Spiritual Technologies
Thank you to everyone who sent me comments on how I have shaped my coaching offerings. They’ve been valuable to receive. If you haven’t yet sent me any thoughts, please do – it is incredibly helpful to me.
Today we start with some feline fun. These caracal kittens have been hanging out in the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, and then, for cat power on a different level, check out this gravity-defying leopard. I am hope they make you smile. I did.
And whilst we are in this paused, happy moment, this astonishing work created by Faith47 in tribute to her friend, the street artist, Hyuro who passed on late last year, will be sure to touch your heart. The work is filled with love. And then follow her work to Beirut, where she has been involved in a project called Medicinal Flower of Lebanon, bringing life and hope to the concrete scars of that city’s pain. The work is particularly poignant given the events of the past week.
In the midst of the turmoil and loss, we can find much to soften the world.
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Strategy
From Beirut’s concrete, we head to the steaming, dense rain forest of Gabon.
Financial Times, Africa Editor, David Pilling’s article on Gabon’s rainforests draws our attention to a mindboggling fact of our lives. If something exists, but generates no cash income, it is unvalued in our world. In cash terms, it is more valuable to destroy rainforest replacing it with cocoa, palm oil and rubber. This is what has driven the destruction of much of West Africa’s forests. And yet, we all depend on the rainforests. Without them, climate change is accelerated.
In our current framework, Gabon’s rainforests are effectively providing ‘unpaid ecosystem services’, storing about 26.5 gigatonnes of carbon, approximately five years’ worth of US emissions. However, their protection and stewardship of these reserves get little reward.
Gabon wants to change that. They want their stewardship of these environmental assets, that give immense value to the whole world, to be rewarded, and so they’re working with the African Conservation Development Group to issue a bond, whose underlying asset is the rainforest. It makes intuitive sense to me. What do you think?
Tanguy Gahouma-Bekale, permanent secretary of Gabon’s national climate council, puts it this way “People say you can’t be paid for what is a natural process, but we say ‘No’. It’s more than 30 years of policy that have preserved our forests. This is not a natural process; it’s a vision.”
(If you’re interested in innovative ways to address environmental change, you’ll also enjoy reading The Mice That Roared, about how 8 small Pacific Islands shifted the economics of fishing.)
Self
The idea that we don’t value that which doesn’t have a cash return got me speculating whether that is why it is so hard for us to create time to focus, time to dream, time to relax.
I have always been curious about a seeming contradiction in our world.
Professional sportspeople have a number of seemingly sensible habits. They spend time analyzing their opponent’s game. They spend time reflecting on their own game. They reflect on the team strategy, and what their own capabilities bring to the mix. They seek professional advice on how to improve their game. They practice. They rest. They sleep. And then they play the match. They take time to review the match. They identify what went well and how to repeat it. They look for areas to improve. They do this consistently.
In contrast, those of us who play our sport in the business world are perpetually on the field, playing the game. We move from meeting to meeting, game to game, often not even pausing for lunch. No halftime for us. As for making time to consult a professional, or clearing the diary to think about what’s next, or to sit with colleagues and practice how to do something better, who has time for that? There’s a match to be won, so we must play and play – even though we know practice and recovery would help. Some of us pause for a few days a year – we call it strategy – to look at the competition, to reflect momentarily on the business (not ourselves as leaders) and then we’re back on the pitch.
This is despite the fact that all the research says that working on our leadership skills delivers better organizational results; that taking time out to focus on the business and its strategy delivers better results; that sometimes going for a walk, or not going into the office is the best way to unlock that innovation you’ve been looking for.
Perhaps there’s something in Gabon’s approach that will inspire you.
Protect unspoilt time. It has value. Perhaps not as immediately evident as a meeting, but its there. If you’re just super-busy emitting loads of carbon, and you never stop, you’re going to overheat. You also need a rainforest.
Perhaps consider pausing at the end of each week with your team. What went well? What could we have done better? In your one-on-one meetings explore what individual skills, knowledge, and relationships each ‘player’ needs for the team to perform better. What is their rainforest?
Soul
A fortnight ago we reflected how forests contain age-old wisdom, a wisdom that was completely missed, disregarded, discarded by ‘modern science’, a wisdom that’s being rediscovered as we begin to understand the immense intelligence that underlies systems that have evolved over millennia.
The beginning to a recent Wired article, adapted from the work of David Desteno professor of psychology at Northeastern University, resonated with that theme. It said, “Social scientists are researching what humans can do to improve their quality of life. Their findings echo what religious practices perfected centuries ago.” This is not about one’s faith, but rather about the systems that have evolved over centuries and the wisdom contained within them.
Desteno reflects that “Over thousands of years, these experiments, carried out in the messy thick of life as opposed to sterile labs, have led to the design of what we might call spiritual technologies—tools and processes meant to sooth, move, convince, or otherwise tweak the mind.”
As with Gabon’s rainforests, sometimes the wisdom is right in front of us. It doesn’t need to be invented, it’s there. It has evolved.
It’s fun to read Desteno’s results.
Having people practice Buddhist meditation made them kinder.
Practices of gratitude – think of a pre-mail prayer or prayer to greet the day or end it – correlate with people being more helpful, more generous and more patient.
The synchronous movement of many religious ceremonies and celebration result in greater feelings of connection and compassion.
Quite aside from their spiritual dimension, Desteno notes that “(t)he ways these practices leverage mechanisms of our bodies and minds can enhance the joys and reduce the pains of life.”
These are things that we can all bring into our lives. Create quiet moments for reflection. Find moments for conscious gratitude. Create moments where you move in connection and concert with others.
As we end today, think of all the moments of beauty that you’ve encountered in just the last 5 minutes. Caracal kittens, leaping leopard, compassionate friends, healing flowers, towering trees, ancient wisdom – it’s all contained in these words. Then let your mind go to the space around you, view it all with gratitude; the smell of the morning coffee, the butter melting on the toast, the sleepy smiles of those you love…
Thank you for being here. The fact that you are reading these words, maybe sharing them with someone you care about, always makes me see them in a new way. These letters start as seeds in conversation with my coaching clients, ideas about ideas that might help make your life a little more joyful, a bit more peaceful, maybe richer, but those seeds only germinate because I know that you will read these words. Thank you for providing the connection through which these ideas evolve. Without your reading the words wouldn’t be written.
I hope that you have a beautiful week. See you next Sunday.
Karl
PS: If you’re curious about working with me, here is a little about what you could expect and this is what my clients have said about working with me.
PPS: I loved author Ann Lamott’s reframing of FEAR, so I shared it here and this quotation from Tolstoy on the artist’s aim got me thinking.
(This letter was first published on 17 October 2021)