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Human-sized challenges I (talking about possibilities)

It’s incredibly hard to choose a just right challenge. Have you noticed this? Even if you manage to come up with something that is exactly in the sweet spot between too easy and terrifying, as soon as you begin, something is sure to screw up. This will either make your chosen adventure suddenly way more adventurous, or else kinda moot.

Rating the size of the challenge in advance is also full of unplanned surprises. We can research, but we rarely have access to enough information to know for sure. Ever taken a new job? How often do your preconceptions truly match what you find is the day to day reality, six weeks in? We have to make our best guess. There is a fair amount of what comes perilously close to outright gambling in many of our most mundane choices.

The world is literally full of challenges, too. Just waiting to be conquered. Or avoided, depending on your particular temperament. There is no shortage of frontiers to explore, even if you are following millions or billions of other humans in that exploration. It’s new to you. It’s a short lifespan we have to work with, and an awful lot of possibilities to thread through.

This means that many of us spend our days doing lots and lots of stuff that is too easy, or too hard, or completely uninteresting to us. We have to do some of it. Some of it we do because, let’s face it, everyone else is doing it (it’s hard to resist peer pressure, even as cool, independent-thinking adults). Lots of what we do falls into the category of “what was I thinking?” Then there are the challenges we take on because we know we should stretch ourselves, move out of that darn comfort zone, expand our horizons. These are either intoxicatingly exciting, or downright traumatic. Either way, they take some energy.

My point is, figuring out a ballpark scale of challenge does require some trial and error, some humility when we get it wrong, and some celebration when we accidentally get it right. It’s not automatic that our lives match our resources, mentally, physically, financially, emotionally. It takes a lot of calibration, and puzzling out what’s gone wrong, and effort to figure out what could be changed to make the match more “right.” For us. In this moment.

In this very human endeavour, looking around at others in order to see what challenges they are attempting, surmounting, or failing at, is tempting. It is natural to want to follow a pattern set by someone else, rather than to start from scratch and, well, write our own book. The problem is that our defaults are so often set to “negative” in this sort of comparison. We either use this comparative exercise to put ourselves down, or to pull ourselves up, but at the expense of the other. It’s zero sum thinking when we have no shortages (of possible challenges) to worry about! In other words, what someone else finds interesting or achievable is almost completely irrelevant to my own life. If you think about it, why would their choices have anything to do with the scope of what I am looking at for available next hard things?

Unfortunately, most of us are still working off of the mindset that a classroom group of same-aged, same neighbourhood children is somehow supposed to be a group with sameness. That is patently untrue, and the diversity in today’s classrooms supports the range of human possibility and experience rather than the alikeness of any particular demographic. Furthermore, we still talk as if the diversity itself is the problem. As if it is unexpected that a group of 30+ children would have more than three or four learning rates or styles, and that the achievements of such a group would be all over the map. Looking at the adult experience, it seems there are almost limitless ways to find meaning in occupation (my particular area of professional interest), or to express one’s thoughts or feelings, or to create a joyful, welcoming home. Why would children be a homogenous group when adults are so much more unlike than like?

The size of the challenge is infinitely variable, crossed as it is with what field of inquiry, exploration, skill-development, or mental or physical frontier one is working within. The level of detail one chooses as interesting – mapping the human genome, mapping the solar system, mapping a house’s electrical wiring – this is also infinitely complex. And then there is the intensity of the pursuit – is it a single-minded obsession, or part of a suite of interests? Is it a life long dream, or a four year political cycle we’re talking about?

I guess my point is that there is almost no conceivable limit to a human-sized challenge, except for the limits of each individual. What is interesting, to me? What is already achievable and easy, to me? What is the thing I want most to master next, myself? Understanding where I am situated, what is around me, what draws my attention, and what I value most, next, and least; these are the important questions to answer. Not what my friend/neighbour/colleague/sibling is doing. Not what I see a celebrity I admire accomplishing. Certainly not what others tell me I should be able to do. Or not do.

The size of the challenge, as it relates to me, is a very good calibration exercise to fine tune. I can look at the various projects I am doing, or have done, and it would be far more useful for me to rate my own subjective experience of their interest and ease than to ask others how I did. I can, for example, think about the fear factor. Was it scary? Is it less scary now that I’m in it, or have completed it? Or is it an activity that is ramping my fear up each time I “go back in” because I’m only doing this really to try to prove to others that I’m not scared, when I really am? Other factors could be: energy expenditure (very individual, and very temperamentally based), balance with other aspects of my life, interest overall, agreement with my particular values hierarchy…and so on. This obviously takes some thinking, and I believe that time thinking is well spent, if it helps with the ability to gradually get better at finding just right challenges, for me.

Being human is great. It is enough that we are human together, and can’t seem to stop challenging ourselves. That’s the great unifying characteristic, I think. We resist gravity. We express our thoughts. We imagine, and create, and innovate. More specific definers than that as to how to be human, and it gets tricky to care for ourselves and still show up in the world.

Let’s enjoy our uniqueness in what inspires, excites, comforts, contents, or plain gladdens us. Let’s not do so much judging of our own or others’ chosen level of “challenge.” Let’s invite and offer, but not expect and compare. Some days, a just right challenge is just getting up and stretching. Other days, we actually fly.

The challenge is human-sized if a human is choosing it. That’s it.

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Ideas are not People. People are People.

There is a lot of power in one person’s intention. That is for darn sure. Aim plus movement plus communication of vision…that is inspiring stuff. People like to follow people with vision and aim and some forward momentum. People like people with ideas. However, it is my sad observation that a powerful agenda is just…not enough to take it to the finish line. There are a lot of mundane steps involved that have to be either done or delegated. That involves a level of inspiration that gets down to doing dishes, cleaning bathrooms, and keeping the cupboards stocked. In other words, vision requires a certain amount of physical work, done in the all too real world. Ideas are not people, and it takes people to make ideas worth anything at all.

Enter a great team. A great team does not consist of a lot of the same sort of people, but rather, all the diversity. Someone to notice that we’re out of toilet paper. Someone who makes callbacks on time. Someone who thinks about the timeline and pushes people. Someone to remember both why there are regulations and what they are! Someone who pushes against the regulations, but for a good cause. Someone who makes everyone laugh when things get tense. Someone who brings cookies. Someone who takes notes. Someone who doesn’t lose the notes. Someone who thinks of super creative solutions to problems, but someone else who can actually turn those solutions into a plan with a timeline and a budget. A team really benefits from its differences.

Inclusion is such a funny concept. In order to properly inhabit it, one has to include all the people and concepts and problems that make it so frustrating and impossible to visualize. You can’t do it neatly and precisely because that is one sort of process represented well in some people’s ways of doing things, but not everyone’s. And everyone is who inclusion is for! So you have to have space for messy and non-linear thinkers as well as the neat and finicky ones. For abstract idealists, and concrete engineers. For the artists and the scientists and the farmers and the explorers. For mud on the floor and laser focused intensity. For midday snacks and all night debates.

I read a great book a few years back. Messy: the Power of Disorder to Transform our Lives, by Tim Harford (Riverhead Books, 2016), has kept me thinking on some level about the conflict inherent in teamwork and how it can be a really good thing. We don’t all see things the same way. We don’t all agree on the what, the how, the when, and frequently the why! We get riled up, and we have to put our thoughts in order so we can tell everyone why we’re right and maybe just a little more right than them. This forces us to examine what we truly believe, and in a safe team, to express it. That’s a good thing.

I’m smiling now because I just had a very dear teacher friend give me a plaque saying exactly that: This is a Good Thing. Apparently that is how she remembers me. I didn’t realize that I say that all the time, but others agreed with her! So. I guess I do like to reframe to the positive. That’s my superpower. I have to say it is a superpower with a dark side (I frequently use it to evade my own more “negative” emotions, to some detriment to my mental health), however it was a nice compliment. But back to my point, which was that it is a good thing when teams have some conflict within their ranks. At the very least, it means people are engaged in the overall goal to the extent that they are willing to put some skin in the game!

But there are limits to conflict and how much an agenda can be pulled apart by a “team” before it becomes unrecognizable – it being the team’s agenda, or maybe even the team. At a certain point, it is maybe helpful to separate the agenda from the team, and to figure out if there are potentially some sub-teams that would be better off working together on a sub-agenda, rather than constantly fighting for control of the overall one. This is tricky stuff and is why all teams need good administrative minds. When is the conflict healthy and productive, and when is it becoming nihilistic? That’s a tough call, and one often made most correctly in hindsight, unfortunately.

In my podcast, one of the complexities I try to untangle from a few different directions is the concept of separating the person from the person’s ideas or even values. This is an incredibly important step in useful dialogue or any process involving more than one mind. In child development, we speak of joint attention. This is that magical cognitive and perceptual skill where a child (or anyone, actually) and another person are both attending not only to each other, but also to a third item (or task or object of interest). The reason it can be called joint attention is that the child in question is looking both at the object, and also at the other person. There is an alternating of visual regard that shows the child is keeping track of both what they are doing together and also how the other person feels or thinks about it (as communicated through facial cues). Joint attention is what allows for shared enjoyment, teaching and learning, and social emotional growth. Joint attention is the set of blocks on the table between me and a child, and it is neither of us, but participated in by both of us.

Sometimes, in a team, it might be helpful to designate certain ideas as blocks on the table. Separate from any one person in the group, but of interest to everyone. No one is in danger of being personally attacked if we can make sure that the blocks are seen as separate and objectively discoverable things. These are thoughts, for sure, and therefore often somewhat abstract. But once expressed, they can be placed in relation to a person, rather than seen as part of a person. This is safer for everyone because then criticism or even rough handling of the ideas is not going to result in the same level of hurt and confusion as if the ideas stayed connected to their originator.

I realize this is difficult in a culture where we value individualism and so tend to identify (often fiercely) with how we (each, individually) see the world. As in, our individual thoughts are who we are. But they’re not! We are not our thoughts. We have to be deeper/more than that, because otherwise our thoughts changing could rock our identity, and that is a pretty scary thought! Come to think of it, that could be the problem fueling some of the polarization in our political landscape.

We are each of us already full human beings with validity and worth before we have ideas. We know this because we value infants, and let me tell you, infants’ ideas are somewhat simple and straightforward. One could call infants the ultimate conformists. They want to be comfortable. Period. They are not choosy about how – but they will be quite vocal about how not to achieve this egocentric and highly practical goal. Infants are the most tyrannical of all despots, and we love them dearly. They come to have ideas that start to differentiate them from each other as, and as well as, they are cared for, securely loved, and waited on hand and foot. Their developing personalities do not procure the care they need. The personalities come after the care is given. Always. Try withholding basic needs from anyone at any age, and they will eventually descend back to that infant place of tyranny and single-mindedness and un-originality. At the root of our humanity is our worth because we are human, not because of what we do with our humanness.

So fast forward back to your average adult-inhabited team, and we can see that making sure everyone knows their value, before they have to add value, will go a long way in helping to de-escalate conflict as regards agendas. Ideas, and the plans we make to push them forward, are all so many blocks on the table. People matter. Agendas are objects of interest to people. But the people are more important than the objects, or agendas, or ideas.

Sometimes, concrete thinkers benefit from visuals or even tactile symbols to help with the relational terms we use (under, over, because of, before, after, not so much as, and more than). When we want to help our literal thinkers learn about the process of organizing time and activities, we use a visual schedule. This makes what we do in planning the day observable, and separate from an invisible and person-centred process. It makes it an object both a child and a caregiver can look at, and manipulate, together. A visual schedule is often magical in defusing daily conflict. The same principle could work in teams where agendas are getting confused with proponents of those agendas. Maybe placing some coloured blocks on a table and labeling them with the ideas would help! Ownership or authorship could be ascribed, but that is not as confusing as when the ideas are seen as the person. Figuring out relationships of one person’s ideas to other people’s ideas could be more playful, and less fraught.

Teams are great, and the more people with the more ideas in them, the greater the potential for creativity, innovation, acquisition of many types of wealth, and flourishing – both of the team and of everyone around them. Inclusive teams need to have space for a lot of rough edges, sharp disagreements, non-overlapping perspectives, and completely new paradigms. That’s what fuels growth and prevents stagnation. Yes, it’s dangerous, as the power of the emotional fuel that drives passion can also blow things up. But that power is so worth it.

Value the people. All of them. In your team, everyone is amazing, before they even show up. After they are safe, and welcomed, and sure of their worth, you will see ideas surface which will be fantastic, but also unexpected, and maybe even scary, sometimes. That’s okay. Put them on the table, and let everyone just consider their characteristics and possibilities without needing to smash them down or keep them under someone else’s ideas or hidden from sight. The ideas aren’t people, and so can be safely treated as objects.

But the people are people. And people will always do better when treated as human.

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Just “try your best”

I have to really stop myself from cringing whenever I hear myself saying this. There’s nothing wrong with this advice. Except the tremendous harm it can do. The fact is, we will keep on saying it to kids, to ourselves, to each other. Earnestly. Like we actually mean it.

What on earth does it mean – to “try my best?”

Let’s stop and think about this. Because it actually matters, when we are talking to a group of children, or any group of humans for that matter, what it is we are trying to communicate or direct them to do. “Trying your best” is, after all, a phrase that employs a superlative. Never a good idea. And there’s another phrase with a superlative. Okay, it’s sometimes not a good idea.

Every try costs. That’s why it’s a try, and not a do or do not, as Yoda has cautioned, so wisely. When we try, we are not sure of the outcome, and we are gambling, and we are paying for this up front with courage, and with uncertainty, and with the vulnerability that comes from an inability to do, rather than try. The try can get more expensive yet. We can try and fail, and we often do, if what we are trying is in the real world, where everything is much more difficult than in most video games. To try is to put oneself out there, in the land of vulnerability. I think that just trying is somewhat worthy of congratulations, without the need for us to go on and try “our best.”

Because, what on earth would constitute “my best?” When I try in one area, I am not at the same time trying in another. If I work on yoga, I am not cleaning my house. If I go to work, I am not at the same time looking after my kids (at least not directly). If I try to learn something, I am not at the same time able to carry out other tasks that I have already learned. While I am trying at one thing, I am not participating in others. And furthermore, sometimes that try means I have less time and energy to devote to other tasks which are waiting for me, and which are not negotiable, and which must be done no matter what the “try” took from me, emotionally, physically, mentally.

So if I try my best, does that mean that I keep trying until I master something, to the detriment of all the other parts of my day? Or does it mean that I must use every morsel of concentration and reserve energy while I am trying, even if that leaves nothing for the list of tasks I must still attend to? Does it mean that I must use willpower to cover off coordination deficits? Should I trade physical force for lack of emotional control? Or emotional manipulation for lack of mental ability? How far should I go to succeed in the “try” in order to truly be able to say, I did my best? How far should I travel into the “end justifies the means” territory in order to meet this rather impossible-to-measure demand?

Of course this is all ridiculous. Except…what do young people hear when we tell them to ignore pain, hunger, or other warning signals in their bodies in the interests of “health” or conditioning, or task completion, or sport? What do any of us hear when we have deadlines looming at work that suggest spending more time in the present would allow us to succeed, even when our families at home pay for this now and in so many future ways? What about sports competitions where not only participants, but even spectators or supportive parents feel able to engage in “trash talking” that would be acceptable nowhere else, in the service of encouraging a win? Why is it that the concept of trying seems to bring out such a snake-filled basket of pressure that is at once vague, a bit menacing, and yet crushing all at the same time?

In horse training there is a mantra that is worth applying here, which is to “reward the slightest try.” This is because horses generally try a lot, and try very hard, and try in all directions, depending on their temperament. What they want to know is, where is the peace? Where does pressure lessen? What can I do to get back to a state of security and confidence? Horses, being prey animals, do not want more stimulation. They generally like to feel like everything is proceeding as expected and nothing is going to eat them in the next moment.

We as humans are not always predators in our thinking either. Sometimes parts of our brain act as prey, and close up in fear, or lash out, or bolt from a terrifying situation that makes us feel like we are being hunted. In those situations, and even in more peaceful scenarios, trying is the thing that we do that adds to our uncertainty. Trying a little is quite brave. Trying a lot is more so. Trying our best is probably just unrealistic.

It’s funny that we often add “just” to this cheerful piece of advice. “Just” try your best, as if that wouldn’t take all your courage, all your internal resources, and every scrap of ingenuity you may have in scrounging others’ if you feel out of resources on your own. Just try your best, and you’ll be fine. We don’t really mean this. We mean, “just try a little bit, see how it goes, and figure out that you won’t fail as badly as you think, and that you can afford to pick yourself up, and try again, and guess what? It gets easier with every try!” That’s what we mean, but it’s too long of a sentence.

I guess I just want to say that trying is a miraculous thing for some people. It represents so much in the way of heart, hope, and faith. A small try is not really a small thing. The slightest try is, after all, a try. If we reward the slightest try, there is far more chance that someone (maybe even ourselves) will be willing to try again. Trying again is probably far more useful in the long run than trying my best.

I know we won’t stop saying this silly mantra to ourselves, and to each other. But let’s smile when we do. And if we can qualify it, let’s do that, too. I like to tell myself to NOT try my best, but instead go for 10%. 10% of what I think my best is, is far more realistic, and furthermore it leaves energy for dishes, and vacuuming.

And let’s eat when we’re hungry. Rest when we’re tired. Ask for help when we’re sick or in pain. Console ourselves a bit when we’re sad. Let’s not think that trying equals self-abuse. Let’s not model that to our kids, who get confused when we do.

Let’s try, slightly. And then do it again.

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Reducing the weight of possibility

Possibility is a very big attractant. I think we magnetically attach to it without even a thought. It’s like we’re a static cling magnet for little dust bunnies of opportunity. We pull them to us and there they are, following us wherever we go, almost impossible to get rid of. Where we go, so do our hopes, dreams, and potentialities. We want so much! For me, for you, for the world.

This is all very lovely, until the possibilities coating us start to take on actual weight. What if we invest in them, as if they were part of us? What if we take, for instance, what we hope will happen on that date with friends tonight, and load it up with detail, emotional investment, and even secondary goals that could become possible if…? We show up, and so does our idea of what is going to happen (but most definitely has not happened yet). It’s not real, because we imagined it, but it is starting to feel very real to us.

We do this so unconsciously, and so often, and so quickly, that we don’t realize how many feelings in our day have to do with completely made-up stories that we told ourselves, forgetting to put them into the future, and conditional, tense. When someone cuts us off in a line up, or in traffic, we are upset because we are already driving or living several minutes ahead of ourselves, and this event has created a small rift in our (not yet realized) timeline. We don’t like when things don’t go even a little bit as planned, and our instant rise in temper (which, hopefully, remains completely private and undetected by others), is evidence of how much we don’t like it.

It has been very helpful to me to try to recognize when I’m angry about something that has actually happened, vs something I wanted to happen, which isn’t going to, because of _______. The first scenario is objectively real and in the past and therefore can be dealt with. The second never happened, wasn’t real, and maybe was only even thought of by me. Totally subjective. Not very easy for anyone else to deal with, and really not fair to make a big issue of, by me, in the world out there, because it’s imaginary and exists in the fairy-tale place all imaginary outcomes exist within.

Imagination is really (we think) what sets us apart from most, if not all, other species. We can time travel. We can put ourselves into situations we are not actually in, and think about how it looks, feels, what would happen next, and costs/benefits of various choices of action in that scenario. We tell stories where we inhabit other people’s lives, settings, choices. We can go to the past or the future with equal ease. It’s a breathtaking ability.

Until it starts to mess with our reality.

That’s when imaginary outcomes – hopes, fantasies, ideals, potential effects of such and such a decision or action or cause – start to take on weight. They start to feel real and we start to treat them as if they are either actually happening, have happened, or will happen with certainty.

And this is where things get dangerous. We start to forget what we have told others. We start to assume that this object we are carrying has the same gravity for everyone as it does for us. We are treating an idea as if it is an event, objectively measurable and real. This is one way to “manifest” our dreams, for sure. But it can also put a terrible strain on those around us as they try to manage the weight of an invisible and un-feel-able (to them) factor in our decision making and our interactions.

I am thinking in particular of our children, surely the most vulnerable to our tendency to displace our hopes and dreams onto others. I spoke in my latest podcast about the concept of taking rocks out of our child’s backpack by selecting only one goal for them in any particular challenge. One goal is already quite heavy for some children. It’s heavy for us. Let’s not add rocks to their backpack by layering on three or four or six or eight more hopes, dreams, and plans for their day. Let’s look at our dreams, for sure. Let’s consider them as the beautiful, imaginary, fantastic stories that they are. Some, perhaps, will magically manifest into reality. But some cannot. And that’s okay. That’s not actually a loss if we don’t create a false sense of reality around them that gives us ownership of their lines and colours.

Also, and this is not nothing, let’s be careful as to who is putting a plan into whose backpack.

Really, each of us should carry our own load. We have our own potential, our own possibilities, our own “choose your own adventure.” That is a lot. Let’s let each child, each person, each someone we love and want the best for, figure out who and what and how their future will look. Let’s give them control of their own ideal outcome. Let’s suggest, envision, inspire, and encourage. And step back. And let others choose for themselves.

This is so hard! We all dream big and some of us can see so far into the future with our incredible imaginations! If only he would…if only they could…if only she saw…but that’s them. And you’re you. And I’m me. And we each have a lot to manage, what with the nature of time being so darn relentless.

So think of your goals as pretty rocks. They’re beautiful and precious, but awfully heavy. Don’t carry them with you all day. That’s too hard. Take one at a time, maybe. The one hard thing for the challenge before you. That’s probably going to make that challenge a lot more do-able. And for sure help kids take rocks out of their backpacks, rather than stuffing more in.

Possibility is amazing. Let’s not wreck it by taking its beauty as license to own it and carry it and hoard it and keep it. Let’s let it stay light and unattached to us, and yet…still possible.

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Stacking values – as steps vs. weapons

It is very helpful, I think, to respect that every single person I interact with holds values, and lives by them. This means that all of us, even the people I really disagree with, are principled and have integrity.

I realize that it is very hard to understand what exactly is driving the behaviour of people whose values are very different from my own, or who stack their values in a different order than I do. But it is much easier to dialogue with those I disagree with if I resist the urge to think of others as having no values, while I retain the moral high ground and live by the only possibly appropriate values (i.e. the “correct” values for this situation). Assuming the moral high ground is the first step in “othering” people, and it can be devastating in its outcomes.

Instead, it is more useful in a collaborative venture (assuming we do not want to deteriorate into a war that no one can possibly win) to look at our value systems objectively, and as separate from our personhood. We each make choices, and those choices are both determined by what we value most, and also lead to us refining and adapting our value structures in more and more nuanced ways. This is great work – really, the work of ethical, intentional living. We are all doing it, but some of us are doing it with more awareness than others. Values are not who we are, but they’re close, because our values do tend to become a reliable container for our actions, and so can sort us into groups who agree, or disagree, in any particular problem-solving scenario.

So, if we look at each other with thoughtful and respectful compassion for the forks in the road that have led to our particular core beliefs and intentions, maybe we can talk rationally about options. None of us are value-less. None of us are even illogical, although we may seem so to those around us. We are making the choices that make sense and align with what we hold as precious. And anything that anyone holds as precious is precious, to that person, and should not therefore be dismissed or disregarded.

This is not to say that in an endeavour, everyone can hold true to their own hard-won value system and resist any changes. That won’t get a team anywhere. However, stacking values is something that can be done within a context and with boundaries around the goal of the team, so as to allow people to keep their own hierarchies intact in other, more personal contexts. If talking about values is safe – that is, if no one feels attacked by another person for holding a value up higher than another thinks it should be – then negotiating within a particular context, and for a particular aim, is possible.

I like to think of values as stacked, like steps. This is because the most important values tend to hold up the others. For instance, freedom of speech is a critical value that allows for other values to exist. Without uncensored communication, options drastically reduce, and quickly. We need to speak our truth to each other because none of us know precisely what it is like to be the other. Without free speech, we cannot work together, and without working together, some of us won’t survive.

But…close behind freedom of speech (or above, in this metaphor) is the concept of respect for others. If my freedom causes harm to you, then I need to restrict my use of that freedom. The second value thus constrains and sharpens the function of the first. These two values could be argued (and are) as to relative positions on a hierarchy, but they are indisputably both foundational to an inclusive society.

So this hierarchy, in my mind, moves from most to least important, up. It’s relatively easy to agree on the bottom or foundational values. Human rights are like a bottom step for our justice system. Rights of the child govern anyone who wants to help children. Respecting the rule of law, within a democracy, is also fundamental to forward planning for most missions.

Above these core values, we start to diverge based on temperament, interest, experience, and what we are trying to do. Scientific projects value different forms of expression than arts projects. Education values different activities and outcomes than does health care. Religious organizations value and work towards different goals than businesses. This is all okay, and adaptive, and useful in a functioning society.

As a team, then, working towards a defined outcome, it is helpful to have team discussions about how to stack values so as to give the team the highest chance of meeting the desired outcome. Some teams will value competition, while others will value cross-pollination of ideas. Some teams will value hard work in specific seasons, while others value low and slow percolation of ideas and efforts. Some teams need hierarchy due to the complexity and precision of planning, while others are going to do better just winging it.

Values aren’t good or bad. They just are. Stacking values does not make one morally better or worse, it just will be more or less useful within a particular context. When we stack values in a useful and transparent and non-judgemental way, we optimize the efforts of a diverse crew of people. We do not disrespect the values represented in their lives, and in fact we welcome their particular perspectives, which have been shaped by living out their values. However, values can move in a hierarchy, and this can be responsive to the context. Keeping values separate from our individual identities is extremely important to the work of ethical living in a social setting.

The opposite of stacking values is to weaponize them. This is when we double down on our own particular value system and identify with it as the only “right” way to live. We become defensive, and we also equate our values with moral superiority and even with the will of God, however we conceptualize this entity. This of course justifies almost any action to protect our values from being disagreed with. Furthermore, because we have identified so closely with them as to be indistinguishable from our values, it can even mean people who disagree with our values must not agree with our own humanity. We fight back, and often the war becomes nuclear.

Value systems do require thoughtful, intentional work. This work can be done unconsciously, and with little effort, but the likelihood that we will live out second-hand beliefs and stereotyped ideas becomes very high in that case. Putting conscious effort into our own structures of intention and belief is well worth the time and energy it takes. This goes for teams as well, of course, and the more discussion is encouraged and facilitated, the more likelihood that creative rearranging will seem possible and safe for all involved.

So, give yourself a pat on the back. You 100% have values, and they are organized in some way. Yes, you could be more aware and intentional about that, but hey, you’ve come this far and that has taken principled living! You probably have unique stacks of values in unique circumstances that have kept you alive and functional. Celebrate that. And know that values can move, can be rearranged, can evolve with your growing wisdom, experience, and ideals. Your values are fundamental to who you are, but they are not you. You get to choose them, not the other way around.

And if you are a team member, relax and enjoy the creative ways that other people have chosen to arrange and live out what they find important. They’re not wrong. You’re not wrong. We’re all just doing the best we can with the situations we find ourselves in. Let’s help each other and build on each other’s good work, rather than going to war for a futile cause and missing out on what could be the most constructive type of conversation.

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Double-binds

Sometimes we want to do more than one hard thing at a time. Anyone who is a parent is familiar with this particular dilemma. We want to be present for our youngsters. Really see and know them and respond as the ideal parents we envision ourselves to be. However, we also very badly need to keep our youngsters’ worlds orderly, stocked with supplies, paid for, and functional from a life preservation sort of perspective. We can’t always play with, when we’re caring for. This is a double-bind. I’m bound to do two things at once, and the two things are at odds with each other.

Trying to fulfill these sorts of mutually exclusive roles is a major reason we burn out, pull out, flake out, or just plain flame out. We can’t win. We may do well at one role, but we know it’s at the expense of the other, and the guilt can rip us up. Frequently has, in my case!

Think about a double bind you were in today. I bet there were several. It may have been an important text that came while you were driving. Or the distress on a co-worker’s or family member’s face about something you knew required support, even as you tried to finish a task on a tight deadline. It could have been knowing you were too hungry to function, but you had promised yourself you were going to be “healthy” and wait for that next meal. It could have been trying to please both your employer and your client at the same time, when neither wanted the same thing. Or it could have been trying to get through the shopping trip to buy the food that your toddler needed to eat in order to stop screaming, but which was not yet available to give her, because you were trying to buy it! It could have been the even more difficult choice between self-care, and care of another who seemed to need it just a bit more than you did.

Double-binds seem to tear something inside us into two pieces, and that tearing sensation is hard to locate, but very much in evidence when we get a chance to sit still, by ourselves, and evaluate our day. Double-binds make it impossible to feel we got it right, even though we’re so tired, did so much, worked so hard. Gave 110%.

Much like any mindfulness guru will tell you, naming the enemy is half the battle. Maybe more. If we can spot our double-binds, at least we know what it is that is causing us additional stress, over and above the fatigue that normally comes from a hard day’s work.

Double-binds are everywhere. But I don’t believe they are necessary. What they tell us is that we have not yet solidified a values hierarchy. We are experiencing conflict as two deeply held values are competing for the top spot in our brains, and bodies, and minds. We want to hold them up side by side as equals, but they aren’t playing nicely.

It’s great that we have values, but there is no universe where our values can all be the most important. Especially when we are dealing with human (messy) situations. We have to prioritize our values. Some will need to be placed above others. That’s just a fact. It is situation-specific, for sure, but situations require us to know what we believe to be our primary purpose as we navigate through them. Otherwise, we will stall out, or behave in inconsistent and incredibly frustrating (to ourselves, and to others) ways.

Driving while owning a phone is a good example of this. Communicating in a timely manner is a high value for many of us, especially in certain networks such as work, family, or caring for dependents. We want to be responsive, and also know what’s going on as soon as it is possible. However, staying safe and alert on the road may need to trump that very legitimate pressure. Think about it. One will make us popular, or efficient, or productive. The other will keep us, and others, alive.

It comes down to this very cold appraisal once we see a double-bind for what it really is – a clash of two good things for the position of the most important and best thing. It’s possible to believe and hold to many values, but they need a clear and consistent framework (some sort of algorithm? or maybe just a code) for when conflict between them happens. And it does all the time. Think about privacy and confidentiality vs. the need for public safety during a pandemic. Think about fiscal responsibility vs. the homelessness crisis. Think about opioid addiction and the risk of tainted drugs vs. handing out clean supplies to addicts. Nothing is obvious. There’s no “right” hierarchy. But there needs to be a hierarchy. Without one, we wander in circles, getting tired, and not getting anything done. We can even do harm by muddying a decision and thereby succeeding at neither possible outcome.

However, once there is a clear and coherent hierarchy of values in place, double-binds lose their power. They become exercises in actualizing what we believe. Not a guilt trip. Just a way to decide what is most important in this particular scenario, while remaining true to our (pre-decided and thus integral) core beliefs and identity and purpose. And hierarchies do not (despite sad evidence based on abuses of power) have to mean that we are less respectful of the values we place lower on the scale. This is a sorting that can be highly nuanced, responsive to context, and evergreen, while we’re at it. Who do we want to be? Where do we want to go? A sorting of values will help us figure out how we’re doing in getting there. If it’s working, we’ll know. If it’s not, we can change it, because we’re living our life in a reasoned and reasonable manner.

Spotting double-binds can even become kind of fun, once you get the hang of it. Why am I tense and feeling so unable to move forward? What is it (or what are the two or more outcomes – red flag!!) that I’m really trying to accomplish? In other words, are there two paths I’m trying to walk down, at the same time, leading in two different directions?

Do yourself a favour. Stop. Calculate the two good things, the two hard things you want to do at the same time in this moment. Now, just choose the most important, based on your unique perspective, beliefs, and inner compass, right now. That’s it. You don’t have to say the other isn’t good, or valuable, or very important. It just isn’t the most important to you in the place you’re in right now.

Then commit, and let the other choice wait. It’s okay. You will survive. It will survive! And you can do that other thing later, in its own most important space and time, now that you know it’s jockeying for position. By slowing down in this way, you not only save energy, but you will have a shot at congruence with your own beliefs and intentions that you can feel self-respect for as you think it over later. No, it’s not as satisfying as if you could have done both things well. But none of us can. We’re only human. We can only do one hard thing at a time.

In this one moment that is your present, make it your best hard thing.

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What’s the point?

I have been struggling with the point of inclusion. It’s such a broad word, and, like religion, it covers so many sins. Who includes whom? The whole concept of inclusion presupposes some are let in, and that therefore maybe others are kept out. In other words, somehow gatekeeping is happening.

I suppose gatekeeping is happening. We are all complicit. No one is entirely innocent and victimized in this discussion, just as no one is entirely evil.

I cannot imagine a world without categories. That world would make no sense, and would be terrifying to boot. We need to have paths, homes, places of work, places of belonging. And we can’t all belong everywhere equally. We belong in a place that fits us more specifically, more particularly than other places. We choose, and we gate-keep to protect our places, and spaces. It’s not the protection that is wrong, it’s how we decide on what is (or who is) the threat. It’s the simplifications that make this troublesome. It’s the assumptions that make asses of u and me.

So what are we really trying for, in saying we want inclusion in education, and more than that, in society? What are the coveted resources that all humans want, need, are entitled to by intrinsic worth and “human-ness?” What does it look like to be included, rather than excluded? And how do we both protect and preserve special-ness of place, function, purpose? Without denying the “special-ness” of everyone?

I don’t think that everyone should be everywhere and do everything. But then, how many of us would really like that? Instead, I believe inclusion as a concept starts with dignity. Dignity, and my right as an individual, to live a life that I both imagine and am willing to work towards. In other words, I think inclusion is really about choice.

I imagine inclusion not as a conceptual world without walls (formless, void, chaotic, very stressful). Instead, I see it as a large village, with many purpose-built and highly unique structures. The important thing is that, in this village, the doors are open to each building, each functional place, each potential site for human occupation and relating. Inclusion just means that in this village, every person belongs first. Beyond and because of that belonging, each person is free to choose when, where, and how they want to contribute, express themselves, and explore, and so they choose which doors to walk through.

Tearing down entire structures that were useful and served a purpose for the whole group, because of historical, actual, or perceived restrictions to entry, is not inherently inclusive. Rather, it just diminishes the society, by reducing choices for access to meaningful learning, and meaningful discovery. Wouldn’t we do better to instead figure out what defines those structures (form, function, and vision), and what limits to access are still in place that might prevent interested and potentially contributory individuals or even whole groups from entering? We need to tear down the barriers, not the whole blacksmith’s shop!

We need to examine the hoops we ask people to go through to enter places of learning, worship, legislative debate, business, and play. We need to make sure that those hoops enhance the purpose of the structure by sorting in those who are truly interested and willing to sacrifice what is necessary – not just to succeed outwardly, but to inwardly receive the benefit of participation. While this process may justify some restrictions on entrance, we need to question very carefully what sacrifices are truly necessary for involvement in any particular endeavour. Those sacrifices may not be what was historically or traditionally demanded. Calculation of risk/reward is, after all, not a science/math question. It is a human one. Best done by the individual contemplating both the risk and the reward.

“We” used to assume that only males would be able to concentrate well enough to be doctors and lawyers and judges and civil engineers. “We” used to consider women incapable of protective or strength-based roles such as in the military, policing, emergency services, and even politics. “We” used to think that gender determined nurturing and capacity for empathy, as well as colour and style preferences. “We” used to think that disabled people belonged in places of 24 hour care, and nowhere in public, so others would not be distressed by their appearance. “We” used to think race limited intelligence and sorted people, both by character and upper limits of class. “We” used to think a lot of things that “we” now know are not at all true, and which never were anything but justification for some people to receive privileges denied to others.

We need to be incredibly careful about our gatekeeping, if we are going to do a good job of inclusion.

We need to tear down the assumptions and gates that have slowed our progress as a society and contributed to incalculable suffering across all of the human race. We need to open doors that have previously been shut to marginalized groups. We need to remove barriers for those with varying abilities but high interest. We need to dismantle rules and processes that serve to keep the powerful in power and the disenfranchised silent and power-less. We need to do this because inclusion benefits everyone by not only reducing privation, but also by unleashing potential that has been locked in the shadows at the edge of the playing field, the lab, the combat zone, the ground zero, the family.

I think the point of inclusion as a term is really that, vague and imprecise as it is, it can function as a starting point for dialogue – about what we used to think, and what some of us privately still think, and what some of us think might be possible.

The parameters of the dialogue could be the nuts and bolts of ensuring and preserving the right of every single person to step through doors. Further, it could extend to finding ways to make more visible, accessible, and safe the paths to, and through, those doors. It could branch out into exploring how it is that certain doors more strongly interest, intrigue, or call to the uniqueness in our psyches. Is this also a form of restriction? Or is it inherently miraculous?

Inclusion as a broad metric then, should not measure equality or uniformity or a levelling off of previously unequal participation. I believe Inclusion should measure each individual’s experience of real life options, against what they wish were options. Inclusion should not measure success (external, norm-referenced, competitive) in participation either; instead it should measure the ability to persevere in the act of engagement in an activity. Based on human differences, both the process of engaging and the outcome of persevering may be discouraging for some. However, because participation in the endeavour is itself a reward, many people may choose, if allowed, supported, encouraged, and kept safe (from harm, not discouragement), to persevere anyway. Success or external achievements are only a byproduct in an inclusive paradigm, after all. Meaning is the point, and meaning is entirely subjective.

We choose to approach doors that hold meaning for us, and when those doors are shut in our faces, we suffer. When those doors open, we may suffer as well, but it will be because after crossing that threshold, we embark on a hard path we have chosen. And that, my friends, is the basis of dignity.

It is our human right to battle adversity in uniquely individual ways, and sometimes for reasons that are inscrutable to outsiders of our own heads and hearts. Inclusion means every single one of us are free to do battle on the ground we choose. We do this within structures we choose to enter, for reasons that speak to our deepest selves. Inclusion, done well, simply allows all humans to engage in the full human experience.

Let’s keep talking. How do we do this? – that’s the point of this website. One hard thing. At a time.