Integrate!

How do you do it? We all have strategies for the days when the clock is ticking but what we need is not happening. We all have strategies for getting through uncertainty. There is no magic bean that will eliminate uncertainty. And uncertainty goes to the heart of what makes human beings most uncomfortable: we don't know what is coming next. Our brains have evolved to keep us safe by predicting the future, but it's often an impossible task. There's no way to know for use what will come next and so there is no way to prepare for it without wasting resources we might need to guard against something unpredictable. So our brains go in circles, running their best predictions and then running them again with whatever new information becomes available. But there are so many situations where we just don't know. We don't know how long, how much, or how often. We don't know the outcome of the project or the illness or the relationship. We can guess. We do guess. We ...

Management doesn't just happen at work. It happens everywhere: we manage our kids, our partners, our parents and friends. We manage situations and feelings. We manage. There's a funny thing about managing: it has two meanings . On the one hand it means that we like to run things, to control things, to give direction. And on the other it means that we are surviving or coping. You can see where those two intersect: managing means hanging on in a world where none of us are able to thrive. People and relationships need managing because we don't trust collaboration or cooperation. We don't trust other people to follow through or to be capable or to want good things. And we don't trust them because when we are managing, we are just hanging on. And that's not a position of strength or confidence. What would be different if we encouraged people instead of managing them? We'd start with the belief that they were clever and brave and capable. What we don't alw...

Swansea, Wales I understand that most people who read this blog don't read poetry. It's foreign to most of you, in the way that plants that grow on the other side of the planet are foreign. It's so far outside your awareness as to seem irrelevant to your lives. But when it's outside my awareness for too long, I get antsy.  Poetry helps me settle into all of myself. Maybe if you give it another chance, it can help you, too. Here's why I think "more poetry is needed": Poetry grounds meaning in the senses. It uses sight and sound not just as containers for meaning, but as part of how meaning is made. In poetry, words point you toward lived experience, rhythms get under your skin, and the way the words  look on the page changes how you hear them and what you imagine when you do. It's as if the function of poetry is to say "There is no meaning outside the way you live your life. Presence is what counts." Poetry only makes sense when ...

Encouragement means more than cheering people on. According to Google,  it means"give support, confidence, or hope to (someone)." That makes encouragement the key to helping your kids find what they need to face their challenges and pursue their goals, whether they are toddlers or teens or much older than that. ©canstockphoto.com/osons/ If you have a kid who is anxious or stuck, you can use the 4P process to help them find what they need to feel better and do better. The first P is for presence. Your kid needs your undivided attention. I know it's hard to put all your attention in one place. You have a million things to do and you're tired and easily distracted. But think of it from your kid's point of view, and you'll understand why focused attention is important. There's not much that makes kids more anxious than fighting for their parent's attention. They feel insecure as soon as they think that they're losing you, and they feel safer a...

In an NLP training this weekend, we were talking about the problem of getting people in a particular profession to own up to mistake. Within moments, we realized it wasn't about a particular profession. Most people find it really hard to admit they've made a mistake. If you don't own up to making mistakes, it's hard to learn from them. That's like paying for something and walking out of the store with empty hands. You have the pain of the mistake without the gain of learning from it. This is even more true for organizations. If people won't own up to mistakes, the whole organization misses out on the learning that should come from them. Making a mistake is like losing one piece to your puzzle.  If you don't own up to the mistake, no one is going to know that what they just picked up in the the piece you need to complete your puzzle. So as an individual and as an organization, you face the same choice. Am I okay with a puzzle that looks like this...

© Can Stock Photo / edharcanstock It might be hard to remember the last time you looked at a physical map.  Maybe you were on vacation, and you pulled a map out of a guide book or you picked up one of the tourist maps you get at hotel desks or information centres. The thing about a paper map is that it has edges. Your map program on your phone will just move the edges and re-centre so you are back in the centre of the picture. Life is more like the paper map. Sometimes we get to the edge, and we have to make choices about what to do next. Essentially we have only 3 choices: turn around and go back; go forward without a map or go looking for another map. Sometime between 40 and 60, maybe several times, you will come to the edge of your map. It can happen earlier or later, but it will certainly happen that in the middle of your life, you will run out of map. Your plans will or will not have worked out, and you'll find that there is no clear route from where you are to where y...

©CanStockPhoto/dbrus January ended, and now you can look back at your plans for 2019 and notice where you are on track and where the track is under 4 feet of snow. Maps work as long as the roads are clear and you know where you are and where you want to go. Most of the time, it's a good idea to get your bearings before you try to use a map (much less make one). But people are naturally impatient, especially as a new year begins. We think we need a plan. What we need is a compass. A compass can only do one thing: it can show you where true north is in relation to where you are now. With that one piece of information, you can move in any direction with confidence. You just need to know where you are in relation to one defining landmark. What's your true north? I think it's something like wellness, or a life well-lived. If you don't know where you are in relation to that, it's hard to make good choices about how to get there or about the price of going somewh...