Integrate!

Are you on Twitter? I am and I am enjoying it for the moment. But, although I follow lots of social media experts, I have not been luring scores of people to my website. That would take a level of intention and attention I have not yet decided to commit to Twitter. I'm not ready for a long-term committed relationship. I am not even sure we're at the dating stage. I am still flirting with Twitter. The same issues come up when I consider the difference between the advice I read on writing copy and the advice I read about how to tell a story. I am sure that there are differences between effective copy and copy that gets fewer positive results. And yet. And yet. I am a conversationalist. I love long talks and I love writing that makes me feel like I am in long talk with an interesting person. Not always a close friend. . . just the kind of friendly mind that it's possible to spend time enjoying. I don't want a copy of an interesting mind - I want the real thing. ...

Harmony is a feel-good word. It comes with associations of smiling cherubs and soft sounds. Harmony tells us that we can connect in ways that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. What harmony also tells us is that the right kind of integration takes both intention and discipline. The first requirement for singing in harmony is that you listen; the second is that you be willing to change what you sing in order to blend with what you hear. The same thing is true when we create harmony at home or at work. We listen and then we alter what we do so that the whole can be greater than what we could do on our own. It's not an easy gig. It's not even a matter of giving up leadership. Imagine a harmony where the second part consistently came in one beat after the melody. In true harmony, you are always listening, always responding, always moving together according to some shared principles and what you hear. Are you capable of harmony? How long can you discipline you...

When my son was six, he started taking violin lessons. His teacher suggested that we take him to a concert at which young award-winners of some sort would be performing. We listened to a little boy who was already an accomplished violinist at the age of 5 - a year younger than our 6 year old beginner. Did the 6 year old run home to practice harder, feeling that "if he can do it, I can do it?" Nope. He just felt overwhelmed by the gulf between where he was and where he wanted to be. That's the problem with many great models of achievement. They are only inspirational if, in some way, we relate to the central character. We have to think, "if she can do, maybe I can do it." Often we think, "She is amazing. I could never do that." We walk away impressed with the talent of some rare human being, and less impressed with our own abilities. I suppose that's why people with a physical handicap to overcome often make good models of inspiration. Whil...

Congruence could be defined as the single-minded determination we feel to enjoy the first long weekend of summer. It doesn't much matter that it is usually cool and often wet. It doesn't much matter that summer won't really be here for another month. Given half a chance, summer starts now (in our minds and in our hearts, if not in our backyards). Here in Canada, the important part of summer does start now. It is light until well into the evening, and light when most of us wake up. We who have lived through the darkness of December are now the children of sunlight. It's a time to be happy and hopeful, a time to enjoy being outside or getting moving or even cleaning out the winter dust and packing away the extra layers of clothes. It's a time to graduate and step into a world that feels promising. I am always amazed at how uncomplicated my happiness turns out to be. Through all the complexity of economic challenges, of relationships, of deep thoughts - the sun s...

I've been reading a book called Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer. It reports on research on how people know and make choices. Because it is research-based, it is largely about how we know (inside) the world (outside). Much of the book is about defining the conditions under which we make better choices when we have less information. I wonder if we make better choices about ourselves when we put aside the vast and inadequate knowledge we have stored about ourselves and reduce our thinking, as best we can, to the pattern described in a system like the Enneagram. Instead of saying "what do I believe about this?" we can ask "what would a 4 believe about this?" Since we have much less information about 4s than we do about ourselves, this would impose a simplicity on the choice we are considering. The process is roughly: let's reduce the amount of information available and notice how the choice becomes clearer and more stable....

It's not a matter of if we will ask this question, or even a matter of when. The human "I" is elusive, even to itself. It emerges from biology and will power and history and hope. The "I" that has a brain is more than the brain and more than heart and more even than its presence in this time and this place. Uniquely, it seems, "I" is what asks the question "Who am I?" No one can fully find an answer to the question. No one system or philosophy will provide the whole of the map we need to move towards an "I" that is elusive and possibly changing as our lives change and unfold. For long stretches of time, we manage just fine without even asking the question. It is often enough to have a sort of rough sketch of our own identities and then to act as if they were, roughly, accurate. And then it's not. Then we are facing a situation and it finally matters that "I" knows how "I" is going to respond. Sometimes ...

This is the first in a series of entries that will give examples of what changes in your experience as you filter it through the lens of the Enneagram. On the weekend, I was at a conference listening to a speaker who was explaining quite a complicated system in ways that sometimes made it hard to follow and sometimes simply made it more complicated. I found I had a lot of common ground with the principles of his system and much less interest in the details, particularly since the details seemed to involve some mixed or quirky metaphors. On the other hand, the change work that he demonstrated was good work, and the presenter was also communicating strongly that he was the kind of person it would be fun to get to know. In terms of most communication theories, including NLP, this was a recipe for dissonance: two different perceptions fighting for attention. Dissonance generally leaves human beings distracted and edgy: it's not comfortable to be the rope in a tug-of-war between differ...