The Future is HOW – Best Of: HOW to Grow Your Future

Welcome to a best of special edition of The Future Is How. I'm so glad you're here. In this summer episode, we're stepping into a different kind of garden, one made not of flowers, but of ideas, questions, trust, and transformation. Over the past season, Frederick has spoken with some of the most inspiring future gardeners, people planting seeds of change, possibility, and beauty. Today we bring you the very best of those conversations, woven into a story of how we grow what's next. So take a moment, breathe in, and let's begin. Because the future isn't something we wait for.

The future is how Welcome to a very special summer edition of The Future Is How. I'm Fredrik Fjordt, and today I want to take you on a walk through a different kind of garden. Imagine, if you will, a thriving ecosystem where instead of planting seeds for flowers or vegetables, we're cultivating the elements that shape our future. This garden has rich soil made of powerful questions, strong trellises of trust, flowing channels of communication, and restorative greenhouses of rest. But it's also alive with the buzz of cross-pollinating bees, nourished by both sunshine and rain, enriched by compost that transforms challenges into growth, and tended by a community that understands how every element supports the whole. Over this past season of conversations, I've had the privilege of speaking with remarkable gardeners of the future. People who've mastered different aspects of this living ecosystem. Today, I'm sharing their wisdom as we explore 11 essential elements in this garden of possibility. Because here's what I've learned: the future isn't something that simply happens to us. Like any thriving ecosystem, it requires intention, diversity, cycles of growth and rest, and the understanding that everything is connected. So grab your gardening gloves—metaphorically speaking—and let's discover how to grow a future that's not just better, but truly extraordinary. Our journey begins where all good gardens do: with the very foundation. Element 1: The Soil of Questions. In any garden, everything begins with the soil. And in our garden of the future, the richest soil is made up of the questions we ask. Marc Champagne, author of Personal Socrates. Showed me how questions aren't just tools for getting answers. They're the very foundation from which our future grows. So let's switch gears a little bit, Mark. You're also known for someone who loves questions, right? You wrote the book that I have right here, Personal Socrates, where there are just many questions that are super inspiring. What's the one question that you would say is the most powerful question that you've ever asked?

Ooh, that's a powerful question in itself. Well, my take on powerful questions are they're centered around the relevance and the timing of the question. But I will answer your question with two questions if you're okay with that. Perfect. Because the, probably one of the biggest questions that was posed to me by a mentor during one of the hardest times of my life when I was shutting a business down and trying to figure out what I was gonna do next was by actually the gentleman on the COVID of the book, Chip Conley. And, and he said, you know, what do you want for your life? And that, that question in that time, I can't state how significant it was for me because it was during a time where If I paint the picture a little bit, I had one of my sons was born. He was, I think, maybe 1 year old. We were financially really stressed about what was going on. I, as a dad, was concerned that that energy was being felt in the home, even though both my wife and I were doing everything possible to not let that translate. But, you know, anyone who has kids knows that they pick up on energy pretty, pretty quickly. And, you know, I had shut down a business that reached a bunch of people and, and a business that I knew, or I would say a calling at that point that I knew was what I was meant to do. But for various reasons, that avenue didn't work out. And I was left in a place where I, I felt hopeless actually for the first time in my life. But it was that question that paused all of that narrative long enough to then start asking other questions and say, I say, okay, well, if this is what you want, you know, what's one step that you can take today? Or what do you need to make sure your mind stays in a good state? And who can you speak to that to help you along that path? And I share that question because if I were to ask that today, it's a good check-in, it's a good reminder, but it doesn't have the weight that it did and the impact that it did in that moment where I could feel myself slipping into deep depression.

You see, when we plant questions in rich soil, what grows isn't just answers; it's possibility itself. The quality of our questions determines the quality of our future, much like soil quality determines what can take root and flourish. Element 2: The trust trellis. Every experienced gardener knows that some plants need support to reach their full potential. In our garden, trust serves as the strongest trellis of all. Esther Wojcicki, known as the godmother of Silicon Valley, has spent decades understanding how trust creates the framework for everything else to grow. So what do you think most parents still get wrong about preparing kids for the future? We just heard one, which is that we don't trust them enough or not early enough, right, to do things on their own. What are other things that you think parents still get wrong about preparing kids for the future?

Well, I would say number one is trust. And number 2 is respect. So we don't listen to the kids. You know, let's say you're planning to go away for the weekend. Do you ever ask your kids what they want to do? I would say most people don't. Well, but maybe you should. You know, we're going to be going, I don't know, to the mountains or to the beach or whatever. What do you think is the ideal thing for you to do? And kids might come up with surprising answers. You know, you don't necessarily have to do what they say, but just listening to them and giving them the credibility that they've come up with some interesting ideas or places to eat or, you know, whatever it is that they want to do. Most people just, they take kids like a piece of luggage, you know, and that's just okay, we're bringing the kids with us, and, and then they don't ever ask the kids or tell them what they're doing, or I think that's not a good idea. I love that. Kids are not luggage. They're human beings.

Absolutely. Yes. I love that. And it reminds me of two things. The first one is that we should really carefully listen to the questions kids are asking, right? And not always kind of like coming up with an answer for that question, but like really sit with that question that the kid is asking because there's usually some deeper meaning in that question when they ask these questions. And I think kids do a wonderful job in really questioning everything, right, that they see in the world, that they experience in the world. And the second thing that you remind me of is I usually take one of my kids for my travels when I have to, or I can speak somewhere around the world. I usually take one of the kids, right, and I let them do the planning. I let them choose where we're going to stay, what we're going to do, and all of those things. And it's really, as you said, something beautifully surprising that they come up with, right? That makes that travel so different. Yes. It gets you into a childlike state as well as an adult, right? Where you can explore, where you can see new things and do different things, right? And you get off this autopilot where you usually go to the same restaurants or have the same conversations or whatever it is. And I think that's a beautiful reminder. Trust, like a well-built trellis, doesn't just support growth. It makes growth possible in directions we never imagined. When trust is strong, communication can climb higher, relationships can spread wider, and potential can reach toward light we didn't even know existed. Element 3: The Communication Channels. Water is the lifeblood of any garden, and in our future garden, communication serves as the irrigation system that nourishes everything we're trying to grow. Matt Abrahams, Stanford lecturer and communication expert, opened my eyes to how strategic communication creates the conditions where understanding can flourish. You reminded me just about an important thing, that is the power of questions, right? When somebody shares with you, like, they had just a bad day, and instead of just acknowledging that, right, like, ask, like, what makes your day bad, right? Usually, or like, exactly, what's the bad thing that happened to you, right? So you go deeper on something that is revealing something. So what do you think about the power of questions in communication?

So important on so many levels. Let me try to be concise. So the question is, what's the power of questions? So obviously ironic that the question leads to this kind of answer. But questions are so powerful for so many ways. One, they're ways of engaging. I mentioned that earlier. When I ask you a question, your brain spins up multiple systems to respond. You become more attentive and engaged. Because answering a question requires more effort. So I could tell you something, or I could ask a question. So whenever I lecture as a teacher, when I coach executives and senior leaders and others giving high-stakes communication, I always say start with questions because it's engaging to your audience. So I never say, today I'm going to cover 3 topics. I say, today we're going to answer 3 questions. So number 1, it's an engagement tool. Number 2, questions allow you to connect. They allow you to dig deeper. They allow for more disclosure. They demonstrate and signal interest. Asking a question that shows you have been paying attention is as powerful as paraphrasing. And we know that paraphrasing builds trust and deepens relationships. And the other thing a question does is a question can actually bolster your credibility. So if I'm trying to demonstrate that I really understand something, know something, I can ask an insightful question that demonstrates that in a way that is much less braggadocious and off-putting than somebody who, imagine, is interviewing for a job and just recites their LinkedIn profile. So questions are amazing tools. They're like a Swiss Army knife that can be used in so many ways to really help you.

So I might ask you now a question. What's your favorite question to maybe reframe a tense conversation, right? Sometimes we end up in these conversations where we see like, no way out. Like, we have our opinion and the other person has the other opinion, right? And we really see that this is a tense conversation. So what's a favorite question that you'd like to ask to really get out of this tense conversation?

So a question I like to ask is, help me understand why you believe that or what brought you to that point.

Like a well-designed irrigation system, good communication doesn't just deliver information, it creates the conditions for growth, connection, and transformation. It reaches every corner of our garden, ensuring that no potential goes unwatered. Element 4: The Storytelling Sunshine. Every garden needs sunshine to thrive, and in our future ecosystem, stories provide the essential light that helps everything grow toward its potential. Calla Ryan, award-winning writer and founder of Poetic. Illuminated how compelling narratives don't just entertain, they transform how we see ourselves and our possibilities. So, Kaleigh, I like to go back to some of the thoughts that you've shared in the beginning, where we really talked about imagination, right? Trying to imagine that future story that you want to see happening. And there's a great quote from William Arthur Ward, who said, if you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it. Right? I think that's a very powerful way of bringing that together. And when we think about imagining these stories, how can stories we tell today really shape the future we want to create tomorrow? Like, tell us a little bit more how we can just become better storytellers? What are some of the ways that really help us to tell these optimistic, these stories of awe, these stories that really inspire us where we say, like, I can't wait to live in that future?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think there's so much possibility. I think one of the things I often think about is that, like, Creating a story about a future self, as we're sort of exploring today, that sort of encourages intentional living, if you follow my drift. And sort of this idea of like, if you're actively crafting the story of your future self, then that storytelling is going to like help you live with intention to actualize, to do that, to be that. And I think also storytelling helps you reframe the past or negative experiences. Because I mean, you know, the future doesn't exist without something that's propelled us to that point, you know, like, we're all miracles, really, in the sense that we've achieved or gotten to where we are. And I'm conscious of so many people's journeys are different. But I think if you can tell your story, sometimes that's the most powerful thing of all. And It's why TED Talks are so popular, right? Because a lot of them are ultimately autobiographical with a nugget of wisdom, right? And everyone has fascinating experiences. And anyone who tells you— like, it's like when people say, I'm not creative. You're creative. And that doesn't mean you can tell stories necessarily, but we all tell stories. You know, Ireland is a nation of storytellers. You know, Wilde, Beckett, Yeats, Joyce. You know, we've had some of the heavyweights, right?

Stories like Sunshine have the power to awaken dormant seeds, energize growth, and help us see clearly what we're cultivating. They don't just describe the future; they help us envision it into being. Element 5: The Rest and Recovery Greenhouse. Every Master Gardener knows that plants need periods of protection and dormancy to reach their full potential. In our future garden, sleep and rest aren't empty spaces. They're specialized greenhouses where our most important growth actually happens. Dr. Els van der Helm, sleep neuroscientist, revealed how the quality of our rest directly determines the quality of our waking potential. There's a correlation between the amount of sleep you get and the quality of sleep and the next day. So, so literally your future. So how can we deal with that? Waking up and that anxiety that we maybe face during our night's sleep?

Yes. So I'm really happy that you raised this. My PhD was focused on sleep and emotional processing. And we actually called sleep overnight therapy in one of our papers because that is actually exactly what sleep is. So we experience something emotional during the day. If we then get good sleep, we see that particularly during dream sleep, we remember better what happened emotionally. But importantly, we strip away the emotional tone of the memory so that the next day we remember, ooh, that's where I saw a snake and I've got to go around that path. But we don't feel all this autonomic arousal again the next time we think about it or the next time we see a flashback. And a famous example where we see this kind of go wrong is in post-traumatic stress disorder, where people actually tend to have a poor memory of the trauma, but they relive the emotional feeling that was associated with the trauma. And there often we see sleep problems. So in the ideal situation, we would manage our stress during the day so that we go to sleep with lower stress levels, then we get higher quality sleep. And this higher quality sleep sets us up for a better day the next day in terms of feeling less anxious, less depressed, and kind of this overnight therapy has done its job. What is, of course, the challenge here is that when we have all of this stress during a day and we're not coping with this stress and we go to bed with high stress levels, and anyone listening can probably relate to this, we either have trouble falling asleep or we have very poor quality sleep in that we wake up multiple times, or maybe we don't wake up, but the next morning we just, it doesn't feel like refreshed sleep. And then the next day, we know from studies you're even more vulnerable to the next stressor. You know, you're kind of, you know, more anxious, more depressed, and you can easily get into this negative spiral. Which we really want to turn around. So the good news is that you've got two ways to get at this problem. You've got one way, which is reducing the stress, or the other way is to improve sleep.

Sleep, like a carefully controlled greenhouse environment, doesn't pause our growth. It optimizes it. In the quiet darkness of rest, our minds process, integrate, and prepare for tomorrow's possibilities. It's not time lost; it's potential gained. Element 6: The Wellness Ecosystem. A thriving garden requires attention to the health of the entire ecosystem. Soil health, plant health, and the delicate balance that keeps everything functioning optimally. Newton Chung, Director of Health and Performance at Google, showed me how personal wellness isn't just about individual health. It's about creating conditions where peak performance and deep fulfillment can flourish together.

I think just one thing I want to say there, and this points to this direction of if we go into this topic of vulnerability, I was recently in this leadership summit. And so, it's a room full of senior leaders at Google and we're just doing some icebreakers and someone asked, "How many here have caregiving responsibilities for aging parents?" Over half the hands in the room go up. And then, I look around the room and I knew a lot of the people and for so many of them, I'm like, "You have kids too." So, you are in the caregiving sandwich. And most of us don't even talk about that. But I see this and I'm like, well, for all of us, that's actually job one. That's actually highest priority. And we've been hiding that from one another. It's a huge, huge load. So that's kind of an example of something where it's like, we know this to be true if we just think logically about how many people are carrying this load, but we don't share it and therefore we can't support each other through that struggle.

Yes, such an important point. And I love that you kicked off the conversation with asking people, you know, what are their caregiving responsibilities? And as you mentioned, you know, we are most of the time in a sandwich situation, right, where we have to take care of our kids or friends or, you know, even other people's children, right? When we, you know, have them at our house or have them in our place, you know, we have some sort of a responsibility, but also to our parents, right? We all have responsibilities that really we mostly do not talk about or not share with others. And I love that you kicked off that summit by just having people share what they're currently dealing with, right? What's on their mind and what's keeping them also motivated, probably in a way, to become better human beings, right? To take better care of the people they need to take care of. So if you want to talk a little bit more about that notion of vulnerability and how important that is in your work and in your life too.

For your audience, I'll give a little bit of background of how I've gone into this direction of thinking that vulnerability— we've all been talking about vulnerable leadership over the last few years, but what I've come to realize over the last 2.5 years as I've been experimenting with this is we're all talking about it, we're all looking for academic studies to say we should be more vulnerable, but then at some point, if I take vulnerable leadership out of the equation, let's just say talk about the skill of playing the piano, It's like we have talked about playing the piano, we send each other articles about playing the piano, we look for academic research to say we should all play the piano, and then I look around and say, how many people are going out every day and practicing piano?

Wellness, like a balanced ecosystem, creates the foundation where everything else can thrive. When we tend to our physical, mental, and emotional health, we're not just maintaining ourselves; we're preparing the conditions for our best future to emerge. Element 7: The Compost of Transformation. Some of the most beautiful gardens emerge from what seems like decay and breakdown. Personal transformation often requires composting old patterns to create rich soil for new growth. Angela Peart, who transformed from finance professional to healing artist, showed me how the process of breaking down and rebuilding can create the most unexpected and beautiful futures. You mentioned that the main part of the work happens afterwards in that integration phase where you try to really make sense of what you've discovered and trying to integrate that into your life. So what are some of the practices that you recommend people are doing after, you know, they go on a journey?

Well, there's so many different journeys and everything is so individualized. But my part is I want to make sure that you can make the most of what you experienced. So I want to give you tools. I want to give you— and, and again, this could be like some people want to do gardening, some people want to draw what they experienced. It can also go like deeper into layers where you want to do like meditation, where you want to, you know, think of life completely different. You come out with different insights, with different ideas, which could be— I'm saying again, I have to say you could because everything is so individualized. But overall, this is what people report back. They are more than happy to tell you all about their journey because it is, it's very special. It opens you know, it opens you up in a way that you probably wouldn't think it would. And by doing this, which maybe sounds a bit creepy, but it's not at all. It is a really gentle way of finding that sort of peace that many people are looking for. It also brings, again, people report and say what they found is that a lot of answers are there already. It's all there. It's all within us. We as human beings need to find a way to access that by maybe slowing down and just listening and feeling and understanding and being more present.

Beautifully framed, as you said, that to all of the questions that we have as human beings that are on our minds throughout our days and nights, probably, that there's the answer already inside us, right? We just have to discover it and let it out, right? And I think you mentioned that these journeys help you to really go deep and finding those answers, right, that you're looking for. And I think one word always comes up when I read the research or talking to people who have done this work, the word love. Like the composting process, personal transformation takes what seems like endings and decay and transforms them into the richest soil for new growth. What feels like breakdown is often breakthrough in disguise. Element 8: The Cross-Pollination Bees. In nature, bees don't just collect nectar; they carry pollen between different plants, creating hybrid vigor and entirely new possibilities. Lisa K. Solomon, futurist and designer at Stanford's d.school, is like a master bee in our garden, showing how the cross-pollination between futures thinking and design creates innovations we never could have imagined. We talked a little bit about imagination as something that is accessible to all of us human beings, right? But I think it's also something underused. And really taking that time, as you talked about it previously, to imagine and taking a step back, right? And allow yourself to really pause for a couple of minutes or even maybe a couple of hours to imagine that utopia that we want to see happening ideally, right? And that we want to be a part of. So why do you think imagination is such a wonderful tool on the one hand side, but also one that is so underused in our daily lives?

Imagination is, I think, what has kept us alive as human beings for tens of thousands of years. You know, the ability to imagine something beyond right in front of us is, I think, the fuel for advancement, for possibility, for survival. You know, this idea of being able to tell a story about What I think, you know, from the caves of Glasgow where they really realized that there were, you know, drawings of animals that were basically communicating like surviving is avoiding those animals. We're going to paint this picture for you. That's a form of taking an imagination of what could happen and communicating it in some tangible way. So I think imagination is critical, you know, to us connecting as a species and is something that, you know, we have grown and evolved. Unfortunately, I think imagination is something that is undervalued, as you said, and misunderstood. So I'm excited when I have colleagues like Ed Finn and Ruth Wiley at the Arizona State University Center for Science and Imagination that's doing a lot of new research on imagination and particularly applied imagination, I think is critical. But I think that our schooling, and at least I'll speak here from a US perspective, it really doesn't value imagination. I mean, like creativity, I think pretty much from the second grade on, you know, if you can't, you know, draw a beautiful horse, you're not creative. You know, these trips. And again, like, show me the index that honors and really encourages imagination. I think oftentimes the divergent question, particularly in public schools, gets shut down because it's off of the incentive system to get through the material that we are able to test so that we can measure to advance you. And yet, right, we had these great heroes that we put up on a pedestal for being these— wow, they were the out-of-box thinkers, you know, Steve Jobs, the out-of-box thinkers. Again, Elon Musk, you know, imagining going to Mars, you know, as some earlier inspiration.

Like bees in a garden, when we carry insights from one domain to another, when we connect seemingly unrelated ideas, we don't just create something new. We create something more resilient, more beautiful, more alive than what existed before. Element 9: The Connection Root Network. The most sustainable gardens aren't just collections of individual plants. They're ecosystems where everything supports everything else through underground networks of connection. Dr. Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, has spent decades studying how human connections create the invisible networks where our best futures can flourish.

Probably the most surprising idea from the research was that our connections with other people actually keep us healthier and they help us live longer. It made sense that they would make us happier if we had good, warm connections with people. That's not a surprise. The surprise was finding, as we followed thousands of lives over decades, was that the people who were most connected to others were the people who stayed the healthiest and lived the longest.

Fascinating. So you mentioned that these intentional connections are very helpful and very powerful, right? So what I also see is that relationships just don't happen by accident, right? They're cultivated. What could you help people to do differently when it comes to their relationships? You're absolutely right.

They are cultivated. And the people in our study who were the best at relationships paid attention to them daily, weekly, And there are kind of two categories of what we call social fitness, meaning really keeping relationships vibrant. One is enlivening and strengthening the relationships you already have. And the other is bringing new people into your life. And there are ways to do each that research has shown us actually work. And help people do this. So let's start with taking care of the relationships you already have. Many of us have people who, you know, we just don't see as often as we'd like to. And we say, oh, I really want to spend more time with that person, but I don't do it. And what we find is that the people who do this well are the people who take little actions over and over again. So, for example, maybe you commute to work every day. So maybe on that commute, rather than looking at your phone or listening to a podcast like this one, maybe what you do is you just send a little text or an email to someone or call them on the phone just saying hi, Just wanted to touch base, see how it's going. And the people who do that regularly are blessed with so many rich relationships because they keep up with each other's lives. Right. So that's one thing in terms of making sure you keep up with a few people all the time.

Like mycorrhizal networks in forests, create invisible connections that share resources, communicate needs, and strengthen the entire system. Our futures don't grow in isolation; they thrive in the rich soil of human connection. Element 10: The Innovation and Inspiration Blooms. Throughout our garden, we've seen how each element supports the others, creating conditions for growth and possibility. But there's a special energy that emerges when creativity and leadership come together. Adam Galinsky, leadership expert, revealed how inspiration becomes an active force that transforms individuals and communities.

I basically have, I think, 3 profound insights. The first is that the inspiring and infuriating leader are on this sort of universal continuum that's made up of these 3 universal factors.. And so I call these being visionary, being an exemplar, and being a mentor. So visionary is how we see the world. Exemplar is how we are in the world. And mentor is how we interact in the world. And the other thing is that this inspiring and infuriating leader are basically mirror images of each other, right? So the inspiring leader sees an optimistic big picture, right? The infuriating leader is a pessimistic pedantic, right? Inspiring leader is calm and courageous. Infuriating leader is anxious and cowardly. Inspiring leader is generous towards others, elevates others. Others. Inferiority leader diminishes others, is selfish. And so you can start to see that. So that's the first sort of fundamental insight is that there are these 3 universal factors that make up this enduring continuum. The second, I think, really fascinating finding is that the reason why these are the 3 universal factors is because each of them satisfy a fundamental human need. So being visionary satisfies the need for meaning and understanding. Being exemplar satisfies the need for protection and energy. And being great mentor satisfies the need for a sense of belonging and inclusion on the one hand, but also status and feeling respected by others on the other hand. And then the third one, and this gets at your point about maybe not so magic, is because they're a universal set of attributes that distinguish these inspiring and infuriating leaders, that means that leaders aren't just born, but they're made because we can practice those attributes, we can nurture them, we can develop them, we can turn them into habits. And so each one of those becomes really, really important. And one's like thinking about the being visionary is really thinking about the future, right? It's all about what you're interested in. And one of the things I found in my research is that we're really attracted to optimistic futures. Right? People who paint a better picture, right? I mean, it's embedded so brilliantly in Barack Obama's, one of his sort of like official sentiments, which was hope, right? This is optimistic future that's going to come to be. And I think that's one of the things. A second thing about being visionary, and I think this is really what connects the past to the present and the future, is selecting a particular set of values that animate everything that you do.

Inspiration in leadership, like vital energy flowing through a garden, doesn't just motivate; it activates the potential that's been carefully cultivated in all the other elements. But inspiration alone isn't the end of our journey. There's something even more profound waiting. Element 11: The Beautiful Purpose That Blooms. At the very heart of our garden, where all elements have come together: the rich soil, the strong supports, the flowing water, the warming light, the protected spaces. The healthy ecosystem, the transformative processes, the cross-pollinating connections, the deep networks, and the inspiring energy, something extraordinary emerges: beauty. But not beauty as decoration. Beauty as the natural expression of purpose lived with intention. Tim Leberecht, founder of the House of Beautiful Business, opened my eyes to how the most sustainable futures aren't just built on efficiency or innovation alone. They bloom when we discover how to create meaning in our work and beauty in our business. When purpose becomes the guide for how we shape what's next. You highlighted human-centeredness, so it seems to be a very important concept for you, basing our designs and ideas on human needs. But you also promote something that might be an evolution of human-centeredness, which is life-centeredness. Can you talk a little bit about that evolution, and is there something beyond life-centeredness?

When we started the House of Beautiful Business in 2017, human-centered was what we really tried to promote. Human-centered was not necessarily taken for granted in business, which was at the time very tech-driven and cold and technocratic. And data-obsessed. That conversation changed. We had all the conversations about purpose and sustainability and ESG, and also, I think, emotional intelligence, and of course, inclusivity, DEI. We produced all these externalities that are now coming to haunt us, right, that are very much the crux of the polycrisis, whether that's nature or it's mental health. It's basically exploiting our own inner resources. So we're paying a high price for having moved the human to the center at the expense of nature and the environment and other life on Earth. And maybe even— this is also an interesting, of course, emerging field— interplanetary life, right, and interplanetary being. And I think we're in this moment of great humbling. COVID certainly also fueled that. I think it was also a moment of like, oh my God, we're quite brittle, we're quite fickle as a species. We're not as strong as we thought we might be. Nature is strong, stronger than us. Restoring this connection to nature and to life itself is, I think, really, yeah, pun intended, vital for creating a more beautiful future. And it means also that we're honoring the life around us, animals, nature, interplanetary, but also maybe the mystic spheres that we can't quite even name that surround us, the energy, the aura, you might call that spiritual or not, and your own inner life, right, that we so often suppress, especially at work where all of the life that is inside us all of the uncomfortable emotions, also negative emotions, even though they might not be negative, but they're often called negative— sorrow, melancholy, rage, anger. We don't really want to bring them to work, right? We bring in the happy, shiny, consistent self. So also allowing life to be much richer inside us and expressing it, I believe, is really a vital ingredient of a more beautiful future, right? I think we'll be much more in harmony with ourselves if we allow that, and we would be much more in harmony with everything everything that surrounds us if we do that.

This is the ultimate flowering of ImmoGarden. When purpose and beauty become inseparable. When how we work becomes as important as what we achieve. Beauty here isn't about aesthetics. It's about the harmony that emerges when everything in our ecosystem is aligned with deeper meaning. It's how we decide which questions to what to ask, where to place our trust, how to communicate, what stories to tell, when to rest, how to stay well, what to transform, which ideas to cross-pollinate, who to connect with, and what to feel inspired about. This is how we shape a better future. Not just one that works, but one that's worth creating, worth living, worth sharing. A future that is both purposeful and, in every sense of the word, Beautiful. As our walk through this garden comes to an end, I want you to understand something powerful. You now have the complete toolkit for shaping a better future. Not just dreaming about it, not just hoping for it, but actively creating it. You have the soil, the right questions to ask. You have the trellis, the trust to build. You have the water, the communication skills to connect. You have the sunshine, the stories to inspire. You have the greenhouse, the rest to restore. You have the ecosystem, the wellness to sustain. You have the compost, the ability to transform challenges. You have the bees, the innovation to cross-pollinate ideas. You have the roots, the connections to strengthen everything. You have the inspiration, the energy to activate it all. And you have the purpose, the why that guides every choice. The beautiful thing about this garden is that it's never finished. Finished. But it's always beautiful, even in its becoming. Some seasons will be about planting new seeds. Others will be about tending what's already growing. Sometimes storms will come and we'll need to trust in the deep root systems we've cultivated. And sometimes, the most important thing is simply to step back and marvel at the beauty of what we're growing together. This is how the future gets shaped. Not by accident, but by intention. Not by hoping, but by doing. Not by waiting, but by planting, tending, point, and growing. The guests you've heard today: Mark, Esther, Matt, Kala, Els, Newton, Angela, Lisa, Robert, Adam, And Tim, they've each mastered different aspects of how to create meaningful change. They've shown us that the future isn't something that happens to us. The future is how we choose to think, how we decide to connect, how we commit to grow, and how we act with purpose every single day. So as you step back into your own life, ask yourself: How will you tend your garden today? How will you plant seeds for tomorrow? How will you shape the future you want to see? Because the answer to "what's next" isn't a mystery. The future is how you choose to create it. Thank you for joining me in this garden of possibilities. I'm Fredrik Fehrt. And remember, the future is how.

Thank you for joining us in this garden of possibility. If something here resonated—a question, a moment of insight, a story—carry it with you. Every small act, every shift in perspective, is a seed for something bigger. And just like any garden, your future needs care, attention, and time. So keep tending it. Keep growing it. Thanks for listening to this special edition of "The Future Is How." Until next time, stay curious, stay kind, and remember, your future is growing.