possibility

Four Steps To Turning Your Hope Into Reality

"Christina's World" Andrew Wyeth (who died in January 2009 at 91 years of age) was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century, and was sometimes referred to as the "Painter of the People," because of his work's popularity with the American public.  He learned art at an early age from his father, who inspired his love of rural lan

dscapes, sense of romance, and a feeling for Wyeth family history and artistic traditions.

In October 1945, his father and his three-year-old nephew were killed when their car stalled on railroad tracks near their home and was struck by a train. Wyeth referred to his father's death as a profound personal tragedy and a formative emotional event in his artistic career.  Shortly afterward, his art began to be characterized by a subdued color palette, realistic renderings, and the depiction of emotionally charged, symbolic objects and people.

One of the most well-known images in 20th-century American art is his 1948 painting, “Christina's World,” currently in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

The woman of the painting is his neighbor Christina Olson who was 55 at the time of this painting. She had an undiagnosed muscular deterioration that paralyzed her lower body. Wyeth was inspired to create the painting when through a window from within the house he saw her crawling across a field.

He described her as being "limited physically but by no means spiritually." Wyeth further explained, "The challenge to me was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless."

"In the portraits of that house, the windows are eyes or pieces of the soul, almost," he said years later. "To me, each window is a different part of Christina's life."

So the painting depicts Christina’s journey of hope to get back to her house, the windows to her soul – the journey to reconnect with her true self in the midst of her disabilities, to hang on to the hope that she can fulfill her true soul’s purpose no matter what obstacles she faces.

The Power of Hope

Experts tell us that hope is one of the most powerful emotional attributes in helping us move our lives toward where we truly want to be.  Without hope, we die.  As author Brennan Manning wrote, there are three ways to commit suicide:  take our own lives, let ourselves die, and live without hope.  In those terms, consider how many people there are among us who are in reality committing suicide - they're letting themselves live without hope.  Perhaps they're afraid of hoping (for fear of getting disappointed).  Perhaps they don't even know what to hope for.  Perhaps they don't think they're worthy of anything good to base their hopes on.  In any case, they're taking their own lives by living without hope.

Hope is an optimism that believes something is possible, even when the reality we see appears to contradict the possibility.  Hope not only refuses to let go of the possibility, it chooses to take action to turn possibility into reality.

So how does this work in real life?  Think of people like former South African President Nelson Mandella and world-class athlete-cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong.  They represent countless everyday people who have done the same thing:  rather than wait for their fears to disappear or for facts to back up their hope, they used hope to create new facts and reach their goals.

Here's what Lance Armstrong once said:  "If children have the ability to ignore all odds and percentages, then maybe we can all learn from the.  When you think about it, what other choice is there but to hope?  We have two options, medically and emotionally:  Give up, for fight like hell."

The power of hope is in its ability to help us create new facts about our possibilities - to chart new directions, to establish new behaviors, to take bold action in the face of odds and obstacles.  That's what successful people do.

Dr. Srinivasan Pillay, Harvard neuroscientist and psychiatrist, describes the difference between successful and unsuccessful people.  The study of successful people reveals that they “rely less on existing facts about any given situation to get what they want.  Instead, they recognize the challenges, and rather than giving in to the relative impossibility of achieving their goals, they seek out routes that will allow them to achieve them.  In other words, successful people do not lead statistically sensible lives.  Rather than asking questions based on what is probable, successful people train their brains to focus on what is needed to accomplish the less likely of two options.”  (Pillay, Life Unlocked, pp. 49-50)

How Hope Works the Brain - the Four Steps to Creating Your Reality

And the power of this Hope Approach is that it actually taps into and leverages the way the brain has been wired to work.  “When the brain thinks that something is possible, it will stretch out the route for achieving it.  It will chart a path toward your goal that is radically different from the course it would chart without hope.  We call these motor maps and they are action plans based on information that we give the brain.  They are highly dependent on what we imagine.  If we remain fearful, fear will disrupt our imagination.  If we focus on our goals instead of on our fear, the brain can use what we imagine as a guide for sketching out motor maps.  This imagining is tied so closely to doing that expert athletes can literally make improvements in their performance by first imagining them and then practicing them.  We call this motor imagery (or imagery of action), and it precedes actual movement or action.  So, if you want to make a change in your life, first imagine yourself making that change so your brain can determine the route that will take you to your goal.  Hope is necessary for action.”  (Pillay, p. 51)

So what’s the process of using hope to create your new reality?

  1. Start with hope – believing that something is possible
  2. Then imagine yourself doing it (motor imagery)
  3. And your brain creates motor maps – action plans – to help your whole body mobilize into action
  4. Then ACT on those plans.

And the good news is that it’s a self-reinforcing cycle.  If we continue to take those steps, it becomes a self-perpetuating process and creates its own momentum.  Jim Collins, in his best-selling book Good To Great, calls it the flywheel principle.  With every simple turn of the wheel, it begins to pick up speed.  Every turn creates more turn, until it finally has its own momentum.  Our part is to keep turning the wheel - to keep doing the simple actions, keep taking the small steps that move us forward.  The flywheel reminds us that our actions will ultimately generate a sustainable momentum.

Keep affirming your hope - keep imaging yourself doing what you're hoping for - and then keep stepping into the actions your brain creates to bring your imagination into reality - keep acting - and then keep on repeating those steps.

I'm a firm believer in this process, having seen the reality of it take place again and again for myself.  Hope generates belief, which generates vision, which generates action, which generates reality.  As long as I keep turning the flywheel, momentum keeps building.  Don't stop turning the flywheel, don't stop hoping and acting!

Christina's World, Your World

Go back to Andrew Wyeth's painting.  Notice Christina's body language.  She's paralyzed from her waist down.  She can only get around by crawling.  There's a cross wind blowing - notice the strands of hair on her head.  Her arms have an emaciated thinness.  What's more, she's off the beaten path.  See that?  In the middle of a barren field.  And her house stands on the top of a hill that for a paraplegic must seem starkly unattainable.

And yet what is her body language?  Does it describe defeat?  Hopelessness?  Resignation?  No, she's leaning forward, toward her home, what Andrew Wyeth describes as her soul, her true self.  She hasn't given up.  She's focusing her life on where she truly wants to go.  She's about to mobilize all of her strength to move up the hill and get home.  One crawl forward at a time.  Putting one arm ahead of the other, pulling her lifeless legs behind.  One crawl at a time.

Now that's courage.  That's the power of hope.

So what do you find yourself afraid of?  What feels hopeless to you at times?  What do you tend to despair about?  What are the obstacles you face that stand in the way of your dreams?

What does stepping into hope look like for you?  What is the new reality you want to imagine?  How can you affirm that vision to yourself and others again and again?  Are you willing?  Are you willing to take action, to create new facts and act on them in ways that move you forward?  And are you willing to keep hoping, keep imagining, and keep acting, refusing to stop turning the flywheel?

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Skyscrapers and the Human Spirit

Okay, I admit it - I'm drawn to cities ... always have been!  I was born and raised through my teenage years in Tokyo, at that the time the world's largest city.  Ever since then, whenever I go anywhere, I always want to get to the downtown of any city. Among many things, I especially love the skyline of huge, tall skyscrapers.  I love driving home to San Francisco across the Bay Bridge and seeing the massive skyline of downtown getting closer and closer, and then suddenly being right in the middle of it all, feeling awe, inspiration, wonder and excitement that I live here.  Is this weird?  I think I know why I love this, though.  Read on.

My interest obviously got piqued when I read about the world's tallest skyscraper officially opening way over in Dubai last month to a spectacular fireworks, laser, and water extravaganza choreographed to music.

The characteristics are quite impressive:  The Dubai Tower's 160-stories reach 2,716 feet.  It's so tall that it's visible from 60 miles away, reports say, and the temperature drops 6 degrees from base to peak. Winds at the top can reach 90 miles an hour. The highest floor offers views of Iran. Its elevators will travel the world's longest distance, operating a speeds of up to 22 mph. Its nightclub on the 143rd floor is the world's highest; above it, on floor 158, the world's highest mosque.

The skyscraper is not only a testament to engineering and architectural genius but also to a bold and courageously counter-intuitive vision that gave birth to the original idea.  Phil Anderson, managing director of Economic Indicator Services, an economic forecasting service based in London, blogged recently about the beginning of this modern phenomenon:

"Bradford Lee Gilbert designed and built the very first so-called skyscraper in 1887 as a way of tackling a client's unusually shaped six-and-a-half meter plot on Broadway in New York. The solution was to build an iron bridge truss, but stand it on end so that the real structure of the building started several stories above the curb - producing the best design to maximize occupancy and rentals.

New York's press ridiculed the idea. Fellow architects pronounced the building unsafe. Building experts said it would blow over in the wind, if it ever got off the ground. New Yorkers themselves were aghast at the notion of a building that would tower above their side-walk to a height of 160 feet. A fellow engineer and friend begged Gilbert to abandon the idea, pointing out that if the building really did fall over, his legal bill would ruin him. Lawyers confirmed this.

But Gilbert knew better, arguing that the building's structure, with wind bracings from top to bottom, meant that the harder the wind blew, the safer it would actually become. To put the matter to rest Gilbert requested the top two floors of the new building for his offices.  And the rest, of course, is history."

I'm always in awe of people who have a vision to do something that is often ridiculed or thought impossible, a vision that is counter-intuitive to conventional wisdom, a vision that takes boldness and courage to live out.  When those visionaries refuse to give up, when they build their dreams based upon their best research and understanding and end up producing something transformational, the world is left a little bit better for it.  Little did Lee Gilbert know the global legacy he was leaving because of his act of courage and vision!

One of the things I love doing is walking into San Francisco's downtown financial district, right into the middle of that urban forest of monolithic, giant trees.  I crane my neck and allow my eyes to follow the path straight up to the top of the skyscrapers.  Especially when those tall glass-encased structures, glimmering in the sunlight, stand against a dark blue sky, the feelings I get every time are a mixture of awe, wonder, and hope.  There's an instant elevating of my inner spirit and passion for life.  Almost a sense of transcendence ... in the midst of the hubbub of activity and life all around me.

Interestingly enough, ancient cathedrals were designed to evoke similar emotions - the human spirit was being led to look up toward the divine as a person's eyes followed the upward lines toward the tops of the spires and high, vast ceilings.  A place where the divine and human meet.

That's the way I feel when I'm in the middle of our urban glass "cathedrals" in downtown.  I realize that I'm in direct contact with the amazing human spirit of creativity and vision and skill that put these buildings first on paper and then on the streets.  It's awe inspiring to me when I think of everything that went into making these dreams reality.  All of this helps explain why I love being right in the middle of big city downtowns.

Skyscrapers are by design symbols of the willingness to break normal limits, their peaks pointing to the limitless sky of possibility.  Their existence stands as monuments to courage and boldness in the face of ridicule and doubt.  In some ways, they're our urban cathedrals for the elevation of the human spirit toward the divine life of creativity and possibility.

I want to challenge myself and all of us urban dwellers to embrace skyscrapers this year as one of our symbols of hope and courage.  As we each forge into new territory, I want to live a life of possibility, I want to keep dreaming and planning and working to help make the world a better place.  I want to create sanctuaries of hope, where people's inner spirits are elevated and drawn to transcendence, where bigger dreams are dreamed, and profound transformations take place, even when others might ridicule or doubt.  And I want to be a part of a community that helps others embrace their highest possibilities, too.

Hey, here's a great idea:  maybe we should all take a trip over to Dubai to soak up some of Brad Gilbert's inspirational legacy.  If you book me a ticket, I'll fly over there with you!  Or just as good for me, come on over to San Francisco and we'll take my favorite walking tour through downtown together ... and see what happens to our spirits.