Some airports have conveyor belts to move people. You’ve probably seen them. Maybe you’ve stood on one as it moved you forward.
This is how many of us go through life. Moving through with the herd, along for the ride, following the pre-determined path set out by someone we don’t even know. We hardly notice when we encounter shifts in the landscape. We’re just following the crowd, along for the ride.
Eventually, the conveyor belt comes to a screeching halt and throws us off. We are jarred by the unexpectedness of what just happened, even though, had we been paying attention, we would have seen it coming.
If we had looked ahead, scouted our environment, we would have seen that the ride would end soon. We would have been prepared to transition smoothly to the floor, to keep walking without missing a beat.
These moments — when the conveyor belt ends and throws us off — are catalysts. A device that forces us to transition to a new way of moving through life.
So here we are.
The people who are talking about how nobody could have seen this coming are the ones who were asleep on the conveyor belt. The truth is, many people saw this coming. Perhaps not in exactly this form, but they warned.
The way we’ve been working isn’t working. The way we’ve been living isn’t sustainable. Not for humanity, not for the planet.
Plenty of people saw this coming.
Nobody listened.
Adapt or Get Left Behind
And even today, in the midst of all of this, there are people, and industries, trying to maintain a sense of “normalcy.” Wondering when we will go back to “business as usual.”
The conveyor belt has thrown us off, and instead of navigating the landscape and considering how to move forward, they want to go backward.
We are at a profound moment of change in the history of humanity. And in the face of change, our instinct is to cling to what we know and how we’ve done things in the past, even when how we’ve done things in the past hasn’t worked.
Oh, how we love our habits.
Change incites fear and doubt. It also presents opportunity to do things differently.
We can use the technology we have to do the same things we’ve always done in new ways, or we can use that tools we have to meet our outcomes by doing new things in new ways.
At this moment in time, we have a choice: adapt and lead, or get left behind.
The conveyor belt has stopped. The ride is over. It’s time to survey our surroundings and use our feet. .
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