optimism

"While one may not agree with Hamlets’ statement that “there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so”, our mindsets matter a lot in how we perceive life, how we are perceived and the degree of success we may have in our varied endeavors. 

In rapidly changing and chaotic times an agile mindset can be critical to success. While there are many personal trainers to help sculpt our bodies into somewhat supple forms, there is a scarcity in those who can show us how to exercise our minds to be as flexible as they need to be. 

Mindsets matter. Growth mindsets. Learning mindsets. Optimistic mindsets. Realistic mindsets. 

Optimism matters. 

In the novel “Gravity’s Rainbow” by Thomas Pynchon a character is described as one whose “mood collapsed the room”. While misery may love company, nobody likes being in the company of miserable people. 

Optimism is not just an essential component of innovators but a trait that you must have if you wish to inspire folks to follow you. “Woe is me, doomed are us” works for a few drinks in a bar, but at the workplace it saps energy, hurts culture and is just a plain downer. 

Pessimism is something we all wallow in, but it fails to show the way out. A way to get optimistic is to forget all the legacy nonsense you may have to grapple with and ask that if you had a fresh sheet of paper, a subset of the talent in your firm and its assets (brands, network, money), what would you do? 

You likely will find you are looking forward to what you and your company can do. 

Every day is a new career beginning. 

Tomorrow is where we will spend the rest of our lives. - Rishard Tobaccowala, 6/19/22

https://substack.com/profile/884113-rishad-tobaccowala

Utopians believe in progress; dystopians don’t. They fight this argument out in competing visions of the future, utopians offering promises, dystopians issuing warnings. 

We help you develop future development skills. 

Why spend time thinking about far off future, when there is so many urgent challenges for us to deal with today?

Imagining the future is FUN. Not only is it a chance to be creative and inventive, but it's also important for the future of your business. Thinking about the future is a way to take an ethical stand.  When we face the future, we're trying to make sense of changes that are already starting to happen, all around us, and we're using history, logic and intuition to try to figure out where those changes might eventually lead.    

In fact, when we face the future what we're really doing is participating in a process of anticipatory history.   We imagined what we might do in a world full of new possibilities so that we can prepare to act ethically and responsibly.  We think about difficult decisions that we might have to make any future and how those decisions will affect others.   

By thinking about that future now, we give ourselves more time to consider our response more time to figure out, how to be an upstander when change is happening fast.  

In other words, thinking about the future today prepares us to make history tomorrow.