When things happen the right way, will you let them?

“Can you allow things to happen the right way?”

This question crossed my mind while listening to a session about mindfulness by John Kabat-Zinn at Google.

I got a picture in my mind of a friend of mine who’s constantly worrying at work. It’s like she never has enough time to set things straight and to make things right. Often she takes her work home. And still things aren’t the way she wants them to be. And when they do there’s almost no time to enjoy them because another task is waiting, accompanied by another impossible deadline.

I wondered if she would be willing to sit back and be aware, just to allow things to happen the right way.

I wondered if I would be willing to do so. Maybe you wonder as well whether you’d be willing to do so.

Hold that thought for a while.

It seems absurd to say that ‘allowing to happen’ may be the best way to get things under control.

But there are many kinds of control. When you’re in resonance, when you – as a surfer – are one with your wave, then you’re in control. You are because your body is reading the wave in a way your rational mind can’t begin to understand. You read in dolby surround, in every kind of direction at the same time, with every sense possible.

Some people call this harmony.
Some mindfulness.
Some awareness, or flow.

I’m curious if I could become aware of moments when trying to control things keeps me from resonating, keep me from ‘allowing things to happen the right way’?

There’s a sentence popping up in my mind right now which may help me to open up.

“In you I trust.”

Let’s try that for a second. See what it does to us.

Boundaries

Change begins with respect. Respect for your own boundaries. Respect for other people’s boundaries.

I find it hard to keep that in mind. Sometimes I’m so eager to tell my story, fill reality with my point-of-viewishness, that I forget to respect people’s space.

I used to mistake a question for an invitation to fill the gap, to start ‘flowing’.The result was always the same. I felt exhausted and unsatisfied. It always seemed like ‘people didn’t get it’. On top of that I was tired. I ‘pushed’ the whole time and didn’t give people the chance to give something back.

Over the last few years I came to realize what went wrong. Questions were often invitations from people who wanted your attention while they explored a thought, a feeling, an experience. Sometimes they just asked for a hint to get them going. Sometimes they asked nothing at all. They just connected, invited me to pay attention.

Again, easier said than done.

You’re in a flock – about starling intelligence, google and leadership

Lose control to get control. Seems like something a zen-master would say. Don’t credit me wrong, I’m not (yet).

So what’s about the losing control to get control then?

First things first: get back to now
I’ll get to that in a second. First things first. This evening I donated blood for the first time. Lamazone was there as well. Moral support was great, but what we talked about afterwards was even more rewarding.

Here’s what happened. As we walked home in the late evening sun we started talking about what it meant to let go and how shutting up your consciousness gets you back to the here and now.

How long before you realize you’re awake?
The latter, being a necessary condition to let your body (your whole body) do its job at its fullest extent, is easy to forget. This morning for instance I woke up and started planning from the moment I opened my eyes. It took me 45 minutes (!) to realize I was ‘here’, lying in a soft bed, beside a beautiful woman I love. Forty five minutes I was all getting nervous about stuff I had to do instead of being there and enjoying waking up.

Whatever.

Complexity is not consciously controlled. starlings know that.
So Lamazone and I talked about how most complex things aren’t built by conscious control but by strategic principles in movement.

You were saying?