Posts Tagged ‘David Whyte’
Let the world look at you. I assure you, the world will like what it sees.
Posted on: April 26, 2010
Gratitude or selfishness?
When I first encountered the idea of a gratitude diary, I was discountenanced by feeling grateful for things like . . . well, my coffee. I suspected greed, not gratitude.
Once I started using a diary, then I realised that I was often thankful for the meals I had had that day. I am grateful for a homemade soup, for example. but am I grateful just because I could have been out all day and been subjected to junk food? Partly. Yet when I feel grateful for soup, I never simultaneously think of the disgusting fare served up as food up-and-down the arterial transport spokes. I am think of much I appreciate a well made home made soup. I experience pleasure not gluttony.
In short, I experience me.
This still seems selfish, doesn’t it? But it is my job to see me. It is my job to appreciate who I am.
The funny thing is that we cannot see who we are, or appreciate who we, are except in the eyes of the world. It is when I reach out to some thing I value and treasure, when I recognize what is good in the world, that I recognize the good in me.
Khalil Gibran talks of adventuring a path and meeting the soul. Not a soul. The soul.
David Whyte talks of the universe taking its ball home too, when we get up and take our ball home. He points out that universe is not punishing us. It is just that without “the faculties of attention, there is nothing to be found.”
We are what we are grateful for
We are what we are grateful for. It’s a simple as that. When we remind ourselves of what we truly appreciate, we remind ourselves of ourselves. We are validated. We belong.
But because we are simple folk and all these word feel like mental contortions, we can listen rather to the words of Mr Chips’ fellow teacher.
“I found that when I stopped judging myself harshly, the world became kinder to me. Remember I told you once, go out, and look around the world. Do that now. Only this time, let the world look at you. And the difference, I assure you, the world will like what it sees.”
Employers for life
Today, CIPD published a story that we want an employer for life.
Insecurity distracting us from growth
Some people don’t understand the economic numbers and if they don’t, then the responses reported by CIPD spell out for them the meaning of a severe recession.
Employees are grubbing at the bottom of Maslow’s Need Hierarchy.
It’s not much of a life, and we won’t be going any where fast as a country until we reduce the fear and worry about basics.
Employment relations and psychology
We need to get the politics right. We need to get every one to sit down and see what we can keep stable, and keep it stable. Give people as much security as they can so they can plan.
But we also have to learn to function in the “whip and crack of the whirlwind.” Other communities do. We need to as well.
Careers have changed
CIPD was knocking the ‘free agent’ route. Well, UK has not had much of tradition of self-employment or entrepreneurship. We will get panic simply because we don’t have many role models around us.
Let’s take the intrapreneurship route with which we are more familiar.
Before social media
Our CV showed an obedient relationship with authority.
In a social media world
Our CV is our portfolio of original work and our evolving purpose.
What is our evolving purpose?
When we aren’t used to telling our story, explaining our purpose can be the hardest thing in the world.
So often our purpose has been no more than “hitch a ride on a gravy train.”
For too long, we’ve pretended
- we can drive the train
- make gravy
- and that we are welcome on the train.
That is the crisis that we are facing.
But hey, if catching gravy trains is our skill and purpose in life, then at least we can become knowledgeable about gravy trains. When do they come and how do we hop on and hide?
We can write about it. We might have to be like Banksy and keep our identify quiet. But we can write about it. And show he evidence.
To carry on the train metaphor, we can show a picture of us in Edinburgh in the morning and in London in the evening. Of course, “they” will be looking out for us now. No problem. We are the experts. Another route!
Psychologists reading this know where I am headed . . .
Build that portfolio!
You can call your life by any name you choose but there is only one life you can call your own. Start you blog today!
Don’t do anything indiscrete. Begin with the small things. Take a picture of a train.
And then another. Then another.
It’s a cheap hobby at least.
Bet it becomes lucrative though!
Acknowledgements:
“conduct your blooming in the whip & crack of the whirlwind” : Gwendolyn Brooks
“there is only one life you can call your own” : David Whyte
Only this time, let the world look at you. I assure you, the world will like what it sees.
Posted on: February 16, 2010
Why have managers ignored the poets for so long?
Contemporary English poet David Whyte
David Whyte uses contemporary language to talk about the essential ontological question of management, work, organizations and successful business.
When he takes his ball home, the universe takes its ball home too . . .
Far too often, our remedies for this world involve sulking. Like an aggrieved child in a playground, we pick up our ball and go home. We don’t address the lack of respect that sent us into a spin.
Persian poet, Khalil Gibran
Poets through the ages tell us that we find meaning and satisfaction through action, not inaction. Through engagement, not withdrawal.
Yesterday, I posted an excerpt on self-knowledge from Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet. He says it too.
We don’t find our bliss by staying in. We find our bliss by setting out on a path. And on that path we don’t meet our soul. We meet the soul.
It also matters little which path we follow. Many lead paths to the soul. What matters is that we travel the path. What matters is that we set out. What matters is that we adventure a path.
We will recognize the soul on the way because it will recognize us. And we recognize ourselves, we acquire self-knowledge, when the soul says good day.
Goodbye Mr Chips
Similar lines were said in the iconic movie, Goodbye Mr Chips, by the German teacher to the gawky, awkward Englishman.
“I found that when I stopped judging myself harshly, the world became kinder to me. Remember I told you once, go out, and look around the world. Do that now. Only this time, let the world look at you. And the difference, I assure you, the world will like what it sees.”
Only this time, let the world look at you. I assure you, the world will like what it sees.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Thinking about modern careers in the words of Khalil Gibran (flowingmotion.wordpress.com)
- Do you agree with Khalil Gibran’s ethics of market place? (flowingmotion.wordpress.com)
- If our words for happiness and sadness were different, we wouldn’t feel muddled (flowingmotion.wordpress.com)
- Personal leadership: Answer the moral challenge of our age (flowingmotion.wordpress.com)
Psychology blossomed in the noughties
Positive psychology, appreciative inquiry, and mytho-poetic tradition are well understood and taught in psychology and management classrooms in all corners of the world.
But we need a name
Paradoxically though, the technical names for these fields are relatively unintelligible to lay people. If there is anything we want to achieve in this field, it is to be intelligible to ordinary people.
Would personal leadership do as name?
Eventually, I settled on the term personal leadership.
We are concerned about styles of leadership that are personal. What I do, for example is not strictly relevant to what you do. And what I do today, has little bearing on what is relevant tomorrow.
And does the name contribute to our understanding?
Having described the rationale of this new field in these words, is it truly a discipline that belongs in the professions?
How can this definition of leadership generate a theory that is useful in practice? After all, if what is relevant today and is not relevant tomorrow, what use is that theory?
We have an ontological challenge
The difficulty is less in the epistemology, that is in the way we study leadership, than in the ontology, the nature of leadership.
We used to think of leadership as something we do.
Now we look at ourselves in context. Our unit of analysis, as researchers say, is “ourself in context”.
What are the practical implications of defining leadership as ourselves in context?
We don’t exist when we don’t see
David Whyte refers to attention. “When my eyes are tired the world is tired also”. We are our habits of attention. We are what we attend to. We are our capacity to pay attention. When our way is lost, we find ourselves by paying attention. By becoming mindful and “touching and feeling” what is around us.
The big change in our understanding of leadership
Who we are is not what we do repeatedly and well.
Who we are is our frontier. Who we are is the place where we are curious about the world. Who we are is the frontier we cannot ignore.
Paradoxically, often when we feel tired, it is not because we are at our frontier, it is because we are not. We are not at a place where we are confronting the unknown carried by the energy of compulsive curiosity.
Leadership is not a spectator sport
We feel alive when we are in a place where “we want to know”. We are leaders when our curiosity about a situation leads us to ask questions. We are leaders when our compulsive curiosity asks questions which holds a mirror up to a situation.
We are leaders when our questions allow people to ask their questions.
How can we understand leadership in a way that allows us to share knowledge?
This question has two goals.
#1 What is the knowledge I can share?
There are many ways of sharing knowledge and we know stories are much more effectual than dry statistics answering questions that were unlikely from the outset to produce a practically significant answer.
We also know that knowledge is also more likely to be absorbed when people trust the presenter – when the presenter shares the journey of the students.
#2 What can I charge for my knowledge?
And probably more important is the heretical question of what can we charge for our knowledge. How can we claim and sustain status for our knowledge?
It is this question that personal leadership answers. We share knowledge not because we are right, but because we are willing to share in the gains and losses of a decision.
It is here that the field of personal leadership enters into the spirit of our age. Authority comes from being willing to share the gains and losses of a decision.
Are we so curious about the people we are with that they are willing to be changed by them ~ without notice and without guarantee?
That is knowledge to be passed on. Am I willing to act with you right now?
A good year ago I jotted down these three quotations. Then I abandoned the draft. Now I am tidying up my blog, I wonder, what was going through my mind that day.
David Whyte on the willfulness of the world
“And I thought this is the good day you could meet your love, this is the black day someone close to you could die”.
~ David Whyte from The House of Belonging in River Flow, p. 7.
Was I thinking about the essential unknow-ability of the world and importance of living in the world as it unfolds and both tempts us and taunts us?
Goethe on the universe conspiring to help us
The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.
~ Goethe
Was I thinking about the need to be active and the magic that happens when we cross the Rubicon and move towards irrevocably towards what we want?
Isaac Newton on following our dreams in the large world around us
I don’t know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
~ Isaac Newton
Was I thinking about the impossibility of understanding the universe yet finding a corner within it where we live our lives heroicly and magnificently?
What sense was I making about mindfulness and action?
Did I come to the conclusion that world likes us to engage quite forthrightly following our interests yet understanding that others will be doing so too? Did I come to the conclusion that life promises us nothing yet demands our full attention? Did I come to the conclusion that we will always be significant yet what we do is important?
Did I come to the conclusion that is OK to ask and the world loves us for it? Did I come to the conclusion that it is OK to be small ~ we all are?
What was I thinking that day?
Make more money by promoting a sense of belonging in your firm: A manifesto for HR
Posted on: November 22, 2009
I don’t do pain, even in my imagination
In my last post I described an exercise for testing the depth of our positive attitude: write a novel about myself and make myself feel pain. I tried it. It was hard! I’m glad to know that I am not a masochist.
But I learned a little. I learned that we hate to lose our ‘role’ and that I hate to be around people who are just pretending to have a ‘role’. From there, I found myself listing the HR procedures for increasing belonging and the metrics to show how much value these procedures add to a company.
A manifesto for HR!
My worst nightmare
My worst nightmare is being in zombie-land. I hate being in places where people have become cynical and at best are just “deteriorating as slowly as possible“.
Of course, I don’t really hate it ~ I am terrified by it. We are terrified by anything which assaults our personalities. I’m an INTFJ or a shaper/completer-finisher/resource-investigator. I don’t do incoherent, lazy, out-of-it. I may be misguided. I may be slothful about many things. But I will always have a purpose. If I am going to be rudderless, I do it on purpose!
Our nightmare is not to have a role
This was my insight from the novel-writing exercise. We are all terrified by the prospect of not having a role, or not belonging to our communities and workplaces. We are very sensitive to rejection. Even the nuances of rejection send us into a flat spin.
Many things that can lead us to feel that we don’t belong
A lot of things can lead to a sudden feeling that we are out of place.
- Our general confidence
- Policies of the firm which signal who is in and who is out
- Cliques and favoritism
- Mismatches with our own hopes and dreams
- And storming – good old crises of confidence
Recraft your way to belonging
- Heaps has been written in the last few years about recrafting jobs to meet our personal needs. A waitress tenderly sweeping the floor of the cafe with good music playing in the background is recrafting her job just as the young guy who also works there recrafts his job by trying to sweep as fast and vigorously as possible. Both put their personal stamp and sense of meaning on the job.
- Poet David Whyte gives the same advice. Begin with the ground, the hallowed ground on which you start. Find meaning and belonging in what you already have and build from them.
- Positive psychologist, Christopher Petersen calls expanding from what we have “building a bridge while we walk on it”.
- And for a good speech showing this is not just for me and you, but for the smartest and the brightest, listen to Dr Rao on Googletalk (YouTube).
Recrafting when we feel rejected
It is tough to recraft when we feel rejected though ~ for this reason. We hate being rejected and we are loathe to admit that we have been excluded.
- One, it hurts.
- Two, we catastrophize and think that if this person rejects us, then everyone else will too.
- Three, we worry that if we dismiss rejection, we may dismiss feedback that will help us manage future relationships.
- Four, we catastrophize and think that if this relationship is not worthwhile, none will be worthwhile.
- Five, we worry that the information that we have been rejected will be used against us!
Rejection put us in an emotional spin and bullies know it! They’ll use rejection to keep you off balance.
That said, how do you work on finding the good in situation when you are feeling lousy?
Recrafting when we we are afraid
I would say we should do three things.
- Make an objective assessment of the situation, as clinically as any staff officer in front of a paper map miles from the front line.
- As you are not sitting behind the lines and you are actually in the thick of things, do as you would in battle. Move yourself, everyone else and everything you need out of the firing line.
- Consider all the options including the options for negotiation and resumption of pleasantries.
This is really hard to do. Believe me ~ being rejected by people like employers and teachers, on whom you depend, will frighten you almost as much as getting shot at. In many ways it is worse. You can allow yourself to be frightened by bullets as long as you act responsibly. But to admit you are being “dissed” by your own side rips the guts out of you.
So you do the three steps: you take defensive actions, you try to be pleasant, you take time to make an objective assessment. And guess what 90% of your energy is going into defending yourself from your own team!
Time spent on mending relationships in a firm
You are now being defensive and so is the next person and so is the next. Guess what? Anyone who wants to overrun this outfit, or take on this company, is going to win!
The firm is now in peril
This is my biggest nightmare. It is quite clear once the spiral of defensive starts, the only thing allowing this firm to survive, is the incompetence of the opposition. Anyone wanting to ‘take’ them would only have to distract the staff more for the whole ‘shooting match’ to fall apart.
What is the alternative to a firm where we are all watching our backs?
Inevitably, things do wrong in companies. People do bump against each other quite unwittingly. Feelings are hurt. If we want to be successful (survive),we need to establish is a working culture where people are able to deal with shock and surprise without passing it down the line.
How do we stop defensiveness spreading?
Good HR departments, generally in larger firms work hard to keep a positive atmosphere (I did say good.)
- Good firms develop strong systems to minimize the management by whim. The reason they do that is to remove the objective threat to one’s employment that accompanies disagreements. When there is no objective threat, then people can attend to mending their fences. Good firms don’t allow people who are party to any “dissing”, in either direction, to take part in decisions about each others employment contract.
- Good firms go to great lengths to manage the assimilation process ~ known as on-boarding or induction. They work with people through the forming, storming and norming stages and then take a watching brief during the performing stage coming back in when there are changes in a team or when someone leaves.
- Good firms take some trouble to build diverse teams and to educate people why they need the very people who seem very different from themselves. HR also takes some trouble to make sure that a team is not made of people who are too similar too each other and that the important bridging roles of team player and chairperson (the lazy roles!) are also present.
- Good firms insist that everyone has an active career plan which is reviewed with you openly by committees chaired by senior members of the firm.
- Good firms monitor diversity assiduously and keep a watchful eye on the formation of cliques. HR is quick to intervene to minimize behavior that is rejecting and removes people’s attention from their own job.
- Good firms design jobs carefully making sure that is is easy to get down to work (autonomy), that growth is possible in the job visible (competence) and that jobs allow us express ourselves meaningfully (relationships). Work has goals, feedback built into the task itself, adequate resources, dignity, respect, physical safety, contractual safety, mentors and coaches. We don’t want people so confused about how their jobs fit into the wider whole that they cannot think straight.
This is what I do for a living
My job is to make a system so that we are able to work together even when we are rubbing up against people. I will see the effects of my systems in several ways:
- People attempt to resolve difficulties without fear of their contracts. People take the initiative; people don’t use the employment contract as a threat; negotiation of the employment contract is kept separate from other decisions; there is no fear in the organization or cynicism.
- The output of people does not vary significantly when they move from group to group. Nor does the output vary between people with different demographic characteristics.
- The time taken for people to settle into the organization is known and the process is monitored and taken as seriously as quality on a Toyota assembly line.
- Everyone has an active career path, we are mindful of who should be seriously thinking about progressing onto other firms, and we treat their onward progression as part of our competitive edge.
- Deployment of individuals is not only done for and to individuals. Teams are deployed so that they are balanced. They are given time to bed down and their boundaries are respected. Team work is not disrupted without investments being made in the time it takes to reestablish a team.
- We have designed each job so that it has clear goals measurable by the incumbent, they can see how well they are doing and they can step-into the job in an orderly way sharing their successes publicly with others.
HR Metrics
To monitor my system, I have metrics on each process. I also monitor HR Costs/Sales in each business unit and over time. When people have the time to attend to their jobs, I would see small improvements in the ratio.
Take for example, the HR Costs/Sales ratio in manufacturing which is usually around 10%. If people are able to do their job only 10% better, then the ratio will increase from 10/100 to 9/100 or done the other way from 10/100 to 10/110 or a 1% in Gross Profit. That is generally going to be “pure” profit ~ that is, it is money that comes available for new equipment, training and even medical insurance and holidays.
When we are making more money because we aren’t worrying, then that is good profit indeed!
We do what concerns us and we are terrified by its loss
So it seems making a role for everyone comes from greatest concern -that we are going to have to sit around faking it. That led me to think that everyone wants a meaningful role. Not everyone wants to sit around making meaningful roles. Who would make the money if we did? While other people are off making things and selling things, it is my job to create an organization where we can get along without needless friction.
An emotionally healthy company requires good systems. We must be able to work without fear. Problems must be refereed as they arise and early. And we must trawl our systems looking for emotional bruising that is getting buried. If we continue to hide the casual rejection of people “because we can”, it will eventually cost us our livelihood. While we are all protecting ourselves from each other, our opposition will be taking over our business.
Simply, I am doing my job when you are able to do yours and I do this job because I cannot imagine what it is like to live defensively all day long!
PS I still don’t think I did the exercise properly. It is very hard to imagine pain ~ even on a make-believe character that looks, moves and talks just like us!
Related articles by Zemanta
- Do you live restlessly in the shadow of adrenaline-inducing goals? (flowingmotion.wordpress.com)
We are what we say and do
“When your eyes are tired, no part of the world can find you . . .” so says poet, David Whyte. David Whyte doesn’t blog, but he has unwittingly captured the essence of the blogging and the inature of the internet age courtesy of Larry and Sergei at Google.
This was a massive insight prior to the Google search engine. In today’s world, anything & everything we do leaves a trace – a picture, a comment, a blog post.
That worries many people. And sometimes it should. Just because Google says “first do no evil”, does not mean that there is no evil out ther.e
But if we don’t do, if we sit at home talking to no one, then there is no one and nothing to be found.
People looking for ideas, explanation, activity, colloboration – even things – only discover us if we have left a trace.
The search words that bring you to my blog tell me a lot about you . . . and me
The search words that bring people to our blogs bring that home. People search for strange things. Many people want to take a test to find out if they are good looking. This sentence may draw them to this post.
Simply, people don’t discover us for what we think we said. They discover us for what they think we said. And if we didn’t say it, there is nothing to discover. We are don’t exist. We are simply not there!
We have two choices:
- Be silent and be, well not ignored, but not known at all.
- Be misunderstood and be noticed.
Surely the latter is better. When someone has noticed, then we can can engage in a conversation. And they way they misunderstand us tells us heaps about them.
Misunderstandings are so informative!
Enjoy. Maybe we should keep a curiosity diary. What really surprised me today and what I should ask some more questions about?
Can you stand up in front of 1000 people and state your personal elevator speech in 20 seconds?
Posted on: November 14, 2009
A personal elevator speech
When I taught at the University of Canterbury, my colleague Peter Cammock, would ask our class of 900 or so students, whether they could stand up and state their life purpose in a 20 second elevator speech.
Elevator speeches are hard to write at the best of times. When they are yours too, they are really hard.
Crafting our elevator speech
There are perhaps 5 things that are helpful to understand about elevator speeches that help us in this task
- Structure
- Resonance with our deepest beliefs
- The story of where we have come from and where we are going
- Our immediate influences
- And what we are still not sure about
Structure of an elevator speech
An elevator speech is a mini-business plan. Or a mini-operational order. It has five parts.
- Situation – the story that is bigger than us
- Mission – that part of the collective story that we will write
- Execution – the chunks of our mission that can be fulfilled as sub-missions
- Administration – the resources that we need
- Communication – how will we know how well we are doing and who should we tell
[SMEAC]
Resonance with our deepest beliefs
Our elevator speech is not about what we must do, or what other people expect us to do. Duty wears us out and is sure to wear out anyone who is listening!
Our elevator speech is about those dearly held beliefs that are vital and engaging. Our elevator speech is about what brings us alive, what we quickens our pulse, and what brings a light to our eyes. If only we could see that!
The key to finding this magical place is to look at our relationship with others. What is that we love to to do and others love us to do?
We are likely to find this place in our our work, which even if solitary, like painting, is sociable ~ it is for others to use and enjoy.
Who are these others? What were we hoping when we started our work? How do we, or how do we hope to bring the light to other people’s eyes that we want in our own?
It is here, a unique place for each of us, where we feel totally at home. It is here that we live wholeheartedly and we don’t have to plan. It is here that “our deep gladness and the world’s hunger meets”!
Our story
The curious thing about our stories is that so much of our lives are disappointing. What would you feel if you were a graduate in today’s UK facing 20% unemployment and debts from your education?
How would you feel if you were like me? Your country gone. Your house gone. Your career gone. Your life in disarray.
Well, whatever we feel, we should not disown our stories. Our stories give us perspective and the more we have lost, the more perspective we have. As a noobe in the UK, my rich paste and perspective is a gift to people in my new home. My very disappointment is what I have to enrich the lives of others.
Our influences
As I arrived in a new country, I felt muddled. Any disruption ~ a new job, a new house, new friends ~ might have confused me. Losing a country is just an extreme mutation of a general theme!
Slowly, we begin to make sense of what we contribute through our interactions. I do a lot of work on the internet and I was helped on my way by reading the Chief Happiness Officer, Steve Roesler, and Barbara Sliter.
My mission is to be happy
From the Chief Happiness Officer, I learned that my job is to be happy. I felt a bit silly, I must tell you, until I realised that happiness isn’t my vision. My happiness isn’t the bigger story or the shared story. My happiness is my mission.
My happiness is how I contribute to the shared story because happiness is contagious. Because I am a noobe. Because I have a rich past and my perspective on what is good and true at this time and in this place helps people around me fulfil their missions, whatever those missions may be.
My vision is a world where we are confident of our countries
I learned my vision from Barbara Sliter.
“We are ready for more: more meaning, more challenge, better environments, interesting work, balance of life. We are ready to be co-creators”.
I want to contribute to the world where our search for meaning is more legitimate, easier, likelier, just fun. Less hassle and more fun.
My vision, which I think is widely shared, is a world where people wake up with curiosity about what the day holds and sure that their contribution today makes their country great and their community great, their workplaces, schools and colleges thrive, and their families happy and warm places to be.
The execution
And I learned how to execute my mission from Steve Roesler. Steve suggested that employees must start the conversation. I am a work psychologist, so this is important to me.
My specific task in the next year or so is to learn, with other people, how to have these conversations, what it means to have these conversations, what are our choices when we have these conversations, and ultimately of course, what we have learned from these conversations and how they have evolved.
My immediate task, or rule-of-thumb, is to attend to my own conversation with work and people I work with ~”The way we hold the conversation” as David Whyte says.
I am not going to worry about what other people are doing. I am going to ask: does the way I hold my conversation about my work make me happy?
And then I will ask, if changing the way I hold the conversation makes me happy, does the conversation become better, fuller, richer, for other people around me? Do I fullfil my mission of being contagiously happy?
Our uncertainties
Like most people, I don’t say aloud, or post, what is really important to me. I wrote this post a good 18 months ago and I didn’t post it! But it was still in my drafts. Thank goodness for blogging! I wish I had posted it though. This is how far I have come.
I have pursued the vision and mission OK but I didn’t follow through the execution in a focused way. Imagine where I would be now if I had done so? Of course, I can do that now! With a little bit of thought, I can add the steps to be executed to other work that I am doing now!
Elevator speeches in brief!
And there we have it. Elevator speeches have a standard structure. We find out who and what we are in conversations including our work. Some people help us pinpoint what we are doing and where we are going.
We bring in our own story ~ as it is. Often our very disappointments which give us the perspective that others find valuable.
And then we must be bold enough to say what we are doing aloud!
Possibly I should add a step under execution:
Find more places to say my elevator speech aloud so that it gets better and crisper, shorter and more relevant.
I want to bring a light to other people’s eyes.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Happiness, positive thinking, nonsense? (flowingmotion.wordpress.com)
Imagining goals doesn’t quite cut it
It’s a fact. Our brains don’t distinguish very much between imagining something and doing it! Mentally rehearse your perfect golf swing and your real one gets better. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? Pity it doesn’t work with losing weight.
The trick is to imagine fully enough. We have to be able to imagine something in its entirety and reasonably accurately. We must have no objections or leave anything out!
That’s the rub. By the time you can imagine something completely, or be totally confident that it will work, you have done it already, and probably often!
Using our brain’s confusion to our advantage but keeping it real
We want to capitalize on the inability of our brains to distinguish fact from fiction but we also want to keep it real. We want to use our imagination to get us going, but bear in mind that we still have to do whatever it is that we do. We still have to stumble and fall, and get ourselves up again. (In fact, stumbling and falling and getting up again must be part of the story that we imagine – we need that skill of error recovery too!)
The ravine exercise
I’ve been using David Whyte’s story of walking alone in Nepal and coming to a ravine with a rickety bridge. He couldn’t cross it and he couldn’t double back because he had insufficient supplies. Panic!
We often find ourselves in similar predicaments. We look at what we want – the other side of the ravine. And we look at the bridge. It’s too rickety to walk on. The gap between where we are now and where we want to be feels too big. We can’t help ourselves. Our attention is drawn to the gap. We stare at the ravine and the long drop down – and we can think of nothing else.
The current advice is to do what you would do if you are on the edge of the ravine: check your pockets, see what you have to help you, make sure you are safe. Get your feet back on the ground. Then funnily, you find a way out of your predicament. Or, at least survive until the rescue party arrives.
This metaphor works – but it is still hard to do. The ravine draws our attention no matter how hard we try not to look at it.
The fast forward exercise
I’ve been trying out another mental trick but I haven’t tested it fully. Would you try it too and let me know how it works?
Think of yourself as you are now, warts and all. Now play yourself forward 10 years. Don’t change a thing. Just make yourself older and fatter!
You probably won’t like the image all that much. And you will be motivated to take the next step. List the first thing to change and do it right now.
Do you do it? Of course keep a record too. In a few weeks, you’ll look back and be surprised at how much you have got done.
I’d also like to know how much effort it took and whether you got a lot done attending to little things. The extra chocolate biscuit. The internet banking that is not done. Whatever!
The psychology of forward movement
The psychology is simple. We keep our feet firmly on the ground rooted in now. We imagine what we can imagine – what we understand – and roll it forward with obvious changes – slower, greyer, not as good looking.
Then do what has to be be done now. It is so much easier!
At least, I hope it is. Do tell me!
Related articles by Zemanta
- Do you live restlessly in the shadow of adrenaline-inducing goals? (flowingmotion.wordpress.com)
flowing motion 
Recent Comments