Can you become future-proof?

There’s a lot of talk these days about the future. After all, it’s election season and we have a lot of scary issues confronting us.There’s also a lot of talk about the future of sales.What does the future hold?Three, five, 10 or 20 years from now, what sort of world will we live in?No one knows.Nils Bohr, the Danish Nobel Prize winning physicist, famously said “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”In fact, the only thing we can know for certain about the future is that any predictions we make about it now will almost certainly be wrong.In the face of this uncertainty, I believe that it is more important than ever for sellers to proactively take steps to future proof your mindset, behaviors, habits and skills.After all, the only thing you can control is yourself. And how you prepare yourself for an unknown future.So, how can you future proof yourself?To future proof does not mean to inoculate yourself against the future. There’s no vaccine for that!No living being is immune to the future. It’s coming for you whether you like it or not.Consider future-proofing as the opposite of child-proofing.I remember how, as new parents, we installed child locks on kitchen and bathroom cabinets to keep curious minds from exploring their contents.Future-proofing is doing the opposite.It means to take the locks off your mind and indulge your child-like curiosity. It means to constantly learn new things to help you master the ever-changing environments in which you work and live.Quite simply, to future proof means to learn.You have to make it your mission to constantly seek out new knowledge to prepare yourself to seize the opportunities the future presents and take advantage of them.In short, continuous active learning is the only way to prosper and be happy and healthy in the face of uncertainty.I don’t mean “uncertainty” in a pessimistic manner. It’s just that the future is unknowable.Personally, I find that to be a hugely exciting proposition.What are you doing to prepare yourself for a business environment that can’t be predicted?- Andy