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Month: November 2007

Your frontiers

David Whyte takes about finding the frontiers of your life: the place where you face the unknown in an expansive way. I like the correspondence with Paulo Coehlo‘s horizon.

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Find your angel

For people with a mystical bent or open mind, Paulo Coelho‘s The Valkryies illustrates Csikszentimihaly‘s notion of negotiating the fit between oneself and the environment. Without spoiling the read, I’ve extracted some passages to show the process of remaining engaged with the world around us while we deal with the immediate pressures of life, of overcoming self-doubt, and then of moving forwards taking our cues from the place we are in. Paulo Coelho also has a blog with a daily message here.

Look to the horizon

“Okay,” . . . : I’m going to tell you what it is I wanted you to notice: All the people who passed by in the street were looking down.” (p. 37)

“All of us create a kind of ‘magic space’ around us. Usually it’s a circle of about fifteen-foot radius, and we pay attention to what goes on within it. It doesn’t matter whether it is people, tables, telephone, or windows; we try to maintain control over that small world that we, ourselves, create.” (p. 38)

Second mind

“Sit down, close your eyes, and I will show you what the second mind is,” . . . (p. 28)

“No, no. I want to know whether you’re thinking about something else. Something beyond your control.” (p. 30)

“A melody,” . . . “I’ve been singing this melody to myself ever since I heard it yesterday on the radio on our way here.” (p. 30)

“That is the second mind,” . . . “It’s your second mind that’s humming the song. It can do that with anything. . . . But the second mind is a tough thing to deal with. It’s a work regardless of whether you want it to be.” (p. 30)

“She had two minds. Functioning at the same time.” (p. 31)

“In order to penetrate the invisible world and develop your powers, you have to live in the present, the here and now. In order to live in the present, you have to control your second mind. And look at the horizon.” (p. 32).

“Gene asked her to concentrate on the melody that she had been humming. . . . Chris concentrated. In a few moments, the melody disappeared. She was now completely alert, listening to Gene’s words.” (p. 33)

“Don’t fight your thoughts. . . . Think about what they want you to think about until they grow tired.” (p. 76)

“Be patient, and listen to everything your second mind has to say. Don’t respond. Don’t argue. It will get tired.” (p. 79).

Channel

“Open the channel. Begin to speak.” (p. 87)

Seeking

“What will vanish is the idea that the mountains I have conquered are too small. I will be able to keep alive my love for what I have accomplished.” (p. 98)

Pact with defeat

“I am talking about your pact with defeat”

“We have a contract, you and I: not to win when victory is possible.”

“I have never made any such pact.”

“Everyone has. At some point in our lives. we all enter in to such agreement. That’s why there is an angel with a burning sword at the gates to paradise. To allow entry only to those who have broken that pact.” (p. 112)

“From the moment that you set foot outside,” . . . “promise, in the name of archangel Michael, never again – never again – will you raise your hand against yourself.”

“You will still have many problems in your life, some of them normal, some of them difficult. But, from now on, only God’s hand will be responsible for everything – you will interfere no more.” (p. 133).

“God has the right to destroy me. I do not.” (p. 135)

“He thought of the books he had written, and he was happy. The year would end without any problems – because the pact had been broken. There was no doubt that problems would arise in his work,in love, and along the path to magic – serious problems or passing problems . . . But from now on, he would battle side by side with his guardian angel.” (pp. 135-136)

Accept forgiveness

“God is love, generosity and forgiveness; if we believe in this, we will never allow our weaknesses to paralyse us.” (p. 245)
“Our defects, our dangerous depths, our suppressed hatreds, our moments of weakness and desperation – all are unimportant. If what we want to do is heal ourselves first, so that then we can go in search of our dreams, we will never reach paradise. If, on the other hand, we accept all that is wrong about us – and despite it, believe that we are deserving of a happy life – then we will have thrown open an immense window that will allow Love to enter. Little by little, our defects will disappear, because one who is happy can look at the world only with love – the force that regenerates everything that exists in the Universe.” (pp. 242-242)

Make a bet

I think I’ll probably be infatuated many more times . . . He felt no guilt about it. Infatuation was a good thing. It gave spice to life, an added to its enjoyment.

But it was different to love. Love was worth everything, and couldn’t be exchanged for anything”. (p. 225)

“Do you remember what you said? You said: “Look around, this is my face. I am the place where you are.” (p. 227)

 

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Employees care!

I would be more productive if I had a different boss?

Response

Percentage

No

15.91 %

Yes

40.91 %

Don’t Know

9.09 %

Sometimes I feel that way

27.27 %

Do not Care

2.27 %

N/A

4.55 %

Interesting data from Zimbabwe. Only 1 out of 50 do not care whether or not they would be more productive with another boss.

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Dreaming 2.0

I stumbled this site.  You can look your dreams, tag them, and look at similar dreams from others.

Excellent site to put your anxieties and dreams in perspective.

UPDATE: This is also an example of crowd-sourced psychology, semantic web and visualization.

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Tidy catalogue of pop psychology

Rhetoric, persuasion, listening: pop psychology

For selling, persuading and simple negotiation, have a look at changingminds for a useful miscellany of tips and techniques.

Sensemaking: heavy duty psychology

The psychologist to turn to when we have to lead from the front in times is Karl Weick who gives us the  SIR COPE acronym.

  • Social
  • Iterative
  • Retrospective
  • Continuing
  • Plausible
  • Enacted

Elevator speeches

I think I might spill my drink over someone who actually spouted an elevator speech at me, but what do we say when someone asks us “What do we do?”

Can you stand up in front of 1000 people and state your personal elevator speech in 20 seconds?

Up there in the BEST elevator speeches ever!

What is your vision of the future?

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How important is this employee to your business and how good is your follow-through?

There is a program about restaurants and casinos on Radio 4 at the minute.  It seems chefs in casinos are given every resource and facility to provide better food and service than their competitors.

I wonder how many industries could make the same claim?

 

May 2017:  How many businesses seriously consult their in-house experts about what they can do to advance the collective goal?  How many businesses are running a strategic-game at all?

To rephrase this in terms of contemporary work & organizational psychology research, how many jobs are the most pressing concerns felt by employees to be their specific contribution to the strategic effort?

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Watch list: effectuation

The logic of entrepreneurship.  Is this a term to watch?

UPDATE 2011 (four years since my first post):  Effectuation has become a bigger deal.  It’s even in Wikipedia now.

UPDATE:  Work seems to be going on at this website. They even have a unconference of sorts in December 2009. [which website?]

The papers on this site explain well the tough concept of “Ready Fire Aim”.  From these papers, its possible to translate the concepts of positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship into business practice.

It is also possible to argue logically for a strategic approach based on the level of predictability in the environment.

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Discovering poetry: Shel Silverstein

StumbleUpon kindly threw up this freeform poem of Shel Silverstein. I haven’t read him before. I particularly like What If as a poem for the incorrigibly anxious, and God’s Wheel, for the incorrigibly stable!

For the anxious and catastrophizing

What if

by Shel Silverstein

Last night, while I lay thinking here,
some What ifs crawled inside my ear
and pranced and partied all night long
and sang their same old What if song:
What if I’m dumb in school?
What if they’ve closed the swimming pool?
What if I get beat up?
What if there’s poison in my cup?
What if I start to cry?
What if I get sick and die?
What if I flunk that test?
What if green hair grows on my chest?
What if nobody likes me?
What if a bolt of lightning strikes me?
What if I don’t grow tall?
What if my head starts getting smaller?
What if the fish won’t bite?
What if the wind tears up my kite?
What if they start a war?
What if my parents get divorced?
What if the bus is late?
What if my teeth don’t grow in straight?
What if I tear my pants?
What if I never learn to dance?
Everything seems well, and then
the night time What ifs strike again!

For the incorrigibly complacent

God’s Wheel

by Shel Silverstein

GOD says to me with a kind
of smile, “Hey how would you like
to be God awhile

And steer the world?”
“Okay,” says I, “I’ll give it a try.Where do I set?
How much do I get?
What time is lunch?
When can I quit?””Gimme back that wheel,” says GOD.
“I don’t think you’re quite ready YET.”

 

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David Whyte

David Whyte :  Born in Yorkshire, of Irish descent, David Whyte is a marine biologist, NGO worker, turned poet who writes about our relationship with work

He is a little guarded about his poetry but you can find  odd snippets on the web. If you haven’t encountered his work, I recommend you buy his CD, Midlife and the Great Unknown.

I’ve added a link to his wide range of works on Amazon and listed other posts on this blog related to his work.

LINKS TO OTHER POSTS ON THIS BLOG:

Your frontiers

How our earlier training as psychologists inhibits our understanding of positive psychology

Priorities and goals

The Desiderata

Importance of recreation

Tough concepts in positive psychology: Whose competence is being tested in an interview

Deciding what to do is the hard part. Doing it is the easy part

Hope and the great chasm

Synergy is undervalued

Putting Humpty back together again is the psychologist’s challenge

The Sun – David Whyte

Belonging

Is this a new poem by David Whyte?

Great quotations

Distance lends enchantment to the view

Consider your career shift this weekend!

David Whyte on YouTube

5 poetic steps for exiting a Catch 22!

5 point comparison of Hero’s Journey, Appreciative Inquiry, and Positive Psychology

4 steps to defining the work of a positive, playful, work psychologist!

Is engendering curiosity a pertinent goal for positive psychology?

The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness

Buzzing with expectation

Uni degree.  Then what?

Essential HR in the recession

Psychologists, 2009AD, recession, life

Frazzled? Get a one line job description

Where will you be when this recession ends?

Awakening: A new era begins

We do know how to deal with the unknown

Poets advice for surviving the financial crisis

From anger to effective action

Overcome your fear in 3 steps

3 steps when goals seem out of our reach

3 steps to head off burnout

UPDATE:  I’m happy to add some downloads here linking the poetry, particularly of David Whyte, to contemporary management. Removed.

I am currently reading The Heart Aroused.  I really recommend it as a an overview of modern views on management.  If you mean to get into positive organizational scholarship or positive psychology or the Edge Economy and networked competing supply chains, crowd-sourced solutions and cognitive surplus, you need to read this book.

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