"The Great Resignation" is a Chance to Evaluate Your Blueprint

Perhaps it's time to take a long look at your life blueprint.

In the business world there is a lot of discussion of “The Great Resignation” or alternatively “the great reshuffle.” If you run a business, then you’re definitely re-evaluating what you need to do to attract and keep talent. However, more importantly, what this means for us as individuals and as a society is that we are rethinking the blueprint for life that was handed down to us – something we always work through in the coaching process.

As you think about your life, it’s important to understand your blueprint. Your blueprint is your collection of beliefs, values, thoughts, and expectations that shape all the decisions in your life and ultimately how you feel about your life. Unhappiness is when your life conditions don’t match your life blueprint and if you want more happiness and more fulfillment you must shift either your blueprint or your conditions.
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As we witness “the Great Resignation” -  a re-evaluation of our values is exactly what we are seeing. Several generations of people are taking a look at their blueprint for the first time and realizing that the blueprint they have isn’t really working for them. 

Your blueprint is shaped by your parents, your culture, your schools, advertisers, your friends, your church, and all the other voices out there telling you what is important.  People who haven’t jumped into coaching usually don’t even know what their blueprint is or why they feel empty or listless. Many people like live on autopilot like this and just cope with a nagging unhappiness that they never quite understand. Many even take it to their grave.

However, we are witnessing a change as people start to think about personal development and mental health. People are looking at life and deciding that being defined by their work doesn’t make sense. They’re deciding they’d rather live in pursuit of their passion than make a big paycheck. Or maybe they’re a mother deciding that they’d rather homeschool their kids than pursue a career (or vice versa). Or maybe instead of pursuing an office in the C-suite someone would rather pursue a deeper relationship with God – even if that isn’t what movies and pop culture urge them to do.

The amazing thing about life is that when you make a decision to create a life rather than react to the world, you achieve a new level of fulfillment you didn’t know was possible. Working 16 hours a day might be the life for you. Then again, like those participating in The Great Resignation, it might not. Have you taken the time to ask yourself what you want from time here on Earth?
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Get started understanding your life today with this brief exercise:

1. Write down the 5 things you value the most. These should be ends and not means – meaning you might write down excitement and not skydiving. Or you’d write down “love” and not “spending time with my wife.”
2. Write down the rules and conditions that have to be met for you to be living each value. For example “Excitement – trying one scary thing a week, going on a vacation to a new place every year, meeting new people every weekend.” Whatever the rules for you are.
3. Look at what you need to add and delete from your current life to do a better job at living your values.