#90: Golden handcuffs and opportunity cost.

How embracing the reality of loss makes it easier to take leaps.

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Loss is an example of our environment changing, and our psyches being forced to catch up.

But sometimes change happens the other way around — our psyches change while our environment lags behind.

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak to the MBA candidates at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, my alma mater. Specifically, I was talking to the weekend cohort — the students who are doing most of their course work remotely so they can continue to work, raise their families, etc. Then one weekend a month they come to Duke for a flash flood of classes and conversations. 

In other words, these aren’t your typical students. They are in their 30’s or 40’s. They are already knee-deep in their careers. They have committed significant time and energy to a chosen path. They have partners and children who rely on them. Compared to your standard MBA candidate, these are fully-formed adults.

But surprisingly the most common question I heard from them was, how do you take a leap of faith? How do you pivot? How do you let yourself evolve, and bring your life along with you? 

Though these people are “grown-ups”, they are still growing (aren’t we all?). During this MBA program, and especially during the on-campus, drink-out-of-the-firehouse weekends, their goals, desires, and ways of understanding the world are being challenged and expanded.

But their day-to-day realities aren’t going through the same transformation. 

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I talk a lot about the transformational portal that is loss.

But the truth is, we are all constantly transforming. Life, with all its twists, trials, and podcasts, won’t allow us to make it out unchanged.

And who would want to? It’s a beautiful thing that we get to be in a constant process of not only discovering ourselves, but creating ourselves.

However, society isn’t set up to support that. As a collective, we celebrate and reward loyalty, commitment, and perseverance. Having a series of one-year job stints on your resume is seen as a red flag. Making a lateral move onto another career track is labeled risky. Taking a pay-cut to do something you love?? Short-sighted, idealistic, and even selfish if you have people who rely on you.

But the future we imagine from playing it safe is NOT guaranteed. Mike and I did everything “right” — climbed the corporate ladder, put our personal needs behind those of our family, ate blueberries instead of cake — and look at us now.

Again and again we sacrifice our time and lifeforce for perceived predictability, but it’s a promise that can’t be cashed out. Meanwhile, we are losing something very real — the opportunity to create a life that fits our latest, greatest evolution. To maybe even create a life that supports rather than restricts this evolution. 

I had coffee with a friend the other day who just left a decades-long job to join a new corporate environment. We talked about what it takes to make the leap, seemingly without a net. But she challenged my metaphor, “Are we really taking that big of a leap? We have learned so much, done our jobs well, been successful where we were. We bring so much to the table. Why do we assume we will not be successful elsewhere? Why don’t we bet on ourselves?”

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I don’t envy anyone who has found themselves locked in a set of golden handcuffs.

And I have compassion for the very real, very difficult choice of deciding to step away from a path that feels reliable and secure (even if it’s not), especially when you have people relying on you. I also have publicly recorded times when chasing my own dreams wasn’t working out the way I had hoped. But I don’t know a single person who took a leap of faith, who made a bet on themselves, and regrets it.

However, I bet Mike regrets not doing it.

Change is constant. Even if we fortify against it, life will sooner or later derail all our plans and chuck us into the unknown. So we might as well choose the unknown when we’re called to it. It’s one of the few pieces of agency we have — to ride into uncertainty on purpose sometimes. 

Either way it’s a rollercoaster, but when we choose it, we at least have time to buckle our seatbelts.

To your evolution,

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