Inspiring Your Authentic Week

Posted: 18 May 2008 12:54 PM CDT

Predicting the future is a risky game, but there are some meta trends going on that are worth noticing and responding to. These trends will affect our lives, our businesses and our children's lives.

The trends we are already experiencing suggest more dramatic changes in the way we live over the next 20-30 years. If these predictions sound far fetched just think how you might have responded if you had been told about how the internet or mobile phones would have changed the way we live in 1978.

We can respond to these changes in two ways - we can deny them or we can embrace them. If we deny them we will be left behind, if we embrace them we will find opportunities for happiness and fulfilment.

Oil - the price of oil will continue to rise. Massive increases in demand from China and India coupled with falling new discoveries means that supply will be squeezed pushing prices up. This is a good thing.

A significant proportion of the affluence we enjoy in some parts of the world is based more on the availability of cheap energy than it is on human ingenuity. Human ingenuity is a sustainable resource, oil is not. Higher oil prices and climate change will encourage investment in more creative solutions for transport, heating and other energy than simply digging it out of the ground.

Our pensions and disposable income are already being eroded by rising oil prices and it is likely that oil prices will double again over the next two years. If we want to maintain our lifestyle it is time to invest in decreasing our dependence on oil.

We need to disconnect ourselves from our addiction to fossil fuels and start creating and inventing our way out of it.

Here is an example of how it can be done:

www.zerocarbonhouse.com

We also need to dramatically change our attitude to travel. Travel is important, meeting people and learning about new cultures is important, it promotes the kind of compassion and ingenuity that we need to live peacefully and sustainably. Isolation is not an option.

Commuting and much business travel, on the other hand, is enormously wasteful. Since moving to Mallorca we have found that much of the travel we did in the UK was unnecessary. My work is now more international than ever, with clients from the middle east to the west coast of the US and from Norway to South Africa, virtually all of it is web or phone based and I travel less than ever.

Rising oil prices will help us evaluate our travel needs more carefully.

Water - is following closely behind oil as demand increases and supply becomes less reliable due to the effects of climate change. Clean, safe drinking water will continue to become more and more expensive. The price of water will become an issue for all of us within 20 years.

Now is the time to invest in water saving technologies, such as rainwater harvesting and reusing grey water. We do not need to use precious drinking quality water to flush the loo or water the garden.

www.mywaterwisehome.com

Make increased self sufficiency in water, fuel and food part of your 'pension'.

Work - It is becoming more and more clear that, in many cases, employing people, or being employed is far from being the optimum solution for either party.

Being employed instantly creates hierarchy and removes responsibility. As most managers know, managing people is an extremely challenging and stressful job. And most people who dislike their job cite a poor relationship with their manager as part of the reason.

There is already a strong trend towards more and more independent working, but for many this is high risk and challenging.

Over the next 10 years there will be an increasing movement towards self-employment especially in areas that have traditionally been low paid and manual work. This 'micro outsourcing' will be driven by businesses looking for ways to reduce cost and risk and made possible by technology which will facilitate just in time ordering and reduced cost of transactions. One of the benefits of micro-outsourcing is that it will remove the limits on what people can earn that tend to go with employment.

If you employ people - how might you help them to become more independent?

If you are employed - how might you propose a higher level of independence to your employer?

If you want more support in innovating your business or life to the new paradigm, drop me a line and we can see if I can help.

Or come and find out more at the Authentic Transformation Day in Liverpool on 13 June.

With love

nx

neil crofts - coach, consultant, facilitator
Authentic Transformation - join the evolution
UK mobile 07775 658534
neil@authentictransformation.co.uk
www.authentictransformation.co.uk

As we are made to conform our personality, individuality and self-confidence is driven out of us. Once we are sufficiently lacking in self-confidence we have to demean others to give ourselves a sense of importance.

Neil Crofts - Authentic - How to Make a Living by Being Yourself - published by Capstone October 2003