Soaking Deep

We don’t necessarily have to understand our engagement with the world. Yoga talks of three states of consciousness. The three semi-circles you see in the Om symbol. 

The knowledge that is going on in our heads. The embodied knowledge that has soaked so deep, that it is part of our behaviours and habits (which we may or may not even be aware of). The free-flowing knowledge that is in our dream state... our state of processing and connecting and imagining. Our hallucinating walk around the way we experience the world. Where symbols and moments blur. 

Revealed preference is when the combination of our three states leads us to act in a way that may be different from what we say we want. You might say you like little local coffee shops that are different. Then buy your fix at Starbucks. You might say you like independent bookstores. Then buy your books online. 

As creatures, our behaviours are not always consistent with what we say we want. This opens us to manipulation if the way things are framed can change our decisions. The same information with a different story can lead us down a different path. This raises the importance of being able to pause, step back, and reflect on the choices we are making. 

Actions have consequences. Consequences compound. Connecting to each other and soaking deep into future options.

Om Symbol

Sacrificing Awareness

Developing cars that can drive autonomously requires multiple sources of awareness. When we drive, we somehow manage with one set of eyes and ears. We have a brutal internal system of awareness, triage, focus, and context switching. Yogis would argue it is only possible to focus on one thing at a time. The challenge is just that we are wired to take on an incredibly complex world. This means once a habit is engrained, we embody the knowledge. We let it go and move on. This means we are not always aware of ourselves. We often make decisions in isolation. Even when something is important to us, it isn’t necessarily present in our head. We might forget what we enjoy. We might forget what is important to us. We focus on what is in front of us and how we feel at that moment. When we are making decisions, it is not always in the context of everything that is important to us. This is both a strength and a weakness. We can “handle” the chaos that autonomous vehicles are still trying to conquer... plus more. But that handling can sacrifice awareness. 

Autopilot

What Reality Counts

Not everything that counts can be counted. Investment is not a game you play where Risk and Return are knowable and the only two items on the scoreboard. What you do genuinely matters. Fundamentally. It’s not a game. My biggest quibble with wealth creation is the illusion of control and associated arrogance that can arise in people who have “done well”. Like the TV series Westworld where the penny drops about “what are we actually doing here?”, it is easy for us to get fooled by randomness. To see patterns we want to see. To get lost in our own illusions. At times of major crisis, you need to look beyond the numbers. What really matters? What is a distraction? What is the core that will allow you to rebuild? What are you building and why? Throw away the stop watch. The time sheets. The productivity measures. Time and opportunity cost lose their power. Repurpose to meet the challenge.

What really matters?

Through the Waves

I started going to “5Rhythms” classes about 4 months ago. I am a creature of the head, and 5Rhythms is an intentional attempt to shift attention to what it is my body is trying desperately to have heard. Gabrielle Roth started the practice in the 1970s drawing from shamanistic, ecstatic, mystical and eastern philosophy. Pretty much the opposite of my deep soaking. I do remember a phase of “Slain in the Spirit” embodied work in the Church when I was growing up, but it mostly freaked everybody out. To me it felt fake. I desperately wanted to experience God in that way, if it was real, and had a purpose. I wasn’t willing to fake. I didn’t understand the purpose. 5Rhythms isn’t “Slain in the Spirit”. It takes you through waves, trying to connect with the energy and rhythms of your body. Focusing attention in different places. Releasing. Freeing. Giving permission. The Rhythms are Flowing (Feet), Staccato (Hips), Chaos (Head), Lyrical (Hands) and Stillness (Breath). The workshops I go to are about two hours long, and move you through and with whatever emotions you are experiencing. It is powerful work.

By Default

The law is changing in the UK, so that all citizens are organ donors should they die. By default. You can opt out if you want to. Evidence shows that that is how we make most of our decisions. By default. This is largely how we solve the work problem. By getting a job. That outsources what we have to do, and means that (by default) we get up every week day and pitch up to work. It also means we look for work. We create work. Work for work’s sake. There is no minimum wage for your time when you have sold it all. This means you stop making the decision about whether individual units of energy are worth expending. Work expands to fill the space. This all makes sense. Consciously deciding on things is hard. It is why we embed our habits. It is why in the areas we claim mastery, we are able to act at a much deeper level than conscious decision making. The key is awareness. Knowing what your defaults are, and if you are comfortable with that. Otherwise… change the laws you make for yourself.

Savour v Seek

Before the year 1800, the world was very different. There were less than 1 Billion of us. Although scattered around the world speaking different languages, our day to day lives were not that dissimilar. Different rituals, beliefs and ways of seeing, but we were mostly poor, illiterate farmers. One way to describe what has happened since then is massive, unsustainable, growth. In a world of farmers, idleness is a significant vice. You need every hand available to assist in the fight for survival. That deep-rooted driver to be 'doing something productive' - meant less conscious sitting, conscious breathing, conscious discussion. There was work to be done. We spent the last 200 years growing out of scarcity. Much of the work we need to do over the next 200 years will be growing into abundance. Learning to savour rather than seek.

Who are you?

I find shows like West World, and Black Mirror, disturbing because they seem not that detached from reality. When they start dipping into what it means to be human. A book which also messed with my head is Homo Deus. Part of what it looks at, is how people and Artificial Intelligence will interact. Where will decisions be made? 

Right now, the lowest unit of decision making is the individual. But we all know we have a committee of competing desires (long term, short term, rational, emotional, cultural) in our head. What happens when decision making gets pushed down a level? What happens when decision making gets co-ordinated as we extend our ability to communicate? What happens when we hand over different parts of control?

When we start seeking out 'who we really are', and 'whether we have free will', things get messy. These questions drive us forward. Motivate us. West World simplifies that down to Three Key Drivers and a Backstory. This allows our days to be a loop. A bunch of habits that we repeat every time we wake up. Then, depending on how we get bumped by the world, we respond.

What Drives You?

What is your Backstory?

What is your Narrative?

This is how I understand Free Will and Privilege. Like a Galton Board/Bean Machine where we are presented with a number of choices. This creates the illusion of us being in control, because we feel like we are choosing to go left or right many times a day. The choices are presented to us by the world. We can't break the rules of physics, or the society we are in. Where we start - country, region, city, parents, wealth - matters.  Our drivers matter. Our backstory matters. Our narrative matters.

Bean Machine/Galton Board

Scheduled Conversation

In business, people spend a lot of time consciously relationship building. I made a point of staying in regular written contact, as well as face-to-face as often as possible. I am not as deliberate in my personal relationships. It  has always felt like friendship should be more 'natural'. More fluid. The reality is that life can swallow us whole if we let it. Deliberate reminders help trigger contacts. It is no coincidence that more people remember birthdays now that Facebook has started helping us out. Whatsapp groups also do the trick if one person remembers. I am part of a support group that meets twice a month, and have started trying to get into the habit of setting a time to meet with a few of my other friends. Consciously putting aside an hour to Skype. Good relationships require work, time and effort. Otherwise our irregular meetings are just a celebration of a memory.

Personal relationships also need weeding

'Sapiens' by Yuval Noah Harari

Yogis believe everything we see is Maya. An illusion that clouds reality. How we see the world is our story. The closest we can come to truth as beings that think by separating and connecting ideas. Through categories and boundaries. Harari's 'Sapiens' is a history of our shared stories. The layer of meaning we add to what we experience to help it make sense, and help us function in a very confusing world. Through Empires, Religion, Nations, Money, Science and various other tools of communication, our worlds have become more connected. Our consciousness more shared. This is a powerful book to read for anyone interested in community building, or how and why we interact.

Empty Chairs

I asked a buddy to write a guest post the other day and he said he would leave the navel gazing to me. He is working in South Sudan where things are not looking particularly optimistic. I may talk a big game repeating scenes from Braveheart and Gladiator but it is guys like Guy who get on with helping out on the front lines. I asked him if there was a book I could read to get to understand the issues more. He said he doesn't know much about that, but 'I do know landmines and unexploded ordnances'. I do feel particularly lucky that I am able to pontificate about happiness from the comfort of various coffee shops around the world. While I may think the first response to someone who is less than happy is 'Are you exercising?', that does assume they are not afraid of not making it to the end of the day alive.

Today's global coffee shop is Beat Street Cafe in Christchurch. New Zealand is far from the troubles of a South Sudan. The people are friendly. You feel very safe. They love rugby. They aren't going to spoil the party by beating South Africa in the cricket semi-final. Basically, Kiwis are sweet as. Even then, stuff does go wrong. Wandering the city on my first night here was sobering. Over the course of 2010-2012 the city was struck by a number of earthquakes. Christchurch is one of four cities in the world where the CBD is designed as a square of four avenues with complementing city squares and surrounding parklands. The other three of the same design are Philadelphia, Savannah and Adelaide. Over 1000 buildings in the CBD, between those four avenues, were destroyed following the earthquakes. 185 people died. There is a powerful temporary art sculpture with a white chair for each of those lost.

185 empty chairs commemorate those lost in the 2011 earthquake

Every now and then we can be pulled out of navel gazing with a slap to the face. Someone we love can be torn from us by disease, our entire city can be shaken or one of the good guys might not get to the unexploded landmine before we do. Ideally we don't need these traumatic events to shake us into consciousness. A certain amount of pondering is needed to think about what and who matters to you, but then you need to get on with it.

Llandudnoitus

It helps to live in a city like Joburg or London before you live somewhere like Cape Town. Or at least find a way to form some of the immediacy habits of busy (and productive) people before you dive into awesomeness. I lived in Cape Town for about four years before the arrival of my brother lead to a visit to Llandudno beach. He has never let me live that or the over sized nature of my head down. When you live in Cape Town, a trip to the other side of the mountain is a very long way. Speaking of the mountain. Have you climbed it? I would love to see stats of the answer to that question from people who live in Cape Town vs. people who visit it. I suspect for many natives of the mother city it is 'I will one day'.

There is something about rarity or limited opportunity that makes us act. As soon as things are plentiful we seem less able to value them in the same way. Perhaps our fear of missing out is the incentive that drives us when we just have one chance. A more positive way of thinking of it may be that we just lack the triggers? We can build triggers.

I am visiting a friend in Whangarei, New Zealand. Last night we visited some of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen. My mate had come to the beach a few times but seemed as struck by Matapouri as I was, unsure why he didn't come more regularly. He does go to another beach every weekend so it is not quite my Llandudnoitus. It did remind me of what I call the 'Sitting on Memstone' dilemma. Memstone was a memorable place with incredible views on my university campus. Unless you were hungry and distracted. Then it was just a place you walked past on your way to meals.

Sometimes we need triggers of limited time or visits from friends to knock us into consciousness. We can do it ourselves by creating checklists. We value spontaneity though. Using checklists feels a little outsourcing our decision making.

But if it leads to more of the good stuff, perhaps admitting the need for a little help is worth it. Maybe simply writing a list of the things you would like to do and people you would like to see is enough. Write it each night and then throw it away. You are still the boss.

Matapouri Beach, New Zealand