The World is Changing, like it or not! The question is “How do YOU want it to be?”
By: Brad Houston
Tags: The New Normal, Positivity, Listening, Improvement, Changing The World

The World is Changing, like it or not! The question is “How do YOU want it to be?” Brad Houston Jul 1, 2020·8 min read

Let’s not miss our chance to think about how we want things to be, rather than rush back to doing things the same.

It feels like at this moment, more than any time that I have experienced in my life, that THE WHOLE WORLD is in a state of CHANGE.

First, we had the NEED TO CHANGE — Thanks to Covid19

Then hundreds if not thousands of years of exploitation and people crying out for change, erupted following the death of George Floyd, sparking a DESIRE FOR CHANGE, even a DEMAND FOR CHANGE

Now — I feel like in between all of these events and the absolute whirlwind of opinions on Social media and on the news. NOW, we are faced with the CHOICE TO CHANGE.

Now we are stopping to think about:

how do we want this to play out?

What should we keep? What should we throw out?

Do we need RADICAL change? i.e. Complete changes to the systems of power, management, government etc?

Is any of the above even possible? What could be the negatives if we do change things?

I don’t have the answers, but I am personally excited by it. I don’t want complete anarchy, but there are LOADS of areas that can be improved

(I put out a post on Instagram recently that was a bit cruder and direct to the point than this, but stirred by these same waters).

I’d like to give a little more context on who I am, for those of you who don’t know me well

My early life was spent in a variety of tiny country towns in Australia, far from the ocean. However, by my teens and early Adult life, I was lucky to live in a little town called Bellingen (or “Bello” as it’s often called) that is surrounded by mountains and valleys covered in rainforest and is only 30 minutes from the beach. (so after all those years in the #country, it was paradise!!)

Bellingen is in a small pristine part of Northern New South Wales, Australia and it abounds with swimming holes, waterfalls and beach breaks only accessible by bush track (well at least it still was 20 years ago when I was there). The Bellingen River snakes from the rainforest right down the middle and then out to sea. I was lucky enough to have parents who had paid their dues in the bush and now built a home along the river, further towards the sea. So, life was full of water skiing, wakeboarding, hiking, surfing, skating…lots of ‘ing’s’. It was a great time and I’m sure played a key role in forming who I am today :D

It’s also one of the three main areas where the hippies migrated to in the 60’s to set up their communes. First, there is famously Byron Bay and Nimbin (which I thought at the time and still do to an extent as to have sadly become the ‘Yuppies hippie weekend experience’). Then there was The Bellinger valley and lastly, someplace I can never remember down near Taree.

So I think that some of those hippy roots rubbed off on me. The 60’s hippie, dreamer mindset. Peace, love, happiness, that sort of thing! I always thought that the 60’s/70’s eras sounded interesting and exciting, so when I lived in Bellingen in the late 90’s, I tried to soak it up and got stuck into Jimi Hendrix and lots more. I love music, so I also listened to tunes like, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, TOOL, Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine etc.

It was a great life and I feel fortunate to have spent time roaming the hills with first-generation kids of the original hippies and even making an occasional visit to one of the still running communes (to smoke the green stuff of course…no point hiding that 20 years on) and chat to people who still “lived the dream”.

I got to see and hear about the good parts of the hippie movement and loved a lot of the general concepts. However, I also sadly saw how disenchanted many people had become and with my Dad as the primary school Principal I also became aware of some of the sadder fallouts that occurred at times (heavy drug addiction, suicide, neglect of kids etc). Not from all of course, but sadly from many, which I think if part of what mostly killed the hippie movement.

Why am I share all of this? Well:

1. Just because I want to

2. Because I think that to look forwards we should always take a look at the past

3. I want people to know more about who I am and why I am the way I am

4. I actually believe that there is a LOT that we can learn from the original hippie movement

5. Now, unlike the 60’s, anyone (and I REALLY mean ANYONE) can put their thoughts out into the world and have that spark!

The possibilities for ideas to spread and positive movements to form is better now than it ever was back then (the 60’s). Which I think is both GOOD and SCARY.

One of the phenomena that I have read about that exists now and will play a role in the reshaping of society, is this sort of ‘global mind’ (Elon Musk talks about) that we live in. We are all connected via the internet (like nodes Musk puts it) both feeding info INTO THE SYSTEM and taking info OUT. This excites and disturbs me. The result is that people from all over the world, can put their heads together, or rally around shared interests, and actually solve problems that we would never have solved before!

I think this interconnectedness is also a major part of why technology is progressing at an exponentially faster and faster rate.

But then we hit a major blip! Didn’t we?

Covid19 (real or fake) hit the brakes hard! — Really hard.

It knocked a LOT of us off our perch and I am not ashamed to say that it was the death blow to my already fledgling Sunshine Coast Video Production Startup. However, the aftermath has led me on an exciting journey, which I will be sharing soon with people inclined to listen. If you want to follow along, feel free to go to www.flicks4good.com.au or follow me on Instagram @brad4good

But back to the story/point that I am making! We all have a choice, or in reality, a LOT OF CHOICES, regarding HOW WE WANT THINGS TO PROGRESS from here.

I personally am unsure, but I will be honest and say that as someone who spent 20+ years being told “how to think to succeed”, “What steps to take to succeed”, “How we need to adapt the way we speak to suit different personality profiles”, “why the world runs as it does”, “follow this system” or that, and how some “things just won’t change”, “it is what it is” etc.

Well, I think that like many, now that I think of it, I am sick of it!

I don’t have the answers and I’m not saying that I won’t still “play by the rules” but I am putting the question out there “are we playing by the right rules?”

I don’t like the way that it seems that people who are more headstrong and less patient have tended to be the ones who move into power and end up telling the rest of us what to do.

I don’t like people who have inherited wealth looking down on people who are working hard just to survive

I don’t like any form of pretentious behavior, where one person puts themself above another! Based on clothes, income, where you live…

I hate pretentious attitudes. I think that they are actually ridiculous masks covering the so called “better, superior person”s own insecurity. I have even heard of someone in Sydney defriending someone after they found out that their new friend “caught the train to work, rather than drove”

I HATE (a word that I rarely use) the way that people’s attention span (and even interest) has drifted away to almost nothing…unless (something directly benefits) the person reading/listening/watching

I think that everyone deserves to be heard, even the people who find it hard to articulate their thoughts as clearly as some might like. I personally have a heart (because I live with it due to an accident years ago) for people who’s thinking is affected by medication, which in turn might changes the way that their message comes across.

I don’t know if it’s my country roots (that were very humble and often surrounded by dirt (literally), shout out to Mullalley, 6 hours West/Inland, and Bibinluke, down in the Snowy Mountains, but I love to chat (as you might have noticed ;). For some reason, most small town people tend to be a lot more open, down to earth and open to talk. Sometimes talk about just about anything. Which frustrates certain personality types no end!! :D

So I find myself feeling sad that the general depth of conversation seems to have declined, and that people are too “busy” to talk/listen, even to their own friends and family!

BUT, it’s not all doom and gloom

I have personally have HOPE and an unrelentingly optimistic spirit. So, I am going to finish with a few of the things that I HOPE for, and believe that we can achieve IF we (as a human race) simply decide to.

I hope that people will become more patient rather than less

I hope that we can develop higher levels of empathy for other people and THEIR struggles

I hope that impatient people can learn that sometimes a story is only worth sharing if the context has been given and the details all the details are shared

I hope that we can LISTEN to people and have the patience to hear their whole story, even if they go on a tangent or two (ahem, I’m somewhat ‘prone to’ and even ‘fond of’ a tangent or two)

I hope that racism can be weeded out and stopped

I hope that people will care for each other more

I hope that if given the option to help, even if it’s just in a small way, that people will choose ‘to help’ more often than ‘not help’

I hope that at least 1 person has made it through this mind dump

I hope that by the time I am done with my life, most of the world will have seen what I did and the IMPACT that I made

Right now, I am nothing alone as a person (well close to it), however TOGETHER we can be anything! as a society.

I (for what it’s worth), urge:

Those of you with MORE than a ‘glass half full’ outlook, perhaps pour some from your glass into the ‘glass half empty’ people’s cups.

Those of you with more patience than others, find a way to instill it in others.

Those of you old enough to have lived in times where there were better conversations and relationships, better values, perhaps try to find a way to help us to experience those things again.

Let’s get back to sharing and LISTENING to each other's stories! Not skimming, not half-listening, but actually stopping and PAYING ATTENTION.

I believe in Growth Mindset, that our minds are constantly adjusting and that whilst we can develop ‘bad ways of thinking/interacting’ we CAN unlearn those habits and develop better ones. I know that at first, these things will feel annoying and painful to force ourselves to do (like doing physio!), but that soon the brain will do a beautiful thing and that those patterns and processes (hopefully healthier processes) will become autopilot and part of…

WHO WE ARE!

THE BETTER, FUTURE, “US”