Perspective – U-Turns
Change requires a commitment to success. If you have been stuck for some time and are moving towards what you want to achieve, your commitment will be tested. There are pitfalls awaiting the adventurous.
Being productive, healthy and successful can make us feel fulfilled and happy about who we are and where we are going. Strangely, we may register this as a loss. Here is why. Suffering and being stuck can invoke strong feelings of sympathy from others. This attention can be quite addictive. So much so, that after all our preparation and hard work, when the break happens and the door opens; we are overcome by an overwhelming wave of indifference and incompetence. We compare ourselves with the task and others in our field. We are distracted by problems to solve. We engage in busy work. So we feel an urge to give up.
We may play into this comforting, warm place of victimhood. “Yes I would love to try out for that position or that post but you see I am so damaged. I just don’t know if I can.”
The illustration comes from the album cover for “20 years of Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and was painted by Ruth Phelps.
Our quest is to leave behind safe, secure, compelling victimhood. It is to step forward, into who we are. And to succeed we must watch for this self-sabotage.
You can read the full article here.
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Technique – Your Inner Team
Scientific literature solidly demonstrates the existence of the unconscious. Conscious and unconscious thought and feelings operate in parallel. The mental process that deals consciously with reality is ‘The Ego’. The ego does its best to translate the expectations of the unconscious into decisions and actions. However, conflict between conscious and unconscious processes often leads to inexplicable behaviour, causing us to compromise our intentions.
Consider the ego as a composite of different personalities. In “True Purpose” author Tim Kelley refers to these characters as our inner protectors. And for each of us they may be different. However there are some key archetypes we each carry to some degree:
- Protector: who keeps you from putting your life in danger.
- Image consultant: who censors your speech, turnout and hygiene.
- Critic: who inspires us to higher standards, higher ambition and constant improvement.
- Sceptic: who demands evidence.
And
- Wounded Child: The one the inner team are trying to protect.
The graphics are the work of Danny Beck, an artist working in the video game industry who kindly allowed me to pick the characters from his online gallery. You can see some of his creatures and some of his beautiful figure drawings in Danny’s online gallery.
Some of the personalities came with the package. In “Outliers” Malcolm Gladwell refers to research that indicates there is an inherited, cultural component to our psyche. Others have developed during our lifetime.
It is possible to engage with these personalities, at the fringe of our consciousness, who manage so much of our perceptions and energy.
You can read a brief description of a suggested process for working with your inner team, here.
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A Small Adventure – Graphic Recording
This month the small adventure happens in the space between my two worlds.
Earlier this week I worked with a team of graphic recorders, pulled together by Melanie Kiley of Symphonia, for a World Café workshop run by David Isaacs here in Cape Town. Our role was to graphically illustrate the ideas raised in the Café sessions. I had the privilege to work with Sonja Niederhumer who has studied this field in a Masters degree in Sweden, Brandan Reynolds who produces cartoons for Business Day, Weekend Argus and Rapport as well as Xolani Majola, a young up-and-coming artist from Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape who hopped on a bus over the weekend to be there for the event. Good company all.
In order to show the organiser relevant work, I loaded some of the drawings I did in my church to illustrate sermons. Here is the drawing I did of the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears before pouring a jar of perfume on them.
Later I did a small watercolour of the same scene. Which you can see here.
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© 2011 Stephen Quirke, All rights reserved. You are free to use material from this Conversaction newsletter in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear. The attribution should read: ”By Stephen Quirke of StrategyWorks. Please visit Stephen’s web site at https://www.strategyworks.co.za/ for more resources on how to hold effective conversations in your organisation.” (Please make sure the link is live if placed in an eZine or in a web site.)
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