October 18, 2007

In my experience, I’ve found that one’s perspective most definitely determines their actions. For example, if you’re feeling gloomy and you think the future holds nothing different, then you will have an entirely opposite outlook, attitude, and set of actions then if you’re feeling optimistic and you think the future is malleable or in your control.

“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be,” said Abraham Lincoln, and I’m sure you can look into specific periods of your life when this is true.

For an example, at one point in my life, while travelling with my teammates from the Odyssey World Trek for Service and Education, we hit a major low. We were holed up in Buenos Aires, after having spent six months traversing the Americas. All of us were sharing a hotel room. We were short on funding, we had some equipment damage, and we weren’t sure that we would be moving forward with our next destination. We were also tired and sick (sure indicators of stress!), and we had a general feeling of lethargy, fear, and helplessness. It’s times like these when that attitudinal shift makes the biggest difference.

As a group, we decided to shift our focus away from the doom-and-gloom mentality and instead dedicate ourselves to excellence to our task at hand. We took time out for rest and recuperation. With that renewed vigor, we started to find new, interesting, and inspiring ideas for dispatches, interviewees, and organiations to visit. We repaired equipment and took care of our physical selves. With that shift in focus, we kept moving forward, and we did end up proceeding to our next destination (Capetown). The team ended up completing the trek 18 months later after visiting an additional thirty countries.

“Fake it till you make it,” is a good motto to use. If you believe in something wholeheartedly, and you truly act in accordance with that vision, you will see definite progress in your life. This might mean making some tough changes to your current choice of actions, though, so consider what you want before you go for it.

When we are in difficult situations (see my post on Dealing with Difficult Times) we tend to constrain ourselves into thinking that our perceived reality, at that time, is in fact the only reality.

What comforts me are the insights from quantum physicists, like Michio Kaku, who actually tell us that we envision the world as a multiverse, with infinite probabilities and simulatenously existing situations.

From a television interview with Kaku:

“Imagine you’re in a room and many radio frequencies are in the same room. Your radio is turned into one frequency but you’re very comfortable being in a room with many frequencies, right? But you tune into one.

“Well these frequencies are now wave functions. In this room there’s the wave function of dinosaurs… in this room! Because they never died 65 million years ago! Because a cosmic event prevented the extinction of the dinosaurs!

“In this room, there’s the wave function of aliens, because perhaps aliens decide to colonize the Earth millions of years ago.

“In this room, there’s the wave function of Alexander the Great, perhaps he came all the way to the Americas instead of being… just conquering most of the old world. Think about it. Your mind goes crazy!

“This is the multiverse. So, Welcome to the multiverse.”

In any given moment, we have an opportunity to choose from an infinite number of options in our lives. It is soothing to me to know that somehwere, someplace “out there” may be another me who chose a different option during one of those diverging points. Perhaps in the multiverse, my fellow Trekkers and I did give up and fly home to California, ending the project six months after it started. Perhaps, in the multiverse, I ended up in a different family of origin, with different parents. Perhaps I remained single, or married someone else. Perhaps, in the multiverse, I went to a different school, or took a different job…. the possibilities are endless, and you yourself in this very moment are the sum total of all the choices you’ve made up until this point.

If our vision of the future is bleak, then I assure you our shared reality of the future will be bleak. If our vision of the future is positive, enriching, collaborative, and filled with understanding, care for the environment and our planet, then I assure you our shared reality of the future will be filled with peace, prosperity, and wellness.

I prefer to focus on the positive, and I encourage you to do so, too.