Without it, ideas come from fear and threat; to attack or defend.
The linear goal-setting methods of my past would deem a year since my last post quite a failure! I'm not disciplined, committed, or focused come the judgments.
To the contrary, it's been well worth the time to find heart, resolve interconnected pains and over-responsibility, so a new perspective can be presented without attacking the status quo and reinforcing entropic 1-upping dynamics. The growth has been well worth it for my own health, clarity of purpose, and organization of complex understanding into bitesize pieces. I appreciate the pains that expanded my capacity for complex thinking, for emotional integration...to lead change with kindness so it can be sustained.
Along the way, this account of what brought me here illuminated aspects of the continuum for which I am grateful:
Decades ago, my career began with guiding others on research design using data to make ‘good’ decisions. I walked a fine line of doing what others expected (chemist, accountant, actuary) because I was ‘good’ at math AND needed something with a little zip that fueled my passion. I was attuned to struggles and wanted to make life better for people, yet believed that it had to be done through others. With a masters in statistics, I could guide better uses of data – wherever I wanted to do it.
I’d naturally developed this understanding of myself and others through my growing-up years. This is not judgment nor criticism; simply understanding and perspective. Performing “right” so others felt good (about their teaching, about their relationship to me…) by getting good test scores and winning awards BUT not to the degree of asking teachers hard questions or challenging rules à those would get me their fear face, their dismissal, their judgment.
So from the outside, it looked great. Personally, I wasn’t thriving. This was my version of survival. An achiever part developed when I was young and got me out of invisibility when I could write the alphabet and read at 4. It felt good to come out of invisibility!
As long as I wasn’t too much! Guiding others and helping them was a safe role. Just don’t push too hard. I got pretty good at it. While colleagues hone repetitive standardized processes like Six Sigma and new product ideation, I gravitated to the complex.
Connecting people across the supply chain to seek mutual wins. Share goals across the food industry, government agencies, and academia for the sake of children’s health. Technical and marketing experts across countries to accelerate solution finding to complex problems. Presenting scenarios as the future continued to get unpredictable. I could design and facilitate processes and techniques to move any challenge forward.
It was so fun to watch people flourish! Until it stopped working. People wanted to participate, spent money to travel and then wouldn’t disclose their knowledge. They’d build camaraderie and align on goals bigger than themselves, then not follow through in their organization. We’d map complex systems for common understanding, and they’d later use it to 1-up.
Nonconsciously, my internal system fired that I was the problem. And being scapegoated by unhappy participants reinforced it! My own marriage falling apart sealed it. Clearly, there was something I was missing. I need to figure it out or risk falling back into the abyss. Invisible, again.
To fill my understanding of people, I pursued a master's degree in the root of human dynamic - family systems. Finally! What I’d been experiencing made sense. Nonconscious felt influences that activate survival autopilots…process couldn’t overcome that.
I was ready to take my eureka and notch up the design and facilitation to the next level. The world had another plan – a global pandemic. Lock downs, no getting together, refiguring out work. We were posed as risks to each other (and the implications of that persist…)
I was immensely grateful that the alternative was easy – start up a private practice as a therapist!
Greatly needed. Yet I despised the unhealth of the system, and its tendency to create more, bigger problems in its inability to address root causes of symptoms. Such bad decision-making, further tangled with bureaucracy and rules. So, doing what has gotten me through thusfar, I keep the rule makers happy enough AND do it my way. Be a root cause problem solving systemic thinking therapist that actually helps people feel better, not expect them to cope and manage to get through the day.
Working with complex clients and having a breadth of problem-solving and change facilitation knowledge and skills, I quickly immersed in understanding the complexity of the layers of human functioning. Found pathways for restoration, growth, and thriving. Much of the medical model, education beliefs, parenting practices contribute to our ever-expanding entropy – humans in degradation from within and between.
It’s time to merge being a kickass guide with expanding understanding. Why would I want to keep this expanded model of understanding hidden? Naturally, because it’s ingrained in me to keep me invisible…unless it’s sought by someone else. Sharing for the sake of sharing?? That’s risky.
So I started by having fun with the ideas in my mind. Giving them space to be heard, to rattle around with other ideas in my own mind. It became fun! In January 2024 I wrote a blog about it. It felt so pivotal – after 57 years of believing they were useless.
It took nearly another year of getting from listening to my own thoughts to dumping them out. Disorganized, random connections, all the dancing in my mind is now free. And safety on my own computer! Ha.
It’s time for the sharing. Permission to share ideas without knowing if anyone will find them useful or even care to read. Yet, I deeply believe the potential is limitless, just like it is for all ideas that expand understanding.
I am well aware of the risk: we’ve divulged into a society that feels threatened by different ideas and perspectives. Sadly, part of our entropic spiral has diminished individual capacity for discomfort to grow through differences. Or we've succumbed to not feeling, favoring apathy. Potential for backlash is real and not the holdup. It's natural as my ideas rub against societal belief structures, good ‘medicine’, a multibillion-dollar stress management industry, prevailing leadership models, and entrenched ideologies.
So I’m committing to share them anyway with kind-hearted delivery. That's what I can do. For the one person who finds one nugget useful. So he/she can find a new pathway to restore and flourish - personally, relationally, for their organization, for causes that matter. Might that be you?
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