Will you look back on this time in a few years and realise that it was the time that your business went BOOM? I don’t meant in the destructive, it’s-all-over sense, but in the explosive rocket-taking-off sense? I don’t know about you, but as someone self-employed who doesn’t qualify for any of the government’s assistance, I’ve been on a roller coaster of emotions over the past few weeks. From extreme anxiety to unbounded optimism and everything in between! I’ve taken control of my chimp brain a few times and now made a decision: that this will be a time I look back on as when I shifted my life and business FORWARD.
I heard Futurist Mark Stevenson say a few years ago, “There are basically two kinds of people: the Brave and the Dead.”
I think he had a point. I call this the difference between Cave Thinking and Brave Thinking. Plato’s Cave (look it up or read my previous blogs) depicts an existence in which people are imprisoned, not by some external force but by their own voluntary acceptance of the reality with which they are presented. The prisoners are prisoners in mind only. The Philosopher urges them to escape and discover the truth beyond the world of shadows but they ridicule, persecute and kill her. As human beings we seem to be inherently resistant to change. Change represents threat. Familiarity represents safety. We are creatures of habit: we like what we know. But, of course, this leads to stagnation and the regurgitation of the status quo. And stagnation is actually regress, because whilst we stagnate the world around us continues to move. Everything is in motion.
The world has changed and is changing and to survive we must adapt. But I would argue that it is more preferable to make and shape the change rather than play catch up. In fact the successful companies and movements do just that: they don’t wait for a kick up the arse, they forge ahead into the unknown and make the future what they want it to be. This is a fundamental mindshift:
a) watch what happens and follow the trend or
b) shape what happens and lead the trend.
This is the difference between Cave Thinking and Brave Thinking. In the Cave we are distracted by what seems to be acceptable, what seems to be the norm, what seems to be reality. In fact it is the version of reality we have been handed. For many, accepting this reality, even though it is admittedly deficient, is more comfortable, less stressful and less traumatic than the alternative of leaving the safety of the familiar, challenging the norm and breaking out into an unknown brave new world. This truth is captured brilliantly by the film The Shawshank Redemption which shows Morgan Freeman’s character Red released from prison after 50 years of incarceration. He tries to live outside the cave of the institution that has become his home and finds it too new, too difficult, too scary and uncertain. There is a moving scene which shows him walking up to the prison gates and asking if he can come back in. He has become institutionalised. His request is denied of course and we find him not much later having hung himself.
Institutionalisation is when the norm in an organisation or culture is so established and embedded that any other way of operating seems unbearable. To some extent we are all institutionalised - that’s the Cave of Plato’s analogy. But some people get out...
Jesus captured the same idea when he said:
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14)
It is hard to swim upstream, to run against the flow of the majority. It is difficult to be a change-maker. But life lies ahead! Doing what everyone else is doing was never a recipe for success. The ones who have stood out through the ages and changed the world are those who have questioned the reality they were handed and were brave enough to try something different. From the Wright Brothers to Martin Luther King Jr; from Jesus to Walt Disney. The Brave Thinkers change the world.
The temptation in a time like this is to shrink back, conserve, reduce, fear, worry and dwell on all the unknowns and the what-ifs. But you can choose to look up, look ahead, look for possibilities, make plans, believe, dream and commit to a better future after this.
Personally I’ve committed to making new plans, looking for new possibilities and dreaming bigger dreams. Undoubtedly many new ventures and startups and organisations and initiatives will begin during this time; the question is will yours be one of them?