By Shae Hadden | Bio

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I haven’t lived through the Depression, or participated in a major global conflict. Compared to many people on this planet, I haven’t had a lot of difficulties in my life. But the challenges that I have faced I have been able to survive. If you’d asked me a year ago what made that possible, I would probably have said “sheer will power”. But I’m a little older and a little wiser now. And my answer today has a quality of serenity in it that wasn’t evident back then.

Viewing the future as possibility has allowed me to look at everything that’s happening from a very empowering perspective. The future has not occurred yet…it is and always will exist in the domain of possibility. And, as Jim Selman would say, possibilities are not real (if they were, they’d be examples). So being afraid of the future is simply being afraid of what’s possible. It’s up to me to choose which possible future I want to commit to and ‘make real’.

Once I’ve chosen what I’m committed to, although I may be afraid, I can move into action even though I may not know what or how I’m going to do what needs to be done. And if challenges and breakdowns keep coming my way, I look at them as opportunities to re-orient myself and re-commit to the future I want to create OR to choose a different possibility. What’s interesting to me is to observe that, as I keep being in action, the challenges seem to eventually evaporate and I can move on to whatever’s next.

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
—John Quincy Adams

I admire people like Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton for speaking their truth, for calling things as they see them, and for committing to our collective future over and over again.

Let us take our cue from them and not resign ourselves to despair and hopelessness about what may be. Let us be leaders in our own lives. Let us have the courage to persevere and to create the future we want.