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Immersing Ourselves Within the New World

Going beyond resumes, beyond jobs, and beyond bosses.

Back at the turn of the millennium in 2000, my life was having a turning point itself. I was working at a job that was definitely the peak experience of my conventional life so far, I was a Senior Web Developer for a local web firm whose clients included notable video game publishers like Sierra Studios, Activision, and Konami. I was effectively at the top of my world, a world which would come crashing down a year later, as the company I worked for imploded along with many others during the Dot.com Bomb period.

Fast forward to today and this experience, this ending, was a catalyst in waking me up to what was wrong with the way work worked. Yet almost two decades have past in which I’ve read books from The Cluetrain Manifesto to Reinventing Organizations and it feels like not much has changed locally where I live. In Vancouver, while there are probably more “socially aware and conscious” companies, they pretty much work internally like any other conventional company out there in the mainstream work world. In effect, the greatest social change and innovation needed today, the way companies work and operate internally, hasn’t changed at all.

Don’t get me wrong. I realize that transforming a company, just as much as transforming individuals, is a radically difficult thing to do. But here’s the thing that perplexes me. Why aren’t newer companies, newer startups, striving to let go of the past and step into the future, working in a new way from the very start of their inception, as it’s much easier to do with a new company. I mean Vancouver has hosted both the TED Talks and the BIL Conferences with tremendous success in the past. Lately though, this exuberant energy around changing the way work works feels like it has fizzled out. Again changing the world, even just changing your world, is a radically complex thing to do. 

Immersion

I’ve been pondering this for a while, wondering why this momentum seems to have disappeared and a single keyword keeps revealing itself to me. Immersion. Or lack there of. Simple put, we are not immersing ourselves within the New World we talk about and wish to live within because we are still immersing ourselves within the Old World. Therefore, no matter how much you wish to be within this New World, you will never get there if you don’t let go of and step out of the conventional Old World. What I’m talking about here specifically are the social artifacts that form the cornerstones of our Old World which symbolically represent the governing beliefs that hold it up.

Governing beliefs, which form the basis for other beliefs, are the most difficult to change, because they are tied to personal identity and feelings of self-worth. You can’t change your governing beliefs without changing yourself.

Dave Gray

Why we need to change these cornerstones is because they define our identity. So if we want to transform ourselves and our identity to work in new ways, we need to change these cornerstones. Think of them like the corners of a portal to our New World. Once we create them all and they can align and interact with one another, we can create a stable and sustainable portal to our New World, allowing us to not only step within it but fully stay within it.

The cornerstones of our Old World, our old identity, are evident once spoken. They are resumes, jobs, and bosses. Until these are replaced by new cornerstones, we won’t be able to fully step into this New World and into our new identities, allowing us to communicate and operate in a new way. They key thing to realize though is that in going beyond resumes, beyond jobs, and beyond bosses, our new cornerstones need to not only go beyond them in scope but also include and integrate them within this broader scope.

Growing & Becoming More

The whole emphasis here is that we are not discarding our old identity completely but are instead broadening and redefining it as a whole. In doing so, it gives us the creative capacity to handle greater complexity which is essential for this New World emerging. That said though, the experience still feels earth shattering. The you that you think is you has to die metaphorically, so the you that is truly you can be born (which mirrors Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey). But again by having these new cornerstones, we can create a solid stable footing and identity within this New World, so we can finally let go of the Old World.

Going beyond bosses to me is probably the easiest to articulate right now because it has been covered in so many books like Reinventing Organizations. Within an organizational capacity, leadership gets distributed collectively. So it doesn’t go away but instead transforms into something more. But that said, the greatest challenge here is how individuals deal with this. You have to intrinsically take leadership of your own life and create your own path, rather than extrinsically just fitting into society and waiting to be told what to do.

Going beyond jobs isn’t something covered as much. Many people think the Future of Work is new things within an old context (i.e. new types of jobs). It’s not. It’s old things within a new context. In effect, we need to work in radically different new ways, letting go of social artifacts that now limit us rather than empower us. Luckily books like Reinventing Organizations do touch upon this, loosely explaining how Teal organizations go beyond job titles and job descriptions.

To truly understand our contexts, we need to pull ourselves out of the classroom and immerse ourselves in the context, take action based on growing understanding of the context, and then learn even more as we reflect on the impact that we’ve achieved.

John Hagel

Going beyond resumes really isn’t covered by anyone, as far as my research has found. Yet to me this is a cornerstone that if changed could create a domino effect, helping to change the other ones more easily. That’s because right now, resumes and jobs form a bridge from which conventional work is achieved today, with a boss being the gatekeeper standing in the middle of that bridge. So if we can go beyond resumes, looking at the individual in a much greater, complex, and creative way, we have the opportunity to build a new bridge to this New World, one with much greater potential and possibilities for everyone. 

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Letting Go in Mastering Creativity

Understanding the fractal process of creativity and how it allows us to master it in an ever increasing context, even allowing us to let go of our constructed Self.

I mentioned in my last post a personal “altered state” experience from many years back. Why I decided to fully share this experience now is because I noticed similarities to how this experience was so extremely difficult to replicate for myself (that I was never able to do so again) and how it mirrors the extreme difficulty in achieving aspects of the triple-loop learning process as described by Markus F. Peschl in his paper entitled Triple-Loop Learning as Foundation for Profound Change, Individual Cultivation, and Radical Innovation.

As I mentioned in trying to replicate my experience, my greatest fear was in not being able to return to my sense of self and identity because I had to let go of my sense of self and identity and fall into this space of both emptiness and everything (extreme darkness and light). The following excerpt from the paper is what caught my attention, as it seems to mirror this same very thing on an existential level.

The Fear of Letting Go

Letting go. In order to reach this state of emergence it is – at first – necessary to let go what one has discovered in this process of redirection and exploration of one’s own premises, assumptions, etc. “ […] you have to change from voluntarily turning your attention from the exterior to the interior, to simply accepting and listening. In other words, […] you go from “looking for something” to “letting something come to you,” to “letting something be revealed.” What is difficult here is that you have to get through an empty time, a time of silence, and not grab onto whatever data is immediately available, for that’s already been rendered conscious, and what you’re after is what is still unconscious at the start.” (Depraz, Varela, and Vermersch 2003, p. 31) Of course, this process can cause existential fear in some cases, because one loses the (epistemological) ground on which one is standing and which normally provides a rather stable cognitive framework. This is a well-known state in the constructivist framework (if it is adopted in a reflected manner). Being in a state of receptivity always means being in a relatively passive role which brings about a higher chance of being (epistemologically and existentially) hurt. However, surrendering into this rather receptive and open state does not imply that one is completely passive; rather, the contrary is the case: in a way one finds oneself in an active state of extremely high attention towards what is coming up without trying to project one’s own expectations, plans, knowledge, etc. It is a slightly paradoxical situation: on the one hand one is waiting seemingly passively for what is going to happen and on the other hand this is a highly active state concerning one’s attention and receptiveness. These processes of trying to get empty and at the same time to be attentive towards what is going on “out there” are well known from art and religious traditions as well as from Husserl’s phenomenological approach (e.g., the concept of epoche).

This is the closest description I’ve seen to describing the moment just before I’m ready to try to cross over into this altered-state. Experientially I’m cocooned in this rhythmic experience of deep breathing and visually seeing “waves” of something (or nothingness) drifting across my eyes, even though they are closed. As I said, it is in this in between space where I am neither where I am nor where I want to be. I’m just letting go, letting things happen, and letting things emerge. Again I’m totally passive, letting things emerge but at the same time very awake, attentive, and receptive to what is trying to happen. I believe this may mirror what is also known as “holding space” for others but on a different lower level of being.

But of course, again at the point where this “portal” of feeling emerges, as though I am being pulled through into an altered state that is greater than my Self, that’s where the “existential fear” strikes. The fear that if I let this happen, I will lose my self and identity and not be able to return to my Self. In effect, “I” will be lost forever within this in between space.

The Process of Creativity

One can describe that process as a U-shaped curve that is realized in a series of states: the left branch going down the “U” focuses on issues of observation, perception, sensing, discovery of patterns of thought and cognition, and on how to leave these patterns behind oneself in order to be cognitively and emotionally “prepared” for profound change. At the bottom one finds him-/herself in the state of presencing: it can be characterized as a condition of high receptivity and openness and as a state where radically new knowledge/ change can emerge. The upward branch deals with issues concerning the realization, prototyping, and embodying these changes in the (external or internal) environment.

Going beyond the excitement of seeing words that describe this altered-state experience I had decades ago are seeing words, like the ones above, that also closely mirror what I’ve been trying to articulate as the process of creativity for past five years or more. In effect, the three “branches” of this U-Theory (or as Peter Senge refers to it as “presencing”) are what I refer to as the Connecting, Empowering, and Inspiring stages of the creative process.

The Fractal Universality of the Creative Process

Finally, it has to be mentioned that this way of looking at profound change processes can not only be applied on an individual level (“individual cultivation”), but also in the collective domain of organizations, social systems, etc.

What’s even more remarkable is seeing the above words which I’ve reiterated time and again that the process of creativity is mirrored universally at both the individual and collective level. In effect, it is a fractal process. That’s why it’s not so much a linear process as it is a cyclic and spiral one. When one begins to see the “multitude” of themselves individually (and later how this actually leads to the Future of Work with multi-potential people working in a completely new context), one begins to understand this.

Learning to Master Creativity in New Ways & Contexts

If these methods were combined with approaches from other fields (such as phenomenology), a highly sophisticated and powerful paradigm for radical/profound change could emerge. This paradigm would not only have a deep impact on the process of how profound change can be brought about, but could also trigger a new understanding of science that is compatible with the constructivist approach and that has a broader perspective on knowledge, its dynamics, and its permanent renewal and innovation.

This closing paragraph really surprised me though because when I read the words “a new understanding of science”, I immediately thought of Dave Gray using the scientific method for his Lab of the Possible. And when I thought of that, I immediately realized I was seeing a bigger fractal pattern here, one that I was able to step back from and see it rippling outward at a broader and broader scale.

You see I have been realizing more and more that while the process of creativity has this universality to it, at the same time there are these differences with it as one evolves and grows through the stages of human development (ie Cook-Greuter, Frédéric Laloux, etc). In effect, yes everyone is obviously creative but obviously not all in the same way. What I’m referring to here is how a person learns to master creativity. In effect, like everything else (even understanding your passion and purpose in life), it’s not an off or on state but rather a process of learning, articulating, and mastering it over time and, more importantly, applying this creative capacity in new ways and in new contexts.

And if you look at and understand the evolution of moving from single-loop learning to double-loop learning to triple-loop learning, this same fractal pattern of changing creative context can be seen. In working towards mastering single-loop learning, one realizes and learns that the things within our reality are creatively constructed. In working towards mastering double-loop learning, one realizes and learns that the reality around them is creatively constructed. In working towards triple-loop learning, one realizes and learns that their very sense of Self is creatively constructed. So again collectively, one is learning to master creativity in an ever increasingly greater context.

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Tools That Limit My Creative Momentum

I feel like I’m at an important point in my life’s work, a point where it’s momentum needs to shift and change, transforming into something else, so that it can naturally evolve. The key problem I’m encountering with trying to increase this momentum is energy, specifically trying to maintain and increase this energy, thus increasing my momentum in turn.

For example, right now I have a process whereby I collect and gather information by reading it in digital Kindle book form or PDF form, by archiving website articles using PrintFriendly. This process is very fluid and easy, letting me highlight text using different colours to signify importance and also to annotate highlighted text with my own notes to connect them to this larger picture that I’m seeing. The key problem with this approach is that all of my research is hidden to everyone else though (yet it’s very portable, always with me, even offline).

I’ve tried other services to replicate this process publicly but my main concern as always is maintaining the life and portability of my research. I’m tired of my research being stuck or locked within a third party service and if that service goes out of business then I’ve lost all that work (at least from a public perspective, since most services allow you to export an archive of your work for yourself).

I’ve likened this throughout the years to constructing a telephone every time you want to make a phone call.

Of course the flip side of this is using open source software that you host yourself (i.e. WordPress) but with which doesn’t offer the same fluidity and ease of use compared to other third party services. So then I have to jump to trying to figure out ways to emulate this functionality within the software which deviates from my research itself. I’ve likened this throughout the years to constructing a telephone every time you want to make a phone call. It’s ludicrous and frustrating, as from my perspective, web software and platforms, haven’t really evolved that much over the last couple of decades.

All said and done thought, it’s where I have go though if I want to continue forward, building momentum. In effect, I need to stop, modify my own platform to my own needs, so that I can progress forward.

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Embracing Your Shadow Self

One of the key things I’m discovering on my journey is that to transform and integrate ourselves, we have to not only accept that we have a shadow self within ourselves but to openly embrace it. The reason being is that if we ignore or deny the existence of it, the stronger its hold will be upon us. By recognizing and accepting it though, we are able to step beyond it.

The thing is though, while I’ve read this time and again in the articles I’ve researched, when I encounter other people who are also undergoing this deep journey, there seems to be this fear or aversion of openly recognizing this side of ourselves and discussing how we are striving to overcome it. In effect, there is this whitewashing of the deep struggle within us, striving to maintain a facade of positiveness to avoid discussing this darker aspect of ourselves. It reminds me of people wanting to avoid admitting or talking about depression which only makes its hold on us all the more stronger.

Of course, the opposite is true as well. If we give into our shadow self and our depression, we shift and become a victim of it by accepting it without seeing a way around it. In effect, “This is my reality, I may as well accept my lowly fate.” Obviously this is a trap that our ego wants us to fall into and we must learn to avoid it as well. Thus the trick is to accept it being there, what it’s trying to do to us, but step beyond it at the same time. Nevertheless to do so is a monumental challenge which is why I believe those who have undergone this struggle should share their experiences with it, so as to help others better understand the process of doing so.

Thus the trick is to accept it being there, what it’s trying to do to us, but step beyond it at the same time.

With that in mind, I’d like to point out two great sources who I believe are doing wonderful work in this area.

Brené Brown is without a doubt a seasoned traveller in this field because she, herself, has openly talked about her own struggles within her own journey of acceptance. Encapsulating this as vulnerability, she emphasizes the acceptance and sharing of this side of ourselves so that we can collectively rise above it.

Maria Popova, at her website Brain Pickings, is another excellent source of inspiration, as she often discovers and shares the stories of countless creative icons of our time and how they have struggled through this process themselves. Intimate details of their battles with and within themselves are revealed, showing how with time and reflection that battle shifts to one of love and acceptance of oneself.

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Striving To Overcome Complex Judgement

I mentioned before that I don’t have any mentors or guides that I can relate to, to try to understand the transition I’m going through. So often I end up learning and growing by reading books and articles by others that I come across that seem to be on the same journey as myself.

One author, Venessa, who has a blog called Emergent By Design, I’ve read repeatedly in the past few years but I haven’t been to it in a long while. In visiting recently, I noticed two blog posts by her from last year, What Mental Slavery Looks Like: Repressive & Reactive Patterns and When The Mind Hijacks My Flow State, that really resonate with the struggle I’m going through.

The Maelstrom of Voices

Within these these two posts, she talks about a “society of personalities” within her head that often sidetrack her from making creative progress in her life.

the Critic would cluck its tongue, “tsk, tsk. look at you. totally out of control. way to keep your shit together.”

the Servant would apologize, “ugh, i didn’t mean it. i’m a horrible person.”

the Slave Driver would spur me on, “be more self-righteous! remind them of all the ways you do more than your fair share!”

the Victim would be both helpless and indignant, “everyone’s always trying to use me, and i guess that’s what i deserve.”

at the end of the day, neither of these patterns was what i actually meant to say or do. they were the result of pathways laid down long ago by the desire to meet the expectation of family or cultural conditioning. and apparently they were still calling the shots.

i can’t remember what it felt like to be connected to my creative essence, or who i was then. i only know that i have become a society of personalities. i am exhausting myself maintaining the dynamics between them. the tyrant and slave, the victim and abuser, the oppressor and oppressed, all playing out their parts. one faction mercilessly berating me for my failures, the other trying to survive the onslaught. i keep trying to “push through,” hoping that there is a hump somewhere in the not too distant future, that if i can just get over it, things will right themselves. this of course is not true, and no matter what output i produce, i’m dissatisfied with it, and furious and disappointed with myself. every day i get more and more frustrated, more and more depleted.

Venessa, Emergent By Design

In reading this, I know that she is ahead of me on this journey. Why? Because she’s aware enough of the voices that she is ability to differentiate them into their different perspectives. In my case, they are all just one voice (as I’ve never thought of differentiating them). And often times for me, they’re not so much voices as flashes of imagery that relay a feeling of expectation and judgement from each.

Transcending The Voices

In thinking about this today though, I had an epiphany. Each of these voices, these society of personalities, almost sound like they each match a specific stage of human development of making sense and meaning, also known as an action logic. For example, the Servant sounds like it matches the Diplomat which is an early stage of human development whereby the individual wants to belong so much that they will do anything to conform to the group. And the Slave Driver almost sounds like it matches the Expert which is the next stage of human development whereby the individual focuses on differentiating themselves from others so much, that they strive to impose, control, and belittle others in their efforts to do so.

If it sounds like these are just very negative stages of human development, they’re not. I’m just focusing on the negative aspects or fears of each stage. Each has a positive side as well.  The emphasis here though is to show the striking similarity to these voices and how they seem to match the negative aspects of each of these stages of human development. In effect, even though one is able to progress and develop positively through the various stages, each one of these negative aspects from each stage still sits in their mind, making their ego more and more complex as one develops to the latter stages.

Increasing Complexity

What I find remarkable about this is that it matches the descriptions of the tests by the Devil in the Bible and even the stages of testing in The Alchemist. In effect, the more one gets closer to integrating the complexity of themselves as a whole person, the more complex the challenges they face to do so. I’ve describe this before as an increase in paradoxes that one faces, the closer they get to the final (albeit as far as we know) stage of development. In fact in the final stage, the goal isn’t so much to integrate and control these voices but to let go of trying to control them and just accept and witness them as they are. In doing so, one transcends them and lets go of a fixed sense of individual identity, taking on one of a much more transpersonal nature (i.e. beyond the self, universal, timeless, fluid).

Of course, I know this all, having researched and figured it out over the years, but knowing is not enough. It’s like reading something versus actually experiencing it. In experiencing it, you finally truly understand the depth and simplicity of it, its wisdom. Thus in my mind, it sounds simple and logical for me to just let go of having expectations and judgements on myself so that I stop having expectations and judgements of others but it’s easier said than done. The societal conditioning goes so very deep and it’s hard to unravel.

Valuing Oneself

In fact, what I find interesting is how I differ from Venessa in her struggle (or at least from external appearance based upon what I’ve read of her from her posts). You see I often find it fairly easy to obtain a flow state in my writing and love the curiousity and exploration of researching my life’s work in understanding creativity. Where everything falls apart for me is what to do with all of this amazing knowledge and wisdom I’m accumulating. In effect, while my exploratory research side feels amazing and fruitful, my other side sits their judgementally and says “What are the results of this? How are you supporting yourself with your work?” That’s where everything falls apart and I feel irresponsible and useless (regardless of all of the amazing things I’ve discovered along the way).

It’s a struggle for me. My research implies a letting go of expectations and judgements of myself and others, yet it seems impossible to do so until I can sustain myself economically and in such a way that works within this new way and New World of thinking and doing. Why? Because if I just fall back into a conventional job, all of the things around it just keep pulling me back into the old way and Old World of thinking and doing. In effect, it causes a regression in oneself as you fall back into an earlier stage of development. 

Alas, it seems that unless I become a monk, giving up my worldly possessions and live based upon what others give me, this goal of letting go seems unrealistic to attain. And yet I know people have already made this leap. And yet how did they get around this stage of the journey? Alternatively is it because while I’m living authentically with my writing and taking leaps with it, I’ve still yet made the full leap in living what I’m writing? In effect, as my mantra of old goes, I’m not fully yet “working on living what I have learnt through play” which represents creativity as an integration of playing, learning, and working in harmony with each other, thus allowing you to finally live a life whereby you truly feel alive.

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Sharing My World

Over the past few days I’ve been rethinking and rehashing about what I want to do with my Be Real Creative identity and brand which will hopefully encapsulate all of my research on creativity that I’ve done and will still do. More than anything now, I realize I want this to be a safe space for myself. A place where I can extend as curiously as I want without feeling limited by conventional beliefs and boundaries.

In terms of others though, I want it to be a place where I can share this New World I’ve discovered with them as well, so that they can safely explore and immerse themselves within it, as it is the only way to fully comprehend the complexity of it. In effect, you can’t understand it by observing one aspect of it because it will seem completely impossible and incomprehensible if you do. Instead you have to understand all aspects of it as a whole in relationship to one another, at which point the paradigm shift in thinking occurs and you suddenly step through the looking glass to suddenly see the impossible possible before you.

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Working At Living

In my last post I said I wanted to start applying the knowledge I’ve learnt to my own life and start living it which replicates my mantra of working at living what you have learnt through play. To get the ball rolling on this though, I thought it would be best to reflect way back to the origins of my journey, at the point when I set a lot of intentions and asked a lot of questions of what I wanted out of my life.

What Do I Want?

In reviewing posts back between 2005 and 2007, I noticed that I wasn’t really happy with my life. Not only was I unhappy with the way work worked but I also felt like most jobs really couldn’t encompass all that I wanted to express of myself. Because of this, I said things like “I’m dying to feel alive“, “I want to feel connected“, and “I want to be real creative“. In effect, I felt like a piece of machinery in a lot of my jobs, rather than a human being. Instead I wanted my work to feel like home for me, I place where I was accepted fully as I am, with the ability to express all that I am.

Now that’s what I was feeling at the time. What have I learnt today that applies to this and have I made any head way? Interestingly enough, what I’m realizing right now in this very moment is that, if anything, all I’ve done is improved my ability to articulate what I meant by this. Today I realize that what I want is to integrate my life. I no longer want to try to find a job that can express all that I am because I know now that’s impossible. Instead I want to do work that resonates and expresses all of the diverse aspects of who I am as a whole and collectively unifies and defines the narrative of my life which is often more commonly know as your passion.

What Have I Achieved?

But again, here’s the thing. Even though I’m much more capable at understanding and articulating what I wanted back then, have I really moved any closer to achieving what I wanted? Again, in all honesty, no. If anything, I’ve gone off on a tangent and wanted to “get a job” being an organization consultant or a change agent. In effect, to ask the same question of myself, would a job of that nature express all that I am? No, it wouldn’t. It would definitely express a much deeper aspect of myself but no, it wouldn’t express all that I am.

Weaving My Life

I remember saying way back that when you fully understand your passion and purpose in your life, it would weave all of the knowledge you’ve acquired throughout your life, no matter how marginal, and it would integrate it together eventually allowing your work to just be you living your life (so much so that it doesn’t seem like work). This is why people who often have reached this point in their life say that they can’t believe their getting paid to do what they love because they’d still do it regardless of getting paid for it.

A couple of quick examples of this off the top of my head are restaurant reviews and product reviews. I’ve noticed over my life that I have this knack for perceiving often intangible things that when I later articulate them to others, they often are surprised by how poignant and correct I am on my perception of them. For example, I love discovering new restaurants and taking photos of both the food and decor, as I talk with my wife about the qualities that make it so unique in terms of its identity. In addition, I seem quite adept at analyzing and synthesizing reviews of products, often relaying seemingly intangible yet important things to friends and family that often aren’t seen in mainstream reviews.

What I’m trying to get at here is that I am doing many different things in my life already that I just naturally do without even thinking about. The thing is though is that I’m missing the obvious next step of taking the opportunity to sustain myself with these natural activities, enabling them to become a part of my life’s work. Again in doing so, I’m not only able to express all that I am naturally but in doing so, I’m able to make my life my work and sustain myself by just living it. In effect, I’m working on designing my own life, creatively integrating playing, learning, and working into it in a way that resonates with my own values and beliefs.

There are many other things as well. For example, while I’m not doing desktop computer support work anymore, I love mobile devices like the iPad and love sharing tips and tricks about it. Another thing that both my wife and I love doing is photography, so much so that we’ve thought about selling our photos as cards but again, we’ve haven’t taken that next step to start. Even music has always been a love in my life, allowing me to express myself in ways that words often are unable, thus I’d love to start practicing composing more and seeing if that can lead somewhere as well.

Articulating My Diversity

But if you read the above though, you’ll see that things all weave around and come back to one very important thing that I’ve never been able to achieve yet so far, even though I’ve played around with it countless times. That is the ability to define and express all of this diversity within a single space, a single home, online, within a website, so that people can see all that I am as a whole. Thus it’s kind of like the chicken and the egg story. You feel like you need the one to achieve the other but you can’t seem to start the one without the other.

Anyways, I think that’s enough for now. Time to absorb my thoughts and reflect on where I’ll go from here.

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Stepping Off The Pulpit

I just realized something these past few days that has opened my eyes to what I’ve been potentially doing wrong with my life. And interestingly enough, it’s a slip up that I’ve made before but in this newer context of knowledge that I’m learning, I believe it is creating a wider and wider gap between myself and others. How I noticed it is by reading some of my older posts and then comparing them to my newer posts, particularly ones I’ve done on Google Plus over the past few years.

If you look at my posts on my site here from many years back, particularly between 2005 to 2007 when a lot of my feelings and emotions were finally coming out of me and being articulated into words, you’ll see that what I’m learning and sharing is done so as a personal journey. In effect, my focus is completely upon myself. I’m sharing what I’m learning and what I believe I need to apply to myself. I call this working at living what I have learnt through play, as this allows me to lead by example.

But over the past few years though, there has been a substantial change to how I communicate. More and more it’s less about what I’m learning to apply to my life and instead what I believe other people need to learn to apply to their lives. To some, this might seem like a positive step, as it seems like I’m wanting to help others. Don’t get me wrong, I want nothing more than to help others, but how I’m doing it could actually be harmful to others and myself in the process. That’s because instead of sharing what I’m learning to better my own life, I’m redirecting what I’m learning and instead preaching to others how they should lead and live theirs.

Cartoon by the Naked Pastor

What’s weird is that I knew I was being preachy some years back and I thought I had altered my writing enough to rectify this, what still hadn’t changed though was that I was still directing what I had learnt outwards at others, rather than inwards at myself. I think this shift occurred within me because I believed that if I could help others become whole in terms of their identity then I too could become whole. But of course with this mindset and belief, it means that unless I make someone else whole then I will never be whole. Thus there is always this constant agenda in the back of my head to “save others and help them wake up and see the light”.

And for the most part, I think this is immediately apparent when I talk to others. I often communicate what I have learnt and what others need to learn to “wake up” to see these big shifts in society. But of course in talking this way, regardless of the validity of what I’ve learnt, it makes everyone else sound like idiots with blinders on. And in turn it just makes me sound like a mad idiot preaching the coming apocalypse and how I can save others by waking them up. All said and done, it is I who needs to wake up and change my methods.

Thus going forward upon my site, I’m going to try to shift everything I’ve learnt and redirect it back upon myself again instead of at others. Of course I’ll still be sharing what I’ve learnt openly but only within the context of how I can apply it to my own life. To get back into the rhythm and practice of doing this, I think the next few posts I write will reflect on what I was searching for back between 2005 to 2007 and determining how far I’ve come in achieving those desires today in my own life.

Categories
General

Embracing Your Craziness

I’ve been trying to keep an eye on the results of this years Peter Drucker Forum and based upon what I’ve seen so far, it appears that things haven’t change much from last year. While it does seem like more and more people are seeing the changes needed to transform the way work works, it seems as though many do not want to accept these changes and then act upon them. Now if it sounds like I’m being judgemental of these people, I’m not. If anything, I want to show how this is completely normal behaviour.

What I’m talking about here is how people deal with paradigms, as described by Joel Arthur Barker within his book Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future. Paradigms effectively act as physiological filters that can prevent us from seeing things, even if they are plain as day under our very noses.

You are quite literally unable to perceive data right before your very eyes.

But it is not just visual. You listen but do not hear. You touch but do not feel. You sniff but don’t smell. All the senses are mediated by the Paradigm Effect.

But as I noted above, I think people are finally beginning to see things. What’s holding them back though is that they still don’t believe what they are seeing. It just still seems too crazy. And that is where the greater problem lies for many. We are fearful and afraid of being seen as crazy by our peers. Any yet to move forward, we need to learn how to embrace this craziness and make the leap.

Making The Impossible Possible

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Alice in Wonderland

You see I’m realizing that the more we ignore what we are seeing, the more crazy and agitated we become. Therefore,  paradoxically it is only by accepting and believing the craziness that we can prevent ourselves from going crazy. If this seems ludicrous then you just have to remember where we are going.

The world is changing rapidly and we must change rapidly with it. We need to let go of the Old World that is dying and step forward into the New World that is emerging. Only by letting go can we grasp and take hold of the new. Therefore, to step into this New World, you pretty much need to be crazy because everything within it has been shifted and works differently than the Old World. In effect, the whole system has changed.

It’s Hard To Let Go

To give one example of this, I keep laughing every time I see a discussion around the problem of managers. They are a social artifact of management that is no longer needed because management, while still existing, transforms and shifts to the entire organizational body with everyone self-managing themselves and the organization as a whole.

Some of the recaps of the Drucker Forum have pretty much stated this outright as well (i.e. everyone is a manager) but in the same breadth of saying that managers are no longer needed, they continue describing how managers should work within these new organization. This only shows how strong a hold the old ways of work are so ingrained in our minds that it is almost next to impossible to let them go, even when we want to do so.

Leading By Example

Finally, the most humorous thing I noted of all about these recaps is this foreboding sense of “What now? Who’s leading the charge?” In effect, for those who do seem gung ho about stepping into this future, it seems as they don’t want to be the ones taking that messy first step and landing flat on their face. But that’s the only way to move forward because every first step is always a difficult one and that’s how we learn through failure.

Therefore, the people leading the charge will need to be everyone everywhere to make it a collective momentum and tipping point. This in turn is the future of leadership and how it shifts to the entire collective or organization as well.

To close things off, I’d like to enclose a quote below that I wrote back in 2013 after last years Peter Drucker forum. While people are finally starting to grasp my first two points about everyone being a manager and leader, it appears that it still might take another year before they understand how everyone is a customer.

Transforming work. Everyone is a manager. Everyone is a leader. Everyone is a customer.

Nollind Whachell
Categories
General

When The Many Become One

In the past, I’ve tried to express that I keep seeing all of these patterns around me and I’m noticing that these patterns are converging into a greater narrative. For example, I keep seeing all of these notable people writing books around seemingly diverse different topics. Yet if you go deeper below the surface of what’s being said, all of these books are talking about the same thing but just from different perspectives or disciplinary languages.

Today, I feel like I’m going insane with the weight of what I’m seeing because I keep seeing all of these patterns around me and they are almost everywhere I look now. Why it’s overloading is because of the repetition of the pattern. It’s like a tornado approaching me and everything is being picked up and tossed into the air. You don’t know which way is up anymore because you’re overloaded by all that you see.

Copernicus’ Solar System from De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium

And yet what I’m slowly realizing is that all of these patterns have a commonality in that they overlap and connect with each other. The best way I’ve tried to describe this in the past is imagine what it was like being an early astronomer studying the heavens. At first, you just saw a jumble of patterns that seemed chaotic. But over time, after seeing the patterns over and over again, you begin to see a relationship between them and behold the chaos transforms into a unified and integrated order of our solar system.

The Web of Life

Now while the above patterns are almost effortlessly for me to see on a daily basis, the difficulty of course is trying to explaining what I’m seeing and put into words. One thing that I can be sure of though is that this greater narrative goes way beyond just business and changing the way work works. It almost goes to a more universal level and changes the very notion of what it means to be human and our potential both individually and collectively.

To put this another way, I’m seeing how this greater narrative relates to both not only organizational development but also personal development. In effect, the pattern and approach is the same for both. Therefore collectively combined together, it is a social development approach that can help humans take the next step in their evolution.

Therefore just as our organizations today are trying to break down their silos and boundaries to release their untapped potential, so too are individuals doing the same very thing. As I’ve said in the past, I don’t want my identity to be tied to my job title because my past jobs have never adequately encompassed all that I am. Therefore, I’m trying to express myself, all that I am, in a new way by taking all of the seemingly fragmented aspects of myself and making them one integrated whole.

Value The Marginal

Now while this may seem grandiose, it doesn’t feel this way to me. If anything, it feels simply essential. And more importantly, it is not something I’m so much creating as something I’m just seeing emerging. Therefore I more often feel like a messenger than a creator, witnessing this emergence. And in terms of communicating, my struggle is in trying to simplify what I’m seeing and trying to put it into words that anyone, even a child, could understand because I want it to be understood just as universally as I’m seeing it.

What I’m also realizing is that this is not something new. In effect, life is cyclic in nature and to me it seems like we are not discovering but instead rediscovering these development approaches, just in the same way that we are rediscovering ourselves. In effect, some of our best potential often arises from the aspects of ourselves that we have discarded within ourselves in the past because society didn’t deem it of value.

It is only when we take these marginalized aspects of ourselves and of our society and integrate them completely together that the many fragmented parts finally become one purposeful entity. This relates to what I’ve said before about the need for leaders with sight and vision. It is not about recruiting new talent out there. It is about seeing the potential and talent already within your organization and already within you in your personal life.

Use edges and value the marginal.

Permaculture Principle #11