What's IN your Mind is not what's ON your Mind

The expression« "What’s on your mind?” could beneficially be replaced by “What’s in your mind?”

Because what’s “in” has a great impact on what’s “on”!

Indeed, if a man is a “macho”, can gender equality be on his mind? And if a woman is a partisan of Women’s Lib, can she join a company or a group where the female population is exclusively hired to assist male executives?

If the idea of growth, profit and value capture have ben drilled in a Business person's Mind, he/she might have difficulties to put his/her mind on finding ways to make a Business thrives, whether or not it grows.

What we store in our minds are stories we have been told and trained to believe and respect. These early “engrams” can last for Life. Like in the metaphor of Plato’s cave, some people think shadows are Reality and never question them, because they are the Truth!

And then some “troublemakers” appear, and they challenge the accepted“Truth”. Why?  Because they have "seen" or imagined a new one!

They are usually arrested, tortured, sent to jail or to re-education camps, banned, or killed.

That’s how strong the power of the “Comfort Zone” can be!

But, in certain cases, the thinkers manage to survive and their theories with them. Some study the new approaches, experiment them and discover they are not only right but preferable! Indeed, the earth revolves around the sun! Indeed, Gravity exists, it is not the earth that sucks! Indeed, objects heavier than air can fly, even Man can fly…

Utopias become Reality and, instead of being impossible due to certain mindsets or certain levels of Knowledge, they move from the “impossible”to the “possible”!

How many geniuses have been tortured, burned, assassinated for imagining new Truths, new ways, new approaches?

Which new visionaries are going to find ways to save the Planet and Humanity and make people conscious of the necessary moves and changes, beyond their life span, so that future generations can go on living and enjoy new forms of Life?

Which new persuasive and exciting horizons are going to have to be imagined so that we agree to sacrifice some of our current comfort and replace them by various forms of altruistic Generosity?

Delayed, non-personally experienced benefits are difficult to imagine. They are also difficult to “push” because the traditional “what’s in it for me” is replaced by “what’s in it for them”.

 And who gives a damn about “them”? Too few of us apparently!

The patterning of the Futures

 We usually live with three “chronologies” in mind:

1 The Present

2 The Past

3 The Future.

We believe the Past influences our Present, and our Present influences the way we imagine the possible Futures.

What if the Future became the cause of the Present?

In other words, what if what we imagine as desirable Futures became so attractive and so exciting that we would start taking the necessary steps to make them happen starting today?

Of course, one of our main engrams is what we have been told time and again i.e. that no one can “predict” the Future.

Too rare are those who told us that we could prepare it! And yet we can !

This is when “detached” observation comes in

Detached from engrams, assumptions, beliefs, vocabulary, local mindsets and customs, attitudes, prejudices, religious “embargos”, cultural biases, lack of Imagination, Political and imaginary threats, Education systems, fear, force, etc. The stronger the detachment, the more our mental maps and our landscapes broaden and our freedom to think “different” increases. As Albert Einstein once said:

“Logic will take you from A to B.Imagination will take you anywhere!”.

But how many schools, colleges and universities have a faculty dedicated to the transmission and the development of Imagination?

Hence, patterning the Future is often an evolution of the Present “tinted” by the Past, limiting the “discomfort” zone to the minimum.

So, what can we do? A cognitive Reboot

Unlearn and Re-Imagine to open the doors to new perceptions.

Our Life is an adventure in perceptions. Indeed, we don't see the world "as it is"; we see it through  our own filtering glasses, i.e. our beliefs, assumptions and worldviews. These are  the "doors of perceptions" through which we build our representation of Reality, our own Meaning-making story of "what is" true and of what is possible. David Bohm, one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20^th century called perceptions “Theories of the Mind" to clearly indicate that they are our hypothesis and should not be considered as "truths".

So sometimes, we need to admit that our entire belief system is just a "belief" system. It may have helped us to make sense of the world and act efficiently but it might also become a set of completely inappropriate "maps" that dont help us navigate a changing world. At that point, we need a deep cleanse of our own belief system. We have to take off our narrowing glasses and look at the world as if we were a cognitive new born. That is the type of cognitive reboot Descartes has done:

"Some years ago, I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them.I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again, right from the foundations, if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last”. René Descartes

Unlearning is eliminating all the old and unnecessary “furniture” placed in our minds and occupying space, maintaining obsolete “boxes” and preventing new and “out of the boxes” connections to happen.

Unlearning is also switching off the "auto-pilot", taking the time to identify our thinking highways and routines so that we can escape from them.

What's in our mind are just ideas about realities. Good or bad ideas, but just "ideas" that we might want to "play with" and change.

It all starts by Education in Efficient Thinking and Serious Creativity, the development of a strong desire for better Futures, and the development of effective strategies in Fun-raising.

‍The Future is about re-learning, and re-imagining!

Re-learning about everything: Creativity, Innovation, Thinking, Doing, Contributing, Work-netting, Fun-raising, Shaping, Futuring…

Re-imagining is about Education and the systems around it: Methods, Curriculums, Organization, Ways and Means, Qualities and Skills of the Transmitters, Styles of Transmission, Vocabulary, Schedules, Locations, Evaluations, and the vital passage from the current “formatting” approach to the desirable Education (*) Vision.

The Future(s) can be made visible, desirable, and actionable!

Viable and exciting Futures are possibles.They depend on our capacities to make deep changes in the ways we see and think. Instead of staying stuck with what we have IN our mind, we need to make a creative deconstruction of our assumptions and ideas. We need to adopt creative lenses to get unstuck and develop new perceptions of what is true, what is needed, what is possible and desirable.

These are radical changes: we call them "Shifts in Minds for Shifts in Action". They will change what's ON your mind and help you actively Shape your Future by accomplishing 4 movements:

1. SEE  and decode a World - which is largely unknown - with fresh lenses
2. SENSE new opportunities and emerging needs
3. SEIZE them creatively and develop a Vision for the Future
4. SHAPE reality in new ways

Let’s put our hearts and our minds together and do it!