“You should never wait for the world to catch up to your obsolescence." - Futurist Jim Carroll

Here's a truth to consider: your gut feels the pivot long before your head admits it.

Sometimes we are forced into a career change or pivot. Other times, we need to make the decision on our own.

Either way, it's a gut-wrenching moment.

I know that when I was thinking about leaving the corporate world behind back in 1990, I was pretty miserable. My career track had changed due to a merger; my opportunities vanished; my successful path forward was now in doubt. And yet, I struggled mightily with the idea of moving from career certainty to becoming a self-employed unknown chasing a future that didn't yet exist.

But I went through with it, and it turned out to be the right thing to do.

Here's what I've learned in the decades since: when a pivot is forced on you, you go through something a lot like the stages of grief: shock, denial, anger, and eventually acceptance. When the pivot is your own choice, the same thing happens, just in slow motion. You sit in denial that things have to change. You get angry that they have to. And eventually, hopefully, you accept it.

As I wrote in my book Now What? Reinvention and the Role of Optimism in Finding Your New Future, the faster you get to acceptance, the quicker you can reinvent.

So how do you get to acceptance? You learn to recognize the signals. Some triggers will tell you when it's time:

The expiry of your relevance

The "soul-crushing" signal

The need for reinvention velocity

The "Sunday night" signal

Read about them in the full post.

And one trigger that sits apart from the rest: if you are drowning your career misery in substance abuse, the pivot question has already answered itself. The first move isn't a career change. It's getting help, from yourself or from someone trained to give it. The pivot comes after.

Here's the filter, though: not every bad week is a signal. Burnout, a difficult client, a rough quarter — those are weather, not climate. The triggers above only matter when they become persistent, structural, and patterned. If a vacation fixes it, it wasn't a pivot signal.

You should never find yourself thinking "I should have jumped sooner."

Because when you wonder if it's time to pivot, it probably already is.

---
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing this series, The Art of the Infinite Pivot, because he thinks he has mastered the art of the pivot!

**#Obsolescence** **#Pivot** **#Gut** **#Signals** **#Acceptance** **#Change** **#Reinvention** **#Relevance** **#Triggers** **#Career** **#Freelance** **#Lessons** **#Denial** **#Grief** **#Movement** **#NowWhat** **#Optimism** **#Soul** **#AI** **#Recognition**

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2026/05/decoding-tomorrow-the-infinite-pivot-series-28-you-should-never-wait-for-the-world-to-catch-up-to-your-obsolescence/

Gibbon . . .

"we cannot determine to what height the human species may aspire in their advances towards perfection . . . we may therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race"

#Oops #Misguided #Optimism

Gibbon . . .

"we cannot determine to what height the human species may aspire in their advances towards perfection . . . we may therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race"

#Oops #Misguided #Optimism

#EzraKlein gives us some reasons for #optimism and #hope about #AI and the #economy.

“the relational sector” of the economy…will explode. Instead of so many human beings working with computers, they will work with other human beings.
The more automation there is, the more people value a human’s touch.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/03/opinion/ai-jobs-unemployment-silicon-valley.html?unlocked_article_code=1.flA.fRhA.fLyD-UVfqq0n&smid=nytcore-ios-share
#GiftLink #GiftArticle

April flowers to brighten the day 🍃💛💐🤗

#April #Optimism #Positivity #Beautiful #Spring #Flowers

A quotation from James Howell

James Howell (c. 1594–1666) Welsh historian and writer
Paroimiographia [Παροιμιογραφία]: Proverbs, or, Old Sayed Sawes & Adages, “English Proverbs” (1659)
[compiler]

More about this quote: wist.info/howell-james/83714/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #jameshowell #disaster #getby #makedo #optimism #proverb #silverlining

The piece discusses how psychological differences between liberals and conservatives shifted after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, with Democrats showing declines in well-being and trust while Republicans tended to improve in these areas. The study tracked 20 weeks of participants across seven measurement points to observe changes in well-being, self-views, and worldviews in relation to who they voted for.

The article is of interest to psychology readers because it highlights how political events can modulate psychological states and attitudes, challenging the notion of fixed ideological differences and illustrating the dynamic interplay between political power and individual psychology.

Article Title: Trump’s 2024 victory flipped the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives

Link to PsyPost Article: https://nolinkpreview.com/www.psypost.org/trumps-2024-victory-flipped-the-psychological-differences-between-liberals-and-conservatives/

#politicalpsychology #liberalsvsconservatives #institutionaltrust #wellbeing #optimism #conspiracybeliefs #cynicism #selfesteem #personalcontrol #psychologyresearch