Growing up, we were all likely taught the same thing. Go to school, get good grades, get into a good college (and amass a ridiculous student loan debt in the process), find a “secure” job, work there for 45 years and then retire at age 65 and live the good life. Sounds good in theory. However, as many baby boomers who had planned on retirement over the past several years can attest, it does not work out so well in practice.

The primary reason this path no longer works is this: we are no longer in the Industrial Age. The Industrial Revolution ushered in decade after decade of ever-increasing productivity and economic growth. The afore-mentioned path worked while we were in the Industrial Age, but most certainly does not work today. Think about it. We now operate in a global economy. Things are different. Factory jobs can easily be outsourced to foreign countries where the wages are immensely cheaper. An American factory worker simply can’t compete with a person in China earning a dollar an hour. And when you contact customer service and hear that Indian accent on the other end, that person’s wages are probably less than 1/10th of what it would cost a company to pay an American worker. It’s not fair, but it is the reality we face.

That having been said, it’s not all gloom and doom. Change always ushers in opportunity, as long as you’re open minded and smart in terms of how you respond to said change. Today, we now live in the Information Age (also commonly referred to as the Digital Age or the Knowledge Economy). Today’s opportunities reside in what you know, not how many hours you’re willing to work per week. The days of being a good employee and doing what your boss tells you are rapidly fading.

America will once again have to embrace it’s roots, namely entrepreneurism. We won’t look for jobs; we’ll have to create jobs. We won’t be paid by the hour; we’ll have multiple streams of income. We won’t have 401k’s, pensions or social security to get us through retirement; we’ll need sources of residual income. Like it or not, these changes are here. Welcome to the new normal. We can complain all we like but it’s not going to set things back to the way they were. Our only option is to adjust to these changes and see the opportunities that lie within. And it’s that strength of character, fortitude and never-say-die attitude that will help us navigate through this sea of change. Those same remarkable qualities are exactly what this great country of ours was founded on.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” ~ Charles Darwin