Daily Inspiration: “There’s the future you have. Then there’s the future you’ll create!”

“There’s the future you have. Then there’s the future you’ll create!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Life is a journey of choices – and each and every day, you have the opportunity to change your path.

What’s your decision today?

I continue to choose to reinvent, reimagine, redo and rethink – that’s my choice! Three months ago, it looked like the event, conference, and meeting industry in which I work might be coming back, and I would find myself on stage once again. Today, the future is looking pretty dire, particularly in regions of the US, where it seems that folks don’t realize that wishful thinking never trumps science. With that, my future is once again uncertain, volatile, and to a large degree pretty unknown!

What can I do about it? Not much, other than to plow ahead with ideas, continuing to explore new boundaries, initiatives, and opportunities. I’m always discovering new pathways because of this – I just finished a virtual project for a client that took a different approach for an online event. I convinced them that few people will sit down and watch a 45-minute or one-hour keynote on Zoom, regardless of how good the virtual set or content might be! Instead, I gave them a tightly produced, content-rich 15-minute virtual tour of their future, and followed up with a 30-minute interview with senior executives on ‘how to get there.’

It’s a format that seems to work, given the clash between the need to stay aligned to trends but the inevitable reality of short attention spans. My mantra for my online work has become built around Pink Floyd – “short, sharp shocks.”

My choice has always been to never give up, continue to explore ideas, rebuild and reinvent my future. It seems to be serving me well as this world of incessant uncertainty continues to cloud our future. In the absence of clarity, I’m choosing to double-down on action!

What’s your plan?