Webster’s Riverside Dictionary defines an entrepreneur as “one who launches or manages a business venture, often assuming risks.” Sure, it’s easy to see how that applies to a business owner—but how does it apply to an employee.

Your “business” is your entire career. You are in charge of it. And every employer you have is a client on the long journey of your career. Whether you change jobs annually or stick with one company for five years or longer, whether you work for a small business or a large corporation, you are the owner of a service-based business where you must meet and exceed customer expectations, adapt to the needs of the marketplace, and stay competitive by offering something unique.

Once you realize that you own your career, it’s easy to stop feeling like a victim. No one and nothing has control over you. It’s your career, and you are free to fix it and direct it in any way that you like. You’re in the business of developing yourself as a commodity, marketing yourself, and finding fulfillment in work. You pick your clients, and work to see if there is a match. You learn to be gracious and solid, because you never want to burn any bridges. If you’re not finding fulfillment at work, you have the responsibility and power to find the solution. If you do everything you can to make it work and still find yourself unfulfilled, you may need to look for a different “client” (i.e. employer). But no matter what the problem is, it can be solved once it’s identified.

My aim here is not to turn everyone into an independent business owner. Indeed, not everyone has the capacity, or desire, to succeed as an entrepreneur. There are many advantages to working for a company, including the infrastructure support, steady paycheck, benefits, and built-in community. But we all have the aptitude to take control—to invest in ourselves and make decisions based on our own values, interests, and abilities, to the benefit of ourselves and our employers.

Yes, the new world of work is scary, but like a fast-moving ride, it can also be exhilarating and fun—if you embrace it as an opportunity to develop your greatest self. There is the potential for tremendous cross-pollination of skills in the new world of work. A journalist carried over her knowledge of the media to become the public relations direct of a school system; the production manager of a plastics factory converted his knowledge of materials and manufacturing into an asset at a scenery design firm; a waitress used her people skills to become an effective human resources counselor. There’s no slowing down the new millennium. To survive and thrive in the new world of work, you need to stop being the victim, and start thinking and acting like an entrepreneur.