Thriving Manifesto
This site is all about thriving in this complicated sped-up world that we inhabit.
The future IS what it used to be…
It’s easy to get hooked into seeing the conditions we face today as being dramatically different from those experienced twenty years ago. There is lots of surface evidence - the rise of connectedness, information technology and science, bio-genetic innovation. Jobs are lost, new skills need to be learnt, threats and challenges arise around power and resources - at home, at work, nationally and globally.
Yes, but. When you look deeper, this incredible rate of change has been going on for centuries. The themes that recur are less about the change and more about what it is to be “human”.
… but our choices don’t have to be…
What has changed is that there is more and more theoretical, experimental and experiential evidence that we humans are really “homo mashups”. We have the ability to shape our reality from how parts of our mash-up minds choose to perceive it. The mashup re-remembers the past and future in ways that reinforce what we are used to perceiving. We can continue to allow the existing unhelpful patterns evolve or, through the techniques and thinking here, choose to influence them albeit not directly.
… thriving or diving …
There are tried and true principles that help us thrive…
· providing value - utility plus significance
· having a huge advantage if you do what you have talent AND passion for, and you select your focus well so that you are…
· “best in the world” to those you serve or produce for
· surrounding yourself with the right cadre of peers, mentors, friends and partners
· retaining “beginners mind” and the barbarian approach to endeavours – trying lots, keeping what works and discarding what doesn’t – leading to you reinventing yourself periodically
While being on the look out for the other principles that sink us…
· Entitlement - I’m entitled to what I have or had
· Effort = reward - If I work hard and truthfully, then I’m entitled to do well
· Continuation - tomorrow will and should be like today, because it almost always is
· Not decoupling what I want to achieve from the way of doing it
… a whole new outlook …
As different parts of our mash-up minds communicate, take reward or hurt in their own ways, it’s not possible to just “think” our way to thriving. What does work is stimulating helpful thinking and jettisoning unhelpful thinking, feeling, behaviour and action, around:
· Finding and flourishing in our craft, and taking it to the right series of life stages to perform it on, (or stay “realistic” about our endeavours or expect others to flock at our door because we are good at something)
· Embracing the cornerstone of life - “use it or lose it” to stimulate what is helpful and jettison that which is not
· Our habits, that sustain and centre us (or self sabotage us)
· How we nourish and grow our willpower muscle (or let it wither as age, complacency and “I told you so” takes their toll)
· Being aware and compensating for our preset filters that shape (and distort) our view of reality, with helpful “live-withs” – that insert helpful questions in our heads at the right moments
· Living for the most part in the “now”, (and avoiding being regularly hijacked into unhelpful rumination and televised slow motion replay on fears, regrets and anger from our personal story – past and future)
· Treating ideas as neutral, and not tethered to those that give them voice (versus prejudging based on our perceptions of others and being particularly anchored to those ideas spouting forth from our own tongues)
· Who is in (and ejected from) our inner circle for each of the life portfolios we create
· How we develop key thrive skills that reinforce who we aspire to be and help us get there (or wallow having all the best intentions but not the skills to make them happen) – how we learn, manage time and know-how, create and maintain relationships, and deal with adversity.
That’s what this website is about.
The thinking derives from our own “reality” of what we have found and seen works and what doesn’t. This has been heavily influenced by many memes created by a wide range of talented people, and mashed up into this whole by us.
These memes are acknowledged and we have included content and links to more detail as a “thank you” as well as to stimulate you and us to greater thriving.
Grant Margison
Sarah Heal