Anniversaries, Birthdays, Mid-life crisis
Birthdays and anniversaries are interesting and often bittersweet. We get a year older, we celebrate, and are a year closer to dying... but ever the optimists, we celebrate and that's how I like it. My Mum would have been 70 this year. I think about her everyday, often several times a day, but on her birthdays I am reminded of the years we've spent apart now, and that reminds me of the years we spent together...bittersweet. Anniversaries, are similar. They always seem to be a bigger number than the years that seemed to have gone by. The perception of time is elastic. As a child, the day seemed long. Now I am at the age where I often say, 'Where has the year gone?' These milestones also instigate a reflection. Have we achieved what we should have by age 21, 30, 40, 50, 60, retirement and so on...? The midlife crisis is a result of feeling a lack of achievement and wanting to plug that hole. What if the ambitions were tempered? We may not progress as fast, as individuals or a race. So we always expect more from ourselves, reflect and try and fix it. Pivoting, in the entrepreneurial world considers the assets/strengths existing at the time, and puts in a new, innovative angle which can utilise all that as a strength. For example, if my intention was to launch a bakery and it's opening day but my oven hasn't arrived, I may have an option to pivot and package up the ingredients for different types of baked goods and sell those. This will utilise the ovens of customers instead, whilst still giving me a product and an income. Of course there is some reconfiguring that is required and immediate but low spend to change direction, temporarily or permanently, but at least all is not lost. I met someone who did no consider the experience of working in a store for many years an asset. We agreed to list a inventory of experiences and the skills that went with it, before and after the experience. Pretty soon there was a comprehensive picture of a tenacious, creative and talented individual who used initiative and had the ability to connect to people's problems. This has led to a re-assessment of possible career areas. Granted, this too has to be inventive, but luckily those skills and the drive were in abundance.
