“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”

– song lyrics from the Canadian band Rush “(You can’t get) Something for Nothing”

The future is unpredictable and highly uncertain. This does not have to be a bad thing for entrepreneurially-minded individuals who thrive and adapt and spot opportunities amidst this change. Whether it is global competition, technological disruption, climate change, generational trends or changes to the social fabric, most of you will change jobs and careers more frequently and become increasingly reliant on part-time gigs, side-hustles and self-employment. Long-term stable jobs and financial independence based on static knowledge acquired during university are becoming a thing of the past.

Unfortunately, students entering university are increasingly unprepared for this unpredictability and uncertainty. With names such as “The Entitlement Generation” and “Generation Me” today’s students are more fragile and afraid of the future than previous generations. Rising rates of adolescent depression and anxiety have been well documented. Many have been raised with less unstructured play by more protective parents and thus sheltered from the realities of the world. Some are unprepared for people, ideas or things that might upset them and thus demand “trigger warnings” and protective campus bureaucracies. They are quick to take offence as demonstrated by the rise of “cancel culture” to remove those they disagree with. They are living at home longer, getting married later, deferring children and becoming increasingly dependent on their parents and governments (See, for example Rourke (2011) “You owe me: Examining a generation of entitlement”; Twenge (2014) “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – and More Miserable than Ever Before” and Lukianoff and Haidt (2019) “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure” for a review of these demographic trends and their causes.)

You do not need to suffer from these generational trends affecting your peers!

Personal Empowerment results from the application of entrepreneurial thinking to your own life – being curious about yourself and what makes you tick, spotting opportunities for adding value, and proactively creating the best possible career and life. This approach involves the use of entrepreneurial tools and attitudes to achieve personal happiness, well-being and growth in your character, human capital, social capital and financial capital.

Empowered individuals have Agency over their careers and lives and are in charge of their own futures. They may not be able to predict or control the future, but they can create it through actions that are within their control. They take proactive conscious control over their own character (beliefs, attitudes, values, intentions), human capital (education, experience) and social capital (networks, relationships). They know their strengths and weaknesses, and understand their beliefs and values. They are aware of why they are doing things, what values they are trying to achieve, and what is causing their emotional reactions. They have a purpose and take positive action toward attaining values that are in harmony with their beliefs.

Empowered individuals are not forced to take just any job that fate, destiny or the system happens to offer. They have conscious career goals, intentionally grow their human and social capital, and use entrepreneurial thinking to build value in their career and achieve personal happiness. They actively track their own happiness and spot opportunities where they can improve their lives. They climb Maslow’s Hierarchy of Values to achieve financial security, love, meaning, fulfillment, self-actualization, well-being and happiness.

Now that you are an adult, you owe it to yourself and your long-term happiness to make a conscious choice about the beliefs, values and principles that you hold. You can’t immediately change the subconscious beliefs you currently hold, but you should make an informed adult decision about your conscious beliefs, values and principles. Then you can decide if you want to take control of programming your subconscious beliefs using positive self-talk tools.

There is one fundamental choice – the Primary Action – to engage your System 2 slow thinking Executive which enables you to apply principles to guide your actions. If you don’t consciously focus and “switch on” your System 2 thinking, you are operating on auto-pilot and relying upon your “gut instincts” and emotional reactions to guide your actions (System 1 fast thinking). You can choose to take conscious control of your happiness or not. You may choose Agency or not. This is the essence of Free Will and Personal Empowerment.

Taking conscious control over your career and life takes time and effort. There is a process to be followed and principles to be internalized and turned into habits/mindsets. “You can’t get something for nothing.”

Anyone can start up a new company. It’s not all that difficult and every city is full of entrepreneurs who start new restaurants, laundries, gas stations, and retail stores. A large number of these startups fail. If they learn and apply good business and entrepreneurial principles, their chances of success dramatically increase. They don’t have to learn and apply these tools, and most don’t. These are the ones who struggle and a great number fail entirely. Those who do thrive will universally tell you their success was the result of hard work and proactive learning along the way.

Similarly, anyone can get a job and become an employee. It’s not that difficult and a significant number of these people never really thrive and/or get promoted to become executives. Many are just putting in their time and living for weekends, vacations and retirement. Those who do achieve success do so by creating new sources of value for their employers. They become “intrapreneurs”. Every book you will ever read by any successful business person will tell you about their hard work and effort and share with you the principles they discovered during their journey. There has been something of value in virtually every one of these books I’ve ever read.

In exactly the same way, anyone can be born and grow into adulthood. It’s not that difficult if you are fortunate enough to live in a region that is free of war, oppression, disease, famine, corruption and dictatorship. However, a significant number of people go through life without being profoundly happy, without achieving self-actualization. They often suffer from anxiety, have mid-life crises, and struggle to find meaning and purpose. Having a quarter-life crisis has become the new normal. Happiness, like success in business, does not appear to come easily. It takes effort. “You can’t get something for nothing.”

I’ve tried to give you an overview of the current “state-of-the-art” in entrepreneurship, business, design thinking, goal-setting, behavioral psychology, philosophy, job satisfaction, career searching, positive psychology, CBT, CT-R, mindfulness and happiness theory. I’ve integrated my own personal journey with the same struggles many of you are facing and shared with you what has worked for me without presuming that my choices will, or should be, the same as yours. I’ve curated and/or created various tools to assist you on your own path, but there are many more that could and should be considered throughout your life. I hope that I have helped you search for and discover one of the many paths that will lead to your own personal happiness and well-being.

A Career is more than just having a Job!

A Life is more than just being Alive!

What worked for me, the individual path I took, and the choices I’ve made about my beliefs, values, principles, goals and actions will not, and should not, be the same as yours. I hope you will, however, learn from my journey and I hope you will help me learn from yours!

“Live long and prosper!” — Vulcan salutation from “Star Trek” by Gene Roddenberry.

Assignment #5: Final Report

In your Final Report (Assignment #5) you will revise and update progress on your Career-Related Design Challenges (Assignments #1-3) and your Character-Related Design Challenges (Assignment #4). In addition, you have the opportunity to demonstrate the conscious practice and personal growth you have made using entrepreneurial principles, attitudes and skills during this course. This is an experiential learning course, so the focus is on reporting what you have done (e.g. interviews, events attended, organizations joined, research, visualization exercises, etc.).

Entrepreneurial searching is all about getting out of the building, meeting with people, practising empathy and learning from the experience. So you should document these proactive behaviors in your Final Report. When using the Diamond/Looping principle you should use a variety of divergent and convergent methods and tools. I’ve created videos just for this course for a number of these tools and documented them in this workbook, but you should also follow your curiosity and take advantage of the many other entrepreneurial tools and methods you have learned during your time at Toronto Metropolitan University.

In this book and in the video series (ECLD Modules 1-11 on YouTube), I’ve also introduced you to a number of entrepreneurial principles, attitudes and skills that you can practise in order to grow your entrepreneurial mindset. These include:

ENT Principle # 1 – Bird-in-the-Hand. Start with your given means especially your Character, Human and Social Capital.

ENT Principle #2 – Experiment and Learn using the Diamond Design Thinking Method. Test your hypotheses, directions and goals against reality using the scientific method based on iteration, looping and pivoting. But use the right tool – don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.

ENT Principle #3 – Radical Collaboration, Radical Candor and Crazy Quilt. Never Go Hunting Alone!

ENT Principle #4 – User-Centricity. Think Like Your Prey. Understand your customers’ problems before you try to sell them on your solutions.

ENT Principle #5 – Affordable Loss. Prototype and build a Portfolio of career experiences.

ENT Principle #6 – Lemonade and Surprise-Seeking. Don’t just turn lemons into lemonade, deliberately seek surprise and serendipity. Use re-framing to build resiliency and grit.

ENT Principle #7 – Pilot-in-the-Plane. Control what is actually under your control using Agency. Turn on your System 2 Executive to program your own computer using Self-Talk. Focus on positive values rather than avoiding negatives.

ENT Principle #8 – Integrity and the Principle of Being Principled. Live without wax by eliminating contradictions that cause unhappiness.

I’ve also given you a few additional stories and principles that I’ve discovered over the years:

• Deliver Value Before Asking for Value Principle (based on VP Sales at 3DNA)
• Remember the Grape Vines Principle
• Dr. Peter Principle (the “No Jerks” Policy)
• The Crow Epistemology. People can’t remember too many things at once so be sure to essentialize and condense information.

Finally, I’ve given you a number of entrepreneurial attitudes and skills for you to practise including:

• Goal-Setting and Time Management Skills
• Curiosity and Alertness
• Bias to Action and Proactivity
• Re-Framing, Adaptability, Grit, Tenacity, Resiliency and Anti-Fragility
• Empathy based on User-Centricity, Active Listening and Interviewing Skills
• Growth Mindset
• Spotting Opportunities for New Value Creation
• Self-Esteem or Core Self-Evaluation (belief in your own worthiness for happiness)
• Self-Efficacy (belief in your own competence and skills)
• Internal Locus of Control
• Optimism, Hope and Positivity
• Mindfulness and Positive Self-Talk Skills

There are, of course, other entrepreneurial skills and attitudes that are critical for career success that I have not explicitly covered in this book such as: teamwork, creativity, financial and information literacy and resource acquisition (i.e. bootstrapping, hacking and guerilla skills). You are welcome to document your conscious practice of any of these attitudes and skills.

Assignment #5 –Step-by-Step Review for Final Report

• Review your Assignments #1-4 and any feedback you received on it. Watch the feedback videos posted to D2L to see the feedback given to other student assignments in the class and get a sense of how to improve your current DCQs and Goals.
• Perform another Iteration/Loop for each of your relevant career-related design challenges to incorporate all your recent interviews, networking events and other updates since Assignment #3.

• Capture the Learning and Revise your Design Challenge Question (DCQ) to incorporate anything you learned into your new-and-improved DCQ. Show a Before and After to demonstrate how your DCQ improved since you wrote Assignment #3. Update your Goal-Setting Tool #9 goals and highlight any major updates or differences.

• Meet with your Design Team using the crazy quilt principle and practise radical candor to review and discuss your progress, brainstorm alternatives, get their feedback and make any changes to address their suggestions. Capture your team members’ feedback in Post-It Notes with questions, observations, feedback, and suggestions for improvement.

• Use Tool #11 – Self-Reflection to document which principles, attitudes and/or skills you practised since the last assignment. Don’t just copy the ones you used previously, demonstrate what you practised since the last assignment.

• Write your Report to Document Your Process (Take Photos of Your Work) and be sure to answer the 5 questions illustrated in the figure (i.e. did you start with good questions, use visualization, find good insights, make progress, practise, and end up at a better place that will help you launch your next Loop/Iteration? Be sure to structure your report with sections such as “So What?” or “Insights I Gained” or “What I Learned”. Write a Report for the course assignment that meets university standards and includes Table of Contents, Introduction, Background, Next Steps and other relevant sections to help us to help you.