By JazzmYn*, CreativeCommons

5 Things You Must Do Immediately to Survive and Thrive in the 2012

5 Things You Must Do Immediately to Survive and Thrive in the 2012

Jed Diamond, Ph.D. has been a health-care professional for more than 40 years. He is the author of 9 books, including Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places, Male Menopause, The Irritable Male Syndrome, and Mr. Mean: Saving Your Relationship from the Irritable Male Syndrome . I offer counseling to men, women, and couples in his office in California or by phone with people throughout the U.S. and around the world. To receive a Free E-book on Mens Health and a free subscription to my e-newsletter go to http://facebook.com/menalivenow. If you enjoy my articles, please subscribe. I write to everyone who joins my tribe of followers. My new book, MenAlive: Stop Killer Stress with Simple Energy Healing Tools is due for publication in May 2012.

On May 30, 2011, a leader in the Spanish Indignants movement, inspired by the Arab Spring made a call for world-wide protests to draw attention to economic inequalities and human rights violations. I still have a vivid image of being in Madrid, Spain, in June 2011 and seeing 40,000 men, women, and children, marching for a better world. The protest received additional attention when the internet group Anonymous encouraged its followers to take part in the protests, calling protesters to "flood lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and Occupy Wall Street". They promoted the protest with a poster featuring a dancer atop Wall Street's iconic Charging Bull. The first protest in the U.S. was held at Zuccotti Park in New York City on September 17, 2011. The Occupy Movement continues to spread throughout the world. Two Responses: Love vs. Fear The phrase we are the 99% is a political slogan used by protesters of the Occupy movement. It refers to the concentration of wealth among the top 1% of income earners compared to the other 99 percent. Like all grass-roots protests, the media at first ridiculed the movement. Not surprising since major media are owned by large corporations that are run by the 1%. As writer Jack Etkin says, Occupy went after The Corporations... so the Corporate-owned-media are attacking Occupy. Police response has been mixed. Those reacting from fear often use violence. Those who are more secure find peaceful means to deal with protests. In Oakland, California, riot-gear clad police officers cleared demonstrators from their encampment using rubber bullets and tear gas grenades, gravely wounding an Iraq war veteran in the process. The violent raid, authorized by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, was harshly

criticized by Dan Siegel, the mayor's top legal adviser. He called the raid "tragically unnecessary" in a press conference announcing his resignation. Siegel, a civil rights attorney, followed up the press conference with a sharply-worded Twitter post. "Support Occupy Oakland, not the 1 percent and its government facilitators," Siegel wrote. Other cities have taken a different approach. In Albany, N.Y., a planned move by the mayor -- with the support of Gov. Andrew Cuomo -- to oust Occupy demonstrators from a city park near the capitol was quashed after the city's police chief and district attorney aired reservations. "So long as we have no violence that is being perpetrated against law enforcement and no damage to state property, there's room for peaceful coexistence here," the district attorney, P. David Soares, said in a recent interview with the Associated Press. "I support the right of all parties to assemble peacefully and express their points of view." 2012: Shift Happens Everywhere Although the Occupy Movement seems to have emerged out of nowhere and surprised many people, others have seen the change coming for some time. As Richard
Heinberg goes said in his prophetic 2003 book, The Partys Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, Industrial societies have been flourishing for roughly 150 years now, using fossil energy resources to build far-flung trade empires, to fuel the invention of spectacular new technologies, and to fund a way of life that is opulent and fast-paced. But the opulent life-style of the 1%, which many in the 99% tried to emulate, could not continue. It is as if part of the human race has been given a sudden windfall of wealth and decided to spend that wealth by throwing an extravagant party, says Heinberg. The party has not been without its discontents or costs. From time to time, a lone voice issuing from here or there has called for the party to quiet down or cease altogether. The partiers have paid no attention. But soon the party itself will be a fading memorynot because anyone decided to heed the voice of moderation, but because the wine and food are gone and the harsh light of morning has come. John Peter is President and founder of The Arlington Institute and is considered by many to be one of the most informed futurists in the world. In his 2008 book A Vision for 2012: Planning for Extraordinary Change, he says, I believe we are entering one of those punctuation points in the evolution of our species that will rapidly propel us into an unimaginable new era. This new world wont be at all like what we currently find familiar. Because this shift is so fundamental and acute, the most positive option will not make sense at all from this vantage so early in the transition. In the face of almost certain uncertainty, our job is to rise to the occasion, to evolve in our thinking, our perceptions, and in our commitment to make this transition as positive as possible.

As we get ready to move into 2012, there are two ways we can do it. We can look around us and see that more and more people inhabit the planet (now approaching 7 billion) that has limited resources. We can feed our fears, hoard what we have, and maintain an apocalyptic vision of billions of people dying so the 1% can continue to live their opulent lifestyle. The other vision is to feed our love and compassion, share the limited resources of the planet, and find joy in living more simply so that others can simply live. Two films describe these approaches: The 2009 disaster film 2012 and the 2011 film The Economics of Happiness.

Heres the poster for the film 2012.

Heres the poster for The Economics of Happiness.

Heres What You Can Do to Survive and Thrive in 2012 1. Understand that there are real stresses we face in the world and they wont end in 2012. The changes that we are in the midst of are real and serious, but they are ongoing. There wont be a simple fix and no hero will save us. The changes result from a combination of factors including the following: Economic stress--From instabilities in the global economic system due to increasing debt and ever-widening income gaps between rich and poor people. Emotional stressFrom fear of losing resources and increasing violence from those who wish to control the critical supplies of oil, coal, water, and land. Climate stressFrom changes in the makeup of our atmosphere. Population stressArising from differences in the population growth rates between rich and poor societies, and from the spiraling growth of megacities in poor countries. Environmental stressFrom worsening damage to our land, water, forests, and fisheries. Energy stressFrom the increasing scarcity of conventional petroleum products.

2. Recognize that we each can influence the future by focusing on what we want. Many of us feel that we have no control over events in the world, that we are pawns in a game that someone else is playing. That is not the case. There are an increasing number of studies that show that focusing our attention and intention on the future we desire can help to bring it about. Researcher Lynn McTaggart has demonstrated that people can actually impact whether there is war or peace in an area based on our collective intention. She says, An entirely new scientific story is emerging that challenges many of our Newtonian and Darwinian assumptions including our most basic premise: the sense of things as

separate entities in competition for survival. She concludes, The latest evidence from quantum physics offers the extraordinary possibility that all of life exists in a dynamic relationship of cooperation. We can choose what kinds of books and blogs we read, movies we watch, or T.V. programs we view. Do you want a disaster world or a happiness world? What focus our attention on expands. I suggest you check out the Economics of Happiness. It offers the kind of world I want to focus my heart and soul on achieving. 3. Stop looking for good guys and bad guys. We are all in this together. Whether you are on the left, the right, or somewhere in the middle, there is a tendency to see the world as peopled by good guys and bad guys (and of course, they are not just men who are good or bad). Research scientist Rebecca Costa calls this irrational opposition. In her excellent book, The Watchmans Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction Costa says, Irrational opposition occurs when the act of rejecting, criticizing, suppressing, ignoring, misrepresenting, marginalizing, and resisting rational solutions becomes the accepted norm. We live in an increasingly complex world. One way to make things simpler is simply to find some bad guys to oppose and get passionate about getting rid of them. Whether the them are Republicans or Democrats, rich people or rabble rousers, the upper class or the middle class, its easy to demonize the opposition and lionize the people on our side. But the truth is we are all human beings on a very small planet in a big universe. We will either survive together or not at all. 4. Understand that we have a good wolf and a bad wolf inside each of us. An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he says to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

There is no good group and bad group. There is only each of us with our own excesses and deficits. We need to be kind to ourselves and others. Whether the love inside us is able to win over the fear depends on which side we put our energy on, which side we feed. The more we tell ourselves stories that are driven by fear, the more we will feel threatened and look for others to attack. The more we remind ourselves of all the good we have received and the love that surrounds us, the more we will work together with others to solve our collective problems. 5. Accept that lasting solutions must occur on the energy level not the material level. When we try and figure out how to deal with all the stresses noted in #1 above economic, emotional, climate, population, environmental, and energyits easy to get discouraged. The problems just seem too complex to solve. How do we feed everyone in the world? How do we protect ourselves from those who would do us harm? How do we find ways to use the resources of our finite planet in ways that supports life? The great physicist Albert Einstein said, Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. The problems we face today are all material problemstoo many people, too few resources, wasting the resources we have, etc. But there is another level to problem solving that occurs in the realm of energy. The picture most people call scientific is obsolete, says Ervin Lazlo, arguably the worlds greatest systems theorist and interdisciplinary scientist and philosopher. He tells us that science is in the midst of a shift from matter to energy as the primary reality and that, In the emerging concept of the new science there is no categorical divide between the physical world, the living world, and the world of mind and consciousness. That is a very radical and transformative statement from a scientist with solid credentials. The new field of Energy Healing can help us solve problems that seem insolvable, whether they are chronic pain and never seems to go away or chronic conflict going on in the world. In my new book, MenAlive: Stop Killer Stress with Simple Energy Healing Tools, I give you the information you need to use these tools in 2012 and beyond. Its true we live in turbulent times. We will be buffeted by the seas of change. Individually we are likely to be swept away. Working together we can create tribes that nurture and sustain us. We can join our tribes together to create a more joyful and sustainable world than the one we are living in today. I invite you to join the tribe at www.MenAlive.com.