Quite often I talk with folks who, on one hand, don’t have any problem acknowledging that there’s been a change in condition (of their business, their neighborhood, their customer base, society’s expectations, new weather patterns, whatever) – but, on the other hand, are very resistant to acknowledging that they need to alter their (previously successful) actions in order to, basically, survive this change in condition.

And I do mean surviving. We’re nowhere near talking about thriving.

You might be saying to yourself, oh, do you mean that expression ‘doing the same thing but expecting different results’? Well, sorta, but this goes much deeper than that.

I’m talking about that expression plus the dreaded “but that’s how we’ve always done it” woven through it, and then coating it with a layer of “there’s been changes before and we’ve just laid low and we somehow get through it”. No folks, this isn’t just regular denial, this is the absolute worst kind of denial because this is the denial of the power of influence. 

In the 21st century, the power of influence is more powerful than ever before because it wields its power most prominently when you aren’t around. Blame the interwebs, or this era of mis-/ dis-/ mal- information that we’ve been living in for at least 8 years but survival is quite uncertain if you’re playing it the way you’ve always played it.

And this is why I will only participate in problem-solving discussions if the word condition is used by its’ mathematical definition because of the significant descriptor word in that definition: requirement

When something is required – not just in math but in anywhere or anything – then it is an absolute. It’s a must. It doesn’t just exist, it actually can’t be avoided or eliminated or denied. It’s influence can’t be ignored, or minimized, and you’ll get absolutely nowhere fast if you just merely acknowledge that it exists.

Sure, there’s the alternate option you can ponder of how you might go about changing the condition itself, but only if you were a participant that maneuvered it into its current state of existence, because – I assure you – that condition changed for a very good reason in the first place (see my essay on Chaos Theory).

If you are running up against a new condition – not a temporary phase, but something of permanence – and it is exhibiting a negative affect on whatever it is you are doing, I insist that you look at it as a requirement of how the bigger picture (the statement, the theorem, our world) that we are all existing within is operating. Then, from that viewpoint, that is how you determine your best course of action, to first survive and then to thrive.

You’re not changing your end goals, you’re just gonna navigate a new pathway to ’em.