“What’s possible” is far more important than “what is”
“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” ― Gloria Steinem
I love Michael Beckwith’s recent description of the mass media. He called it a “weapon of mass deception.”
He also said that instead of calling it news, we should call it “olds” because it tells a dying story, an antiquated anomaly that only exists because we continue to place our attention upon it.
What if instead we woke up every morning to different stories? Stories about all the spontaneous healings from the last 24 hours, stories about all the relationships that have recently been reunited, about philanthropic acts, about new innovations and creativity, about all the good that is taking place on the planet.
If we were bombarded with stories like this instead of stories about the lowest common denominator, our awareness would expand. We’d literally re-engineer, as Beckwith called it, our imaginations. We’d come to expect ever more good, more cooperation, more compassion.
The current news media wires our nervous systems for worse case scenarios. We actually believe and expect bad things to happen. We think that’s normal.
It’s not.
As always, we have a choice. We can place our attention on the news (AKA the “olds”) or we can dream of what can be. By placing our attention on new possibilities, we animate a completely different future.
Here are the headlines I’m envisioning for today:
New Zika cases around the world fall to zero
U.S. Democrats and Republicans hug it out on the Senate floor
The Middle East celebrate 10 years of peaceful coexistence
Snows return to Kilimanjaro
Pam Grout appears on Super Soul Sunday
Tell me in the comments section below: What’s your new headline?
Pam Grout is the author of 18 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the about to be released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy