Puzzled?

I never planned on living this long, did you? When I was a kid I thought I’d be long gone by forty. What is up with this? I’m in excellent physical condition, I have a great attitude, aptitude and I’m still looking for some altitude. This is a whole new space for me. I can’t go backwards, there’s no reverse on this thing.

I’ve spent most of my adult life building a unique skill set or platform, making valuable mistakes and maintaining a fail rate that would make any loser jealous. But I’m still kickin’ in the stall, baby.

The problem is, for most of us, along with all those skills and experiences, you’ve picked up a “hot stove” intuition and an over developed bullshit detector. You could never sit through a corporate onboarding session with a straight face again. Besides, their too smart to hire you.

They don’t necessarily want your common sense or worldly experience. Already tried that experiment in a recent post, Back In The Ring. They like ’em stupid. So where does that leave you?

If you do a SWOT analysis on yourself, (SWOT Analysis is a useful technique for understanding your Strengths and Weaknesses, and for identifying both the Opportunities open to you and the Threats you face,) or any type of self assessment, you need to take into account the battlefield your occupying. This ain’t your father’s career model. Joined a union lately?

In Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, he lays out the three A’s. Asia, Automation and Abundance. I’m sure you can figure out the first two, but the abundance part really grabbed me.

Abundance sounds like something out of a self help book but it’s a reality. You can build it but they ain’t coming. Unless you can add some value beyond the product or service itself.

People don’t buy goods and services based on necessity anymore. They instead, make purchasing decisions on how it makes them feel. The Prius is a good example. Simply put, we have too much stuff. The fastest growing industry in this country is, of all things, storage. Storage? Let that sink in.

So back to you. With most services headed to New Dehli and your previous contributions to society being automated, digitized or just plain shit canned and you still have a long row to hoe, you gotta dig in. If you want to live comfortably, creatively and spiritually fulfilled, you have to figure out this puzzle. You gotta find your fit.

If you want to clearly define your interests and desires going forward, you have to position yourself in a role that enhances the way you feel about yourself and energizes you for exploring new directions.

If you decide you want to build upon what you have done before and bring it to a higher level, change direction, find inner peace and self satisfaction by investing yourself in community based charities, a small business, or any meaningful entrepreneurial adventure, remember, at this period of your existence, you are, for the most part, on your own. And that’s a good thing once you ease into it. Self expression is the holy grail.

You can never go home. Dig in and enjoy the soul searching process that brings out the best in all of us. If any of this resonates with you, I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment or subscribe. There are a lot of us in this stage of life and I’m sure we can help each other. In the mean time, in between time, tap into all the wonder that is you.

You don’t fit into the corporate scheme of things anymore. As the old commercial goes, “we don’t want tuna with good taste,” they don’t even want your friggin’ tuna. Sorry, Charlie!