Don't Give The Elephant The Remote Control

There's an elephant in the room, Karen. It's sitting right there on the sofa, getting very comfortable. For goodness sake, don't give it the remote control, especially "in these uncertain times".

Do you see it? It's sitting right there, at the end of that last paragraph. It's hiding in plain sight, so we put some quotation marks around it so that you can spot it more easily.

When were "times" ever certain?

There is no doubt, that nobody is untouched by change. It's been forced on us in a way we rarely have to experience here in Australia. However, that does not make the world less certain than it was before. In some ways the reverse is true - we have now have more rules that influence our lives than we had before.

So why do we feel that everything is now more uncertain?

We are in a situation that very few of us ever imagined. We had our future mapped out in our heads, and it didn't include the risk of spreading a deadly virus. Nor did we imagine that we might have to practice social distancing from some of those we love, that we might have to change the way we work, or that even the act of getting food would need some form of reinvention.

We feel more uncertain because the future only ever existed in our own imaginations - and we never imagined it would be like this.

So now we will have to re-imagine it - and we have a choice.  We can give the elephant the remote control, or we can take control ourselves.
Giving the elephant the remote control means that we will just wait. We'll watch what the elephant wants us to watch, or play what the elephant wants us to play, when it feels like playing it - if it feels like playing it.

The feeling of uncertainty is because what we imagined turned out to be not what happened. Some of what we thought we would do, may not even be possible for some time. So now we can simply re-imagine it. We can take control of our own future, we can be realistic about what wasn't working before, and we can reset our compasses.

Change Agents, now is the time to lead. Let's imagine and communicate a better future, based on what we've learned recently.

We've learned that family and friends matter most, that having savings for a rainy day is a good idea, and that flexible working can 'work' well. Let's imagine working in ways that enhance our well-being, rather than taking from it.

How are we going to invent the future and make the world or work  better, because believe it or not, the elephant has no idea.

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