Disease is dis-ease, a negative force that brings out of being at ease.
According to Ayurveda there would be main 3 causes of dis-ease:
This creates a negative feedback loop that would lead into disease.
How do you fare on these 3 dimensions?
From Cate Stillman ‘Body Thrive: Uplevel Your Body and Your Life with 10 Habits from Ayurveda and Yoga‘
Creating meaningful connections, even over social networks, requires a high degree of authenticity. Unfortunately it is rather the opposite that most often occurs: our own self online is rather more superficial.
Amber Naslund writes in this excellent, touching and profound post ‘the Life-Out Loud Manifesto‘: “the only way to truly forge those connections in a lasting, valuable way is to put our genuine selves out there. To say boldly: “Here I am. Here is what I stand for. Here is what I love and what I don’t and what I would like to know more about. Here is where I hurt. Here is where I stumble. Here is me, unapologetically, without pretense, without shame.”
She continues: “The web makes validation and connection more possible than ever. But to find it – to find more than superficial words and fleeting sentiments writ quickly with thumbs – we must pledge to step out of our comfort zones in order to let people see us in all of our beauty and individuality and imperfection. Only then can others see the light that only we shine, see their own reflections in our mosaic, and perhaps find their strength and their voice and say “I’m here, too.””
I like the pledge to be more authentic online. It’s tough but it might be something that will distinguish success in the Collaborative Age.
I like this quote: “Advances are made by answering questions. Discoveries are made by questioning answers” —Bernard Haisch.
Questioning answers is a great tool in many instances in life, and it is true that it sometimes leads to deep insights. It is too easy to be led by the soothing sound of answers delivered with assurance. Answers reflect the common knowledge, the knowledge that the person talking wants you to share.
Question answers more often. It will lead you to discover new areas of thought. It is a great skill. It is a great creative tool too!
Byron Katie writes in her book Loving What Is, “There is no such thing as verbal abuse. There’s only someone telling me a truth that i don’t want to hear“.
I find this quote very relevant, with some qualifications. Byron Katie speaks in that way as part of her healing interventions, and I believe that there are some instances where verbal abuse can really be hurtful and destructive. This quote might not always be applicable, or might be too difficult to apply in really difficult relationships.
However, there is also some truth in the fact that if verbal abuse affects us, there is something that we don’t want to hear or that confronts someone we don’t want to be. We should not take it too literally then, but it might be worth investigating why we react harshly sometimes to what is being said to us or what is being said of us.
In my consulting work I often observe that clients expect us to provide “consulting methods”. Actually it looks like our credibility would stem from having proprietary, proven consulting methods to address a large number of cases. However I feel that in a number of cases this should not be the most important concern from the client. Experience and capability to handle specific situations should be.
Of course it is important to have methods and to put on paper the lessons learnt from various interventions in a structured manner, that can be enriched over time. On certain aspects it is a definite indicator of effectiveness in a consulting intervention.
On other aspects I see to many “consulting methods” just developed to give some comfort to the client whereas ad-hoc approaches based on general principles would be the best response to the issue at stake. Even worse, applying those “methods” automatically will lead in a direction which might not ultimately resolve the actual issue of the client.
I consider that while having a few methods is essential, the client should also consider the level of experience and of human connection that the consultant brings to the table (in addition to providing an independent cold eye view of the situation). This is often all that is required, not the extensive application of a complicated analytical method.
I thus become suspicious when I encounter consultants that have methods for about everything: formatted by their methods, they might not look into the real issues at stake.
There seems to be much benefit of keeping our eyes on the long term prize (benefit) we are seeking so as to minimize the psychological impact of what we have to go through to reach it.
That’s what Valeria Maltoni expands on in her interesting post ‘How Small Differences in Perception can have Potentially Major Consequences‘. Experiments show that by keeping focus on the longer term benefits we get much more consistency in practice and more effort put into it: “we came up with a strategy that we called, “Keep your eyes on the prize.” So this is not the slogan from an inspirational poster. It’s an actual directive for how to look around your environment. People that we trained in this strategy, we told them to focus their attention on the finish line, to avoid looking around, to imagine a spotlight was shining on that goal, and that everything around it was blurry and perhaps difficult to see”
So let’s focus on the prize to reach it more effectively and avoid falling down at the first difficult moment!
I can’t resist to share a quote that moved me from Om Swami’s blog, itself a quote from the author Will Durant.
“Many years I sought happiness. […] I perceived that if I will do as well as I can the tasks for which life has made me, I shall find fulfillment, and a quiet lane of happiness for many years. Gladly I surrender myself to nature’s imperative of love and parentage, trusting to her ancient wisdom, and knowing that, as Dante learned when he entered Paradise, “La sua volontade è nostra pace — in her will and service is our peace””
Om Swami concludes: “Each one of us has a certain purpose. It can’t be and is not the same for everyone. Sometimes, we keep battling for a different life, hoping that we’ll have a life of our dreams by clearing all the hurdles in our present life.
The truth is, if Nature has given you a certain strength, talent, capability, whether you like it or not, it’ll put it to maximum use. No matter where you go or what you do, it’ll pull you back into your natural play field where you add the greatest value to its functioning and apparatus.”
Thus we’ve been warned and gently guided to find our happiness.
Marshall Rosenberg in the book ‘Non violent communication‘ explains that “In the course of developing emotional responsibility, most of us experience three stages:
Emotional responsibility is essential to respond to deeply conflicted and emotional situations. I like this description of those three stages because of their clarity and how they relate to my own experience. I am not always emotionally liberated but at least I can see how to reach that level.
Taking responsibility for our own feelings is in my view the essential piece here. Being able to do that is the key in reaching inner peace and responding adequately to stressful situations where tempers flare.
How do you take responsibility for your own feelings and at the same time acknowledge the feelings of others, being ’emotionally liberated’?
Following our post on the need to break patterns to create value, the example of Airbnb is quite interesting.
At the core, the concept is about breaking a basic survival pattern, repeated from generation to generation: don’t let unknown strangers in your house!
It was only by providing sufficient assurance that things will turn out fine that this pattern could be broken (thanks to the inter-mediation provided by the platform). However basically the value released by the platform is at the core, breaking a deeply ingrained pattern.
It is a bit the same with the more advanced Uber applications (survival pattern: don’t enter the car of an unknown stranger and be driven somewhere!) and most of the disruptive, successful companies that have emerged recently (for Google, the survival pattern was: don’t give all your personal information to an external company!).
Breaking patterns can thus release great value if properly done and with the assurance that safety is still provided. When do you start your own disruption?
Our mind patterns have been built to benefit our survival. To thrive we need to be able overcome those patterns.
Our mind patterns and instinctive reactions are immensely useful – they allow us to react instantly to threats, and generally stick to proven survival reactions in our day-to-day life.
At the same time, they imprison and limit us in considering new situations, or finding new ways to look at common situations. We need to be able to overcome those patterns to thrive.
This is of course dangerous and better done in a situation where we are somewhat protected, and possibly not all the time.
The dilemma is, those mind patterns need to be overcome to find new value, and we still need them to cover our survival most of the time. The capability to thrive in this dilemma is the mark of the innovator.
Break your patterns consciously sometime and reap the value. When do you start?
Following on our post explaining ‘Why We Are Moving From a World of Problems to a World of Dilemmas‘, let’s give ourselves some guidance when we can’t really be sure that what we are facing is a problem or a dilemma.
The rule is simple – in doubt, treat the situation as a dilemma.
This will force a much wider range of considerations and solutions, and will probably be more right. Consider a situation to be a problem only when it is clearly delineated and where linear thinking appears to be applicable. All the rest should be treated as dilemmas.
Dilemmas implies choice, it implies regret and it generally requires prompt action to be released. It requires character more than analytic thought. It is harder but nowadays it is often more useful to consider situations as dilemmas rather than problems.
One of the most interesting changes brought by the Fourth Revolution is that we are evolving from a typical world of problems to be solved (typical of the Industrial Age) to a world of dilemmas where we have to choose between options.
The reasons for this change are numerous. One is that we all have much more choice than before and so, there are many possible solutions for a situation. This forces us to make choices. The other is that because of our increased interconnectedness, our decisions can’t be independent of the decisions of others. We are thus forced to take into account others’ actions and reactions in our analysis, and this creates dilemmas.
Knowing how to resolve problems is thus not any more the key competency. Knowing how to manage dilemmas is, with all the issues related to possible regrets, and making choices in an uncertain and changing world.
Let us learn to face dilemmas better to thrive in the Collaborative Age!
