Projections for 2011

• Finding the Common Ground through Social Media

We will see a shift toward using the tools available to us for networking in a new way. Instead of using them mainly to connect with people we already know and see regularly or to get back in touch with former friends, we will use them as bridge builders to find the common ground past the walls of age, culture, and background that often divide us. These resources will become powerful tools to help us figure out what's stopping us from getting world-changing work done.

• Standing Up for the Best and Against the Worst In Others

We will sense the stirrings of a new kind of revolution of Hope. This type won't be grounded in magical thinking or quick fixes. Rather it will be a powerful person-oriented kind of hope that takes on new depth due to the support system it creates around Vision. I believe a quiet wave has already begun and will swell in 2011. This sweep will be about learning to come alongside one another one by one to affirm the best in each person and the great individual potential ahead. But it will also involve learning new ways to stand against whatever is sabotaging those closest to us with “You're better than that!” challenges. (Book Being Wrong is my personal favorite new resource for sparking this revolution.) Hope in our dreams of doing our own part tends to die without that combo of people both strongly believing in us and yet also helping us shift out of the patterns that are holding us back.

• Using Our Imaginations to Create New Realities

And finally, the other major shift I am watching for is a shift in the use of our Imaginations. As we integrate so many new forms of Play and Story into our daily lives (social media, gaming, ever-expanding entertainment industry) we will see a shift out of merely using our gifts of imagination and dreaming to escape. We have used them already very effectively to create other Realities that are completely Impossible but consistent and Probable within themselves.
We will begin to use those same powerful and uniquely human capacities to Dream and Imagine and Believe to start noticing how much we are dismissing that is totally Possible...just because it seems highly Improbable!
We will then begin to bring those amazing Possibilities into the Reality that has always been waiting for us. This time in history will bring new challenges to stop being mired in the doubt that "Improbability masquerading as Impossibility" brings. We will remember the image from Man on Wire so many of us have now seen of Philippe flat on his back on a high wire stretched between the Twin Towers on 8-7-74 and we will ask ourselves what other clear Possibilities we have always told ourselves are Impossible.
And then we will Play and Dream and Imagine our ways into making things happen, just as Philippe did. We will begin to use our Imaginations for the true purpose for which they were give to us: to change the world in the numerous ways that we already can but aren't imagining our way into...until they become practical reality.

Those are the trends I'm following and hoping to live my own way into for 2011. Anyone with me? I say Let's go change the world.