Make a Wish, Change the World!

Reduce poverty, promote economic development that restores or protects the environment, fight substance abuse among young people, or promote democracy, or promote world peace. Wishing can make things happen.

Okay, so there is also some work involved. Perhaps lots of work. It all depends on how big a change you want to make and how fast you want the change to happen. Makes sense, right?

Part of the work comes in trying to create and implement ideas that will address the problem or opportunity that interests you. This is where, believe it or not, wishful thinking can actually be helpful. Sitting around wishing there wasn't so much hunger in the world is obviously useless. Wishing for, or dreaming about, an alternate state of affairs may actually have some value.

For example: I wish that civilization could provide a good material quality of life for everyone without any pollution problems. Crazy idea! What if I focus on one area of this rather substantial challenge? I could wish that we got all of our energy from the sun, just like plants do. While we obvuisly can't become like plants, we can do things to make better use of solar power.

My wishful thinking leads to the idea that maybe my advocacy group should focus on "selling" something called "passive solar" architecture. This would lead to wide use of buildings that rely on sunlight for heat and illumination. Such buildings can work even in cold northerly climes. Don't believe me? Just do a Google search on passive solar design or ecological desing or green buildings. (And selling is a full-time project for an organization. Ever notice how many commerical messages the average person encounters each day? Still think running some ads in E Magazine will do any good?)

What in the world am I talking about? I am talking about creative-thinking strategies that build useful ideas out of fantasies and wishful thinking. Michael Michalko outlines several such techniques in his book Cracking Creativity. You can probably pick up a cheap copy on Amazon.com and learn to use one of the techniques in a few hours. The techniques that you'll want to study are called "Fantasy Worlds", "Parallel Worlds", and "Wishes".

For now, I am going to have to leave you to your own devices when it comes to figuring out how much change is realistic for your group and on what timeline things could be made to happen.