In the ancient Jewish tradition, people are thought of as having two primary orientations to the world - an inclination towards good (yetzer hatov) and an inclination towards evil (yetzer harah).The inclination towards good draws us out of ourselves towards what is most compassionate and most principled. And the inclination towards evil draws us towards our most self-centred interests, from which we care only for ourselves and not for others or the world.Surely, in this way of thinking, the inclination towards good is itself good and should be cultivated, and the inclination towards evil is bad and should be extinguished? No, say the rabbis, they are both good, and both necessary.How can this be?With only the inclination to good we risk spending all our time basking in the wonder and awe of life. Many possibilities for action are denied to us, because they cannot be known to have positive outcomes. The inclination to good, on its own, is noble but paralysed, unable to decide what to do when uncertain about consequences, when the world in all its complexity and unknowability becomes apparent.And so we need the inclination to evil also. Given free rein, it dooms us to a life of self-centredness, of action purely for our own gain. But without it, say the rabbis, nobody would create anything. We would not build houses, bring children into the world, nor do the difficult and creative work of shaping the world around us. The inclination to evil, with its indignation and rage and cunning and huge creativity is what brings us into purposeful action.Denying either side leads to trouble. It takes both inclinations in a constant dynamic tension to have us act in the most human, and most humane ways.And this is the foundational task facing each of us if we want to act with integrity in the world: we must find a way of knowing ourselves fully so that we leave nothing of ourselves out. We have to stop denying and pushing away the parts of ourselves that we don't understand, or don't like so much. We have to take our fear and confusion as seriously as our hope and our joy. We have to stop pretending to have it all together.Integrity is exactly that - integrating all of it. When we bring our hope and our fear, our nobility and selfishness, our love and our disdain, our serious adulthood and playful childishness, our light and our darkness, each informs and shapes the other in a constant dance of opposites. And this is what brings us into creative and purposeful and appropriate action in the complexity of the world.
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You’re never just in life, this situation, this moment. You’re also in a particular relationship with it.So often this is transparent, like the air you’re breathing as you read this. But it's illuminating to understand that the world you're experiencing isn't ever simply 'the' world.Perhaps your relationship is to welcome whatever is happening. Perhaps you’re pushing it away, or denying it. Perhaps you’re treating what's happening as a huge opportunity. Or perhaps as a curse or problem. Maybe you’re relating to what’s happening with a longing that it be over. Or maybe you’re trying to cling on to it, already mourning the end of it, even before it’s gone.Another way of talking about this phenomenon is mood. Every mood - anger, joy, love, resentment, frustration, cynicism - opens up a particular kind of relationship to what’s taking place.Can you see how your relationship to it all shapes so much of your experience and what’s possible for you at any moment?That each brings forth a distinctive kind of world?That what’s possible from resentment is different from what’s possible from anger or love? That what’s possible from relating to it all as a curse is different to what’s possible from an orientation of welcome?Once you see all of this, you can first become an observer of your relationship to everything. Reflective practices can help here - a regular 
It's clear that we human beings are deeply affected by the environment in which we find ourselves. We are in a constant exchange with what is around us, both shaping it and being shaped by it.And so it's worth remembering, because it's mostly so invisible to us, that we are each the environment for one another.Which means in turn that difficulties that occur for other people and with other people can often be addressed, first, by taking responsibility for what is ours, and how it's affecting those around us.
It’s common practice in many organisations for people to demand, with some force, a ‘take away’ from every learning experience, course, workshop or coaching session.Perhaps it seems obvious, at least to start with, that this should be the case. After all aren’t we busy, productive, results-oriented people? Why would we do anything unless it obviously moves us forward, to the next step, the next project, the next success?By insisting on this we’ve confused learning with other, more familiar, activities. And we’ve profoundly misunderstood the nature of any learning that’s really worth our while.Firstly, the confusion. Learning is not like going to a meeting, finishing a project plan, coming to an agreement, or delivering a product. When we insist that learning be like every other activity in our working culture we’re not really engaging in learning at all. We’re confusing learning with deciding, or getting things done, both of which are worthwhile activities in themselves, but don’t change us much.Secondly, we’ve misunderstood or wilfully redefined what learning can be. We’ve reduced it to knowing a fact, understanding a step-by-step process, or knowing about a clever technique. We want to learn with the minimum of our own involvement, in a trouble-free, predictable, and narrow way. We want it recognisable in form and structure. We do not wish to be too troubled. And all of this is insufficient for learning that really does something.Unless we want our learning to keep us within our habitual, predictable boundaries (and I am arguing that this is not learning at all) we have to give up our demands that it be familiar. We have to allow it to confuse us as well as inspire us, to dissolve our existing categories and rigidity, and to confound our everyday understanding so it can show us something new. We have to allow it to render us unskilful for a while so that we can embody new skills that in turn open new worlds of possibility. And we have to allow ourselves to feel many things - elation, excitement, frustration, disappointment, wonder, surprise, boredom, joy - so that we can be affected by the experience and not just observe it in a detached way.Good learning undoes us.And for that reason the ‘take aways’ we demanded at the start may be quite different from what actually happens. And what lives on in us as a result may not appear at the moment we walk out of the room, but as the product, over time, of living with, practicing and inquiring into what we’ve only just begun to see.By demanding we know what learning will do before we begin, we’re hardly learning at all.
In the Jewish tradition, any story is an invitation to interpretation, to imagination, to invention. You read a story not so much for what's true in it, as for what can be imagined into the spaces. So a straightforward story can become the launching point for wildly differing interpretations, all of which are held alongside one another even if they're paradoxical, mysterious or downright contradictory.It's a tradition known as midrash and it embodies a commitment to see things from many angles, to have many different kinds of explanations for what might initially look obvious and simple. In midrash there's no such thing as a story with a monopoly on the truth.Often, it's helpful to do midrash with your own life, with your work, with your relationships.You probably already have habitual ways of explaining who you are, who others are, what's happening, and what's possible. Perhaps you currently have only one telling available to you, one that's so familiar, so trusted, you can't even tell that it's there.Making midrash from your own life involves starting to tell a different story from the one you're currently telling. Maybe you're not the righteous, wounded hero after all. Perhaps they're not out to get you, but are trying to help. Maybe you're not as in control of your life as you think - or perhaps you're much more in control already than you knew. Maybe it is possible for you to be someone who asks for what you want. Perhaps there's a contribution you're making that you can't see because of your self-critical stories. Maybe life has an invitation for you that's not going to come from trying harder and harder until you work yourself into the ground.These are just a few of the stories you might have about yourself and life, and a few of the alternatives you could start to imagine. You could also ask others how they'd tell the story of your situation - great midrash can begin simply from here.Even if you have only one way of explaining your life, it's already midrash, already just one interpretation of many that are possible.So much opens, and so much suffering can be avoided, when you stop believing your own stories as the only truth.
How easy it is to be up to something while simultaneously denying it.I have sophisticated strategies for trying to be in control while looking like I'm being inclusive, for trying to get people to love me while looking as if I'm just trying to help, and for being stubbornly attached to my own view while looking as if I'm asking what other people think.All of these allow me to hold on to a particular kind of self-image (kind, accommodating, self-effacing) while simultaneously getting my own way. And they involve some sophisticated kinds of denial - spinning stories that blind me to my real intentions.When I relate to other people in this way, things can get pretty complicated.Sometimes, though - sometimes - I am able to see what I'm doing while I'm doing it. The intentions which I was subject to become object, moving from the background to the foreground, and then I have a chance to intervene and to take responsibility for what I'm doing.I am less had by my strategies. I become someone who has them.This move, making what we are subject to become object to us, is at the heart of all profound developmental transitions. Every time something moves into view (a part of us, or a way we're thinking, or a way we're constructing the world, or a way we're being shaped by our interactions with others) it affords us more freedom to act, a more inclusive view of ourselves and others, and a greater possibility to take care of whatever and whoever it is that we care about.And this move requires that we get onto our own con-tricks - all the ways we'll convince ourselves of our rightness and deny our part in what's happening.Often, it seems, what I'm hiding from myself about my intentions is pretty much the worse-kept secret of all, known to everybody else but me. And that is why, for each of us to develop, it's so important to be surrounded by people who extend love our way, who see us for our goodness, and who extend the kindness and respect required to tell us the truth (with care for timing, and in ways we can hear and understand), rather than keeping what they see to themselves.
Convergent problems are the kind for which diligent, patient and repeated efforts produce answers we can trust. Many problems in mathematics, for example are convergent, as are the vast majority of engineering problems. Such problems are convergent because a suitable methodology and sufficient effort allow us to converge on a single, practical, true answer to the question at hand.Convergent problems lend themselves to solution by technique and process. And once we know what to do with a convergent problem, we can repeat the technique and expect to find a reliable answer, every time.Divergent problems are those for which, with diligent, patient and repeated efforts, we could expect to find many different answers. For example, in sentencing someone who has committed a crime, is justice or mercy more appropriate? Or, in the midst of many competing financial pressures, should we centralise our operation, seizing control of all the details, or should we decentralise, allowing the people with the most local expertise the opportunity to bring their own insights to bear? Is discipline or love more important in learning to do something well? Should we dedicate ourselves to conserving tradition, or supporting change? And in organising a society, is freedom to do what we each want most important, or responsibility to the wellbeing of others?Divergent problems are divergent precisely because it is possible to hold so many different perspectives. The more we inquire - if we are prepared to do so with sincerity and rigour - the more possible responses we discover. And such problems are inherently the problems of living systems in general, and human circumstances in particular - circumstances in which our consciousness, values, commitments, cares and many interpretations enter the fray.Divergent problems do not lend themselves to easy answers, to platitudes, or technique. Instead, divergent problems require us to make a transcendent move, in which we step out of the easy polarities of right or wrong, and good or bad. Such a move, which is clearly a developmental move in the sense that I have described previously, calls to the fore our capacity to live in the middle of polarities and complexity, uncertainty and fluidity. In the case of justice and mercy, this move might well be called wisdom. We run into enormous difficulty whenever we treat divergent problems as if they were convergent - as if there were some reliable process, however complex and sophisticated, by which to arrive at a correct answer. When we do this, we treat human situations as if they were mathematical or machine-like. And we strip ourselves of the possibility of cultivating discernment and genuine wisdom, reducing ourselves to rule-followers and automatons.It can never be justice alone - for strict justice is harsh, and unforgiving, and has no concern for the particulars of a human life. And it can never be mercy alone - for mercy's kindness without justice can be cruel and damaging to many in its wish to take care of the few. And it is never sufficient to say 'well, it must be mercy and justice' as if there were some simple, easy to understand combination or position between the two.And all of this is why paying attention to development 
