#123: T.G.I.TED - Visualization and Breathing Air From The Future

We all know the power of visualizing, right? We know how important it is to visualize a future that we can imagine ourselves in -- to see, hear and even smell that future.

But can you really breathe air from the future? Yes!

In today's episode, I talk about a TED talk I recently watched. It's by Anab Jain and it's called, "Why We Need to Imagine Different Futures."

In this T.G.I.TED series, I'll share my insights on an inspiring and thoughtful TED talk each Friday. I'm doing this to celebrate the release of my own TEDx talk, which is, drumroll... NOW OUT! You can watch it here:

https://www.thorchallgren.com/tedx

In the TED talk given by Anab Jain, she talks about how her futurist lab literally created what urban air in the future would smell like, and as a result, leaders in the U.A.E. made different choices so their children would inherit a different legacy.

As we think about our own futures, it's important to bridge that disconnect between today and tomorrow, and to be as SPECIFIC as possible. This TED talk shows just how specific you can get!

As always, thanks for listening!

Here's the other talk in this T.G.I.TED series:

#118: T.G.I.TED - The Hidden Power of Smiling

You can find me here:

WEBSITE:  https://www.thorchallgren.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/thorchallgren

You can find me here:

Dr. Thor on Instagram @thorchallgren

Website: https://thorchallgren.com

Transcript

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Today I want to talk about breathing air from the future, a concept from a TED talk I recently watched. Now we all know that when we imagine what our future will look like, it's important to literally put yourself into that future, to see feel and touch what it will be like. In today's show, I look at a TED Talk where the speaker literally gave people the chance to smell air from the future. So take a deep breath. And let's get started. 

Welcome to Every Day A New Thought. I'm Thor Challgren. It's T.G.I.TED a new feature on the show where I look at one TED Talk that inspires me. I started last week with Episode 119, where I talked about the hidden power of smiling, and I'll put that show in the description. 

Oh, and great news. My own TEDx Talk is now available. A week ago, it wasn't. And then about eight hours after the episode came out, it was actually released. So my talk, which is called why you should embrace chaos on vacation is now available. And I'll put that link in the show description below. 

So on to today's talk, I watched a TED Talk by someone named Anab Jain. She's in the futurist business where she explores what the future will look like. And she actually has this very interesting approach which, which is that she makes it tangible, she really puts you in the place where you can see feel and touch what the consequences of a particular future action will look like. 

And her main point in the talk is that we are often disconnected from the consequences of our future actions. They don't feel real to us. And so as a result, she says that we often treat our future self like a stranger, like we can't even imagine what this person will feel like. So the choices that we make now are disconnected from knowing what the impact it will have on that future version of ourselves. 

So in her talk, which I'm going to put in the description, she shares two main stories about her how her lab helped people see what the future will look like, what it will feel like. And in one case, what it will smell like. So she shares a story about how her lab was hired by the government officials in the United Arab Emirates. And one of the things that they wanted to look at specifically was the impact of the urbanization of a city and what that would do to the air quality. So her lab actually went in and figured out if they projected forward what the traffic impact in that city would look like. What would the air in fact be. And so they created this physical way for the officials to go up to a device and it would basically breathe on them and tell them this is what the air will smell like in 2030 If you don't make any changes. And the point that they made was, this is essentially the air that your children are going to live in. It's fascinating because then the leaders made decisions to change the way that they designed the city realizing that this air represented a future that they didn't want their own children to inherit. 

She also shares two other stories, one where they created a mock trial to point out the impact of genetic testing, and another on what the impact climate change would have in 2050. And they literally built an apartment of the future to show what life would be like for people in 2050, based on current projections of where climate change is going to take us. 

My takeaway from this is that we've all heard the importance of visualizing your future, how it's important to see yourself in it. And this TED talk really shows me how far you can go with this. Jain talks about how important it is to bridge that disconnect between today and tomorrow. 

So if you're ever thinking that you're not visualizing specific enough, that when you imagine the future that you see for yourself that maybe you're not bringing that specificity of sensory impact, you're probably right, because here's someone who literally creates what the future looks like. That helps us bridge that disconnect between who we are today and who we're going to be tomorrow. 

That's the show for today. If you liked this, please hit subscribe if you're watching on YouTube. If you're listening to the podcast, please subscribe or follow the show on your favorite podcast app until tomorrow. Thanks for listening