This is the Appreciative Narrative Daily Moment. Today, a reading about the Anticipatory Principle from “Appreciative Living” by Jaqueline Kelm
Jaqueline Kelm in chapter four of “Appreciative Living“ talks about the fourth principle of Appreciative Inquiry, “The Anticipatory Principle which suggests the images we create in our minds about the future guide our present actions and create that very future. She writes:
Athletes have long known and practiced a form of future imaging called visualization. The idea of visualization is to picture something in your mind and make the experience as real as possible. [Peter] Senge writes how “world-class swimmers have found that by imagining their hands to be twice their actual size and their feet to be webbed, they actually swim faster.”
Golfer Jack Nicklaus describes how he uses images:
“I never hit a shot, even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head. It’s like a color movie. First I “see” the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the brightest green grass. Then the scene quickly changes and I “see” the ball going there: its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behavior on landing. Then there’s a sort of fade-out, and the next scene shows me the kind of swing that will turn the previous images into reality.”
Later on in the chapter, Kelm writes about thinking about vision as a field, in the same sense that magnets have a magnetic field as if it contains power in and of itself.
She writes: “This is a more difficult concept to articulate… The emotional, aesthetic, and spiritual aspects (what it feels like, what it really means to us) might be the other factors that make up the power of the visionary field.
The essential idea is that our images are possibly deeper and broader than some of the current thinking would suggest. Our images not only provide beacons of direction, but perhaps actually help attract congruent thoughts, people, etc. It’s not too far of a stretch to consider the possibility that formative fields help create some of the miraculous “coincidences” that often emerge with strong visions.
Considering the anticipatory principle, ask yourself, “What are three things I am grateful for today?”
If you are able to write these down, that’s ideal. Regardless, take a moment to visualize each gratitude, put yourself fully in that situation. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell?
Go ahead and pause this recording until you’ve named three gratitudes.
Now consider what role you played in these moments you are grateful for.
Finally, what is something, no matter how small, you can do today that will bring you joy?
Again, write it down if you are able, and then fully visualize what it would look like to do this activity and experience that joy.
A quote from John Schaar, “The future is not a result of choices among alternate paths offered by the present, but a place that is created—created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.”
101_appreciative_narrative_ep12_anticipatory_principle_jacqueline_kelm_appreciative_living.mp3