Category: Vertical Development

A month ago, in a conversation with my sister, she indicated the following.

She said these words because she is our family archivist. She enjoys maintaining photos of our past but also discovering things in our past that some of us might not be aware of. Some examples of this might be discovering our family lineage or discovering something that our dad worked on (i.e. the Red River Floodway in Manitoba) when he was younger.

For some reason though, her words kept tugging on me, almost as though my intuition was telling me there was something important about them.

At the same time though, I’ve been redesigning my website, importing old posts back onto it, and going back to try to fix any importing errors in them (which I’m still in the process of doing).

What I’ve already noted as being revealing in this process is how much I became aware of how much I was radically changing over time. In effect, I often beat myself up that I wasn’t reaching the goal or destination of fully expressing myself in the way I wanted to do so, yet I was still expressing myself in ways that showed how much I was changing.

To put this another way, I was courageously trying to express myself in ways that I often couldn’t logically articulate because I still didn’t fully understand who I was becoming. Yet I still stepped beyond and off the edge of my existing worldview to try to intuitively express myself in an emotional way, expressing what I was feeling at the time.

What this made me realize this morning is that growth and development require reflecting upon the past to see how we were previously looking to the future. In doing so, it collectively helps us to understand who we are fully becoming in the present.

In effect, reflecting upon the past is not enough. Nor is just looking to the future. They both have to be done in combination. This relates to something Steve Jobs said.

To emphasize this even more so, let me explain it in a different way.

To grow and develop, one needs to step beyond who they think and believe they are. This is a daily practice of trying to articulate who you feel you are wanting to become without fully knowing who you are becoming as of yet.

Often this entails articulating what you feel you need in your life that relates to values you want to embody.

Yet in that present moment of articulation, one will often feel like they are off the edge of the known world, exploring a newer, unknown one that they can barely comprehend. Actually so much so, that they may feel lost within it.

They are lost because this newer unknown world is a larger worldview they are exploring. So they actually have to lose themselves to find themselves.

But to be able to map it and understand it, you have to actually step into the unknown of it and explore it, experiencing it like a traveller exploring a new world.

But you can’t just experience it. You actually have to try to articulate the experience, almost like you’re a storyteller describing your journey into this new world, even though it may be feel impossible to do so.

Yet in doing so, in repeatedly trying to express the experience of stepping into this unknown, you are mapping it out and make it known.

So again, to fully map out a newer worldview and a newer state of being for yourself, which represents your growth and development, you continually have to step beyond who you think and believe you are to discover who you truly are.

But the discovery of one’s larger sense of Self only comes from reflecting upon your exploration, not from the exploration itself, even though the exploration is an essential part of the overall process itself.

That’s because your reflection is an act of navigation, both in terms of navigating between the newer places you’ve explored, thus understanding how they relate to one another, but also in terms of navigating between your old world(view) and newer, emerging one as a whole.

All said and done, this has been a very enlightening experience of reflection for myself, especially for someone who is usually just future-focused on creatively releasing potentials and possibilities. It’s taught me that getting to that future and releasing one’s potential requires continually reflecting upon your past actions of exploring your future self.

At the same time though, this also makes it evident why most people don’t continue to grow and develop much once they become an “adult.” It’s because they often reach a point in their lives where they stop looking forward to exploring newer experiences, because they may feel that they are too uncertain and risky now, and instead just focus on nostalgically protecting and defending their past which defines their present belief of who they are.

Yet in doing so, their old beliefs of themselves are actually standing in the way of newer experiences and of who they can still potentially become. In effect, it’s almost as though these old beliefs act like a chasm or moat at the edge of their worldview. It both protects them from having to deal with the unknown (ie “Here be dragons”) but also prevents them from expanding their worldview at the same time.

This is another paradox of growth and development. It is not about pushing ourselves forward into the unknown which feels like someone pushing you off a cliff or into a chasm. It is more about recognizing and becoming aware of how we are often already being pulled into playfully and curiously exploring the unknown without fully realizing it yet.

This again embodies what creativity means to me when applied to one’s self. It is about discovering something that has already been there all along but you just weren’t aware of it.

A CBC News article indicating how Trumps claims there’s only ‘2 genders’ highlights how most political leaders today often don’t have the perception and awareness to understand the complexity of humanity let alone even the world.

The executive order, which Trump signed after promising in his inauguration speech that it would be U.S. policy “that there are only two genders,” also ordered trans women into male prisons and a halt in the issuance of passports with an “X” gender marker, sparking fear in trans people across the country about their legal status. 

While the administration claims the move is a return to “biological facts,” experts say it ignores both biological and historical reality — that humans have never fit into just two sexes or two genders.

“The terminology could be new, people’s awareness could be new, but the idea or the practice of changing gender is hardly new. It is observed in every time period in U.S. history,” said Jules Gill-Peterson, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

When asked about Trump’s executive orders, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said he was “only aware of two” genders, adding that he believes the government should let people “make their own personal decisions.”

“That kind of psychological burden of being told that what you are is impossible – it’s hard to overstate, really.”

People often misinterpret the meaning of things at earlier stages of psychological development because they lack the life experiences to be fully aware of the depth of understanding of things and thus they don’t perceive them properly. In other words, they have a very narrow view of the world (aka worldview) and are considered ignorant due to this lack of awareness.

At the same time, even when a person achieves a somewhat mature stage of development in their life, they can temporarily regress back to an earlier level of consciousness due to the fear they may be experiencing from conflict or uncertainty in the world around them. A perfect example of this is what occur in both America and Germany prior to World War II.

This articles highlights this as it shows how most people often misinterpret what gender means, often wanting to push what they believe it means instead.

What’s remarkable from the article is Canadian Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre inadvertently highlighting his own lack of awareness due to his beliefs and then showing how he is misinterpreting the meaning of gender as “society deciding the gender of individuals” (i.e. “people make their own personal decisions” of what gender means societally for someone else) rather than “individuals choosing their own gender themselves, regardless of what society believes it should be.”

In deciding to redesign my website recently, I went to Archive.org and looked back at some of my previous designs over the years to get some inspiration for creating something new. While I reminisced and looked back fondly on some of the minimalistic designs I had created, what the process quickly shifted to was what I had written and so succinctly at times.

What jumped out at me was how 2011 and 2012 seemed to be very poignant, transformational years. In effect, even though I wasn’t able to fully articulate myself and my work as a whole, what I articulated was profound. This was both the time where the deeper meaning of my Be Real Creative mantra was birthed but also the first time where I courageously and specifically stated that I was beginning to perceive “life as a game”within my post entitled The Playful Vision.

But the more I dove through these archives, the more I realized I was expressing profound things even much earlier. Like even as early as 2002, I was expressing really radical thoughts about perceiving a transformational world rather than our current transactional one in my post entitled Give What You Think It Is Worth To You. Considering I was using the Radio Userland software at the time (which had features that most web platforms still haven’t replicated today), I’m assuming this was after I had read The Cluetrain Manifesto and it had influenced me so deeply.

All said and done though, what affected me the most upon reflecting upon this all was a realization of how much more I wished I could have seen and read but couldn’t because of my reoccurring pattern of going offline in frustration at being unable to fully express myself…before eventually coming back online again. Yet what’s so ironic is that in my frustration of not being able to express myself so fully, I was often expressing myself in ways far beyond what I had been doing so before.

What I’m getting at here is often it seemed like I was so focused on where I wanted to be in the future, that I was often completely missing how much I had radically changed from my past to the present at that time.

Oh my god! What if that’s it? What if that’s all it is?

In effect, what if this is all about is just holding space for something to emerge?!

What I’m talking about here is that I was working on my Life as an MMORPG website and I was changing my existing quote posts so that certain keywords weren’t just bolded for emphasis but were actually linking to pages that would describe what these keywords meant.

But for many months, perhaps even a year, I’m been struggling to find the words to articulate the meaning of these keywords, even though these words are slowing emerging within me.

However, because I couldn’t find the right words immediately, even after repeatedly failing to figuring out ways to do so, I ended up feeling like were was something wrong with me and I was doing something wrong.

So since I felt this way, I felt like I was stuck and couldn’t go forwards.

But today, while making these changes whereby I wasn’t just bolding these quote keywords but I actually linked them to pages, something suddenly clicked in my head that I had visualized before but couldn’t fully understand previously.

For the longest time, I’ve felt like when you’re trying to discover something new, it’s like you’re walking around it virtually to get a better grasp of it. What this could be visualized on a whiteboard as is simply a large empty circle with a bunch of thoughts written out around the exterior of the circle and in the middle of the circle is a large question mark.

Do you understand what I just described?

This is what “holding space” looks like and means.

This is what not rushing cognitive dissonance feels like and instead giving it time to resolve on its own.

So this entire time I felt like I was doing something wrong from my Self-Authoring Mind’s perspective, I was actually on the cusp of doing things right from my Self-Transforming Mind’s perspective. But because I wasn’t aware of what I was doing, my Self-Authoring Mind continually blocked me from embracing my Self-Transforming Mind.

So now I realize that what I’ve been doing all along with my Life as an MMORPG website is actually right and the key thing that I was missing was that there is absolutely nothing wrong with leaving these keyword pages blank because that’s the whole point, to leave and hold space for them so that something can emerge on it’s own.

In effect, the words and their meaning that I will write upon these pages in the future will emerge the more I add quotes and link to them in the present. And then by looking at these quotes collectively and reflecting back upon them, that’s how these words and meaning will emerge.

Putting something in and not immediately getting something back out of it.

(Garden-like)

Not fully making sense of something immediately. 

Not fully seeing the structure you want to see with certainty.

How to revive strategic thinking in an age of digital outrage

To mitigate future crises, leaders need frameworks that foster long-term strategic thinking, not short-term tactical reactions.

https://bigthink.com/smart-skills/how-to-revive-strategic-thinking-in-an-age-of-digital-outrage/

But here’s the irony — and the opportunity. The very human capacity for strategic thinking that we’re in danger of losing is exactly what we need to address these challenges. Real strategy — the kind that comes from experience, insight, and understanding human dynamics — is what separates successful crisis response from digital chaos, and effective governance from populist reaction.

What we need now isn’t just better plays within the old rulebook — or wild throws hoping for miracle catches. The game itself has fundamentally changed, and with it, our need for a different kind of strategic thinking.

The strategic thinking I learned in those early campaign days wasn’t just about careful advancement — it was about seeing the whole field, understanding the human dynamics at play, and recognizing patterns that others missed.

The philosophers who wrote amid the chaos of the mid-20th century weren’t just documenting their moment. They were providing frameworks for navigating fundamental change while preserving what matters most. Their insights remind us that strategic thinking isn’t just a set of tactical tools — it’s a fundamentally human capacity that becomes most crucial precisely when the old rules no longer apply.

This Year, Try Setting Intentions Instead of Goals

Goals are about what you want to do. Intentions are about who you want to be and why you chose your goals in the first place. The distinction goes deeper than meets the eye.

www.verticaldevelopment.education

I have found playing with intentions (versus goals) to be quite a powerful developmental exercise. It freed me up to become more attuned to the role synchronicity plays in life. I’m less concerned with rigid steps and plans of action and more open to stepping in a direction generally aligned with my intentions while welcoming opportunities when they arise.

Privileging intentions over goals has also helped keep me honest, as it’s always forcing me to ask myself: Why is this important to me? Why do I want this? What do I stand to lose if I fail to achieve this? How is this aligned with my deepest values? Who am I becoming as I make this decision?

I’ve heard Richard Barrett speak before of setting intentions versus goals and how goals actually limit your potentiality, whereas intentions leave us open to opportunities we may not have planned for, letting unexpected synchronicities play a part in our lives.

What Alis is talking about above aligns with this.

This seems to be more important now in my life as I play with shifting between a self-authoring mind to a self-transforming mind.

My recent reflections upon the LA fires has made me stop and step back, reflecting back even farther in time to potentially seeing something that, if my intuition is right about it, could help explain a lot of things, both in terms what my family has been experiencing but also society at large.

One dominant pattern that emerged from the LA fires and that has increasingly emerged in past events over the years is this.

There is an increasing distrust in authority figures in our society.

The Effects of the Pandemic Tearing Our Social Fabric

While this pattern existed before the pandemic, I believe it was the pandemic itself that really ripped the social fabric of society, as well as the social contracts that exist within it.

While a lot of government authorities were correct in implementing lockdown measures to protect people’s lives, especially at the start when there was no vaccine, most people couldn’t comprehend this. “Why would you separate me from my mother in her senior care facility? You’re monsters!”

Thus these events created cognitive dissonance in a lot of people, a inner tension that they couldn’t accept, so to overcome it they often created narratives that made them 1) believe that COVID wasn’t real and 2) it was a plot by government officials to try to “control” us.

While this might seem like an extreme reaction to an event, it’s obvious that the pandemic itself was an extreme event.

A Breakdown of the Social Contract

But as I said though, this distrust for authority figures, especially in the government, existed well before the pandemic. So where did it start?

I believe it started with the breakdown of society decades earlier, with the massive loss of blue collar jobs, and it is increasing today, with the loss of white collar jobs as well. Heck, even high end tech jobs, which once used to be the ultimate in job certainty, security, and safety are no longer safe anymore with the threat of AI overtaking these people’s jobs as well.

This is why I believe the U.S. elections have been so volatile and unpredictable recently. There is this continual unrest amongst people that the social contract of society is completely broken and shredded beyond recognition anymore. And it has to take often the highest tiered jobs being under threat before people wake up and realize something is wrong.

I noticed this within my own city of Vancouver over the past couple of decades. Back before the turn of the millennium, lower class people thought that the cost of living in Vancouver was getting too expensive. Then from 2000 to 2010, it started affecting the middle class. Finally from 2010 to today, even people in the upper middle class or lower upper class (ie $150,000 or more) are finding it difficult to live here.

Of course, no business or government leader really started freaking out until the high cost of living started to affect them personally and their work in trying to attract top talent to Vancouver. In effect, many businesses today have found that their high paying jobs are not enough to retain people, let alone even attract them anymore, as the cost of living in the city has become absurd and untenable.

A Societal Shift

But where am I going with all of this? Because while this post touches upon these points, it’s trying to show a bigger picture of something that is probably invisible to most people.

What I believe is happening is this.

Our society is undergoing a massive transformational shift between a Socialized Mind to a Self-Authoring Mind. But…it is stuck.

What do I mean by this? Here’s a quick summary of ChatGPT’s description of these mindsets, based upon Robert Kegan’s work, in relation to what might be happening within society.

The Socialized Mind thrives on trusting external systems to provide stability and meaning. When those systems fail (or are perceived to fail), this trust collapses.

The Self-Authoring Mind builds new meaning by integrating multiple perspectives and taking responsibility for one’s beliefs and choices. However, this transition requires a level of critical thinking and emotional resilience that may be hindered by anger, fear, or grief.

Conversations with ChatGPT

So instead of relying upon an external compass to navigate their lives, like a Socialized Mind would do so when they rely upon societal leaders, a Self-Authoring Mind creates their own internal compass to help them navigate life instead.

But that’s not what’s happening here.

What we’re effectively experiencing here is a transformational shift where people are letting go of trusting external authority figures, so letting go of a Socialized Mind, and yet they are not making the inner journey which helps them to create a Self-Authoring Mind for themselves.

In Limbo With a Victim’s Mindset

So where are they then, from an internal perspective?

They are stuck in limbo within a liminal world of their own imagination, one not grounded in reality, because they have to actually let go of older beliefs and an older worldview before they construct and step into a newer worldview and a new reality.

But they don’t want to let go of these older beliefs. They want to make them permanent forever. This is why they’re stuck.

People stuck in between may regress into defensive patterns, including black-and-white thinking, conspiracy theories, or a victim mindset, because these offer a sense of certainty and coherence in an overwhelming world.

Conversations with ChatGPT

If you want to describe what type of mindset most people are living within today, it would most definitely be a victim’s mindset. Why? Because the most powerful tool of a victim mindset is blame. Blame externalizes fault to someone else and thus detaches responsibility from one’s self. Yet in doing so, that detachment of responsibility also detaches the possibility of empowering ones’s self.

In other words, when one gives up responsibility for their lives, they will always be a victim. Yet for some, this victimhood becomes a righteous, safe, secure space of certainty, almost like a knightly badge of honour, with their gleaming, defensive armour protecting them from the seeming chaos of life. Yet what they don’t realize is that this armour also separates them from all of the wonderful depth of life as well.

What’s also important to realize here though is that these people haven’t actually let go of external authorities. All they’ve done is just exchanged one type of external authority for another (i.e. Trump as a replacement for Biden). And if anything, their belief in these external authorities is even more vehement than it was before. It’s almost like they are doubling down and putting all of their belief, faith, and trust in this seemingly different leader to save them from the crisis they are in.

Why Are People Stuck?

But why are people stuck though, especially with regards to striving to find a sense of sovereignty and trust with themselves, which is what a Self-Authoring Mind could help achieve? ChatGPT offered some clues.

1. Unprocessed Grief and Trauma: Anger often masks deeper feelings of loss, fear, or sadness. If they haven’t fully processed the trauma and stress of the pandemic, those emotions may be driving their current mindset.
2. Fear of Responsibility: Transitioning to a Self-Authoring Mind requires taking responsibility for one’s beliefs and actions. This can feel daunting, especially when trust in any guiding framework has been eroded.
3. Overwhelmed by Complexity: Topics like climate change and COVID require engaging with complexity and ambiguity. Without a clear internal framework to navigate this, it’s easier to reject these ideas outright.

Conversations with ChatGPT

While these are valid points, I think my previous post highlighting my thinking process around the LA fires touches upon some more important points that could be incapsulated as follows.

People are so overwhelmed with the complexity of life today that they can’t wrap their head around the ambiguity and uncertainty of it. Yet at the same time, our society so voraciously pushes the belief of needing to be a knowledgeable expert, that people actually fear looking like they don’t know what is happening, so they create an illusion that they do.

Why this is monumentally important is that it actually relates to the shift between a Self-Authoring Mind to a Self-Transforming Mind as well. In effect, if you can’t let go of being an expert and feeling like you need to know everything, you will never ever be able to embrace a Self-Transforming Mindset which embraces not knowing as a sort of super-power.

This is the very paradox I’m struggling to overcome myself in my own journey to a Self-Transforming Mind. In effect, recognizing that I will never ever know everything I need to know, so as to be comfortable enough to share my experiences, knowledge, and wisdom relating to vertical development.

How Can We Help People Get Unstuck?

But let’s continue. How do you help people get unstuck and continue this transition that they are effectively standing in their own way of? Again ChatGPT had some suggestions.

If they’re stuck in a victim mindset, here are some ways to encourage growth:

1. Address the Underlying Emotions:
   • Help them process the grief, fear, and helplessness they may be masking with anger.
   • Acknowledge their pain without dismissing it. For example: “It must have been incredibly hard to feel so powerless during the pandemic.”
2. Encourage Perspective-Taking:
   • Instead of arguing facts (e.g., about COVID or climate change), gently invite them to consider alternative viewpoints. Ask open-ended questions like: “What do you think might explain this differently?” This helps them start practicing critical thinking without feeling attacked.
3. Focus on Agency, Not Blame:
   • Reframe the conversation toward what they can control. For example, ask: “What small changes could you make that align with your values, regardless of what politicians do?” This shifts the focus from external blame to internal action.
4. Model and Share Growth:
   • Share your own experiences of navigating disillusionment or frustration in a way that demonstrates self-authoring behavior. Show how it’s possible to create meaning without relying on external authority.
5. Normalize the Transition:
   • Let them know it’s okay to feel disoriented or angry during this process. Highlight that these feelings are often signs of growth, even if it feels messy right now.

Conversations with ChatGPT

While these points are interesting and most definitely viable on their own, what I find interesting about them is that when you integrate them all together, it provides a bigger picture to someone that may be paradoxically shocking and confounding for them to face.

The very transformation that you’re avoiding, that you’re blaming others for experiencing and feeling, is the very thing that will provide you with the sovereignty, agency, and sense of meaning that you’re seeking in your life.

This is what I’m becoming more and more aware of in my own journey. In accepting this statement, I increasingly avoid externalizing and blaming my “problems” on others and instead shift my awareness to what I’m not aware of that is making me misinterpret this experience I am undergoing right now.

A perfect example of this is what I said earlier. I currently believe (with my Self-Authoring Mind) that I need to be an expert and know everything before I can share my experiences, knowledge, and wisdom of vertical development with others. Yet a Self-Transforming Mind realizes that they can never truly know everything. It’s impossible because there are veils behind veils within life (thus representing the stages of development within vertical development).

So for me to actually embrace my Self-Transforming Mind that’s actually already within me, I need to let go of my belief (and associated fears) that I need to know everything first. That would be like a child wanting to read and master everything before you actually live your life. But that’s absurd because you actually understand and master life by actually living it.

Again, I “know” this but I don’t truly know it in the sense that I’m not truly embodying it yet. So it’s this seemingly weird, unnatural experience where I feel like I’m stepping into uncertainty and ambiguity, but in doing so, the experiences I actually experience, help me to actually embody and make the transition one step and one day at at time.

This is what everyone needs to realize and become aware of. This seemingly weird, unnatural experience is actually a natural part of life. In fact, it forms the very bedrock of what it means to be a human being.