Daily Inspiration: “A simple truth about your future: you can’t prevent it from happening!”

“A simple truth about your future: you can’t prevent it from happening!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Try as you might, your efforts to beat back your future are inevitably doomed to fail!

And yet, it seems we are surrounded by people and companies who think that it is possible.

I wrote a long blog post: “The Future, and the People Who Hate It: What Happens When People Tune Out From What Comes Next?” I’d encourage you to read it; it offers my thoughts on how the attitude of some members of my audiences was changing:

The expectation of how to get to the future was shifting; magic wand thinking was taking hold. Just one year later, the world was in a very strange place, and a con job was being pulled upon the populace

What has changed is a belief by some people that an attitude of anger and a mindset of hateful negativity would be enough to take a region into a future. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about these people – and the thinking that drives their thinking about the future:

• they don’t understand the future
• they don’t even try to understand the future
• an inability to accept the future even if they understand it
• they refuse to accept the future once they understand it
• the future conflicts with their desire for things to stay the same – so they deny it (i.e. renewables, electric cars won’t’ happen!)
• a belief that what exists today will exist tomorrow. (i.e. cars will always be based on carbon!)
• they have job skills that are outdated and don’t line up to existing realities but are unwilling to upgrade
• an inability to accept global change (‘we’re the greatest and will always be the greatest!’)
• the incumbency dodge (‘when things are great, they’ll always be great!’)
• the reality dodge (I don’t like the existing and future reality, so I’ll just make up my own!)
• the speed challenge – they are stuck in the slow lane in a fast world
• clinging to an old trend that is no longer relevant
• clinging to an old trend that no longer exists
• clinging to an old trend because the alternative, the real future trend is too painful to contemplate
• denial about the eventual emergence of the trend
• their rage blinds them to the world (hint: look up “coal rollers”)

I could go on; I’ll build up this list over time. It’s sort of like my Innovation Killers theme, which is worth a look.

Except, the implications for companies, economies, and people are far, far worse.