14 May The future should be ridiculous
Okay. Let’s take a poll.
When you think about the future what is your default feeling/thought/belief?
If someone asks you (like I am right now ?) what do you think will happen in your future? How would you respond? Do you have a timeframe for “future”?
What if I was more specific: What do you think will be your situation in 10, 5 or even 1 year?
What then? What images? Hopes? Dreams come up for you?
Why am I asking you this?
I was reading some research which had me realize there’s a Healing Spiral …
When I reflect on my conversations with people who describe what they experience at the beginning of their healing … versus those who consider themselves in the midst of it all … and see what shifts in perspective there are for those who have experienced “rounding the corner” to choose one possible metaphor.
A huge part of that is recognizing the healing spiral, going from caught in the trauma, dealing with the reactions that come with an attachment history, and how to experientially shift into a different future.
It starts with Dator’s Law: Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous.
Well, that caught me in my tracks.
What we envision SHOULD appear to be ridiculous. Hmmmm.
Perspective changing, which is what Dator’s Law invites us to do, shifts out of what we are habituated to thinking into something else.
It’s meant to catch us off guard.
It’s meant to explore those habitual responses we all have to something “preposterous.”
Instead of saying, “That’s crazy, that could never happen.” Or, while shaking our head, thinking “I can’t imagine that” … what if we paused.
And then investigated a bit further to see if this thing that could never be, that is on the face of it, ridiculous, might be possible. Any idea, especially those ridiculous ones can be useful to spark creativity, innovation and orient us out of habitual patterns.
Ridiculous scenarios help us think of things we’ve never thought of before.
We know from the science that any story we tell ourselves creates a specific response in the brain.
Some propose that we tell ourselves catastrophic stories about the future so that we won’t be shocked but rather prepared. Yet … the more time we spend in the catastrophizing … the more we cement the feelings of helplessness and fear.
Sooooo … what if we told ourselves different stories? Took different perspectives?
That’s what the Becoming Safely Embodied skills are about. In fact, there’s a couple skills dedicated to just this very thing.
Angus Fletcher, a neuroscientist who studies the effects of storytelling on the brain, describes it like this:
“Foreknowledge stimulates a powerful sensation of cosmic irony in the ‘perspective-taking network’ of our brain’s prefrontal cortex, giving us a godlike experience” … as we see events from afar, or from above.
Pretty “heady” stuff, I know, but essentially … foreknowledge triggers a mindset shift.
It’s a sense of déjà vu …
Fletcher continues, “This God’s-Eye vantage reduces activity in our brain’s deep emotion zones, acting as a neural shock absorber against the traumatic events before us…. [shifting] our tragic feeling of helplessness into a psychological sensation of helpfulness.”
Here’s your homework:
- Who will you be in 10 years (or five years, or even one year, whatever feels most accessible)? The idea is to stretch out of the known as much as you can.
- Where will you live?
- Who will be there with you? Will you live alone? Live in community? With just one person?
- What will you be paying attention to? reading? listening to? watching?
- How will you get around in the world? Literally and figuratively.