Category: Change

How Emotional Work is Key to Manage One’s Own Misalignments

This post by Steve Pavlina ‘Aligned Solutions‘ provides interesting insights on how to manage own misalignments – like for example those between our aspirations, dreams, thoughts, choices…. Importantly, this requires working at emotional level and not at analytical level.

We all have some misalignments that create themselves and that we have to manage; and we also need to make sure they do not become so significant as to become hazardous, because if we have too much misalignments we may suffer in day-to-day situations when it comes to making choices.

The issue is how to deal with them to attain genuine alignment of our own self so as to attain the lightness and resolution that comes with better alignment.

“I’d say that the heart is really the key to alignment. My biggest alignment mistakes happened when I tried to use my brain to go against my feelings. If my feelings aren’t aligned with what I’m trying to do, that kills my plans dead. Doing anything interesting in life requires sustainable motivation. So figuring out what gives you the most sustainable motivational juice can point you in the direction of increasing alignment too.” Therefore, the important point here is to able to distinguish at the emotional level in what direction we ought to go.

In addition, Steve Pavlina points out the need for discipline and motivation once we have decided on a new direction. Having an emotional commitment clearly helps.

Improving our own alignement is essential for our balance and our freedom; and this can only be addressed by undergoing emotional work.

Share

How Economic Growth Definitely Reduces Poverty

The site ourworldindata.org is always an excellent reference about worldwide statistics, and their page on economic growth is particularly instructive. The historical perspective is quite instructive.

Global economic wealth production is quite exponential when looked upon a long time frame, since the Agricultural Age through the Industrial Age. Lately, it has spread to many more countries and people, sustaining this exponential growth.

GDP per capita follows the same exponential growth, particularly in developed countries, but also – albeit at a lesser level – in developing countries.

As the page shows, conversely, extreme poverty has been decreasing significantly in the recent decades globally, which is excellent news (even more taking into account the significant growth in world population) – going down from a historical 75% of world population down to less than 10%.

Hence economic growth is definitely a major component of human well-being. Solutions to the current climate crisis should take it into account, looking at means to pursue growth – in a more sustainable manner – so as to continue raising the well-being of more people.

Share

How Long Lasting Internet Memory Can Be

In this Wired article ‘I Called Off My Wedding. The Internet Will Never Forget‘ we get reminded how internet can maintain memories of past events (even if they did not really happen at the end). And how this will impact the choices provided today by internet services.

“Of the thousands of memories I have stored on my devices—and in the cloud now—most are cloudless reminders of happier times. But some are painful, and when algorithms surface these images, my sense of time and place becomes warped. It’s been especially pronounced this year, for obvious and overlapping reasons. In order to move forward in a pandemic, most of us were supposed to go almost nowhere. Time became shapeless. And that turned us into sitting ducks for technology.”

Facebook memories, or advertisements for stuff we consumed years ago (I still see on my screens adverts for camper vans in New Zealand where we vacationed years ago…) are reminders that internet does not forget anything. And through AI those memories may emerge in the weirdest ways.

On the opposite, curiously, everything which happened before the advent of social networks (2005-2010 approximatively) does not exist in Internet memory, which creates a substantial gap.

The only exit from this situation is to delete it all, but that may not even be possible. We have to live knowing that the internet has in memory everything we posted and wrote all those years – and that some may come back to haunt us one day.

Share

How We Need to Be Able to End Things Gracefully

In this post ‘Ending it gracefully‘, Seth Godin reminds us how it is important to anticipate that most initiatives will end and probably “fail” at some stage. And it is typically at those moments that we need to be able to remain graceful.

“You can pull out every stop, fight every step of the way, mortgage your house and your reputation–and still fail. Or, perhaps, you can quit in a huff at the first feeling of frustration. The best path is clearly somewhere between the two. And yet, too often, we leave this choice unexamined. Deciding how and when to quit before you begin is far easier and more effective than making ad hoc decisions under pressure.” 

However, more importantly I believe is the capacity to be grateful to what happened before the end, and be graceful to all of those that have supported and participated to the adventure. The worst is when the end is the start of a long-winded drama.

Most initiatives we take will end eventually, and not always in the best of situations. Let’s learn the skill of ending gracefully and moving on.

Share

How Silent and Listen Go Hand in Hand

I just realized by reading the post ‘Listening Skills Need Exercise‘ that ‘Silent’ is the anagram of ‘Listen’ in English. This is actually quite a powerful statement.

I am a great believer in the power of active listening. And this requires an absolute openness.

“Only when we’re able to quiet what is going on in our head we can truly listen.” Active listening is powerful as a change agent, and it requires a discipline and a practice from the listener.

Silence can be more full and powerful than noise, in particular obviously than random noise.

Inner and outer silence is the key to real listening and change.

Share

How Languishing is the Dominating Emotion of the Covid Times

In this excellent New York Times column ‘There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing‘ the author makes the point that languishing may be the dominating emotion of the Covid times.

As we increasingly don’t get excited by anything as we are confined in our homes, “it wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing. Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021.”

And indeed personally I have been caught by languishing in particular during the toughest periods of confinement, not coming out of my home offices weeks at a time.

Languishing seems to be a precursor of more serious disorders in the future according to some studies, hence the need to overcome this state. The article proposes that “flow” could be the antidote. “People who became more immersed in their projects managed to avoid languishing and maintained their prepandemic happiness.” This, of course, requires that one has a project that keeps occupied. Another approach is to ensure to keep uninterrupted time to oneself, which allows to concentrate on something of interest.

Languishing seems to be quite the descriptor of the mood of many people at this moment. As vaccination increases and we are able to have more and more social relationships, we need to be able to escape this mind state. What are you doing against languishing?

Share

How Belief in Paranormal Increases

Statistics show a significant increase in the past few years in the belief of paranormal powers, as shown in this very interesting Medium article ‘Hex Factor: Inside the Group Offering $250,000 for Proof of Superpowers‘. The article addresses efforts being made to debunk paranormal power claims.

“The fastest-growing religious affiliation in the U.S. are people with no religious affiliation, Bader says, or “nones” in sociological parlance. It’s a broad category that includes both atheists, agnostics, and people whose beliefs don’t fit with any formal religious organization. A large percentage of nones also say they believe in the paranormal. People who accept the paranormal are also more likely than those who don’t to believe in conspiracy theories.”

This trend in an increase of both conspiracy theories and paranormal claims may be linked to an increasing misalignment between people expectations and how they observe the world.

“Once those beliefs are there, they are really hard to dislodge. Our brains are exceptionally good at discounting evidence that doesn’t fit with what we already believe, and at prioritizing information that confirms our pre-existing perceptions”. However the article states that most of those claims go mute when requested to be demonstrated (which does not mean that people don’t continue to believe in them).

The increasing belief in the marvelous, the paranormal and conspiracies seem to be a mark of our times where reality becomes more difficult to apprehend in the face of the modified reality presented to us by media and screens.

Share

How To Achieve The Right Balance in Law-Making

In those strange days of the Covid pandemics, most governments have introduced many new laws to govern our daily life. And sometimes they seem to have forgotten some age-old advice about effective laws:

“Unnecessary laws weaken necessary laws” (Montesquieu)

“Too soft laws are not followed and too harsh laws are not enforced” (Franklin)

I particularly find the second piece of wisdom particularly applicable in a country like France where lawmakers seems to love producing new laws on everything on a regular basis, which makes thinks difficult to follow. Moreover a lot of those laws don’t get really applied because they are either too soft or too hard.

Lawmaking is a change management exercise (why edict a new law if there is nothing to change?). It is not always performed with the right approach or with the right balance to be really be effective. Reverting to age-old wisdom in the matter would be a good recommendation for lawmakers.

Share

How We Should Stay More Often and Longer at the Edge of Uncertainty

In this inspiring post ‘Staying at the Edge of Uncertainty‘, Leo Babauta makes that point that we should learn to stay more often and longer at the edge of uncertainty. By moving close to the limite of our safe zone, on the brink of the uncertain, is where we learn and evolve most.

“All of us do this in most areas of our lives. Sometimes, we are able to voluntarily stay in uncertainty, but those times are relatively rare, and usually we don’t like it so much. Here’s the thing: the edge of uncertainty and chaos is where we learn, grow, create, lead, make incredible art and new inventions.”

And Leo Babauta insists that generally we tend to avoid this situation and rather come back to the well-known and familiar. To achieve this goal of being more closer to the edge and more often he recommends a deliberate practice:

  1. Set aside a time
  2. Pick something you are avoiding
  3. Do it for a short time (10-15 mins)
  4. Learn to embrace uncertainty
  5. Be kind to yourself

I have to be more self conscious about being more at this edge of uncertainty.

Being at the edge of our uncertainty and learning how to stay more often there is certainly a great advice. Have you tried to do it deliberately?

Share

How Timescales of Survival Call on Different Groups

Survival at different time scales (year, decades, centuries, millenia) requires the mobilisation of different groups. This can explain the importance for us to cultivate those groupes (from the family to humankind). And this can also be contradictory therefore leading to paradox and conflict.

This thought is based on the quote by mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson: “The destiny of our species is shaped by the imperatives of survival on six distinct time scales.  To survive means to compete successfully on all six time scales.  But the unit of survival is different at each of the six time scales.  On a time scale of years, the unit is the individual.  On a time scale of decades, the unit is the family.  On a time scale of centuries, the unit is the tribe or nation.  On a time scale of millennia, the unit is the culture.  On a time scale of tens of millennia, the unit is the species.  On a time scale of eons, the unit is the whole web of life on our planet.  Every human being is the product of adaptation to the demands of all six time scales.  That is why conflicting loyalties are deep in our nature.  In order to survive, we have needed to be loyal to ourselves, to our families, to our tribes, to our cultures, to our species, to our planet.  If our psychological impulses are complicated, it is because they were shaped by complicated and conflicting demands.”

Survival at different time scales requires sometime contradictory approaches and relying on different social social groups. That may be something we do not sufficiently account for in our understanding of social tensions.

Hat-tip for the quote to Valeria Maltoni in ‘Fast Gets all our Attention. Slow Has all the Power‘

Share

How the Habit Dip Is an Incredible Learning Opportunity

In this excellent post ‘The Habit Dip‘, Leo Babauta goes deeper at what happens in this unavoidable dip when one tries to learn a new skill or habit. And how this moment of despair is also an incredible opportunity to learn about oneself.

All changes are hard and most go through a dip: after the initial excitement of discovering a new skill or habit, there is some sort of valley of death where progress is extremely difficult and disappointment can set in. It is the moment one should not abandon the change, and we all have to cross it.

Leo Babauta makes the point that “the dip is an incredible place of learning. It’s the place where we learn and grow, and get better at facing difficulty. When things are going well, everything seems easy, and you just have to keep doing the same thing. There isn’t a lot of learning there. But when things are hard, you have to face the difficulty if you want to keep going, if you want to avoid going to your usual pattern of discouraging yourself or quitting.“

Therefore when we are faced with this unavoidable moment, it is a good thing to become introspective and to analyze what happens to oneself. Being curious and in the learning mode will teach you much about yourself.

We all go through the dip when we try to change. It can be a struggle, but also a great learning moment about oneself. Let’s exploit it that way!

Share

How Security is Mostly a Superstition

I like this quote by Helen Keller: “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing“.

This quote brings forth several aspects. The first is that security is a superstition, and although we strive for it and try to get it in modern society, we need to be aware that this is not a natural situation and should be careful not to become too naive.

This immediately brings logically the fact that it is not good to constantly avoid danger. While one can be prudent, it is quite useful to be adventurous.

And in any case, being adventurous brings us new discoveries and enlightens our lives.

Definitively, security is a not a natural state and we should not let ourselves become complacent. Life needs to be an adventure.

Share