We are what we think - a recipe for hope from your own head

When you want to become more hopeful about your own life, it really helps to open up your ears to the silent dialog you have with yourself all day long, for example every time you look into a mirror. Many of us, particularly women, will hear themselves say things that suggest that there is something wrong with them, something lacking, that they are not enough just the way they are. It requires conscious effort to stop the flow of nasty remarks and try to look at ourselves with appreciation, but I know from personal experience that it can make a massive contribution to shifting your entire perception of who you are in the world. One of my favorite quotes is "The grass is greener where you water it." In other words, what we give our attention to grows. Unfortunately, this is true for both positive and negative things. If you focus on all that's wrong with your life, the negative things are going to grow and all that's positive is going to wilt without the water of your attention. We are what we think.

While I've been familiar with this pattern on a personal basis for a while, it didn't occur to me that you can apply it to the world at large, and to all the pressing issues that humanity is confronted with. Then I came across two very different books that both essentially argue that it is possible to reimagine the future - develop a new dream for the future - and that this is exactly what we need to do if we want to turn things around.

In "The Soul of Money", Lynne Twist argues that we've been living the myth of scarcity for a very long time. We are all trapped in the thought pattern of there is not enough, more is better and that's just the way it is. Instead of appreciating what we have and living from a place of enough, we constantly chase after money and material goods to alleviate the sense of lack that permeates our lives. Interestingly, this is also true for very rich people. Even they never reach the state of enough unless they start looking at their lives from a perspective of sufficiency. Lynne Twist demonstrates that it is possible to overcome scarcity thinking and no longer let money dominate you, but make your money and the way you use it an expression of your deepest values. Once you realize that there actually are other ways to live, a different world becomes possible - a world in which there is enough for everyone, a "you-and-me world" instead of a "you-or-me world", as she calls it. A world in which "more" is no longer the paradigm would be a world without excessive consumption and the massive exploitation of the earth's resources caused by it.

One of the central questions Rob Hopkins asks in "From What Is to What If - Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future we Want" is What if things turned out ok? It struck me when I read this that I was struggling to even admit this was a possibility. I believe that many of us are so overwhelmed by the probable impact of climate change that we get stuck in hopelessness and passivity. In that state of mind you will find it very hard to take positive action, because making a positive contribution requires having positive energy. Rob Hopkins shows in his book how harnessing the imagination and tapping into human creativity can restore hope to people and bring about rapid and unexpected change. A new dream for the world - or some part of the world surrounding you - is key because by imagining a positive future you bring this possibility into being. Focusing on a positive dream also frees up a lot of energy that would otherwise be spent worrying about all that's going wrong.

Having a dream shows us which parts of our mental garden we need to be watering and which parts no longer deserve our attention. It inspires us to act in order to make the dream come true. What is a dream that you can start turning into a reality?

Inspiration:

Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money
Rob Hopkins, From What Is to What If - Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want