Accepting life

An unchangeable feature of life is that, at every moment, you find yourself inescapably in some situation or other - perhaps one that you did not choose.And however magnificent or terrible it is, you are, conclusively, just here, at this moment in the life that you are living.No manner of denial (and all the suffering that comes with it) can change that your life continues from this moment, this particular configuration, and not from another.And so acceptance of life - as opposed to fighting life - is not 'putting up with things' but responding fully from where you are. Not pretending to yourself or to others that you are somewhere else.Every situation, however glorious, however unwelcome, has its own possibilities. And you have precisely this hand to play in whatever way you can.Many paths lead from this place.Will you go to sleep to yourself, or step in to this, the one and only life you have?

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Stimulus and Response

After writing yesterday's post on work and love, I was introduced to Dan Pink's RSA talk on our mistaken assumptions about what makes good work possible.The subtitle of his talk could be 'Don't think you can manipulate people into making their most genuine contribution'.Paying bonuses for performance, argues Pink, works out only in very particular situations. Promise to reward people more for performing a mindless mechanical task, and often, yes, they'll find the wherewithal to do it better, or faster.But make bonuses the reason to do work that requires care, thoughtfulness, or imagination - especially if that's your primary method of engaging them - and you're most likely to see poorer results.I don't think this should surprise us. We know pretty quickly when we're being manipulated and it often makes us cynical and resentful.The very idea that bonuses would increase performance arises from the still-influential work of the behaviourist psychologists of the last century. They argued that the inner experience of human beings is irrelevant, and that we can decide what to do by looking just at outer stimulus and response patterns.In many organisations we're still caught up in the simplistic understanding of people that the behaviourists inspired. The consequence? The design of management practice based on the reward and punishment responses of animals such as rats.But we're human beings, with rich inner worlds that cannot be ignored just because they're hard to measure. We are brought to life by meaning, belonging, contribution and creativity. We're not machines, nor do we contribute any of our higher human faculties in response to a straightforwardly manipulative stimulus such as a bonus.When we're treated  - or treat ourselves - as if we're something less than the complex, meaning-seeking beings that we are, it should be no surprise that we - and our work - are diminished.Pay people enough to have the issue of money be off the table, argues Pink. And then you need to ask deeper questions.Here's the animation from his talk, with thanks to Geraldine for introducing it to me.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc]

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Love

Love - genuine love for anything - is so often left out of the discourse of organisational life.Apparently it's not serious enough for business.Sometimes we'll allow ourselves passion - a word which is allowed, I think, because it sells us to others with its promise of energy and heat, commitment and making things happen. (We're so tied up with endlessly making things happen that we've forgotten everything else that conspires to make it possible).And we'll allow ourselves cynicism and skepticism, moods which distance us from one another and give us a feeling of superiority (a kind of pseudo-sophistication in which we believe we have greater insight than everyone else around us, who simply can't see what we can see).Frustration and resignation are also welcomed in many organisations, because serious work is apparently meant to be difficult all the time and both of these moods, reminding us of our difficulty, tell us that we must be doing it right.But love - genuine love? Deep, heartfelt love for something or someone that brings out our integrity, moves us, has us speak truth even when it's inconvenient, draws us out of ourselves, can touch people with something beyond manipulation or self-interest? How often do we allow that in ourselves or in others?We treat love with disdain.And we're much the poorer for it.

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The cycle of ennui and distraction

Here's a self-perpetuating cycle that may be familiar to you:

The way out? Through the body.Give up trying to distract and numb yourself. It only lands you deeper in.Instead turn towards the experience. Understand that your anxiety, fear, shame are teaching you about the world. You cannot finish everything. You cannot know everything. This is the way of life, and you cannot change it.There is nothing wrong with you.And so instead turn into life. Step away from the screen, the to-do list. Run. Walk. Dance. Or sit quietly for a while feeling the simple presence of your body, your breathing, your aliveness.And then, only when life has taken hold of you, return to your work and your commitments.They - and what's important - may look very different to you from here.

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What causes what?

Standing at the sink, washing the dishes, an old coaching client comes to mind. I don't know why. We used to sit talking in his office or in the front room of his home, and as I remember the contours of that experience I'm quickly off into other worlds, memories, and then ideas about what needs doing now.How strange and unruly thought is.Later, putting away some items in a kitchen cupboard, I am inexplicably thinking of characters from a TV series that I love (which does not, as far as I can remember, ever feature a kitchen).And writing this I find myself thinking of my grandfather.When I was small he used to send me to the shop next door with a few pennies and instructions to buy myself whatever I wanted. I'm touched by gratitude and sadness, and find myself thinking about my relationships with my own children.And each time thoughts arise, new actions that need taking occur to me. The course of my day - what I actually attend to - shifting in subtle and unpredictable ways.How little we know ourselves, the quiet hiddenness from which our actions arise, what's going to happen next. And given how little we can know of ourselves, how little we really know of others.And how inevitably incomplete our efforts, in the affairs of our organisations, to understand what's causing what, or be fully in control.

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What will you do...

... with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

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Life's incompleteness

There are millions of books that you'll never read.Millions of films you'll never see.Places you'll never go to.People you'll never meet.Experiences you'll never have.Do you chase after what's unattainable with resentment and frustration, raging against life's limits? Or open in gratitude at life's richness?I am starting to discover George Steiner's work for the first time. Here he is with a beautiful account of his move from fear to wonder on this very question, involving a fascinating story of the discovery and reburial of thousands of terracotta Chinese warriors.[youtube=http://youtu.be/Q1z3sMGYjNk]

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Care and Careful

Careful and care are quite different from one another, but we often confuse them.Careful:

holding backwaiting until conditions are just rightbeing nice rather than genuinesaying what's expected, what's socially acceptableprotecting yourself - for the benefit of whom exactly?

Care:

coming in closeacting when it's neededbeing kind, which sometimes requires sharpnesssaying what will actually help, teach, free people updropping your defences so you can be of assistance

Careful keeps difficulty going when it feels too risky to act. Care does what it can to reduce it.Careful twists the truth for its own ends. Care speaks it.Careful is full of caution.And care is full of contact.

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Speech Acts 8: Between asking and responding

I have written often here about the difficulties we get into by uncritically saying 'yes' to requests so often. Resentment, frustration and overwhelm are often the result.Some of our difficulty comes not so much from the answer we give, but from overlooking a critical step, which happens between the request being made and the answer being given. We forget to talk with the requester about what they meant.Perhaps we get embarrassed. We're supposed to understand what's being asked of us, of course. Or perhaps we have forgotten that talking and listening productively is a much a form of action as 'taking action'.And so we rush in headlong, only to find that the proposal that was apparently urgent can wait a while. Or that when she said "I need to know all the figures" she meant just the three most important ones. Or that the budget constraints were much tighter than we expected. Or that the other project we're having to put aside is more important. Or that someone else was already on it.Sometimes we even find that the person asking didn't understand all the aspects of the request themselves, or the knock-on effect of our 'yes'.In my work in organisations I'm surprised repeatedly by how common it is to leave out this basic step - a dialogue between requester and requested that continues until both are satisfied that what is being asked has been fully understood. Often such a dialogue will result in a different course of action being taken, or discovering that none is needed after all.Unless we stop to talk with one another until a meaningful yes or no is possible, we're condemning ourselves to a cycle of wastefulness that none of us can afford.

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You can read more on 'Speech Acts' - conversations, requests and promises - here.

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What you can't do

Please understand this:If you want to stay in relationship with another, you can't force them to change to suit you.Yes, you can talk. Certainly, you can make requests. And yes, you can tell another person what emotions, what responses their actions stir up in you.But still, you cannot force them to change.Believing that you can is a sure way to resentment, frustration and resignation. For both of you.Instead, can you see the difficulties you are having as an opportunity for your own development, your own unfolding? An opportunity to live in a bigger narrative, one that has space for the chaotic, unpredictable, mysterious beauty and humanity that is each one of you?

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