The Wisdom of the Storm

The year is coming to an end and while many are reflecting, some are ready to just close the book on 2022...with great force and then toss it in the trash. Not so fast.

I am a business driven technologist, part of the Web3 community and dare I say, a believer that all layers of the Metaverse will create enormous opportunity for new careers and the economy of the future. I thrive on innovation as a revenue leader in emerging tech markets. It is safe to say, I travel in circles where brilliant people are experiencing frustration, loss and hardship with tech sector structural shifts and meltdown of the crypto market, instigated by actors giving honest Web3 builders a bad name. While many are looking for work or processing financial loss, being an innovator is about making it through, in spite of. The innovators of the next greatest generation of tech companies, are building.

Because we are human, we are unique. Our experiences, our ideas, our struggle as well as how we respond is also unique. What I have learned, is the incredible people I have met this year are all going through stuff...a lot of stuff. Managing careers, children, health, aging parents or worse things. We will all have our turn for suffering at some point in time because this is life. I have found the people I admire most, demonstrate remarkable resilience, usually born from hardship.

It is difficult to write about hardship because it is relative and easy to fall into a dangerous trap of comparison. Pain is all the same. What is productive to talk about is the growth that is possible as the outcome of challenging circumstances. Most of the time extreme challenges are unforeseen or occurring for a myriad of reasons, many way outside of our control. Life is mostly unpredictable even if we have a solid plan. While we can tack against the wind, there are times it is appropriate to take down the sail in order to survive.

Times of chaos and crisis require more thoughtfulness and less fear. Being resilient is about a deep trust of oneself and ability to recover time and again with deeper wisdom.

Resilience is guided by the confidence in ourselves in circumstances which we have no experience and therefore unfamiliar what to do. Career, family, health, transition...whatever. Humility lives here, where we may ask for help to coach us. We may find letting go of old stories not serving us well opens space for a new reality worthy of our attention.

When we create space to think about the challenges we are navigating, and set out intention on what we want, we create the energy to keep our focus on the desired outcome....the calm waters. This is the learning that gives permission to change, learn, grow in our wisdom, to develop courage and discover our purpose. If we do not learn, major challenges become a fertile ground called failure, which personally I do not believe is productive for anyone.

There is a tremendous opportunity in the times we are least prepared for disruption to create an advantage by hunkering down to discover or rediscover core values, motivation as well as how to in these moments support and lead others through. Great leaders have the gift of resilience, while also being able to operate through crisis with low ego and high empathy.

It is natural to reflect on the year and make plans for the coming one. It is more difficult to take inventory of how we grew and what we learned about ourselves and where we are headed with willingness to be fiercely honest about what is important, including what is holding us back in pursuit of our dreams, whatever they are. This is the wisdom of the storm.