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Dynamic
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In this month's issue:
The Resident Quotation is repeated with each issue. It is chosen for its directness and clarity, and for its ability to combine thought and a basis for action in a way that is both reassuring and empowering. The current Resident, from the innovative, courageous and dynamic dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, exemplifies the essence and context of living dynamically: "There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. "It is not your
business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor
how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep
it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do
not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep
yourself open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open."
On May 13th, my wife Susan and I are leaving Santa Fe and moving to Brighton, UK. Although this is a major geographical move for us, in terms of service it should be almost invisible to my telephone and email clients. The major difference will be due to the effects of the change of time zone. In terms of contact details:
You
can probably expect a hiccup or two in my speed of response as the
time for moving grows nearer. I will be taking the week of May 11-18
as a settling-in period. Normal service will resume on Monday, May
19th.
Mary hates herself because she's short and rounded; Robert despises his narrow chest and receding chin; Yvonne detests her curls; Colin abhors being bald. We all know these people and sympathize with them because they are ourselves. We wouldn't spurn Mary, Yvonne, Robert or Colin for their physical characteristics and - unless we're having a bad hair day or using our looks as a focus for deeper issues - we wouldn't seriously condemn ourselves, either. Sadly, we are not so sanguine when it comes to other kinds of characteristics: "I'm no good with money."; "I'm frightened to speak in public."; "I'm hopeless at spelling."; "I can't count for toffee."; "I get tongue-tied in groups."; "I'm much too emotional." These are the kinds of psychologically-related self-criticisms we use to embed the 'should be able to' knife deeply into ourselves. Even more sadly, society generally isn't very compassionate around these traits. Especially with the celebrity focus so prevalent today, it's easy to believe we have to be world-class comedians, orators, models, and academics just to get a job as a teller at the local bank. Organizations themselves perpetuate this nonsense by requiring job applicants to make presentations and/or write thousands of self-justifying words even when the job in question has no need for speaking or writing skills. In this environment, it's too easy to be genuinely disheartened and disempowered by our perceived inadequacies. This feeling is worsened if we try to improve ourselves and still fall short of what we perceive we 'should be'. There is a way, however, to bring the same level of acceptance (hopefully high) to our psychological characteristics as to our physical ones. This, quite simply, is by knowing what we are and recognizing the impossibility of being what we are not. Just like coming to terms with our physical being, we can hold up a mirror to our psychological selves, assess our relative strengths, and learn to love the overall blend of features. To help us in this task, the world is full of readily-accessible tests for self-revelation. They range from early forms of personality assessment such as astrology to more recent ones such as Jung's personality typing and the variant tests based on it. Many of you have completed the one on my website: http://www.santafecoach.com/Ptest/the%20DLC%20ptest.htm. These tests are accurate within a reasonable tolerance. There are many available free on the Internet or at low cost in paperbacks. The more of them you take, the more you will balance out individual test idiosyncrasies and recognize your true self appearing repeatedly before you. When the tests reveal aspects of yourself you don't like or recognize, take another look at yourself: it's unlikely that tests that are generally accurate will contain huge deviations, especially if the unliked feature recurs across different tests. Stay true to type Peter Drucker, a genius on matters of management and life itself, says: "Give your resources to your opportunities." This simple piece of advice is one we seem to find extraordinarily hard to follow. It means we benefit most when we put our effort into things we do well. Too often, we make huge investments in trying to fix things we don't do well rather than profiting easily from what we do successfully. Imagine the state of the forest if every oak tree were struggling to be a mushroom. The notion is absurd. Yet this is just what happens when philosopher-types try to be salespeople, artist-types try to be administrators, and regimental-types try to be social workers. They tend to be unhappy or they do a poor job. If they're naturally competent, they will do a good job but be unable to sustain it. To repeat a couple of lines from the last issue: "Dynamic living is about increasing our conscious awareness and developing congruence, integrity and flexibility. This enables us to pursue the path which seems most honorable and beneficial both for ourselves and for the wider society." A vital part of this is taking our psychological type seriously, discovering it and acting on our discoveries. Then we can love ourselves for our littered desk (INTP-type) or our tidy workshop (ESTJ-type). And then we can enjoy others' revealing features too, and stop scorning them for having the psychological equivalent of a large nose.
Learning to live with 'Stupidity' We've all said it, often with additional expletives: "How could they be so stupid?!" "They" are often in authority - the government, the boss, the school board - but they can also be peers or subordinates. It seems that friends, spouses, children, and employees are all capable of behavior that strikes us, uncharitably, as 'stupid'. For gifted individuals, as for all those who are unafraid to see that the emperor is indeed naked, living in a 'stupid' world is particularly painful. Many things that could improve life are so obvious and yet so overlooked. This article takes a look at the reality behind 'stupidity' and what we can do to reduce its impact on ourselves. 'Mediocrity Rules': Get used to it! If you’ve ever felt that this is a mediocre world society run by and for mediocre people, you deserve credit for your readiness to see the truth, even when it hurts. After all, if everyone in the world is to survive, its tasks and requirements have to be manageable by very nearly the least capable among us. That means they are unlikely to challenge or produce results that consistently satisfy the healthy demands of the most highly-resourced individuals. P.T. Barnum famously declared that no-one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public. That same observation applies equally to the world at large, with the result that those motivated by money and temporal power focus their efforts on the lowest common denominator. This doesn’t leave much over for those who would prefer something more challenging than a night out at "Jurassic Park" followed by a Big Mac. A basic principle The sad truth inherent in the above example helps to explain why the more able or visionary among us feel so lonely, rejected and undervalued. We are genuinely in a minority, thinly distributed among much greater numbers of humans with less of every quality - thoughtfulness, integrity, reflectiveness, vision, insight, etc - we hold dear. This sounds shocking to those of us brought up to believe in democracy and the belief that we are all equal. However, equal rights to exist as best we can are not the same as equal personal resources. Those are in the hands of mother nature, the universe, or God, depending on your preference, and they are not evenly distributed or evenly applicable. Those most richly endowed with personal gifts are in a minority, so it is unlikely that they will predominate in power or even influence. It seems as if they should - after all, evolution alone might be expected to prefer the exceptional over the ordinary - but evolution, like democracy, takes a more cautious middle path. It’s just not fair! And it can be painful to endure. What makes it hurt? The reason for the pain can be shown by example. A good many sci-fi films have included a sequence in which a robot, given two opposing instructions, goes into a spin shouting: "Does not compute!" and eventually blows its own head off. Our human equivalent is called ‘cognitive dissonance’ - the attempt to hold two opposing ideas - and it causes us great pain. You can see the signs of this in someone given conflicting instructions. Perhaps they’ve been told they have to produce a piece of work by a given time and simultaneously informed that an essential resource is unavailable to them. They stop in their tracks, wrinkling their forehead, scrunching their face, scratching their head. They’re simultaneously stressed and perplexed. And it hurts. I believe a similar pain is caused when we experience the conflict between what we can see of how life could be and how it actually is. Call it: ‘existential dissonance’. Of course, the reality is that it can’t be other than the way it is, but this doesn‘t mean that our visions are based in unreality. My sense is that we typically incorporate the tools and structures that are already to hand when we develop our visions of a practical utopia. It makes it all the maddening when ‘they’ get it wrong. Our task is to find a way to live with this painful reality.
The graph of this normal distribution is a continuous, symmetrical, bell-shaped curve. Frequencies tend to concentrate around the median and become fewer and fewer at either end, resulting in a frequency curve which is high in the middle and low at the ends.
n x x x <------Value of whatever's being measured------> The numbers at the bottom don’t mean anything. They are simply to be used for reference. The 50 mark is the median, where 'most people' predominate. Those at the A end of the curve have less of whatever is being measured than most, while those at the B end have more. You could imagine the bell as a moving entity, going to the right. Whatever it encounters, the B end (where the the pioneers and early adopters live) finds it first, the bulk meets it a little later, and the tail reaches it last. Thus inventions form in the mind of the inventor (B), then reach the university research lab, then trickle into industry research labs before finally finding their way out as products into the mass of the public. Late adopters - the A end - will acquire 'the latest things' just before they turn obsolete. The point of this bell curve is that it applies to everything. It can be the distribution of intelligence, or integrity, or independence or autonomy or awareness; it can be physical capabilities or IQ or EQ. It stands to reason that if you are of exceptionally high intelligence, integrity and intellectual courage, then you are going to be sitting right up at the front end of the bell curve of those qualities. That would mean you're likely to be pretty lonely. It means you're not going to be immediately understood by more than a handful of fellow humans. Worse, it means your contribution probably isn’t going to be valued by many people because most of the world (all those 'behind' you on the curve) won’t recognize its significance. If you want to maximize your chances of being rich, happy and successful in every way, make sure you’re born into a space round about the 60 mark. Then you’ll be just ahead of the masses sufficient to profit from them coming along just behind, and not so far ahead that their relative lack of vision will bother you too much. A practical example of the impact of the normal distribution is my practice. The psychological types who predominate among my clients and contributors to this ezine are the IN** types and those numerically close to them. Those four types, out of a possible sixteen, total only 10-14 percent of the USA and probably world population. This means my constituency is only about a quarter of the size it would be if we were ES** types, who add up to nearly fifty percent of the population. It also means that if you are an IN** type, you must look harder to find like-minded individuals to partner with at work or home. (You might find them among the varied gatherings of those classified as 'core cultural creatives'). Generally speaking, however, if you feel lonely it's probably because you’re seriously outnumbered by people who don't think or feel like you at all. What to do about it? Such an imbalance calls for a considered response. I feel sure that as children we were all full of our greater vision and insight and shouted it loudly from the school desk or the dining table. Until, that is, we learnt that it wasn’t wanted. Then we went into a state of hurt and resentment and a sort of ongoing bafflement as to the nature of these weird people who couldn’t - or wouldn’t - see the obvious. Sometimes, our caretakers were so blind they actually put us at risk. Pretty scary. This brought additional intensity into our experience of existential dissonance. Often, we would compensate by assuming it was we who were wrong in every way. Today, we can easily find ourselves in similar positions: with workmates, acquaintances, and even our spouses. This is very troubling, recreating the old mix of pain and frustration at not being able to make ourselves understood. Managing this pain is much easier if you can find yourself in a mental and emotional place of lowered expectations, both for yourself and for others. Some of these thoughts might help move you there: * Remember, wild animals that are outnumbered and not respected by the rest of the animal kingdom tend to lie low until they‘re sure it‘s safe to proceed. Self-protective IN-types do likewise! * Recognize where your understanding is on the bell curve and accept the fact that those more than a short distance behind you are simply never going to understand what you‘re talking about. Yes, this does have huge implications. * Acknowledge your difference to yourself and don’t try to bring the full force of your competence to bear in an environment designed for less-resourced individuals. It can only bring you grief. * Accept that you aren’t going to change the world of mediocrity you’re forced to live in. Find a task space, a hobby or preferably a career, where you can genuinely stretch yourself and be challenged by the possibilities. This is easier for academically-oriented individuals than for action-oriented ones. * Be ready to discoverand acknowledge the aspects of life in which 'they' sit further toward the front of the curve than you do. In acceptance, perhaps, or courage or pragmatism, or physical strength. * Accept that in a couple, the person further back in the curve, no matter what the subject, is going to set the operating standard. This is because the one behind cannot easily adjust their position forward, but the forward-dweller can operate at a stage further back. In real terms, this control-from-the-rear dynamic is often seen in couples whose risk-tolerance is widely divergent. There, the most risk-averse partner controls risk-related issues and can apparently prevent the readier risk-taker from achieving his or her goals. * Don’t make the mistake of believing that your competence can compensate for a work- or love-partner’s relative incapacity. Forward-dwellers are often so lonely they underestimate their own exceptional qualities and embrace less adequate others, mistakenly believing they can fill the gap or bring their partner on. Sooner or later, this breeds resentment and ongoing recrimination, resulting in partnership breakdown. * Recognize that the wayward behaviors that forward-dwellers are prone to - such as addictions, eating disorders, alternative sexual practices, compulsions, paranoid responses and reclusiveness - are a natural response to being in a very difficult position. These behaviors may not make it any easier to make friends, but they aren't anything to be ashamed of in themselves. * Most of all, don’t blame yourself for what you cannot change. Recognize that your powers to effect change are disproportionately small compared to your vision and understanding and that you didn’t make it this way. Push where you can but don't blame yourself if the wall doesn't budge. Put real effort into finding others like yourself and be creative in your adaptations to life in what amounts to an alien world. * Trust the universe to know best. One of my favorite bumper stickers reads: "Don't believe everything you think." Like many people who sit and think a lot, I have a tendency to imagine I have a personal line to the truth. ('Eureka' moments come so much more frequently if you don't risk exposing them to others' inspection!) However, it's worth remembering that all our 'thought' is just conjecture. None of us have the superior perspective to truly understand this universal system that's been chugging along contentedly for around 14 billion years. * Oh yes: a healthy sense of humor helps, too. Summary One of the intrapersonal dynamics I encounter very frequently is when a client has seen something clearly yet has had their observation refuted. Alone, perhaps even disparaged, they then attempt to explain it away to themselves as some error of their own. In order to live the life and produce the work of which only you are capable, you must develop a substantial faith in your right to your own judgment. A good starting point for this is to accept that you feel differently and see differently for a good and natural reason: you are different. As you grow in confidence and articulation, you will find others of like mind who will respect and appreciate you, just as you do them. Your peers are not plentiful but they are there. Don’t be afraid to let them know about you, too. Then the blindness of so much of the world won't seem so painful. cjc
"Accept,
then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if
you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it
your friend and ally, not your enemy."
Eckhart
Tolle,
non-denominational spiritual thinker and author of: "The Power
of Now."
Copyright ©2003 by Christopher J. Coulson. All rights reserved. Christopher
J. Coulson |
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