Saturday, February 24, 2018
Future Consciousness: Firstly, the future will happen whether we are prepared for it or not.Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Simplifying the Concept of Future Consciousness
The last almost ten years I have focused on teaching foresight strategies and have become a crusader for teaching future consciousness. Often it seemed like people are satisfied with their status quo and have no sound plan for the future of their business. Some and not many have an idea for the coming year or two, but not much more than that. With this information, we are never really taught future consciousness. It starts as children that our imagination and creativity is stifled by adults that want us to learn to be realistic, therefore, no preparation for future consciousness.
Beginning in kindergarten many children's imagination, creativity, and thoughts of a limitless future are stifled. We are asked to be practical thinkers leaving little room for inspiration, ingenuity, or even fantasy and these are the things that help us be creative.
This repressed thinking led to my crusade to help individuals and business owners to become future conscious. I thought if I can help individuals, entrepreneurs, parents, and even families to think about the future they will be open to imaginative thinking. They will begin to see things that are typically unimaginable, become visionary, and grow resourceful through ideas that are unusual, and stop thinking compartmentally.
We want to design a mindset or a future consciousness that sees the unfathomable, questions the present state of things, processes and is curious about how things can be better. The origin of future consciousness is the ability to envision the future five, ten, even twenty-five years out.
Future consciousness is something we are not accustomed to doing. Until we are prepared to become future conscious, we will struggle to be cutting-edge and to create a sustainable future for ourselves, our businesses, and organizations.
But why is it essential to be future conscious since there is so much innovation and creativity around us that others created?Firstly, the future will happen whether we are prepared for it or not. Many years ago, when I was looking to enroll in graduate school, the advisor asked me “so, what do you think about the program and your future as a whole? Because here is a thought the next three or four years will come and go whether you enroll in the program or you sit by your window watching the people pass by day in and day out. Where do you want to be in, 5 or 10 years from now? It will begin with this next step or not.”
That got me to thinking; future cognition is about the same. The future is coming most often sooner than later. Technology and innovation are ensuring that things are now changing at such a rapid rate that if you're not going with the current, you can quickly be left behind. If you are not prepared, it is almost sure that you will be left behind before you know it.
What you need in becoming future conscious is to develop the capacity to:
Imagine – create a vision for what you would want to see in your future
Inquire – always ask why questions, challenge everything to create transformation
Innovate – initiate an outline of a plot of occurrences that the future can bring
Implement – design a timeline in which you will drip each of these ideas until your transformation is realized
It’s about continually contemplating these four steps, and making them a pattern of thinking and achieving, rinse and repeat. Developing a keen awareness of the past that has brought you to the present, scan the trends that have set the stage for the future, design scenarios of probabilities and with this construct your desired future.
Without being future consciousness, having a mindset, and a vision of the possibilities the future can bring is impossible. You always want to be able to anticipate and conceptualize the future you want. When you are conscious to the potentials, you see things that most others don’t, and you can position yourself in ways that others in your industry cannot be because they do not have this vision. It is like having 20/20 vision while others are legally blind.
My suggestion is to stay alert, sharp and maintain future consciousness. You will soon have such a sharpened vision that you will have a whole new mental pattern for viewing things tangible and not. You will find that you will seamlessly be positioned for creating sound foresight strategies.
Your partner in success,
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About: Dr. Nilda Perez is a futurist| business foresight strategist| mentor | trainer| consultant, earned a Doctorate in Strategic Foresight from Regent University. She is a member, and Outreach Coordinator of the Association of Professional Futurists. She uses foresight targeted strategies to position businesses in the 21st century by designing their preferred future to take them beyond their imagination.
Her goal is to help businesses of any size align themselves with future consciousness for longevity, an uncontested market space, increased profits, and maximum growth through foresight strategies with targeted tools, methods, and approaches. For more information, visit Dr. Nilda Perez or Foresight Strategies Group