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Does thinking about the future fill you with hope or dread? If it was up to you, what would your future be like? Do you know how to ensure a good life and a great future, or are you leaving it up to chance?
Stories shape our reality and influence our decisions, choices and actions – which, in turn, have an effect on our future. In this book, Tom provides an engaging and highly practical approach to adopting a futures mindset to successfully prepare for the stress-provoking rapid changes of modern living. Reflecting on his own journey, and blending insights with scientific evidence, Tom shows how becoming more conscious of the future and addressing life’s challenges proactively can help you flourish and thrive in this fast-changing and challenging world. |
Tom Meyers, in his new book The Futures Effect, provides an engaging and highly practical approach to transforming your consciousness and your way of life. Written in a clear, direct, and easily understandable style, Meyers’ book highlights the critical importance of understanding and guiding your life from the perspective of your envisioned future. Instead of following the habits and mindsets of the past, the key to a better life is to become more conscious of the future and its possibilities and opportunities—to infuse the future into the present. For Meyers, the future should become a way of life.
The Futures Effect examines the essentials of personal empowerment and taking a proactive, rather than reactive stance toward life’s challenges.
Embracing the concept of self-directed purposeful evolution—we have the power to personally evolve ourselves—Meyers discusses how to successfully prepare for the stress-provoking rapid changes of modern life, creating a “resilient future,” and how to envisage a “future self” to serve as a guiding light for navigating and understanding the present. Meyers addresses human emotions and feelings, decision-making and planning, knowledge and thinking, and purpose, self-narratives, and self-identity in outlining his futurist philosophy.
Filled with illuminating examples from his own personal history and experiences—of difficulties and successes and insights—Meyers’ The Futures Effect is an enthusiastic and constructive roadmap for heightening one’s future consciousness and re-energizing one’s life.
Thomas Lombardo, Ph.D.
Director of the Center for Future Consciousness
Executive Board Member and Fellow of the World Futures Studies Federation
Author of Future Consciousness: The Path to Purposeful Evolution, Essays on the Future of Psychology and Consciousness, and numerous other books and publications
The Futures Effect examines the essentials of personal empowerment and taking a proactive, rather than reactive stance toward life’s challenges.
Embracing the concept of self-directed purposeful evolution—we have the power to personally evolve ourselves—Meyers discusses how to successfully prepare for the stress-provoking rapid changes of modern life, creating a “resilient future,” and how to envisage a “future self” to serve as a guiding light for navigating and understanding the present. Meyers addresses human emotions and feelings, decision-making and planning, knowledge and thinking, and purpose, self-narratives, and self-identity in outlining his futurist philosophy.
Filled with illuminating examples from his own personal history and experiences—of difficulties and successes and insights—Meyers’ The Futures Effect is an enthusiastic and constructive roadmap for heightening one’s future consciousness and re-energizing one’s life.
Thomas Lombardo, Ph.D.
Director of the Center for Future Consciousness
Executive Board Member and Fellow of the World Futures Studies Federation
Author of Future Consciousness: The Path to Purposeful Evolution, Essays on the Future of Psychology and Consciousness, and numerous other books and publications
This book is all about inspiring you to think constructively about your future. By providing a straightforward and useful framework based on unwavering principles, it fosters the development of a guiding narrative for the future, for one’s life.
By using that framework, we can define and design a preferred scenario of the future that is better than one left up to chance. Everyone can easily follow the steps suggested by the book to progress, live a meaningful life, and assure a “GREAT” future in this fast changing and challenging world. It teaches us how to analyse, develop, and pursue our preferred plans using language that is simple to read and understand. The clever use of “Y’our” rather than “Your” by the author serves to remind us that our choices, decisions, and actions influence more than just our own lives. We must thus construct our future based on that awareness to be responsible people who care about the future. For readers at all educational levels who want to live a purposeful life in our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, this book is highly helpful. Alireza Hejazi, Ph.D. Analyst for Leadership and Futures Studies and author of a.o. Responsible Foresight and Becoming A Professional Futurist |
As an osteopath and an autodidact futurist, Tom links the most important skills from futures thinking to learn how to feel with your whole being. His vision is not so much about shaping your vision about the future; it’s about shaping your feelings about the future and using that as an instrument to choose directions. It is not a book that is made to be read at one time. It reads like it is simple, but it is not. It’s a book that you should read chapter by chapter and think through and let the content make sense for you before passing on to the next chapter. You need to take time to digest.
In his writing, Tom takes you by the hand. Sometimes the text seems to repeat but then it comes to another point for which you still had to go back to what was told before. He teaches us personal futures thinking through his own experiences and underpins them with lots of research from other futurists, (mental) health experts, philosophers, and scientists. My greatest learning from the book is that a lot of things are uncertain but there are also a lot of things you can count on. I love the insight that “…certain feelings I longed for were constant in life, like feeling content, fulfilled and healthy… I knew I would not always experience those things, but I would always be striving for them”. Working with Tom on GREAT futures is not about knowing; his futures effect is about wisdom with all your body, mind and soul. Linda Hofman MSc. Senior lecturer & futures researcher, Fontys Academy for Creative Industries |
About
Tom Meyers
Tom Meyers was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1970. His life has been eventful, to say the least, but he came to an abrupt halt at age 29 when his gourmet deli business failed, leading him into an existential crisis. Three revealing steps – what he now calls “Futurizing Yourself” – saved his life and helped him overcome his limiting beliefs and make his preferred future into an ongoing reality.
Today, Tom is an osteopath and body-centred stress coach with a private practice in Brussels. He promotes health and wellbeing and is the founder of the “Reaset Approach”. Tom combines his health practice with his work as a wellbeing futurist, speaker and author. His mission is to help people flourish and thrive as they prepare for the future with confidence. |
In this mind and life changing book Tom explores how - instead of leaving the future up to chance, fate or others to decide - you can futurize yourself and evolve on purpose by pulling the future towards you. In the futures effect Tom's his second book in the Futurize Yourself series he delves again in his personal experience and shares his insight to empower you to create and have a GREAT (Good, Resilient, Evolvable, Actionable and Transcendent) future by exploring the future and pulling it too the present.
What would you like “the future” to be like? Or, as Tom likes to put it: What “the future” do you want?
“Today, neither past nor present, but the future has become the key to y’our health and wellbeing and the wellbeing of our planet on which we depend.”
We are living in a fast-changing and ever more complex and ambiguous world. A world that is trying to cope and navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and the devastating effects of climate change. At the same time, every aspect of y’our life is being influenced by automation, robotisation, datafication, and so many other changes and challenges due to technological advances that have outpaced our own evolution.
How will we cope with all these changes and challenges in an environment that is evolving faster than we are? How will we cope with ever-increasing stress levels while the reactive ‘fight and flight’ based stress response has become outdated and even become a stressor itself as it tampers with behaviour and our time perception?
How will YOU cope?
Today in the midst of turmoil where short-term pressures are up against medium- and long-term uncertainties, humanity is at a decisive moment. Will you wait until it is too late with y’our health, wellbeing and very existence at stake, or will you futurize yourself and adopt a futures mindset. A mindset where you start living on purpose instead of leaving life, and your future, up to chance by creating vivid and realistic images of your preferred future - based on self-defined unwavering principles - and using them as a starting point to change your behaviour in the present – a process and mindset that contributes to better, more meaningful living and a GREAT future for y’ourself.
What would you like “the future” to be like? Or, as Tom likes to put it: What “the future” do you want?
“Today, neither past nor present, but the future has become the key to y’our health and wellbeing and the wellbeing of our planet on which we depend.”
We are living in a fast-changing and ever more complex and ambiguous world. A world that is trying to cope and navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and the devastating effects of climate change. At the same time, every aspect of y’our life is being influenced by automation, robotisation, datafication, and so many other changes and challenges due to technological advances that have outpaced our own evolution.
How will we cope with all these changes and challenges in an environment that is evolving faster than we are? How will we cope with ever-increasing stress levels while the reactive ‘fight and flight’ based stress response has become outdated and even become a stressor itself as it tampers with behaviour and our time perception?
How will YOU cope?
Today in the midst of turmoil where short-term pressures are up against medium- and long-term uncertainties, humanity is at a decisive moment. Will you wait until it is too late with y’our health, wellbeing and very existence at stake, or will you futurize yourself and adopt a futures mindset. A mindset where you start living on purpose instead of leaving life, and your future, up to chance by creating vivid and realistic images of your preferred future - based on self-defined unwavering principles - and using them as a starting point to change your behaviour in the present – a process and mindset that contributes to better, more meaningful living and a GREAT future for y’ourself.
"Don’t wait till it's too late - to "Futurize Y'ourself" - for y’our future is at stake."
Y'our actions matter even if more people are involved.
We all influence the outcome.
We all influence the outcome.
What will happen if you don't Futurize Y'ourself?
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It’s time to believe that your individual decisions, choices and actions matter and that you
act like y’our future and the future of the future depends on it.
act like y’our future and the future of the future depends on it.
What, the future?!
Futurize Yourself (Vol.2)
“Neither past nor present, but the future has become the key to y’our health and wellbeing and the wellbeing of our planet on which we depend.”
What the future do you want?
Today in the midst of turmoil where short-term pressures are up against medium- and long-term uncertainties, humanity is at a decisive moment. Will you wait until it is too late with y’our health, wellbeing and very existence at stake, or will you futurize yourself and adopt a futures mindset. A mindset where you start living on purpose instead of leaving life, and your future up to chance by creating vivid and realistic images of your preferred future - based on self-defined unwavering principles - and using them as a starting point to change your behaviour in the present – a process and mindset that enhances your future-self continuity and contributes to a better, healthier, more meaningful life and a GREAT future for y’ourself.
The best way to have a great future is to create it and evolve on purpose, today!
What the future do you want?
Today in the midst of turmoil where short-term pressures are up against medium- and long-term uncertainties, humanity is at a decisive moment. Will you wait until it is too late with y’our health, wellbeing and very existence at stake, or will you futurize yourself and adopt a futures mindset. A mindset where you start living on purpose instead of leaving life, and your future up to chance by creating vivid and realistic images of your preferred future - based on self-defined unwavering principles - and using them as a starting point to change your behaviour in the present – a process and mindset that enhances your future-self continuity and contributes to a better, healthier, more meaningful life and a GREAT future for y’ourself.
The best way to have a great future is to create it and evolve on purpose, today!
content
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: What the Future?
Chapter 2: A Good Future
Chapter 3: A Resilient Future
Chapter 4: An Evolvable Future
Chapter 5: An Actionable Future
Chapter 6: A Transcendent Future
Chapter 7: The Future Self
Afterword
Introduction
Chapter 1: What the Future?
Chapter 2: A Good Future
Chapter 3: A Resilient Future
Chapter 4: An Evolvable Future
Chapter 5: An Actionable Future
Chapter 6: A Transcendent Future
Chapter 7: The Future Self
Afterword
Target Audience
Men and women between 25 and 55 who are interested in self-development, personal futures and/or are concerned about how to deal with a rapidly changing world.
The strong points
- It is a book that was timely yesterday but essential today to be empowered tomorrow.
- It is a timely book that is needed today to tackle some of our greatest challenges
- It is one of the few books in an emerging genre of "self-development through futuristic thinking"
- There is increasing attention to futures thinking as there is more and more evidence that it has benefits for one's health, well-being, adaptability and resilience
- It provides a clear structure for getting a grip on the rapidly changing world
- It is the first book to propose a stress management and resilience enhancing approach by creating a strong picture of the future
- It is the first book on how to boost one's 'future self continuity’
- It helps the reader to be very clear about where they are going, but flexible about how to get there.
- It helps the reader get more control over their future
The Futures Effect
Change Your Story, Change Your Future!
Change Your Story, Change Your Future!
Blurp
The Good FUTURE
The future is not something that just happens to us - it is something we create every single day, by action or by inaction. Whether the future is good or bad is entirely up to us. As we see the future, so we act, as we act so we become!
(Gerd Leonhard, Futurist and author of Technology vs Humanity)
(Gerd Leonhard, Futurist and author of Technology vs Humanity)
The Resilient FUTURE
The future is an elusive abstraction we almost don’t believe in; looking straight at it requires us to confront our fears and anxieties, the possibility of misfortune, and the fact of our mortality. -
(Vincent Ialenti, anthropologist and author of Deep Time Reckoning)
(Vincent Ialenti, anthropologist and author of Deep Time Reckoning)
The EVOLVABLE FUTURE
Evolve and do it yourself.
(Nature is too slow)
(Tom Meyers)
(Nature is too slow)
(Tom Meyers)
Kaplin A., Anzaldi L. (2015). New Movement in Neuroscience: A Purpose-Driven Life. Cerebrum 7.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4564234
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4564234
Wilson D.S., Hayes S.C., Biglan A., Embry D.D. (2014). Evolving the future: toward a science of intentional change. Behav Brain Sci. 37(4):395-416.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24826907
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24826907
As we see the future, so we act, as we act so we become!
(Barbara Marx Hubbard)
(Barbara Marx Hubbard)
The actionable FUTURE
The Transcendent Future
Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.
(Jonas Salk)
(Jonas Salk)
A. H. Maslow (1963). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370-396.
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu
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Do unto your self as your future self would do unto you.
A. H. Maslow (1963). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370-396.
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu
The future YOU
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references
These books are not only referenced in, but also highly recommended to read after my book "The Futures Effect"