Fear of Aggression

March 10, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter 

Picture 10When I felt trapped and stuck in a life direction that I didn’t want and believed I had no other choice but to be in, I often dreamed of the Incredible Hulk smashing his way out of a cement box.

That dream was a gift because it gave me a visualization and metaphor that I used when I found myself in situations and circumstances that I couldn’t stand but couldn’t find my way out of. I got pretty good at smashing my way out of bad relationships, jobs, partnerships, crises etc. But the problem was that another would always pop right up to take its place.

So I tried other things like fighting harder for control over people and things in my life, setting more boundaries, screaming at the top of my lungs in my car, punching the pillows, plotting revenge and trying mostly unhealthy means of escape and distraction. But unlike Einstein’s, my universe remained an unfriendly place and I got tired.

Eventually I realized that my Incredible Hulk dream was showing me how to break out of the cement box of my own resistance and ego. The people and things trying to do me in and hold me back did not exist “out there” but in me.

Much later still, I learned to discern the difference between natural aggression and the typical way we think about it which is some form of “aggression is bad”. Natural aggression is absolutely fundamental to life: birth, love, creativity, art and change. I really got that at a gut-feeling, non-intellectual level when a read a passage from Florence Scovel Shinn about an impromptu pre-dawn visit with a friend to the Prospect Park Zoo:

A faint pink streak appeared in the East, then suddenly we heard a most tremendous uproar. We were near the Zoo and all the animals were greeting the dawn.

The lions and tigers roared, the hyenas laughed, there were shrieks and howls, every animal had something to say for a new day was at hand.

It was indeed most inspiring. The light slanted through the trees; everything had an unearthly aspect.

Then, as it grew lighter, our shadows were in front instead of behind us. The dawn of a new day!

Our shadows are in front of us now. An extremely powerful emotion is arising, individual and collective. Its natural aggression that Seth Roberts described as:

“the creative loving thrust forward, the way in which love is activated, the fuel through whose agency love propels itself.”

Denying natural aggression distorts it and turns it against ourselves. Everywhere we see the evidence that shows up as scarcity mentality, ultra-competitiveness, greed, excessive consumption, obsession with others’ transgressions and even violence and abuse.

I see and hear firsthand how hard it is for people to not attempt to escape and avoid these intensely powerful feelings despite their equally intense desire for a greater self and bigger game.

Because here’s the thing: these wild feelings are valuable pointers to the unrealized wild power within us. Now is the time to bust through the concrete walls that trap and distort it. Like I told someone earlier today: you’re going to bust-out anyway so why not roar, laugh and howl for your new dawn now and save yourself a lot of head-banging.

Filed under: resistance, shift
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Let It Run

March 10, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter 

In rowing, one of the calls that coxswains and coaches make is “let it run”. That means the rowers stop rowing and the boat continues to move through the water on its own momentum, until it stops. Pause drills are similar. Rowers stop rowing and start again at different points in the stroke in order to feel balance, synchrony and flow.

Speakers can use these techniques because the need to “run-on” and never, ever pause completely prevents them from connecting with or relating to their listeners.

This stems partly from fear of being interrupted and losing air-time. Interruption is rampant in the attention economy. Politicians interrupt, commentators interrupt and celebrities interrupt each other even if it means hijacking a major award show:
Roger Ross Williams / Elinor Burkett at the 2010 Oscars.
Taylor Swift / Kanye West at the 2009 VMA’s.

Those aren’t the only kinds of interruptions. Others include the streams on listeners’ devices as well as on the backchannels that are now being integrated with talks and presentations. Anonymity gives cover to troll-like, negative behavior that can spread through the audience, sometimes turning it against the speaker.

These changes present new kinds of challenges for facilitators and moderators. But what can a speaker do other than try to outrace, drown out or crowd out interruptions, multi-tasking and waves of unfavorable reaction?

Stop, feel and accept the individual, collective and spatial energy in the room.

Connect with one person at a time on the deepest possible level through the pauses, letting the message resonate. Its better to be in relational presence with a few listeners by holding the space rather than to desperately or forcefully fill it up.

Rowers practice letting the boat do the work for them by allowing it to glide under them as they take their rest. In the collaborative, connected world, the lines between speakers and listeners are blurred and the dynamic has shifted. To attempt to control and resist those changes is a missed opportunity to “let it run”.

Filed under: Communications, communications leadership, presence, resistance, rowing, self-expression, social communications
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Refusing to Collude

February 26, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter 

I woman told me the story of her anorexia. Her family couldn’t deal with it and she was eventually hospitalized. She didn’t understand the doctor’s alarm because the scale told her 100 lbs. He saw 80 lbs. and told her she would die. Although she had the evidence, what “she” saw on the scale, the doctor’s words were, thankfully, enough of a shock to get her to accept treatment and eat. She was unwilling to make the trade-off, her life, in spite of her proof that nothing was wrong. The doctor refused to collude.

Clients can get hostile when you refuse to collude. They’ll drag out the facts, proof and evidence of what’s happening to them and how it justifies their suffering in one or more personal or business domains. I’ve used that doctor’s approach, direct and hard-hitting. I lost clients. I’ve also colluded, by spending too much time listening, being empathetic and giving feedback, ideas and advice that weren’t followed. I didn’t want to be an enabler and I didn’t want failed projects. So I lost clients.

I learned. Resistance to change loves collusion and uses the proof and the evidence to get it. The only way you can help someone stop resisting is to help them see it for what is. It doesn’t work to whack them over the head with the dire consequences. These aren’t, after all, life and death situations although our clients in the grip of resistance clearly suffer.

What does work is going deep, getting to the bottom of it so to speak. What’s beneath everything that’s visible, understood and apparent is the hidden payoff. Its impossible to tell another person what that payoff is. You can only help another person realize it. That takes willingness, commitment, rigor, logic, dialog and trust. Timing is critical because resistance is a vampire. It will do anything to escape the light of reason in order to remain safe and secure in the dark.

The woman who had the strength to make it through anorexia struggled for decades with disappointment and frustration that showed up in her career, professional and business domain. It literally made her sick and frequently injured. She had the will and desire to go another way but her resistance had collected three decades of evidence that convinced her otherwise. I refused to collude.

And then there was a moment when she was able to be still long enough to ask herself: “If I’m not the one who starves and disappears, then who am I?” She answered: “I’m visible and powerful.” And there was a time in her life when she believed that visible and powerful was a dangerous way to be so she shut it down. There was no regret or grief in this realization, just relief because it all made perfect sense. She was never the effect, she was always the cause. It was the right choice at the time and she could choose differently now.

If you’re struggling with resistance to change or creativity you can do this on your own. Its a simple but powerful self-awareness tool. You have a conversation with yourself guided by these fill-in-the-blank questions:

  • I’m the one who_____________
  • If I’m not the one who_______________, then who am I? I’m the one who__________________

Filed under: resistance, self-awareness, stress relief, trauma release
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Just This Once

February 22, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter 

It used to be called “getting over” but you don’t hear that expression anymore. You expect it in the public so that’s not getting over. You join the private to get away from it and resent it when it shows up, which it does, more than ever. Some now call it hustle.

  • The moderator continually requests that participants keep their comments within the topic, framework and agenda but the hand keeps going up and the interruption is “just this once”.
  • The group’s charter includes never using the group for business solicitation or self-promotion and a new member tries to sneak one in that’s barely camouflaged and the interruption is “just this once”.
  • The professional service provider provides free, search-able access to ideas, solutions and content but the uncommitted client interrupts to ask for and discuss what’s already easily available “just this once”.

This self-management technique is the best way to discern if you’re the perp or the victim of getting over. Ask yourself “what would this look like if everyone chose to do this just this once?” The key word is choose. Don’t choose or settle for the wrong hustle, unless you’re Superfly.

Filed under: authenticity, intention, self-awareness, self-management, social capital, social communications, social media, social networks
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The Enlightened Idea Wiki

February 21, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter 

Picture 4We had an interesting and provocative discussion this week at Samadhi about the intersection of the evolution of media and the evolution of consciousness. It also turned out to be one of those times, when out of the blue and unexpectedly I got what I describe as “jacked up by the Field”.

I’ve found that philosophical discussions and meetups requiring rigor, have huge benefits for professionals and content creators in the change business, including:

  • Linking and integrating ideas, solutions and content that seemed mutually exclusive.
  • Bringing unconscious beliefs contradicting ideas, solutions and content, into awareness.

As I developed the post, the “enlightened idea wiki” came up and I think it has a lot of potential as a both a practice and content structure and model.

This is how it evolved. I’d recently spent a lot of time developing a presentation about models for professional service providers and content creators. The focus of the presentation is: The Credit. So when I read this NYT article, Author, 17, Says It’s ‘Mixing,’ Not Plagiarism, it brought up a good deal of righteous indignation that I was happy to share with others in my social communities who felt the same way, especially about her specific quote:

“There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,” – Helene Hegemann

It felt so good and so right to rip into this with so many people who agreed with me.

Flash forward to the meetup. The discussion was preceded with a meditation and then a reading of an EnlightenNext Magazine column, Awakening to the blob, inspired by Mediated, Thomas de Zengotita. A quote from the book via the reading:

In a mediated world, the opposite of real isn’t phony or illusional or fictional—it’s optional. Idiomatically, we recognize this when we say, “the reality is…” meaning something that has to be dealt with, something that isn’t an option. We are most free of mediation, we are most real, when we are at the disposal of accident and necessity. That’s when we are not being addressed.

My unexpected lesson from the Field was hearing this young, intelligent writer’s honest expression of her vantage point with respect to de Zengotita’s work.

I discovered that terms and concepts actually exist to describe the experience of growing up in the postmodern era. I discovered that we are living in a mediated world, and I am a mediated girl.

Suddenly my righteous indignation about the 17 year old “mixing not plagiarizing” author seemed out of whack from the vantage point of my greater self who “meets” people where they are and without judgment. I realized that How Dare You! was my ego’s voice, justifying my resistance to a vantage point that threatened mine. That was an important shift.

A wiki post is a lot of work but I recommend creating one, maybe once a quarter. Here’s why. Like a great visual it takes a lot of seemingly disconnected, linear, small things and gives them form and expression in a way that adds dimension and artistic expression to your ideas, solutions and content.

Isn’t that a better use of your time than a quarterly plan?

Filed under: Content, Creativity, change leadership, integral, multi-dimensional, self-awareness, self-expression, shift, solo psf
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