(The second of two articles about preparing for 2017.)

It’s official: we are living in turbulent times.  I’ve never seen such a high level of anxiety among fellow speakers, in the audiences speakers address, and in the industry itself – among the meeting planners, conference organizers, and speaker bureau reps.

It’s not entirely clear why we’re all so worked up about the present.  The echo chamber of social media may have something to do with it.  We don’t see one terrorist attack; we see the same one played over and over again until emotionally it feels like Armageddon.

The pace of change may have something to do with it.  By many measures, things are moving faster and faster, and just keeping up is more and more of a chore accordingly.  So what you might call the Red Queen phenomenon is stressing us all out.

And I believe that something I’ll call virtual isolation is adding to the angst we all feel.  That is, we’re in touch with more and more people, but it’s the virtual version, not the real one, that we connect with all too often, and that leaves the unconscious mind unsatisfied.  I have a great set of friends that live in another city, and I’m in that city from time to time as I travel, and it seems like I just miss connecting with them, because of their schedules, or my schedule, and so we keep up on Facebook, and I learn of the highlights of their lives, but I miss out on the quotidian, and I don’t feel connected in the same way as if I were sitting across from them in that café bouncing their 2-year-old on my knee, and laughing over old times.  (Their 2-year-old is now 6, by the way.)

So how can we rise above all this angst and fear and thrive in 2017 as speakers?  Following are a few strategies for thinking about how to orient yourself and your messages in the coming year.

1.Get clear on your why. Simon Sinek made the idea of knowing why you do what you job one – before you do anything else.  When times are turbulent, you need to hold fast to your main principles more than ever.  Why are you seeking to change the world, one audience at a time?  If you know that reason, and you’re passionate about it, and completely clear about it, then you’re ready to start your journey next year.

2.Be prepared for messy. Sitting next to two couples in a crowded restaurant the other day, I couldn’t help focusing in on the conversation for a few moments.

One of the two men was completely dominating the conversation.  He talked non-stop, a long, rambling, largely incoherent anecdote that appeared to be about his morning commute.  The other couple had an infant, asleep in Daddy’s arms.  At one point, the raconteur waxed so enthusiastic about the traffic that morning that his volume rose and he woke the sleeping infant up, who promptly started to cry.  Without missing a beat our speaker said, “Just ignore him and he’ll go back to sleep.”

Now, for a display of narcissism, that little scene was unbeatable.  Yet, the relationships between the two couples seemed genuinely warm, and the other three people seemed to take our raconteur’s appalling advice in stride and find it reasonable.  Presumably they knew of his sterling qualities, ones that they had seen demonstrated on occasions other than this one, and that I was unable to detect.

Humans are messy; that’s all there is to it, and our perceptions are always and forever partial.  Arm yourself with a ton of forgiveness and open-mindedness in advance, and you just might get through the year with a smile on your face.

I’ll let you know how it works out for me.

3.Focus on the future; don’t debate the past. So we have all this fear, apparently, thanks to the pace of change and the randomness of the future – but in fact a surprising amount of our future is actually going to be a repeat of something we’ve done in the past.  We think the same thoughts, go to the same places, and argue with the same people – over and over again.

A good deal of our angst, in fact, inevitably comes therefore from replaying the recent past, wishing it had gone better and wondering what we might have done differently.

Sages throughout the ages have counseled letting go of the past because we can’t change it.  But I don’t think that really gets at the heart of the problem.  We obsess about the past because we fear replaying the same patterns tomorrow, or the next day.  We look backward, negotiating with our memories, trying to make them come out differently in order to control the future.

But of course we can’t control that future.

Instead, we need to look forward thinking to ourselves, “what’s one small thing I can change to affect the outcome when that scenario comes around again?”  Otherwise, it’s re-runs of Groundhog Day for everyone one, and who wants that?

Here’s wishing you a fabulously successful 2017 as a speaker and a human.  And if you’re clear about why you’re moving forward, who you’re moving forward with, and how moving forward might be just a little different – you just might pull it off.