Cutting Through The Great Resignation Guessing Game

Everyone's searching for that great sense of freedom, but we're doing it all wrong.

The latest Ivanti Report finds that it's not that people are less ambitious, they simply want the freedom to work how they see fit. (Thanks to Marcel Schwantes and Hadas Almog for posting about it.)

This whole Great Resignation thing is mainly about the next generation - clearly they're not super pumped to do things the way our generation did. So what will make them super pumped? That's what everyone's trying to figure out. But I'm here to tell you that having a genuine sense of freedom, has nothing to do with where they're working from, or the amount of time they invest in their job every day. Nothing to do with their ranking, title or perks either. It does have everything to do with being in environments that foster optimal human connection. We all got a tiny taste of that newfound freedom at the beginning of the pandemic when we discovered that we can still connect despite everything going on. Remember how excited we all were to connect? How loving and considerate we all were those first few weeks? A few weeks later we went back to our normal behavior of belittling others through our thoughts and actions.

In this new era we're headed into, we're going to discover how our greatest sense of freedom will come from connecting in an optimal manner, and from pushing beyond our collective capabilities together. It will come from reflecting on the quality of our connection together. This is the only way to get that natural high from life that keeps eluding us.

So what am I saying? We're used to thinking that we'll get an amazing sensation of freedom by being alone on a mountaintop somewhere. We've been conditioned to imagine that the only way to get that sense of fulfillment we seek is by disconnecting or unplugging from it all, and pushing beyond the boundaries of our personal capabilities. By sitting on our own and reflecting or meditating. We have this misguided notion that we have to dig deep inside ourselves to get the ultimate high. I know this for a fact because I did a lot of that a couple of decades ago. All the Eastern methods we've picked up like yoga, meditation, and mindfulness are designed to make us feel better about ourselves - and yoga itself is a $37 billion dollar industry! So here's the catch - digging deep inside ourselves is like taking a little trip inside our ego. None of the Eastern methods teach us how to go beyond the ego, because all their ideology is based on subduing the ego through fasting, being still, and basically shutting down all our desires. This calms the ego, and makes us feel better. It doesn't make us better humans.

Here is the key takeaway - the next generation want to be better humans than we were! They can already sense that they're not going to get it from having a 40 year career, and doing all the other things we did that don't really make us happy. They can see our system isn't working, and they want to latch in to a better system that will accelerate their development. That will truly allow them to reach their full potential as humans. Conquering technical frontiers is nothing for them. They are ready for this new challenge that has to do with increasing our emotional intelligence together.

So in this new era we're headed into, we're going to discover how our greatest sense of freedom will come from connecting in an optimal manner, and from pushing beyond our collective capabilities together. It will come from reflecting on the quality of our connection together. This is the only way to get that natural high from life that keeps eluding us. And all this is still ahead of us. Right now people only feel it on a subconscious level, but soon we'll understand how this is the key to everything we want.

David Sable spoke about this in his newsletter - how people really want to come together: " .... as I talk to people across the globe, I find that in general more are excited to see colleagues than not; more are looking forward to ending the isolation and getting back to some form of face-to-face collaboration than those who want to stay in Tibet on the mountaintop; and more want their workplace to be better, more personal, and more responsive to their needs and open to flexibility." David Sable's Imagine Newsletter, Is the Great Resignation Really Because People Hate Their Jobs?

The Advantages of Investing in Human Connection

Experiencing genuine human connection on a daily basis frees us from worrying about ourselves and rids us of stress, problems, and struggles. When we apply the integral method all our egoistic thoughts will be replaced with a genuine sense of freedom - the ultimate fulfilling state to be in because it gives us a break from the constant demands of our ego. But it doesn't subdue the ego. We apply these advanced methods while being fully conscious that we have this growing ego, and how it was designed to encourage us to systematically invest in our human development. And we capture parts of these sessions so we'll be able to remember how great it felt to be free for an hour.

Why am I referring to the Super Pumped series? Up until recently it was enough for one charismatic leader to whip an entire company into a frenzy of activity. But the next generation isn't as impressed with that as we were. They see how it doesn't always end well. They have an incredible sense of their self-worth, and a natural built-in respect for others. They are far more sensitive than us. We're already seeing a new generation of entrepreneurs that are not falling into that hubris trap. They get on some level that their success is tied to the people around them, treat them with respect and as equal partners on the journey. Instead of waiting for all these things to happen naturally, investing in human connection accelerates our grasping more each day how each part of the whole is vital for success.

What's Driving The Business World?

Everyone can see that things will continue to get tougher for business stakeholders: the workplace disruption, new Covid variants, hybrid bringing a whole new range of problems, wage cuts due to inflation, and ongoing political disruption and uncertainty. Not to mention growing stress and mental health issues, and the need to be sensitive to all these new things.

What we don't understand is that there is a massive transition underway in the world. And what's driving it? All the internal changes we've been going through over the last few years, which all escalated during the pandemic.

Freedom has been a big part of this discussion. But what we don't understand is that there is a massive transition underway in the world. And what's driving it? All the internal changes we've been going through over the last few years, which all escalated during the pandemic. We're becoming different people, with different desires than we had before. And this is especially true for the younger generation. They appear to be looking for freedom because they're not buying into our way of doing things. What they really want deep down inside is to discover a better way of doing things here. They don't want to learn our way of doing things - they want to make their own way in the world. And in the meantime, they're not willing to compromise - hence the Great Resignation.

Who Is Really Free?

A person can be locked up in jail and feel free. On the other hand, a king living in a castle can feel like he's in jail. Freedom is really about our mindset - and the good news is that we choose what type of fuel we want to fill our tank with. And we can surround ourselves with people who want the same type of fuel in their tank.

Eventually, each one of us will discover that personal freedom can only be achieved by building a new kind of relationship between us: good, unlimited reciprocal relations. Evolution is moving us, the human race, forward toward an integral connection, and within this connection we'll discover a completely new and better way of life.

Like children who run around the house in joyful abandon next to their mother who they know will take care of them and prepare everything that is good for them, a sense of freedom will grow within us as we develop closeness and consideration in the relationships between us.

Now imagine how great creating this kind of environment in a company would be for business. Start imagining it, because that's the future.

A Passover Story About Freedom

A few years ago my husband was on his way to an Israeli prison to do a Connection Workshop. Since it was Passover his team had come up with the topic of Moses and Pharaoh. But when they arrived they were given a large group of Arab prisoners who aren't that interested in Passover. So they had to think fast. They decided to change the theme of the workshop to talking about freedom. Can you imagine a group of Jewish instructors sitting in a circle with Arab prisoners, doing a workshop about how to really be free? It was an off the charts session. In the workplace we may feel free to go here and there, work from home or the office, work on this project or another. We really imagine that we are free. But we're not because our ego is constantly making more demands! But prisoners don't have those kinds of illusions that they're free to do what they want, so they always get to the heart of the matter faster than any other group of people.