Yes, It IS About The Future
"My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there." - Charles Kettering
There was a time in my life when my college Grade Point Average 1 seemed exceedingly important, yet, no one has asked me about it in half a century.
Likewise, not one human being has asked about what I did in the year between high school and my tour in Vietnam; to this day no one asks what my rank was in the Army; no one has quizzed me on the panic and despair I had in the 1980s when I had no prospects for a job nor have I been asked about the long gap when I was “between jobs.”
No one.
Few, if any, review my résumé … that list of job titles and dates and tasks and categories of tasks I did in the past. I suspect that anyone who looks at it does so out of idle curiosity or they hope to discover a word or disagreeable font size that auto-disqualifies me from their narrow consideration. (Remember, “lazy, unimaginative, fearful and selfish”?)
So many, many things have seemed so very, very important during my life. Yet, over time, their significance has waned if not disappeared altogether.
Do you know why no one asks about those things?
I don’t live there anymore. My friends don’t live there anymore. My family doesn’t live there anymore. None of the people I have known in my life live there anymore. The world doesn’t live there anymore. Who I was and who I am are not the same.
Serious people, that is, adults, know that.
Serious people are not interested in what I did in some long-ago job or the myriad tasks or job titles at which I tried to make a minimal living. Serious people do more than a cursory read of credentials. Serious people do more than make snap judgments based on out-of-context bits and bytes of data to satisfy their desire for instantaneous gratification.
Serious people, er, adults, are interested in what you and I can do to make a positive difference in the future.
After all, it’s about the future.
Serious people ask me to help them frame industry-specific strategic issues that, unless effectively dealt with, could restrict the development of their team members and organizations. Serious people ask me to help them think through the success indicators of desired futures. They rightfully expect tools and models to assist them in helping themselves in creating future successes.
I cannot do it for them; I can only help them help themselves.2
As I have mentioned elsewhere, it seems to me that we have the past - and we have the future.
I suggest that my family, friends, clients, and prospective students and clients pick one … and stick with it.
The past is data that has already occurred and cannot be altered. I no longer sit around having circular gripe-and-pity sessions with myself about the bad choices I’ve made in my life.
Emotional health, personal development, personal growth, effective relationships, and making a positive difference in the lives of others cannot be made retroactive; such things lean forward; they live in the future.
It is well that we cannot measure the future. Without human preconceptions, the future will always be boundless, timeless, and without distance, economics, and other artificial constraints. Were we able to measure - or in some way, predict - the future it would become diminished as we filter it through our own past fears.
We can only measure the past (which is one reason why mere “managers” perpetually count stupid stuff that has already happened - and true leaders have boundless opportunities.)
Ah, I’ve met them throughout my life and many are still out there - the sarcastic, cynical folks who disregard possibility thinking as “unrealistic,” or “pie in the sky.” Such self-limiting pronouncements do nothing to further progress, creativity, self-confidence, or interpersonal trust for that matter. They make it about themselves and not about successes of the larger group.
We can wait to see what happens - or we can deliberately and mindfully choose - the conditions of our future successes. Click this sentence to read my article with tips on one way to do so.
As Dennis Gabor3, Nobel Prize winner, noted, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”4
So, I frequently ask myself: “What’s your plan? What future will you create?
Will you continue to wallow in regret and self-flagellation about things that have already happened - as if they happened this morning? Will you re-enact yesterday’s pain or choose emotional health? Will you cling to toxic relationships or surround yourself with people who contribute to your peace? Will you become complacent about past successes and cease to create new challenges for yourself? Will you self-stick to a job you hate and wherein you feel trapped or will you risk a bit and find a place where you’ll feel wanted, appreciated, satisfied, and can truly make a positive difference? Will you stop seeing limits where there are no limits, and obstacles where there are no obstacles?
On the whole, will you construct a positive, effective vision for yourself, your family, your business, and your relationships, and set about to make it happen?”
I work on answering those questions every day.
Living in the past is an addiction. Like all addictions, it will seduce you into believing it is the only possible now, that it is the only source of comfort. Like all addictions, it will cause you to cling to it as if it were the future. Like all addictions, it will tell you that you have no options … which adds one more moment, hour, or day to a regretful past.
We have the past … and we have the future.
Create your future.
Think you can’t?
Yes, you can.
(While I have your attention, please consider using the button, below, to share “It’s About The Future” with your friends and co-workers? Thanks!)
My GPA? For the record it was about 2.6 against 4.0 … and, I’m still somewhere in that range as a human being.
See my article, “On Successes, Failures & Choices”
Inventing The Future, Dennis Gabor, 1964“