Tether to the Future
Change requires acting as if the change is already happening.
If patience is a virtue, I’m seriously deficient.
I’ve never been the most patient of people. I walk fast, talk fast, and prefer action over endless meetings. Waiting for change to happen tops my list of things which make me extremely impatient.
Despite my impatience, I’ve developed enough patience to know that change does take time, that sometimes change needs to unfold organically, and sometimes change needs a swift kick to speed it along. When change begins, it is usually glacially slow. A letter here, a protest there, an article, a discussion, an interview, a petition. Yet every time you begin to question the status quo, to even suggest that change needs to happen, a shift begins. Any movement in a new direction disrupts the status quo. Even when dissent or change is brutally repressed, the seeds of change have been sown. Ideas have been launched. Minds begin to question, to change.
Change is like water. A bit of moisture seeps through a crack in a wall. The moisture turns to drops. The drops turn to a trickle. The trickle becomes a steady stream. The steady stream gains momentum until the wall collapses. The barriers to change are washed a way. Change is inevitable, it just takes time.
It can be enormously frustrating to wait for change, especially when the status quo is damaging, depressing, or you’ve simply outgrown ‘the way I’ve always done it’.
I’ve developed a technique I call ‘tethering to the future’ that helps me prepare for, and accelerate, change. I’m a visual person, so my visual is climbing a mountain. You have to be certain the place you are standing is stable and you don’t want to take your next step unless you have some idea of where you are going, but your eyes are always on the next step. The tether is like a spring-loaded camming device (SLCD), which fit into cracks and rocks where they’ll grip to provide protection. The basic mechanism of a cam is that the harder you pull on it, the farther it spreads apart, thereby gripping the walls of the crack you’ve place it in.
Tethering to the future serves the same purpose as a climbing cam. You state your intent and take action, even a small action, on the upward path, something which will provide stability, that you can count on to move you forward.
There are multiple ways you can tether to the future - small but critical actions which make a difference.
What big changes do you want to make and what small actions can you take now to tether you to that future?
I’ve decided I’m going to live in Paris for 3 months and write - sometime in the next few years. I am tethering to that future by doing 15 minutes of French classes a day. Not so much time that it becomes a burden or feels overwhelming. Just 15 minutes a day is the tether that brings to mind the aroma of cafe’ noire and a buttery croissant in a café on a crisp October morning. It reminds me of my end goal and it keeps me moving towards that goal. It plays out in big ways and small. It’s not just French classes - that tether to the future creates a ripple effect to make the change really happen. It’s looking at houses based on whether I can lock up and leave. It’s deciding the next computer is an ultra-light laptop. It’s evaluating the consulting projects I take on based on whether they can be done remotely. It’s shifting my mindset.
A tether can also help you decide if your chosen change or destination is really right for you. Rather than going all in and discovering that is absolutely not what you had in mind, tethering to the future gives you the chance to try out the change first.
I want to teach social marketing at a university, so my tether is signing up for a course on designing a curriculum this fall. Either it confirms something I’ve been thinking about for a while, or I run screaming into the night, before I’ve committed to teaching a full class for 12 weeks.
A tether can also be as simple (but thought-provoking) as creating a vision board. Taking the time to think about what changes you want to see in your life, in the world, in your career and illustrate them on paper. It doesn’t take long before you start editing, reimagining, and changing your behavior to make those changes materialize. The physical act of writing down, or picturing, the changes is enough to push the change into motion.