Our habits (which are our way of being automatic) feel very familiar to us - in our bodies, in our emotions.Said another way, when we act habitually is also when we most often feel like ourselves.Perhaps you know yourself as the irritable one, or the one who makes a joke out of things, as always just a little bit late, or as someone who can charm others. Maybe you know yourself as assertive and pushy, someone who'll always get angry, or as the one who makes sure everyone is taken care of at the expense of what's good for you. Each of them, whether helpful or not, is a habitual way of being that you keep going perhaps because it's the way you're able to feel like you.So it should be no surprise your development - making the move away from habit towards responsiveness - means loosening your grip on what's familiar and feeling some measure of confusion, disorientation, and anxiety.And that this is what development always entails - allowing ourselves to feel unsure, a little shaky, to not know ourselves - so that we can do what's called for, not just what feels familiar.
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When you find yourself filled with judgements about other people, don’t be so sure that what you’re experiencing is really anything much to do with them.It may well be a simple projection of the harsh judgments of your own inner critic.The critic covers its tracks like that. Wily enough to disguise itself in many ways, it would love to have you believe that everyone else is out to get you or disappoint you. And it would rather you blame what’s outside you than turn your attention inwards, where you might discover its role in keeping your world so small and contained.For this reason, the first place to look when you’re judgemental of others is towards yourself. You might just find it’s there that your difficulty with them can be most skilfully resolved.Photo Credit: 
What if for just one day... you speak and listen, with singular attention, to the people closest to you.... you reflect deeply on your life - what you're aiming towards, what has you forget it, what brings you back to yourself.... you pay attention to the finitude of your life - that it will, one day and who knows when, end.... you begin a new practice that's been important to you - learning something for the first time, writing, creating something that matters.... you ask yourself the big questions you've been avoiding for so long.... you put aside all your daily distractions and see what it's like to fully inhabit your life.What if, instead of living an endless stream of days with the same routine you took one day to do one of these?What if it led to another, and in time, another?What would it change, do you think, in your relationships, in your work, and in choices you make?
For Aristotle, the proper way to approach any practice or activity is to do so with its right end in mind. Every practice has its proper aims and goals, a telos or end-point towards which it is oriented.So the telos for doctoring is to bring about the health of patients, and to relieve suffering.The telos for teaching is the education of students, both in their capacity to know and their capacity to act wisely upon what they know.The telos for parenting is the development of adults who can live fully in their lives, contribute and participate in wider society.The telos for lawyering is the pursuit of justice.Acting skilfully in the midst of any practice requires that we discover or locate for ourselves the right telos and point our activities in that direction.All too often we stunt our own capacity to excel by pointing our practice towards a telos which is out of place, or too small, or much too self-centred. We point our businesses towards hitting this quarter’s targets rather than making an enduring contribution; we point our parenting towards behaviour that’s convenient for us rather than our children’s development; we teach in order to get the grades rather than helping others become learners; we lead others in a way that has them follow rules and procedures rather than taking responsibility. And we do this because because we’re afraid, or trying to look good, or because we’ve forgotten why we entered into a path in the first place.All of this is both a matter of discernment (what’s called for here?) and remembering (because we forget ourselves and what we’re aimed at so quickly and so easily).When we know deeply the particular end towards which we are aiming, we open up the possibility of acting with wisdom and discernment in the many complex, ambiguous situations we are bound to face. And our dilemmas and difficulties become the opportunity to ask ‘how could I act in a way that points towards the right end for this practice?’ - a clarifying question that is often difficult to answer well but gives us a path, each time, through our confusion and uncertainty, and towards the sustainable excellence for which we long.This, in the end, is the single most importance difference between being practical (just getting things done) and exercising practical wisdom (getting things done in the right way).
We think that we're grown up just because we've hit adulthood, or because we've taken on a position of leadership.But so many of us are still looking for parents who can save us from life's difficulty, or who can tell us we're doing ok.As long as we're looking for parents, we expect the leaders of our organisations to know what to do, to tell us what's needed, and to rescue us. We hold back from speaking truth, because we're scared they'll judge us or reject us. When we don't see change coming we blame them for sticking to their rigid parental ways. And, when things don't turn out the way we want them, we blame them for failing us, instead of stepping up and taking action ourselves. We give up our capacity for independent action so we can keep ourselves in a dependent, child-like role.All of this is happening even at the most senior levels of multi-national organisations, because - it turns out - being senior and being grown up are not the same thing. It explains much about why change can be so difficult, and why so many of us hold back from solving the problems we see around us.And it makes the ongoing task of adult development so critical for each of us and our organisations. Because it's the challenging work of growing up so that we can genuinely be adults in the world - without relying on a saviour - that allows us to take collective responsibility first for our institutions, and for our society as a whole.
Many times
When we take the automatic path (
Automatic:
Two paths available to all of us, that are an inherent part of being human.(1) The automatic path