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PRINCIPLES in BUSINESS: the principles that shape exceptional organisations

MESSAGE BOARD: Issue 12. November 2008

Hello and welcome to the November 2008 Message Board from PiB, the 12th in our series of monthly news and articles on corporate life, leadership and of course, the 3Ps approach. If you missed previous Message Boards, you can retrieve them from the PiB Message Board Archive.

As usual, my appreciation for the thoughtful comments on these Message Boards. I will be taking some family leave from 20 November and will return 2 December; but I will still be monitoring my email so please feel free to email your comments during that period.

In the meantime, enjoy this issue... peace, David.

IN THIS ISSUE

News & Events in Perth
Saturday 6 December 2008: The Living Philosophy Snapshot Series: Living Resilience

The Message Board Feature Article
This month we are looking at the notion of Thinking Better. Often people say that they need to get a grip on their thinking (that they should somehow 'control their thoughts'). They say "I need to think more positively" or "I have such a poor attitude towards him. I need to change it if I want a better relationship." Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (a widely accepted evidence-based psychotherapy for many disorders) encourages this change our thinking but for PiB, wanting to change is the only first step, indicating that the thinker has begun to recognise the influence of his or her thinking. More food for thought...

We Are What We Do
Our regular column with insightful ideas to reflect on...

Subscriber & Privacy Information

NEWS & EVENTS in PERTH

Perth readers who have travelled the 3 Principles road with us will remember our very popular half-day Snapshot and ten week Introductory Courses at the Midland Centre. They were a wonderful exploration of the 3 Principles for small groups and I have received a number of requests to conduct similar courses again. In response, I am delighted to invite you to attend the first of our Saturday Morning Snapshot Courses: Living Resilience.

Living Resilience is an opportunity to explore, expand and discover the dynamics that allow human beings to live from the core of their (naturally resilient) nature. In today's uncertain times, we can all benefit from the simple truths of the 3 Principles approach...

! Snapshots are relaxed, interactive and informal events so group sizes are limited... to join us, register yourself or a small group of friends by clicking the link below:

The Living Resilience Snapshot Saturday 6 December 2008

THE MESSAGE BOARD FEATURE ARTICLE

Thinking Better (or "I really have to learn to think better")

For me, cartoons sometimes convey wisdom long after the next page is flicked over. They invite us to think again, before the moment of insight is lost. Beyond their momentary humour, cartoons usually contain deeper psychological meaning, illustrating the human dilemmas we face and become caught up in...

"Getting a Grip on your Thoughts"

Often people say that they need to control their thoughts or get a grip on their thinking, "I need to think more positively" or "I have such a poor attitude towards him. I need to change it if I want a better relationship." Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (a widely accepted evidence-based psychotherapy for many disorders) encourages this change our thinking but for PiB, wanting to change is the only first step, indicating that the thinker has begun to recognise the influence of his or her thinking. Once we see the connection between our thinking, feeling and behaviour, we tend to want to change our thinking, our life-long conditioned habits of judging, criticising and analysing, placing expectations on ourselves or others (and the many other habits we innocently build over a lifetime). The results often resemble the inner battle our man in the cartoon is experiencing. Every human being has a capacity to create thoughts, attitudes, views on how life is etc. - and this capacity can serve us to live happy and healthy lives. PiB calls this capacity the PRINCIPLE OF THOUGHT.

This same capacity can create a mental nightmare of self-condemnation (or condemnation of others), hopelessness, helplessness and anger. "She doesn’t like me!" "I wish I wasn't so fat." "You’ve stuffed up again" "You'll always be a loser!" ...on and on. When we become angry, frustrated, stressed and overwhelmed by circumstances we sometimes feel our heads will explode, and in many ways they do.
In desperate moments our mind (and our thinking in particular) has a life of its own. Yet, what are we to do? Knowing that it is our thinking does not help. In fact, it makes it worse. All our efforts to change our thinking are yet another burden for our frazzled minds.
PiB asserts that every human being has a natural innate mental health. That is not to say that we are never going to have a bad hair day! What we say is that psychological health is built into our being. When the distress is over we return to calmness - we are at ease with what is at that moment, and this ability to regain our equilibrium is our innate psychological health. What grounds do we have to make such an assertion?

Well, put simply, Nature (the cosmos) has an energy that is expansive, generative, abundant, self-creating and evolutionary. Human beings are part of this powerful energy as LIFE UNFOLDING. So we assume (yes, just another thought or belief) that human beings are part of life unfolding, and our experience of that is determined by a psychological function called THOUGHT. We are not just thinking our unfolding life, we are experiencing it. This capacity to experience is call CONSCIOUSNESS - the mysterious capacity to know that we live… and experience it in this very moment. Moreover, to varying degrees we are able to understand that it is our thinking that brings forth our uniquely personal experience of life. Consciousness is about our understanding THAT WE THINK.

But Back to the Guy at the Bus Stop...

We all know moments like this - when we want desperately to change our thinking - knowing that our attitudes, beliefs, views, etc. are not serving us well. We want to be more open-minded, less judgmental, more ready to look positively on situations. But no matter how firm our resolve, our habits seem so strong, so entrenched, and so unmoveable. So let me ask you this...

When you are at the bus stop, or talking to your children, partner or boss (whatever it is); are you present, or preoccupied with a thousand habitual thoughts? You see, when we are present, rather than in the heat of battle as it were, that 'presence' sets the stage for us to acknowledge and set aside our insatiable drive 'to think'. Or to put it another way, to the degree we are present, we experience life first-hand.

"To the degree we are present, we experience life first-hand. We see, smell, hear and feel life unfolding in the here and now."

Next time you are at the bus stop, see, smell, hear and feel life unfolding in the here and now.

Until we see that we think and become more conscious of SEEING our own wandering and absorbed thinking, we will always struggle to find a more open and willing mind in times of stress.

The NOW is an uncluttered mind, a focused mind, a mind free of fixation on what we are thinking and open to the generative power of just BEING. As we grow in experiencing each moment more of the time, the self-imposed battles and frustrations of our thinking diminish, because our ordinary moments will be in the NOW - not in the life of preoccupation.

© David Bodman 2008.

Permission to copy for personal use is granted. For other publication rights please contact the author.

WE ARE WHAT WE DO

"‘Sorry, can’t stop!" "My head is about to explode!" Constantly on the move, going from one meeting to the next, lunch on the run or worse, missed lunches entirely and a weakened body. Every moment in earnest anticipation, my speech hurried. Listening? No time for that particular luxury! Daily demands loom large and decisions I wish I hadn’t made propel me from one stumbled moment to another. Take five minutes out? Definitely a bridge too far. My feelings are raw and palpable...

There is a lesson here and a question: am I up for being the student in this moment?

I see the impossible and yet I am called to a new moment of possibility. Called to recognise my irritation with listening. Called to find once more the intention to listen, really listen. Called to see that my speech has moved into prattle, and called to pause and regain some inner poise. Called to wake up to how blind I am to my body’s voice - the voice which is telling me to be in silence, rest for a moment. Perhaps the hardest moment... to set aside the thunderous and chaotic movement of my thoughts and know that beyond the chaos there is a resilient and wholesome person with all the resources I need to meet every circumstance.

The call to be students: open, curious, thirsty to explore what we don't yet understand... it is in every moment.

Until next time... David

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