How can we flourish and thrive in a world that moves faster than us?

Are You Feeling Overwhelmed?
Do You Feel the World Is Evolving Faster Than You Can Keep Up?

Well… it is. And the question that follows is perhaps the most important of our time: now what?

Across the world, there's a general malaise being felt. People tell me they feel exhausted, stretched thin, as if they’re trying to stay upright on ground that keeps shifting beneath their feet. Days fly by and the expectations relentless. Even the most resilient among us admit that something about modern life is deeply unsettling.

Does this sound familiar? If your answer is yes, you should know that you are not alone feeling this. The world “is” evolving faster than you can keep up.

A recent review in Biological Reviews by Longman and Shaw (2025) brings this into sharp focus. The authors explain that our bodies evolved to thrive in environments that looked nothing like the ones we inhabit today. In but a second on the 24-hour clock of evolutionary history, industrialisation has reshaped almost every aspect of our world – from the food we eat to the air we breathe, the light that surrounds us, the rhythms of our days, the work we do, and the complexity of our challenges and choices. The Environmental Mismatch Hypothesis suggests that many of today’s health problems arise because the world around us has changed far too quickly for our biology to follow.

To cope with these pressures, the body relies on remarkable adaptive processes. The brain responds; neurological and hormonal systems shift; some muscles tense while others relax; vascular changes redistribute glucose and nutrients; behaviour adjusts; and countless internal mechanisms activate autonomously to help us meet a demand. This ability to adapt and at the same time maintain homeostasis – a stable internal environment – has been one of our greatest assets for survival. But even our greatest assets have limits. When demands become too intense or too constant, and when there is too little time to recuperate, our buffering systems begin to falter. And once they can no longer keep us stable, the only natural pathway left is long-term evolutionary change through natural selection. Yet natural selection unfolds over thousands of years, while the pressures we face today emerge and transform within a single lifetime. Some forms of change – especially technological change – now accelerate in cycles of mere months, some even weeks.

We are biologically tuned to the tempo of nature, yet we now live in an era where technology sets the tempo. Our body and brain are shaped by habituation – by a preference for constancy, incremental change, predictable rhythms, and signals we can clearly interpret. Instead, we face information overload, perpetual connectivity, fragmented attention, uncertain futures, and expectations that never truly end. However, the environmental mismatch Longman and Shaw talk about is only part of the story.
For more than a decade, I have been speaking about the growing conflict between the world we evolved for and the world we are living in. As an osteopath and Fitfull Futures Explorer, I’ve seen how this mismatch manifests most clearly in the stress-response – and how it lies at the root of many of the physical and mental health problems my patients present with. Put simply: their bodies are failing not because they are weak or broken, but because they are trying to function in conditions they were never designed for.

Over time, these observations led me to develop The Reaset Approach, and later concepts such as eustasis – the good balance between biology and culture – and Evolopsis, the idea that humans must begin to evolve on purpose if they want to flourish and thrive in a fast-changing world. These ideas go a step beyond the Environmental Mismatch Hypothesis.

Because while their review helps us understand the situation we are in, it doesn’t answer the question that matters most today – What can we actually do about it?

Biology cannot evolve fast enough. So what now?
How can we flourish and thrive in a world that moves faster than us?

That is the question I’ve been working on. My view is that we need a new form of adaptation – not genetic, not passive, but conscious. We need to evolve on purpose. Natural selection will not catch up. Thus we must develop our capacity for eustasis – the ability to adapt and manage change while staying healthy in body, mind, and spirit – so we can flourish and thrive no matter the scenario of the future or the speed at which it unfolds.

But before we do, we need to know what we want and what we need to experience eustasis.
We need to discover the potential, traits, and qualities that already reside in us – the parts of us that can be developed and intentionally evolved.

This is what I call our “DNA for the Future” – the elements that Do Not Alter, yet can be expressed in different ways to offer stability through change.

I talk to my patients about this idea, and I brought it as a concept to the Dubai Future Forum held on 18–19 November 2025. I shared it in conversations with everyone I met and addressed it whenever I could take the microphone. I always ended with a deceptively simple yet deeply provocative question we are not asking ourselves: What would an ideal day be like in 100 years’ time?

Almost everyone resonated with the idea, and the feedback I received was that although they had never heard of it, it felt as if they had “always known” it. Perhaps you feel this too, that what I’m saying isn’t new, yet until you read about it, you had never thought of it. That moment of recognition is what I call resonaissance – when something feels both new and familiar, like an awakening of something already within you.

I may be sidetracking a little here, but I want to give a big shout-out to my dad, Peter Meyers, who sent me the article “Le monde moderne évolue trop vite pour notre corps, qui n’arrive plus à suivre le rythme” (Slate, 26 November 2025), which led me to the paper by Longman and Shaw. It reflects exactly what I have been saying for years and highlights something we urgently need to focus on.

Because as the evidence in my practice continues to mount – not year after year, but month after month – one message becomes increasingly clear:

What are we going to do about it?
How are we going to address the conflict between biology and culture?
How are we going to resolve an evolutionary mismatch in our software within a lifetime?

We are not powerless – we are human. I believe that within us already resides the potential to overcome this dis-ease. But it means we must stop leaving our evolution, our future, to chance.
We need to evolve from, with, and on purpose.

As His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum reminds us, “The future belongs to those who can imagine it, design it, and execute it. It isn’t something you await, but rather create.” We have created our environment and our culture – now it is time to futurize ourselves.

I believe this conversation must take centre stage and become part of a global dialogue: What do we need and want? How do we create a future where humans flourish and thrive without becoming technology? How do we evolve on purpose?

We need to carry this conversation forward until we meet again at next year’s Dubai Future Forum – and wouldn’t it be a missed opportunity if it wasn’t on the agenda?

How can humans evolve in pace with – or even ahead of – cultural and technological change?

This question could be the theme that ties together all areas of the programme – Exploring the Unknown, Empowering Societies, Reimagining Health, Optimising Systems, and Foresight Insights – and could even inspire the short story competition.

We need solutions.
We need to change how we move forward.
We cannot leave our future to chance.
We must create a DNA for our future so we can evolve on purpose and cultivate eustasis.

Our future – and the future of generations to come – depends on what we decide and do today.

We already know what the problem is.
We already know what will unfold if we do nothing.
We cannot let that scenario be the one that becomes reality.

The future is ours to shape and create – together, from, with, and on purpose.