The election in the U.S. and events unfolding in other countries around the world have been sources of anxiety and distress for many people. Sometimes, events escalate to the point where it feels possible to lose a sense of hope for the future. I’ve just finished participating in an on-line forum where we focused on subtle activism and how to engage change in ways of being and acting that don’t feed destructive emotions or tendencies.
Because of my almost 35 years of working with the optimal future self, whenever I feel overwhelmed or filled with a loss of hope, I remind myself that there are many probable futures available in the quantum realm of possibility. I also remind myself to orient myself to internally reach out to my optimal future, as well as to the optimal future of my country, my government, as well as to an optimally healthy earth.
In an interview I listened to recently, a woman recounted ways in which the future has surprised us again and again. The only example I remember, even though she offered a few of them, was about South Africa at the end of Apartheid. She reminded the interviewer that there was no way anyone would ever have imagined that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison and that he would then become leader of the country. This got me to thinking about optimal future possibilities and it was good to have examples of how this dynamic has played out in our lives.
For this week’s experiment, I invite you to explore your relationship with hope as a dynamic element of an engaged life. How do you relate to hope? Do you allow yourself to consider hope even as you also have mixed feelings, perhaps fear, anger, or doubt as you do so? Remember, if you can support a commitment to wholeness, it’s essential to allow all the colors of your emotional rainbow to be part of your awareness. One needn’t cancel out the other. It’s possible to tap into hope even when there’s grief, anger, or a sense of helplessness.
One of the reasons I’ve always resonated with the concept of optimal futures is that it relieves me of having to know what’s ahead, of having to figure out anything, and of having to have a sense of what’s coming. The realm of optimal futures resides in an as-yet-to-be-realized dimension of possibility and, for me, that’s really helpful, as it gets me out of the way. I don’t have to worry about whether I’ve made up something. Instead, I invite myself to “call on” my optimal future self, or an optimal future environment that’s available to me. Then, it’s a matter of saying “yes” to that each day without trying to figure out what it means.
In this experiment, I invite you to deepen whatever your own relationship to hope might be, and to allow it to become an even more enlivened essence in your life. I’ve said many times, and will again and again, I’m sure, that where we focus our attention and awareness is where we resonate. The frequencies, thoughts, and feelings with which we resonate shape the quality of our lives and this experiment invites you to feel into what qualities that resonate with hope can become even more available to you as part of your everyday activities and ways of being.
As with all these experiments, curiosity is a very handy companion to have along the way, as it invites a state of discovery. Judgment, on the other hand, tends to close things down, so please remember to pat judgments on the head as they arise, and allow them to simply move on through as if they were a bird flying by.