How we limit ourselves
Good morning
In Coaching to the Human Soul Alan Sieler cites psychiatrist R.D. Laing’s observation, that “The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”
This failure to notice our failure to notice, got me thinking about how shifting one’s perception can open entirely new possibilities for one’s life and the world.
It reminded me of Marcel Proust’s statement, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes”, and that, my dear friend, triggered today’s reflections on the power of perspective.
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Molly Burhans, a 26-year-old environmental activist, and Skin, a 53-year-old rock icon and activist, both exemplify the power of shifting how we view the world.
Intriguingly, despite their superficially different paths, they share roots in the world of design. Burhans has a master’s degree in landscape design and Skin did her honours in interior architecture. And in an even more peculiar twist, Burhans had started her tertiary education studying dance and Skin went on to be globally acclaimed for her powerful stage performances. I don’t know if they’ve ever met, but I imagine that they’d have a great conversation.
/ strategy
I learnt about Burhans in David Owen’s New Yorker article How a Young Activist is helping Pope Francis battle climate change.
Burhans looked at the approximate 200 million acres of land owned by the Catholic Church, making it potentially the world’s largest non-state landowner, and saw a direct route to impact powerfully on climate change through better land management practices.
In 2015 she founded GoodLands. Its mission is “mobilizing the Catholic Church to use her land for good.” They say that “A fundamental way to address many of the issues we confront as a society today is to use the land and properties we already have more thoughtfully.” By bringing a different perspective to bear on existing assets, Burhans sees new possibilities.
Amazingly, as she started her work, she discovered that the last time the Catholic Church had updated the maps of their assets was in 1901. Her new perspective revealed knowledge gaps.
As a student, Burhans was assigned to work with an environmental group in Portland, Maine. The group wanted to plant pollinator-friendly vegetation on an undeveloped piece of land in the city.
Burhans read widely and became concerned that the birds and insects would be attracted, but that the single piece of land would not support their whole life cycle.
She zoomed out, identified, and linked all the potential sites in the city, in so doing creating the possibility of environmental corridors that would support the pollinator’s entire life cycle. Thinking systemically, she created a whole new set of possibilities with hitherto unused assets, the possibility of a revived urban ecosystem.
It is this orientation that she brought to the Catholic Church. What might be possible, if they started to think of their land ownership not as individual parcels of land but as a system that could have a meaningful impact on climate change?
David Owen, the article’s author describes how in a visit to Burhans, she showed him “specific Church-owned parcels not far from where we were sitting which would be particularly valuable in any effort to preserve watersheds, habitats, migratory corridors, or other environmental assets. If Church leaders understood what they controlled, she said, they could collaborate with municipalities, government agencies, environmental N.G.O.s, and others, in addition to any efforts they might undertake on their own. ‘The role of the cartographer isn’t just data analytics,’ she said. ‘It’s also storytelling.’”
By introducing a new perspective, by telling the Catholic Church a new story based on new information about the possibilities that rest in their land ownership, Burhans is laying the foundation for a different world.
Look at the assets in your life, in your business, look at the lives you touch, what possibilities might you unlock if you shift your perspective?
Central to Burhans’ story has been her capacity to connect with people who influence her perspective, and whose perspectives she can, in turn, shift.
Who do you need to listen to? What connections should you be forming?
Recently Ridwaan Rasool, Director of Information Technology at ABSA, shared Sandika Daya and Priya Rowjee’s writing with me. They have started publishing a series of articles on LinkedIn for “for every underprivileged person that is navigating the world.” I am richer for reading their perspectives.
/ self
Skin co-authored her autobiography It Takes Blood and Guts with writer and academic Lucy O Brien.
You’d be hard pressed to find a better story of the power of being true to yourself and the massive multiplier that comes from intentional action.
Although not a conventional leadership text, Skin’s story is nevertheless a study in leadership, in having the courage to confront prejudice, in knowing what it means to persist despite the pain and the frustration.
Today, I am sharing just a snippet, I will give share more in the next few weeks.
Skin grew up as Deborah Ann Dyer. In the book she reflects on her journey from shy, conservative Brixton girl to bold Skunk Anansie vocalist, Skin.
As her journey unfolded, she first started to shift her dress sense and then took the step of shaving off her Afro. She declares that at that moment “I’d found myself. Once I’d shaved my head people would look at me, so I had to be confident, to let go of my shyness, and a bold new me emerged.”
She both shifted her perspective on herself, and forced others to shift their perspective, and then it looped back in on her, forcing her to be herself even in the light of this new view. She created a mutually reinforcing cycle that compelled and allowed her to maximise her essence.
She says, “Back then, a shaven-headed black girl was seen as quite radical and made some people uncomfortable, but I also realized the thing I’d been trying to run away from was what people liked about me the most – that I was uncompromising with my look. If you try to conform, I concluded, you’re taking away your own power, putting your best asset away in a box, so instead I decided to accentuate and love my differences.”
Part of this journey was changing her name.
She reflects that as a teenager, because she was tall and lanky, she was dubbed Skinny. In becoming Skin, she both reclaimed the name and gave it the edge that represented the activism and energy that she would bring to the world of rock.
What parts are there of your journey that you could reclaim?
What is there that you might change to symbolize a new intent for your life?
Skin reflects that the internal changes took longer to come then the act of changing clothes and shaving hair, but those actions laid the foundations for her to connect with who she wanted to be.
/ soul
William Saunders, founder of experience design consultancy Experio, introduced me to the work of Dr Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg whose work “explores subjects as diverse as artificial intelligence, exobiology, synthetic biology, conservation, biodiversity, and evolution, as she investigates the human impulse to ‘better’ the world.”
In this artwork, she “asks visitors to view the world from the perspective of plants and pollinators and to take part in a cultural project to help save bees and other endangered species of pollinating insects.” It’s an interesting challenge, but given our planet it is a much needed one.
I hope that your week is enriched by new perspectives.
All the best
Karl
PS: If you’d like to learn more about working with me, you can do so here or drop me a mail and we can set up a time to speak. For the occasional extra snippet follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram.
(This letter was first published on 18 April 2021)