Life feels heavy right now, doesn’t it? Between the ongoing effects of the pandemic, advancing climate change and impossible rises in the cost of living, many of us probably feel like burying our heads in the sand.
It’s so easy to feel like nothing’s going to change. But there’s a hack for that.
Raise your hand if you – consciously or unconsciously – imagine things simply getting worse in the future? I know I often do.
The thing is, that reality doesn’t exist yet. It’s in our heads.
What if we imagined a better future? And took steps towards making it a reality?
From what is to what if
This is the premise of my latest read, “From What Is to What If” by Rob Hopkins.
Hopkins starts off with some fascinating information about how stress affects our brains and stops us being able to imagine and create. With all the collective stress of the world right now, it’s not surprising that many of us aren’t feeling very imaginative or creative.
But if we can create the right conditions and steal moments of imagination – where our mind can wander and think “what if” – we can start creating a better world.
Imagination for everyone
Needless to say, reading this book has inspired me to start imagining my own vision of a better world.
I partly wanted to do this for myself – to harness some positivity and perhaps clarify some ideas for action I could take in my own life and community.
But also, my job is to write for organisations who want to make a difference. And as I recently wrote about – if we’re going to get people on board with our visions, we need to inspire them, not scare them.
So I want to get into the habit of regularly flexing my imagination and writing about new ideas in a compelling way.
This is the first in a series of posts I’m going to call my “imagine series”. It was originally going to be just one post, but my brainstorm got so big that I realised I was going to have to break it down into separate areas.
But if that’s how many ideas one person has, just think about all the ideas brimming in our collective imaginations!
Look out for my upcoming posts on my ideas for community, transport, housing, childcare, sustainability and more.
I’d love to hear what you think and maybe even inspire you to write your own “imagine” posts.