Who is in charge?

We live in interesting times, and right now the rule of leadership is unraveling before our eyes. I am going to take a side-step here to notice some of the belief systems about jobs from a social perspective and then get back to how you can create your own job. It’s important to have a sense of humor about what is going on in the world, since much of what is happening is interrelated, but we just tend not to notice. So, get set to dive into some pretty wacky territory when I start talking about the concept of a boss. Remember that if you want a job, in the traditional sense, you are also saying you want a boss. Implied in your search for a job is the ideal of authority, contracts, and rules. However, something very strange is happening, and right now, it may not be the best time to want to be an employee nor a boss.

Leadership

The past’s ideals of leadership have become a true modern nightmare. While it is true that there is a certain amount of cooperation we need to feed and organize our societies, there is a difference between distributed leadership and hierarchical leadership models. The ideal of centralized authority took hold, even in jobs, and hierarchy was born which worked well for a while. There’s nothing wrong with centralized forms of organization, however, it is when they control the resources instead of merely managing them that they become mini-dictatorships. Think about any centralized board right now that was set up initially to just manage something, and you see gross abuses of power because of the power abdicated by members to these centralized boards. We get mad at banks for foreclosing but many seem to agree when homeowners’ associations do the same thing. Even if you don’t have a homeowners’ association you can still get sent to jail if a local city government does not like you growing vegetables in your front yard.  Workers in France have gotten so fed up with leadership abuses they’ve taken to kidnapping their bosses and threatening to blow up factories! Companies still want the same level of commitment and loyalty from their worker’s but they do not want to reciprocate in wages or benefits. Many companies will drop health benefits for their employees and pay the fine to the government rather than add mandated healthcare to their employee roster. Thus, a job is no longer what we once thought it was. It is no longer defined by a 40 hour work-week, compensation for good work, benefits, or even security. Instead, it is being completely defined by ideals of leadership and authority, which are crumbling left and right. As Facebook poster Mike Winters suggests, “it should not be amazing in a country where a woman can be involved in the murder of her 2 yr old and get away with it…this woman [with the vegetable garden in her front lawn] will probably get time in jail while casey anthony goes free…the world is all screwed up in it’s thinking.”

We Need Social Leadership Models

There is a paradox in business right now. Management is actively trying to recruit employee participation, but the only thing left in their arsenal of persuasive skills is the word “job.” Jobs are scarce, right? Maybe they are not so scarce,  instead think of scared. Jobs and bosses, in terms of authority and leadership, are scared. Large companies that they thought were rock-solid have vanished into Wall Street dust. What’s left of other companies is being scavenged by the corporate government and con artists. People in other countries are rising up and taking back their own industries. It’s not a good time to be a boss. The incentives used to motivate good behavior have disappeared. The incentives for bad behavior have increased and the penalties are almost non-existent. What’s left are organizations where bosses instill insecurity so they can control their resources (employees) better hoping to make them more scared than they are. They are hoping to keep them from doing the inevitable in such a situation. However, the paradox is that this tactic never ever gets participation, it instead triggers revolution or complete non-participation and their subsequent demise. Positive participation only happens when both sides have something to gain by cooperating, in which case it is no longer a boss/employee relationship, it is more of a relationship between equals. I bet that the Founding Fathers understood that principle quite well.

It’s All About Jobs – Part II

There is much to this subject, and it has plenty to do with reality creation. In part I, I went over matching intention to your job search. However, that’s just the start. If we are all Powerful Creators able to create what we want in life, why is it that 15 million people are unemployed and probably another 10 million are underemployed? If we really understand YCYOR that statistic alone would tell you that there are plenty of variables in creating a job, and we’re not that good at it! It’s not as simple as creating mashed potatoes, or any other recipe, yet that’s exactly the approach we’re given to “find a job.” My questions, which many unemployed people share is: “How can you FIND a job when there are none available?” The obvious answer is that you can’t. You can’t “find” mashed potatoes in your reality if there are no potatoes in your area, no matter how much you beat empty air. To find a job, one has to be hidden, but available in your immediate area. The same is not completely true if you are creating a job, however, it does influence its appearance.

Hot Potato

Finding a job can be like a game of hot potato. Someone has to have that potato before you can take it from them, but you’re standing in a circle with seven other people hoping for that potato and the intent of this game is to not only find it, but keep it. If you were in Ireland during the Great Famine, odds are it would have been pretty hard to come up with some good potatoes. However, maybe if you lived in Peru, you could still find some good potatoes. Similarly, there are different patterns of job scarcity all over the United States and elsewhere. China has numerous jobs becoming available, while the United States is hemorrhaging jobs. Now, if you are in the United States and jobs disappear, what happens? If you were in the Great Potato Famine, you would most likely hoard potatoes when you had them so your own family wouldn’t starve. If you were a farmer, you would sell the potatoes you did get at a higher price or demand more for them, since they are scarce. Or, if you really got sick of this Hot Potato game, you’d emigrate to a better place – like the United States – and forget about the famine all together. In other words, if you want to “find a job” you had better be willing to move to a place where it’s easier to “find.”

Location and Job Creation

Now, if you create your own job, you won’t have to move – but it may still be beneficial. Why? It’s a question of influences. Everyone around you is creating their own reality and if the mass consensus is that jobs are scarce, you will have to engage numerous influences of that belief system and unless you are a reality creation ninja, any one of those influences can become your next obstacle. They may not be a part of your belief system, but working with others mean you engage these influences via their energy projection in your immediate vicinity, and if your energy is moved by these influences, you end up creating obstacles. You will have to spend an enormous amount of focus and attention on remaining neutral, yet accepting; a very delicate balance that even a trained Buddhist monk would have trouble doing. If you simply move to an area with different cultural and social beliefs, you eliminate negative influences working in contradiction to your energy flow with far fewer effort on your part. Another way to do it, is to stay in the area you are in, but find a group of people who are creating the way you want to create, and engage similar belief systems and influences, so that you can create a vortex of protective energies in a hostile environment. It’s the difference between sailing with the wind or sailing against it. If you really have to sail against it, you’d better have a really good team to help you navigate the bad weather. You can still create your own job regardless of your immediate environment, it just may simply take more “work” on your part and far more awareness of how the wind (energy) moves. Of course, if your intent is to show others how to create despite negative influences, you may find yourself unable to move because it does not align with your Higher Self. Instead, you may find that you are constantly challenged to create positive thing in the worst of conditions. So, consider where you are as well as what your intent is to create your next job.

Continue to Part III…