In his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, historian Yuval Noah Harari talks about the coming disruptions in technology, politics, religion, immigration, terrorism, and war. He says that so much change is coming that almost the only thing we can know for certain is that we cannot know what is coming.
As he explains, this unpredictability is the key driver for how we can best prepare:
“I think the most important thing is to invest in emotional intelligence and mental balance, because the hardest challenges will be psychological. Even if there is a new job, and even if you get support from the government to kind of retrain yourself, you need a lot of mental flexibility to manage these transitions.
“The most important investment that people can make is not to learn a particular skill — ‘I’ll learn how to code computers’ or ‘I will learn Chinese’ or something like that. No, the most important investment is really in building this more flexible mind or personality.”
Yuval also describes three ways that we can build this more flexible mind: meditation, exercise, and connection with nature.
Inner Leadership agrees. Building emotional resilience and learning to see ‘problems’ as opportunities is the most important attitude we can have for leading ourselves and others through this time of change. And meditation, exercise, and connection with nature are three of the four ways that Inner Leadership recommends we can achieve this.
But building a more flexible mindset is only the first step.
If we truly want to succeed in the 21st century we need to go further than coping with change. We need to learn to thrive because of change.
And to do that we need to build the seven skills of Inner Leadership:
- Connect strongly with who we are at our best (using meditation, exercise, creativity, and time spent in nature)
- Learn to make clearer sense of a changing world (by learning to call on our intuition and by spotting when we are making mistaken assumptions)
- Learn to find more opportunities in any situation (there are ten possible types, perhaps with more than one opportunity for each)
- Get comfortable choosing our best path between these options (even when we have little or no information or can’t predict how things are going to turn out)
- Use our Purpose and Values to provide not only long term stability and direction but also short term adaptability and enthusiasm
- Learn to inspire ourselves and other people so that we long to do what needs to be done
- Understand and manage the emotional transitions that inevitably accompany change, (so that we maintain and build our momentum as we go forward)
Yuval Noah Harari says that emotional intelligence and a flexible mindset are “the essential keys to the 21st century“. We agree. But they are only the first step.
By strengthening your abilities at all seven of the skills or competencies of Inner Leadership you will give yourself the best chance of not only surviving the 21st century but learning to thrive because of the changes that are coming. Because no matter what changes happen, you will know how to use them to become a stronger and more valuable version of the person you most want to become.
An unpredictable future is already here. What are you doing to prepare for an even more unpredictable future?
The Churning, Inner Leadership is a framework and a set of tools for building inspiration in a time of change.
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(And remember: you can’t learn to swim just by reading about swimming, you also need to do the practice.)
Photo source: GQ magazine article