What got you here today will get you back here tomorrow.
Unless something changes.
Let’s face it. The tomorrow you dream of is rarely a reflection of what you experience today.
Today is about tomorrow.
Get there.
Living things decompose when idle.
Ships rot in the harbor.
Airplanes rust in the hanger.
We all want something. However, some hope for what they want and some go get it.
Whatever it is that you want, you won’t find it on the couch, in your inbox, at your desk, in your sleep, or thinking about it.
Slap on some swagger, put her in drive, and go get it.
Fulfillment is more about being able to say ‘I went and got it’ than it is ‘now I have it.’
Move. Sail. Fly.
Fewer buttons.
Cleaner lines.
Losing one’s scarcity mentality.
Speed.
A willingness to accept being wrong if it get’s us one step closer to getting it right.
Simplicity.
Niches.
Authenticity.
Belonging and providing a place to belong.
Less noise. More music.
This is the rhythm and rhyme of the music we must make tomorrow.
It’s hard to opt- in to an opportunity if you can’t see it through the smoke of distraction.
As you clear the smoke your visibility for opportunity multiplies tenfold.
Michelangelo had to see the angel in the marble before he could carve to set him free.
We’re surrounded by such metaphorical angels. They’re waiving at us too and yearning to be freed.
But as long as there is smoke, we’ll never notice their waive.
Fewer options for distraction lead to more opportunities for opportunity.
Clear the smoke. Opt-in. Set your angels free.
The role of business school used to be to teach about scarcity, shelf space or lack thereof, FIFO, LIFO, and bottlenecks. If you understood these things, you understood business.
But there’s frustration in the biz department walls now. The markets are gaining taste, an eye, and appreciation for the arts. Now professors are having to leave the spelling bee traditions of memorization, test taking, and regurgitation and wrestle with beauty, design, art, meaning, and fulfillment.
Couple this with two or more decades of college graduates that learned what they supposedly needed to learn all to find that the knowledge got the job but didn’t unlock meaning they wanted out of life. The system, unfortunately, has made more noise than it has music. But that happens when structure becomes more important than improvisation doesn’t it?
Many are asking what’s next now that we’re on the other side of the industrial and education revolutions.
For one, I would say next isn’t coming – next is here.
And secondly, those that point us towards and experience, meaning, and fulfillment will be the leaders we look back on today with gratitude and the forefathers of whatever we end up calling “next”. Continue reading
Ashton.Gustafson 