Listen to your Inner Economy

In a groundbreaking book, Rethinking Work, Boston career counselor Cliff Hakim noted that success comes from defining the inner economy— discovering what makes you happy, lights your fire, gives you juice—then learning how to align your passion with the marketplace.

You might wonder, “Can I afford to pursue my dreams in such uncertain times? Isn’t is best to place it safe?” Hakim counters that there is no job security anymore—so why not bet on yourself and pursue the work you love?  If you’re ready to take that leap, here are  five things you’ll need to do.  

1) Make time to reflect

Take a few minutes each day to explore your relationship to work and consider what tasks give you the greatest joy. To jumpstart this process, try the Core Values Test developed by Peter Senge at MIT.  There’s an online version here. The test will reveal whether you’re on a quest for leadership, wisdom, or self-knowledge, whether what really motivates you is family, friendship, adventure, the adrenal rush of problem-solving or a gentle and predictable routine.

2) Put together your creative committee

Find a few trusted friends and colleagues to brainstorm about how you might incorporate these values into your everyday life. “Choose people who will listen, non-judgmentally, and support your desire to grow, then start swapping stories about activities that make you feel excited and engaged,” says Hakim, “Listen to the little sparks that emerge from this creative conversation and give yourself permission to explore them in greater depth.”

3) Start to flex and learn new skills

A willingness to explore new talents is key to staying fresh and feeling more alive. TJ Maxx, a multibillion-dollar purveyor of discount clothing, routinely shuffles workers into different jobs.  A logistics manager may be asked to head up information services, or a client representative may be reassigned to marketing. “Many companies are now encouraging people to stretch,” says Hakim.  “They’re developing a new kind of yoga, helping people try out different roles and routines.”

 Whether you work for an organization, or for yourself, don’t be afraid to change your resume.  If you feel stifled, experiment.  Consider doing something different.  Don’t be afraid to make an unexpected move as long as you're following your core values.

4) Learn to dance with the marketplace

Successful entrepreneurs don’t take failure or rejection personally; they allow for a few missteps and keep on moving toward their goals.  It usually takes five years to move a new venture into the black or forge a new career— and that’s with constant practice. "After a while you learn how to adjust the steps to stay in rhythm with the marketplace," Hakim says. "It's not a perfect waltz, but you get better at it, as time goes along."

5) Follow your creative voice

  

In 2010, Cliff Hakim took the advice he’d been giving clients—follow the work you love. He’d been outlining some new lectures and making notes for another book but nothing seemed to spark. Around this time, he took on a home improvement project: building a stone wall around his property. An architect praised the beauty and ingenuity of his design, and when it was complete, Hakim’s wife delivered one of those life-changing lines, “I’ve never seen you look so happy.”

 

“This project grounded me in the earth,” he recalls, “and working with stone gave me a sense of permanence. I wanted other people to have this feeling, too.”  

Hakim gave himself permission to explore his natural sculptures with what he calls “a truthful arrogance.” This meant following a creative impulse with no idea where it might lead.  

Hakim started building garden monuments and special seating areas until a friend said, “I have the perfect piece of land where you can start your business.” Another said, “I know a quarry you should visit.” Then quarry master said, “You’re always in such a rush when you come up here… Leave three hours next time, so we can walk the land and talk.” Their relationship evolved, and Hakim discovered he liked hanging out with stonecutters and foundry workers, men who made things with their hands. 

 And that was the birth of his new company, Inspired Stones.  

  

Hakim is still listening to people’s stories, as he did for many years in his coaching practice. Only this time the conversation is about their desire to connect with nature, construct a memorial honoring a loved one, or create a meditation garden. At 64, Hakim enjoys working outdoors and often has to leverage large stones into place before he can start carving and refinishing.“I can still do physical labor,” he says, “because I feel young inside. To keep your spirit alive—that’s the greatest gift you can give yourself and others.”

Reinvent Your Profession

You got your MBA or your law degree and worked your way up to the top...only to discover you  didn't become the person you set out to be.  Now what  to do?  

You can join a self-help group for recovering lawyers,  a support circle for executive burn-out.  Maybe even find a Bankers Anonymous for financiers shamed by the scandalous behavior of their CEOs.  But there's another alternative besides opting out.  It's changing your profession from the inside out.

This is the story of three visionaries who went straight to the core of the problem--making their professions more palatable to their fellow practitioners and  more responsive to the people they serve.

These three  had the courage to ask:  If my job isn’t aligned with my core beliefs, what would it take to fix it?   

Read on to find out how they changed their disciplines and reclaimed their original ideals.

Lawyers Can Be Peacemakers

Twenty-one years ago, San Francisco divorce attorney Pauline Tesler considered the adversarial nature of her profession. Families emerged broken and bitter from protracted litigation, and because of the way the system was set up, attorneys often made the outcome worse.

“In law school we are taught to put on armor to protect ourselves from conflict,” Tesler says, “but this walling off of feelings and emotions has been a source of enormous misery. Studies show that by the third year, 40 percent of law school students are clinically depressed.”

Tesler’s solution was to become a pioneer of Collaborative Divorce, a win-win approach for both attorneys and their clients. This process helps families come out whole, and allows their legal teams to work with other professionals like psychologists and financial advisors. The Collaborative Divorce movement now has more than 25,000 members worldwide who believe that law can be a healing profession, and lawyers can play the role of peacemakers. These practitioners no longer have to put their feelings aside; they approach their work with compassion and the will to serve.

 

As founder of the Integrative Law Institute (ILI), Tesler hopes to return the practice of law to its original purpose—to help heal conflict. One of the areas she’s exploring now is the law that governs business partnerships. “We want to help entrepreneurs get clear about their working environment,” she says. “So we ask: What are the values that brought you together as a team, and made you want to build this company together? When you disagree, or things go wrong, how would you like to deal with that?”

Integrative law starts with the belief that conflict can be creative, and that it’s part of growth, as long as there’s a constructive system in place to deal with it. Tesler compares it to integrative medicine, noting that both serve the whole person. Her hope is that attorneys will pave the way for a more humane way of doing business. In the meantime, she has shown her colleagues how to tap into their own idealism and good will.

Non-profit Bankers  Build Community

As a piano technician Christopher Sikes found a perfect niche: repairing Steinways and other high-end pianos then selling them to professors at Harvard or MIT. But when he needed capital to expand his business, he was surprised to be turned away by local banks.  Determined to change the system, and create more opportunities for entrepreneurs and small business owners, Sikes got his MBA and is now in the vanguard of a new profession as a “non-profit banker.”

“We structure our loans to meet the needs of the businesses, rather than asking the business to meet the requirements of a bank,” he says. “Our goal is to provide what’s called ‘patient capital’ because it gives startups time to get their product off the ground.” 

Since 1989, Common Capital has supported housing projects, dairy farms and sustainable agriculture, a natural foods market, a coffee roaster, and a local cinema that uses film to teach literacy in the public schools.  Some 250 regional loan funds have cropped up in the US, investing in local enterprises and building strong regional economies.

Three years ago, Sikes created the Community First Fund, asking residents to invest in local businesses. “Folks feel good supporting local shops and services. It’s more personal than investing in the stock market,” he says, “and the fund contributes to a strong regional autonomy.” 

There are now 250 organizations like Common Capital around the country, helping thousands of entrepreneurs to turn their dreams into reality.  

Socially Responsible CEOs Reorganize Their Companies

What do we do about an economic system that rewards the elite—like CEOs and shareholders?  How can business also take care of the workers, and reach out to the community?  The answer: Change the nature of commercial enterprise. Make doing business is compatible with doing good.  

This is the aim of the B Corporation (the B stands for “benefit”). These innovative companies are making a pledge to give back to society as well as to their shareholders. Certified by the nonprofit B Lab, they meet rigorous standards of accountability and transparency. And they also have a strong commitment to social and environmental causes.

With his friends for over 20 years, Bart Houlahan and Andrew Kassoy,  Jay Coen Gilbert shares a passion for creating a better world through business. Coen Gilbert and Houlahan were Co-Founder and President, of a $250 million basketball footwear and apparel business when they decided to create the B Corporation (the B stands for “benefit”), a new structure for companies concerned with giving back.  Certified by the nonprofit B Lab, these firms meet rigorous standards of accountability and transparency. They also have a strong commitment to social and environmental causes.

“All the world's wisdom spiritual traditions say the same thing: We are interconnected, we should treat others as we wish to be treated, and we must be the change we seek in the world,” says Coen Gilbert.  “Our work, and the work of each individual B Corporation are simply imperfect attempts to manifest these truths in the marketplace.”

Today there are more than 1,000 Certified B Corps in 33 countries and over 60 industries. Examples include Patagonia, makers of outdoor gear; Badger Balm, producers of natural cosmetics; Ingage Partners, a management and technology consulting firm that gives a quarter of its profits to good causes and allows employees time off to volunteer; and Etsy, a global marketplace for handmade goods that provides loaner bicycles and organic meals to its employees, and offers its office compost to a community farm. These innovative companies have made a pledge to society as well as to their shareholders. They’ve made doing business into an opportunity for doing good.

A Feminist Future?

My Late Blooming class today was in the doldrums after congressmen grilled Hillary Clinton like they were auditioning for the primate version of  Survival.  Despite the mud and sticks, Hillary acquitted herself well.  Yet it was profoundly disturbing to see this retro attitude toward women surface once again.  

Boomer women can't really think about Late Blooming without realizing what it took to get here.  The legislation, the protests, the way we had to prove ourselves, over and over, in the workplace.  What last week's spectacle brought up was our role as front-runners in the way women are perceived.  

A few days ago, I went with a friend to a supposedly "fun night" at the Mill Valley film festival--a look back at dance music on Dick Clark and a few other TV bandstand shows. We were reminded of what teenagers looked like in those days.  In one clip, the boys are jumping all over, strapped onto rocket-shaped guitars while the girls are immobilized in barrels of dry ice, scantily clad and made up to the hilt. (The warmest things they've got on are their false eyelashes.)  These clips brought back memories of an impossibly idealized Barbie and Phyllis Schlafly's flawless imitation of The Stepford Wife.  ("I think I'll bake a Bundt cake--if my husband lets me.")   No wonder we considered it progress when women were let out of the deep freeze and recast as go-go girls!

"Did we really live through this?" my friend asked as we hastily walked out, feeling like our feminist mojo had been caught in some sadistic time warp. 

If those of us who fought like tigresses for women's rights have forgotten what things used to look like, how can we blame the next generation for saying "Gee, Mom.  Feminism is a little out of date"? Maybe it's time to treat our grown children to some reruns of Donna Reed and Dick van Dyke.  Or grab a few old copies of Look or Life,  with blatantly sexist ads like the ones pictured here, created by real-life Mad Men after a three-martini power lunch.  Once younger people get the drift, maybe they'll recognize the retro attitude toward women that's creeping back into the mainstream now.  

My point is this: We can't sit back and say, "Look how far we've come."  Instead we have to say, "Here's where we went wrong." 

The bad news is that we have monetized every aspect of woman's labor and defined her as an ersatz man. Female executives can only get to the top by hiring other women to care for their homes and children. Nancy Fraser, author of Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis, says we've separated production from reproduction, creating a society where to "lean in" means to lean on others.  Is it any wonder that women are working longer, harder than ever before and feeling less content? How can we, as feminists, face up to the fact Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer are another version of the "one percent" and that their solutions aren't one-size-fits-all?  European women did this better, focussing on childcare and work-life balance, with the help of socialist governments.

In the US, we have been giving capitalism all the glory despite its staggering inability to address human concerns. Our wholesale belief in free-market, for-profit institutions has not only produced a ridiculous concentration of wealth, it has ignored women, minorities and the elderly and literally taken them off the map.  The worst thing to be in this country is female, poor and black or undocumented....and of course, over 65.  Who gets to bloom in that situation?

Globally, policy makers have been touting microloans as the solution for women in developing countries.  Yet the fact is these women have little control over their childbearing and are still considered their father's or their husband's property. As governments promote microcredit they are shying away from tougher, more systemic issues like the stunning prevalence violence against women and children, human trafficking and domestic abuse. 

A few years ago, funding for women's programs was pretty bleak.  For every dollar that went to aid women in third world countries, roughly 20 dollars went to men. Even though research shows that if you help a woman she'll help her family and help her village--and there will be a trickle "out" effect.   

While the UN talks a good game on women's issues it has yet to show any serious support for a Fifth World Women's Conference (now more than two decades overdue). It's most serious failing is not realizing the power of a gathering like this to provide important opportunities for mentoring and networking--passing the torch to the next generation. 

I'm probably the wrong one to talk this morning  if you want cheering up.  But if you've made it this far, you might as well hang in here for another rant.

This season, women are getting a bad rap on primetime television as well.  Even Shonda Rhimes, usually a cheerleader for women's issues, has gone a little squirrelly.   We have the President's bimbo headlines on Scandal with a Hera-Zeus feud center stage. Every female surgeon on Grey's Anatomy is behaving like a narcissistic twit, and last season's How to Get Away with Murder cast the great Cicely Tyson as a deranged Lorena Bobbitt with a flair for arson as revenge instead of a dull kitchen knife.

The opening salvo of Downton Abbey, I've just learned, is another  study in feminine stagnation.  No spoilers here.  But Violet is 123 and still stuck in the same whalebone corset, and the widowed Mary is still dawdling, perhaps wishing to be done with all those pesky suitors so she can get on with life. 

Readers, please!  Let's take a break from all of that and go see Sara Gavron's gutsy piece of story-telling, Suffragette. Those of us who worked hard for equality are watching very closely---writing and volunteering and fundraising--to be sure that all of our landmark accomplishments don't simply disappear. 

One final thought: Struggling with recidivism might just be the penalty of aging. We get to hold our breath and hope that every social movement we spearheaded isn't rolled so far back that we find ourselves longing for the development of the rotating femur and opposable thumbs. 

If that happens, I'm to going to barbeque a wooly mammoth, paint my face with possum grease, and head into the woods.

Giving Back as a Second Act

The AARP’s new program Life Reimagined, encourages people over 55—the largest and most powerful segment of the workforce—to home in on their passion and create strong second acts. A good many of us Boomers will have to work to pay the bills, long after the usual retirement age. But can this be a time to follow a new calling?  To give ourselves completely to a cause, to pursue what we might refer to as "matters of the heart?" 

San Francisco social entrepreneur Marc Freedman has upped the ante even further, urging boomers to go out and change the world.  An impossible dream?  No,  not if we start at the local  level, and work  one community at a time. 

 

In 1997, Freedman began building a movement to tap the vast skills and experience of people in midlife and older. He founded an organization called Encore to encourage people to take up a social cause then he created the Purpose Prize, giving away over $5 million to hundreds of social innovators over 60.  Called “a MacArthur genius grant for retirees” this award, says Freedman,  “goes to everyday heroes who see a problem they can’t ignore. What they all had in common was a willingness to stretch their skills, embrace new situations, and take some amazing personal risks."

Charles Fletcher, a former telecom executive, created, SpiritHorse, a global network of therapeutic riding centers for people with disabilities—offering services free of charge.  At 53, Fletcher began volunteering at a local equine therapy center then plowed his Social Security checks into this venture. 

Referrals came in, and the program grew, and Fletcher has since helped more than 5,000 individuals worldwide. 

 His leap of faith?

“At one time I owed about $138,000 in credit card debt,” Fletcher says, “Since I was single I was able to take the risk. My daughters were out of college and established. I could afford to take the chance I might go bankrupt.”  

A human resources expert, Kate Williams gradually lost her sight at age 65, then started a job training program for the blind. “If I was going through so many challenges to simply keep my job" she said, "I had to ask: What must other visually impaired or blind people be experiencing to find one?” With no funding, Williams started working with the Adaptive Technology Services, to create a software program that would help the blind overcome employment barriers and function in a sighted world. This project was taken up by the Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, where Williams now trains people for jobs in finance, industry, government, and nonprofit work.

Sixty-three year-old, David Campbell, a technology executive, sprang into action after hearing about the devastating Indian tsunami in Southeast Asia.  When he learned that the Internet was still working, he got on a plane, armed with a wireless router and duct tape. Once he arrived in Bang Tao, he began recruiting volunteers—turning good Samaritans with lile to no training in disaster situations into an effective response team.  When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, he mobilized a similar team in Mississippi.  His group, All Hands Volunteers, has helped 45,000 families, in six countries—providing immediate relief while bypassing bureaucratic red tape.

What’s stunning is the level of financial risk these activists assume in order to improve the lives of others.   “They fund their efforts in a variety of ways -- downsizing a home, raiding a retirement account, taking a side job,” says Freedman. “And the prize money they receive usually gets plowed right back into the project.”

In Europe many retirees are finding new rewards in the non-profit sector. Often these late bloomers are inspired by their activist children. In 1998 Arthur Dethomas went to Cambodia as part of his national service, helping the former French colony adapt to the legal system shared by neighboring countries.  When his Parisian parents, Emmanuelle and Jean-Paul came to visit, they took an active interest in Sala Bai, a school in Siem Reap, Cambodia, preparing disadvantaged youth for jobs in the burgeoning restaurant and hotel business.  

Impressed by the drive of these young people, the couple moved to Siem Reap and for two years Jean-Paul directed the school, while Emmanuelle handled communications.  Now back in Paris, Emmanuelle, 68, is president of Agir pour le Cambodge, the school's umbrella organization and Jean-Paul, 72, a former engineer and tech executive, is mentoring budding entrepreneurs. 

Who says there are no strong second acts in modern life?

The essentials of a creative life

African sculptor El Anatsui is a Late Bloomer who took the New York art world by surprise in his 60s.   Using discarded items—the foil and caps from liquor bottles, the serrated tops of milk cans—he creates works of astonishing majesty and beauty. He is best known for his “walls,” floor-to-ceiling structures with folds as sumptuous as Renaissance textiles, and for his installation on the Highline in Manhattan,  incorporating mirrors and corrugated roofing to expand the city’s view of open sky.

Anatsui’s rise has four pertinent messages about late-life creativity.

First, Late Blooming often involves working with materials that others have rejected—like cans and bottles rescued from the garbage bin.  We start by rescuing aspirations we may have put aside because our mentors failed to value them. A filmmaker goes back her first love, painting, using her well-honed visual sense.  A writer, known for his travel pieces, returns to his first inspiration, the short story.   A psychologist reads through her journals, discovering  her early thoughts on heartbreak and abandonment, a theme she's ready to tackle from a different perspective after decades in the consulting chair.

Second, Late Blooming requires us to assess fundamental assumptions about the nature of our work. Anatsui challenges long-held views of sculpture as something made of “approved” materials and thus creates some startling effects, as though he were encapsulating the history of art in a single medium. In a New York Times review of his 2010 exhibition Roberta Smith wrote “…the works evoke lace but also chain mail; quilts but also animal hides; garments but also mosaic, not to mention the rich ceremonial cloths of numerous cultures. Their drapes and folds have a voluptuous sculptural presence, but also an undeniably glamorous bravado.” 

That bravado stems from a radical embrace of new methods and procedures, and from an unbridled willingness to experiment.  So what about the art of creating your own life?  A social worker goes into business, providing at-home services for the aging, drawing on her business acumen. A physician convinces his colleagues  to donate a week each year, repairing cleft palates, a common birth defect, for children in developing countries. How can you use a broader set of skills to achieve a new result?

Third, Late Bloomers not only create something innovative, they go about building it in unexpected ways.  Anatsui  works with 20 to 30 assistants to create each piece. In his small studio in Nigeria, he has revived the concept of the medieval guild employing apprentices to produce works of great sophistication and complexity. 

He also encourages curators to hang the pieces in their own way---allowing them plenty of room for interpretation. “Life is not fixed,” he says, “It is always changing.”  He told one reviewer: “I don’t want to be a dictator. I want to be somebody who suggests things.” 

As a Late Bloomer, ask yourself:  How can I collaborate with others? Where can I loosen up and begin to improvise?  This kind of thinking can lead to change in direction. A communications consultant now bills herself as a "creative partner" helping companies to come up with a  marketing strategy.  An attorney changes her practice to Collaborative Law, working with psychologists and financial planners to help families weather a divorce.

Fourth, Late Bloomers know that the bigger the vision, the longer it takes to refine.  In the short film, Language and Symbols Anatsui reveals that his first ambition was to turn our idea of African art on its head.  “African art is said not to have any abstraction,” he says. “Yet early on I discovered West African symbols called adinkra, that can refer to ways of saying goodbye, or to the oneness of God, or Unity.  I started building these concepts into my work and got interested in different kinds of language." 

Anatsui went on to develop a series of wall-height sculptures titled “Gli.”  That word means  barrier, but pronounced with a different intonation, it can also mean “story” or “disruption.”    

Ask yourself: What one idea have you been incubating all along?  Over the years, how has it grown more beautiful and complex? What long-held beliefs are you ready to disrupt with a new vision? 

For more inspiration, watch the short, Gravity and Grace, an introduction to the life and work of El Anatsui. Or better yet, buy the full length documentary, Fold, Crumple, Crush for $19.45.