#PulpNonFiction: Put on your big girl pants

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to your courage - and our curiosity. May your curiosity be stronger than your fear. - Nikki Bush
#PulpNonFiction: Put on your big girl pants

Who doesn’t want to win at life and work? I’m going to guess not many of us.

Who can say confidently that you are winning at life and work? Not enough of us.

That’s why Nikki Bush’s new book, Future Proof Yourself, How to Win at Work and Life is so welcome right now, when so many of us feel like we are languishing rather than living due to circumstances outside of our control. Future Proof Yourself is a no-nonsense guide to getting back into your big girl (or boy) pants and getting back on track and en route to a life and career worth getting excited about again - no matter how little we feel like doing just that right now.

Nikki herself is no stranger to getting back up again after being knocked down, both literally and figuratively. In her book, she writes about the time she was forced to spend many weeks lying flat on the floor after injuring her back, and how in this helpless position she was forced to pause and rest and keep going in her career even as she couldn’t actually go anywhere.

She also writes about coming to terms with her husband’s senseless murder during a home invasion, and the terribly unfair financial aftermath, including being forced to sell her home and become a single parent and sole breadwinner to her two boys, while her shock and grief were still raw. Astonishingly, Nikki was able to take even this devastating trauma and use it as fuel to keep her life and career going

Future Proof Yourself details the story of how Nikki was able to reclaim her agency over her own present and future. She refused to live the rest of her life as a victim of circumstances she had no control over. Rather, she was determined to do what she could with what she had where she was, a lesson we all can learn from for our own careers and businesses.

Nikki has poured her learnings into her book, which is packed with (many) highly practical bite-sized tips on how you can meet your personal and professional challenges, whatever they are (and what, with covid, and South Africa’s dubious honour of having the world’s highest unemployment rate, we all have some battles to face), with courage and curiosity.

As Terry Pratchett says, Even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility.

At some point, you have to get up, get dressed, make your bed and keep moving forward.

About Bronwyn Williams

Futurist, economist and trend analyst. Partner at Flux Trends.
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