Chapter VI

You have reached the Ground of Your Own Choosing the moment you know deep inside yourself, “I am the person to do this work.”

The path to this discovery runs through the fertile land of the creative space of transition, and if you follow it you will emerge with a better alignment between who you are and what you do.

The need for this alignment is a new phenomenon in human history.

Prior to the early years of the last century, there was no need to know yourself well enough to be able to discern the kind of work you were well-suited for. If your father was a machinist or a tailor, you were one too.

If you were a woman, you probably didn’t work outside the home at all, unless it was necessary for survival.

As Peter Drucker has observed, the fact that we can now choose our vocation is an “unprecedented change in the human condition,” one which future historians will view as even more significant than technology in shaping the era we live in.

“For the first time, a substantial and rapidly growing number of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves, and they are totally unprepared for it.” (speech to the Leadership and Management Conference,1999).