Category Archives: Opting out

Learning how to roll with it

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I had one of my worst interviews ever a while back, which also turned out to be one of the most important in my study on men opting out.

A friend of mine put me in touch with a man who opted out of a career to become a chiropractor. He had graciously agreed to participate in my study and the next step was for me to contact him in order to set up an interview. Well, that sounds easy enough, but this guy turned out to be very busy and getting a hold of him was extremely difficult. Finally after what was literally months, he suggested a time to meet. Fantastic! The timing wasn’t optimal for me but no problem; with some minor rearranging in my schedule I made it work.

So we had a time, so far so good! However, he didn’t want to meet in any of the places I suggested (interviews are good to conduct in quiet and private places so that the interviewee can speak openly and freely without worrying about anyone else hearing), he wanted to meet in a shopping mall that was on the way for him between appointments. At this point I thought I need to take whatever I can get and agreed.

The next day I drove to said shopping mall to see if there was a café with any remotely private corners or nooks where we could conduct the interview and I found one which actually didn’t seem so bad. I was very pleased; finally this was going to happen! He said he only had an hour, but being the seasoned interviewer that I am, this didn’t worry me. An hour is fine; much data can be collected in 60 minutes.

Well, the day finally came and I set off to the shopping mall about 30 minutes ahead of schedule to be sure to get a quiet table. I get there, I order coffee, and I sit down at the table right at the back of the café. It was private, it was quiet, and there really weren’t that many people there either. This seemed like it was going to work out after all.

About 15 minutes into my coffee, the café starts to fill up (who knew this café was so popular?!) and music starts playing, pretty loudly I might add. The minutes pass and I look at my watch. It’s time. He should be here. I realize I have no idea what this man looks like but right then a man walks in. I stand up and he walks over to the table next to mine where someone is waiting for him. False alarm. I sit down and wait. It’s five past by now and my phone rings. It’s him. He says he’ll be there in 10 minutes. Argh, that will only leave us with 45 minutes for the interview, but okay that’s fine, it’s better than nothing.

About 17 minutes later a man comes in, he’s looking around, I think that must be him so I get up and say his name. Bingo! He’s here! But right then I see he has a kid in tow. I really like children, don’t get me wrong, but as interviews tend to be private – which is what you kind of hope for as a researcher – bringing someone along is usually not a good idea. I sigh quietly to myself but smile. It’s okay, I’m not letting this faze me; he’s finally here. The kid is hungry and needs something to eat, they go to the counter and there is nothing he wants. He finally settles for a soft drink, the dad has some coffee, and 25 past the hour they’re finally making their way to my table. We now have 35 minutes left of the interview.

No problem, we can do this, 35 minutes is better than nothing. The music is still playing loudly, but whatever, my dictaphone has a really good mike. We start the interview and I realize that this man, ironically, has the softest voice of anyone I have ever met. I realize I can hardly hear a word he’s saying. I pray that the mike is picking up his voice anyway and I start reading lips like crazy.

The good news is that the café and the kid don’t seem to bother him at all. He’s very open when he talks about his experiences, but still I feel a bit disappointed. His story doesn’t seem to fit my understanding of opting out. Maybe there was something he wasn’t telling me? Maybe the café setting was a mistake after all, or maybe my lip-reading skills just weren’t up to par.

All this was going through my head when he suddenly said something important. This man practises aikido in his free time. He explains to me how in aikido you can’t resist whatever is coming at you, you have to accept it, and use that force to your advantage. You have to acknowledge and embrace it and use it for your next move. In other words, you just have to roll with it. He explained how this is a philosophy he adheres to in his practice as a chiropractor but also in life.

Wow. It triggers the most amazing light bulb moment in me. I’m not exactly new to research, but all of a sudden I realize I had been making the mistake that so many people make, but that you have to be really careful not to when doing research. Instead of really listening, I had been confirming what I already knew and trying to fit my male interviewees into the model I developed for my research on women opting out. After all, I am the expert on opting out. The thing is, although some of the men seem to fit into my model, all of them don’t, and at the time I wasn’t really exploring that possibility. I was just trying to confirm what I already knew.

No more. I still haven’t listened to the recording of that particular interview so I’m not sure if my dictaphone actually picked up any of what he said. But regardless of that, this was probably the most important interview I’ve had so far during this research project, and I am so grateful that this man took the time to teach me the importance of acceptance.

This goes for any situation in life, whether personal or professional. You may think you know what a person is saying or what he or she needs; you may think you know the best way forward. But if you don’t listen you may be totally off and things will, most likely, just backfire. If you stubbornly stick to your own agenda, you’re not going o get very far, or at least you’re not going to get there in the smoothest nor most productive of fashions.

They really are very wise, those people who practise aikido. We could all learn from them.

Stay-at-home dads

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I got back from the US a couple of weeks ago, where I interviewed men who have opted out of successful careers. By now I have conducted interviews in Finland, the UK and the US (and I am still looking for more men, so please let me know if you are or know of anyone in these countries who I could interview: theoptingoutblog@gmail.com. Thank you!).

Luckily everything I heard about interviewing men when I set out has been proven wrong. The stories I have collected are incredibly rich in detail and so interesting. I just love interviewing, and although I haven’t started to systematically analyze my data yet, I do have some tentative impressions. One is that although it at first seemed that men who opt out pretty much follow the same pattern as women (see my post Men who opt out), the more I interview the more complicated it gets. While the stories of the women I interviewed were all very similar, I’m finding that the men’s stories are all over the place. They are actually all quite different.

The decision to leave seems to have come about differently for men than it did for the women I interviewed. The women typically set out to have a career without any plan what-so-ever to ever leave, but finally did leave due to a crisis that pushed them to rethink their lives and their values (see for example How do you decide to opt out?). The decision for men to opt out on the other hand – not all of them but many if not most of them – seems to have been less about being pushed to make a decision and more about just doing it.

This, of course, could be because men aren’t potentially as forthcoming about talking about crises as women, but that is not the whole truth. Men are socially expected to work, to be the breadwinners, and to support their families, whereas women aren’t. If a woman pursues a career, she has to overcome social norms and expectations. In fact, we often assume that women who pursue careers do it for selfish reasons – self-actualization – while men do it for selfless reasons: to support their families. That is not true, however, both do it for both selfish and selfless reasons. Both may have families to support and both do it because they find it meaningful, but still this is how people often subconsciously see it. So a woman has more social barriers to overcome when pursuing a career than a man does, which probably means that if she has made it that far in her career, she has done so because that is what she really wants to do. And if that is true, she is not going to give it up very easily, unless something happens that makes her rethink her priorities.

Men on the other hand, are expected to work, to have a career, so all men who have risen in the corporate hierarchies might not have gotten there out of pure conviction and grit. So I’m thinking, maybe the decision to leave may therefore just be something they decide to do and not necessarily as a result of a crisis. Maybe it is just their next step, whether it is for good or for a period of time until they come back again.

Many of the men I interviewed in the US either are or have been stay-at-home dads. I suppose that is to be expected as there is no legislative parental leave and affordable high quality daycare is harder to come by in the US than it is in Europe.

For these men, it was therefore naturally often children that made them decide to leave. They saw their family as a unit and together with their wives (who also had successful careers) they decided that the best thing for the family whole was for the wife to work and for the husband to care for the children, and then that was what they did. And all of them were very happy about their decisions. Despite the hard work (because staying at home with kids really is hard work), it felt meaningful and they cherished the time they had with their children.

But, the truth is, when it comes to social standards they are the anomaly. In their respective communities, they are the only stay-at-home dads in what continues to be a predominantly woman’s world. And here are some of the frustrating things they hear from other women, often strangers:

  • “Oh you’re babysitting your kids today!” (How can a dad possibly babysit his own kids? They are his kids!)
  • “Oh you must have forgotten her jacket at home!” (No, this dad knew exactly how much his daughter needed to wear in that weather.)
  • “Oh how sweet, are you helping your wife out today?” (…)
  • “When are you going to find a job?” (Something you generally wouldn’t ask a woman in the same situation.)

And the most incredible thing I heard was something that one man told me happens on a regular basis when he takes his child to the park. Strange women will come up to his child sitting in the stroller and fix things like hats and jackets, thinking that this dad needs all the help he can get. Anyone with children will know how unsettling that is. You don’t want strangers touching your children and if a man did that – just walked up to a woman with a stroller and started touching the child – it would definitely be frowned upon, right?

It seems that although we are becoming more open to men and women breaking gendered norms, we really have a ways to go. Even in Finland, which is considered one of the most gender equal countries in the world, very few men actually take parental leave. Many men take out their legislated paternity leave and stay home with the mother and the new baby for up to three weeks right after the baby is born, but the percentage of men who actually stay at home and are the main caregivers until their children start daycare or school, is in the single digits. Last I heard it was about 3 or 4%. And a lot of it is due to organizations not supporting fathers who want to do this. Although they would never deny a Finnish mother to go on maternity and parental leave, I have heard many stories where employers have told fathers that it may be your legislative right, but here we just don’t do that.

So where does that leave us? Well, it leaves us with a long way to go. But based on the stories of the men I interviewed, it is a truly valuable and cherished experience for both the father and the child. Fathers can be just as attentive and caring as mothers and if we just give them the chance to participate in childcare on equal terms, I really do think the world would be a better place.

My book, my dream

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Something very exciting happened this week: my book Opting Out and In: On Women’s Careers and New Lifestyles has finally been published! Writing and publishing a book is a long process, so this has been a long time coming, but what makes it especially sweet is of course the fact that writing a book has been a dream of mine ever since I was a child.

My parents raised me to be a reader. Although we obviously had rules and restrictions, the thing that we were allowed in excess was books. (Except at the dinner table, I wasn’t allowed to read at dinner. Every time I was caught with a book open in my lap under the table I was told to put it away. And I was genuinely surprised that they noticed, every time.) Book fairs, book orders, and visits to the book store are cherished childhood memories, and I still remember the feeling of opening a newly purchased book, burying my nose in it and breathing in the scent. This is something I still do by the way, and did you know that books smell differently depending on which country they are from?

By now you probably understand what a great part of my life books are. I have always loved them, I have devoured them, and they have opened up my mind and imagination to wonderful things. They have taught me languages and the power of expression – the power of being able to say exactly what you want in exactly the way you want. They have shown me that language can be more vivid than a painting, and more powerful than weapons. And it is something I try to pass on to my children because not only do books make life so interesting, language and the ability to express oneself is the key to success, if anything. Besides, I read somewhere that people who read a lot of fiction tend to be very empathetic, as stories teach them to see things out of other people’s perspectives.

So you can imagine, the thought of writing my own book was the ultimate thing. But it was a distant dream. I didn’t think I had the ability to write a book that could compare to the novels I loved. But now I have done it, I have written a book. Not a novel, but one filled with stories of women. I am so grateful to these women for being willing to be a part of this and for sharing their personal thoughts and experiences with me. Without them, this book would no be what it is.

I have already started working on my next book, which is going to be about men opting out. I am still in the early stages as I am writing it as a part of my current research project, but I’m enjoying the process already and I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy Opting Out and In. Happy reading!

 

P.S. The hardback and kindle versions are available now, and the paperback will be available in a few months.

Changing the world one blog post at a time

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I have been asked a lot lately about crisis as a catalyst for change. In my research on opting out, this is something I have seen across the board. Everyone I have interviewed or talked to who has opted out and adopted a new lifestyle has experienced some sort of crisis that pushed them to make a change. It could be anything from an identity crisis or something at work that went against their values, to sickness or even a death in the family. The nature of the crisis varies, but all of them experienced something that made them realize that they just couldn’t go on the way they had; something that provided them with a sense of urgency.

As I talk about this idea of crisis as a catalyst for change, a question I sometimes get is, if people experience a crisis that pushes them to opt out, is their lifestyle change really an active choice or did they have no choice but to opt out? Well, choice is complicated and there are always both push and pull factors. Just because one is pushed to make a choice, or a choice is made from a number of less that optimal alternatives, it doesn’t mean it isn’t a choice.

What we’re looking at is actually just the nature of change. Whether we’re talking about individual lives or implementing change on an organizational level, a sense of urgency is what is needed. Change can be daunting. Stepping out of one’s comfort zone and into the unknown is uncomfortable, which is why people don’t usually change their behavior until they’ve had that light bulb moment that provides them with the sense that something just has to be done, now.

This is what my colleagues and I used to do when I worked as a consultant. We would help our clients implement organizational change by providing everyone in the organization with the opportunity to have a light bulb moment of their own, and it worked like a charm. Only after having this light bulb moment, did they also feel that sense of urgency and understand that change is necessary. And only if they changed their own behavior was change on an organizational level possible, because an organization is made up of its employees and their actions.

So the fact that people who opt out experience a crisis before making a lifestyle change is only natural. It provides them with the sense of urgency. But opting out and adopting a new lifestyle can be quite a radical. Changes can also be made on a smaller scale, and sometimes it is only a small change that is needed in order to greatly improve one’s sense of wellbeing.

This is what a good friend of mine did a while ago. Those of you who regularly read my blog will know just how much I love working from home. I often write about the advantages of having real flexibility and more control over when, where, and how you work. However, my friend is employed by an organization where working offsite is unheard of, and she often mentions how she wishes she could too. Well, get this. One day she decided she would ask anyway if she could work from home for one day, and grudgingly she was given permission. It just made me so happy. It made me feel that my research is really making a difference. Maybe, just maybe, my friend is the start of something new in that particular organization. Maybe more of her colleagues will now start asking for more flexibility and maybe it will even lead to changes in company policy. Who knows?

But one thing I do know is that if you want to do something differently at work, the first step is to ask. If you never ask, the answer will always be no. And asking may just make all the difference.

What is success anyway?

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I’m reading Anne-Marie Slaughter’s book Unfinished Business at the moment. You might remember Anne-Marie Slaughter; she was the one who wrote that famous article in The Atlantic titled ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have It All’. The title of her book refers to the feminist revolution, which she argues isn’t finished yet. And I do agree, there is still work to do. Despite so much progress having been made for women, gender equality still hasn’t been achieved. I mean I come from Finland and Finland is considered to be one of the most gender equal nations in the EU (and in the world for that matter) although it is also one of the most gender segregated. However, although Finland is one of the most gender equal countries, there are about 25% women in top management positions and about 27% on corporate boards. The question is, is that gender equality?

I’m actually working on a paper at the moment with a set of interviews of gender equality workers in Finnish organizations. These workers have lead projects in their organizations to make them more gender equal. What I’m finding is that there is a lot of gender fatigue in Finnish organizations today. People don’t really want to talk about gender equality anymore; they think it’s a non-issue. The result is complete disinterest in whatever it is these gender equality workers have to say. No outright resistance; they’re not rude and people generally know what’s politically correct. No, it’s just total indifference, which is worse in a way. I mean if resistance comes in the form of indifference, it’s really hard to fight. You don’t really know what you’re up against. And not only that; it kind of makes the gender equality workers and what they do invisible and that’s just awful.

One of the reasons behind the gender fatigue we see in Finland is that people think that since things are so much better for women in Finland than in many other countries in the world, we need to just give it up and be happy for what we have. Well, I find it hard to argue with people who say that, it’s hard to make them see. But the fact of the matter is that if we say we shouldn’t keep striving for gender equality because we have it so much better compared to others, it’s like saying that we shouldn’t bother about high quality education in schools because in our country children at least get to go to school. Ok, so I’m not sure that was a very good comparison, but you catch my drift.

But back to Unfinished Business. One of Slaughter’s main arguments in her book is that we will never achieve complete gender equality until we start valuing care work. It is women who continue to do the brunt of care work in society – both in countries like Finland and elsewhere. And as long as women continue to be the main carers in society, this will come in the way of having a career on the same terms as men who don’t have as difficult a time juggling work with having a family. As long as this is the case, women will just not be able to have it all.

But if we start to value care work, Slaughter argues, if we start to value also other things than paid work and objective and traditional definitions of success, only then will men also take on other responsibilities and roles in greater numbers. This, in turn, will make it possible for all – both men and women – to care for a family (which is important!) and to have a career without feeling like they’re on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

When Slaughter had her crisis and quit her high status, sought-after, dream job in foreign policy to go back to her university position, she says “I was forced to confront what was important to me, rather than what I was conditioned to want, or perhaps what I had conditioned myself to want.” And that’s the thing. That’s what women who opt out do. They start questioning the objective definitions of success, and they create their own subjective definitions instead. They realize that maybe the high status, high salary, corner office and company car really aren’t what will make them happy. Like one woman in Lisa Belkin’s column ‘The Opt-Out Revolution’ said, the raises and promotions may have meant a successful career, but they didn’t necessarily mean a successful life.

So maybe that’s what we should all do. Maybe we need to think about what success is for us. I mean what it really is, not what we think it should be or what others say it is. What exactly is it that makes your life successful?

Exciting news!

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I received exciting news last week. I’ve been applying for funding for my research on men opting out and on the new meanings of work, and finally funding has been granted! Not only that, I got the mother of all funding: three years full-time funding from the Academy of Finland, which in Finland is a really big deal. In fact, it’s only just starting to sink in.

To be able to focus full-time on research is a dream for any academic, and for me it’s especially amazing since this is what I’ve been planning ever since I started working on my PhD several years ago. I want to research opting out as a societal phenomenon, not just a women’s phenomenon, I want to be the first (as far as I know) to include men in the discussion on opting out, and I want to be involved in uncovering and creating new definitions and solutions for work. This is the future and it’s happening now!

I think one of the things that worked in my favor in this round of applications was that I have already started this research. I was frustrated last year when I couldn’t seem to convince funders of the importance of this topic, so I decided to start interviewing men on their opting out experiences anyway without funding because I knew this is what I wanted to do. As a result I’ve already conducted about 10 pilot interviews and could share preliminary impressions and results in my application.

So if there is one learning to take away from this, it is that if there is something you really want to do, don’t wait for permission, just do it!

I’m going to miss teaching though, I was just getting into it and I really liked it. But you win some and you lose some, and in this case the win is pretty amazing. Post-doc research project, here I come!

Oh right, and I also need more men to interview. So if you are a man who has opted out to adopt a new lifestyle or way of working, or if you know of someone who is and who would be willing to be interviewed, please contact me: theoptingoutblog@gmail.com

All emails are confidential and will be treated as such.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

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My father passed away a few weeks ago. We were close and I miss him terribly. This is the first time I’ve lost someone this close to me and although I’ve lost beloved grandparents and other people from my extended family, it’s just different when it’s your parent. The grief is acute and physical and it just feels hard to comprehend.

But it really puts things into perspective.

I think about all the people I’ve met during my journey from the business world to academia. The people I’ve talked to about opting out, whether casual discussions at parties or conferences or interviews I’ve conducted for my research. A common denominator for all opting out stories is that something has happened in these people’s lives – a crisis of some sort – that has helped or pushed them to take the step and make a real change instead of just talking or dreaming about it.

And it’s true, a crisis or traumatic event may propel a person to make a change as well as trigger some serious soul searching. If everything goes well (and this is important because let’s not romanticize crisis here; we have to remember that a crisis is no walk in the park and some people don’t recover) it may trigger personal growth and create a feeling of authenticity. As a woman I’ve interviewed said, “ You just don’t waste time on anything that doesn’t matter anymore.”

I’m finding that I can really relate to that right now. I just can’t be bothered sweating the small stuff. Intrigue at work? Not interested. Disagreements and misunderstandings? Can’t be bothered. Students who complain? I refuse to let it get to me. Really though, I’m dealing with more important stuff in my life right now.

And although I’m sad, I’m also finding that I quite like not getting fazed by what’s not important. I feel like I see things more clearly. I just hope it lasts and that I continue being able to put things into perspective. Although I suspect as time passes I will gradually slip back into getting stressed over work and deadlines like I usually do. Because that’s life, nothing is constant and opting out isn’t forever, it’s cyclical.

I wish I could put perspective in a jar and then in the future, when I need to, breathe some in and not sweat the small stuff again.

The illusion of control

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One of the things that comes up again and again in my research is control. Before opting out there is a feeling of having little or no control over one’s life and career. People talk about how they are drawn between work and family, they never seem to be in any one place enough – never at work enough, never at home enough – and the hectic pace simply becomes hard to keep up with. There’s a feeling of being stuck – in a job or a lifestyle – with no idea of how to break free. Because the fact of the matter is, although you want to break free, seeing or imagining what you could do instead can be hard.

And then something happens and you do finally take the step. You opt out, you leave that lifestyle that that you haven’t been able to break free from, and you feel like you’ve managed to take control over your life. You have a sense that you can finally be you.

It’s no coincidence that so much seems to revolve around the idea of control. It’s so deeply embedded in contemporary culture, in how we talk and think. We want to control everything, and we develop technology to do so; to control nature, our bodies and our health (although ironically a consequence of this is a loss of control – just consider global warming for example), and this goes hand in hand with the concept of choice. The rhetoric of choice has become one of the corners stones on which Western culture stands. By being able to choose, we believe that we can control not only our lives but also our destinies.

It reminds me of a former colleague of mine who liked to talk about the ‘illusion of control’. Before meeting clients or kicking off a development project, he would check with the team, “So do we have the illusion of control?” he would ask, and if we did we were good to go. Because you can never really have control, you can only have a feeling or an illusion, and that’s how ready you will ever be. And that’s good enough when opting out and in as well.

In fact, that has been one of my main findings. After opting out and in, people recognize that they really can’t control their lives and their surroundings, no matter how hard they try. Before opting out many of those I interviewed reported being control freaks and pathologically organized. After opting out and gaining a sense of control, they felt less need of actual control. Many became forgetful and some became rather disorganized, but in a way that they recognized as healthy.

One of the most powerful stories of letting go came from a woman who was terrified of flying. After opting out she boarded a plane to Spain, only to be informed that there was something wrong with one of the engines, but that they were working on it and hoped to be able to take off shortly. This is scary for anyone, but for someone who is afraid of flying this is definitely not good news. But instead of having a panic attack, she surprised herself by just leaning back and thinking “Well these people are professionals, I’m sure they know what they’re doing.” The difference was dramatic.

So the concept of control is important, but it is rather the idea of control than actual control. When we feel like we have control, we don’t as acutely feel the need to control. Instead we can just let go. And letting go, it seems, adds to a sense of sanity and a sense of peace. It adds to our wellbeing. Maybe that’s what we should be doing more of – letting go.

Keep calm and opt out

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“A master has failed more times than a beginner has even tried.”

I read that on Facebook the other day. I can’t remember whose quote it was, but after having received my second rejection in two weeks it spoke to me. That is not to say that this spring has been all bad. I’m not getting rejected on all fronts; after all, I did land a position at the university where I’ve been teaching on short-term contracts, and the work on my opting out book is developing nicely. But it’s funny how we tend to remember the negative bits – the critique and rejections – better than the positive. In part it’s because it just takes so much mental willpower and emotional strength to keep getting up after getting knocked down again and again, and although I feel like screaming at times I keep doing it. Keep getting up. Though I do sometimes ask myself just how dreamy this living my dream business really is.

As I write this I look up longingly at a silly postcard I have thumbtacked to the bulletin board above my desk. It says: “Keep calm and opt out”. It offers me a bit of solace. Not because I’m planning to opt out again. No, but because I started to opt out about seven years ago and I’m still continuously doing so every single day, or at least the card reminds me to. Opting out is not a one off thing. It’s a process. It’s a state of mind. And it provides a feeling of control when everything else seems to be spinning out of control.

The academic world works according to rules that I’m sure frustrates most academics, at least some of the time. And many are very critical of it, but at the same time they shrug and say that’s just the way it is. If you want an academic career you just have to play according to the rules.

But if so many dislike the way things work, then why don’t we do something about it? Maybe the reason is we don’t all dislike it? Maybe we can’t imagine an alternative? Or maybe it’s just that we feel unable to do anything about it? Social theorist and psychoanalyst Paul Hoggett makes an interesting observation. While Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory holds that anyone who is capable of reflecting over his or her situation is also able to change the structures in which he or she exists, Hoggett argues that there are in fact a lot of people who are able to reflect, but that at the same time are painfully aware that there really doesn’t seem to be much they can do about their situations. He calls this state ‘self as reflexive object’. Maybe that’s the problem? Maybe that’s why some, especially early post-docs, opt to leave academia? Maybe it isn’t only the lack of funding or positions, maybe it’s the feeling that you have no control over your career and thus your life, and that there is nothing you nor anyone else can do about it?

I sometimes jokingly say that I’m a tourist in the academic world. Partly it’s because I’ve had this whole other career before I started doing research and I obviously have that to fall back on, or to go back to should I decide to. I feel like I’m standing with one foot in the academic world and one foot in the business world, and I really like it that way. It’s kind of my way of opting out. I mentally refuse to be assimilated (although I am dedicated, one doesn’t exclude the other) and I resolutely hold on to the ability to critically recognize what works and what really doesn’t, in both worlds. And it gives me comfort, because when I feel powerless to change what doesn’t work, and when I keep getting hit by rejection after rejection, it keeps me from losing my sense of self. It allows me to still be me.

I think that’s the main issue here, whether it’s about frustrated academics or mothers of young children or managers who long for a simpler life. The hectic pace, the rigid rules, and the lack of control over our lives makes us feel like we’re losing ourselves, and our sense of dignity.

A while ago I wrote a blog post where I explained how I don’t advocate opting out, because what would the world look like if we all opted out of jobs, of organizations, of society as we know it. While I still stand by my words, I’m also thinking what a narrow view I had of opting out in that moment. Because opting out doesn’t have to mean leaving the work you’re doing. It’s a state of mind. It’s hanging on to who you want to be. It’s living and working in a way you can live with. It’s an ability to prioritize and put things in perspective. And perhaps, most importantly, it’s creating alternative solutions and changing the rules by refusing to adhere to them. Today at least I feel that maybe we all should opt out. Keep calm and opt out. Maybe it isn’t such a silly postcard after all.

Mindfulness on my mind

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I attended an interesting research seminar yesterday on mindfulness in the workplace. I have to admit, I was skeptical. I don’t really believe in the mindfulness and positive psychology hype we’re seeing pretty much everywhere (see The search for happiness or Help that just isn’t helpful). And although mindfulness can be good in many ways, I just don’t believe that it is the answer to everything.

It’s on everyone’s lips everywhere. Workshops get organized; consultancy companies specialized in mindfulness seem to pop up right and left. And although I sort of automatically get put off if everyone is doing or talking about something (I know it’s silly, but it’s true…), curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to know what exactly we’re dealing with here. And, in addition, since I research contemporary society and social change, I figured I really need to find out what this mindfulness craze is all about. Why exactly does it appeal to people so much? And why now?

Well, I have to say, I’m glad I went because I really enjoyed the talk. And the fact that the speaker had us meditate in our seats in the middle of an otherwise busy day was an extra bonus. But what struck me was how many parallels there are between my research on opting out and the speaker’s research on meditation and mindfulness. There are three things in particular: choice, control, and crisis.

He talked about being able to break our automatic behavior and choose our responses. He talked about the ability to control our attention, our reactions, our thoughts, and our feelings. And then he talked about crisis; about his own crisis that lead him to start practicing meditation, and the crises of the people he interviewed for his study. They had all experienced a personal crisis that led them to start meditating.

Now, this isn’t rocket science and you may find it obvious, but for me it was extremely interesting because these are exactly the things that keep coming up in my research on opting out: choice, control, and crisis.

The rhetoric of choice is very strong in our society. In a reality that often feels chaotic and overwhelming, the idea of free choice is an attractive one. It provides us with a sense of agency – a sense of control in a world that feels like it’s spinning out of control. And in a society where individual choice is key, where we believe that we are what we make of ourselves, and where we alone are responsible for that, the idea of choice has become a part of the very fabric of who we are.

But crisis is also interesting. Yes, a crisis will often lead to a re-evaluation of one’s lifestyle, and maybe push someone to opt out or start meditating, but there’s more. Contemporary life is defined by constant crisis. According to Anthony Giddens (author of Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives) crisis today is no longer simply an interruption, but an on-going state. We live in a risk society, where we are painfully aware of all the risks we face globally, in part due to media broadcasting every catastrophe and every act of violence in full color to all corners of the globe. This is despite the fact that contemporary life in many ways is less risky that it was before, but that is not how we perceive it.

So if mindfulness promises choice and control, maybe it is not so surprising that more and more people are becoming interested in it.

And I have to say, I did enjoy the seminar. I do admit that mindfulness or meditation can be good in some situations. It is just that in this day and age, we sort of go overboard with everything – moderation isn’t exactly our strong suit – and we do this with the idea of mindfulness too. All of a sudden it has become the answer to everything. But it’s not.

So to finish I will just say, too much of the good is just that: too much. Even when it comes to chocolate.