VUCA 2.0 safety — “Fasten seat belts”
“May you live in interesting times” is an expression that purports to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. I don’t know about you but I feel we are living in such times and I also enjoyed watching the human ingenuity triumph as NASA videos and Space X photos from Florida showed. Yes it does not address the racial injustice or unite america nor does it make the Covid-19 pandemic go away or regress! I am quite aware of that and yet…interesting!
Welcome to Volatile, Uncertain, Complex Ambiguous times (twice over)!
Yes VUCA 2.0 events show there is Clear and present danger both to our health, economic wealth. Racial incidences impacting our collective well-being and success of humanity as defined in “pre-2020 terms”. Of course resulting in fear, rage, anger, as there are no good solutions for many issues plaguing us. Life has become less predictable and more probabilistic. For good measure there is also Loss of status and certainty on who to look for guidance.
Does it mean we curl up and stay home? No way! Human spirit is for more resilient to not notice that “Every cloud has a silver lining” Looking beyond the earth into the sky is one way. The launch definitely gives us something to cheer in addition to better technologies and connectivity which will help humanity in becoming a global village in the coming decades and centuries (even as we fear death of Globalization and rise of national and communal way be of being and doing!)
So how best to combat this Confusion coming from Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (C-FUD factor) that VUCA 1.0 has resulted in? Optimism? Hoping for previous normal or Praying for God’s grace or Wishing for Invisible hand or Kissing frogs for fairy-tale ending are options surely!
What can you and I and each one of us do realistically?We all know that The Best Way To Predict The Future Is To Create It. Let’s build seat-belts first!
The 16th President of the United States, President Abraham Lincoln, is often credited with saying, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
— https://www.wanderlustworker.com/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-create-it/
This is one of the reasons I applaud the launch of the SpaceX Dragon as it reaffirms human beings can achieve.
We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon…We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_Moon
Of course we can mess up the earth, screw up the human racial brotherhood and more too…How to fasten the seat belt? Faster, Cheaper, Better technologies for slower to adopt and change human kind — Education?
Is this new? Human Beings have seen and addressed many Corona viruses before and this wont be the last. We have faced many economic meltdown — man-made or otherwise! BTW don’t look at this hopefully — I am not a economist or an astrologer. Who knows we may be heading in to VUCA 3.0 when Earth’s climate gives way due to population explosion, human exploitation and wars and infighting! Am I helping? — anyway this is a grown up conversation!
If I were a betting man, I would bet on human spirit any day and especially now as we are Human Beings! This is the seat belt to fasten to! It is capable of incredible feats and competent enough to recover even as we falter. It is some what like seasons as earth turns. We are at or near winter solstice of larger time cycles (see Yuga for instance) so spring may be sometime in the future.
Some human voices say, 2021 can be that beginning of this century! What do you feel? Are you ready to ride 2020 just to survive as you plan your ways to thrive in 2021 and beyond? Sure it needs some getting used to, some re-planning and the road will be bumpy for sometime to come in VUCA 2.0 years (or decades hopefully not centuries!). Fasten your seat belt — what if it is not a smooth ride that optimists want nor the apocalypse pessimists predict! Are you okay with that? Humanity as a whole will get thru it. So join the joy-ride!
As a Coach who favors Clarity over Confusion, this is what it means to me — double down on Unfolding Full Potential of mine and others. My invitation, hence, for you, is to practice these muscles every day “Creativity, Flexibility, Agility and Resilience” (C-FAR to See-far) so you can survive and thrive (not alternatively but simultaneously and dualistically!) — Yes it is a new skill!
So even as we go about today, watching this reusable rocket launch on our hand held devices, en-route to a peaceful racial protest as we cover our nose-mouth area, let’s stay connected. We have far far long way to go! Both internally within us to raise our individual consciousness and externally to space around us — Of course we need to do all this responsibly (greed is so 20th century!). Hope in — VUCA is just like surfing when the tide is high!
