Knowing the Game

Knowing what communication game is being played, and how to play it, is fundamental. Like when someone comes home from work and they need to dump. They just need to moan. To whine. To vomit out the bad day. They don’t necessarily need someone to fix the problem. They don’t need to be fed back what has come out. That’s gross. 

Part of communication is often simple observation and attention. We do not always need feedback. Sometimes you need periods where you are just getting stuff done. Feedback-free action. Where you are a little kinder to yourself and just relax into whatever your automatic process is. Trusting yourself. 

In Yoga, you relax into the posture. Sometimes you are stretching hard, but at other times you stop trying and focus completely on deep breathing. Letting your body be where it needs to be without beating yourself up. Do not only have one tool in your toolbox. Planning is both creating a plan, and detaching from that plan. The only thing you can be certain of is that it will not play out in the way you thought. 

Planning is like financial modeling. You can have disdain for the projections and trying to measure everything, because it is so obviously going to be wrong, but sometimes it is still worth doing. Simply as a tool for thinking through problems. We think in stories, and simple things that are wrong still let us nudge towards an understanding of advantages and disadvantages. We can only think in simplifications of reality. Then adjust how we lean into the chaos with different games and tools.