Of sand and stars and time

I’m sitting on the beach at Mar de Jade on the Pacific coast of Mexico.

The sun is setting, fire-red, turquoise, slate. The stones and sand, still warm. About twenty feet from where I’m sitting I can see the occasional silhouettes of fish leaping from the water. And further, westwards, a group of pelicans are circling, sharp against the twilight. Each, as if taking turns, chooses a moment to furl its wings and dive into the waves before climbing, fish-laden, to join the others. I sit for nearly an hour, as the sky darkens. The pelicans wheel to the south. The tall lights of distant boats come into view.

This moment, with its tender joyful sadness, sings to me of sand and stars, of friends who are here with me, and of my family far away and back home on another side of the world.

I remember the feeling of such places from my childhood - the easy feel of being swept up into an endless and timeless landscape, wondrous and vast. And today, in my forty-fifth year, the same wonder tugs at me.

But from this part of life it’s different from before. I can already feel the inevitability of losing all of this, one day and who knows when, for another kind of timelessness.

Photo by Justin Wise

Aliens, part 2

Next time you're in the midst of a fight, you could imagine the alien of yesterday coming to visit.The alien takes no sides, and knows no history. All it can do is look at the situation from the outside, and say what it sees about your part in it all.You might like to consider what the alien would have to say to you.It could be quite different from the way you see things.Especially so when you're sure that the other person is wrong, and that you are right.

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The Alien Game

Here’s an illuminating game you can play.

Imagine that an alien comes to watch you at work (or with your family) for a day. The alien has perfect command of your language but no understanding of your culture. Your practices, tools, systems and relationships are all new and strange to it.

The alien’s part in the game is to be deeply interested in each thing that you do, the way that you speak with people, the meetings you go to and the processes you follow. It asks you, at every turn

“What is it that you’re doing? And why are you doing it?”

Your only role in the game is to answer truthfully each time. But you’re not allowed to say “It’s just what we do”, or make up a plausible, but false reason. “I genuinely don’t know”, “It’s what my colleagues taught me (but I don’t know why)”, “It’s what we did in my family when I was growing up”, “it distracts me from what I’m scared of”, “it keeps me looking good” are all allowed, if true. You have to have to account, as completely as you can, for each part of your day.

The last part of the game is the most important.

Given what you've said, you get to decide whether to continue on as you are.

Or whether something - perhaps many things - have to change.

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Becoming human

Four ways of dealing with the anxious feeling that you're not completely in control of your organisation:

give someone a poor appraisal (blame someone else instead of facing that there are limits to own your power)

invent some targets for people to hit (if you can think of something measurable you might be able to avoid talking about all the uncertain, difficult to understand aspects of your work)

restructure (much easier than actually talking deeply to people about what's going on, from which who knows what trouble might happen?)

or go the other way and try to do it all yourself (keeps your heroic image going and allows you to show people how much you suffer for your role)

Or perhaps you could give up 'looking good' - which gives rise to all of the above - as the primary task of leadership.Owning up to your uncertainty and your anxiety, and to your limitations, allows you at last to become a human being to those around you, so that they in turn can be human themselves.

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Categories of experience

How do you label your experiences? Can you even see that you're labelling them at all?How do you decide what kind of experiences you label as welcome and unwelcome, acceptable and to-be-avoided-at-all-costs?And which labels do you give to joy, calm, fear, surprise, confusion, anxiety, delight, guilt, shame, love, uncertainty?Most importantly, can you see that the particular categories you have become used to are only one possibility? That your categories are not fixed truths, but are something you've been taught or have taught yourself over time, and solidified through years of practice?If you were prepared to loosen your certainty about all of this, you might find that the experiences you're most dedicated to avoiding hold hidden treasures and possibilities. Which, as long as you're avoiding them, will never be revealed.

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Your part in your mood

Opening the door to gratitude is not easy.But when you find out how improbable it is that this (whatever this is) is happening - that anything is happening at all - it can liberate this moment, and the next, and the next, into a new-found amazement. And wonder and amazement, even at the mundane everydayness of life, are the ground from which gratitude arises.Gratitude, resentment, cynicism, resignation - all involve no small measure of choice on your part.Which are you in the midst of choosing today?

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Wellspring

Yes, I know, you're really busy.But would you take some time to sit still for a while? I mean really still. Twenty minutes of not doing anything.Sit upright, alert, awake to yourself and your life for a while, and see what you find.Don't go to sleep (though you might quickly find once you've been sitting for a few moments quite how tired you actually are).Quite soon you might discover how difficult you find it to be with yourself (could this be why you're quite so busy as you are?). And how much is going on even when you're doing nothing.Thoughts crowding in. Ideas. Plans. Judgements. More plans. More judgement. Your inner critic chomping away. Feelings - irritation, anxiety, fear. Perhaps flashes of joy. Maybe love. Maybe gratitude. But, for many of us, mostly anxiety and irritation of one sort or another.But if you do sit still for a while, and if you do it regularly, you might start to catch glimpses of something that's behind your familiar whirling thoughts and feelings, behind all the stuff that you habitually take to be you.Maybe the first thing you'll encounter is a more expansive you than you ordinarily know. A you that can observe all of the activity, judging and fearfulness, and know itself to be bigger than all of that. A you that doesn't need to be needed. A you that isn't so invested in running away into busyness. A you that's able to experience whatever there is to be experienced.And then, given enough careful attention, and with much waiting and stillness, you might discover something even beyond that. A background aliveness from which all of the you that you experience arises. An aliveness that's deeply engaged in everything - for it is life itself - but not caught up in it. An aliveness that's content with simply being alive, amazed at it even. An aliveness that finds joy in the simplicity and sheer unlikeliness of being here - in breathing, in the beating of your heart, in your capacity to see, hear, love, hate, grieve, act, sleep, rest, eat, move, speak, listen. An aliveness that is not trying to get anywhere at all but which is fiercely, actively committed to life itself.We forget this part of ourselves because finding it also requires us to find so much of ourselves that we can't tolerate. But we would do well to remember it once in a while, because it's a source of deep love, deep commitment, and vibrant, generous, living possibility.And to be sure, we could all do with some of that in our frantic, over-stretched lives.

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The route of dignity or defensiveness

Many of us were initiated into fear from an early age, even if we grew up in the most loving of families. We came to know it intimately as we encountered the prospect of punishment. We feared being ostracised, feeling ashamed. We feared our most cherished possibilities being withdrawn from us by those with power over us. It was central our education system, and it is what gave such powerful impetus to our learning to fit in as we grew.And so as adults we come to rely on fear as a way of having things happen, and we hardly know we are doing it. We build it into our institutions, practices, policies and procedures. We barely see how we are creating circumstances in which we and others cannot speak up, cannot say what's true, cannot bring ourselves forward strongly. We are blind to how our own fear is shaping us.And fear's wish to hide itself - because we are fearful of speaking about our fear - means this can be the case even in those organisations with the noblest aspirations.So maybe it's time to ask some important questions - ones that may provoke some fear themselves if you truly address them, head-on.

Does the way you run your organisation draw out the dignity of others, or their defensiveness?

Their genuine capacity to contribute, or their wish to protect themselves?

Their care, or their fearful self-interest?

Their ability to do the right thing, or their skill in looking good?

Their capacity to tell the truth, or to hide things away?

What does it draw out of you?

And could you learn, even though you are afraid, to be someone who draws out dignity, contribution, care and truth in those around you?

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Fourteen questions about meetings

 While we’re talking about meetings, are you organising your meetings

So you can look good?So you’ll feel needed?Because you think you should?Because it’s what everyone else does?

Are you paying any attention at all to

Whether they’re effective for achieving what you intend?Whether you actually know what you’re intending?Whether people feel alive, connected, and able to contribute?The shifts in mood, engagement, and authenticity as the meeting unfolds?Whether your meeting actually helps people talk about what’s true and important?Whether you and everyone else are just marking time?

And if you’re invitated to join a meeting do you

Speak to the organisers to determine what they’re intending?Find out what your contribution could be before you say yes?See if there’s a more effective way for you to contribute than just turning up?Ever say ‘no’?

There are a million ways to communicate information, make a decision, come up with a new idea, learn from others, make a discovery. And just because endless meetings are what you do, it doesn’t mean for a moment that they’re the best way to have any of this come about.

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Decisions, emotions and our deepest concerns

We're often taught that emotions get in the way of good decision-making, and that it's our logical, rational selves that are most human.And, of course, it's true that emotions can get in the way of deciding well:

Deciding your future in an outburst of rage…Choosing who to recruit to your team from the midst of your frustration…Making a commitment from fear or panic…Or getting blinded by love, by resentment, by shame.

But your habitual, reactive ways with emotions are not all that are available to you.Emotions can be cultivated, refined, mined for their deep intelligence, if you’re prepared to pay attention to them over time, allowing them to reveal their complexity and depth instead of pushing them away. Behind your hot, of-the-moment reaction, which for some emotions may be very narrow indeed, can be something more rarefied, more significant, and with a deep intelligence all of its own.So before you act, before you decide, you could ask yourself:

What is this emotion drawing my attention to? What is it trying to say? What is it trying to protect? To what in my history is it attached? What care of mine is it expressing? What bigger commitment? What does it want?

and

Is there anything in all of this that seems true? That I want to take into account?

Reacting to your emotions in an unsophisticated way can be shortsighted, yes. But leaving emotions out of your decision-making means leaving out what matters most intensely to you.Because emotions are always in one way or another intelligently associated with our deepest cares, and our deepest concerns.

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