Submitted by Jay Tye
There’s a phrase I heard once: “Time is a flat circle.” I’m not entirely sure where it came from..probably Reddit, since I spend more time there than a self-professed workaholic reasonably should, but it stuck.
The idea is that everything that’s happened will happen again, history will just keep looping. And if you look around right now, especially in market research (or tech, or transportation (hello Waymo!), or honestly anything not currently being sold in a vending machine), you can feel the loop tightening.
AI. Automation. Layoffs. Hiring freezes. Role consolidations. Budgets that feel like someone forgot to stretch before the race. It’s easy to panic. It’s easy to watch the headlines roll in, scroll past the latest round of layoffs at XYZ company, and you find yourself spiraling into yet another “open to work” post wondering to yourself: what exactly is safe anymore and how will I ever overcome this?
And I get it. I’ve been there. Not metaphorically, actually there. That place where fear of the unknown turns into hopelessness.
I grew up poor. Single teenage mom, two kids, Section 8 housing, and food that mostly came from government boxes or whatever the local food bank was giving out that week.. It wasn’t “tight budget” poor. It was “you learn how to stretch a can of tomato soup across three days” poor.
I spent a long time believing that where I came from meant I couldn’t go where others seemed to be arriving with ease. While my peers got career head starts from well-connected families and/or financial cushions, I panicked about my future. I grew resentful. Struggled to accept my reality. And for a while, it consumed me. Quietly and completely.
Eventually, I got tired of the weight. So I got resourceful. I started choosing curiosity and optimism over resentment. I just quit fighting the battle in my mind and started accepting that while there are things out of our control, there are two ways to deal with them: You can fear them and freeze, or you can face them head-on, figure it out as you go and trust that everything will be ok.
You see, fear has a sneaky way of shrinking your world. It makes everything feel like a threat. Every job posting. Every new piece of tech that seemingly launches every other day.. Every opportunity that seems to happen in rooms your’re not in. Until one day you realize that the only thing fear is really good at, is keeping you stuck. A self-fulfilling slowdown. The more you worry, the smaller your world gets and the harder it becomes to see a way out.
I started seeing challenge and adversity as a kind of invitation, not some kind of punishment or insurmountable wall designed to keep me out because I didn’t have the same luck or launchpad as everyone else. Once I let go of the fear and self-doubt and started focusing on being resourceful, curious, adaptable, and open to possibility…the resentment softened. The fear loosened. And things, better things, started showing up in my life.
Now look, this doesn’t mean I wake up every day radiating “Choose Joy!” energy like some kind of corporate wellness poster in the break room. I still flinch at the cost of a large cup of coffee at Starbucks… But I am deeply convinced that optimism is essential for everyone, especially right now as things are fast moving and a bit unpredictable.
Here’s a truth worth accepting right now: things are going to change. They always have and always will.
The printing press put scribes out of business. Netflix killed Blockbuster. iPhones replaced (for many people) alarm clocks, cameras, flashlights, newspapers, and (let’s be honest) small talk. AI is just another wave and example of history repeating itself.
And like every wave before it, its shaking things up. Hard.
So accept it. We’ve been surfing change since forever. Resilience isn’t new. We’ve been shape shifting since the beginning of time. Adapting. Pivoting and continuing to survive.
Of course that doesn’t mean shit’s always gonna be easy…But it does mean it’s possible.
You just have to meet change with curiosity and confidence instead of fear. With hope instead of pessimism, resentment and worry. Meet change with grace (one of my favorite words).
It’s about softening the voice in your head that says you are doomed, there’s no way out, the sky is falling and you’re destined to fail. It’s about giving yourself room to adapt. To try. To not know how things will ultimately pan out but to stay optimistic and keep going anyway.
We’re all just spinning on a rock, figuring it out as we go and our time here is short in the grand scheme of things.. As long as you keep learning, adapting, keep moving, and understand this is all just history repeating itself and will continue happening forever, you can stop freaking out and start believing in yourself and trusting the universe. We’ve been here before and we’ll be here again. The chaos isn’t going anywhere so you might as well fill your boots, lift your chin and march onward into the sun.
Hope, and belief in yourself, isn’t naïve. It’s necessary.
So keep going folks. Gracefully and confidently into the unknown. We’re all gonna be ok.
Jay
