What is Conscious Living?Conscious living consists of a set of practices whereby you learn and grow to be a more aware, deliberate and skillful master of your life. The practices can be arranged from the macro to the micro:
- Through greater awareness, a person can achieve for example —
Conscious Living and Double-Loop Learning On Item 3, the additional skills required to move from single-loop learning to double-loop learning advocated by Harvard Professor Argyris are precisely skills of conscious living: the ability to recognize limiting habits, attitudes and assumptions. For more on double-loop learning, check Apin Talisayon's blog posts ("Single-loop learning versus double-loop learning", "Double-loop learning", "The reflective knowledge worker" and "Practice internal double-loop learning") Conscious Living, Innovation and Team Learning On Item 4, there are in fact direct connections between some skills and practices in conscious living on the part of top business executives and their capability to create business value through process or product innovation, and through innovation of business models (see figure below). When the 75 members of the Advisory Council of the Stanford Graduate School of Business was asked to recommend the most important capability for leaders to develop, their answer was nearly unanimous: self-awareness (see George, B. et al. "Discovering Your Authentic Leadership." Harvard Business Review, February 2007, pp. 129-138). At the operational or shop-floor level, similar direct connections occur between skills in Team Learning and skills in conscious living. - - The following examples and vignettes illustrate some of the skills and practices (in blue boxes) in the figure above. “I would have wanted to stay in my comfortable chair and continue to enjoy the fire tree in full bloom outside my office window. Another planning session was scheduled for this morning. As I walked to the conference room I said to myself, 'This meeting is going to be different. I will listen and focus on the little gems of wisdom in each suggestion made, especially from those whom I do not particularly like.' Halfway through the meeting, while adding my own to the general flow of ideas I realized I can enjoy working with this team after all. The meeting ended sooner than I expected. As I got up from my chair to return to my own desk and to the fire tree and the fluttering of the dark-orange petals in the wind I felt much happier.” (suspending judgment in order to truly listen) -- o -- The ladder of inference is “what happens inside our heads between what we see and what we conclude” (from Senge). In normal daily life, the process happens quickly and unconsciously. We are normally unaware of the process and therefore unable to examine and evaluate each step. A practice in team learning is making explicit every step in one’s ladder of inference, and to be open to comments, suggestions or corrections from the group. Peter Senge, the guru of Organizational Learning who popularized the term “ladder of inference” said, “If we cannot express our assumptions explicitly in ways that others can understand and build upon, there can be no larger process of testing those assumptions and building public knowledge.” A ladder of inference can proceed as follows (with examples within parentheses):
-- o -- “We were arguing and fighting over a Center management issue. I noted our egos were starting to act up and from similar past experiences I knew it would end up like a ship caught in shoals and unable to move forward. We call such situations 'Spratleys.' Then with conscious effort we asked each other, 'where am I coming from in this issue?' or 'what is my motive in this issue?' when we saw that I was coming from pursuit of a long-term personal objective and she was coming from nurturing sustainable relationships in the Center, it became clearer to both of us why we took our respective positions. The mutual awareness of our assumptions and motives also enabled us to consciously select a third position that was satisfactory to both of us.” (awareness of assumptions and motives) -- o -- Being aware of your internal blocks to full listening is another practice of conscious living. While listening to someone or while someone is talking, do you:
-- o -- “When I listed the success factors of the successful anti-poverty projects that Pia sent me, I saw very clearly: they were successful because they used well various forms of intangible assets the community owns or can access! I realized that if I had used a knowledge-sharing framework – the most prevalent ‘KM for development’ framework – I would have missed it. But using an expanded intellectual capital framework, it was all very clear in front of my eyes.” (the wrong framework is like a blindfold; while the right framework enables you to see) -- o -- Systems thinking includes the practice of multi-disciplinal or multi-sectoral external sensing combined with the practice of "connecting the dots”. Look at the following seemingly disparate facts and events:
What do we see here? It seems to be happening across many disciplines and sectors: intangibles have become more essential in creating value! -- o -- |
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