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A Default of Privilege

Become comfortable with discomfort.

It might sound good as a hashtag or on a T-shirt, but the above statement is utterly impossible. Discomfort is of course, by definition, not comfortable.

It’s one of the reasons we have default settings. They are comfortable. They save us time and mental energy. They eliminate conscious choice. To move away from them requires deliberate decision. As Dr. Jason Fox explains, our default is “selected automatically unless a viable alternative is specified.” Continue reading “A Default of Privilege”

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Spaciousness

On February 27, 2020, I was sitting in a workshop in Melbourne, Australia and wrote this in my notebook:

That’s what I was craving at the time. Some breathing room, both in real and symbolic terms.

Be careful what you wish for! Two weeks later, my calendar was virtually empty. Ten trips cancelled; more than twenty projects postponed. Continue reading “Spaciousness”

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The Sound of Silence

In a meeting last week, an Italian colleague commented to me that our Canadian Prime Minister sure knows how to use the power of silence, and that world class facilitators know the same thing.

In case you missed it, here’s the clip Gerardo was referring to. It clearly made the rounds worldwide:

Silence in a meeting can make us uncomfortable. Continue reading “The Sound of Silence”

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Stressful Gratitude

Throughout this period of lockdown, I’ve been so looking forward to the collective waves of gratitude that we’d experience, just as we’ve lived through the pandemic restrictions collectively. Small things we’d taken for granted would be cause for celebration.

While that has partly been true as various constraints have recently been eased where I live, a more dominant emotion in me and those close to me has been stress. Continue reading “Stressful Gratitude”

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Influencing Change

“How many problems in our lives and in society are we tolerating simply because we’ve forgotten that we can fix them?”[1]

This week I’ve been reading various books on the subject of influence. How people change their behaviour, and how other people can persuade them to do so. So timely.

Jonah Berger’s book The Catalyst is framed this way, “Rather than asking what might convince someone to change…start with a more basic question: Why hasn’t that person changed already?”[2] Continue reading “Influencing Change”

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