My Personal Manifesto for Living in an Age of Uncertainty

On the outset of leaving for Canada in just over a week for an ‘extended period of time’ after having spent an incredible year living in Hungary and traveling around the world, meeting and re-connecting with some amazing people along the way in the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates and across Europe, I reached a moment of clarity the other day where it dawned on me that this is the life that I truly want to lead until the day I die: I want to live an interesting life in different places all around the world, but more importantly, I want to make a positive difference in the lives of the people and the communities around me.

I may never have your typical 9-5 office desk job and everything that comes along with it, including the security and stability that so many people dream of. At this point in my life, I am perfectly alright with that. I can handle uncertainty, having pushed myself to the outermost limits of my personal comfort zone when I decided to leave everything I knew behind last year and venture into the unknown to see what I was capable of. All of this in an attempt to make a name for myself somehow. Mixed with some initial fears and overwhelming excitement, this combination is what continues to keep life exciting and rewarding, helping me to move forward towards achieving some of my larger than life dreams and ambitions.

Living in an Age of Uncertainty

The very idea of ‘security’ and ‘stability’ that many people of my generation strive for after recently graduating from university and landing a job, any job, with a steady paycheck in order to keep up with mortgage payments and maintaining a consumer-driven lifestyle, seems all but an illusion to me now. We only have to look closely at the world around us to realize that the world is going through massive upheaval on many different levels, and the scale and level of complexity of this change is unlike anything that we have seen before.

This includes the decline of the industrial revolution where the 80 year long run that brought ever-increasing productivity (and along with it, well-paying jobs for an ever-expanding middle class) is coming to an end. As we speak, the nature of geopolitics in the Middle East and North Africa is being shaken to its core; the global financial crisis is still being felt in many parts of the world today, including Europe with its euro zone debt crisis calling into question the very existence of the European Union itself; rising food prices that are sparking food riots in many countries across the developing world, not to mention the untold millions of people worldwide that go to bed hungry every single day; and the increasing frequency of natural disasters worldwide together with the further degradation of our environment that is leading to unprecedented numbers of climate refugees.

In this day and age where nothing is for certain anymore, not even the world’s energy supply of oil, and where long-held beliefs and assumptions in ideas such as democracy, freedom and the role the media plays in shaping our perception of the world around us, are being challenged and called into question, we are told that the people and organizations who are best able to manage change, diversity and uncertainty, will be the ones who succeed.

I am certainly placing all my bets on this and have come to realize that with this given mindset, so many opportunities do, in fact, exist out there. And if those opportunities somehow do not exist at all, there is simply nothing to stop you from going ahead and creating those opportunities on your own.

To quote Seth Godin,

“Every individual, self-employed or with a boss, is now more in charge of her destiny than ever before. The notion of a company town or a stagnant industry with little choice is fading fast.

Right before your eyes, a fundamentally different economy, with different players and different ways to add value is being built. What used to be an essential asset (for a person or for a company) is worth far less, while new attributes are both scarce and valuable.

Are there dislocations? There’s no doubt about it. Pain and uncertainty and risk, for sure.

The opportunity, though, is the biggest of our generation (or the last one, for that matter). The opportunity is there for anyone (with or without a job) smart enough to take it–to develop a best in class skill, to tell a story, to spread the word, to be in demand, to satisfy real needs, to run from the mediocre middle and to change everything.“

So my question now becomes, how do YOU want to live your life?