How to get excited about the Future
The future can be overwhelming.
Depending on your information diet, you might be watching the daily disaster show on television or social media. You might have read enough Sci-Fi to realize that most of those future visions are dystopian in nature, not painting a particularly bright picture of the future.
And it’s real out there. From climate change to the rise of AI, from economic collapse to political mayhem, there are many worrying future trends.
How do you remain optimistic about the future?
“A pessimist is a well-informed optimist,” Mark Twain said.
Being an optimist does not mean being Pollyanna slap happy and ignorant.
There are three simple steps to stepping into Creating the Future from an optimistic place:
- Forgive yourself and others
- Become present
- Invoke the future
Forgive yourself and others
Attachment to the past prevents us from stepping into the future.
The first step is to let go of the past. Forgive yourself and others for anything that has happened.
Realize all of life is innocently exploring its purpose.
We are all part of a multi-billion year old process of life exploring itself. We are simply the apex of our current reality.
Whatever has happened in the past has been there to get us here.
Find gratitude for all that has happened, “good” and “bad”. All happened to create this moment.
Allow yourself to grief, to feel all you need to feel to make peace with the past.
Get present
What are you feeling right now? What is happening for you? Check in with yourself, this moment. Look around the room. What do you see? What all is around you?
Find your feet on the ground. Scan through your body. What are you sensing?
What are you feeling right now? Are you feeling safe? Can you choose to feel safe?
What thoughts are present for you? What is coming up as you are reading this? What judgements are you making?
Whose judgements are these? How valid are they right now?
What wants to emerge? What wants to come through you?
Take a few deep breaths and find the stillness of the moment, of being here, right now.
Connect to gratitude that you are here, in this moment, that you get to experience life.
Invoke Future
The future is uncertain. Nobody knows what the future holds — unless they work to create it.
“The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented… It was man’s ability to invent which has made human society what it is.” — Dennis Gabor
Once you let go of the past and have become present, you can choose which possible future you want to focus on.
Imagine the best version of yourself in the future.
- How are you showing up in space? How is that person standing? — Stand like that.
- What are you feeling? What does success feel like? What does meaning, what does bliss feel like? — Allow yourself to explore feeling that.
- What is on your mind? What are some of the thoughts you would be thinking about yourself? About life? — Think those thoughts.
- What kind of people are around you? What community do you have? — Reach out and start building a community that supports you.
- What are you doing to feed your genius? To create time and space to play, to imagine, to coax out what wants to emerge. — Start making time to express.
- What vision do you hold? What is the best future you can see? — Imagine it. Keep exploring it in ever more detail.
Indulge in envisioning it. Even if you have a hard time “seeing” it, focus on how you would feel or what you would be thinking.
Experience how great it feels. Drop that emotional anchor into the future.
Then take one step into that direction.
What is one small thing you can do right now that will move you toward that direction?
If you keep orienting your decisions in every moment on the future self you want to experience, you will know that you are always on the path.
Isn’t that exciting?
I turn people on to themselves and their capacity to create. More at http://philiphorvath.com
