Most people are living into a default future and they don’t even know it… 

Do you know why men’s shirts have buttons on the right but women’s have them on the left?

For men, it was probably because that made it easier to reach a gun inside. Before guns, swordsmen needed jackets which buttoned left over right, so as not to catch the handle when they drew their sword. 

For women, it was probably because when buttons were invented, in the 13th century, the woman wearing the shirt wasn’t the person buttoning it—they had servants button their shirts. Some people believe that most women held babies with their left hands, so they needed their right hand to open their shirt buttons for breastfeeding.

I’m less interested in the correct historical reason for why we do our buttons on a particular side, than the fact that we do…

What unconscious habits have you picked up in your life or business, that can be traced back to your parents, or your grandparents, or your culture, or your religion?

As Carl Jung once said, 

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Did you know that the space shuttle was designed by the Romans?!

On either side of the Space Shuttle are two massive solid rocket boosters (SRBs). The SRBs have to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. 

The railroad line from the factory is on a railroad track that is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. So, the limit for the size of the solid rocket boosters was set by the width of the railway track. 

But why is the track such a unique measurement?

Well, railroad tracks in the US are the same width in England, and American railroads were built by English immigrants. 

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the tramways before trains existed, and that’s the gauge they used.

They used that measurement, because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that were used for building wagons which used that wheel spacing.

And why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? 

Because if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England. You see, that was the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads across Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their armies. 

The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. The chariots were made for, or by, Imperial Rome, so they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

This connection was first written about by an Irish solicitor named Bill Holohan, when he explained how 2,000 years earlier, the Romans set in place the restrictions for the size of the space shuttle. 

What ruts are YOU trapped in, that were set in place years, or even generations, earlier? 

Try asking your parents or grandparents about their beliefs and habits around money, love, intimacy, success. You may be surprised just how far back your habits and beliefs go. 

Then the question arises… 

What are you going to do about that?

The opposite of a default future is a created future 

Winston Churchill understood that.

In the dark early days of the Second World War, Churchill had few real weapons. The British Army only had nine divisions available for war, whereas Germany had seventy-eight. 

Within six weeks of invading France, the French surrendered to the Nazis. And the entire British armed forces were forced to flee from France at Dunkirk. Almost all the army’s equipment had to be abandoned in France—many soldiers were unable to even bring back their rifles.  

Without weapons, Churchill attacked with words. The speeches he delivered are acknowledged among the most powerful ever given in the English language. 

In 1940, three days after he became Prime Minister, he gave his “blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech. A month later, he gave a famous and defiant call to arms, “we shall fight on the beaches…” Two weeks later, he inspired the British nation in the face of what could have been seen as a terrible defeat at Dunkirk, using the phrase, “This was their finest hour…”

According to the Imperial War Museum: His words were defiant, heroic and human, lightened by flashes of humor. They reached out to everyone in Britain, across Nazi-occupied Europe, and throughout the world. As journalist Beverley Nichols wrote, ‘He took the English language and sent it into battle.’

But Churchill had been using generative language and living a created life for a long time. 

When he visited the United States in 1932, prohibition was in place and there was a nationwide constitutional ban on the sale of alcohol.

Churchill simply had his doctor write out a prescription for alcoholic spirits—at meal times! 

Are you living into a default future… or a created life?

Love. Rich