Integrate!

What do you get to choose? It's too easy to say that you cannot choose what happens to you, but you can choose how you respond. That turns choice into a consolation prize. We think we "have to" choose instead of we "can choose!" We get to choose our actions and reactions without being fully aware of how they will make change in the world. That sounds dangerous, and it is. But it is also the seed of optimism. No matter what happens to us and around us, there are choices we can make.  Identifying the choices that you have the ability and resources to make pushes you to be more self-aware: more aware of the feelings, perceptions, biases, memories and hopes that combine to keep  you moving. Self-awareness is fundamental to both feeling better and having better influence on others. When life knocks you down, you look up and say "so what can I do next?" You can change your mind, your communication, your actions. You can begin with an impulse or an inventory....

Have you heard about VUCA ? If you're not a business guru, you may have missed this management acronym. It stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. It's a slightly terrifying description of what is really business-as-usual in a world of change and interaction. Management theorists might think VUCA is new, but here's how the 19th century poet John Keats described the quality that made writers great: 'At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously- I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties. Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.' VUCA has been with man a long, long time, and the best of our thinkers have found ways to embrace it. If it's still too complicated for you: consider this picture. Is it health food? (No). Is it healthy food (Possibly). In one category or f...