This program weaves together the critical skills for optimal performance, across weeks or months to enable measurable improvement. It consists of six segments that stand alone as well as build on each other.
"Productive insight; clear (often sudden)
understanding of a complex situation." Free Dictionary
Pop the bubble of conditioned
thinking and emerge into the creative realm of "no absolutes," continuous
change, uncertainty and unlimited possibilities.
Then, there can be innovation,
adaptation and optimal performance.
Performance & Open-minded Mindfulness:
Open-minded: questioning everything,
accepting diversity and uncertainty.
Mindful: consciously aware; concentrated.
Foundation for blending process, project,
engagement and knowledge management into a cohesive approach to optimize
performance.
This Newsletter
Our aim is to stimulate the kind of thinking, dialogue and understanding that leads to optimal performance.
Unarguably, we are in chaotic times. As we move from regressive obstructionism and ignorance to progressive enlightenment, there is bound to be disruption. Think of the past, change has always been disruptive, that is its nature, to disrupt the status quo.
Live without a floor beneath or a roof above; no walls; no boundaries.The more we can do that the greater our ability to manage ourselves, our projects relationships and organizations.Not just to get through the change, perhaps thinking that it will all calm down and go back to normal, but to thrive and to seize the opportunity that rapid and significant change brings.
Slowness to change usually means fear of the new. ~ Philip Crosby
In the Rapids
The image of a river with rapids and waterfalls comes to mind as an analogy for the way our lives work. Now we are in the rapids (hopefully there's not a waterfall at the end of this set of rapids).As any river savvy person knows, you have to be a lot more careful and in the moment in the rapids.You need awareness, precision, decisiveness and letting go all at the same time.Once you're in it you're in it, there's no turning back only falling in and being swept away.But even then, out of the boat and in the water there is still, perhaps even more so, the need for being in the moment, aware, precise, decisive while you let go into the rushing water.
Letting Go
What is letting go?It is not being overcome by the emotions to run amok, arms flailing in fear or anger.It is not sinking down into depression.It is loosening the conscious control that gets in the way of our intuitive capacity to act in the moment.Like riding a bike, skiing or surfing.Once you've learned enough with the analytical mind, the body-mind takes the learning and you no longer consciously think "now I will put more weight on my right side to begin my turn."It just happens in real time.
This kind of letting go is what you need in the rapids of chaotic change.
Of course, nothing just happens, there is a sequence of events - thoughts, sensations, evaluations, more thoughts, decisions, actions - taking place in the blink of an eye.The trick is to become expert at observing the sequence of events from a calm place at the center of it all, while being totally immersed in the moment.
Practice
How do we reach the point at which we can comfortably let go into the moment?Whether it is bike riding, skiing or managing changes in your life, it is through practice.We learn and embody the learning.Then we can act spontaneously.
To cultivate the ability to manage in chaotic times practice insight or mindfulness meditation to develop the concentration and moment to moment awareness needed to creatively and consciously take appropriate action.Learn to be an objective observer while being totally engaged in the action taking place in the moment.Embody the insight that everything is subject to change, everything is impermanent.Everything is the result of causes and conditions.
The practice of mindfulness or insight meditation begins with the simple exercise of observing the breath, body or thoughts to build the power of concentration and to cultivate continuous awareness.It is through this awareness that we can avoid the reactive behavior that arises when change confronts us.We can feel the urge to fight or flee and instead of reacting, choose an action that is in keeping with the needs of the current situation.
As we cultivate the ability to objectively observe while not being distracted the insights of impermanence and causation move from intellectual understandings to experiential knowledge.With the combination of these insights, concentrative capability and mindfulness, we become masters of change.
