Sailing with no wind

Since we were young at school, we have been taught to support our colleagues and live together as one social group. I remember when my school used to award “White Points” for good behavior at school and big part of that was referred to collaborative behavior with colleagues. For example, I once got awarded for supporting a younger member in the school to tie his shoe laces, and teachers acknowledged this as a supportive behavior. As we grew older, where did those traits go?

A quick reflection to the life we live today easily reveals that day after day it is becoming more material, and very transactional.. Feelings are disappearing, being replaced by simple emojis and people spend less time feeling and more time materializing life. It is much easier to text someone today than to call, because we simply think it takes less time and effort regardless of the feelings involved .. we are slowly turning to machines, and not in groups, but actually silo machines!!

Some of the key symptoms of this massive transformation across generations are:

1. Higher number of “people you know” and less number of “Real friends”. “Friendship”, and relationships in general, is becoming very superficial.
2. Super limited number of “Good Old colleagues”! As long as you have power, then you have colleagues who behave good at work, but once you lose that power, the vast majority of people will forget all about you (Probably something close to 99%).
3. More time with machines, less time with humans. The more people deal with machines the more they get used to solid facts and forget emotions. Despite the huge development in artificial intelligence, no one is able to create a “soul” that feels behind the body. Are we forgetting this today?
4. Run after everything that shines!! People want more and more of everything that shines .. the race for money, work status, business networking …etc, is far more aggressive than the race for love, peace, feelings ..etc.

The current relationship and life status can be described by one statement:

We are doing a lot more than before .. but extremely superficial and fragile!

Recognizing the danger of growing generations this way, can you imagine the future for our children? 20 years from now? If relationships are becoming too superficial and fragile today, how would they be 20 years later?

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report showed that there is a global trend characterized by a decline in rates of marriage and an increase in rates of divorce across the world (Chart SF3.1.C), and they compared this to the rates in 1970, and the difference was very high. Between the years of 1970 and 2012, the difference in divorce rates jumped to 50% increase. Isn’t that frightening? In 40 years (almost less than a generation age) the rates jumped 50% .. how would the trend look like in the future?

No matter how successful you are, how rich, how powerful ..etc, we all need relationships to survive .. we will all come to a weak point where we will need someone to lean on, someone to support us .. it’s just the equation of life .. So what’s the recipe for resuscitating relationships? .. 3 easy steps:

1. Make a list of those people whom you really care about.. at least top 10.
2. Schedule something in your diary to connect with those people Face-to-Face at least once weekly. (Even if you are abroad, technology can help you video conference).
3. Accept no interruptions during your meetings with them .. no phones / technology / distractions .. live the moment and enjoy it ..

Our parents, grandparents, ancestors weren’t smarter than us, and we aren’t smarter than them .. so how did they manage to live happily as families for longer times and with much lesser resources? They simply had more time to spend with their beloved ones .. there were less distractions and less races behind material life .. they had much bigger families to sponsor, and much lesser financial resources than us but they still managed to bring to the world great families and successful kids .. like you .. They managed to sail very high seas and went through much tougher times with much less resources ..

The simple rule of sailing, is that you need a boat, sails, and crew on board plus some resources of course … right? Absolutely no! There is something missing … The Wind!

The wind is the most invisible resource that people always neglect when sailing in the sea, but not real captains, who always look for good wind and carefully measure its impact .. and this is a very good analogy of our current life today .. we sail without feelings, and this invisible factor is becoming of less focus everyday until maybe one day generations will not recognize what it looks like ..

We have learnt to depend on motors / machines to sail ships as they make us sail much faster and reach destinations / milestones much quicker ….. Faster, Quicker, stronger .. is what we focus on, while we don’t actually enjoy the journey .. we don’t feel excited with the journey ..

It’s time we look for internal joy, some internal “slow-down” feeling where we get back to our nature and actually live the moment .. wait for the wind to fill our sails, then we enjoy the moment and feel the thrill of the ship moving forward … Getting used to speed is ruining us from inside .. it’s making us overlook moments that will never return .. we overlook our kids grow, our parent leaving the world, our friends depart … it’s making us forget who we are and what we need to achieve …

Isn’t it time to slow-down, stop the machines and sail with the wind?

Written by:

Engagement Expert, International Speaker & Pragmatic researcher