The question is “How does it happen?” And also “How can we encourage it to happen?”
Yesterday, I said on twitter:
Questions I have been pondering for years now: what brings about an aha? what gets people to shift? how to get unstuck and take action?
Which is something I have been reflecting on since my early days of working with Drake Zimmerman on coaching and philanthropy. Or maybe it comes before that…going back into my childhood when I became fascinated by the brain (thanks PBS). In any case, it all came up again earlier this month when I sat down at a cafe with Clay Shirky. We had a powerful hour of mutual brain picking. He said he had just finished writing his next book and a question he was still mulling over was how do we get people to move between these spaces he had discerned and laid out for me.
Aha’s are those bright moments where the light bulbs flash on in the brain, and we suddenly see something in a way we had not seen it before. Sometimes this happens when we have a near death experience or a cherished one is ill or dies. Maybe it is a near miss or a sudden revelation. It can come from stillness and reflection. @SusanLipshutz shares, “Sometimes awakening, clarity comes from getting shaken up via an activating event that threatens the comfort zone, opens heart~”
@butyes declares, “an aha actually IS a shift–it’s the FEELING of an insight which changes the situation–and may make action possible.” So aha’s are a form of shifting, but not the only form. Shifting can also happen through determination and persistence. We can shift our habits. We can shift our views through reasoned argument. Sometimes shift is what gets us unstuck from the place we are or the way we are.
So I asked – what gets people to shift and take action. And the response was so useful, let me share it with you here.
Pain and the Away-From
Some people pointed to what gets us to wake up and move away from something. For example, @philwoodford said, “Usually a metaphorical gun barrel pointing at someone, in my experience.” Similarly, @brainsturbator asserts, “System Shock is the Currency of Consciousness Change. Why does the roshi smack the seeker?” Perhaps even an accumulation of is necessary, as @ValdisKrebs describes, ” enough knowledge/pain/processing have to accumulate for a tipping point or a spark to lead to aha/action.” And @nicolerufuku shared that “rock bottom forces a shift.”
Personally I don’t think we give enough respect to hitting our rock bottoms. For me they have been rich places for remaking myself and give me a lot of courage to take on new challenges (as I know I can survive failure).
@OctaviaMoon suggests that it can take a variety of things, “bottoms, even highs, loves, money….spiritual awakenings.” She goes on to say that, “yoga is a beautiful thing…takes you into the body where you might be stuck and makes things less literal.”
What I was expecting to hear from others but didn’t was something about carrots. I hear the pain and sticks method can work. Do carrots work too? Can we lure people to shift and get unstuck?
The Emergent Shift
Sometimes shifting is about not looking directly at what needs to change, instead it is about letting the mind rest. I think of this as letting the unconscious resolve things by putting the conscious mind elsewhere. @gordondym replied, “For me, it’s shifting attention to something simple, and/or thinking of something completely unrelated.” @butyes speaks to the emergent shift from another angle when she says, “but the aha itself–that often comes when one becomes still on the other side of worrying at the problem. In stillness there’s room to sense a little niggling glimmering something, and sit quietly with it, until, ‘oh!'”
Conditions for Shifting
While we may not want to cultivate the negative experiences that can make us shift, and perhaps we want to be more active than allowing an emergent shift, what can we do for ourselves and others to foster shift and get unstuck?
@HollyE4S offered a series of conditions that can help shifts happen:
- Openness to grace
- Openness to change
- Action begets Action. Easier to shift in something that is already in motion.
- Connect with others who are taking action
- Learn first steps
Which reminded me of something I think I was first exposed to from @ken_homer and comes out of world cafe – find and take “a simple elegant next step.”
Looking back on my training as a coach, it feels like so much of our training was in developing competency with tools to help people shift or get unstuck – modifying beliefs, shifting frames and seeing multiple perspectives. I will review some of those in a post just for that.
What other ways to notice shift happening? And what can we do to spark it?
Body Image
by ThriverI was conversing with a good friend last night, and the subject turned to looks. I said something then that I want to share with you now.
People in general are so self-conscious about their appearance. There are millions, if not billions, of dollars spent on appearance. And yet, over and over people get together and fall in love. Not because people are perfect. But because when one person loves another, they admire that person for who they are (we hope). The lover embraces the other. Finds beauty in the shape of a belly button, the curve of a collar bone, the bend of a knee, a dimple in a cheek. The lover, admiring the partner, gets this sort of feedback in way too many cases, “but my x is y.” My thighs are too fat, my nose too long, my eyes too small, my arms too thick or too thin, and on and on. This is most often the case with women, but men do it too.
What in the world is going on? The lover admires, and in response the beloved says, “don’t admire me, I am not what I wish I was.” Rather than letting the lover admire, we put on costumes that conceal. As women, we put on makeup to conceal, to make theater of our appearance. Costumes are great. We need them. They indicate expectations we can have about behavior Costumes are fun to play with. (Wear the wrong costume, and enjoy the way others are disturbed in their expectations.)
The woman says, “I don’t want you to see me without my makeup on.” Oh really? The lover can’t peak behind the curtain and get a backstage view of the star?
When we complain about our looks, what we are really saying is, “the lover should not love me as I am.” or “I don’t love myself as I am.”
I really love burlesque. There is something so exquisite about a person, of whatever shape and size, totally flaunting their sexuality as it is, with no excuses. I want that for you. Maybe not the public spectacle part, but the flaunting what you got for your beloved. Focus on your assets and play to them.
Ask yourself:
Note: Who am I to give you this? Let me reveal a bit about me. Very few people notice this about me, but I have a congenital bone deformity. That means, from the time I was born, the bones in my arm have been crooked. I have scars showing the work done to improve it but not fully “correct” it. I would never say, “my arms are too flabby” when there is something much more noticeable – that I can’t do anything about – which makes me “flawed” in the model perfect sense. And then let me tell you this even more revealing bit of information. Never once. Not ever. Not even in the slightest. Over the last 25 years of relationships has anyone ever even hinted that they like all of me, except that. I have had guys want to adjust my bike handles for me, so they work better. I have had guys ask what surgery would make it more functional. But never once did anyone ever say, in any permutation of it, “this is so unattractive” or “I don’t love that part of you.” And if that is something a lover accepts – the right ones – the ones that love me….the ones that love you as you are… then I think they will also accept your thighs, your nose, your eyes, and all the rest of you too. Don’t insult their love and ardor by demeaning the glorious object of their desire. Love your body, as it is, as the lover beholds it, with eyes filled with admiration.
It is one wild and precious life you have, and this is the body you have for it. It is a miracle. Millions of years of life begetting life led to you and your body. What a marvel! As it is.
Closing Triangles
by ThriverI think of myself as nurturing networks and communities as well as individuals and organizations. And one strategy I use is network weaving. Network Weaving describes the connection made between two people I know who don’t yet know each other as closing a triangle, because in a network map, this is exactly what it looks like!
credit: NetworkWeaving
Here, in this post, I want to talk specifically about my practice of making introductions. I had been connecting people for a long time before I met Ken Homer, but his introduction format really set the bar for me. When he introduced me to another one of his connections, I felt like I was glowing! Wow, that is how I want people to feel when I connect them.
Sure, I want them to feel good and associate that with me. Less egotistically, I want the time I take to make an introduction to be time well spent for all of us. I want them to feel great about connecting to the person I introduce them too. I want it to be useful all around. This is not about quantity for me, it is about quality. So, here is the pattern I use, developed in part through what Ken demonstrated.
I described it on twitter today.
After stating the purpose of the email (useful for any and all starts to email conversation), describe relevant and positive strengths of each person to each other.
My wording for this is usually, “Person A, please allow me to introduce you to Person B. Person B is passionate about x, has terrific skills in y, and wants to explore z. ” Followed by the inverse, “Person B, please allow me to introduce you to Person A. Person A is passionate about m, has terrific skills in n, and wants to explore o.” This is a rough format, each one is different, but they all fit within that general pattern. Also, the adjectives are always chosen to fit the people I am describing. Use your own.
I like to point to something that makes the people I am connecting clear about what they have in common. I don’t mean that they both read books. I mean that they are both within a particular field or sub-domain, know people in common, or have a similar passion about making the world a better place (and do so coming from a similar mindset).
I also like to point out what I imagine might be the mutually beneficial initial outcome from each party taking the time to make the connection. It might not be what actually happens, but it gives them some sense of why I am making the connection and what each might gain from it.
Sometimes I forget to leave this in. However, after receiving several wonderful network weaving emails from others, I realized how vital this is. I received some letters, saw the alignment, and yet I might not know what to do about it. So in my introduction, I have been adding some suggestion for a first step – “In a 15 minute phone call, I think you could discuss your shared interest in x.”
That examples covers part of #2 and also #3. It doesn’t have to be long. Often I might have had an extended discussion with one of the parties, so I can point to what I have refined as a conversation starter for them.
I find that this often makes clear too what role I want one to play to the other. Maybe I am asking Person A to mentor Person B on a subject area. Or maybe I want Person B to introduce Person A to someone within their network who can help in a more targeted fashion. Being clear on roles can help people feel the respect I am offering them as well as make choices about what they want to be.
I hope these patterns help you make connections between two people.
Happiness
by ThriverI bet, if you read or know me, you probably expect me to advocate for happiness.
I don’t.
Here is why.
If you came to me and said, Jean, I want more than anything to be happy. This is what I would do:
Give me everything you have. I am going to flog you.
“But, Jean!” I hear you say.
Happiness is a relative state. If you want to be happy tomorrow, then making you really miserable today can lead to that. So if tomorrow I then don’t flog you and return some of your things to you, it is likely that you will be happy! (Timelines may vary.) Do you see how incredibly messed up that can make us?
I have been bothered by the idea of happiness for a long time, but it wasn’t until I started reading Satisfaction by Gregory Berns MD PhD that I understood why. He explains how people who win the lottery don’t usually have enduring happiness. And how people who suffer traumatic loss find happiness. Happiness does not come about at some permanent threshold of having or knowing. It is by judging where we are now against where we recently have been. It is something we choose. Something we get by deciding what we want to notice about our present and what we want to compare it to in our past (or imagined future for that matter).
This resonates too with what I learned through NLP Coach training. I can shift to a state of happiness through several means – creating a different context for what I am focused on, a different perspective to view it from, or bringing to the present a state I have experienced in the past or can imagine experiencing in the future. It is all about setting the terms for the comparison.
Fulfillment, satisfaction, flow, these are terms that have more depth and meaning in them. These are more accurate descriptions, I think, for the desired state we want to achieve at a personal level.
CC: Pink Sherbet Photography
I am not interested in living in a happy world. And I think in many ways the problems we face today are created by efforts to live in a happy world. Giving our kids candy makes them happy. Maybe playing video games all day makes some of us happy. Is that a good measure of the world we want? Does that lead the system to create a harmonious flow for individuals and our collective? I want to live in a fulfilling world of flow. Don’t you?
Wand of Gratitude
by ThriverBetween Jerry sending me the book “The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude” and David Rose saying “wand of gratitude” I have to embrace my role as a freaky gratitude fairy. And I want a wand! Not that I think some magic dust will make everything alright. It won’t. Not that I think the right snap of my wrist dancing the wand will make something transport to the world of Harry Potter. No, I want the wand because it acts as an anchor. An object that can remind me (and others) that gratitude is part of the alchemy of connection.
Maybe I will make myself one. I have the craft supplies. 🙂
When I wave this wand of gratitude I want two things to happen:
Because of these two things, we will recognize the value, tangible and intangible in what we have together and individually. And recognizing that value will make it clear how very precious it is.
I wave my wand of gratitude over you.
Shift Happens
by ThriverThe question is “How does it happen?” And also “How can we encourage it to happen?”
Yesterday, I said on twitter:
Which is something I have been reflecting on since my early days of working with Drake Zimmerman on coaching and philanthropy. Or maybe it comes before that…going back into my childhood when I became fascinated by the brain (thanks PBS). In any case, it all came up again earlier this month when I sat down at a cafe with Clay Shirky. We had a powerful hour of mutual brain picking. He said he had just finished writing his next book and a question he was still mulling over was how do we get people to move between these spaces he had discerned and laid out for me.
Aha’s are those bright moments where the light bulbs flash on in the brain, and we suddenly see something in a way we had not seen it before. Sometimes this happens when we have a near death experience or a cherished one is ill or dies. Maybe it is a near miss or a sudden revelation. It can come from stillness and reflection. @SusanLipshutz shares, “Sometimes awakening, clarity comes from getting shaken up via an activating event that threatens the comfort zone, opens heart~”
@butyes declares, “an aha actually IS a shift–it’s the FEELING of an insight which changes the situation–and may make action possible.” So aha’s are a form of shifting, but not the only form. Shifting can also happen through determination and persistence. We can shift our habits. We can shift our views through reasoned argument. Sometimes shift is what gets us unstuck from the place we are or the way we are.
So I asked – what gets people to shift and take action. And the response was so useful, let me share it with you here.
Pain and the Away-From
Some people pointed to what gets us to wake up and move away from something. For example, @philwoodford said, “Usually a metaphorical gun barrel pointing at someone, in my experience.” Similarly, @brainsturbator asserts, “System Shock is the Currency of Consciousness Change. Why does the roshi smack the seeker?” Perhaps even an accumulation of is necessary, as @ValdisKrebs describes, ” enough knowledge/pain/processing have to accumulate for a tipping point or a spark to lead to aha/action.” And @nicolerufuku shared that “rock bottom forces a shift.”
Personally I don’t think we give enough respect to hitting our rock bottoms. For me they have been rich places for remaking myself and give me a lot of courage to take on new challenges (as I know I can survive failure).
@OctaviaMoon suggests that it can take a variety of things, “bottoms, even highs, loves, money….spiritual awakenings.” She goes on to say that, “yoga is a beautiful thing…takes you into the body where you might be stuck and makes things less literal.”
What I was expecting to hear from others but didn’t was something about carrots. I hear the pain and sticks method can work. Do carrots work too? Can we lure people to shift and get unstuck?
The Emergent Shift
Sometimes shifting is about not looking directly at what needs to change, instead it is about letting the mind rest. I think of this as letting the unconscious resolve things by putting the conscious mind elsewhere. @gordondym replied, “For me, it’s shifting attention to something simple, and/or thinking of something completely unrelated.” @butyes speaks to the emergent shift from another angle when she says, “but the aha itself–that often comes when one becomes still on the other side of worrying at the problem. In stillness there’s room to sense a little niggling glimmering something, and sit quietly with it, until, ‘oh!'”
Conditions for Shifting
While we may not want to cultivate the negative experiences that can make us shift, and perhaps we want to be more active than allowing an emergent shift, what can we do for ourselves and others to foster shift and get unstuck?
@HollyE4S offered a series of conditions that can help shifts happen:
Which reminded me of something I think I was first exposed to from @ken_homer and comes out of world cafe – find and take “a simple elegant next step.”
Looking back on my training as a coach, it feels like so much of our training was in developing competency with tools to help people shift or get unstuck – modifying beliefs, shifting frames and seeing multiple perspectives. I will review some of those in a post just for that.
What other ways to notice shift happening? And what can we do to spark it?
Rogue Waves
by ThriverI saw an article on rogue waves not too long ago. And it really inspired me visually to think about how we compound upon each other.
Wikipedia describes rogue waves:
We have some rogue waves amplifying trends. As Taleb says, we live ever more in a land of extremistan (Black Swan).
The Draupner wave, a single giant wave measured on New Year's Day 1995, finally confirmed the existence of freak waves, which had previously been considered near-mythical (from Wikipedia)
Let me explain a bit more about Rogue Waves before saying why I appreciate the metaphor so much.
In this LiveScience article, Choi describes the formation of rogue waves:
Tiny waves, you and me, can concentrate, resulting in an unexpected giant wave. This is more than you and I adding up. This is a shocking single large event. This is not really a tipping point, where the system reaches some threshold and changes state.
What I appreciate about this as a metaphor is the thought of the consolidation of forces. It helps us grasp at something that I feel is crashing in on us. A wave in one system is coming together with a wave in another overlapping system, compounded by another wave in another related system resulting in a freak wave. Will these waves be forces of good? Will there be waves of destruction that compound too? I think yes to both.
The wave of climate change meets the waves of peak oil and financial crisis and consumerism. Boom. The wave of awakening-to-purpose compounds with social enterprise and social entrepreneurship, microfinance, spend-down philanthropy, and healthcare innovations. These are choppy waters. How these waves will interact is anyone’s guess. Which will amplify another? Which will deflect or reduce another? Will there be smooth waters ahead? Do we return to regular waves and patterns? Do we get a rogue wave? And does that change us?
If it were not for….
by ThriverThis twitter post inspired me to share my gratitude.
If it were not for… my network… I would be or have nearly anything I do have and am.
I can name names here. And I have at time in public and in private shared with those people that I am clear have been instrumental in getting me where I am. When I picture answering this question, I see a rippling wave spreading out from this moment. It converges at this time and this place, but the factors and people that had to be in place and in time in order to arrive here are manifold. Many many manifold. And this is not just true for me, it is also true of everyone else in this great overlapping ripple that at its best creates a wave. Perhaps even a rogue wave.
On a skinny puppy song I used to enjoy… there was a sample at the beginning, “is it me and my head or me and my body?” Now I think of this as “Is it me and my network or me and my environment.” Am I even a distinct thing beyond my network? Or distinct from my environment? I am so deeply comprised of the people who have touched my life. Their influence on me forms this palimpsest that makes up my being. In this layered collage, there are colors and sections that seem more vibrant than others, more noticeable. But the whole of the composition is from the whole of the experience. And so too with the landscapes I have been in. I am both the product and the agent of the environments I inhabit.
If it were not for you, I would not be me. Ripple ripple, overlap, and gap.
Magical Listening
by ThriverI learned to listen when I was in coach training. Nothing very complicated… a very simple exercise that you can test yourself. First, we had an opportunity to give advice to our partners after hearing an issue they were exploring. Hmm, okay. Then we listened to them on another issue, taking in what they said and asking them for more. We asked them to explain their thoughts without imposing our own solutions. The difference in the results were so astounding! I still catch myself, at times, giving advice, I admit. However, at my best, the value I add to conversation is not my knowledge, but the space I create for the speaker to fully explore their own thinking.
In many cases, this makes sense. It is likely that the speaker knows more information about the situation. They have personal experience with it and the people involved. If I am really hearing them, I feel as if I am in their mind with them – moving from option to option, by their side. In some cases I may point back to something they have said and put it next to what they are saying now for comparison and alignment. This sounds pretty abstract, let me explain in another way.
Magical listening can be identified in person by the presence of some of the following characteristics:
Would you rather: have someone follow your words – hearing each fully? Let you lead and make space to explore? Or would you rather someone suggest options they think are best? (It might depend on the situation, as I can picture situations where each are appropriate. However, in my experience the latter is the default of most people.)
We long to be heard. We long for someone else to value us enough to hang on our words. We yearn for a sense of connection to someone outside of our own mind that values us enough to feel with us. Someone willing to step out of their ego-centric view of the world and walk with us in ours. When we are given that space, we can be our most creative, resourceful, and bold selves.
How can you be a more magical listener? The following is a list of things I notice myself doing, and I hope you will help add to this list.
How do you do magical listening? Please share in the comments! I want to learn to be a better listener too.
Value of Validation
by ThriverImmeasurable but still acknowledge-able. Not the difference, because that relates to our currency conversations.
This video makes me laugh and cry. I think back on it fondly and look for it regularly, so I thought I would hold it here – for you and for me.
And hey, you are awesome. Did anyone ever tell you….
Positive Deviants
by ThriverI really love this term. It seems to hold contradiction in itself, as our (at least my own) conception of deviants is usually a negative one! To deviate, however, simply means to do differently. So ask the question – where is someone doing something different that has a positive impact? Here is a lovely article on the power of positive deviants.
What I love about this story is how it highlights letting change come from within a community. We may know from the outside of a community that behaviors x, y, and z would help them. However, trying to impose those activities tends to fail. When we find those that are within the community that are doing things differently than the others that align with the behavior shifts that would lead to longer life or greater health and opportunity, we can point to those and allow peer influence (remember your Cialdini) to work its magic.
Where is positive deviance in your own life? Where do you do something right/well that you want to do in other areas of your life? Where do you see positive deviance around you? How can you encourage more of what works?
I first heard about this term about 5 years ago – from two mavens: Drake Zimmerman and Tom Munnecke. Nods to them both.
SIDENOTE: My concern here – the caveat, is using this sort of methodology to export culture. Helping people learn how to make money and thus join OUR system may not be what is most useful to us or to them. This is a case in which we might look inside our own culture and find positive deviants. Who is able to live best while relying on financial capital the least? How do they do that? Rather than – if everyone in the world has more money, we will all be better off. The whole poverty alleviation project is a misguided ego-centric approach to better world building. Make people better off – regardless of whether that involves money or not. And do not measure “well-off” by monetary standards. Some of the poorest people I have seen own the biggest houses, fastest cars, and handle the most money.