Flux

When was the last time change threw your life off balance? In Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change, futurist April Rinne argues that learning to navigate uncertainty isn’t just a modern skill—it’s a survival trait for the 21st century. Rinne contends that change will never slow down, and our old ways of coping—control, prediction, and resistance—no longer serve us. To flourish, she says, we must develop a new way of thinking she calls a Flux Mindset: the ability to stay grounded yet flexible, calm yet curious, as the world constantly shifts beneath our feet.

The book is part personal memoir, part guidebook, and part roadmap for reorienting your relationship to change. Drawing from her extraordinary story—losing both parents at age twenty, building a global career, and helping organizations adapt to disruption—Rinne introduces readers to eight practical “Flux Superpowers.” Each one helps you break free from outdated scripts about control, success, and stability, teaching you to thrive rather than merely survive.

The World in Flux

Rinne begins by acknowledging the global chaos most of us live in: a world upended by pandemics, social unrest, climate crises, and technological acceleration. Yet rather than trying to find a way back to “normal,” she insists that perpetual change is the new normal. The faster the world moves, the more we need to slow our mental pace and reframe uncertainty as an opportunity for learning, creativity, and connection. “Change is inevitable,” she reminds us, “but growth is optional.”

In sharing her own grief story—the sudden death of both parents while she was in college—Rinne creates a visceral connection to loss and reinvention. That experience became her first education in flux, forcing her to write a new personal script at age twenty. Over time, she realized that what she had learned through tragedy was exactly what the world now needs to learn collectively: how to let go, trust, and adapt.

From the Old Script to a New One

Every society, she argues, hands its people an “old script.” This script tells you to work hard, climb the ladder, control your destiny, and equate success with accumulation—of money, credentials, and followers. It’s an industrial-era instruction manual in a post-industrial world. The problem? The pace and scale of change have rendered that script obsolete. “It’s fit for a world that no longer exists,” she says. And old scripts die hard—they linger in our minds, institutions, and expectations, shaping how we respond to everything from job loss to global upheaval.

The antidote is to write your own “new script”: one grounded in timeless human values—curiosity, compassion, and trust—but flexible enough to evolve. This new script is unique to each person; no one can write it for you. It liberates you from needing certainty. It lets you hold the future gently instead of gripping it with anxiety. Rinne introduces the Theory of Flux as a practical model for doing this: (1) Open a Flux Mindset, (2) Unlock the eight Flux Superpowers, and (3) Apply them to write your New Script.

Opening a Flux Mindset

A Flux Mindset is built on three pillars: clarity of values, comfort with paradox, and seeing uncertainty from a place of hope rather than fear. Borrowing ideas from neurobiology and growth mindset psychology (as developed by Carol Dweck), Rinne explains that we’re biologically wired to resist change. Our sympathetic nervous system interprets uncertainty as threat, triggering “fight, flight, or freeze.” But when you ground yourself in your values—your North Star—you recalibrate the body and mind to perceive the unknown as potential, not peril.

“Think of a Flux Mindset as your compass for change,” Rinne writes. “It’s your North Star, your surfboard, and terra firma all at once.”

To find your “flux baseline,” Rinne suggests reflection questions like: What gives you meaning? Whom do you trust when everything changes? What would make you, you, if you lost your job, health, or home? The goal isn’t to define your mindset perfectly but to observe your reactions to change and start reshaping them through practice.

The Eight Flux Superpowers

The heart of the book lies in eight transformative habits that overturn the old script: Run Slower, See What’s Invisible, Get Lost, Start with Trust, Know Your Enough, Create Your Portfolio Career, Be All the More Human, and Let Go of the Future. Each one is paradoxical—it flips conventional wisdom on its head. For instance, slowing down in a fast world makes you more effective, not less. Trusting others first actually builds security. Letting go of the future cultivates optimism. Alone, these superpowers are powerful adjustments; together, they form a holistic system of resilience and adaptation.

Rinne likens them to a “bento box for the mind.” You can practice one skill at a time or weave them together into a nourishing meal of mindset resilience. The key is that each reinforces the others—the more you slow down, the easier it becomes to trust or let go.

Why Flux Matters

Flux isn’t just a personal philosophy; it’s a societal necessity. Today’s hyperconnected, unpredictable world demands flexibility in organizations, economies, and leadership. Yet most of us were educated—and rewarded—for linear thinking and control. “The future isn’t more certainty,” Rinne warns. “It’s more uncertainty.” By learning to dance with change, we not only protect our mental well-being but also amplify collective creativity and connection. Flux offers a language for this new reality—one that blends ancient wisdom, brain science, and modern strategy into a vision of hope. It’s a call to stop managing change and start harmonizing with it, together.

In a culture obsessed with speed, Rinne opens her first superpower with a paradox: To thrive in a fast-paced world, you must slow your own pace. Running slower, she says, isn’t about laziness or giving up—it’s about reclaiming presence, reflection, and focus in a system that rewards overwork and distraction.

The Myth of Productivity

Our society equates productivity with worth. From Silicon Valley mantras to social media hustle culture, faster is better. Yet, Rinne points to research showing that companies that rush to act (like firing fast during crises) often perform worse over time. Wise action, not quick reaction, is what sustains success. Personally, the same holds true: running faster through life diminishes attention, health, and creativity. Harvard studies reveal that nearly half of our waking hours are spent thinking about something other than the present moment—a mental state that fuels anxiety and burnout.

The Power of Not‑Doing

Rinne introduces global traditions that honor stillness. In the Netherlands, people practice niksen—the art of “doing nothing”—to lower anxiety and boost creativity. In Taoism, the principle of wu wei (“action through inaction”) teaches that flow emerges from calm responsiveness, not strain. Across cultures, the lesson is consistent: by pausing, you create space for clarity, healing, and insight. Even nature proves this—trees and bamboo grow strongest during still periods underground before shooting upward.

“Do nothing… and trust that the sky will not come crashing down,” Rinne writes. “It may even get brighter.”

She shares her own journey: after her parents’ death, she initially wanted to run away from grief but instead stopped, grounded herself, and learned that presence—not pace—was her teacher. The ability to “run slower” became her first step toward healing and resilience.

From Productivity to Presence

Rinne contrasts optimizing for productivity with optimizing for presence. The former measures life by outputs; the latter measures it by attention and connection. She offers practices to reorient daily routines toward presence: micro-sabbaticals (short, intentional pauses), not‑to‑do lists, silence and stillness exercises, nature immersion, and “technology Shabbats” where you unplug for a day each week. Each practice retrains your nervous system to calm down and notice life in real time.

Physically, slowing down also protects what Rinne calls “the asset”—your mind‑body system. Burnout, anxiety, and even chronic pain are the body’s signals that it’s time to decelerate. Through breath, yoga, and sensory awareness, you can reconnect to what your body already knows: healing happens at a slower frequency than productivity.

Thinking Slow and the Joy of Missing Out

Citing Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow and Frank Partnoy’s Wait, Rinne shows that delayed decisions and measured thinking often produce better outcomes. She urges readers to replace FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) with JOMO (Joy of Missing Out). Instead of chasing every opportunity, relish the space between things—where creativity actually lives. Attention, she reminds us, is your scarcest resource. Protecting it by running slower unlocks energy, perception, and peace.

Rinne closes the chapter with this reminder: No one on their deathbed wishes they had “run faster.” In a world spinning ever quicker, the real superpower is the courage to pause—to stay human enough to see the roses that everyone else is racing past.

If slowing down lets you notice life, seeing what’s invisible teaches you what you’ve been missing all along. This superpower asks you to move beyond surface vision—to notice the unseen forces, values, and biases shaping your world. Rinne writes, “The best way to see differently is to see what’s been invisible.”

Cultural and Cognitive Blind Spots

From birth, our “scripts” teach us what to see—and what to ignore. Rinne illustrates this through the Zulu greeting sawubona, meaning “I see you.” In Zulu culture, this phrase acknowledges a person’s full humanity—their pride, fear, and potential. In response, the other says shikoba, or “I exist because you see me.” In contrast, casual Western greetings (“hey,” “what’s up”) rarely affirm identity or presence. This, Rinne suggests, is the essence of invisible seeing—recognizing what others overlook and what culture hides in plain sight.

She contrasts how collectivist and individualist societies literally perceive the world differently. For instance, Japanese or Chinese respondents focus on scenes’ backgrounds, while Westerners fixate on the main subject. Even farming shapes sight: rice-cultivating cultures notice interdependence, while wheat farmers prize independence. By understanding what shapes our worldview, we expand it. As psychologist David Robson’s research shows (BBC, 2017), the more you widen your field of vision, the more creative and empathetic you become.

Privilege and the Blindness It Creates

Privilege, Rinne warns, is a major cause of invisible blindness. The more advantages you have, the more insulated you become—seeing your experience as normal and missing what others face. Checking privilege isn’t an exercise in guilt but in sight. It lets you see hidden systems of inequality and recognize the “invisible scaffolding” supporting some while excluding others. Without this awareness, empathy can never be complete.

Rinne’s own story—losing her parents—highlighted invisible kinds of privilege: the taken‑for‑granted blessing of having family, guidance, and safety nets. That loss also revealed invisible options: new communities, unexpected resilience, and a broader sense of family defined by choice rather than birth.

From Consumer to Citizen

One of the most striking invisibilities we live with, Rinne says, is how we see ourselves. Modern marketing transformed us from citizens—participants in humanity—to consumers, defined by what we buy. Yet the word “consume” originally meant “to destroy.” When our worth is measured by consumption, we literally consume the planet and ourselves. Reclaiming citizenship—seeing ourselves as contributors rather than customers—restores agency and community. Movements like the Citizen Shift echo this call, showing how language can reshape behavior.

Peripheral Vision and Intention

Rinne provides practical exercises for seeing what’s invisible: expanding peripheral vision, looking upside down (literally through handstands), and noticing what’s at the edges of attention. Anxiety narrows your sight—literally creating tunnel vision. Curiosity and calm expand it. Intention is the final piece: asking with curiosity instead of judgment. As Jane Goodall says, “What you do makes a difference; you have to decide what kind.” Seeing with intent transforms vision into wisdom.

“It’s easy to see the branches moving,” Rinne quotes activist Elaine Smith. “It takes practice to see the wind.”

To thrive in flux, she concludes, you must learn the art of invisible seeing—the kind that reveals not only injustice and bias but also hidden value, beauty, and potential. See beyond the visible, and you’ll start seeing a new future taking shape.

Have you ever felt lost and panicked, only to realize later that being lost led you somewhere better? In Get Lost, Rinne redefines disorientation as discovery. Getting lost, she says, is not losing your way but finding a new one. It’s how you expand your comfort zone, challenge fear, and grow through uncertainty.

Lost ≠ Failure

Western productivity culture treats lostness as failure—missed directions, mistakes, inefficiency. But Rinne flips this thinking. Getting lost can be intentional: a deliberate dive into new territory. Through her travels (from remote Bukovina to the highlands of Bolivia), she learned that being lost among strangers, languages, and landscapes cultivated humility and insight. When a Romanian grandmother invited her into her home assuming she was “lost,” Rinne discovered that kindness, curiosity, and connection transcend scripts.

Being lost, she notes, often means you’ve exceeded limits someone else drew for you—the boundaries of culture, control, or comfort. In a world of constant disruption, that’s exactly where you must go.

Crisis, Change, and Opportunity

Across cultures, lostness carries wisdom. In Chinese, the word wēijī (“crisis”) combines “danger” and “opportunity.” In Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi and kintsugi celebrate imperfection and repair. From Tibet’s bardo—the in‑between space of life and rebirth—to Nordic bildung schools designed to help citizens navigate industrial disruption through reflection, Rinne shows that cultures have long built scaffolds for getting lost wisely. Learning from such traditions gives us templates for transformation today.

From Fear to Curiosity

Fear of being lost is usually fear of losing control or identity. Yet curiosity thrives in uncertainty. Rinne’s father once told her, “The more different someone looks than you, the more interesting they are to get to know.” As a child, this reframed diversity from threat to adventure. Now, as an adult traveling the world, she sees cultural and emotional lostness as gateways to growth. Whether facing a career detour or existential fog, the key is to swap fear for fascination: What might I learn here?

Coddiwomple: Purposeful Wandering

Rinne delights in the quirky English word coddiwomple: to travel purposefully toward an unknown destination. It perfectly embodies the Flux Mindset. The coddiwompler doesn’t demand control; they navigate by curiosity, gathering insights and allies along the way. Like a sailor guided by shifting winds, being lost becomes movement with meaning. Purpose anchors you, not plans.

“The point of life is not to never get lost,” Rinne writes, “but to grow stronger each time you find your bearings.”

To get lost and flourish requires intentional disorientation: turn off the GPS, take a detour, or explore a new discipline. The more you practice lostness, the less you fear it. Your sense of direction becomes internal, your worldview expands, and your resilience deepens. In a world permanently in flux, losing your way might just be the best way to find yourself.

In a world where mistrust dominates headlines, Rinne’s fourth superpower—Start with Trust—calls for a bold reversal: assume good intent. This principle reshapes not only relationships but the entire architecture of society, business, and leadership.

The Trust Deficit

Rinne notes a global crisis of trust. We distrust governments, corporations, media, and even neighbors. Yet humanity has thrived for millennia on cooperation and faith in one another. Drawing from trust expert Rachel Botsman, she defines trust as “a confident relationship to the unknown.” Without it, change becomes paralyzing. When we design systems based on mistrust—legalese, surveillance, hierarchy—we strangle curiosity and creativity. That’s why, Rinne argues, mistrust is “death by a thousand cuts.”

Designing from Trust

Rinne contrasts old systems (founded on control and suspicion) with new models built from trust. Companies like Netflix, with a five‑word expense policy (“Act in Netflix’s best interests”), and BlaBlaCar, the ride‑sharing platform thriving on strangers’ goodwill, exemplify design from trust. Open‑source communities, microfinance networks, and Wikipedia all operate on the premise that most people are good. The results? High performance, innovation, and loyalty without coercion.

Indigenous wisdom, Rinne reminds us, has always understood this. Trust is relational: between humans, nature, and the future. The Sanskrit satya (truthfulness) and yogic ethics teach that trust is rooted in truth and integrity. Toltec philosophy’s “be impeccable with your word” mirrors this: authenticity sustains community more than control ever can.

Inequality and Mistrust

Mistrust flourishes wherever inequality grows. The wider the wage gap, the weaker the faith between people. From CEOs earning 300 times more than workers to colonial legacies dividing power, systems of inequality breed suspicion. But designing fairer, more transparent structures—like profit‑sharing or cooperative ownership—rebuilds communal confidence. The challenge, Rinne says, is not finding trustworthy people but creating conditions where trust can thrive.

Trust as Leadership Superpower

Modern leadership often confuses strength with control. True leaders, however, lead with trust, not over people. Vulnerability, once considered weakness, becomes a sign of courage. In both personal and organizational life, to start with trust means to believe in others’ goodness first. Yes, some will disappoint—but most will rise to the trust placed in them. And that, Rinne writes, is how change becomes collaborative rather than adversarial.

Trust is contagiously transformative. It turns competition into cooperation, fear into faith, and strangers into allies. “In flux we trust,” Rinne concludes—a quiet manifesto for rebuilding a fractured world one act of goodwill at a time.

How much is enough? Rinne’s fifth superpower takes direct aim at modern culture’s addiction to more. Knowing your “enough,” she says, is not about scarcity—but about sufficiency, peace, and freedom. When you stop chasing excess, you rediscover abundance where it’s always been: within and among us.

The Old Script of Never Enough

From childhood, we’re taught that success means maximizing everything—power, status, possessions. Yet this treadmill never ends. Rinne calls it “the cycle of more”: the pursuit of external validation that leaves us perpetually unsatisfied. Psychologists call this the “hedonic treadmill.” You adapt to new wealth or praise and immediately crave a new dose. Enoughness breaks that cycle by shifting focus from comparison to contentment.

As a child, Rinne learned both scarcity and resilience when her parents made her manage her own budget at age seven. That early lesson—living without certainty of “enough”—later evolved into insight: true security comes from meaning, not money. After their death, she had to redefine what “enough” love, safety, and courage meant to survive.

Too Much vs. Not Enough

Knowing your enough, Rinne explains, bridges the gap between overabundance and deprivation. It acknowledges privilege without guilt and poverty without despair. Culturally, she spotlights Sweden’s policy of “protecting people, not jobs,” which ensures citizens have enough security to embrace change—an example of systemic enoughness in action. She quotes architect Kevin Cavenaugh’s counter‑capitalist credo: “Greed is a little bit more than enough.” Designing economies—and lives—based on sufficiency, not excess, yields sustainability and trust.

From Productivity to Purpose

Rinne ties this idea to leadership. Leaders stuck in “more” create scarcity and mistrust. Leaders who know their enough foster fairness, shared prosperity, and well‑being. She urges organizations to replace endless growth metrics with measures of fulfillment and relationships. When workers feel valued “enough,” they’re more creative, loyal, and liberated from fear. As Daniel Pink’s research supports, people are motivated not by money beyond basic needs, but by autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Subtraction and Generosity

Rinne’s practical guidance: subtract before adding. Cancel one subscription, end one toxic habit, or declutter one space. Simplifying makes room for meaning. She also celebrates generosity as the ultimate expression of enough: indigenous potlatch traditions, where leaders give away wealth to uplift others, prove that giving doesn’t decrease abundance—it multiplies it. “To be more, give more,” she writes. Giving isn’t loss; it’s circulation.

From Happiness to Contentment

Finally, she distinguishes fleeting happiness from enduring contentment. Borrowing from Bhutan’s concept of chokkshay (“the knowledge of enough”), Rinne argues that peace arises from inner wholeness, not outer success. Knowing your enough means trusting that, right here and now, you have—and are—enough. In a world that demands constant upgrading, it’s revolutionary to feel complete.

Rinne’s seventh superpower reclaims something simple but radical: humanity itself. In an era of automation and algorithms, being human—vulnerable, empathetic, connected—is a competitive advantage. This chapter asks a provocative question: When technology does almost everything, what’s left that only humans can do? The answer: feel, relate, and serve.

The Tech-Human Imbalance

Screen time, automation, and digital overload have outpaced human adaptation. Teens spend over six hours daily on screens, loneliness rises, and empathy declines. But Rinne doesn’t advocate abandoning tech; instead, she calls for conscious balance. “Our relationship with technology mirrors our relationship with ourselves,” she writes. Disconnection from others begins as disconnection from our inner life.

Service and Suffering

In many Western cultures, suffering is treated as failure. Yet Rinne, drawing from her own grief, reframes pain as the gateway to compassion. Being human means embracing imperfection and serving others through empathy. She quotes Malcolm X: “When ‘I’ is replaced with ‘we,’ illness becomes wellness.” Service, she says, converts suffering into solidarity—the ultimate antidote to isolation.

Yin and Yang: Restoring Harmony

The old script celebrates yang—masculine, linear, dominating energy—while suppressing yin—feminine, receptive, nurturing energy. The result is imbalance: competition without compassion, leadership without empathy. Rinne calls on both men and women to “yin their yang” by embracing collaboration, inclusivity, and balance. Matriarchal systems, she notes, aren’t the reverse of patriarchy—they are egalitarian systems where power is shared, not hoarded. Restoring that equilibrium is essential to humane progress.

Digital Wisdom (DQ)

To thrive in a wired world, Rinne proposes a new kind of intelligence: DQ, or Digital Intelligence. Beyond IQ and EQ, DQ measures digital self‑awareness—how well you manage technology’s influence on your emotions, identity, and choices. Do you know who has your data, how you behave online, and when to unplug? High DQ doesn’t mean mastering code; it means mastering presence.

Being fully human, Rinne concludes, is both our greatest challenge and greatest gift. Algorithms may predict behavior, but only humans can choose kindness. In flux, that makes all the difference.

The final superpower is the most counterintuitive of all: letting go of the future. Rinne proposes that our obsession with control is the root of anxiety. The future, by definition, is unknowable. The more we cling to certainty, the more we suffer. Letting go isn’t giving up—it’s releasing what we can’t control to focus on what we can: our response, our agency, and our presence.

From Prediction to Preparation

Rinne advises shifting from trying to predict the future to preparing for multiple possible ones. As a futurist, she maps scenarios rather than outcomes. By drafting several possible “tomorrows,” she learned resilience: the future may change shape, but your values can stay steady. She encourages readers to adopt futurists’ tools—scenario mapping, mental rehearsals, and adaptive optimism—to hold uncertainty lightly.

In her own life, the death of her parents annihilated what she thought her future would be. Yet in the void, she found freedom to imagine new ones. Loss became a blank canvas, not an endpoint. “When I let go of what I am,” she writes with Lao Tzu’s words, “I become what I might be.”

Rethinking Control and Agency

Control, Rinne explains, is mostly an illusion—especially for those with privilege, who are accustomed to having choices. The paradox: the more options you have, the more terrified you become of losing them. Real power lies in surrender. Drawing from the yogic principle of aparigraha (non‑attachment), she suggests practicing “mental decluttering”—letting go of expectations, fears, and outcomes. Acceptance doesn’t mean passivity; it means redirecting your energy from resistance to creation.

The Worry Loop

Rinne candidly shares her decades‑long struggle with anxiety. For years she lived in what she calls the “worry fog,” constantly scanning for threats. Her breakthrough came when she realized she had no memory of feeling worry‑free. Therapy and mindfulness taught her to notice, welcome, and use her worry as data. Instead of fighting fear, she asked: What is this trying to teach me? This three‑step process—notice it, welcome it, use it—transforms fear from an enemy into a guide.

Begin Again

Every day, she writes, is an invitation to begin again. We can’t control tomorrow’s events, but we can control how open we are to them. Letting go allows life to unfold with grace. The future, like water, can’t be grasped—but it can be held gently. This surrender isn’t weakness; it’s mastery of the only power we ever truly have: how we choose to meet change.