There is a need for empathy in leadership where conscious leaders walk in the shoes of customers and employees.

Imagine a world where every top-tier executive dons the shoes of their customers and employees. What would it look like if each C-suite executive applied for a job at their own company incognito, just to get a taste of the recruitment process?

A recent event with United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby is worth noting. Thousands of passengers were left stranded due to cancellations. Instead of joining them, Kirby flew on a private jet.

His choice triggered a backlash. He apologized, admitting his insensitivity towards customers and staff.

What if Kirby had stepped into his customer’s shoes before making his decision? Could this have led to a different outcome?

If executives saw their company from a customer’s or employee’s view, they’d learn a lot. They’d understand their struggles and joys. They could use this knowledge to make healthier choices.

Actions speak louder than apologies. To show true empathy in leadership, executives must understand their business from the ground up. This not only encourages humility but also leads to more fair and compassionate businesses.

In a time where transparency is crucial, leaders must do more than apologize. They need to understand their customers’ and employees’ experiences. This way, they serve their mission and build enduring companies.

Can we actively choose creation over criticism as members of this interconnected world?

So much energy is squandered debating and arguing about what and who is right and wrong. We often encounter situations where there is disagreement with someone’s approach or way of thinking. And it’s open to a barrage of criticism for being flawed in some way.

However, instead of joining the chorus of critics, we can choose to be creators and develop something ourselves. This decision allows us to invest our energy in creation rather than tearing down someone else’s approach.

Choosing the path of a creator requires dedication, experimentation, and ingenuity, which is why we often see more critics than creators. If we truly wish to make a healthy impact, we channel our energy into imagining and creating.

To foster a world of creators, it’s essential to embark on a purposeful quest, giving attention to constructive ideas and opportunities that we can explore and experiment with genuinely. This approach creates an environment that promotes healthy transformation.

When it comes to criticism, Marcus Tullius Cicero shared, “I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.”

Can we  move away from endless debates and arguments, and toward a more collaborative and creative future?

The Nomad Lifestyle

Today's nomad lives life on their own terms. But until about 12,000 years ago, people lived nomadically, moving from place to place.With the emergence of agriculture, we began to form permanent settlements and cultivate crops.

Fast forward to the 1960s, when we experienced the rise of the free-spirited hippie and flower generation that defied societal norms. Some hippies chose to live a nomadic lifestyle, traveling from place to place and living in intentional communities.

Today, a modern nomadic lifestyle is gaining traction. It is not as free spirited as the 60s as this new way of living is tied to economic freedom and working (and living) from anywhere. And a new wave of family nomads is emerging; not just individuals.

Currently, over 35 million people embrace the nomadic way of life, and estimates suggest this number will reach 60 million by 2030 and a staggering one billion by 2035. For many modern nomads, the appeal lies not only in traveling but also in fulfilling the ancient need for community. People enter each other's lives, choosing whether to stay or move on to the next adventure.

And there are also digital nomad visas that allow people to root in an increasing number of countries around the world. It also spurs new digital nomad health insurance, co-living options, new company policies and things we have yet to imagine. The first digital nomad village opened in Madeira this past year.

I was just invited to join the second Internet Country cohort, which is "a remote adventure for highly curious people seeking to learn more or start contributing to potential countries on the internet."

But not all is rosy. This lifestyle shift impacts local economies, particularly in Portugal, Spain, and Mexico, where the nomadic population has surged. As housing and living costs rise, resentment from locals grows.

The Modern Nomad

While freedom, conscious living and well-being remain priorities, many nomads are also on a spiritual journey. They balance remote work with personal growth, often while co-living and enjoying leisure activities. There is no one definition of nomadic lifestyle because it's something that can only be determined by the person creating it.

The latest trend is rural co-living for nomads who crave both travel and village life. With high-skilled, educated professionals no longer confined to big cities, new opportunities emerge. For those who prioritize experiencing the world and finding connected communities, this lifestyle is appealing. It fosters excitement for self-sufficiency, like growing one's own food and connecting with others in novel and ancient ways.

Imagine living and working for a month in a beach town. You get to choose whether you surf before or during the work day, followed by hiking, biking or yoga. When you’ve had enough, you move to a world class ski town, hitting the slopes. And when you miss city life, return to an urban center for a change of pace.

With growing interest and demand, the modern nomadic lifestyle offers immense potential. And yet. it's not for everyone. Who will be the next 25 million to join over the next seven years? And what can be created for and by a billion people practicing new ways of living and working by 2035?

We’re definitely living in historic times, where trust is broken among crumbling giants. Who would have thought that Credit Suisse, once a respected institution, would be faltering? The Swiss banking giant serves as yet another cautionary tale of organizations and leaders who have lost their way.

Credit Suisse was an iconic brand, playing a pivotal role in the Swiss economy for over a century. But now it has reached a dead end. The Washington Post reports on the bank’s numerous failings, which include criminal convictions, corruption cases, spying scandals, and massive data leaks. This is a story of “leadership” losing sight of customers, employees, and people in general, focusing on fixing problems while neglecting purpose and trust.

Sadly, many giants are crumbling, suffering similar fates as they overlook the human side of their businesses. Management at Credit Suisse did little to halt the decline, and their frantic cost-cutting attempts and reorganizations were reactionary and ineffective.

We can learn so much from this real-life collapse. Our world needs conscious leaders who lead with heart and genuinely care about people. Every industry is vulnerable to decline when we lose sight of why we’re in business.

Unraveling Crumbling Giants

As we’ve seen with Jack Welch’s legacy and other giants like GE, focusing on short-term profits leads to ignoring the warning signs of long-term risk. Purpose, trust, and ethical relationships are essential for creating a healthy culture where people matter.

Dysfunctional organizations sacrifice long-term gains by ignoring the living systems that need nurturing. As everything is connected, the collapse of giants sends ripples throughout the world. In Credit Suisse’s case, its demise not only destroyed shareholder value but also tarnished the Swiss brand.

This story serves as a stark reminder of the self-destructive tendencies lurking within all organizations, regardless of their storied pasts. The number of crumbling giants is accelerating, with corporate longevity at an all-time low as unconscious leaders cling to outdated models.

Now, we face an opportunity to create healthy organizations and living systems that balance the mechanics of running a business with the human dynamics necessary for true consciousness.

What happens when we wake up to the heart of business and embrace the possibilities that lie before us?

In a society obsessed with solving problems, it’s easy to fall into the trap that there is an expert who can fix them for us. We have been so enamored with the idea of expertise that we often give our power away.

We are actually encouraged to be the expert in everything. Our decaying world has a love affair with celebrity, worship and following the crowd. And so many young people as a result want external validation through fame and money, as do "grown ups" actually!

But the truth is, the "cult of the expert,“ as Sir Ken Robinson shared about our current education system, can be incredibly limiting. He never wanted to be the expert himself. 

Have we asked ourselves why the current education system instills a fear of being wrong, which prevents us from thinking for ourselves?

When we rely solely on experts (and AI) to guide us and make decisions, we neglect the power of our own intelligence and deeper knowing. Our ability to be discerning slowly gets shut down when we trust people outside ourselves more than our own hearts and minds.

Citizen Science on the Rise

Community science, began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ordinary people collected and recorded data, often as part of larger scientific projects. Citizen science emerged in the 1990s when people were able to participate in scientific research on a larger scale due to systems that enabled collaboration.

Today, citizen science is on the rise as a result thanks to our ability to connect to each other through technology. We are beginning to become aware that insights and experiences of everyday people are just as valuable as that of the gurus. We are aware that our perspectives and experiences play a critical role in shaping our understanding of the world.

The big shift is happening slowly when we are choosing not to  blindly trust those in positions of authority. Because they often do not know what we need and are working on their own agendas. We have witnessed over the last few decades so many harmful decisions that have had a profound impact on increased division.

And we’re no longer willing to put more lipstick on a bulldog. We want peace and healthy living. It’s that simple. And it’s up to each of us to be in charge of our bank of trust. Understanding that we will experience heartbreaks along the way, which inform us who is trustworthy and walks the talk. Not just talks.  

Being Our Own Expert

We’ve talked about it before that of course, we want a mechanic to help us with our vehicles. We want heart-centered medical professionals to help us with our holistic health. We want conscious lawyers to help us create conscious contracts.

But we are aware that there is no expert on our lives and only people who can ask questions and listen. And we always listen to our hearts in alignment with our mind. It’s up to us to no longer need to be right or wrong and fight for our lives.

There is magic in the not knowing and we can honestly share, we don't know as no one needs to test us. Our power lies in our ability to be real and raw. And if we get shamed then maybe we need to understand that we are in an unhealthy situation? The question is, do we have the courage to break through the 'cult of the expert’?

There is a healthy path where we value experiences and insights. And make them our own. We leave the archetypes, stories, models and someone else's analysis of who we are behind. And imagine and design our own existence. This is why dialogue and community are increasingly making a comeback in a world where no one wants to be lectured.

By doing so, we create a healthy world where we have a voice. And the opportunity to find our way with people who care about what we care about.

t’s easy to be frightened by headlines about a potential recession and a mass layoff of tens of thousands of people. And this fear is always alerting us to prepare for the next disaster in our external world.

The fear is being projected across the globe. But what if we peeked under the covers and asked a few questions, what would we actually see?

According to Yahoo Finance, Meta hired 42,372 human beings during the pandemic and recently laid off 11,000. Google hired 67,880 and slashed 12,000 humans from its payroll. Microsoft had over 220,000 employees at the end of 2022 which is up from 163,000 in 2020 and 181,000 in 2021.They added more than 57,000 employees in a two-year period before cutting 10,000.

Maybe this is a reversal of a hiring spree that surged during the pandemic? And what’s interesting is that most tech companies are still larger than they were three years ago when it comes to the number of “headcount.”

Maybe long-term employees unexpectedly finding their access cut off to their beloved company is a workforce restructuring? Perhaps a slowdown is coming as a wake up call that we have been focusing on unhealthy growth?

While these are statistics, there is a very real impact on each person who was informed they were no longer needed or valued for whatever reason.

Unconscious Communication

There are a million reasons and stories of why this is happening. But maybe what we need to remember is that all we can do is question.

Despite all the noise of leadership and communication, what is happening is no different than decades ago. It’s all pretty much unconscious or maybe all the internal communication and leadership development employees were laid off first?

Although it used to be that we got laid off in a meeting with our manager and it was frowned upon to hold these meetings on a Friday. But this modern round of layoffs are happening over email, Slack, and other platforms. And few are being informed over a video chat or a Zoom.

Loss of access is now discovered early in the morning when the “communication” reaches the “affected” employees. Some have also shared openly they were having dinner when they got the news that their job was slashed.

In a digital world, companies want to make sure their trusted employees don’t take the company’s data with them so access is cut immediately.

The tech industry increased its public job cuts by 649% in 2022. It’s estimated that about 130,000 people have been laid off from large tech and media companies in the past 12 months.

This is the highest since the dot-com crash more than 20 years ago. Maybe layoffs are trendy now for CEOs and why some call this the layoff parade? Obviously, the culture or the values don’t matter when people can be restructured or slashed due to cost cutting.

Beyond the Layoff

Trust is broken and breaking. How many of us know some impacted people and feel their anguish? Many loved their jobs and companies.

The headlines and panic around a recession and more layoffs needs to be questioned. Maybe this is an opportunity to step back and not buy into the fear?

What if we become aware that every choice we make is contributing to a future that can be healthier than the past? Maybe tens of thousand of people will make healthier choices now that they face a new reality? There are lots of people who need support right now; not just ones in the fresh round of cuts.

Maybe we are here to create the future of work and leave a healthier living legacy for future generations? Can we stop reliving these stories by creating healthy systems that value human life? We are not machines.

No More Sacrifices?

Sacrifices are about giving something up for the sake of gaining something. Some of us sacrifice our health, for example, to wake up every morning at 5 am, drive two hours to our jobs, so we can put food on the table and pay our bills.

What if we no longer had to make any sacrifices? Maybe we are waking up to the reality that sacrifices are simply a thing of the past that don't need to come with us?

The Great Questioning that sprouted in 2022 is manifesting in our evolving relationship with life and work today. The Wall Street Journal, for example, reports that workers are less ambitious today than three years ago. And employers are "scrambling" to meet productivity goals.

It seems that many of us no longer want to work on weekends, holidays or overtime. And we don’t want to go above and beyond what is expected to advance in the collapsing business machine.

It's so interesting that Robert M. Pirsig, in the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, tells this story, “People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question. Because the structure demands that it be that way.

There’s no villain, no “mean guy” who wants them to live meaningless lives. It’s just that the structure, the system demands it. And no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless.”

Creating Meaning

And what is emerging is that we cannot lead with structure anymore or expect someone else to change the systems for us. When we become the leaders of our own lives, everything changes, especially when we begin to make discerning meaningful choices about everything.

Questioning allows us to open avenues and path to creating the future of work—without anyone outside ourselves instructing us about how it should pan out.

It is life changing when we get to choose how to work and create systems that are meaningful and support us. We choose when we rest and pause no longer bound by concepts like PTO (Paid Time Off).

What we will see over the next five years is more of us creating healthy language around having balance and meaning in our lives. Not having acronyms like PTO regulating when we get "time off" and when we don’t. What if there is simply life to experience and to do so, we need balance? Why? Because we are not machines. And we no longer see our life’s goal to be productive and efficient cogs.

We no longer want to “bust our butts” to be productive and get new unnatural growth targets every new fiscal year. Enriching shareholders and executives has been making many of us sick as we stay in meaningless stories that deplete us.

Spreadsheet Sacrifices

I remember being asked by a very senior executive at Cisco if I felt like I was part of the “Cisco family.” I shared that if tomorrow we would not meet our goals, I would be told: "thank you for creating so much here but we need to let you go."

Managing by heartless spreadsheets and metrics create inhumane systems. And the irony is that we can’t blame AI or anyone outside ourselves for creating these manmade structures. I did play a foundational role for the company and got to experiment on the edge with brilliant people. But at the end of the day, the furniture in the office was an asset and I was a liability on a financial spreadsheet.

So, with more of us questioning, we imagine and experiment. Frontline employees have had enough and so have many managers. The perks are no longer as important as living healthy, meaningful lives where we get to create something meaningful. We don’t want to work for companies that poison the Earth or treat people poorly. And we are choosing not to work ourselves to death in the name of advancement.

It's Up to Us

This is why our opportunity is to do our inner work and see what’s possible for ourselves. This is why the work of Michael Strong is so important to help young people navigate what’s possible for them; outside the cookie cutter education systems. And bring dialogue to young people as a healthy technology to tap into their curiosity and imagination.

Suicide rates among young people are soaring right now, especially among young men. It's up to us to get to the root and introduce foundational changes. Our young people are ready to share. But are we ready to truly listen and engage in meaningful dialogue?

Isn't it time to involve our youth in the creation of the future of work instead of instructing them on what it looks like?

When we have imagination, curiosity and courage guiding us, we get out of the way and clear the path to our greatest opportunities. Our lives depend on stepping out of the old stories, taking a meaningful breath and asking ourselves, what matters to me at this very moment.

It’s not like we have lost ambition as the WSJ claims. It is that we want to create meaning and spend precious time with our kids, our elders and the unknown.

Maybe a life well-lived is possible? Where we are headed is an exchange of value and for many of us, an experience economy is on the horizon.

Letting go means making space for our wildest creations. 

A CEO Choosing the Beach

A CEO (chief executive officer) of a billion-dollar asset management firm announced he will be leaving the company. Why? To “sit at the beach and do nothing.” After three decades in the UK, he is heading back to Australia.

Headline reported by Bloomberg, reads: “Andrew Formica, the CEO of Jupiter Fund Management PLC, announced that he will be leaving the $67.9 billion company due to personal reasons, including wanting to be closer to his elderly parents.”

“I just want to go sit at the beach and do nothing,” he said in an interview. “I’m not thinking about anything else.”

The CEO Questioning

Looks like CEOs are also entering The Great Questioning. And as Jack Kelly shares in his Forbes article: “Believe it or not, the CEOs have feelings and emotions that are not too different from the workers in their organizations.

Recent studies show that the top executives … are growing tired of the unrelenting stress, pressure and accompanying burnout. Similar to the folks who’ve left their jobs in pursuit of a better work-life balance, C-suite executives are following suit.”

Over 500 CEOs left their jobs in 2022, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. There is an increasing number of companies that are reevaluating everything as inflation, supply change shortages, delivery issues, staffing shortages, and recession concerns are on the rise. There is much weighing on the shoulders of CEOs at this time. 

While many state that they are leaving for personal reasons like elder care or to build sandcastles at the beach, this is a time for true leadership to rise. This is an opportunity for leaders who want to bring about transformation and have the guts to do so to take center stage. 

And what will happen with those who go to the beach at 51 to do nothing? We don’t really know yet but Jack Kelly shares his insight that:  “For some, the headaches aren’t worth the lush pay packages, especially as the economy and business environment will only worsen in the near term. 

It makes prudent sense for the CEOs to take much-needed time off to rest and recuperate, so that they can return when the market turns around for the better.”

We will also be witnessing a lot of shuffling chairs as CEOs go from one company to another. It has already begun.

Let’s Consider Our Opportunity Here

Creating a healthy, humane world requires more than new organizational leaders who shift the deck chairs on a sinking ship. It takes entirely rethinking the nature of business, work, and life

I urge us to consider this time in our history as an opportunity to usher in a healthier reality where questioning everything means creating what we need. Not more of the same, different channel, same programming.

 “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”—R. Buckminster Fuller

Leadership is not outside ourselves. Let’s enjoy the beach, take impeccable care of our elderly parents and also take responsibility for our part to create the healthy systems we so need in the world at this moment.

No one is coming to save us. Not even a CEO. 

Question everything. Embrace the unknown. Big or small. Take action.

“I’m not trying to counsel any of you to do anything really special except dare to think. And to dare to go with 

When we are trapped inside a specific model of how things should operate in this world, like how to reduce time to market or be more productive and efficient, we can’t see much else. 

In the current model, resource efficiency is a servant to sustainability. Because we are so efficient we can produce seven air conditioners, for example, instead of one.  We don’t necessarily consider the resources and materials it takes to build one or seven items when all we are focused on is productivity rates. 

We can’t claim we’re efficient and care about the environment when we choose to ship our trash to another part of the world. Making our trash someone else’s headache does not come close to systemic thinking. 

And because many organization are operating on 19th century linear models, we stay stuck in how things should be productive.

But we can step out of the hamster wheel when we’re ready to see that there is another way.   

Complexity is uncomfortable because it requires being comfortable with the unknown. It is where true innovation happens. And yes, we can learn to navigate uncharted waters.

To collaborate across boundaries, we need shared values and cultural understanding of not only the problems but our opportunities. 

Two people are working on a project. One sees a gap and asks, ‘shall we address this gap?” The other looks confused and asks, ‘what gap do you mean? I don’t see anything missing? This is how things should be.

We experience a sense of politics when two people with two different visions or agendas try to work together. And therefore, communication becomes key in understanding people’s agendas and how to bridge the divides. True understanding requires acknowledging uncomfortable realities like that not everyone can be right all the time. And that negotiating in the new world means coming to an understanding of what we are working on together; not being stuck on how things should be. 

Who wants to constantly live in the past where we only jump from solving one problem to the next? It becomes a type of addiction to always explore where we went wrong and try to solve the same problems with limited progress. 

Imagine that every time you hear, ‘this is what’s wrong with …”, you asked yourself, what’s possible? 

Do things really need to escalate when there is another path of collaboration and caring about what we are creating?

Many don’t want to hear that we need to do much more than re-think our current systems. But what If what we need is to create sustainable ones? Our current economic system and lifestyles, for example, are gobbling up our natural resources. The Earth has no productivity goals as it focuses on sustainability and regeneration. 

The more we focus on what’s possible, the more we learn how interconnected we are and how important it is to see the whole system from nature’s point of view. 

When we’re in alignment with nature, we understand that unlimited growth is not sustainable and even possible. The Earth simply cannot support unlimited growth. 

If we want to be sustainable and build a healthy economy, we need to understand systems and expect unpredictability. 

Our opportunity, as leaders, is to think and create on multiple levels. Perhaps our greatest opportunity is right in front of us in plain sight?

Elinor Ostrom, in her Nobel Prize Lecture in 2009, shared: “Humans have a more complex motivational structure and more capability to solve social dilemmas than posited in earlier rational-choice theory. Designing institutions to force (or nudge) entirely self-interested individuals to achieve better outcomes has been the major goal posited by policy analysts for governments to accomplish for much of the past half-century. Extensive empirical research leads me to argue that instead, a core goal of public policy should be to facilitate the development of institutions that bring out the best in humans.”

There is no universal guide for how we should each live our lives. It’s personal and requires some of the most meaningful work we ever do. As a futurist, I am here to share with you that despite our current challenges, there are vast opportunities that appear when we understand why we are each here at this point in history. 

#4 The Future is Human

More and more people of all ages are starting to feel a need to have more meaning in life rather than traditional success. Careers have been mostly ingrained in us from an early age as our ultimate goal of leading a successful life. And the traditional “labor” market placed us in one job at a time. Twenty years ago it was frowned upon if we were in a job for less than three years. But all this is changing at the edges.

In the mainstream, the current system—from choosing a major in high school to university recruiting to profiles on LinkedIn and tax returns—is designed around each one of us having a career. The system is not geared toward the creator economy and people not choosing the 9-5 life. Today, we are having conversations about remote work and hybrid work but we no longer know what work actually means.

The need to generate an income and not only feel fulfilled but to follow a deep desire to make an impact will open up pathways that will drive the next decade. We will witness people questioning retirement. As we are living longer, is retirement still relevant? Why stay in a job that depletes one’s energy?

People are questioning why they work so hard and only get to truly have time for life, at the end of the road. One’s life may end up being about choosing to make a life, where work is part of it as we define ourselves less by how we make a living. And then, there are also many who have reached early retirement and have become serial entrepreneurs who are hungry to make a deeper meaning than accumulating more and more stuff.

Organizations will need to adapt to people who have multiple interests that they want to apply and a lot will need to change when people are in the driver’s seat and are no longer seen as liabilities on a financial spreadsheet. Why? Because more and more people are choosing life over working for someone who seems them as disposable.

People are wisening up when they get laid off and told their role is no longer needed and then see their company post in the local business journals that they are hiring the best people for six-figure salaries. It’s always amazing that so many companies claim to hire the best and the brightest and then treat them like they are disposable. And this only happens when we allow it and in a human future, what’s most important than how we treat ourselves and each other?

What can happen when job interviews shift to the candidate figuring out if the company is worth their life investment? It’s not here yet, but it’s definitely coming when we become aware that we have choices and practice discernment.

Albert ​​Einstein, for example, was not simply born a genius. He had to work extremely hard to develop his depth of mind, passion, and creative intelligence, and he was especially critical of the educational system he had endured along the way. In contrast to the overemphasis on specialization found in this system, he believed that students must aim to ‘acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good.’

This noble goal is something that he himself lived by. He writes that ‘the ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time has given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.’

#5 Choosing to Break Cycles is on the Menu

Some predict diversity is the mantra of our times but today’s increased focus creates greater divides and separation. We have a crisis when it comes to teen boys choosing to leave the planet and it is a silent pandemic spreading around the world. Replacing the patriarchy with matriarchy will not break the cycles of human suffering.

This belief that if only x because it’s better keeps us stuck in old stories and beliefs. When we give attention to a problem, we create more of it. When we only talk to people who share our beliefs and unfriend those who dare to think differently, we fragment ourselves. There is no way we can agree with everyone but this insatiable conditioning to be right decreases our ability to truly listen. Our divisions are getting wider and more dogmatic. The more we refuse to mingle outside of our social circles, the more we’ll continue to stay stuck in the same belief systems and build the same ineffective infrastructure and unhealthy blueprint models. 

For one team or one person to win, the other must lose. That is how the current game is played. Everyone is a “warrior” today in their battles, their adversaries, their camps—spreading more fear, greater division, more anger, and more pain, making us all a little bit blind. We teach our kids to win at all costs and to be the best in the world, often at their own expense.

Our opportunity is to create healthy ways to have open and honest conversations to explore what youth need today, for example. And help each of us to come into balance with our own feminine and masculine elements. Allow for diversity of opinions, which will help us understand that we are more similar than different. Listening becomes a major asset in the coming years. Imagine a world where we take our biggest problems and transform them into our greatest opportunities

#6 This is the Time to Become Whole Within Oneself

This is true at an individual and community level. Wholeness, harmony and balance are all-natural systems that surround us. It is humans that divide, label and create stories and beliefs. And we are each being called to address where we are divided and why. It is not an easy road as there will be many traps and seductions that test us along our path.

Our individual and collective stories of suffering and struggling shift when we make healthy choices and choose to no longer fight for our lives. More of us are becoming aware that we can thrive just as much as entering the battles of right and wrong, even though we may feel the magnetic pull to do so.

As more dare to step out of the conflicts and angst, we will find ourselves gravitating towards people, places and things that encourage dialogue, connection and true collaboration. More and more people want to dream together and live in communities where we grow food and laugh together with people and land we care about.  And when it comes to business, the days of siloed departments and cross-functional interlock processes are numbered.

When we pause, we will make time to become aware of what is calling us. And we will be surprised by people we assumed were “happy” with their life also wanting to make choices that impact well-being. What if suffering, struggling and misery can shift into a desire to simply thrive?

This happens when we begin to ask questions like why are we fighting? And what do we actually win at the end of the day? The future is calling us to become aware of the importance of wholeness not only at an individual level but organizations will need to heal the rift between divisions and create living systems that support their true purpose. 

What will happen when customers and employees become owners who are community-driven and interdependent? There is a lot of talk already about DAOs (distributed autonomous organizations), which are online communities owned and managed by their members.  Can collective ownership of small companies force big companies to take a look at how they are conducting themselves?

When every stakeholder of a DAO is deeply incentivized to help build, share and drive their brands, would that become a threat to the big brands?  What will happen when more and more people with a common goal get together, pool their resources and collectively collaborate to achieve a shared purpose? What can happen when more of us become owners in the businesses and marketplaces we frequent, including our local cafes, restaurants and hardware stores?

We are only starting to experiment as new ways of living and working are being created by us. We can give our trust to algorithms (likes, favorites and predictability) and people who have proven to be untrustworthy, or we can tap into our own intelligence and live like never before.

What is happening overall is that we are each starting to understand that we no longer need to be passive participants but it is up to us to hold companies, governments and ourselves accountable for the choices we make.

The future is here. It’s always a choice. Health is everything.

You can find Part I here https://ayeletbaron.com/forecasts/

We are witnessing the Great Questioning across the globe as more people become aware that the systems we have built are falling apart, especially when it comes to work and life. Organizational structures that were created in 1911 are still the foundation of many companies around the world and they no longer serve where we are headed.

In 2022, there will be continued turmoil around the world and it will allow people to see the divergent paths we can take: one leading to more misery and suffering and another opening portals of opportunity and possibility. And, a new conscious business movement is emerging around the world in the most unlikely places. Here are four trends on our horizon:

1) Conscious choices. The biggest shifts will come from small businesses who have a radical purpose and operate with conscious agreements, and practice self-management. These movements are starting organically and will increasingly demonstrate that we have a choice in how we work, who we are willing to work for and how we want to live. Change is coming from the edges and not the mainstream. And because we are so connected online and can bypass traditional media sources, more people will become aware of this new way of living and working. Technology levels the playing field.

2) Dialogue and Connection. The undercurrents that will be created will require today's leaders in large organizations to realize there is a major transformation happening in the workplace. Communication and dialogue are going to be increasingly important and they will no longer be able to delegate their responsibility to lead authentically and consciously to an executive communication function. 2022 is the year when walking the talk and closing the gap between words and actions will be what leaders will be asked to face. And many are not ready for this shift and will try to hang onto the ingrained command and control structure. But leading from the heart, in alignment with the mind, will be key to future success.

3) From Authority to Personal Accountability. There continues to be widespread mistrust of societal institutions and leaders around the world (Edelman Trust Barometer 2021). As more people question everything, we should not be surprised that the choices made will be more about making a life and less about making a living. More of us will begin to walk away from needing more and more and question what we really need. And it will no longer be the corner office, the trendy company or time away on endless business trips. The person who dies with the most possessions rarely wins. As more people learn to trust ourselves, we will witness people taking personal accountability in every aspect of life and 2022 is just the beginning of what will unfold over the next five years.

4) No more hiding in dark corners. Once we start questioning everything, the veil of reality is slowly revealed. We will no longer accept the status quo and move to the edges of what's possible by making conscious choices around what matters most. I can share from firsthand experience that this new world that will emerge by 2027 is being co-created right now. This is an exciting time when we realize that we are not here to change, fix or make our current broken world better. 2022 allows us to become aware that we have a choice: continue fighting for our lives or become powerful creators of our lives?

This world — that we created and inherited — tells us that everything we need, even love, is outside of ourselves.

We have learned to not only seek knowledge and love outside ourselves, but we have also been conditioned to trust others before truly trusting our hearts. It is not surprising since we have learned from a very early age to live from our minds when our opportunity is to listen to the whispers of our hearts and integrate them with a healthy mindset.

The new age gurus will tell you that this is a time to move from your mind to your heart, but the truth is that the journey we are on right now is learning to listen to our heart and become healthy — mind, body and soul.

#1 Becoming Aware of Traps and Seductions

We have been conditioned to think that someone outside ourselves has our answers or holds our power. So many of us want to belong and be part of something bigger than ourselves. I’ve heard people say that they would be able to know right away if they were being recruited into a cult or someone’s scheme. But often, those of us who believe we are too smart to get sucked in are enticed by promises of self-improvement and a supportive community. In fact, over two-thirds of cult members are brought in by a family member or a friend who is deemed trustworthy.

When someone offers a front row seat to the secrets of the universe, anyone seeking answers can be tempted. And the seduction of being loved and cared for is what most are seeking. Anyone who has been in an abusive relationship has come into contact with an insidious liar and their trickster energy — someone pretending to be the exact opposite of their truth. Once you can clearly see the manipulation and deceit that is happening, you can start addressing the wounds and going to the root cause of your seduction. It takes a lot of compassion, self-reflection, and curiosity to heal ourselves.

Until we become aware of our seductions, the same type of people or experiences or bosses will come into our path. The first step is understanding and becoming aware of what and who can hook you into their story. And question everything from not just our mind, but your deep inner knowing. Listening deeply and questioning are key to unraveling and rewilding yourself. No one has your answers.

#2 Doing Your Work

Inner work involves healthy doses of undoing and unraveling. Flow is key as we tap into the intelligence of nature. We can choose to fight the wave and let it hit us with thousands of ripples of pain, or we can teach ourselves to ride the wave by Trusting the Currents. Each one of us has screwed up along the way and trusted people who were toxic to our well-being. It doesn’t mean that we must stay in our own prison when our opportunity is to learn and grow at our own pace.

The best revenge is no revenge; the best revenge is living well by learning to understand that our energy and attention are our most valuable assets, and how we invest and use them is up to us. It takes forgiveness of ourselves and courage to find our own path in our own way. Otherwise, we simply relive our history over and over with reruns and sequels of the same story.

Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet, reminds us that “everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in our heart.” You choose whether you’re facing opportunities or challenges. You can create peace within yourself or you can war with yourself and those around you. When you imagine from the heart, you become aware that everything begins with a single thought in your mind. You have the ability, on your own or in a community, to imagine and create.

Many of us have cried, screamed, judged, blamed, and pointed fingers of shame. But once we take back our power through pursuing inner work, we can no longer remain victims. We can no longer afford to hide. The only path we can take is forward, accepting that we have the power to guide ourselves by following our hearts, which beat in harmony with the universe.

#3 Letting Go Means Making Space for Your Wildest Creations

Most of us have been encouraged to be a good person to others — and yet, similarly, most of us have never been encouraged to be kind, gentle, and compassionate with ourselves in a pure and loving way. We’re now faced with an opportunity to shift our stories, and shed the lifelong practices handed down to us by society and our ancestors.

We have an opportunity to become increasingly aware of what drives someone and how that truly impacts us. “One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. ‘Good’ is no longer good when one’s neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a ‘common good’! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare,” writes Friedrich Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil.

Despite all the success stories we hear, more people are becoming aware that everyone has a story. We can either succumb to be a victim or we can understand that we can control how we choose to respond and show up in our lives. What matters is what action we take: do we remain stuck in our past, or release ourselves by choosing a different path that may be unknown but healthier for us?

You hold great power and an inner ability to navigate your life. The noise and chaos in the external world continues to increase but the true question is whether you are able to trust yourself and let go of deep seeded fear, sadness, or anger. It’s okay to feel into each emotion but freedom comes when you learn to let them pass through you. When you hold on to the past with everything you have, you will experience more of the same. The unknown can be frightening or exhilarating. By breaking through false safety nets and entering uncharted waters, you reclaim your power and freedom. Letting go means making space for your wildest creations.

#4 Leadership is Not Outside Yourself

Leadership is not outside yourself, and it’s your time to understand that you don’t need false prophets, leaders, or profits to have a full life. It’s time for health-conscious souls to take our place in history and step into our power. It’s our time to create a healthy life, and world.

What is Your Heart Whispering to You?

You have a wealth of information to understand and claim from your own heart. All you are being asked to do is listen and question. Unlike lava, which spurts from a volcano and never holds back its pure eruptions, we have been trained to keep our feelings, thoughts, and desires inside ourselves. Do you feel a need to hold back or can you start releasing?

The cracks we are witnessing in the world are like cracks in the hardened arteries of the human heart. Can you feel the fracturing of the world and the unmasking of who you truly are at the heart of it all?

A heart-centered life is an extraordinary gift

Each of us is on our own unique journey, and once we discover our own wonder and have the courage to trek into the unknown, we can begin to explore what’s truly in our heart and find others who share our passion for whatever sparks us. It could be starting a garden or forming something to ignite the imagination of children. Though you believe in what you’re creating, you’ll meet many people who will laugh at you or judge you, and it will be up to you to keep going, by lifting yourself up and not taking on the fears of anyone else.

F*ck the Bucket List Trilogy is dedicated to anyone ready for a journey of a lifetime. This post weaves excerpts from the three books.