"Your future should always begin with your wildest imagination!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
People always tend to say, "Never in my wildest imagination!"
And then that thing happens, and they are shocked by what they see.
But our idea of tomorrow should always consist of our wildest imagination. Because the wildest ideas can often become real, sooner than we think.
Imagine it's 100 years ago. You are going to tell someone that in the future, people will be walking around seemingly speaking to themselves as they are walking - but they are merely doing a phone call using Apple AirPods. Or that they'll be staring into a little box in their hands talking with an animated image - FaceTime. Or other things like that which might have seemed incomprehensible to our ancestors.
I've been noticing that in most of my keynotes as of late, people are taking out their phones and taking a picture of the slide with my go-to phrase. Remember it?
“Companies that do not yet exist will build products not yet conceived using ideas not yet in existence with methodologies yet to be defined with ideas yet to be imagined"
I think the reason it is drawing so much attention is that although people feel overwhelmed by the speed of tomorrow and the change that it brings, some also know that we now live in a world and a time in which anything is possible. Not only that, but ideas that once seemed to be on the crazy side of our future forecast map are becoming more likely.
But not everyone thinks like that. Have you ever noticed that you are often surrounded by pessimistic people? People who can't seem to comprehend how different tomorrow might be? They’re everywhere! And for every silver lining, they see massive rainfall. The glass is never half full nor even empty - they see a shattered glass! They seem to thrive on the belief that the worst is yet to come. Cynicism runs deep in their soul.
Seriously, these people are a bit of a drag!
One of their most common characteristics is that simply can't conceive of a different tomorrow. They seem to have been around for some time: history (it seems incorrectly) assigns a famous quote to Charles H. Duell, the Commissioner of the US Patent Office in 1899: "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Talk about a limited mindset!
Don't be that person!
Stop using the phrase "never in my wildest imagination" when it comes to tomorrow. Instead, let your imagination run wild!
Futurist Jim Carroll believes that our imagination is a window into tomorrow.