The Fear of Irrelevance — And What To Do About It
Warning: I’m covering a touchy, tough topic today — the white-knuckle anticipatory fear of irrelevance. Buckle up, buttercup!
My dad had open heart surgery a couple months ago. He’s a hard-charging adventurer from Montana who built a successful high-end architecture firm in Colorado, CCY Architects. As he was healing from surgery, we took a flat gentle walk around his neighborhood, pointing out our shared proclivities for smart, daring home design.
He kept pausing, wanting to know more about what I do, what questions I ask my clients, what they’re struggling with. At 83, he’s forded many rivers of challenge, heartache, failure, loss, success, freedom, admiration and everything in between. I’ve always learned from him.
But he said the biggest thing he related to that my clients also struggle with — and something he is staring directly in the face of now — is a deeply rooted fear of irrelevance.
Do I matter? Am I invisible? What’s the meaning behind all the years of training, hard work, focus, determination, sacrifice, and love?
The antidote to irrelevance is to transition your insight and experience into what other people can benefit from.
What most people struggle with is figuring out how to catalyze that hard-fought experience into digestible insight that will help build visibility, trust, and opportunities. The key is to ask yourself strategic questions that extract what you’ve been through, and what you’ve learned, then shift it from yours to what other people can gain because of what you went through. That is how you keep your seat at the table.
Because, listen, the fear of insignificance can hit at any age, at any stage in your career. Are you a seasoned leader in finance ready to gain that seat at the table? Or a corporate insurance producer with young up-and-comers nipping at your heels? Or a retiring athlete unsure of how to transition out of sports without losing momentum or income? Or you’re feeling the side-eyed glances of ageism — you need to earn your stripes, or your stripes aren’t needed here anymore.
Here are 3 questions to ask yourself to turn your experience into wisdom, and turn that wisdom into sharable nuggets other can benefit from:
1. Obstacles present decisions — pivotal moments that reveal character. What obstacles have you faced, and how did you get around them?
2. Now that you have distance from that obstacle or challenge, what did you learn about yourself, about others, about your process, how to do it better or with less friction after that?
3. How can you relate that to other people’s experiences in everyday life — work, personal, emotional, etc — and what insight can you give them that would allow them to do that thing better, with less friction or pain, or help them gain something they want (ie. time, status, belonging, etc)?
Now, share that! You have too much to give, too much to share to stay in the shadows. By molding your experience into something other people can use for a positive outcome, that creates a boomerang effect and people will come back to you for more — forevermore.
Need help offsetting irrelevance so you can skyrocket your career to new heights? Snag a free consult here!
Cheering you on!
