Do you know someone who is forever telling you the way it is? Perhaps it’s you. In the past, I know it’s been me.

What I’ve come to realize is that “the way it is” is “the way it was.”

That sounds a bit cryptic to me so let me delve deeper.

“The way it is” is too often an opinion – one we’ve inherited from someone who came before us. So the way it was when we learned that opinion is still the way it is now. It will remain that way unless we notice and take steps to outgrow it.

To quote any Law & Order episode, we’re “stating facts not in evidence.”

Our opinions have become facts to us and we assert them and they act as spears towards others who have different opinions.

Seems to me that we could make some room for “the way it could be.” That would stop us from arguing facts that aren’t facts and seek workable possibilities that don’t currently exist.

When you have two “that’s the way it is” folks interacting with each other, you have a call-in talk show – an assertion filled platform that’s designed for fighting for what was instead of what could be.

We can recreate our past or we can design our future. Keeping our past alive is easy. Just keep asserting “the way it is.”

But if you want to go someplace different, other than the familiar battlefield, begin to focus your energy on the way it could be. You just may discover some evidence for a brighter future.

All the best,

John