If your assessment is that another person is untrustworthy, you're giving yourself little choice than to be suspicious, watchful, checking always for many ways they are out to get you.And when they encounter your suspicious watchfulness, and feel your uncertainty around them, they may well wonder whether you can be trusted. They become cautious, furtive, secretive around you, all of which produces exactly the kind of behaviour that seems to confirm your initial assessment.Before you know it, a cycle of mistrust is created and sustained that may have had little foundation in either of you before it began.In this way the assessments you make of others matter. Because when they're untrue - when they are your ungrounded, unchecked suppositions - they have an uncanny way of coming into being simply because you're making them.
Meaning Belonging Contribution
Three basic human needs, none of which can be met directly by accumulating more stuff, more status, or more prestige:
- Meaning
- Belonging
- Contribution
If you’re yearning for something, it might help you to consider which of these is your particular wish – that which would bring you most alive.And perhaps it would be worth considering whether what you’ve dedicated so much effort to chasing instead – money, more possessions, getting ahead of others – can ever hope on its own to address what you’re really longing for.
Zombies
A recent client counted up the number of hours he was spending in meetings per week. The total? Almost 25, many of which are meetings-of-obligation, in which there is little or nothing for him to contribute.How many of the rest of us are eating up so much of our precious time and commitment in this way?We're turning ourselves into meeting zombies: dulled and silent, resentful and over-busy, saying yes to hours of commitment to which we bring nothing, and from which we expect nothing.So, some simple rules to apply the when the next meeting invitation comes in (or, worse, when someone else simply books a meeting in your diary):
- If you ask me to join a meeting where I'm expected to be an observer, I'll say no.
- I'll automatically decline any meeting invitations where you have not made clear, in ways that I can act upon, why you want me there and what you think I can bring.
- If it's still not clear to me, I'll expect that we'll talk about it before I decide to come (and, no, we will not schedule a meeting to talk about the meeting).
- I'll only come to a meeting when I know that I can contribute.
- When I'm there, I promise to do exactly that.
- And if I'm not there, you can tell me what was learned or decided later.
What freedom - and productivity - could be generated if we applied these rules to our own meeting attendance, and to everyone else who joins us?
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On waking
You wake.The sky is dark outside, just the faintest glow of dawn lights the edges and crests of the rooftops.You have been returned to yourself, as you are each morning.What greater faithfulness and what greater love could life show you than this, the everyday wonder of returning? Or the miracle by which you find yourself aware, feeling, inhabiting your own body once again?
Go to bed
The most powerful influence on our effectiveness in waking life is sleep.
But it is also what we're most willing to give up first in our endless quest to be more productive.We have no idea how impaired we have become through our commitment to keep going - our compromised functioning blurring and distorting our very memory of what it is like to be awake.Our lack of sleep leaves us more vulnerable to illness and to accident. It mutes our creativity. It negatively influences our moods, increasing our irritability and reactivity towards others.And yet we carry on as if we are inexhaustible, wearing our sleeplessness as a badge of honour or bravery or commitment.We've elevated productivity above taking care of ourselves, producing exactly the opposite of our intentions. We lie to ourselves about what we're up to.We've forgotten - or denied - that we have bodies with limits.And as we do all this we fall asleep to our own aliveness.When are we going to wake up to this madness and go to bed?
Talking
You're all so busy that there's no time for a real conversation. Not a moment for the simple act of explaining something, or asking for what you need, or agreeing with someone else what needs to be done and not done.
And because there's no time to talk you're inundating each other with emails and voice messages. Nobody will pick up, because nobody has time. Everyone is too busy processing what's in their inbox.And so you're duplicating effort, doing what's not needed, having to work the same things out again and again - things that somebody already knows how to do.And because you're wasting so much of your effort, you're busier than ever and convinced there's no time for a real conversation.And this is where the error lies. Because this rolling difficulty is solved only one way.By talking.
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Letting go
Among the most profound works of our adult lives is learning to let go of everything we care about.
Learning to let go of people we love.Learning to let go of our projects, our possessions.Learning to let go of experiences.Learning to let go of emotions we're holding, and that are holding us.Why learn to do this?Because, in the end, we will be forced to give up all of them.And because in our capacity to let go before we have to - to give up our hidden, desperate holding on - lies the freedom to bring ourselves to everything without trying to own, control, dominate or force into our own image.In letting go in this way, we let go of our own neediness. And it's only in this freedom that we can fully encounter the aliveness of that which was never ours to hold in the first place.
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The opposite of polite
Being polite at work always involves suppressing something.Politeness is doing what's considered reasonable and appropriate rather than talking about what's true.Politeness calls on us to say what will be acceptable rather than what will help.Politeness has us be liked (although in a shallow way) rather than be trusted.When politeness dominates we force our concerns underground, hiding them from the light, and from each another. There in the dark where they cannot be acted upon directly our difficulties fester, becoming resignation and resentment. Many a polite organisational culture - in which people are outwardly friendly - masks a deep vein of frustration and despair that can find no useful expression.The opposite of politeness is not cruelty, or unkindness, or wilful injury to others - unless in your pursuit of truth you also abandon your capacity for compassion.No, the opposite of politeness is - perhaps surprisingly - respect. Respect for oneself, respect for others, respect for action that matters, and respect for the important work that you are here to do.
On the background
Behind any life, and any society, are numerous background narratives that give us a sense of who we are, who other people are, and what’s possible for us. They tell us how we can live, what’s of value, and how to relate to one another. And they tell us what’s important to pay attention to, and what’s marginal.Sometimes the background narratives are visible and explicit in a family or community, such as the way in which biblical narratives give a sense of belonging and orientation to people who are part of some religious communities. But most often – even when there are visible and explicit narratives available – the narratives we actually live by are invisible, and we see them clearly only as an outsider entering a society for the first time, or when the narrative runs into trouble and starts producing unintended consequences.For the last century or so in the West, we’ve lived in a background narrative that’s directed our attention most strongly towards what’s measurable, particularly what’s financially measurable, and has discounted almost everything else. The bottom line, financial return on investment, this quarter’s results – all have been taken for what’s ‘real’.And at the same time, we’ve considered what’s not measurable largely ‘unreal’ – the quality of our inner lives, our relationships with others, supportive and close-knit communities, the care we give and receive, our capacity to nurture and appreciate beauty. We can’t pay much attention to these, we say, because in the ‘real world’ there are tough business decisions to make. There are profits to be made.I’m not arguing that profit is somehow unreal, while beauty and care are real. That would be an equally narrow way of looking at the world. But it’s becoming clearer and clearer how our narrowness – our failure to appreciate and include all dimensions of human life in our businesses, institutions, and in our public discourse – is wreaking havoc in our present and seriously limiting our capacity to respond to the complexity of the future we’re creating. The shocking rise of inequality in even the richest of the worlds societies, the shaking of our financial systems, our seeming inability to respond creatively to climate change – all ought to have ourselves asking whether what we take to be unquestionably true about how to live is, really, deeply questionable.We urgently need to expand our horizons – to start to take seriously that which we’ve marginalised in the relentless colonisation of all aspects of human life by the narrative of economics.
Waste
It's easy to think of waste in material terms - waste of money, or waste of resources.But our busyness - which keeps us feeling involved and engaged even when we're not doing what matters to us - covers up many other kinds of waste, equally significant.Here are five that are addressable by shifting your requests and your responses to requests:
- Not asking: The waste that comes from expecting that other people will know what you want and all the waiting, resentment, and frustration that comes when it turns out that they don't.
- Imagining you've been asked, when you haven't: The endless waste of projects and tasks duplicated and not needed, in your eagerness to be seen to deliver and be productive.
- Not checking that what you asked is possible: Skipping the necessary to-and-fro of conversation which checks that the person that you asked understood and had the time, capacity and skilfulness to respond. Without all of these, your requests are, often, as good as nothing.
- Not saying no: moving into action without checking your own capacity. This one leads to the endless waste of time and commitment that comes from being overstretched, or being unable to fulfil the promises you've made.
- Not paying attention to your own changing circumstance: Saying, and meaning, a genuine yes to a request but later finding yourself unable to deliver, and pretending nothing changed... leading to both damaged trust and delays.
If you worked on becoming more skilful at these five, you'd make huge strides in your capacity to do what matters without so readily wasting your own, and others', time, resources, commitment and good will.
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