The insecure way is really the secure way.

Earlier this year I was facilitating a day of professional development for the high potential employees of a global retail organisation. The day was the culmination of several months of deep professional development for the future leaders of the organisation.

And yet for some of them it was coming in the middle of a difficult time.

Economic pressures were having an impact on the business.

One of the leaders was based in an office in a different country that was being closed within a few weeks of our workshop.

He observed, ‘Two weeks ago, one of my colleagues was here starting her journey on the programme as one of the future leaders of the company. Now she’s out of a job.’

I shared this story with the coaches I lead as part of The Coach’s Journey Community , as a reminder to them that the security of a ‘proper job’ isn’t all it’s made out to be.

Redundancies happen in every sector.

Businesses go out of business.

Government departments get cut and reorganised.

Charities lose funding.

For people striking out on their own, like the coaches I support, moving from a ‘proper job’ to self employment feels precarious.

And yet, if I slow down, I can see that my income being from diverse sources (a range of one-to-one clients, corporate organisations, my work with coaches and more) makes me in some ways more secure than were I to have a proper job. The difference is the level of responsibility I have: if I have a ‘proper job’ then the connection between my performance and whether I get paid is not clear. But the pressure on me is much greater in my own business (the possibilities are, too, but that doesn’t mean it feels nice).

These observations gave me a strange viewpoint: who is really more secure? The future leader of an organisation being invested in on a leadership programme, or someone who has struck out on their own as a freelancer?

And then, when I was recently listening to an old set of interviews with the mythologist Joseph Campbell, I heard him say ‘The secure way is really the insecure way.’

That gives me the language for what I was seeing.

But Cambell’s work is about more than how our money comes in.

It’s about the deepest truths that humanity has learned over millennia and then coded into its myths.

It tells us that what may look secure to us is often insecure, and that what may look insecure may actually be the more secure path.

This is because, deep down, everything is changeable.

Nothing is secure: the relationships we have, our work, the political climate, the weather, the way society is organised.

And so the only secure way is the adventure: Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, which is the story of human transformation.

It means abandoning home (metaphorically, although sometimes also literally), facing trials, letting go of who we were in the moment of greatest felt insecurity , and becoming someone new: with new capabilities and wisdom to bring back to our community and our life.

In doing that, as we grow our capacity, everything becomes more secure.

Not because we know what will come, but because we are more able to deal with whatever will come.

The coach Lindsey Lewis explained to me on The Coach’s Journey podcast how she was able to take her eyes off her income for months to focus on a big scale creative project; take her eyes off security for so long. It was not that she had a pile of money, or a husband subsidising her work and leaving her feeling secure and safe: it was that she believed in her ability to create clients and income. She had been through an adventure, and come back to normal life with that wisdom. And it freed her.

We all have this possibility, and are faced by these choices.

Sunday Times bestselling author Jamie Smart once memorably observed at a workshop I was at that we laugh or smile fondly at children’s Teddy Bears, knowing that they don’t really bring the security that the child thinks they do.

And at the same time we hang on to our Teddy Bank Accounts, Teddy Job Titles, Teddy CVs as though they provide us with security.

Security doesn’t come from where we think it comes from.

This doesn’t mean everyone with a job should become a freelancer.

It does mean that everyone should seek a clearer understanding of what really creates security.

And remember:

In the end, the secure way is really the insecure way.

The insecure way is really the secure way.

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PS Read my latest long-read article in the Leading With Honour series, here: The Transformational Practice of Telling the Truth (Leading With Honour II)

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This is the latest in a series of articles written using?the 12-Minute Method : write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.?(I cheated a little on this one - took about 15)

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