Musings on the science and practice of emotional intelligence from author and Six Seconds’ COO, Joshua Freedman. Features a blend of practical and inspiring articles about why and how to put EQ in action as a leader, a parent, and a person as Josh travels the world teaching these invaluable skills — while working (and often struggling) to learn them himself.
The serious companies with whom we consult worldwide have all spent time, and usually a lot of money, crafting a “vision-mission-values” statement. There seems to be some confusion about why. Sometimes, it seems, they’ve made one because that’s what everyone else does. Something’s just not “clicking” – or maybe I’m just on another planet with this issue?
Clearly it’s difficult for a large organization to stay focused when people don’t have a shared picture of where they’re going. What are we in business to accomplish? To avoid confusion, let’s call this the “What.” Most mission statements I’ve seen have some clarity around the What: To be the best bank in someplace. To deliver world-class hospitality. To deliver technology solutions supporting key government programs.
Then it seems valuable to at least have an idea of strategy – how we’re going to do that (but in my experience good strategy changes rapidly with changing circumstance). This is the “How.” How sounds like: By maximizing lending through blah blah. By touching the heart. By integrating robust services for rapid deployment. These are interesting, sometimes important, but rarely powerful.
The tragically missing ingredient is the WHY.
I am most often invited to do leadership programs for senior executives or for high potentials (upper level but usually younger managers being groomed for senior leadership positions). Occasionally I get to work with both groups in the same organization, and it’s fascinating to see how these groups each relate to the mission-vision-values statement. Often the senior leaders are excited, they’ve been involved in the creation and it has meaning, significance, to them (though sometimes it’s “just something HR did”). I’ve never seen a group of high potentials likewise touched by these documents.
Some executives, particularly finance types, seem very excited about phrases like “being the best in,” and perhaps that is a big enough WHY for them. Perhaps encoded in that phrase is something deeper than financial gain? But it doesn’t seem to translate to a compelling purpose for middle managers, and it certainly leaves me flat.
One of most powerful human drives is to belong to something worthwhile; so perhaps leadership is about enrolling people in a truly significant purpose. To tap this power, we need two ingredients: significance and belonging.
What constitutes significance? A start is “value above and beyond utility.” Something can have non-utilitarian value because it’s beautiful or impressive or makes us laugh. A great statue, an impressive building, a winning team or a compelling story all have value above and utility. That’s part of the human experience from time immemorial and not a bad touchstone for motivation. Maybe “being the best,” if it really happened, would have significance. I suspect that companies that change their domains, like Apple has done with mobile computing, carry significance because of that groundbreaking experience. But there’s still something deeper: meaning.
If significance is about value, then meaning is about purpose. “Purpose above and beyond utility.” In other words, a real answer to WHY.
I suspect that I’m a bit of an extremist in this regard. For me, “to make money” doesn’t qualify because that’s not above and beyond utility. “To be the best” doesn’t qualify because that’s not a purpose (it’s a recognition of something). “Giving 1% of profits to charity” doesn’t work for me because that’s a byproduct of the organization’s success, not the focus in and of itself. When I seek meaning, I am looking for a profound commitment where the work of the organization is threaded in the very fabric of life.
In itself, this kind of purpose, a “real WHY,” is tough to find. But even more difficult is keeping it real in a growing, dynamic organization. I’ve heard there are some that have done this, but in the hundreds of companies where I’ve worked, and in the many thousands my colleagues and I have touched, I’m hard pressed to think of more than two – and both of those are nonprofits where the WHY is clear, but their HOW isn’t!
In the Six Seconds Model, the “capstone” is a competency we call “Pursue Noble Goals,” which enables you to connect with purpose in your daily life — to put your purpose into action.
Daniel Pink’s video about his new book, DRIVE, provides a fun and clear way of talking about this essential topic:
One of the fundamental choices we each make in each moment is to live in that state of fight or in the state of flow. As I’ve written before (in this article and in At the Heart of Leadership):
FIGHT is characterized by power where the goal is the be right OVER another; emotions such as anger are signals of power and sorrow are signals of weakness.
In FLOW being right or wrong are less important; the goal is to connect in a purposeful, significant way.
The film Avatar illustrates this choice on several levels. Perhaps the most vivid moment is when protagonists Jake Sully and Neytiri meet. Sully is in danger on an alien world and, as night falls, he makes a torch/spear and attacks the threatening wildlife. Forest savant Neytiri saves him and throws his torch into a puddle, plunging them into darkness. At first Sully is… not thrilled… by this “help.” But eventually he sees differently.
In the darkness, Sully finds something else — the luminescent beauty of the world is revealed. While he’s in the FIGHT mode he’s cut off from the world around him, literally blinded by his own weaponry. Forced to give that up, he begins a journey to encounter the world a different way.
We all do this — when we’re in FIGHT we tell ourselves that’s the only way, and we’re fighting for our survival. Often actually creating more peril, but it’s all we can see. It takes a leap of faith (or a push from someone else) to drop into FLOW. There’s a huge AHA! as we see that where there used to be one option, now there’s the liberty of choice.
A few months ago Patty had routine physical, and her doctor ordered some tests, which came back positive so she needed a biopsy. While statistically odds were strong that it would be a nonissue, we were both a bit anxious – especially because of her cancer scare a few years ago.
We carefully didn’t say anything to the kids because we didn’t want to worry them. But on the day Patty went for the biopsy, Max asked me in a quiet, serious voice: “Does Mama need surgery again?” (He was about 4 when she had surgery before.)
I was stuck by his ability to observe and “read between the lines.” And, by the way this cancer fear stayed with him.
I suspect that in general kids see far more than we want them to. From an evolutionary perspective it makes sense – there’s survival value in being able to read subtle cues. Left to themselves kids will take those cues and make their own meaning, sometimes accurate, often exaggerated… but it’s important to remember that fear creeps in the absence of information.
What else are they seeing? And what meaning are they making?
PS. Patty’s biopsy was totally negative – which was a relief! This was days before we were leaving for Borneo and South East Asia for six weeks, so it was fabulous to get this resolved before we went!
Last week Emma was “fussing out” about a writing assignment.* So I said, “then don’t do it.”
“But I H A A A A A V E to…” she moaned.
I pointed out that she did not, in fact, have to: She had choice and each choice had consequences.
She cried harder.
Why?
Emma was caught in a classic emotional trap: wishing it were not so (but knowing it’s not).
Many of us squander buckets of energy spiraling around as we avoid directly facing the facts of our current reality, for example:
Frequently leaders I work with will tell me they have an employee that they KNOW isn’t working out, but they pretend (at some level) that it will change. Months and a lot of pain later, they finally pull the trigger and make a change (sometimes still avoiding the real issue by moving the person to be a poor performer for someone else).**
Some of my younger friends tell me about someone they’re dating, “He’d be perfect if only…” KNOWING it won’t happen, yet they hold onto this hopeless hope.
I want to write another book and KNOW that all I have to do is start writing, but I tell myself I don’t have time right now… in three months I’ll have less time, but I may finally become so frustrated with myself I take action.
Yes – change is possible, but denial is sweeter.
When something feels tough, we often defend ourselves by avoiding the truth of the situation. At the extreme, it’s like a scared 3-year-old: “If I cover my eyes you can’t see me!” While it’s “obvious” this doesn’t work, most of us do it regularly!
The paradox is that while we’re “protecting” ourselves and others from the “brutal” truth, while we stay in the trap we continue to feel frustration, fear, and sorrow. Those feelings push us to narrow our focus to dig into a problem:
Frustration – something’s wrong
Fear – something important may be at risk
Sorrow – I’m losing something I care about
While we stay in the mix of the problem, those feelings continue and usually escalate until we finally get serious. Once we confront the situation and make a commitment to deal with the current reality, then the feelings shift.
So the moral is: fire everyone we’re frustrated with, split up with everyone who disappoints us, and forget about projects that stress us out – right?
Er… maybe not. But those feelings are signals – like indicator lights on the dashboard – saying, “Hey – check it out. Maybe it’s time to get real.”
—–
* Emma is now 10, and an amazing student. She’s also a perfectionist and when something is hard and the “right answer” is not clear, she stresses herself out. Familiar to any of you?
** To be clear: Often a poor performer would be GREAT somewhere else because the problem is frequently the match. But then there are people you just know in your heart will not do well anywhere in this organization, and it takes chutzpah to stand up and take the right action.
Lately life has been somewhat tempestuous at home. Emma’s 4-1/2-year-old priorities conflict with Max’s 2-1/2-year-old priorities — add two work-a-holic parents and their own stresses, and voila, you have a powder keg. Recently it got to the point I was looking forward to travelling so I could have a few days of peace. I take that as a bad sign.
The last few days gave me new insight into my job as a parent — and equally essential lessons as a consultant and manager. Most managers tell me their biggest struggles are managing conflicts and relationships — so perhaps this story about managing the conflicts at home will provide ideas even to those without kids.
Last week I had time with Karen McCown, Six Seconds’ Chairman and Founder. We talk frequently about my little family and about her grandchildren. As many EQ Reflections readers have told me, grandparent-hood sounds like the best of parenting: all the love, none of the “hot buttons.”
The next day I happened to talk to a colleague and the psychotherapist sitting next to her. I talked a bit about my struggles at home, and I was struck by the dramatic difference between the therapist’s approach and Karen’s.
The therapist said, “It sounds like you are letting you kids run things in your house, and you can’t do that.”
Somewhat testy, I said, “Actually, I can do it — but I agree it might not be a good idea.”
“You need to be clear about who’s in charge,” she went on, ignoring my frail jibe, “and consistently reward the appropriate behavior and have consequences for the inappropriate behavior. You have to be more consistent.”
Not bad advice for a cocktail party. Then I considered Karen’s advice from the evening before and how different it was.
First Karen asked me what is happening — what’s the pattern. I explained that a conflict escalated, Emma’s behavior got explosive, and I sent her to time out or her room.
“Is that working?” asked Karen.
“Not really.”
“So you probably don’t want to keep doing it, do you?” Under Karen’s clear gaze, there was only one available answer. I shook my head. “Do you and Emma talk about what happened?”
“Emma would rather not,” I say starting to feel a bit pathetic — how did I give a four-year-old so much power?
After a few more minutes, Karen summarized our discussion into this experiment: “Why don’t you try this: Next time you send Emma to her room, say, ‘When you are ready to talk about what happened, come get me.’ Then, discuss what happened and make an agreement about what Emma and you will do differently next time. Write it down where Emma can see it.”
Before I tell you what happened, what’s the difference between Karen’s advice and the unknown therapist’s? Notice who had the power or “right” in the adult-to-adult conversations. Notice how each approach changes the power dynamic between Emma and me — one actually escalates the power struggle, the other side-steps it.
My sense is that Karen’s advice also focuses on the long term vs. short term — Emma needs to make decisions for herself, and eventually these will be fairly serious decisions. What am I doing now to equip her for that challenge?
This weekend when one of the “inevitable” conflicts occurred, I had a surprising experience. While I was caught up in the conflict, I did not feel the need to explode — I didn’t feel hopeless. This is the power of having a new strategy.
I asked Emma if she wanted to talk about what happened, when she grouched, “NO,” I followed Karen’s advice. A few minutes later, Emma was ready to talk. I began my Self-Science process and asked, “What happened?”
I discovered that looking at the whole event was too complex, that Emma really had trouble telling the story. So I began telling what I thought happened, and after each little piece, I asked if she agreed — really asked, not to get agreement but to get her view. We agreed on some parts, not others, and didn’t debate it — we both identified the story from our sides.
Then I identified the part that was upsetting for me: “I felt ignored when I told you to stop grabbing your brother for the second time and it did not seem like you listened. Were you listening?”
“No,” said Emma, and I could see the realization sink in.
We put up a chart paper in her room and I asked what I should write. Emma said, “No Ignoring.”
I was surprised again when the next day there was a minor tussle between Emma and Max. When I asked what happened, Emma told me, and said we need to go write on the list.
I suspect that a large part of my own reactivity with the kids comes from feeling so powerless — from feeling like this won’t end, and I can’t stop it. So the lesson for me as a parent:
keep practicing optimism (it WON’T last forever and I CAN make a difference if I try).
keep experimenting with new ways of communicating.
to stay out of the power struggle — make my job be “help them learn” rather than “enforce.”
Reflecting on the two different styles of giving me advice, I see three key points to remember an “expert,” consultant, and manager supporting others.
Ask, help them see the story, the pattern.
Challenge the “insane” (doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results)
Offer questions, alternatives, and experiments rather than answers.
I need to remember I don’t have the answers to my own challenges, let alone yours! Perhaps the best we can offer one another is a compassionate ear and the encouragement to keep learning. It’s probably harder to sell than “the answer,” but I suspect there’s a lot more value in it.
Three different people told me the same story last week:
I’m too busy keeping my head above water to make progress on my real goals.
On one hand, that’s a practical and realistic way of coping. Look, we’ve all experienced that some days we can barely tread water fast enough… and some days we sink… and on those days it’s “impossible” to put time and energy into the future. How can you invest when you can’t put bread on the table?
All three had practical, legitimate reasons for “treading water,” they were not making weak excuses. There just has not been time.
So that’s the “practical reality.” What about the “emotional reality”? What I noticed in all three conversations was a loss of energy and momentum. There’s an emotional cost to postponing your future, and when you’re calculating the choices of your day and week, this needs to be factored in. I suspect that when you factor in the emotional cost (in the extreme, dying a little more each day), the equation might change?
You’ve likely seen this framework that Stephen Covey offers in First Things First:
Covey points out that we need to avoid QIII and QIV, and shift more time to QII if we want to build the future. Good! Let’s do it!!! How? Well… that’s a problem. It’s a fabulous model, though most of us already know that we need to stop fighting unimportant fires and getting sucked into distractions… but we still do that. We’re choosing to put time in QI, QIII, and QIV, and shortchanging QII. Why?
Because we’re not driven by “what we know.” We’re driven by what we feel.
There’s some set of feelings boiling around this pattern of behavior pushing and pulling us. There are feelings before the choice (to shortchange QII). Then there are feelings the come immediately when we do what we’re doing instead… then there are still more feelings when we end the day saying, “*(@_!_)# another day with no time for QII.”
If I can indulge in a bit of prognostication, I suspect that if your pattern is “do QI &III but miss QII” you’re feeling a mix of stressed, overwhelmed, impatient, excited, and focused (even driven). If you’re getting sucked into QIV then your feelings are likely to be bored, uncertain, distracted, lonely, or lost.
Then, despite the knowledge that QII is the only way out, you still go to another quadrant, and, for the moment it feels good. If you’re QI and QIII focused, you probably get great feedback, maybe overhearing, “He’s so reliable….” “You can count on her….” If you’re escaping into QIII, you get a bit of relief. In any case, there’s a feeling payoff — an emotional benefit. What is yours?
The first, and perhaps most important step, to getting out of the pattern is to recognize the emotional drivers. What’s triggering your pattern, and what payoff are you getting from it? Knowing that is not enough – you need to DO something with those feelings. That’s another article… but I’d love to hear your ideas (post a comment!)
I also noticed that in these conversations, and many others – including many in my own head, there’s a refrain about being busy: “I can’t do this unless I can devote a block of time…” Many a project have lingered on my “to do” list because I told myself I didn’t have the six hours or three days or whatever to complete it. Consider this:
If you had a month you could devote completely to your future, what would you do with that month?
How about if you had one week?
What could you do if you had one day?
How about if you had five minutes?
We all have time, but for most of us it’s fractured — five minutes here, and hour there. While it’s extremely challenging, somehow we have to reclaim those dribs and drabs of time and turn them into a worthy contribution. As usual, I would suggest the challenge lies not so much in the technical achievement of this end, but in the emotional transition we must undertake in order to bring the A game to these momentary matches.
Survive or Thrive
To conclude, here is powerful reminder from Karen McCown, Six Seconds’ Chairman:
If you focus on survival, then your survival is at question; if you focus on thriving, then your survival is assured – and more is possible.
Each week you have but a few discretionary hours to cash in: Will you spend or invest?
Max and I were at the sushi bar this evening and I indulged in my “restaurant vice” of listening to the conversations around us.
There was a guy about my age who seems to work in construction or trucking; he was talking with his buddy about the woman he’s been dating the last few months. What intrigued me was his experience of beginning to build a relationship with the woman’s three daughters, and the “raking over the coals” they were giving him. I was struck by the complexity of this situation, and was touched by the care – even reverence – he held for the situation. At least to his buddy, he expressed no impatience, no regret, no blame, but you could hear some pain and uncertainty and hope all mixed in his voice as he shared what it’s been like to be introduced to the girls as their mom’s new “friend.”
While I was touched by his tenderness (though presented in a “guy” slap on the back fashion), I was also thinking that the poor guy’s in over his head. As the generations roll on, we’re increasing the complexity and removing support systems. Many, maybe most, of us are trying to do right by one another — but we don’t quite know how to navigate these new situations and roles. While the logistics are not that daunting, the emotions are very messy; maybe it’s just that there are so many opportunities for “big” emotional experiences in all this social complexity? And how do we learn to navigate this new terrain? We’ve barely learned to cope with the world as it was, and each day we’re adding complexity — creating situations none of us is equipped to handle…. yet somehow, with luck and the many blessings that strengthen us, we stumble onward and sometimes it seems to work.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
A few years ago we enjoyed a business climate where companies flourished with little effort; stocks soared, cash was everywhere, and growth seemed automatic. Now we’re in a dramatically different realm.
What does it take to lead today? Not just to “muddle along,” but to truly lead? To take people and organizations to heights they would not otherwise reach, to be someone worth following?
While I am extremely concerned about our present and short-term future, I also see some tremendous benefits in the current economic crisis. One is the opportunity for true leaders to emerge.
What does it take? In keynotes and consulting projects, I frequently ask groups to tell me. I ask them to think of a leader who inspired them to go above and beyond — a leader who helped them be and do more than they thought possible.
In the last few weeks I’ve asked this of three widely eclectic groups: from leaders at Lockheed Martin, and the World Bank Group, to preschool teachers at the Stephen Wise Temple. Perhaps it won’t be a surprise that their answers were quite similar?
Before I share their answers, please take a moment to consider the question for yourself:
1. Think of a leader who helped bring out your very best. Someone you consider “a leader worth following.”
Talking to lovely grandparents, they were asking if I thought it strange how teens are so public, for example posting comments about crude behavior…. On the one hand I do find it strange. Looking @ what videos are popular on myspace — why would someone post a video of drinking at a party… and why would 7 million people watch it? On the other, isn’t this what teens have done for time immemorial? In the “Grease days” it was “tell me more, tell me more, did you get very far?” (dan nah na na nah na nan nah.) Now instead of bragging at the diner it’s posting a vid from your phone.
And yes, it’s much more public, but that’s one of the key differences for this generation – their connections are broad and thin vs narrow and deep. Today it’s 500 “virtual friends” versus last century’s 5 “real world friends.”
“But those aren’t real friends,” says Grandma. For you, they wouldn’t be – but for your grandson they are. As “old people” we have a different definition, a different concept of connection. Feeling connected is a primal – maybe even THE primal need; it appears we’ve accidentally changed the way people experience that connectedness.
This has profound implications at work.
Was talking to “Alia,” a 20-something who was frustrated that her bosses don’t “get” her and her generation. “They think if we’re online we’re wasting time, but that’s how we network. I spend hours online linking people to know about the company.”
Managers often tell me that the young generation is not motivated. Au contraire – as we see with Alia, they are highly motivated… but motivated to their own approach. Just ’cause us oldsters can’t engage that motivation doesn’t mean it isn’t there – it means we aren’t crossing the gap. Affinity is like a tidal force, there’s little that’s as motivating. In the recent past, affinity was to a company and a team and a place. Now it’s squashed flat and spread wide.
Back to the grandparents, they were anxious how much time the boy spent on Facebook, and I asked if they had a fb page. “No, we didn’t want to give in.” Give in?? There is a gap!
I encouraged them to make one that night and invite their grandson as a “friend.” Not because it’s fun for them to hang out on fb, but as a vehicle for creating common ground. It’s only when we’re willing to make that common ground and step into the circle that we have a chance of connecting with, influencing, and engaging those on the other side of the gap.
In SEI Cert class today, Yoshimi said she really liked what I said about Pursue Noble Goals, so I’ll try to recreate it:
Pursuing a Noble Goal isn’t about taking some “lofty” action in the future. It’s about understanding why we might do such a thing, then putting that “why” in action today in “everyday” interactions.
Our lives are made in small moments that add up.
Pursuing a Noble Goal is about ensuring those moments add up to significance — that they add up to what we mean to create.
Sometimes people hear the word “pursue” as something abstract and outside us – it’s really about putting it in action within us.
Just listened to a fab radio show from The Really Big Questions about emotion. talks about some of the science and implications for us individually and collectively. The just forgot to say, “and if you want to learn how to effectively use these incredible resources, contact Six Seconds”
Definitely listen to this one and let me know what you think – and feel about it!!!
I told Emma (8-year-old daughter) she needed to get dressed to go. Instant protest, heel-dragging, power struggle. Yet we were going to do something she wanted!
I observed a new cross-functional team starting up. The person assigned to schedule the first meeting asserted, "Since no one else wants to, I will chair the team." People rolled eyes and crossed arms (mostly hidden!). Yet she was right — no one else wanted to chair.
I was presenting at company and I told participants to discuss their ideas from a worksheet with the person sitting next to them. A few evaluation forms were quite negative, some said that I was "making them share to much." Yet they all said they wanted to get closer as a team.
What’s the common thread?
When people feel pushed, they defend.
This defense response is wired into the very core of the human brain, and when it becomes activated we’re more likely to get dissent — followed by descent into in conflict. The reaction is a "basic rule" of emotional intelligence: When people feel attacked, they defend. Understanding this rule provides invaluable insight into how to work with (rather than against) people in all areas of life. It’s an awareness that becomes even more critical in today’s climate.
Big surprise – people are stressed! Between global climate change, recession, war, and all the "noise" of our daily lives it’s no wonder. But the stress also comes from our success. It’s a terrible paradox: on the one hand we have an abundance of choice and possibility. On the other we’re wallowing in the deluge. While people are seeing myriad options — options of where and how to work, a billion choices for information and entertainment, the liberty to be anywhere in the world — they are also facing a concurrent level of chaos and risk from the unknown. Read the rest of this entry »
In the Six Seconds EQ Model, the “capstone” is a competency we call “Pursue Noble Goals.” Members of the Six Seconds’ team were discussing this last week, and reflecting that especially in “tough times” it’s easy to feel stuck and have a sense that the work you really want to do is occluded by the “stuff you have to do.”When we say “pursue” Noble Goals, that could sound like, “I have to give up the day to day and totally focus on the truly significant.” Nice, but unlikely.
Pursue Noble Goals really means putting purpose into everyday action. If your purpose is supporting equity, how can you build more equity between the people in the elevator today? If your purpose is sustaining a vibrant earth, how can you change what you buy for lunch to be more sustainable? If your purpose is nurturing compassion, how can you think and feel as you wash the dishes so you end that experience more compassionate?
In other words: Consider the alignment between WHAT you are doing each moment, each day — HOW your are doing that, and WHY? Is your intention coming through both in the action and in the way that action is undertaken?
In promoting Satyagraha, nonviolent compassionate activism, Gandhi explained that you can not make peace through anger. Anger and violence make more anger and violence. Real peace only can be made through peaceful means. Sometimes we think the “end justifies the means,” but in this vision, the means IS the end and the end is made of the means. So when we talk about Pursuing Noble Goals, that’s the standard: Live it. It’s not something to work toward in the future, it’s a future to bring into the present. Everywhere, all the time.
Great experience w my kids discovering a way to make a difference – and how that connection to purpose created emotional transformation. Wrote it up on family travel blog…
Clearly it’s difficult for a large organization to stay focused when people don’t have a shared picture of where they’re going. What are we in business to accomplish? To avoid confusion, let’s call this the “What.” Most mission statements I’ve seen have some clarity around the What: To be the best bank in someplace. To deliver world-class hospitality. To deliver technology solutions supporting key government programs.
What constitutes significance? A start is “value above and beyond utility.” Something can have non-utilitarian value because it’s beautiful or impressive or makes us laugh. A great statue, an impressive building, a winning team or a compelling story all have value above and utility. That’s part of the human experience from time immemorial and not a bad touchstone for motivation. Maybe “being the best,” if it really happened, would have significance. I suspect that companies that change their domains, like Apple has done with mobile computing, carry significance because of that groundbreaking experience. But there’s still something deeper: meaning.
She cried harder.
Yes – change is possible, but denial is sweeter.
The next day I happened to talk to a colleague and the psychotherapist sitting next to her. I talked a bit about my struggles at home, and I was struck by the dramatic difference between the therapist’s approach and Karen’s.
I suspect that a large part of my own reactivity with the kids comes from feeling so powerless — from feeling like this won’t end, and I can’t stop it. So the lesson for me as a parent:
On one hand, that’s a practical and realistic way of coping. Look, we’ve all experienced that some days we can barely tread water fast enough… and some days we sink… and on those days it’s “impossible” to put time and energy into the future. How can you invest when you can’t put bread on the table?
Because we’re not driven by “what we know.” We’re driven by what we feel.
While I was touched by his tenderness (though presented in a “guy” slap on the back fashion), I was also thinking that the poor guy’s in over his head. As the generations roll on, we’re increasing the complexity and removing support systems. Many, maybe most, of us are trying to do right by one another — but we don’t quite know how to navigate these new situations and roles. While the logistics are not that daunting, the emotions are very messy; maybe it’s just that there are so many opportunities for “big” emotional experiences in all this social complexity? And how do we learn to navigate this new terrain? We’ve barely learned to cope with the world as it was, and each day we’re adding complexity — creating situations none of us is equipped to handle…. yet somehow, with luck and the many blessings that strengthen us, we stumble onward and sometimes it seems to work.
Just listened to a fab radio show from The Really Big Questions about emotion. talks about some of the science and implications for us individually and collectively. The just forgot to say, “and if you want to learn how to effectively use these incredible resources, contact Six Seconds” 
This defense response is wired into the very core of the human brain, and when it becomes activated we’re more likely to get dissent — followed by descent into in conflict. The reaction is a "basic rule" of emotional intelligence: When people feel attacked, they defend. Understanding this rule provides invaluable insight into how to work with (rather than against) people in all areas of life. It’s an awareness that becomes even more critical in today’s climate.
Pursue Noble Goals really means putting purpose into everyday action. If your purpose is supporting equity, how can you build more equity between the people in the elevator today? If your purpose is sustaining a vibrant earth, how can you change what you buy for lunch to be more sustainable? If your purpose is nurturing compassion, how can you think and feel as you wash the dishes so you end that experience more compassionate?
