Build for Tomorrow: An Action Plan for Embracing Change, Adapting Fast, and Future-Proofing Your Career
By Jason Feifer
Harmony, 272 pp., $27.99
Albert Einstein said that "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." As I read this book, that quote kept coming to mind and in a far deeper manner than ever before.
Change is inevitable, and most expect it. But have you ever considered that you are fully in charge of the impact change has? As humans, we tend to focus on the negative and get stuck in the vicious cycle of thinking that everything that could go wrong will go wrong. Instead, we can change the trajectory of how change affects us and those around us.
Ask yourself what you can do differently. Feifer poses many thought-provoking questions that make you consider scenarios from other perspectives. He then provides historical examples and demonstrates how to explore those situations from alternate perspectives and the ways you could see it differently or arrive at the solution more quickly and with less hesitation. Those everyday examples we take for granted enable us to draw a deeper connection to Feifer's discussion. At the end of the book, he offers insights on ways to use the concepts he presents to embrace change, adapt, and build for your tomorrow.
As I was reading, I started putting my own experiences into the context of what Feifer writes about. I focused on what could be. I changed my expectations because I was doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.
It is not always a comfortable ride, but things worth working for typically aren't. Reading this book came at the perfect time for me. It reminded me, amid significant change on the horizon, to take a strategic pause—sometimes many—and reset my thoughts and approaches to inch closer to the finish line.
Feifer points out that not every change is good or better than what we currently have, but we don't know unless we embrace it and move forward with empowering thoughts. The experience can help us better understand what we are working toward in our professional and personal lives. I challenge you to break the cycle, ask questions, and think about things that you believe are impossible.
