I remember the moment with gratitude, though it was tough at the time."You have no idea how self-judgemental you are", Andy had said to me. And it had cut like a knife. But he was right. I was thirty-five years old and had over many years become seasoned to the harshness of the world.I didn't know it as harshness to be so filled with self-doubt and such worry about how I was doing all the time. It was just the way the world was. Unquestionable. Invisible. And I had no idea that it wasn't so much the world that was harsh but my own inner experience.Andy's carefully timed observation was one of those moments when what had been in the background for so long came crashing into the foreground - when what I had been swimming in for so long was made apparent to me.It was a doorway into a profoundly new world in which I began to see that most of what I thought others were thinking about me was actually what I was thinking about myself. And that I no longer had to believe everything I thought so completely.Eleven years later, I'm still sometimes out-foxed by the shape-shifting cleverness of my inner critic. But I am more often, and more quickly, able to spot it and see through its ways of holding me back and of pulling me apart.And, more and more, in the space that envelops me when it steps aside, I'm able to feel a quiet and genuine kind of joy.
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I've been arguing here for a while that human beings are deeply affected by what we're around, including by other people. We are far from the separate, solitary, unitary individuals that our contemporary understanding (or at least the understanding of the past 200-300 years) would have us be.This has far-reaching consequences for much of the 'common sense' by which we think about ourselves.In the world of organisations in particular, it's considered good practice by many to give people enduring labels such as 'high performer', 'low performer', 'star' or 'troublemaker'. Whole performance management systems are based upon the premise that this is a reasonable thing to do.What such labelling always leaves out is any understanding that we have any 
Question 2 of 2.What if instead of asking what job you want to do (when you grow up) you ask what problem or difficulty in the world you want to solve?What if we asked this of our children?Perhaps this would be one way of teaching ourselves to look beyond our own wishes to acquire status or advantage or power over others.And maybe this simple question would be one way we could help ourselves to address what the world really needs from us, rather than what we think we're entitled to get from it.--With thanks to P who pointed me towards this question.
Question 1 of 2.I know, you're stuck on a crowded bus, in a boring meeting, in a traffic jam, washing the dishes, doing your expenses, waiting for the cashier.I know, from here, life seems pretty boring, mundane, lifeless even. I know, it seems like what matters is happening somewhere, to other people right now.I know how often I am caught in seeing life that way.But perhaps that's mostly because we imagine, or at least feel like, we're going to live forever.But if you were dead, if you were no longer around, if you were offered just one minute more of life, and it had to be this moment in the queue, in the bus, in the meeting, with the dishes, would you take it?I'm sure I would.Then you might see this humdrum moment for the absolute wonder that it is - filled with enormous possibilities for curiosity, discovery, and purposeful action. Or for just looking in amazement. And if your answer was yes, is there any chance you might start seeing things this way, at least occasionally, in the life you already have?
What is 'the news' anyway?Is 'the news' just that account of events in the world that we see on TV or read on the web?What about the way a young woman tucked her children into bed last night with such grace and kindness? The volunteers from churches, synagogues and mosques who this week provided warmth, food and overnight shelter to people otherwise sleeping on London's streets? The reconciliation between brother and sister, long separated and estranged, with hugs and tears? The words of guidance and wisdom shared between teacher and student that bring a new possibility into view? The volunteers who planted life-giving trees on a dry hillside providing shelter not for themselves but for the generations who will come after them? The music composed, books written, scientific discoveries made, art created? The acts of great compassion, kindness, and dignity that happen in ordinary lives, day by day.When we think of 'the world' as if it's the same as the highly selective narrative of events we see on 'the news' it's no wonder our fear and isolation are what we mostly get to feel. And no wonder that we feel our hearts hardening, our despair growing, and our deepening sense that nothing can be done.But while the many shocking, frightening, disturbing events that are in the news do happen, and require our response, what's 'new' in the world each day is not just that. It is barely that.And remembering this might help us respond with our own dignity, kindness, compassion and love right when the world most seems to need it from us.
What’s your understanding of the cause 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.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.The philosopher Martin 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.
We're born with such power and promise and creativity folded deep within us.Such beauty.But we so quickly forget.Perhaps among the most important activities of any human life is to look into the darkness so we can recover that which has been lost to us.And bring it back, again, into the light.
Here's a way to categorise the things we work with (from 
Tucked in a corner between two major roads in North London, a path framed by trees drops steeply out of view and joins the London Loop, 150 miles of walks through parks, woods and fields in a ring around the city. Only a short distance from where I have lived for eighteen years, today is the first time I find myself walking the route, and soon I'm in a damp, green, frosty world only feet from the concrete paving and thundering traffic above.It's quieter here, a little misty, and what startles me most is how the physical geography of the city is brought into view. Alongside the path runs the Dollis Brook, these days hemmed in by concrete and brick banks. It's clear to me from here that it is the brook that has opened this valley in the soft London clay.Seeing that it is a valley at all is a surprise. Under the covering of tarmac and housing the swells and hollows of the landscape are disguised, appearing as part of the purposeful human development of the area. But here in the quiet by the brook I can see how the forces of the natural world, over timescales much longer than each of our lives, have shaped the place in which I live. I live on the slopes of a small river valley. This is a new place from which to look at where I dwell, a different take altogether from seeing myself as living on this-or-that street in a suburb in the north of a busy metropolis.After about a mile, the brook passes under the brick arches of a bridge, six lanes of cars rumbling above. I take a winding path up the valley side, emerging on the pavement of the North Circular Road, built in the 1920s to connect industrial communities while bypassing central London. I have driven this road thousands of times and have never noticed what I can see now in a narrow band on both sides of the road - that the wooded valley continues, flanked by suburban houses, their chimneys poking out from between the trees. It would be possible to walk, drive, and live in this area for years and not see that this is where we are - on the banks of a river that soon joins the River Brent and, a few miles on, becomes part of the broad valley of the Thames which has so profoundly shaped the development of London in the centuries since it first became a city.I'm struck by how pervasively our capacity to construct has hidden the contours and foundations of the landscape upon which we live and walk. And grateful that there are those with enough foresight and courage to preserve the narrow bands of green that thread their way through the city, so that we can turn from the familiar path and encounter it from a different perspective, and with different eyes.And it has me wondering about all the other ways we pave over the contours of human life. How we hide the mysterious, life-giving rivers and valleys of meaning and longing and despair and hope and love under concepts and frameworks, procedures and policies, under the shiny, hard surfaces of professionalism and consumerism. And, too, under the ever-growing plague of busyness that seems to have taken the place of a deep encounter with anything as mysterious, or quiet, or ancient as a river valley threading its way through the city to the sea.