2-3-4 Friday 29 Dec 2023
‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’
1 thought
Merry Christmas, and a happy new year!
Here’s a question for you.
What’s one idea that has shifted your life this year?
We are not looking for huge, mind-blowing ideas. It can be something as simple as
- Recognising that friends are important
- Learning to push oneself out of one’s comfort zone
You get the idea.
One idea that’s shifted my thinking though is an idea I heard at an organisational development (OD) workshop by Tong Yee’s company And.
One of his facilitators, Yu Ching shared (here I paraphrase),
Sometimes when we enter a system, any system,
what’s necessary is that we intervene,
but don’t linger.
Intervene, but don’t linger.
We all know what it’s like to overstay a welcome.
Stay too long at someone’s home, and they start to mention that they’ve got a long day at work tomorrow.
Or if
you’re with a date, they look at their watch, or worse still, they yawn.
Or at work, we keep trying to change something that’s not ready for change.
During these times, what we want to know, more than most, is a sense of the times.
When our time has come, and when our time is up. A sense
of the seasons.
Like licking your finger and putting it up in the air, and feeling that the wind has shifted.
This may sound conceptual, but here’s what it has meant for me.
It’s meant that with friends, I stop trying to prolong our interactions, setting aside something to go to perhaps 2
hours after the initial meeting, so we leave room for longing. Leave room for missing each other.
Rather than getting sick of each other.
This has implications for our relationships, because its shifting our approach away from a long time, to a good time.
Within systems I try to shift, it’s
meant that whilst I would have seen myself as pushing the change, bringing what I think necessary in front of others, it’s now moved to observing, and holding a safe space.
For you, it may mean that in the workplaces you are part of, in the systems you’re trying to change, rather than taking a combative stance, it may work better to listen and learn, before you insert yourself into the system.
1 talk
Stay, but don’t linger.
1 tip
Deep down, I think we want some parts of our lives to be better.
This may sometimes mean that we push really really hard for what we want,
rather than stopping and thinking,
Hey, what is this thing I’m doing, really doing?
With friends and people we love, it may mean that we stay in their orbit for far too long, trying to get them to see your point of view and to change.
Within the causes we care about, we come to a
point when we challenge, fight and push, and end up getting chewed and spat out by the system.
These are painful experiences to go through.
That’s why this New Year, my question to you is,
where are you lingering for far too long?
It may be time for a change.