least two jobs since the start of the pandemic. 920 of them said that "the pandemic made them feel life is too short to stay in a job they weren't passionate about."
If you’re one of the 92%, this raises big questions:
- What are you longing to do with your life?
- What are you passionate enough about to bet your livelihood on it?
- How do you know that life is too short not to do it?
- What are you willing to put on the line to have it?
Realizing our Dreams.
For millions of these quitters, passion is leading them to go their own way. Last year, 5.4 million people filed applications to start their own businesses, breaking the 2020 record of 4.4 million and surpassing the 2019 number by more than 2 million.
Not all of these businesses will succeed, of course. And most do not plan to hire employees. But it's an upward trend. So what's driving it?
The Great Reinvention.
There’s an entrepreneurial revolution springing up out of the winter of our discontent.
The Great Resignation is in fact a huge creative opportunity
In my experience, this is how it works. There’s always an opportunity in there somewhere if you look for it.
Recovering our Purpose.
So what can you do while you’re waiting to turn this resignation into reinvention? Here are five proven steps you can take now to find the opportunity in it for you.
- Go deep. Whether you’ve quit your job or are still on the fence, use this time to reflect. Look back on your life – your successes and failures, your loves and hates, what’s come easy and what’s come hard, and yes, your passions. Then…
- Tell the truth. What do you truly, madly, deeply want to do? What do you long for? What, even if you didn’t have a wolf at the door, would get you out of bed in the morning? What do you want to leave when you’re gone?
- Choose what you love. There are millions of us who dream. Maybe you want to write a book, build a business, start a new career, right a wrong, leave a legacy. But know this. On the shoulder of every dreamer is a doubter. And realizing the dream requires that you choose it… again and again.
- Open up. There is a time to act and a time to sit and wait. Most of us, under the influence of our contemporary cult of productivity, do not often choose the latter. But the only way to experience anything new is to put yourself in places you’ve never been before. To stop, look and listen. What’s out there? What’s calling you?
- Do the work. No question, there is work to be done. But the more thoroughly you do your homework, the better the odds that the risk you take will pay off. Then that leap must be taken. Find the support you need to do the work and keep doing it even when you feel like quitting. Dreamers are becoming achievers every day in the Big Vision Project Incubator. Find out more.
What’s showing up with you while you’re waiting? What is life too short for you not to try?
If what you really want to do is change your life, maybe you can just do that first… and keep your lovely hair.