Ignore The Existential, Pay The Price

There's a clear cultural focus on developing functional thinking, thinking that needs to solve problems, create outcomes and move forward. We've learned to neglect the existential which asks uncomfortable questions like 'who am I', 'why am I here', 'where did we come from', 'what is the point' and more specifically 'what is the point of me'?

There's the irrational belief that we can ignore or placate the existential with archaic dogma, but we can't. At some point these unanswered questions become the reason, regardless of our professional or material success, we get stuck. And stuck is always going to feel deeply uncomfortable causing frustration, depression and anger and besides our own mental well being, others pay the price.

There is the naive belief that to inquire into the existential ultimately leads to the narrow ideology of organised religeon, which is doesn't.

Sure we're a zillion miles from knowing everything but we know enough to engage in intelligent, meaningful and rewarding existential conversations. Conversations that get us moving forward with clarity, vision and newfound purpose.

Why Do Programs or Promises Of Change Almost Always Fail?

Why is sustainable or permanent behavioural change, personal or organisational, so difficult?

Corporates, business and institutions spend a fortune on training and development, people spend a ton on learning and personal development, and most of it doesn’t take hold ... why?

Billions make relatively simple New Year resolutions, something like taking a bit of exercise more regularly or of changing the way they eat. Stand back, these are not outrageously complex or difficult objectives, yet how much of it translates into real permanent change.

Hardly any ... why?

We can change the what, we can even change the how but if we don’t transform the why, the chances of sustainable or permanent change are slim to nothing.

Changing the 'what' works quickly, but doesn't stick.

Changing the 'how' is more complex and sticks a little longer, but the 'what' still needs to be worked on.

Change the 'why' and a sustainable shift is created, but it's complex and the 'how' and the 'what' still need to be worked on. And systems quickly need to be develop embedding and holding the new patterns.

Change programs fail or achieve limited success because they fail to transform the why. Admittedly the why is seriously tricky to work with which is precisely why it's ignored and why change programs almost always fail.

What

How

Why

And that's the easy part, because ...

There are levels and bundles of why and it's an on going process. This is why it's as important to learn or teach people how to expose, work with and transform the why's, on their own. 

Which is why you need to be very clear about why you want to do it, to begin with.  Sustainable change is usually driven by either big dreams or big pain.

Our Problem Is Immaturity, But Who's Going To Own Up To That?

Sure there’s such a thing as hard work and skills development and with maturity it’s easy to recognise and respond to the need for both. The point is, hard or skillful work does not mean mature thinking and behaviour, and it’s immaturity that can’t cope with, solve or even acknowledge the complexity of the problems we face.

The assumption is that psychological maturity develops automatically with age, which it doesn't.

The assumption is that we should instinctively know how to psychologically grow up, which is absolutely not the case. 

The assumption is that we have been taught how to develop maturity, which we haven't.

The assumption is that corporate, political and organisational leaders are mature, which is profoundly untrue. They can be amongst the least mature, but the most confident or driven (driven by what makes for an interesting discussion).

The only way immaturity (less mature than is needed to effectively deal with the problem) can solve complex problems, is either by dismissing or ignoring large chunks of the problem or the whole problem itself.

Our problem is a profound lack of maturity, measured against the complexity of the problems we face. And almost everyone is looking to the next person to solve their problem of not being able to understand the problems to begin with.

Or we ignore large chunks or the entirety of the problem and leave it to the leaders ...

[Sunday Contemplation] Are You Trapped In The Old, Searching For The New?

Sign-Up To Receive This Sunday Contemplation

Dear friends

There is the old and there is the new, the old is not bad and the new not good, both have their place on the scale of usefulness.

The old is crumbling and the new struggling to be born, but although decaying the old is not weak for it controls both real world power and wealth.

The new listens to the words of the old but hears only stories, myths and the anxieties of children. And in listening to the new, the old although perceiving a spark, inevitably sees only weakness as in the garbled wisdom of the elderly.

Although strong the old is rigid, and although soft the new is open and interested.

The old was developed using discipline, control and punishment and the new by mastery, autonomy and purpose. The old collects in groups driven by the need to protect and collude and the new by common interests, vision and the wholehearted desire to cooperatively create.

The old was once new as the new is now, and the new over time will become as the old has now become. All things great once began as fragile and all things decayed once stood as great.

There is the new way and there is the old and although they use the same words they speak a different language.

One speaks of power and ancestry and the other of mastery and authenticity. One speaks of control, the other of influence. One speaks of peace while making war and the other of disobedience while creating tolerance.

The old is simple, but it all it's cleverness can't keep up. And for the new to be, it must learn to embrace the core truths of the old and emerge not replace.

Creating Success and Deep Happiness, How?

It was in the early days of teaching meditation and enlightenment that I met a guy who had been meditating for 20 years, 2 hrs per day, with a total time investment of 14,600hrs. His challenge was ... the meditation wasn't translating into real success or a better quality of life i.e. his life still sucked.

The answer, he was doing it wrong, so wrong it was hurting. He had to start again, which as I'm sure you can imagine, wasn't enthralling.

Sure, he learned discipline and self-control and although that helped him achieve a level or type of success, it wasn't the total success he wanted nor the deep happiness he longed for.

Effort, discipline and control take us only so far and although they may deliver a measure of success, even happiness, to the extent it's achieved, a hefty price is paid.

This is the world we live in, the world we've created. The model of success we've developed and which we unquestionably follow achieves limited success for some, maximum success for a tiny few and is responsible for the untold pain and suffering of nearly everyone.

I believe it's important we cultivate and grow our desire to succeed and experience deep happiness, but more importantly we need to carefully re-think how we measure it, how we go about achieving it and why we want it to begin with.

If our limited success and happiness comes at the expense of others and theirs at ours, which in the current model whether we acknowledge it or not, it does, then it's time to collectively change the model.

On the road to greater success and deeper happiness effort is crucial, right effort, mission critical.

Are You Becoming More Valuable...

... because it’s something we train ourselves to become, not something fixed, dependent upon circumstances, knowledge or skills we have or don’t, are born with or not?

Success and happiness isn’t a light switch either on or off, it’s a dimmer knob we turn, more one way, brighter, more the other, dimmer.

The more success you learn to create and the happier you are, the more valuable you become. And one day I’m certain, you will ask yourself this one simple question ...

Did I have the vision to become more valuable?

Why Your Boss Isn't Really Interested In Your Learning and Development

Real learning means developing clarity of purpose, higher levels of performance and expectation and the evolving need for autonomy. Learning will change the way you think, problem solve, communicate, behave, do things and organize. It will mean real measurable results and change.

And if it doesn’t, there has been no real learning at all.

And they, by design or compliancy, want more for comparatively less without upsetting the status-quo.

So if you’re serious about creating success and deep happiness, you will need to take matters into your own hands, beginning with learning self-mastery, leadership and influence.

How To Get From Here To There?

There isn’t a person on the planet who’s not either going somewhere, or stuck, which in a weird way is still going somewhere ... more stuck.

Now here can be one of several places, either stuck, moving forward and you want to get there, faster, or moving forward but not in the direction of there, some other direction you don't want to be going.

Stuck means no forward momentum and suffocatingly little space. Trapped in repetitive patterns (of behavior and systems) and results, neither of which provide much happiness or meaning. Getting unstuck means energetically creating both space and movement. Space allows for movement and movement makes space, either of which are random because it’s actually the momentum you’re searching for. It's the momentum that eventually breaks through, and gets you unstuck.

Getting there faster means clarity and vision and going through the tough but regular process of deciding what's needed and what's baggage. Lose the baggage and develop what’s needed, which moves you along faster and creates greater momentum. Of course greater momentum and speed require greater mastery and skill.

Heading in the wrong direction means, slowing down, revisiting vision and reducing momentum which gets you to the point of being able take an exit. You don't need to come to a complete stop, but you can't be zooming along either, you'll just keep missing the exit and end up getting stuck at high speed.

Why Does My Success Seem Always Just One Step Ahead?

Imagine living inside a whisper, a whisper neither audible nor comprehensible, a whisper of neither words nor thoughts, but a feeling.

Impossible to locate or eradicate, endlessly repeating the mantra, 'there's something wrong, there's something dreadfully wrong, there something missing, you need to fix what's wrong, you need to find what's missing ... then and only then will you experience the success, happiness and meaning you desire.'

And no matter what success you achieve, how much personal growth you do or how much you party, congregate or bathe in luxury, the whisper only grows becoming a roar, which although you still can't hear (because it’s a feeling and not a thought or word) soon comes to dominate your mental landscape.

There's something dreadfully wrong, there's something missing ... It’s an itch you can not seem to scratch.

Every success inevitably translates to failure, every relationship inevitably experienced as lack.

Feeding it makes it hungrier, ignoring it makes it louder. Discipline quietens it, but when austerity ends which it must, it emerges louder and stronger than ever.

There’s something wrong with me, the world, my partner, friends and family. There’s something missing, I need to discover what’s missing. Like a spotlight it shines its perception of lack and wrong on all it sees, driving your anxiety filled participation.

In truth nothing is missing, nothing is wrong, it’s simply the projection of a feeling, the interpretation of an unseen mindset assumption, that whispers ...

But this does not mean there is no work to do.

Unlike Our Ancestors ...

... we have the potential to willfully transform how we think, behave and organise, quickly.

Watching David Attenborough's First Life I was fascinated to see the first creatures struggle from sea onto land, making heroic efforts to breath, move and survive in an utterly new and hostile environment.

Completely unaware of what they were doing, they are none-the-less the hero’s of evolution, and we the recipients. If they could have thought, if they had been able to appreciate the gravity and the slim chance of success their efforts had, most I believe would simply have slipped back into the ocean.

Today, right now we are making valiant efforts to evolve and adapt to an utterly new environment. Many will fail, but all attempts are needed, because in the struggle to adapt, learn and develop, quantity counts.

But we have the nuke of evolutionary armament. We have a developed brain which observes, reasons and re-wires, constantly adapting and changing.

It’s not a given though, it’s a trained, developed and mastered capacity.

It's Easier the Simpler It Is

We mistakenly believe that thinking is only about new knowledge and ideas, and it is, but it's also about methods of reasoning and logic. For example, the traditional model of business has one objective, to make money and there's nothing wrong with that, except now include real social, moral and environmental responsibility and the logic breaks down. It can’t cope.

It's easier to make money without the constraints of social, moral and environmental responsibility (to whatever degree) and more difficult if there are. It creates a whole new level of complexity needing a whole new way of reasoning and thinking to solve.

But this new logic is not lying around waiting to be found or discovered, it literally has to be created, and anything created progresses through the stages of trial and error.

This makes the work of the socially responsible entrepreneur, business owner and professional infinitely more complex. Not only are they running the show, but they’re working out a new ways of thinking and behaving and ‘competing’ with businesses that do not operate under these 'onerous' constraints.

Success Enables

Success itself is of limited personal value. It's the evolving meaning, purpose and happiness it enables, we ultimately desire.

Success ...

... on the one hand is about results and achieving acknowledged and measurable objectives. It moves through levels of difficulty and complexity. The meaning and happiness experienced at one soon gives way to frustration and resentment, until the challenges of the next are embraced.

... on the other is about consistent, measured and acknowledged learning and development regardless of the results. Happiness and meaning are experienced in proportion to the depth and speed of the learning and growth.

The danger, as always, lies in leaping from the heavens and trying to fly with only one wing.

From Job to Calling, Successfully

A job is what we do when we are young and have limited experience, untrained abilities, talent and self-mastery. It satisfies the fundamental motivation of needing to earn money and provides at least initially a degree of happiness and meaning.

A career is what we do when we are more mature, have experience and developed a degree of vision and trained abilities, talents and self-mastery. It satisfies the fundamental motivation for recognition and provides a new higher degree of happiness and meaning.

A calling is what we do when we are 'psychologically' mature to make a significant difference and contribution in the world, have honed abilities, talents and self-mastery and crafted a unique and compelling vision. It satisfies the fundamental motivation to ‘create’ and provides significantly higher levels of happiness and meaning.

Outer success is the ability to meet predefined objectives in spite of, or more accurately because of, adverse, difficult, challenging or changing contexts. Inner success is the ability to consistently learn and improve regardless of whether outer objectives are met or not.

Clarity in Communication Improves Results

All behavior is communication and all communication either asks for a need to be met or meets the need of another.

Asking your partner to meet your need to be loved is not expressing a need, it's expressing how you will feel after your need has been met. It does not help them understand what they need to do in order for you to feel loved or validated.

And although we may know how we want to feel, we most often have no idea of how to get there. And even if we did we’re afraid to ask, or we don't know how to ask in a way that actually works.

'Darling, I’m feeling vulnerable right now, could you give me a big teddy bear hug and let me know you care'.

This expresses to my partner, how I feel and makes a clear behavioural request they can easily understand and meet, if they so choose.

But it leaves me out on a limb.

Solving Big Problems (We All Have Them)

I help people solve big problems, but obviously only the people who acknowledge they have big problems to solve. Most live in denial, self-righteous indignation or blissful ignorance, which although sounds delightful does not mean they escape the consequences of not solving them.

If you're falling it does not matter whether you know, blame someone else or deny the fact you’re falling for the consequences of hitting the road to be just as real.

Of the people who acknowledge they have big problems to solve most are in crisis, which makes the process infinitely more difficult, because crisis promotes the victim, absorbs brain power and limits both creative and strategic thinking.

A tiny few both acknowledge there are complex problems to solve and stand prepared to do the mental work required to develop the talents and potentials needed to begin the often protracted and uncomfortable work of owning, and solving them.