It’s 2020, and we are at a point of mind-fizzing transition on Earth. Scary? Yes. Awesome? Absolutely. We are in the midst of the greatest transformation in human history. As the pace of change approaches the speed of light, we need an entirely new way of navigating life as we know it. These times are filled with unlimited opportunities and significant challenges. This relentless progress is accelerating, causing ever greater levels of stress and uncertainty.
We are being taken apart, dis-membered on all levels: emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Our value systems are being uprooted and completely recalibrated. We are being asked (or demanded) to choose what truly matters in our lives. As economic, political, educational, and social structures break apart, tremendous opportunities are opening right before our eyes. We are being asked to do the seemingly impossible. We are invited to completely rebuild our world, as we morph and shift into a higher way of being.
As we put ourselves, our values, and our society back together in a completely new expanded-frequency, we cannot co-create this New Earth with the same level of thought that brought us to this point. You can choose to stay in the lower vibrations of anger, greed, and hatred or you can transform yourself into Love, Understanding, and Oneness. All choice is with you.
Each person on this planet must make their own choice. No one else can make it for you. This choice is very simple. Will you choose to be of Service-to-Self or Service-to-Others? Those who choose Service-to-Others will move into the coming age with relative grace. Those who choose to stay in Service-to-Self and separation mentality will find it exceedingly difficult to cope with the new energies. The Earth will raise in vibration whether you choose to join the collective, or not.
“How odd that we spend so much time treating the darkness, and so little time seeking the light. The ego loves to glorify itself by self-analysis, yet we do not get rid of darkness by hitting it with a baseball bat. We only get rid of darkness by turning on the light.”
―
From Dark to Light
The incredible body of work by David Wilcock, spanning three decades, details the impending shift within our solar system. This shift will give us all the opportunity to make a quantum leap in consciousness. Our solar system is moving into an area of space where the vibrations are much higher. This means we will have to raise our vibration in order to exist on our planet. These vibrations can only be raised by people’s thinking. It is quality thought that will lift the people of Earth out of the darkness they have lived in for so long.
The changes in our planet are evident by watching the Schumann Resonance (Earth’s heartbeat) which remained at a steady 7.83 Hz since we began measuring it. More recently, the resonance has risen as high as 120 Hz. More proof of expanding and accelerating energies. The quality of our thoughts is imperative. Every thought contains energy that either creates a positive or negative reality (high or low frequency) not only for you but for the world around you. So, humanity is at a crossroads and conscious leadership is needed. Never before in human history has this type of leadership been more important. As the rate of change approaches light speed, our leaders face three major challenges:
- The human brain is not designed for life in the twenty-first century.
- The old intersubjective stories of the past will no longer work.
- The future story is filled with rapid change.
These challenges must be faced immediately and boldly to move our world forward in a healthy way. We must demand from our leaders a deeper understanding of the true nature of reality: Our new reality is accelerating expansion and this is driving the future story of humanity. We have the ability to feed, clothe, educate, house and provide healthcare for everyone. With our safety and survival needs met, its possible for us to enter a new era of peace, creativity, prosperity and sustainability. This will take bold, enlightened, authentic leadership.
“The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny. The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe. The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It likes a vendetta and has no trouble getting angry. The lizard brain cares what everyone else thinks, because status in the tribe is essential to its survival.”
— Seth Godin
Upgrading Our Stone-Age Brain
Humanity has undergone radical environmental change just on the surface of our planet, let alone the Solar System. Seventy thousand years ago, Homo sapiens were an insignificant species of hominids whose numbers had dwindled to an estimated 2-3000. We slowly climbed our way back and, seventy millennia later, we dominate the planet. This transformation occurred in a nanosecond on the cosmic timescale. We are not the fastest, or the strongest animal, but we are, by far, the smartest.
The Reptilian Brain
Our brain evolved over 600 million years in three basic layers: reptile, mammal and primate. The first layer is the reptilian brain, which forms the structure at the base of your brain and automatically regulates basic body functions. Your reptilian brain keeps you safe by constantly scanning for threats. Your inner-lizard keeps you breathing, runs from bigger animals, eats smaller ones and mates with ones of similar size. It’s a simple life.
The Mammalian Brain
The second layer is your mammalian or emotional brain. While the reptilian brain moves away from threat, the mammalian brain moves towards reward. This means it’s better suited for survival because it seeks out opportunities in the form of better food and more desirable mates. The mammalian brain is focused on satisfaction, so with its development we saw the beginning of complex social structures, playfulness and the nurturing of offspring. Emotions served mammals extremely well for the last 300 million years, and they still dominate our behaviour today.
The Primate Brain
The human/primate brain is the top layer and it is responsible for our advanced intellect and interconnected world. The human brain has tripled in size over the last seven million years, with most of that evolution happening over the last two million. Humans have developed complex social structures that allow us to cooperate flexibly and efficiently in very large groups.
The hallmarks of the human mind are not just flexibility or intelligence, it is the connections we make with our children and each other that set us apart. Few, if any of us, could survive in isolation. We are completely helpless when we are born and continue to be so for many years to follow. Our survival requires an astounding amount of time, energy, resources and nurturing. MRI scans of Romanian orphans in the 1980s showed a marked lack of development of the temporal lobes of children who were not hugged before 8 months old. They did not develop normally, especially psychologically, socially, and intellectually. We literally need cuddles to survive!
“Hugs can do great amounts of good – especially for children.”
– Princess Diana
We Need Cuddles to Thrive
This enormous expenditure in our development is a clear indication that, in our modern world, safety and survival are secondary to our need for connection. Our most basic need is resonant relationship. Clearly, the future of humanity will be focused on strengthening our interconnectedness. The ability to foster and enhance these connections will be the hallmark of effective future leaders.
Our environment is radically different to that of our ancestors. We are no longer in a state of constant threat due to predators. We all seek the essential ingredients for happiness: peace, contentment and love. Unfortunately, there is a glitch in the hardware. Our reptilian and mammalian brains are much more focused on our survival than our interconnected happiness. Rick Hanson Hardwiring Happiness, explains: “…one of the brain’s major design features for passing on genes [survival] is now a major design flaw – a bug – in the twenty-first century.
This bug is called your negativity bias. Your brain is constantly scanning for threats. It’s always asking, “What does this mean to me?” or, “What’s wrong with this situation?” It’s rooted in our evolution, where our ancestors relied on taking bad news more seriously than good news in order to survive. Even though our species (for the most part) no longer has to outrun wild animals, our brains are still hardwired to cling to the bad stuff instead of the good. For 600 million years, our brains have kept our genes alive using this programming.
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.”
— Philip K. Dick
Your Bias Makes you Easily Manipulated
This is where more evolved leadership becomes important. Our inherent negativity bias makes us susceptible to manipulation by individuals who prey on this design flaw for their benefit to push their agenda. Even though our world has significant challenges, the overwhelming evidence suggests that we actually live in the safest, most abundant and interconnected time in history. The major causes of death, famine and war, have been virtually eliminated. Unfortunately, we are still susceptible to leadership that exploits this “bug” by incessantly focusing on the negative.
We have organised ourselves into civilisations and societies in a microsecond on the cosmic time scale. Twelve-thousand years is not nearly enough time for our brain to adjust to the stresses and uncertainties of modern life, so we need to accelerate our evolution. It is time for our leaders to focus on what’s right with the world because there is a lot to focus on. We have the ability to feed, shelter, clothe, educate and medically care for everyone. When we actualise this ability, the world will explode into a new era of sustainability, peace, creativity and happiness.
The great leaders of the future will tip the scales toward the positive; they will upgrade humanity to a positivity bias. This is the opposite of sticking our heads in the sand and ignoring problems. It is about unemotionally identifying the problem, marshalling resources and focusing on effective solutions. When we focus on what’s right with the world, we have the energy to fix what’s wrong.
“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.”
―
Upgrade Your Brain with the H.E.A.L Method
It is well understood in neuroscience that neurons that fire together wire together, which means the areas of our brain that we use the most often become stronger (plasticity). We can take advantage of fleeting, everyday positive moments to combat our innate negativity biases.
Have a positive experience.
Notice something positive that’s happening to you (say, your colleague invites you for lunch), or create a positive experience by remembering something that brings you gratitude or joy (for example, recognise a task you’ve completed and are proud of).
Enrich it.
Stay with this positive feeling for at least 17-seconds. Encourage the positive feeling to become intense. Recognise how it nourishes you.
Absorb it.
Place the experience like a jewel in the treasure chest of your heart and feel your heart expand.
Link the positive experience with something negative. (This step is optional)
Use your current, vivid feeling of positivity to heal old pain. For example, if you’re currently feeling included and liked, you can touch on a past time when you felt lonely to transmute the emotion.
“People all over the world are telling their one dramatic story and how their life has turned into getting over this one event. Now their lives are more about the past than their future.”
―
Our Past Intersubjective Stories
Our intersubjective stories are the agreements we have about reality that hold the fabric of society together. These stories allow human beings to cooperate flexibly and effectively in very large numbers. History is the study of these stories. As civilisation grew, we encountered a multitude of intersubjective stories including religion, slavery, nationalism, militarism, imperialism, industrialisation, nuclearisation, communism, liberal democracy, capitalism and consumerism. Many of these stories worked well, some not so well; and others were devastating.
During the Enlightenment, science and rational thought became the dominating influence. Our old stories slowly, and often painfully, adapted to new, undeniable and evolving truths. The 20th century was dominated by two horrific world wars, terrorism greed, and poverty. More recently, we have witnessed astounding peace and prosperity. There is overwhelming evidence that humanity is setting a new course for safety, abundance and peaceful interconnectedness.
“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
―
The Wandering Mind is An Unhappy Mind
A large-scale research study (Killingsworth & Gilbert) measuring ‘mind wandering’ during everyday activities and ‘happiness levels’ showed that mind wandering occurred 46.9% of the time, regardless of what activity people were engaged in. People were less happy when their minds wandered (even during the least enjoyable activities). What people were thinking was a better predictor of their happiness than what they were doing.
These findings show that our minds wander almost half of the time, so if we want to stay focused on the task at hand, we need to cultivate our attention skills. Being able to focus is not just important for productivity and personal effectiveness, it is also integral to our mental wellbeing. Happiness is less a function of external situations or activities but one of mental achievement. It’s not what happens to us that matters most but the story we tell ourselves about it.
Many threats and challenges persist; the most notable of these are nationalism, nuclear war, sustainability and obscene income inequality. Our leaders must face these challenges head-on and help to rewrite these stories in a peaceful, healthy way. Perhaps a completely new story is needed.
“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs
to the people who prepare for it today.”
―
A New Story for A New Earth
There is a new story emerging on our planet, and it’s a story of accelerating expansion. The pace of change is approaching the speed of light and disrupting every aspect of our society. At the turn of the century, we began to witness unparalleled, rapid progress, and this progress is continually accelerating. From the Industrial Age to the new Age of Transformation, humanity has seen tremendous advancement. This progress has been aided by the intersubjective stories of enlightenment, capitalism and consumerism. We have come to expect more from everyone and everything. The consumer is King, and we are not giving up the throne any time soon.
Consumers demand exchange in abundance with more and more value added to every interaction. The mega-successful companies of the twenty-first century are leading the way in this regard. They are household names because they have internalised accelerating expansion and exchange in abundance. The intersubjective story of capitalism/consumerism is perhaps the most compelling of our time. It has dominated the world for the last 75 years and has been, for the most part, a productive story. It has lifted much of the world’s population out of poverty, stimulated amazing progress, fostered technological breakthroughs and been the greatest disincentive to military conflict in human history.
Leaders today must be forward thinking. They must internalise accelerating expansion and adopt the philosophy of exchange in abundance. These fundamentally different times need effective innovative solutions. Leaders must enable talent to keep up with ongoing paradigm shifts. In this way, leaders must evoke change in individuals and teams. As a result, the structure and processes of an organisation also need to continuously evolve to enable innovation.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
―
A New Perspective
Just like the layers of our brain, the new story for humanity of accelerating expansion, is layered on top of old stories. Here are a few examples that demonstrate why accelerating expansion is an accurate depiction of reality:
1. The study of human history, in the context of the time scale of the universe, makes accelerating expansion abundantly clear. We are in the midst of a rapid environmental change. Modern society developed in the literal blink of an eye when we look at the full depth and breadth of history.
2. Technological progress is accelerating at an astounding rate. Knowledge (or information or data) is doubling every twelve to thirteen months. Automation, digitisation, blockchain, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are disrupting the status quo monthly. Automation is eliminating the drudgery of backbreaking, mindless tasks, while AI is replacing humans in many advanced intellectual skills. You can access almost all the world’s information in the palm of your hand and disseminate a new idea globally with the touch of a screen. This was the stuff of science fiction a generation ago.
3. One of the greatest discoveries in science history gives anecdotal support for accelerating expansion. 90 years ago, astrophysicists discovered that we live in a universe which is expanding at an accelerating rate. Accelerating expansion is the true nature of our physical reality.
“When you make a choice, you change the future.”
―
The Future of Leadership
Resonant relationship, through conscious leadership, is the only predictable way to move our world forward in a healthy way. Conscious leaders will encourage a higher level of interconnectedness by being innovative, transparent, honest and competent. They understand our new reality and will navigate it in healthy and productive ways.
The old methods of leadership were effective in the relatively slow-moving past, but they will no longer work in this new Age of Transformation. There is a new algorithm that accurately describes our new reality: accelerating expansion – accumulating knowledge – rising complexity. This is the new story we must adopt if we want to create a more evolved, safer, abundant and interconnected world. The new paradigm that our leaders must navigate presents rising complexity and rapid change. Change creates extraordinary levels of stress and uncertainty. In times of overwhelming stress, we tend to revert to the past. We cling to our old, familiar stories. Because of this, many people will feel left behind. They will be susceptible to manipulation due to their innate negativity bias. Conscious leaders must not allow this to happen.
“Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups… So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”
―
Covert War for Your Mind
It’s no secret that world superpowers are currently in the middle of a high stakes winner-takes-all information war. We must all do our part by taking personal responsibility. We must reject leaders who would take us backward by manipulating our evolutionary glitch. We must decern those who waste time and resources with petty distractions. People yearn for the free flow of information, for authenticity, and for truth. We will no longer submit to celebrities, media personalities, Big Tech companies, or “journalists” telling us what to believe, what to think, and what reality is. The era of smug inner city elites dictating “facts” to us like a parent scolding a child is forever over. These are fundamentally different times that require elevated leadership and solutions.
We all know that organisations, processes and systems don’t manage people, leaders do. Similarly, research shows that people don’t leave organisations, they leave managers, they leave culture. They leave the intangible; how they feel and interpret the circumstances they find themselves in. When individuals work together toward a shared vision, what seems like magic can happen.
The leaders of the future will encourage an optimism bias, based on the facts of our incredible progress. They will instil confidence by accurately identifying resources prior to aggressively engaging with challenges. They will calmly help us to navigate these fundamentally different times. Conscious leaders will see possibility, leverage potential and expand results. They will encourage us to engage in the solution, rather than be stuck in the problem. They will demand exchange in abundance from us, our government and all its institutions.
“Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.”
―
Life is Short. Don't be Lazy!
We are standing on the cusp of a major revolution in creativity. We have the potential to build a completely new world, driven by a desire to amplify well-being, founded in sustainability, equity and justice for all sentient beings on the planet. We are in this for the long haul. We can not go back. There will be no return to “normal” in the way that we knew it before this year. Many of us are exhausted, depleted, anxious and scared. It’s been a long year and we are facing many long-term challenges, unsure of how to get to the other side.
This is not the time to give in to despair. This is a time to stay attentive, compassionate and not to “wish away” the challenges of others. We are not all having the same experience. Count your blessings and use your blessings to increase the blessings of others. Hear each other and commit to doing the real work of changing the planet – inside and out. When we feel hopeless, we also fail to do the inner and outer work necessary to create change. We languish with a sense of powerlessness, perceive ourselves as victims of a change that we fail to catalyse ourselves. We let others do the heavy lifting of growth and we neglect our own expansion into mastery. Hope is inspiring, but it’s not a strategy for action. It’s simply an energetic key that opens the door for imagining other possibilities. Possibilities that can restore to us our enthusiasm and zest for creating what we want in the world.
“The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your dreams is you.”
– Tom Bradley
Dreams Do Come True!
When our leaders adopt accelerating expansion as the organising principle of life on New Earth, they will be equipped to help us move forward in a healthy way. Through resonant relationships, they will create an environment of trust, safety and abundance. With this type of consensus, they will lead us to a safer, happier, healthier and more interconnected world. Optimism bias will replace negativity bias. We will proactively marshal resources to face challenges. Rising complexity, accumulating knowledge and accelerating expansion will continue to be our new story. Humanity will move forever forward in a peaceful, contented and interconnected way, and that dream you had as a small child of ‘Peace on Earth’ will be our new reality.
Whether you realise it or not, you are on a conscious journey through your life. On this journey, your consciousness is ever-evolving and expanding from the moment you were born, right through to and including this very moment. Everything you experience changes you. Each change contributes to who you are, how you show up in the world, and what you are capable of creating. For a long time it seemed as though there were only a handful of people on the Earth whose conscious journeys provided them with the vision and capacity to step forward as conscious leaders. Only a handful who were destined to deeply impact in the lives of others…
Now all that has changed…
“In order to give birth to a brand-new situation, you must first let the old one
go down in flames. As you embark on this journey of transformation,
know that what emerges from the ashes is so great and positive
that it will inspire others to do, give and become
more than they ever dared to think possible.”
— Suzanne Cunningham
Are you destined to be one of the Conscious Leaders who is prepared to rise from the ashes of the old crumbling paradigm?
