Coaching – Page 2 – The Thrivable Society

Time Horizons

Much of what I do has to do with generating perspectives that are useful in offering us new information that enables wise action. And one of the most crucial in this area is time horizons. I have written in the past on zooming – that we can zoom in and out of a perspective, but when I wrote on that I focused on physical distance rather than time.

We can zoom through time as well. I can focus on the next five minutes or on the next century or millenium. When I was developing the thrivability cards (which in part became the Table of Contents for the Thrivability Sketch), I had a suit that was about time, because it is so valuable to move through time horizons.

If you are in a stuck place or holding a view of catastrophe, one very effective strategy is to expand a sense of time. Another is to shrink it. Let’s look in practice.
photo credit: Moe-tography

I can look at the current economic dynamics and become very depressed at the breakdown in our systems and the suffering that this is creating for millions of people. Pretty daunting. Very sad. If I think about it in a two year time frame, I might feel like screaming at people to do something – anything even – that will shift what is happening. Which is what I see Umair Haque doing a lot of.

To escape the fear, threat, disaster experience and focus on something productive I can do, I might look at a longer view. What if I consider it from a twenty year perspective? Can I imagine that the path in the short term might be quite painful, it will enable us to do something we could not have done otherwise? What would that be? What can I do now to catalyze that?

If I look at a hundred year flow. Can I look to the past and see how we have experienced challenging times before and had it work out for the greater good? Can I imagine, in another hundred years, people telling that same story about us – that we went through a challenging time and came out better for it?

Let’s say I can’t do that. (You know I can, but others may not or may think this is escapist thinking). Given the gritty reality before me, and my negative expectations of the future, what can I do in the next five minutes to make this one wild and precious life worth living for now? What can I do with this one day? While I have this moment in time, what will I make of it? The future will be what it will be, but we are not there yet. No, we are here, in this moment and only ever in the present moment. And the only action I can take is in this moment. So what do I want to make of this very moment?

Do I have ideas about how I want the succession of moments to be? Who am I? Start being who you want to be right now, because there is no other time but right now. So be the change you want to see in the world — already. Now. Not soon. Not in progress. Now.

Zooming in or out of our time horizons frees us from the fear-ridden anxiety of the uncertainty we face to hold a view that enable calm, intentional action. Make a choice. Be proactive about the perspective you hold. Don’t let fear blind you to the alternatives in time horizons.

Experience Stories

by Jean Russell

Today I posted on twitter:

“It continues to amaze and baffle me how much the interior mind creates the experience of the exterior world. What do you do with that?”

It simply deserves more than just that, so I am expounding on it here. Play with me?

First, let me not imply that the interior world is making the exterior world in some magical way. I can’t think coffee and have coffee show up in my cup. The world of objects is a world of objects. However, those objects remain meaningless until we shape a story or stories about them. A rock is a rock until I say, this is the rock I picked up on the beach the day we played with the sand together and ate that delicious chocolate carmel tart. Now it is a rock that has a memory attached to it. It has a meaning for me. And that meaning is entirely in my own internal world. I can tell you that story, and maybe some of what is meaningful about it to me can be meaningful to you (but even if I tell the story well, it will only be a small portion of what is alive for me about it).

I am driving on 90/94 past downtown Chicago. A driver comes up fast behind me, swerves around me, and cuts me off before speeding ahead. These are the facts. And the internal experience I have could take several different paths. I could make up a story that this person is a selfish jerk, a menace to society, and probably thinks of himself as a race car driver. (And then what will I do in response to him? honk? give him the bird?) Or I could make up a story that the driver is racing to get to the hospital because they are a doctor and a patient urgently needs their skill in order to stay alive. (And then what will I do in response to him? move out of the way?).

What happens to my body and my frame of mind as a result of either of these stories? In the first, my body is most likely to tense up or get angry, frentic. In the second, my body is more likely to calm down. I have no evidence by which I can judge whether the first story or the second story is accurate. None. I could imagine the driver of that car is insane and the demons in his mind propel him to behave this way. Or any number of many other possibilities of how the facts can be interpreted. I get to choose which story I am going to tell.

I get to choose the story I want to tell about the worlds I inhabit as part of a dance between the facts that I am aware of and the interior mental models and beliefs I have. The experience I have is not some default or single choice. I get to choose. Most people do not realize this. For most of my life, I didn’t realize this.

Doing so has created profound shifts in how I interact with others, the sense of power and control I have in my life, my sense of agency, my ability to create options for action, my capacity to be compassionate, and my ability to stay “grounded” in the flux of changes around me.

Step 1: Realize that you are choosing.

Step 2: Realize that there are options. Pick the ones that are useful for having the experience you want to be having to the degree that the evidence is not being ignored.

Step 3: Recognize that while there is choice, my ability to communicate and connect with others is in some ways limited by my ability to have an overlap in the story I am telling about my experience of something. This isn’t about making random choices because the choice is there…there are choices in the creation of the story and your internal experience of it that interconnect with other humans.

Step 4: Response and actions are not foretold by the facts before you, they are foretold by the story you weave around those facts. Engage the story you are telling about your experience when you want to create options to act upon.

Make your experience of the world something you actively engage in co-creating.

Positively Insane

by Jean Russell

Today Gregory (On the Spiral) tweets:

Which links to a Scientific American article, The Pitfalls of Positive Thinking. And I think this is a great excuse to debunk the sense that because I am positive focused and nurturing, that I live in some lala land of illusion where everything is soft and beautiful and unicorns run wild and perfectly groomed and everything is sprinkled with fairy dust.

Unicorn (Design by Román Díaz)

Positive thinking doesn’t have to be about daydreaming some future in which you are the bestest, most beautiful, and amazing person ever and then assuming that will somehow magically make it happen. Positive thinking is about wondering about possibility. Is it possible that I could get that? If I could, how would that happen? What would I need to do to get closer to it? Are there other ways I could go about it? When I encounter hurdles, I am not going to tell myself some self-hating story about how I suck. Instead, I am going to tell myself that I am trying, I can keep trying, or I can use feedback to decide how realistic my goals are…and adjust.
photo credit: Origamiancy

Positive thinking can be knowing that while I feel crushed right now, I have been crushed before, and I survived that and grew from it. I am resilient. So instead of using self-talk that denigrates my efforts by focusing on what went wrong (and how that is my fault), I am going to focus on getting to that place where I am not crushed because I know I can do it (and learn from where I can do better next time).

I have worked with coaching clients who want to set big hairy audacious goals for themselves. And that is fantastic. I applaud that. AND… let’s celebrate each step toward that instead of waiting to see if we shoot past that goal. Let’s work on enjoying the process instead of the outcome. Because even when we achieve the big hairy audacious goals, as we sometimes do, we are often then beset by post-goal hitting blues! If you emotionally hype yourself up too much for a bold goal, you collapse at the finish line. Which is fine, if you can accept and enjoy that process. But for you high-performing addicts, the dip after the high seems to be a negative space most people weren’t expecting and have a tricky time navigating (aren’t they supposed to be happy when they succeed?).

Positive thinking is about having an intentional conversation with yourself about the experience you want to be having. What experience do you want to be having, what experience are you having, what is the gap, what do you want to adjust about that? And it turns out, reframing your perspective is the quickest way to level out emotional spikes (of both highs and lows). I know, because I have had to become masterful at thinking my way out of emotional highs and lows. I am a pretty excitable and emotional person. And I don’t like getting hijacked by my emotions. So I learned how to have a conversation with my emotions and give them different perspectives to look through. Sometimes I have to sit with myself in conversation before I can find a perspective that soothes my emotions… but I am looking, and I feel empowered by the process instead of feeling hijacked. No one gave me a users manual for my brain and heart. I had to create it myself. And so do you. We can learn together.

In sum, positive thinking is not about airy fairy day dreaming wish making. If you do it that way, you will be disappointed. Wishful thinking is like Wiley E Coyote stepping off a cliff assuming there is ground there. There isn’t. There is a real world out there with a fair bit of complexity to it, and if you want to make it yours, you better put in persistent and determined effort and manage your expectations. Be mindful of your surroundings.

Oh, that is the one other guide to positive thinking. Manage your expectations. I have a saying I usually only use in private with clients: Expectations are a bitch. Hope for something. Dream of something. Imagine wild possibilities. Drive toward something. All of those can go well. But once you start to expect them, you put your emotions at risk of being disappointed. Find the balance that works for you between what you want to expect for and of yourself and what dreams you want to seek out and make real for yourself.

Breakthroughs for a Thrivable World Part 2

by Jean Russell

Entry Point 1: Individuals

What is the story we tell about people in this Darwinian world where capitalism dominates the ideology? Traditional western economics, dating back to Adam Smith describes humans as rational self-interested creatures. Being kind to others is assumed to be driven by selfish motivations, for example, creating obligations of reciprocity. However, neuroscience reveals the phenomenon in the brain around empathy and generosity. Humans are wired to be kind. The fields of behavioral economics and positive psychology radically alter the story of who we are as individuals and how we interact together. A thrivable world is more possible when we operate under the belief and assumption that people care, act from a place of empathy, and seek meaning-making. We also become self-aware of how predictably irrational we are, allowing us to adjust our systems to nudge us toward the outcomes we consciously want. The increased wisdom in how irrational we are allows us to be more intentional about how we do what we do.

Behavioral Economics

We are driven by much more than greed and profit. In fact, we are predictably irrational, easily swayed, nudged, and influenced. What we may learn and adapt about ourselves is priceless. We even discover new ways to navigate cheating and stealing! (video link)

Dan Pink tells us in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (video also) that while financial rewards may motivate better performance on mechanical tasks; they don’t on creative tasks. Instead, we are driven by our desire to be autonomous, masters of our work, and full of purpose. We do things for a reason we believe in. We like to get better and better at things we do, and we want to be self-directed. If we know this about ourselves and others, what will that enable us to do now that we could not do before?

Iain McGilchrist describes the consequences of how our brains work and what that has produced in the world with his book, The Master and His Emissary where he points to how left-brained linear rational actor thinking has led to the world we have now. Dan Pink also talks about a Whole New Mind, naming six right-brained abilities we need to evolve for the economies of the future. They are: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning.
photo credit: Genista

Positive Psychology

After ages of focusing on illness, psychology has refocused (at least in part) on positive psychology (the scientific study of human flourishing). Recent research reveals more about altruism, The Compassionate Instinct, and authentic happiness. In fact, Jonathan Haidt proclaims that we are Wired to be Inspired.

We also understand more about the conditions we need for productive and joyful work or flow experiences from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and the Evolving Self. (video also)

Multiple Intelligences

For a century or more, Intelligence Quotient (IQ) has been a primary measure of a person’s potential. However, it has both shown that high IQ does not produce happiness or success. It has also been shown that emotional intelligence and other forms of knowing also influence an individuals potential. Howard Gardner’s work on Multiple Intelligences point to many ways intelligence appears in individuals. Dan Goleman focuses specifically on Emotional Intelligence, although more recently he has written about Ecological Intelligence. Recently science has shown that brain cells are not only located in the head, but this tissue is also present in heart, gut, and other areas of the body. What world can we create when we acknowledge the full spectrum of our intelligence and awareness? Does the recognition of multiple forms of intelligence entice greater curiosity and creativity? Learning how to make our brains more plastic fosters transformation through increased flexibility, growth, and integration. What thrivable world becomes possible with these expanded and acknowledged capabilities when we honor and embrace them?

Conclusion

Understanding ourselves as empathic and connected beings in search of meaning and purpose enables us to design our world in new ways. While there will still be zero-sum games and times when we act from greed or scarcity, there is a growing possibility of acting from trust, altruism with autonomy for a greater purpose operating from a place of abundance. We tap into a greater sense and breadth of our intelligence. And we know more about what makes people happy and fulfilled.

Find Good Questions

by Jean Russell

Today I dropped a whole series of tweets that are part of an understanding I am working on. Each nuggets lives alone, but the whole, I hope, is greater than the parts, and thus I post it in whole here.

Hybridity. Transcend and include. Hard to see, wearing attributes of past paradigms when useful, past ideological fashion made functional.

Sometimes when you are inside of a thing, it is mighty tricky to pull your eyeballs out far enough to see what you are in.

Zoooooooooom way way out. Look as if an alien anthropologist at 10 years, 20, 50, 100 and see patterns, movement, fractals, direction.

photo credit: thskyt

The very idea of paradigm shifts (Kuhn) begets an age where no concept is presumed static. Flow, shift, evolve. The process of becoming.

Everything as prototype (nods to @ladyniasan) Government, business, product, like software releases, always todays version open to iterate

Nature knows prototyping, she is always modifying. She doesn’t want yesterday’s world, she is making tomorrow’s by leveling up complexity.

It isn’t about truth, ideals, pure states, pure extremes. It is iteration toward what is useful. Let go of answers. Stick with Questions!

I don’t mean questions like: can this scale? or did we price this right?

I mean questions like:

in 5, 10, 25, 50 years, can we still operate under this purpose?
do my actions and choices contribute to the ecosystems that support me/us? do I or we fit in the ecosystems we are entering? And if not yet, how do we expand them to include us while encouraging the life of the whole interdependent systems to evolve?
how have we made room for ourselves to evolve? For what we do to evolve?
how am I being a contribution here? how am I allowing others to be a contribution?
what about this creates meaning for me, for those it touches, and for future society?
are we having fun yet? How can we encourage play, whimsy, emotion, serendipity, and synchronicity to join us?

These are the questions. The answers are not static. The system isn’t static. The interlocking systems of systems are not static. The answers change. Find good questions and stick with them.
photo credit: jronaldlee

WonderWomanGang

by Thriver

Yesterday I was missing my friend @rachelannyes – so I looked at her twitter feed to see what she has been up to and get a sense of how she is doing. I found a lovely post:

@rachelannyes: What the world needs now is a Wonder Woman gang.

Absolutely.

So I hereby nominate for the Wonder Woman Gang the following amazing women. Please feel free to nominate those who inspire you and seem to have super powers in transforming our world.

@rachelannyes @randomdeanna@CDEgger @juneHolley @HildyGottlieb @amoration@amyrsward @VenessaMiemis @kanter @caseorganic@p2173 @kitode @ruby @silona@samsweetwater @wseltzer @rmchase @nilofer@deborah909 @sgleason @kristinwolff @staceymonk @joguldi @christinasworld@identitywoman @mariadeathstar @lizstrauss@ruthannharnisch @ladyniasan @beandlive @sheriherndon @nancywhite@alizasherman @CreatvEmergence @slboval

Then I asked for other nominations.

@kg posted: @NurtureGirl I nominate @sloane@beautifulthangs @ericaogrady@ShaunaCausey @willotoons@emgollie @khartline @Rapetzel #WonderWomanGang 🙂

plus: @kg posted: @NurtureGirl Are so many! @coachsizzle @nspilger @avivamo@realize_ink @snesbitt @susangordo@suzboop @penguinasana too 🙂#wonderwomangang

Who do you nominate? And when you think of wonderwomangang, what comes to mind? What super powers do you think these women have?

Catastrophe Thinking

by Thriver

I am pretty sure my entire life has been lived under the hovering cloud of the apocalypse. Sure there were moments of possibility – the fall of the wall, the election of Obama, the end of apartheid in South Africa. But mostly the global events we hear about focus on the end of civilization as we know it, albeit in small chunks at a time. It is still framed as disaster…. we are losing what we had and aren’t moving into a better world (except in small isolated ways). From AIDS to Bird Flu, from Rwanda genocide to Sudan and Burma, nuclear proliferation, the Gulf Coast disaster 2.0 (and Katrina as 1.0), Haiti (and so many other earthquakes, mud slides, volcanoes, and other weather/geological disasters for humans) – plus economic crisis and climate change, the extinction of so many species, and the war on terror (which just grows fear and terror) all converge – even for those of us who don’t watch the news. There is overpopulation, sex slaves, and child mortality issues as well as deforestation, crumbling infrastructure, and coach potatoes living in suburban nightmares. There are activists working cancer into their bodies with their martyr-like dedication. There are those in sedated near oblivion – zombie-living. There are hedonic wealth-seekers facing doom with greed and opulence. This is the story of crumbling and disintegration. Our globalized post-modern world tumbling through catastrophes.

We tell this story, and we have been telling this story, for my whole life. And the fear-mongering started long before I was born – the the cold war threatening nuclear annihilation for half a century.

I am tired of this story. I am tired of seeing faces worn down with the contraction of fear. I am weary of the negativity and desperation driving people to hate, divide, hoard, and fight. I am sick of finding out my government is justifying killing people in order to obtain more resources (because, I guess, we are in such a state of lack!).

We victimize ourselves, and in that suffering, we victimize others with our trauma.

Enough. Put it down. Don’t believe the hype. Don’t fight for a world you already gave up on.

Look for the flower emerging in the sidewalk – life pressing through without complaint or blame to assert its urge for sunlight. Nature is incredibly resilient and adaptive. Work within the world we have to co-create the world we want. Focus on what is going well and right, and encourage more of it. Breathe and be the serenity prayer.

Do not deny the brutal facts before us, but know that you see those facts through a filter of the story you are telling yourself (and others) about the world. You can transform that story and see those facts in a fresh light – from a different vantage point. Turn on the thrivability light, and recognize that life gives rise to more life. Never before in human history have we known a greater wealth of possibility.

After three days in Philadelphia discussing philanthropy and philanthropic strategies for transformation, I feel deeply convinced and inspired by a model I can see of thrivable philanthropy. Gerard calls it evolutionary philanthropy, and there might be some subtle distinctions. However, let me explain. And then I hope it will be more clear why our stories about our world could shift to transform our experience of it and the world itself.

Let’s call charity the work that we do to address immediate needs of others who can not, for whatever reason, care for themselves. It is as if you are standing on a riverbank, see a baby floating downstream, and you rush out to save the drowning child. Only, there are not enough people pulling drowning babies from the river, and the babies have suffered from being in the river. Our hearts break open. Some savvy volunteer wonders aloud – “who is tossing babies in this river?” And a crew of helpers decide to go upstream to find the cause. And they discover a system out of balance allowing babies to land in the river. They decide to change the system and set up programs to help mothers and advocate for social justice. We call this social change and social justice work. Still, babies are floating down the river. The philanthropist supporting this work starts to wonder – huh, what impact is my giving having? I want babies to stop ending up in the river – this is madness! And the social justice worker says – well, we think we have decreased the number of babies in the river, but this is a complex adaptive system so I can’t name all the causes and effects! I can’t clearly attribute your dollars having saved babies without acknowledging other programs and the dynamic changes in the system in which our town operates, babies are born, the economy shifts, and nature takes her course. We might have even changed our baby counting practices in a way that changed how many babies we can account for, which skewed the numbers giving an artificial bump. But we are not sure.

Then a thinker stands up and says – it is the very culture and beliefs in which we operate that give rise to these systems that aren’t taking care of all these babies. And the philanthropist has to choose now – either fund better metrics to know whether there is an impact… or fund cultural shift. And there are still babies in the river, and everyone’s hearts break open knowing it and seeing it. And they are sad.

Transforming culture takes longer, it is harder to measure, the complex dynamic system of it all makes it next to impossible to attribute agency clearly. And, it is where the greatest possibility for creating a culture that ever more deeply transforms itself, cares for each other and the whole, and enables the world we want.

Change your story.

5 Ways to Save Yourself from Relationship Overwhelm

by Thriver

photo credit: 1Happysnapper (photography)

Social Media is transformative and magnificent. It is also time consuming for most people, and it can lead to relationship overwhelm. You find so many amazing people out there who share your belief, interests, passions, and humor.

If you are trying to create more space in your life for what matters most to you, here are 5 ways you can save yourself from relationship overwhelm.

Time allocation. Create office hours – during a set time, you connect to people. Maybe it is 8-9am or 4-5pm every day. Maybe it is 2 days a week. How many hours do you want to give it? Maybe you have 5 hours a week, and you track how many you use. Experiment to find the method of time management that fits you and your lifestyle. Do what works.
Rings of priority – who is in the center, who is on the periphery? Make sure to give time to those people that really matter. Filter your social media feeds, so you always can see what they are up to. Be clear with yourself what your criteria are for being near that center loop of connections. The periphery is important too, as a resource for bringing in new information. Find balance for yourself. Don’t cut it off…but don’t get lost there either. What will help you hold that? Is it a container of time? A medium of communication?
Make a request. Share with your network your aim to manage your relationships so you can be a better friend and contributor. Say something like, “I cherish you and the wonderful connections I have, AND, in order to be a better friend, I want to be more careful about how I am giving attention. Can you please consider if contacting me is urgent, important, or valuable? I hope this helps us improve the quality of our connection.”
Make REGULAR sacred space – no tech, all family, or even all alone time. Hold it as your recharge time. Budge anything on your calendar before you give this up. Think of it as your morning oatmeal. Without it, you can’t bring your best self to the world. I don’t mean sacred as in religious practice. I mean sacred as in – never give this up. You are too important in your life not to make time for yourself. I have done this for years, and found it really rewarding. Oh, and do communicate to your connections that you have this boundary so they can respect it. They will hold it ONLY to the degree that you take it seriously.
Think in longer time frames and make daily decisions on those frames (and not the minute to minute ones). Think of what you want your life to be like over the next 5 years. What can you do today that helps you have that life? What is un-necessary, superfluous, repetitive (doing it twice or more isn’t adding value or enjoyment)? Imagine wiping your calendar completely free. No obligations. What do you want really and truly to add back in? (This often happens when you have a major crisis happen – it gives you permission to start over.)

“What are you going to do with this one wild and precious life?” ~ Mary Oliver

Open Wide

by Thriver

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I was determined to have a drug free and very conscious birthing process. My son had been 10 and a half pounds. Giving birth to him in a handful of powerful pushes both tore up my body and freckled my face with broken blood vessels. I was half dazed with pain-killers, and I was certainly not fully present to the experience.

photo credit: bachmont

How, I wondered, am I going to navigate this better? So I read a bunch of books – on meditation and visualization as well as birthing. One of the relevant things I learned is that we often respond to pain with fear, which makes us contract. In childbirth (and in the body in general) this means that the muscles tighten up. Which leads to more pain, which leads to more tightening… just when we need to be most open and relaxed. We go against ourselves.

I had learned, as a young horsewoman, to relax my body. To send a message to the animal that it can relax too. So I had some small sense of what this was like. For childbirth, I had to ramp that up significantly. I practiced relaxing every part of my body. I did breathing and meditation exercises. I did yoga, hoping to make my body more supple. I wasn’t one of those highly structured people that did things at set intervals, but I kept at it in my meandering but persistent way.

I succeeded. I thought of the pain as warmth, turned it in my mind into warm light. My daughter was born on this ray of light. I do not think of it as pain at all, although you might say my neurons were firing that way. I was very aware and present to it. I was grateful for the gift of her and treasuring each moment (without judgment, for what it was).

Now I use this process in other domains of my life. When I feel fear and want to contract, I intentionally open and release. When I feel my needs are not met, rather than shutting down or closing up – or telling stories about it – I become more direct and precise in making requests or sharing my experience. Sometimes it takes a little time to turn around, but I always get there.

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

I get that it seems contradictory. Yet, I have to say it works so well so consistently. That doesn’t mean I don’t experience fear or contraction. I do. It just doesn’t stay around very long. Usually within hours if not minutes, I can shift to being more wide open, curious, and direct.

How do you navigate contraction in your life? How do you transform it? How did you learn how to do so?

Multiple Perspectives

by Thriver

I had the pleasure of chatting with Bill Liao today. We covered a lot of ground in 30 minutes, manuevering into alignment on the language of happiness and what thrivability is and looks like.

One of my takeaways from the conversation is the reminder of how critical multiple perspectives are. We discussed how some words have so many different meanings in them – like happiness, truth, justice, and beauty. For me these words are next to meaningless because they mean such different things to different people. Bill is a fan of etymology.

We discussed the etymology of science. Science derives from scire, which means to discern or to cut into smaller pieces. And while I value very highly the wisdom science brings, it also can reduce things to parts. Part of thrivability, to me, is about unity, interconnected systems, and whole-ness.Can we see the world as both whole and parts? It reminds of this lovely piece by Kevin Clark about intention in the Thrivability: A Collaborative Sketch ebook.

photo credit: [177]

A whole. And parts which are whole in themselves. Multiple perspectives. Being able to hold many perspectives at the same time can feel paradoxical. Like a good zen nugget. Can we see the world from the perspective of a child? A tree? An atom? A brain wave? A diplomat? A starving mother? An entrepreneur? A convict? A farmer? An anthropologist? When we can hold this, we begin to understand the flows of exchange and demand, of gift and grace.

I have a game I play to step into multiple perspectives. I blogged about it here before.

In my coaching practice, when someone is inside something so much that it reduces their resourcefulness, we play a little zooming game. It is often as if we are looking through a microscope at what is before us. And seeing it from across the room or through someone else’s eyes, or from a different timespan or place altogether allows us to detach enough emotionally to find our resourcefulness again. This is about gaining perspective. 🙂

Another coaching tool, especially useful for when we have tensions with another person, is to step into different perspectives of the situation. What does it look like if you are in their position? What does it look like to a witness? What does it look like to you when you are in a different state of mind? What does it look like in the future after you a successfully resolve it? What does it look like to your mentor?

It's cooler. Is the AC on orchid it be Fall?

Bill shared a lovely story about an artist asking a biologist about viewing a flower. The artist presumes that because the biologist knows the internal workings of the flower, that the biologist can’t see the forest for the trees – can’t see the flower for its parts. The biologist replies, but no… I can both see the beauty of the flower and the beauty of the internal workings of the flower.

Being able to hold multiple perspectives gives us a richness of experience, a resourcefulness in our choicemaking, and a greater peace of mind.

photo credit: kevindooley

How do you incorporate multiple perspectives into your work and play?

What tools do you use to engage multiple perspectives? What practices do you have around it?

And thank you for sharing your thoughts. It helps me expand my ability to perceive the world through multiple perspectives. Thank you.