The view from the horizon

So you want to make a change - a fundamental shift in your career or life direction.

For each of us, at some point, the question arises - where am I going? Where does my path lead? Do I like where that path is taking me? Does it go where I want to go? For many, the answer is yes - but for many more, the answer is no - not any more... When that not-anymore feeling hits you, what do you do?

Maybe you have a vision, an idea. Maybe you want to start your own business, become a healer, consultant, coach, inventor, freelance engineer, or some other endeavor. The idea runs through your mind daily - especially just after you've gotten back from lunch, just before the afternoon staff meeting. What am I doing still here in this cubicle? How can I shake off the golden handcuffs? why am I still in my day job? And most of all, how can I bust out of the box.

I remember these feelings well. I spent many years asking myself these same questions, with the cubicle walls looking back at me - silent and mocking, giving no answer. I worked at my job, trying to find a way into the world where I knew I belonged. Yet I saw no way of actually getting there. So finally, hopelessly, I changed roles in my present-day (at that time) job. In that more tolerable situation, I watched and waited until the right moment. And then, when I least expected, the right moment came.

But what was the difference between the day I wondered if I would ever get away and the day I finally did? Were those two days any different from each other? Or were they, in a sense, the same?

The answer to both questions is yes.

The only reason that, today, I can call myself a freelancer is that someone or something opened the door. Blessings in disguise, in the form of company layoffs and a good severance, my wife having a good military retirement package, and other pieces of providence suddenly and unexpectedly combined to close off the old path. And in the process, it opened a new door. It is not something I could have planned, or even predicted. Suddenly the changes were just there.

During my years of casting about with the question of where my road actually went, I went to many, many career workshops. Over about five years, I think I must have undergone at least ten (probably a lot more) "what do I want to do when I grow up" classes and exercises. And they all came back with the same answer. The clearly spelled out what I already know - what I really wanted to do in life. But they said next to nothing about how I should go about doing it. In that, I was on my own.

So on the day you get your own answer back - where do I want to go - what are you going to do about it? Will you, like I did for so many years, let yourself flounder about lost? Will you be stuck in the same paradigm box? Or will you find a way to break out? I'm betting there is a way, but it will require a sudden leap of creativity - an imaginative solution that seems beyond the pale, beyond linear thinking. Or, perhaps, like me, you could just get lucky - in a way, I wonder if the two are the same thing.

The journey to successful change is a long, difficult one. But it is traveled one step at a time. each of us started somewhere, and each of us wants to end up somewhere. Do you have a vision already? If so, then looking at some the most successful people in your field do you wonder - "could I possibly ever accomplish that?" Is there any hope? Are your current actions such that they could possibly lead to the future you want? What do you need to do? 

Can you achieve that using the same techniques and traditions - the same paradigm - you've always used? Most of us are bound by the constraints of present-day thinking. We use the model of incremental change, continuous improvements, steady refinements to solve existing problems. Yet can these get you beyond the horizon? With them, can you do the impossible? Or will you continue doing the same old thing - albeit maybe with a slightly different twist?

Over the years, I have always been a space buff. One of my greatest passions has been the idea of one day traveling to the stars. And in the last 20 years, as the internet has come onto the scene, I have taken every opportunity to follow the work of researchers seeking to push the outer edge of the known. Many physicists have been quietly working to come up with that breakthrough that will take us into the cosmos, and in studying their work I came across an interesting new way of thinking.

It was at the 1996 National Space Society conference in Orlando Florida when I first heard of it. During a pesentation by Dr. Mark Millis, entitled 'Warp Drive When?', I heard of what is entitled the Horizon Mission Methodology. It is structured thought process for breaking out the box in a very well-defined way, bringing usable but unprecedented results. It is a way to envision the future in a constructive, creative non-linear way, yet apply structure to that creativity to bring it back to the present day. Then finally, it helps us to figure out how to make that creativity happen, beginning with the first step.

So what is the Horizon Mission Methodology? How does it work? How does one go into the future, then come back in such a way that they can make that future happen? As its name implies, the Horizon Mission Methodology (HMM for short) is not about incremental improvements. It is about reaching over the horizon. It is about radical change, beyond linear thinking. And to do this, we need to be in the future. The most beautiful thing about this - hypnotists are very good at doing just that. We call it future pacing and it is something I do with clients on an almost-daily basis. 

In subsequent incarnations, the HMM has become de-NASA'ized (the word 'mission' has been removed, and its applicability to other areas besides space travel has been explored). It has now become known as the New Horizon Methodology (NHM). This adapted HMM or NHM consists of five steps:

Step 1) World Building

Envision the future - where do you want to be?

Venture beyond the possible.  Let your imagination go beyond what we can currently do. The only requirement is that this new world must in some way be 'impossible.'

Step 2) Details of the Future

Characterize and analyze this future world. What are the motivating forces, dynamics, etc? What makes this new world beyond the horizon tick.

Step 3) Enabling Elements

Identify key elements of this new world - key innovations needed. What key things are required to make it happen? At this point, the biggest challenge is to stay out of the box, not lapse back into incremental thinking. We need to use high-level description and imaginative terms here - to stay out in the 'blue sky'.

Step 4) Seeing the long path

Now, imagine looking back from the horizon world: What changes were required - what paths did you need to follow to make these key things happen? Note the journey(s) that got you to this realm beyond-the-horizon.

Step 5) The first steps

Finally, identify the early steps along the path(s) identified in step 4. What are the biggest-bang-for-the-buck endeavors to achieve these changes. At this point, you can begin to plan out how to take those first gigantic 'baby steps,' leading beyond the known.

As I look back at the changes I've experienced over the last year or two, I now realize that the HMM was exactly what I did. Once I was able to give up 'hope' (i.e. linear thinking), and let-go/let-God, suddenly the future happened. Without knowing it, I had formed the world, seen the changes, and followed them, one step at a time. I had no idea at the time that I was doing this. But now, as I look back on the pivotal events of early 2012, I realize this is exactly what happened. I followed the path and suddenly, before I knew it, I was on the horizon. And if I can do it, anyone else can, too. 

So let's go back to the problem that bedeviled me, and now bedevils so many potential entrepreneurs, healers and individual idealists of the present day: How can I transcend the bounds of my 'day job' to launch my own endeavor? How can I make a radical career change, breaking out of my present paradigm box. The problem is very easy to state - the horizon is clear. Unfortunately, the path to it seems 'impossible.' And yet, this makes it a perfect candidate for the HMM. 

To someone like me - i.e. a hypnotist - the HMM is a great way to envision and create the future. For anyone who studies consciousness studies, meditation, manifestation, or any of the other means of  future world-building, envisioning is a well-established skill. And in HMM, it is the first step. So let's go into a meditative state and imagine this future world. Let's identify what we see in this world, then develop our path from the present day to that future:

Step 1) World Building: In the case of radical career change, what does this mean? In short, it means you need to create your new 'horizon' world in your mind. 

Imagine you are there. What does this new world look like? What is your role - your 'be'ing? What do you do as your part of that world? What is your job? Or do you even have a job? What does your day look like? What does it feel like going to work? What does your workplace or personal environment look like? As part of your work-life balance, what is your personal life like? Are you married or single? In a relationship? At the end of the day (does the day even end?) how do you feel when you go home from work? What does it feel like when you are not at work? Do you feel at home?  And what does it feel like when you are on vacation?

For anyone experienced in meditation, this is an easy step. As long as we can get out of our own way, we can allow the future to build itself within the mind. We can see the new world growing, first within us and then in the world outside of our own minds. Let go, let God - allow the world to build - and then let it manifest around you.

Step 2) Details of the future: Once you have envisioned this world, you can begin to ask some questions. What about this time makes you happy and why? What is it about this world that caused you to build it in the first place? 

In this world, what works and what could work better? Are there problems you are working on here? what is your mission in this world? What is it about this time you are striving for?
In this world, what is your next goal and how will you know when you have achieved it?

In subsequent meditations, allow yourself to notice details. See and feel the details of your day in this horizon world. What do you love about it? Being somewhat realistic (casting aside the rose-colored glasses) what challenges are there in this world?

Step 3) Key elements of this world

What key aspects of this world are different from the present-day world? Staying abstract and at a high level, what are the most important and most novel things about this world? How are they different from the world of the present day?

While in deep meditation, begin to look at some of the key elements of this world. What are the cool new things here? What do you see that looks impossible, or that is far removed from your everyday reality? Note them and - without judging or becoming 'realistic,' simply accept them as part of this future 'horizon' reality.

Step 4) Paths to the horizon
Now look back from this time in the future. Tell your story from the perspective of your horizon world. How did you get here? What fundamental changes had to occur? What challenges did you have to meet to allow your horizon world to take shape?

While still in deep meditation, look back from your horizon world. What did you have to do to get here? Along that road what were some of your challenges? What were some of your triumphs? How long of a road was it? What did you have to learn and what did you have to un-learn? Looking back along that road, what did it feel like as you were traveling it? When did you have the most hope? When did it seem the most difficult? And when was the goal 'impossible?'

Step 5) The first steps
Now we come back to the present day. When in meditation or hypnosis, imagine what it was like when you first started out on that road from the present day toward your new horizon world. What was the first step you took along the path? What was the next step, and the next?

Shifting your perspective back to the present day, what step(s) will you take now? What is your short-term time horizon for these steps? What will you achieve from eafchand how will you know when you have accomplished them?

Allow your mind to fix the perspective of traveling that path, assume success and set your sights on that nearer-term goal. Anchor the idea of being on the path, and the vision of being at different points along the way - perhaps by touching a finger to a thumb and rubbing it slightly. In NLP, this is known as an anchor, a reminder to your inner mind that you can achieve each new step along the way.

Ultimately, in the present day, How can you develop a plan, a set of steps to take you down your road to the horizon? And now that you've identified those step(s), what will you do to follow up - making sure you stay on track with each step?In one month? two months? six months? How can you keep yourself moving? 

Each day, I challenge you to envision yourself on the path. Each day, I challenge you to do the meditation or self-hypnosis to reinforce that vision and keep yourself on that path.

In future articles, we will look at each individual step in the HMM - applying it using self-hypnosis and thus, from your new horizon, seeing yourself reaching that goal one step at a time.