Mark Agnew
Mark Agnew, motivation adventure speaker, adapts to new ice conditions.
Mark Agnew, keynote adventure speaker, discusses the use of imagination for resilience
I used to get in trouble at school for daydreaming. I'd stare out the window until the stern snap of a teacher's voice brought me back into the room, with a question set up to expose my absentmindedness: "So, what did I just say?".
In my signature motivational keynote talk Find Your Polar Bear I talk about my time in the Arctic and the need for resilience in change. The conditions were in constant flux. If we didn't adapt, we wouldn't succeed. We ended up setting two World First Records and I was awarded European Adventurer of the Year.
Despite my teacher's misgivings, countless psychologists and experts say that daydreaming and imagination is a key component of resilience and happiness. In the famous seminal work Flow: The Psychology of Happiness, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues schools should be encouraging daydreaming.
The author argues that daydreaming is a skill that should be learned as it allows kids (and adults) to imagine different outcomes and alternate courses of action, playing through the pros and cons.
Adapting is a crucial part of resilience. But how can we adapt if we cannot first imagine a different path or outcome. What are we adapting to?
Without the use of imagination, adapting is guesswork. The imagined scenario may be backed up by cold hard data, but people aren't robots, they need stories and inspiring leaders to show them the path, to help them engage in the change of course, otherwise the data is for naught. We all need to imagine a course to the new reality before we make it a reality.
If you want to be more resilient, or you want your workplace to adapt to new realities, don't just stare at numbers and calculate the best course of action, daydream and imagine the best course of action too.
Adapting starts with imagining.