Job security? Jobs have not been a form of security in decades

Imagine: you are walking through the gray corridors of a corporate block. Your warmly-suited host turns to you and says, “And in this cubicle is Mr. John Bon Jovi, our best accountant. It’s actually a funny story; he used to talk about becoming a ‘rock star.’ “Yeah, John did the responsible thing! Say hi, John. Good boy! Now get the peanuts.”

As a society, we are a good three decades away from the death of the job for life. However, curiously, we continue to perpetuate the idea that jobs represent security.

We argue that a job is ‘safe’. May I take a moment to speak on behalf of the human soul? What’s safe in forcing yourself to spend three quarters of your life chasing something you feel? That sounds very dangerous to me.

In fact, this is the worst professional advice you’ll ever hear: ‘Study something that people need… like YOU.’ Why is this well-intentioned thought the potential undoing of a human life? Because anything that can be systematized or outsourced to Asia is of little value. Please learn by all means. But understand that selling it is getting cheaper. Original thinking is becoming more valuable.

As Steve Jobs tried to tell us, we get so fixated on college degrees and corporate jobs that we forget to think originally. We all rush to be the henchmen trained to install and service Bill Gates programs… instead of actually wanting to be Bill Gates.

We even indulge in that weird compromise, where we tell our kids they can do whatever they want with their lives: ‘follow your dreams, by all means!’ – as soon as they have spent eight years studying to be a doctor and have built up so much momentum in that direction that it is impossible to do otherwise.

Conversely, did you know that one of the highest-earning celebrities of all time, far ahead of anyone you’ve ever met with a mainstream job, was Charles Schultz, the author of Peanuts? Snoopy’s Dad was a mega financial success. And what he did for a living was draw a three-panel comic strip every day.

But maybe money is not everything to you. How about a career that allows you to travel? see the world?

Television’s Travel Channel has a young woman who thought differently and earned the perfect race. She wanted to host a travel show, but she had absolutely no qualifications.

Then the inspiration hit me: “What if I traveled to different parts of the world, gathered some of the locals and went skinny dipping in the lakes? No one had ever done that before!” Today, she is the host of an internationally syndicated television show cheekily titled ‘Skinny Dip’.

Before willingly giving in to the illusion of groupthink and allowing the neurosis of others to pressure you into spending three-quarters of your waking life doing something you hate, in the misguided search for security, pause for a while. moment. He looks towards the horizon. There are more available. But only for those who are willing to think outside the box. And that they are brave enough to act on their vision.