I came upon a fork in the road and I took the one that led to the life of my dreams. While I may walk long days, I smile knowing that my every step is one taken in the right direction.
Our life is lived one moment at a time. Each moment is complete with all of the life that we will ever know.
Just think about it, you have never physically traveled to the past because it is no more. And you’ve never traveled to the future because it is yet to come. We live in an eternal now that stretches from our first breath to the last.
While it’s true that we can never be in the past or the future, we all have somewhere we are coming from, and somewhere we are going to. I call this the ever-present past and the ever-present future. They are both visions about about time, the time that is no longer and the time that is not yet. These visions or narratives feel very real and have real life impacts.
Sometimes it feels that your vision of your past dictates how we see and understand who we are. You might consider that the vision your have of your own the future is even more powerful in how you see yourself and your life. Just think of the times that you made a brave decision to do something new and exciting with your life. It’s likely that the days, weeks and months leading up to and for many days after, you were filled with energy and enthusiasm.
Regardless of whether or not you’ve had this experience, we have all felt the dread hand of anticipating a negative future. Visiting a relative that makes you uncomfortable, a past lover who caused you trauma or having to make a move for work to a place you really don’t want to live.
While these personal futures clearly shape your experience of life day to day, the larger societal futures shape our collective experience of life. When the economy is booming we want to invest in the stock market and go out for a nice meal. When there is a threat of war or violence we seek protect ourselves and our loved ones. We stock up on essentials so we are prepared for the worst.
Most of us would think that these societal futures swing from positive to negative and back again. Yet, if you think about it our current narratives about the future are almost entirely negative. Hollywood would have us think that either the zombies or the robots are going to wipe us out. Today’s media is driven to grab your attention. One way to get your attention is to trigger your reptile brain with fear and outrage. Take a moment and scroll your news feed and see that a vast majority of the articles are either doom and gloom or you won’t believe what so and so have done this time.
We live in a sea of negative futures. Many of us, if not most of us, struggle to maintain good mental health. Many happiness experts have suggested that we cut out our exposure to the news completely.
For years I have personally struggled with this. I’m crave information and read everything I can get my hands on, especially the news. On the days that I spend more than fifteen minutes reading the news, I feel heart sick and bit icky. Every time I feel this way I wonder, where is all the good news? It must be out there somewhere. It is, if you go digging for it.
That is why I started PROOF. It is a curated magazine of news that is PROOF of a positive, desirable and even thriving future. When I read these PROOF positive articles the world suddenly doesn’t seem so dark.
In fact there are many many uplifting discoveries and projects that give me inspiration and keep me working towards a better future for all.
In the end there are both dark things and inspirational things happening on this planet. Objectively we should have some awareness of the whole spectrum of information. This give us the ability to make sense of the world and make good decisions about our lives.
The real discovery is that your vision of the future is more important the narrative that you are fed about it. If you want a fulfilling life with meaning and sense that you matter, you will need some vision of a positive future calling you forward.
Ultimately you are what you pay attention to…where you consciously put your attention. Transform what you pay attention to and you will transform who you are and what you are capable of doing in this world.
In the meantime, we’ll be looking for PROOF of a thriving future for humanity.
The Generative Futurist
Editor PROOF
P.S. I would love you to follow our Podcast, subscribe to us on Youtube, sign up for the PROOF email and subscribe if you love reading PROOF
Proof 39 – Creating a Positive Future Today
In the News:
PROOF in ACTION – Ten Steps to Generate a Positive Future
Like plants, we all grow towards the light or wilt, suffer and survive in the darkness. The challenge in these chaotic times is finding the light. We are surrounded by visions of doom and gloom futures, with threats coming from every direction.
One way out of this Catch-22 is to create the light for yourself. That is often difficult to do in the moment, as the current circumstances could be pretty bad — you don’t want to fall into the trap trying to be positive regardless of the circumstances.
The future is a place where you can be positive without this pitfall. The future doesn’t yet exist, so you are free to imagine anything you want about it. Why not imagine positive futures? The more you do so with a clear focus and an intention to bring about positive futures, the more light you produce for yourself and for the world.
Here are 10 steps you can take to generate a positive future:
- Start with what is really desirable for you. While your first thought might be to want a future with “a-million-dollars”, you would be better off considering what about the money would be good for your life; freedom, escaping scarcity, being generous, working on what you love rather than what pays the bills. This is the underlying state that is the desirable future.
- Consider how the future state changes your life, your behavior and actions. You know you have imagined a positive future when you can clearly see that you life would be better in all ways, rather that better in someways and worse in others.
- What is the effect on your community, your city, country or world if this future state was realized? Powerful positive futures impact the world around us. If you can’t see how your future impacts the greater world then go back to step one.
- Decide on a by-when this future will be realized. Small futures can be realized in months. Bigger ones may require years. Audacious futures can even take multiple lifetimes.
- Standing in the future look backwards and plan out the steps it would take to get there. Start in the future and look one step back — What is the step that got me here? Then take another step back in time and ask again — What is the step that got me here? Do this until you know what your first step is.
- Write this plan down and share it with others. This might include friends and family for personal futures, and outside experts for larger futures. Take the input and include it in your plan. Don’t be attached to the timeframe. If the future is going to take more time than you originally thought then move the by-when.
- Take the first step. This is the critical move. If you can take one step in the direction of your future, no matter how small, you will have PROOF that realizing your future is possible.
- Seek out feedback from your first step and every step you take. None of us know what we don’t know until we discover it. Take in this new information and make adjustments to your plan and actions.
- Repeat the cycle: Imagine the future. Determine the by-when. Make a plan. Take a step. Collect feedback. Make adjustments. Doing this over and over reliably through time has you realize the future.
- Wake up every morning knowing that today you are working on your positive future. You are growing towards the light.
Any fool can tell you how the world is going to end. That path leads nowhere we want to go. Make the choice to strike out towards a positive future for yourself and the world. That one action will make all the difference in your life.
Imagine what the world would be like if we all did this together. Now that’s a positive future I’m interested in generating.
May this information inspire you to generate a thriving future for humanity and a thriving life for yourself. For more resources please check out our Podcast and Youtube channel.
-The Bold.ly Now Team
BOLD.LY NOW is a movement of co-creative up-levelers who have a burning desire to step free of our collapsing world & take the most daring leap forward to a thriving world.
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PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project
The Generative Futures Initiative
Generating a Thriving Future for All
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