What does this spark for you?
I wrote this for myself nearly a year ago and the concept continues to pop into my head.
Mostly it's a reminder for my binary-loving brain to… relax.
We have such a well-grooved tendency to think ONE THING is the answer.
The missing “key” that will explain or solve our health, our relationship, our business, our community…
It's what most mainstream marketing/sales tactics hinge on. You just need a new website, that'll solve everything! You need a better mindset, yes! More protein. Of course!
In my experience, it's not even that this is never true… It's that it encourages rigidity and sets us up to be disappointed.
We’re forever searching for a box labeled “RIGHT ANSWER”.
This sends us on a wild goose chase, puts our expectations out of whack, and limits our ability to see/think/solve creativity (we're so focused on ONE small area that we fail to consider everything under and over it).
What I love about Internal Family Systems, and various systems thinking based modalities, is the reminder that nothing exists in isolation.
Pain is not isolated. My neck is tight, yet it's knuckles pressed under my shoulder blade that relieve the tension.
Growth is not random. A high or low sales month tells me more about what what was happening 3, 6, 9 months ago than what's happening this week.
Relationships don't sour overnight. It might seem that way because we're aware of it suddenly, but that dynamic was festering for a long time.
We are living systems. Our businesses are living systems.
This is why being in conversation with them is so valuable.
What are your numbers communicating to you? What is that teaching you about how energy/time/money/attention flows through your business?
What lives upstream from this problem/success? What lives downstream?
Where are you trying to build a dam, when what you really need to do is go up the river and see why water is rushing down to begin with?
If you can think in systems... If you can honour whatever’s going on as a dynamic relationship of parts… you hold a lot of power.
Power in choice. Freedom in choice.
Freedom is knowing there are many doors in to any given problem, and many doors out.
You don’t have to find the “one thing”.
You can try some thing, and see what changes.
You can ask: “What's the next useful piece of the puzzle?” and go from there.
Let me know what this sparks for you,
