What if we skip going to Mars?

Our radically changing world is challenging persistence

Progress isn’t linear. Just because we succeeded, for example, in our mission to get to the Moon it doesn’t mean our next achievement will be just further away on the same direction.

Being proactive about change is part of our will to respond to internal or external needs for growth and development but it comes with a limitation, our planning can only be based on past experiences. In other words, in our attempt to aim higher, we create calculations and projections based on scenarios. Of course this process works very well in a few cases, as with athletes for example, that want to beat records and become faster, stronger, better on a particular and predefined scale. But our progress shouldn’t be linked to specific tools (i.e. our body can be considered as such a tool) or capabilities that can achieve progress in a more or less, predetermined way. Human beings cannot simply be analyzed by metrics and calculations. We are more advanced and less predictable. Likewise, life is unexpected, what will happen next is far from being prescribed in any way.

Often, what starts as a manageable change turns up into a far bigger challenge that pushes us beyond our limits. Getting passed your comfort zone, is actually the only known process leading to personal growth, and that uncharted territory, if it really is one such, cannot be envisaged or analysed beforehand. We currently live in a chaotic period of time, in a place that the least it is characterised by is stability. Despite the fact that we can identify patterns from the past, when looking ahead in the future, unpredictability is the only pattern we can count on. In other worlds, we can only expect the unexpected as the world has transformed to a place of constant adaptability. One could argue that we can barely identify change anymore, only because it is continuous and persisting. It is part of our everyday lives and processes, making potential stability more surprising than a radical or unconventional unexpected development.

But in this context it seems like it would require a miracle for someone to continue making adaptations, staying focused and determined, without losing purpose. In fact, that’s only possible if change isn’t done to us but instead, initiated and even orchestrated by us. The unexpected is not only imposed to us but it could also be triggered by ourselves with our own inventive thinking. “A future state becomes inspirational when it represents a future state that is intuitively recognized as better” says Gartner in one of their latest analysis on change management [February, 2022]. But can we always envision a future good enough to provoke action, keep us engaged and even supercharge us to initiate a strategy to achieve what we strive for?

What could turn up our internal flame and grab our full attention, enabling us to stay laser-focused during turbulent times? Becoming the epicentre of the earthquake of change rather than focusing on a predefined path or existing tool that its purpose resides in past experiences, would make the case. Focusing on our own needs and what pushes. or motivates us to change holds the answer. It all starts with a “why”. Why we need change? To go through fundamental transformations, our actions need to be deeply routed in our own wishes and demands. What we are aiming for is what matters the most to us, what we consider our top values and how we identify our aspirations. It is not simply about becoming better at what we do, not about running faster or growing stronger. It is about recalibrating our purpose. If we manage to listen to what our heart really wants, if we are open to identify the real passion among the plethora of possibilities, then no predetermined path will be enough for us. No current structure will be able to hold us down.

Inspiration and vision have a lot to do with our personal or collective growth progress. But very often we cannot grasp the variety of possibilities, the breadth of human capabilities. In other words, our imagination is limited to the resources already available to us. From personal experience, though, I am convinced that things could finally go much worse than my worst fears and in the same way, much better than I had ever wished for. We often cannot incorporate the unexpected or groundbreaking change that will end up eroding the current foundations and replacing them with other totally new ones into our plans for the future. If we manage to identify a new previously unthought-of direction to go towards though, if we come up with a crazy new idea that resides with our new found purpose and we find the will to act as agents of change, we need to beware that it will also require revising plans and reconsidering old commitments. True change should enable us, to abandon old goals for the new adventures, disconnecting from past pursuits that will be replaced by new endeavours that seem better fitting to our constantly changing self. In this perception even managing to go to Mars could seem an outdated mission before we even achieve it.