Learn to Love Disorientation

Travel Guides

Travel Guides (Photo credit: Vanessa (EY))

The current business world is a lot like traveling, especially world travelling.

Travel requires a certain ease with disorientation. The street names differ. Food is different. Ways of doing things are different. And if you go to another country, not only the language, but nearly every part of the culture can be different. It’s confusing. And even a bit unpleasant.

But traveling is also rewarding. There is the given phrase that travel broadens your horizons, and even though this phrase is trite, it’s true. It is hard to come back to the farm after you’ve seen the lights of Paris.

In today’s business world, an ability to travel is a metaphor for an ability to survive. We don’t need to go to a different part of the globe to experience great changes anymore. The changes come to us. Company names change. Offices disappear and appear seemingly overnight. Even the language of the top officials may be different.

Some of us can go with this flow better than others. All of us must. We know that there are no 30-year, gold-watch jobs out there, though many of us  are still shocked when that fact confronts us.

I need to change jobs? My company is closing? I haven’t had a raise in five years? My family-owned employer was  just sold to a corporation? Yes, it happens. Often.

To experience change, we no longer have to buy a ticket. The changing world comes directly to us via the global economy. Learn to enjoy, or at least tolerate, disorientation. It’s the only way to know where you’re at.

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