I saw a short video the other day – it was a future self meeting up with current self and having a conversation. This conversation was different from your healthy future science fiction, although it did feel like it. The discussion was around COVID 19 and how the impact of this virus has changed the way that we act, feel and complete our daily lives.

• Never has our life/lives been more uprooted than what we are experiencing now.
• Certainty has been replaced in general with significant doubt, stress and worry.
• Our friends in the health profession are in crisis as they battle to save lives.
• Many good deeds materialize.
• Our thoughts turn to crave and celebrate some of the great things that we had before the virus.
• Politicians strive to lead, some more effective than others.
• A large percentage of the UK workforce is effectively now the public sector employees.
• Our air has never been cleaner, and reports of environmental improvements are starting to surface.

One sure thing is that the new future is now more uncertain than it ever has been. It could be the future that we decide to create.

We have a massive opportunity in whatever we do, whatever we want to do – to shape our new future. This event must be the most significant reboot that has occurred in the history of our beautiful and undercelebrated planet.

It is now our time – our time to shape and make a difference to our individual and collective future.

When I completed my MBA a few years ago, I came across The Betterness Manifesto by Umair Haque. It resonated and talked about the new industrial age post-financial crisis in 2008. The messages resonate because we are invited into a new future. One future that allowed us to celebrate Wealth not purely by how big a bank balance we had – but one that asked us to think about our connection with society, doing environmental good,

The great Gandhi invited us to ‘be the change that you want to see in the world’.

The time is now as we need to stand up and create a new future. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to make some change to ours, and others live in creating a new world that is open to even more possibility than we can dream of.

It is over to us.

We can opt for the easy option and remain pollutants, with stress, anxiety and unhappiness, or we can opt for change.

We can choose to create a new future devoid of the class gap, devoid of financial instability and deference, and celebrate life for what it is – which is a remarkable gift.