It’s time for this series to reflect inwards as we arrive at our fourth of ten articles on the components of a thinking environment; Ease. And not wishing to be a complete slave the nomenclature, I feel you could reasonably think of this component as mindfulness, or clarity of mind; a state of calm associated with sage-like figures such as the Buddha or the Dalai Lama. Well, that’s what I’ve read into it…perhaps it is best to start with the current official Time to Think® behavioural guide after all, and then we’ll take it from there.
Ease: Discarding internal urgency
Allowing those words to wash over me, I’m hit with a mindset of being, rather than doing; of quieting our rushing minds, filled with unproductive anxieties from our need to be doing, to be liked, to need to know, to need to belong and certainly also our need to be loved. Anxiety around these needs continue to rise in today’s society, as we become far less patient in our pursuit of them. We focus on tools to enable us to do more, better, faster. Social Media creates an immediate expectation around being liked or not liked, and we fall into and out of belonging at the flick of a switch. Meanwhile, with the internet and the likes of wikipedia, a collective infinite knowledge rests at our fingertips. Except when it’s not, and we become frustrated, so acclimated are we to having all the answers in the palm of our hand.
So, internal urgency is on the rise, and we can see this in the rise in interest of potential antidotes. A quick search on google trends shows the meteoric rise of interest in ‘mindfulness’ over the past 10 years, coupled with the equally meteoric rise of mobile phone notifications. As a race, we understand there’s a problem here and we’re clearly searching for a solution. We know we need to reduce our internal urgency for fear that we might otherwise mentally implode.
But why is this state of ease, or mindfulness, so valuable in creating a thinking environment? How exactly does our ability to discard internal urgency enable others to do their finest independent thinking? The question is hard to answer objectively or scientifically, and yet experientially, it feels obvious. Just picture someone paying attention to you. They seem calm, yet fully engaged, at ease with the situation. How do you imagine you might think and feel in this situation? Now picture the opposite, with your interlocutor appearing occupied, distracted and agitated with a sense of urgency, all on edge with a palpable nervous energy. How well are you thinking now? For me, even writing those words I get a sense of what it would feel like; decidedly uncomfortable. Their sense of internal urgency distracts our finest thinking, or worse even, hijacks it. Instead of being able to think for ourselves, we’re left feeling on edge. Because we don’t have access to their mind, we don’t understand their urgency and we’re left wondering, and perhaps even disturbed. However I think about it, I can’t see myself thinking well when confronted by such an entity.
Companies recognise the issue here, which is why they’re increasingly investing in mindfulness courses and morning meditation classes. They establish a mindfulness programme to demonstrate their concern for staff-wellbeing, but the time it takes to be interrupted again by the urgency around them can be just a matter of seconds from the moment they walk out of the room. The logical path would be to find the root cause, rather than just treat the symptom. However, finding the root cause of internal urgency, especially when it manifests differently for different people, feels rather hard to do. Still, I’m not convinced that a group activity or program works well on its own. Instead, a focus on organisational change that can drive long-term shifts in behaviour feels like a necessary condition, and one value that I feel has the biggest potential for change in this regard is our reframing of mistakes as learning opportunities. The damage that our fear of being reprimanded for making mistakes does to our ability to be at ease, and consequently think, and enable others to think at their best, should not be underestimated. Framing mistakes as learning opportunities instead drives a growth mindset, opening up vast opportunities for development.
"Framing mistakes as learning opportunities instead drives a growth mindset, opening up vast opportunities for development."
Another crucial area to drive cultural change is meetings. I firmly believe meetings are the single greatest tangible influencer of company culture because our meetings, by their very definition, are when we come together and form bonds, and if we can make these moments conducive to great thinking, filled with attention and ease, then the effects will ripple through the entire organisation. That’s why I enjoy facilitating meetings in a Thinking Environment, and teaching teams to run their own meetings in this way. It takes the power of mindfulness out of the meditation room, right into where the action is!
But I’ve been distracted from my opening statement. The focus of this article was supposed to be our internal world, where we firmly place the locus of control within us. There will always be external chatter, urgency, and so forth. If we want to bring about change, we have to be the change we want to see. I am drawn then to two further thoughts that might help a sense of ease to pervade deeper into our working lives, and indeed beyond, but starting from the position of self. I’m drawn to the lessons of the Stoics, and specifically Epictetus.
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externalities not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control…”
If we knew that all we could control are our own thoughts and actions, what might those thoughts and actions be. What would they not be? Certainly not wishing that others thought differently, or that others acted differently. Perhaps wondering why they act and think the way they do, but not to wish they did otherwise. Purely to understand them, then return to shape how we think and act ourselves. There’s immense solace here, doing away with all the internal urgency relating to things outside of our control. When we are with someone, willing them to think, our only action should be to pay attention, and our only thought should be excitement on where they will go next. Until they’re done thinking. At which point, they will be blown away by the experience they had, and be hungry to reciprocate. In this way, we’ve driven change by being the change we want to see.
Next, when all sense of ease appears to have departed, and we’re overwhelmed by our mind, we would do well to consider the modern Mindfulness acronym, S.T.O.P.
S is for Stop what you are doing:
Pause your thoughts and actions for a moment.
T is for Take a few deep breaths;
to centre yourself back into the present moment.
O is for Observe what is going on; with your body (what physical sensations are you aware of), emotions (what are you feeling right now?) and Mind (What assumptions are you making? Are they true? What alternative, far more liberating assumptions might you replace them with?)
P is for Proceed with whatever you were doing;
making a conscious, intentional choice to incorporate what you just learned.
And in that learning, and specifically considering the false assumptions that are driving our sense of unease, it’s often so powerful to return to the stoic stance of focusing only on what is within our control. The two ideas work beautifully together, and if repeated with kindness and self-compassion, can become an immensely powerful tool for driving a sense of ease, for ourselves and for those around us.
Finally, it’s worth noting the true nature of urgency. Urgency is a relative mental state, not a fact about the world. In essence, urgency isn’t real, and we know this when we ask, if event x happened, what’s the worst that could happen? The answer is almost always less cataclysmic than we believed it to be. The urgency we sense is a construct of the anxiety of multiple minds, most immediately our own, rather than a statement about the world. Genuine emergencies aside, it’s worth pausing for a moment and considering that idea for a while, and then perhaps we can try not to add to those minds.
Interestingly, I feel uneasy about ending there. It’s a lot to ask, isn’t it. It is inherently human for our minds to worry and so I fear that one could read the above, perceive at a simple and binary instruction, and be rather upset when it transpires that it's really hard to do. But like all the components, ease is a journey; a life-long practice which we will never fully hone, and that’s OK. With ease, more so perhaps than any of the other components, let’s stick with noticing without judgement. So you noticed that you were uneasy. Fantastic. What success! Then you have a moment with another, or on your own, where you feel wholly at ease and free from internal urgency. Also marvellous. All good. We can’t really lose, provided we choose to notice, and that’s all we can ask of others too; that they take the time to notice, so that we can all find a little more time to think.
Want to learn how Ease can lead to shorter, more innovative meetings with even greater buy-in? Book a free 30-minute zoom session today.
Comments