Welcome back! Feel free to comment or ask a qustion below. If you might want to schedule some time with me, email jennifer "at" The-Live-Edge "dot" com.
There’s really too much thinking going on. If you follow your curiosity first – a Live Edge technique – then think, you’ll have a lot more data to work with and your thinking will go a lot deeper. Here’s what I mean.
You’re in a predicament. Say you’re at work and there’s some kind of hubbub among coworkers on your team. Seth says it’s important to get the report out in time for the conference. Nita says, no, the report is more important than the conference and if they shorten their deadline they’ll end up with a lousy product. They’ve had this kind of argument before; as usual, Seth is in a hurry and Nita wants quality. You know you’re going to have to weigh in.
You can feel people around you trying to decide whether they agree with Seth or Nita, what it would mean for them if they took sides, whether the issue is important enough for them to take a stand or let it ride. This is thinking, strategizing.
Instead, I’m recommending just plain noticing. Try not to be distracted by the apparent urgency of the situation. Hold still a minute. Stand back a few inches, mentally, and survey. What intrigues you about what’s going on? What details stand out to you?
You may already have been distracted by the fact that Nita is chewing gum today. She almost never does this. It’s kind of irritating, actually.
Let your mind run loose a little: Seth is right, you can’t wait for a perfect product or you’d never get anything done in time to take advantage of opportunities. But for some reason you keep thinking of the last time you went biking with Seth. His gloves were in bad shape. He claims he missed a few moves he ordinarily would have made because of a rip in the right glove that was gettiing stuck on the grip. He hates biking without gloves. And he doesn’t want to fix them or replace them. But could the rip really have made any difference? It’s starts to feel like Seth has been boxing himself in a little these days.
And Nita, who is usually pretty prim, is chewing gum and, well, now that you think of it, is looking pretty pissed off.
Now there’s a lot you could do with these details. They don’t lead you to inevitable conclusions. But if you race into strategizing while concentrating only on the usual elements of the argument you would not have taken current conditions sufficiently into account. There are social markers here of who has skin in the game – Nita looks like she’s ready to take some risks today – and who is operating from a position of personal weakness.
You have the luxury – as we do more than we think – of not being called upon to speak right this minute. Most of the time, people just hold their tongues and pretend they’re not listening. What many people tend to do is figure hard on What’s the Right Answer and How to Resolve the Conflict Before Someone Looks Bad.
It’s a kind of If This, Then That thinking pattern. If this is the problem – the timing and goal of the project – then there must be an immediate decision to make.
What I’m suggesting is that you are probably missing a lot of information using the usual techniques of concentrating on what’s exclusively in front of you. If you loosen your focus a little bit and notice the less organized ideas that occur to you, you may discover something new.
I used to walk on the beach in Cape Cod. On the way out to the surf, I passed a shallow, dried puddle. It was grey, like everything else around it; sand, just smoother, more compact than the dunes. As I looked up, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Movement. I looked back and could see nothing. Looking away, I saw it again. So I stopped focusing; instead, I moved my eyes loosely around the terrain and was amazed to discover that there were hundreds, possibly thousands of tiny movements in the sand. Sand crabs. Only gradually was I able to see them by looking directly at them.
Think of The Live Edge approach as a correlate to the now tiresome mantra, Follow Your Passion. It’s this: Follow Your Interest. Trust your mind as a receptor.
