Part of why I included so many reminders to ‘tune in’ in my Monday routine plan yesterday (which is called in Google Docs ‘Just Do This’ lol) is that it can be really important to nurture the ability to not get caught inside what’s happening to us.
We are at the mercy of what we can’t step back from.
Remembering my spiritual sources, as it were, allows me to somewhat regain during the day who I am when I’m meditating at the beginning and end of the day.
Another question which really helps me is
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What is this an example of?
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I used this today a couple of times in leadership meetings.
Someone came and did a fab presentation about a new initiative. When I noticed it was great, I asked myself, ‘What is this an example of?’
Amongst other things, it was an example of doing ‘upstream’ work which means fewer problems later on. Which, as I type this, is making me think of what we can do in a similar way in the service I manage.
In a different meeting, we discussed our targets and objectives. When I thought about what I was finding hard about this, I realised it was an example of me not being able to find the right level of abstraction, and of us as a group of finding the same levels of abstraction for quite different areas of work.
We somewhat found a way through this by agreeing that we would evaluate if the objective was at the right level by if it felt motivating to us as a stretch.
Asking ‘What is this an example of?’ can help us to see patterns and go up from the specifics to larger categories and lessons. Often this frees us from being lost in the detail to find lessons and freedom to move inside the context that detail exists in.
I find it allows me to breathe freer and, again, remember who I am.
This question is itself an example (SWIDT?) of how we might grow our ability to be bigger than the issues in front of us, and cultivate a more interdependent perspective.
Try it out?