Tag / make things better by making better things

by Nathan Coumbe

Denis Waitley was wildly optimistic…

Denis Waitley was wildly optimistic about the future when he recorded “The Psychology of Winning” in the 1990s.

Here are just some of those predictions:

  • Hydrogen-powered cars that cleaned the air as we drove them by 2010.
  • 100% online, virtual education for all students everywhere. No need to drive to classes anymore when you can just access everything online.
  • Supersonic and hypersonic planes used as our normal mode of transportation. Any major city within a three-hour flight no matter where you are on the planet. 
  • High school seniors flying to Hong Kong for their senior prom in two hours. Don’t sneak over to Australia for the afterparty—and make sure you’re home by 1am!

Denis also predicted that by the year 2000, women would have equal pay with men and be equally represented in business schools, law schools, and entrepreneurial startups.

Like I said, wildly optimistic. It might even seem laughable, like something out of a futuristic 80s movie.

And yet…

We are so busy trying to get back to normal after this pandemic, we’ve somehow lost all the opportunity to actually make these happen.

Because of COVID-19, we already did 100% online, virtual education for a year and a half. It wasn’t perfect (far from it). But it worked. It’s been shown to be possible. 

But we were so busy being focused on “getting back to normal,” we seemed to have missed the opportunity to push it further and make it better.

I don’t know the first thing about hydrogen scrubbing and powered cars. But I do know we have the technology for all-electric vehicles that don’t pump pollution and toxins into the air on a daily basis (multiple companies have this tech). 

But instead, we’re buying bigger, badder, less efficient, gas-guzzling, pollution-admitting, tank-like vehicles, all in an effort to make a statement about our political views or our masculinity.

And here we are, 22 past after the year 2000… And women are still fighting for equal pay, equal representation, and control over their own bodies, not to mention all the other genders and races fighting for the same things.

So yes, Dennis was wildly optimistic. But it’s understandable why.

Because even back then the technology was coming online, the possibilities were there, and he saw them and thought, “Surely the world will embrace all of this—right?”

Yet here we are. Rejecting all of it out of hand. 

Yes—some of these wonderful possibilities were forced on us by a horrible situation… Yet they were still wonderful opportunities. 

But we were so desperate to go back to normal that we looked them in the face and said, “No thank you.” 

We’re operating with 21st-century technology and possibilities while trying to stay in a 20th-century world. Why?

Because it’s the world we know. It’s the status quo. It’s “the regular kind.”

I feel like we missed a big opportunity here. And now I’m worried it may be years or decades before what’s possible actually comes to fruition.

by Nathan Coumbe

Creativity and permission

I was walking at the park near my house this afternoon. And when I crossed the bridge, walking the well-known paths I’ve memorized, I saw a picnic table next to the river where no table had ever been before. 

It’s at the perfect place where you can hear the water splashing over the tiny spillway under the bridge—a light, pleasant gurgling and rushing sound that’s quite pleasing to the ears.

From the looks of it, somebody went out and bought treated pine from a home improvement store, built it themselves, and set it up in this spot. 

They didn’t ask permission. They simply thought that this little neck of the woods would benefit from having a place for people to sit… A place to gather and eat next to the water with family and friends in peace and near-quiet.

This was a small, brave, creative act. They didn’t ask permission from the Parks Department to let them do it. They saw a way to make something a little better for other people, and they did it. 

They took a small creative risk. That’s what we were asked to do on a daily basis. 

No one ever gives us permission to be creative. No one will ever give us permission to make things better. 

Because the way things are right now is the status quo. And people don’t want the status quo to change. So we have to create—to make things better—without asking if it’s okay. 

It takes a little bit of courage, the tiniest amount of risk, and the will to act.