The 1st world is finally changing

I used to be one of these young millennials that didn’t like the “system”.

I was told to be lucky to be born in a First World country.

The reality was: School was wrong. I rarely enjoyed anything of it. Didn’t like the direction the world was taking car speed limitations ,animal extinction, irreversible climate change, non-sense airport controls, traffic jams everywhere, small talk, TV, no job perspective for young people and the idea of working in a big corporation from 8am to 5pm was pretty unappealing. I could go on and on.

This world wasn’t for me.

But guess what: Most of us haven’t quite realized there is something extraordinary happening. Things are changing and I am all for it.

1. WORK: The old model of work and hiring is quickly becoming obsolete. 7am to 6pm employment model is off.

I used hating working from 7 am to 6pm at a consultancy firm without almost any breaks and I was thinking: “wait, am I the only one who thinks this way?”.

Everybody that was honest enough to give me a “me too” answer was not courageous enough to ask for change.

It seems that this is finally slowly changing. Remote work is booming, more countries like Sweden that are trying the 6h workday.

People are so burned out that they are finally even risking it all quitting they banking job and go into entrepreneurship.

2. ENTREPRENEURSHIP: It is now everywhere and is disrupting many industries

Over the past year I have seen entrepreneurship taking a different shape. There is never been so many entrepreneurs around the world and some many initiatives that help us build things. Entrepreneurship is disrupting industries that have been doing the same for years from Banking to Law practice to schools.

You can now find a co-founder, join a startup and get funded with a pretty ok idea and this time you don’t need to be coming from Oxford to get $.

3. SHARING ECONOMY- re-using unused assets. We don’t own anymore. It is really about renting or borrowing.

We don’t own anymore.

I am happy to see finally cars less empty (car sharing), less hotels (airbnb), less intermediaries: Beepi (they sell you car online), Banks (Bitcoin) etc.

4- KNOWLEDGE. Is just everywhere. You can learn as much as you want and you only need the internet.

Knowledge is not something that valuable. What we do with it is the real deal.

The internet is an incredibly spectacular thing and only now, after so many years, we are understanding its power. With the internet the world is opened, the barriers fall, the separation ends, the togetherness starts, the collaboration explodes.

We can now learn as much as you want. From wikipedia to quora to networks of experts Githug, stackoverflow. We realize we have all similar question, similar problems and we are here to help each other!

Universities and school are becoming social and networking platforms. If you are going to university to learn you are doing it wrong.

I don’t come from a rich family with a incredible network. I had to build it myself. I wouldn’t be where I am without it. The internet has allowed to reach out to people like me, to fins opportunities, job and get the right skills.

I learned online most of my architect skills as well as my engineer ones. Most of my university exams have been challenges but I don’t remember the content of most of them.

University has caused me more problems than advantages. I decided to finish most of my education in order to be ‘legal’ in the world and get a nice business card when I wanted to raise money or get a job. Now we are in an era where university isn’t going to be compulsory in order to achieve things in life.

With the advent of the internet, the small is no longer speechless, there is a voice. The anonymous become acknowledged. The world comes together. And then the system may fall.

6- GOING BACK TO THE BASICS. Being Fat, fast food is not OK anymore .Sport, Healthy and organic eating. Slow food are on.

We are aware fast food is not good for us. We want to be healthy and are ok to pay more to do so. We were so disconnected that companies started to poison our food and we didn’t say anything!

But then some people started waking up, enabling and strengthening healthy and organic eating.

This is only to get stronger.

But what has this got to do with economy and work? Just about everything, I’d say.

Food production is one of the basic fundamentals of our society. If we change our mindset, our eating habit and our way of consuming, corporations will have to respond and adapt to a new market.

The small farmer is getting back to being relevant to the whole chain of production. Even people are growing plants and seeds inside their homes as well.

And that reshapes the whole economy.

7 . MINDFULLNESS. The awakening of spirituality.

How many friends do you have who practice yoga? What about meditation? Now think back, 10 years ago, how many people did you know by then who practiced these activities?

Spirituality, for too long, was for esoteric folks, those weird-like and mystic people.

But fortunately, this is also changing. We’ve come to the edge of reason and rationality. We were able to realize that, with only our conscious mind, we can’t figure out everything that goes by here. There is something else going on and I’m sure you want to get hold of that as well.

You want to understand how these things work. How life operates, what happens after death, what is this energy thing people talk about so much, what is quantum physics, how thoughts can be materialized and create our sense of reality, what is coincidence and synchronicity, why meditation works, how it’s possible to cure using nothing but bare hands, how those alternative therapies not approved by regular medicine can actually work.

Companies are providing meditation to their employees. Even schools are teaching the young how to meditate. Think about it.

8. CONNECTIVITY. Allowing like-minded people to meet and build

I used to go a school where I didn’t feel any very strong connection with most of my peers. They had to be my friends because that were all my options.

Thanks to the internet I have now met really Amazing people that share similar interests, goals and that I consider nowadays my friends and who I learn from everyday.

We are all connected and we can choose with who and how do we share our time.

Thanks to Slack we can now work in huge teams remotely and not loose track of it.

Thanks to Facebook messenger , Whastapp, Skype and other tools we can keep in touch with people we rarely really see.

This connectivity is allowing us to reshape the world.

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Would love to hear your feedback and thoughts. How has the world changed for you this past year?

Thanks for reading!

Chantal

Originally published at www.linkedin.com.