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CREATE A NEW
BEGINNING

Any time you stop striving to get better, you’re bound to get worse.

—PAT RILEY

Life should be an adventure, to be savored from beginning to end. It is a game of constantly changing odds, constantly developing challenges, constantly opening opportunities. To win it, you have to play it. Sitting on the sidelines won’t do. Even after you’ve achieved all you ever hoped to achieve, it’s no time to stop living. To live, you must have a purpose to guide you.

“Happiness,” observed W. H. Sheldon, “is essentially a state of going somewhere wholeheartedly.” To go somewhere wholeheartedly, you must have your eye fixed on a destination that touches your passions. In the preceding chapter, we touched on the changing social and economic climate, including the changing nature of the job market. To achieve success in this climate, you must regard the changes as challenges instead of threats.

AN ERA OF EXHILARATING OPPORTUNITY

Many people become frightened when they perceive the end of the stable career path that led steadily upward from diploma to gold watch. Yet the future holds for today’s young people exhilarating opportunities that were not there for previous generations. People today have the opportunity to reinvent themselves, over and over, in exciting new roles. Fortune’s Brian O’Reilly described the new relationship between employers and employees and observed, “If the old arrangement sounded like binding nuptial vows, the new one suggests a series of casual, thrilling—if often temporary—encounters.”¹

As the large crop of baby boomers moves into retirement, the job market will shift in favor of the workforce, and people will have the option of working well into their retirement years if they choose. With today’s longer life expectancies, even those who have spent lifetimes in the same career niche will be able to start new careers after age sixty-five, perhaps with less stress and more fulfillment than in their old careers.

FIVE TYPES OF TERRAIN

Whether you’re over sixty or under forty, the achievement of your current vision means that it’s time for recommitment to a new and exciting vision. As you pursue your career path, you’re likely to encounter different types of terrain that can limit your upward mobility. We’ll discuss five of them here:

1. The box canyon
2. The briar patch
3. The badlands
4. Green pastures
5. The barnyard

The Box Canyon

The box canyon is a familiar formation in organizations that still follow the top-down authoritarian management style. Most people are familiar with this land formation from western movies. The trail leads into the canyon and dead-ends at a steep, sheer wall. There’s no way up and no way around. The only way to go anywhere is to retrace your steps and leave the canyon.

In box canyon organizations, room at the top is reserved for a limited few—usually no more than 1 percent of the workforce. The unprivileged 99 percent are relegated to the role of taking orders from above and executing them the way they’re told. They’ve encountered the walls of the box canyon, and there’s nowhere for them to go except out the way they came.

You may have found a comfortable role in such an organization early in your career. You dreamed of becoming good at what you did. You formed your dream into a vision, you set goals, and you drew up an action plan. Now your vision has been achieved. You’re a pro at what you do. Your peers look up to you. They recognize your skill, your loyalty, and your good work habits. You’re earning a comfortable salary. But the job is no longer challenging. You want to move up.

But in box canyon organizations, loyalty, skill, and hard work don’t necessarily win you advancement. There’s room at the top for only I percent of the people, and if the rooms are all taken, your loyalty, skill, and hard work will buy you a cup of coffee in the company cafeteria but not much else.

If you’ve achieved your vision and now find yourself in such an organization, you have two options: You can wait for the organization to change, or you can change organizations. You can create a new vision, commit yourself to achieving it, and take your loyalty, skills, and work habits down a new path.

The Briar Patch

In Joel Chandler Harris’s tales of Uncle Remus, the hero is a brash rabbit who is constantly outsmarting the fox. On one occasion, the fox catches the rabbit and is trying to dream up the most dreadful means of doing him in. The rabbit pleads, “Don’t throw me in the briar patch.” The fox, believing that the rabbit is terrified of the briar patch, throws him in.

But the briar patch, of course, was the rabbit’s home. He knew all the secret entrances and exits, all the hidden trails. He loved the challenge of hopping through the thorny passageways and outwitting his enemies. The rabbit wouldn’t have left the briar patch if he could.

Many people feel that way about their niches in life. They find their jobs stimulating, their companions congenial, and their lifestyles satisfactory. They can find all the challenge they need right there in the briar patch. If you’re in such a situation, you don’t have to abandon it for greener pastures just because somebody tells you things are better beyond the hedgerow. But you do need to be prepared for change.

Keep yourself constantly updated on developments in your field and in other fields that interest you. Briar patches don’t last forever. They often get cleared away for new developments. If that happens, you’ll want to be prepared, and constant education is a good way to stay prepared. It’s as true today as when a Greek philosopher named Aristotle said it more than two thousand years ago: “Education is the best provision for old age.” It’s also the best provision for career crises.

The Badlands

The badlands are hostile territory only to those who don’t know how to cope with them. Those who are skilled in desert survival may find them challenging, stimulating, and fascinating. Some organizational climates are like that. They may provide little support for the innovative risk taker, but individuals may thrive on pet projects of their own. They act on their own initiative, despite the indifference of the organization. They get their ego satisfaction from the respect of their peers, often achieving recognition through professional and trade organizations. If you find yourself in such a situation, look ahead. Are you headed toward burnout? Can you continue to find fulfillment in your work despite the corporate attitude?

You may find that you can effect positive change within the organization by exerting leadership. Having achieved your vision so far as personal accomplishments are concerned, why not frame a vision for your team, department, or other organization and commit yourself to making it a reality?

Green Pastures

Many people reach career situations that seem to answer all their needs. They’ve worked their way into good positions with comfortable pay levels and responsibilities that don’t stretch their abilities or their energies. They’ve found their green pastures. They don’t need to look for better grazing, and they see no need to improve the grazing in their present pastures. They don’t want more responsibility, they don’t need more money, and they don’t want to have to learn new things. They’re happy and productive the way they are.

An organization that has too many happy people like that is in trouble. It won’t innovate, it won’t take risks, and it won’t compete. In time, the green pasture may turn brown, or it may be overgrown with noxious weeds, and nobody will know how to deal with the crisis. An individual with the green pastures mentality may also experience problems. Just as natural environments change, so corporate climates change. Remember that in the new economy, change has become a way of life. The comfortable behavior that once brought you all the rewards you wanted may soon become obsolete.

Complacency is a dangerous quality in an era of rapid change. It turns the green pasture into a treacherous jungle. When you’re in the comfortable environment of a green pasture, you may tell yourself that the struggle is over and all that remains for you is to enjoy the fruits of your labors. There’s a temptation to slack off and let your momentum carry you.

That’s never a good idea. Many a professional athlete has learned that the green years pass too soon; that the glory and the adulation pass when the eye can no longer follow the ball, the legs can no longer muster the speed, the muscles no longer have the resilience.

Those who look beyond the green pastures and plan for the post-glory years are the survivors.

So never allow yourself to get too comfortable. Always keep your eye on the next move, the next change. Be prepared for it. Take the initiative in making it the kind of change you want, and not the kind of change you have to accept, like it or not.

The Barnyard

For some people, even green pastures are too challenging. They’re like barnyard animals. They stand around waiting for whatever comes along. They watch idly as others take the initiative to better themselves and the organization. They’re not interested in upgrading their skills, acquiring more education, or accepting more responsibility. They do what’s expected of them and no more.

Such people are unwilling to do the things that lead to success. If you’re in that category, it's imperative that you begin immediately the six steps outlined in this book. Decide that you will do something meaningful with your life. Identify your talents, your values, and your preferred behavioral mode. Create a vision for a future in harmony with all those elements. Then set your goals, plan for their achievement, prepare for action—and act!

You will encounter similar terrain in your personal, social, spiritual, and civic lives. As you progress toward your vision in each of these areas of life, be aware of where you are—of which goals you have achieved and which goals still lie ahead. Be conscious of your terrain. If you find yourself headed into a box canyon, turn around and walk out. Don’t become so absorbed in the challenges of your briar patch that you lose sight of the challenges and opportunities that lie beyond it. Don’t suffer burnout in the badlands. Don’t be lulled into complacency by the comforts of green pastures, and don’t let yourself be penned up in a barnyard.

As you see the approach of your vision’s fulfillment, look upon it not as the end but as a new beginning. Decide what you want to do with the next stage of your life, whether it be your life in retirement, the next stage of progress in your career, or the launching of an entirely new career. Create a new vision. Set new goals, and plan for their achievement. Then prepare for action—and act!

If you follow this process, you will find your life always stimulating and always challenging. And you will achieve success in terms of its only meaningful definition: the definition that you yourself have written.