A word came up twice in my inbox, two emails right next to each other talked about “overwhelm”, from two of my favourite sources of ideas: Corporate Rebels, and The Guardian. I realised I’ve been seeing that word around. That’s the zeitgeist right now: overwhelmed.
We are all having a rough decade. From the global to the personal, the rate of change and the uncertainty are hard to stay on top of. Interesting times. The term VUCA has fallen out of fashion but it still works great for me. It nails the state, the situation we are all in.
The question is how to cope, how to not be overwhelmed. I think the only way is a letting go, an acceptance of VUCA state as normal, instead of trying to force more stability and predictability than is possible. By embracing the new reality of 2025, we are led to find different ways of dealing with it.
We won’t go into those ways in one post. They’re all over what we write and do at Teal Unicorn.
To escape being overwhelmed, accept that what got you here won’t get you there. Work out what has to go, and what can take its place. Get out from under the weight of overwhelm.
(You can make espresso coffee anywhere, for thirty bucks. What a time to be alive.)