Yesterday I received a list of
questions from a reader who's doing a university research project on
me. His questions probed what caused me to quit my job last year, to
put my own house in order and to start doing some things that might
actually help save the world. It was a bit like being on the
psychiatrist's couch. One of the resources the researcher used to get
background on me was my About the Author
bio, the link to which is on my right sidebar. He was mostly interested
in the self-critical way I described myself in my youth, possibly
because he suspected that my Man in the Mirror
self-criticism might have been an essential step to self-change. But in
re-reading this bio I realized there was something else about it that
had driven me to change my life: I had written the bio as an obituary
from the future, describing not only the main elements of my life so
far, but also the main elements of my life to come. By writing my 'obituary', my future story, I had made an irrevocable and very public commitment to make that story come true.
Of course, I have made that tacit commitment often in my blog, not just in that strange autobiography:
- I have committed
to either selling our house and building a new, exemplary, energy- and
space-efficient one, or making our existing house more
energy-efficient. I'm making progress on the latter.
- I have committed
to live simpler, consuming and wasting less, buying smarter, and buying
local. I've made great progress on this, cutting my ecological
footprint almost in half this year.
- I have made a commitment to complete my novel, The Only Life We Know, set in the future, which describes a better way to live. It's coming along, and my other book project, Natural Enterprise, is now complete.
- I have made a commitment that my next career will be more
socially and environmentally responsible, will give back much more, and
will be better suited to what I do best (idea
transfer,
the ability to take an idea or invention or creation
from one discipline and conceive of how it might be practically applied
in a completely
different discipline), than my last one. I'm still resolute about this,
though it's not easy, and my wife is a bit worried about how long it's
taking. The challenge is an ironic one: The process I describe in Natural Enterprise,
of finding a need and filling it, has worked for so many but doesn't
work for me, because what I do best, and what I want to do, doesn't yet
meet a perceived urgent business need. I'm too far ahead of the curve,
I guess.
- And I have made a commitment to set an example for the next generation, by setting up a Model Intentional Community and by teaching the young
about Gaia -- the worldview that Earth is a single, self-organizing and
self-regulating organism that knows better than any single species, and
shows us, how we should all live -- and then teaching them Critical
Thinking skills, and finally showing them how to make a meaningful,
joyous, self-sufficient living by creating Natural Enterprises.
In making all these commitments I have been, in my own head, writing my
own future story. One of the skills I learned in consultant school was
Future State Visioning, a process that goes like this:
- Write
a plausible story, set in the future, that describes in day-in-the-life
style, how things would operate if you were able to overcome all your
current obstacles, take optimal advantage of the resources and
opportunities available to you, and respond effectively to anticipated
changes in the outside world between now and then.
- Perform a current state assessment that identifies all of
the obstacles and 'gaps' that would need to be overcome in order to
achieve this future vision.
- Develop a plan that addresses each of these obstacles and gaps.
- Develop a scorecard that measures your progress from the current state to the future state you have envisioned.
It's a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea. Rather
than setting objectives, goals, missions, and other abstractions that
you know will never be achieved (and which you probably wouldn't
recognize even if they were), you write a story that illustrates, in
concrete, understandable terms, what life would be like in your
organization if you did all the right things the right way.
The same four-step process works just as well for individuals as it
does for organizations. In fact, it's even simpler: By writing your own
'future' story, the obstacles and gaps and plans and measures that
stand between here to there will be pretty obvious. You only really
need to do Step One, writing the story.
In my experience the hardest part is making it both transformational
and plausible. If you're an idealist like me, you tend to believe everything
is plausible. As my wise friend Jon Husband keeps reminding me, you
need to appreciate the difference between possible and plausible. It's
possible you'll win the lottery or meet a rich, brilliant and loving
person who will whisk you away to your definition of paradise. But it's
not plausible, not likely even under the most auspicious of
circumstances. However, if you're a pessimist, or if you're having a
depressing day, your future story will fall far short of What Could Be,
and won't be enough to inspire you (in fact it might even discourage
you). It's a balancing act, one that requires a bit of courage, a lot
of imagination, a sense of dissatisfaction with the way things are, and
a willingness to make a commitment to yourself to try to achieve the
vision your story reveals.
There are those who believe that the mere process of imagining What Could Be, of sensing and affirming its possibility, already starts to impel you along the path to its realization. Scott Adams of Dilbert
fame always had a future state vision of himself as a famous
cartoonist, and he says that's all he ever needed. No resolutions, no
detailed plans, no personal scorecards, just a constant imagining of
himself there, and the rest took care of itself.
Courage, imagination, dissatisfaction, and willingness to make a
commitment to yourself. If you have these four qualities, your future
story is waiting to be written. Leave it unwritten, or let others write
it for you, and you will merely get to where you are already headed.
Write your own story, and you just might find you're on your way to
What Could Be.
The truth about stories is that that's all we are. What will your story be?
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
