Thank you 2020 for awakening the world to the fact that the only thing permanent in life is - CHANGE.
From dinosaurs to ice-age, to cavemen, us, space travel, smartphones, contactless payments, and artificial intelligence. Like it or not, nothing would have been possible without constant uninterrupted always accelerating CHANGE! We just don’t see it that way.
Our brain is wired to love stability as it means security and comfort. And so we comfortably live in an illusion of a “constant world” forgetting that the first commercial flight took off in 1914, cable TV was invented in 1948 (and took a very very long time to spread), “the now normal office life” has become mainstream after the 1950s, “the normal dining out” became possible with the growth of chain restaurants only in the 1960s, and of course, hailing Uber from the comfort of your smartphone has only become possible after 2008 when the all famous-completely-changed-the-world smartphone was launched.
Zooming out in history we can comfortably say that “normal life” lasts in-between some cataclysmic events that CONSTANTLY change everything. And the good news for us - in the grand scheme of things these events ALWAYS change things for the better! Otherwise, we’d be in some alternate reality and not working from the comfort of our home on our computers. Even the smartphone, although it most likely was a pure coincidence, was launched in 2008 during the biggest recession in our history - the 2007-08 financial crisis.
So what is this normal life that everybody is talking about? If you haven't woken up to it yet, it's time to do it now - the prominence of change is undeniable. The pace of change is only accelerating and the NEW NORMAL IS CHANGE.
Digital is here to stay. The banking won’t ever be the same past 2020. The events industry won’t be the same in 2021 and beyond. And the office life won’t ever be the same again for sure. In my opinion, it was inhuman to keep people in-between 4 walls for the majority of their life for meager pay anyway. And who knows what innovation is cooking in somebody's bedroom. Just like in 2008 we couldn't have known how the smartphone will change the world.
The new normal is reinvention, adaptation, and constant change. If you can’t keep up, you will live in misery being nostalgic about the past. There is no time for regrets and looking back. The only reason we can look back is to take the key learnings and re-apply them to the ever-changing and evolving world.
Most importantly - we need to learn to apply the mantra of change to our personal lives! I've met so many people complaining about their jobs, relationship, income and yet waking up every morning and repeating exactly the same. Day in and day out, month after month. Why? In fear of change! But what's the worst that can happen? If the world comes out stronger, better, and improved after every crisis, why would you be any different?
If you take a planned and focused action towards eliminating people that are bad for you, changing your career, moving to a country where you had always wanted to live. What's the worst that can happen?
For the last 6 years, I’ve been doing nothing but embracing change and it has given me much more than I could have ever gotten from any well-paid job. After quitting a well-paid career in London my life has been a real rollercoaster of success and failures. Moving to the unknown in tiny Lithuania, working my ass off for free or a tiny pay with startups that I truly believed in, going back to employment to discover new skills and strengths, all the way to co-founding No Pants Office. Regardless of the income and successes or failures at work, I still managed to travel to at least 10 countries a year (in 2020 I did only 4, obviously), I kitesurf, I change jobs, I fail, I learn, I read, I started meditating and having morning routines ...And in all honesty, I am much more settled in my mind, I am more content and happier when I ever was.
How did I become so? I don’t know if I was ever different.
I only know that last year I re-discovered "my gut voice" and it turned the tables upside down! In addition to embracing change, I started choosing things according to my own gut feeling and not somebody else's best intentions for me. And while my gut is not always right in terms of income or professional success, so far it has proven to be the rightest thing to do in terms of happiness, contentment, joy, and overall emotional stability.
So while many bad things have happened in 2020, we must thank it for introducing EVERYBODY to the concept of change. "There's nothing more permanent than change" has been my mantra for the last 4 years. Most likely even before that, I just didn’t realize it earlier. And with all my heart I'd like to invite you to embrace change and take charge of your own life. LIVE ON YOUR OWN TERMS, because there's nothing more rewarding than waking up in the morning with a clear action plan towards the life you want to live and taking a journey towards it every single day!