By Bryan Wish
Recently, a good friend who lives in Lebanon shared something surprising:
He said his wife has this uncanny ability to see the future. Not just guess or anticipate but truly see what’s coming. She carries a sixth sense for how things will unfold, and so she tends to live in the future.
He, on the other hand, operates mostly in the moment, focused on laying one brick at a time. He has some risk tolerance, but he doesn’t make impulsive moves. No big swings, just steady momentum. That dichotomy got me thinking:
Some of us only see one step at a time, others live ten steps ahead, but does anyone do both?
Can you see ten steps ahead and know exactly which first few steps to take?
I’ve always been someone with eyes fixed on the horizon, sometimes to my own misfortune. The gift in that is vision. It makes it easier to articulate what I want, why I want it, and mobilize others who want to join something bigger than themselves. But the flip side? I often move too fast. Skip steps. Trip over my own ambition. Create new hurdles that could have been avoided. As one former boss once told me:
“Torpedoes break things.”
That one stung, but it stuck.
I’ve been visualizing the version of Bryan five years from now. Ten years from now. Who is he, not just professionally, but personally? How does he show up in the world? What is he known for? And just as importantly… what has he let go of?
The same questions apply to our business. I’ve been focused on what we’ll be next.
But thinking about what I tend to miss, I’m trying to slow down and be brutally honest about where I—and we—are today.
What signals I miss by being so focused on what the long-term future will look like. How often the texture of my day-to-day life goes unexamined. What it feels like to feel good about where I’m at right now. How to be a better person, boss, friend, leader right now; not when I’ve overcome twelve hurdles to arrive at the horizon line.
I’m looking for pride. Shame. Excitement. Disgust. Contentment. Regret.
Whatever surfaces… that’s your raw material.
Those emotions, when we slow down enough to actually feel them, are data. Signals. Clues.
They tell us what we want to preserve, and what needs to change. They help shape the next version of ourselves and our organizations.
So if you haven’t paused lately to ask yourself about what’s happening for you right now—about the bricks you’re laying today that will help you get where you want to be… if you’re not digging your toes into the grass alongside them and attempting to feel something about the work, now might be a good time.
PS, as it relates to seeing the future, I bought a domain this weekend thanks to our friends at 1to100.com . . . pretty stoked about that future, and what it means for the Arcbound of tomorrow. If you know any rainmakers or Head of Marketing leaders at professional service firms, I’d love to talk to them! Ten+ interviews down.
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Photo credit: iStock
