The year of the consciousness

Now that the world is going through its worst crisis in many decades, there are a few resounding questions that come to my mind. When the sudden failure of your professional life or the business you have started is not dependent on your actions but on those of people thousands of kilometers away (people you have never heard of or spoken to, people who don’t even know you exist), there is definitely reasons to ponder. (Note: I am not referring to the normal disruption of business but to the extreme cases we are experiencing in the current period)

In other words, was it really worth it putting all these long hours at work, sacrificing the family life you were supposed to nurture? Are the model of success that our societies put forward still relevant? How can we better balance our personal and professional lives and objectives? Has the way we have put our priorities forward be the proper one?

Some would argue that in hindsight it’s easy to see what has been going wrong. I would argue that the balance of personal and professional life has always existed but that the pressure from society has been so strong, that somehow we have suppressed it. When everything is going well and you are on a wave of success, what else could you wish for?

Actually, it seems that our societies have put forward the measure of success as being wealth, power, influence, or fame. Short term objectives have often overridden longer and more stable ones. Somehow the measure of success and the way our societies have been shaped up in the past years have led to or at least have been important causes of the crisis we are going through.

My focus is not on the crisis itself but more on the place we, as individuals, entrepreneurs, or executive, should take in the period that is opening in front of us. How will we manage our careers and future development in view of what is happening across the world? It may be time to put back the “self” at the forefront of our concerns. It may be the time for the resurgence of values that would give back some senses to our lives.

Our professional life is an integral part of what we do or what we are. For some it’s the only measure to go against. Yet, there are other parts of our lives that of importance: spending time with family, devoting time to your passion, exercising, travelling, giving back to society through charitable work, etc. The list could go on.

Once you undertake a career path, do you know exactly what it entails? Are you ready to make all the sacrifices that the path you are taking will bring upon you? Somehow it does not have to be a binary approach: if you do one, you cannot do the other one. If you are well prepared there are always ways to balance both your professional needs and your personal ones. Better planning (even for the unexpected!) will help pave the way for a more fruitful life.

This is the year of the consciousness. The year where the self will come back at the forefront. The year where personal values and objective will take back the place they should never have lost.