I wrote a few days ago about how much of the time our actions - and our whole style of relating - are drawn out of us by what we're around. The word I introduced to describe the things which draw us into action, "affordances", comes from the work of Martin Heidegger.I pointed out then how physical environments and all the equipment that comes with them are affordances in this way. Being in the kitchen among the pots and pans and cutlery, or in an office with its desks and computers, in a nightclub with its lighting and bar and dance floor, or in a football stadium or on the side of a mountain each elicits from us a whole style of relating and interacting, as well as certain actions we take without having to think about them. We simply find ourselves acting in whatever way meets the situation before we've framed a conscious thought.This is so important to see, because it can begin to show how much the places you spend your time in shape who you are as a person, and your ordinary, everyday, habitual comfortable reactions to everything. You're constantly being drawn into ways of acting and relating by all of it, and over time this has a huge effect. What kind of person do you become, do you think, if you spend all of your time in the built environments of train, car, plane and office? Or if you spend all of your time outdoors? What kind of person is your home shaping you to be? Or the local shopping mall?You and others really are not so separate from the places you're in as you might have come to believe.
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Somehow, many of us have allowed ourselves to believe that the mark of professional, business-like conversation - the kind we're apparently meant to have in our organisations - is that it should bore us to tears.Too much aliveness, too much spontaneity, too much that's genuine, too much feeling has us shut ourselves and others down.As long as we can speak in business-speak, preferably with bullet-points, we feel safe. Because then we're dead to ourselves and one another, which saves us from all risk, of course.In 
What happens, happens because the conditions were such that it could happen.How common it is to try, push or strive to have what's important to you take place, without paying any attention to this.Right now, for example, are you giving any consideration to the condition of your own body? It's from this that every action you're able to take arises.Are you cultivating the energy, ability to concentrate, capacity to tolerate difficulty, and ability to stay in relationship that will support your intentions? The presence, openness, centeredness to be able to respond?And if not, do you see how all your efforts might be wasted because you're working against the very conditions that could support you most?
Of course, your feeling of unique loneliness and separation from others is precisely what connects you with everyone else in the world.In allowing yourself to feel your aloneness you join everyone who, behind our busy activity and even in our most intimate relationships, feels the same from time to time.In this way, and in so many others, none of us is ever separate from other human beings, even when we're most convinced we are.
When you complain about the way somebody else behaves around you, here's a thought:Perhaps the way they're behaving is one you've been inviting through your own way of relating to them.The downside of discovering this? You'll no longer be able to get yourself off the hook with your complaints and the certainty of your judgements.The upside? By starting with yourself you'll have a chance, at last, of actually changing the situation so what's important to you can start to happen.
When you're irritated or annoyed with someone for the way they're being, you may think "I would never be like that".But the intensity of your irritation could be a sign that you're experiencing a shadow side of yourself - a part of you, seen reflected in them, that you deny and which you do your best to keep out of view.Pushing the other person away is an attempt to push away the part of yourself you'd rather not see.And instead of believing all your judgements, you could start to recognise that what you're seeing in them is, indeed, just like you. And then you have the possibility of reaching out to them with compassion rather than hostility, learning more about yourself, and healing what's pushing the two of you apart.
What would happen if you gave up being in a battle with life all the time?Instead of being so sure that what's happening is not meant to be happening, and certainly isn't meant to be happening to you, can you allow yourself to accept that what's happening is, actually, exactly what is happening?Then, instead of responding from resentment or resignation or frustration, you have a chance of finding out what's really called for, and responding instead with that.
What's your understanding of the source of your actions and other people's actions?Mostly we've been taught to think that it's something within that produces what we do. We talk about motivation, or goals, or drive, or inspiration. We think of ourselves as separate from the world and that our actions and relationship to everything comes from inside us out into the world. And, of course, there's some truth in that.But I don't think it's the whole story.One of the important contributions of the work of Martin Heidegger last century was to show that we're not as separate from the world as all that. Much of the time what's happening is that we're being drawn towards situations, equipment, or possibilities that we meet.So, when there's a chair in the room we're drawn to sit down when we're tired. Or when it's time to go out of the room we're drawn towards the door and reach for the handle, which draws us too.This is different from the way you might think you relate to doors and chairs.It's not so much that before we act there's a thinking process by which we first decide to find a door and then reach for the handle in a series of discrete steps. In the middle of everyday human life all of this just flows out of us, from the everyday familiarity and skilfulness in being in the world that we've embodied over a long time.Heidegger called such features of the world that draw us out in particular ways affordances.Being around different kinds of affordance draws us out of ourselves in different ways. Perhaps you'll see this most clearly if you start to watch for a while what you're drawn into - what you find yourself automatically doing, before you've even thought about it - in particular places.What do the affordances of the kitchen draw you towards?The lounge or sitting room with sofas and perhaps a TV?A meeting room at work with a big boardroom table?The bus-stop or the inside of a train?A cathedral?The waiting room for a doctor's surgery?If you watch for a while you'll see that each place draws from you not just actions but a particular style of engaging with and relating to what's around you that includes how you relate to others. It's all happening long before you've even thought about how to respond in this or that place.This is an important topic because it shows us quickly how much place affects us.There'll be more to say about this over the coming days because equipment (whether paintbrushes, books, teacups or smartphones) and people are affordances too. And there are huge practical consequences of this for all of us, that mostly we're not paying attention to.
Organisations are not machines that can be programmed.Because people are not machines either.