23 Oct 2020
I hope you are keeping well.
Like many people, you will feel overwhelm and the need to rush around at some point, if not every day?
Of course, I have been there and when I discovered “working with ease”, everything changed.
So, I would like to share some thoughts with you for the weekend …
EASE: Offering freedom from internal rush or urgency
Ease creates; urgency destroys
Ease, an internal state free from rush or urgency, creates the best conditions for thinking.
But Ease is being systematically bred out of our lives.
Ease is seen to be the enemy of the fast metrics, the you-are-what-you-have and the whom-you-control working world. The world seems, in fact, to select the urgency-addicted leaders to drive our organisations.
Other models of leadership are ‘sterilized out.’ However, if we want people to think well under impossible deadlines and inside the injunctions of ‘faster, better, cheaper, more,’ we must cultivate internal ease.
This takes the particular discipline of a Thinking Environment, and it takes a preference for quality over the rush of adrenaline.
Ease = Offering freedom from internal rush or urgency.
When it comes to helping people think for themselves, sometimes doing means not doing.
This all happens inside. Not outside. Sure, it would be wonderful if we could stop the everyday madness around us, the squeezing and lunging and accelerating that pass for normal at work these days.
But this external state shows no signs of letting up. That will probably not happen until Ease takes over our internal selves first.
So, ease in a thinking environment is an inside thing.
You slow down.
You still your internal day.
You focus.
You notice that you exist and that you are in this very moment and in this very room and with this very person.
You see them.
You let yourself let them be.
You say how long you have.
You keep that boundary clear so that you can be fully there with them, letting distractions deflate.
You will get to the ravenous iPhone right after this. This human in front of you is more important.
But surely Ease will take too long?
Surely problems cannot be solved without fear and tension and the fist-pounding panicking proctors of our production line of overnight outcomes.
Surely, we should hurry up?
One speaks about the power of Ease in generating independent, excellent human thinking, too. Why, then, do we see Ease work its wonders on the human mind, but return to hurry in such a hurry?
What is it about 120 steps a minute and tight jaws and pounding hearts that drag us back in such a flash?
Why can’t we see how brilliant Ease is in our genius and brilliance?
Why can’t we see that brilliance from each person is the point of our work because everything depends on it, and that rush kills it dead, and that because of rush and the death of thinking, the world, not just the valley, is in flames?
We bought an equation, that’s why.
Rushed = Important.
Tense = Focused.
Tight = Professional.
Pressured = Alive.
And not one is true. But they infest our way of being with each other. Not every culture is un-easeful, of course. But where are those cultures in the collective league table lore of successful, leading, take-them-seriously cultures of the world?
Try it. REALLY be with someone today. Ask them what they think about something and decide that for up to ten minutes you are going to be interested in what they will say next, that you will breathe out, keep your eyes on their eyes (or whatever your culture does with eyes to demonstrate attention), and that if they stop thinking and are looking to you for the answers, you are just going to ask them what they think.
Breathe out again, smile a little, pull your eyeballs off the screen or the ceiling or the pencil you are threatening with a broken back. Just be with this person. Take them in. Notice them. They are thinking. And the more at ease you are inside as they do, the better they do it.
But I am a fire fighter, you say, rushing is crucial. No. Even fire fighters fight fires better, they tell me, if they are at ease inside, so they can think! So, they can listen to each other and to the thousands of bits of information speaking to them from the scene.
Ease inside allows us to think about the emergencies outside.
And never mind fires. Even our tense conversations feel like emergencies. When Ease disappears from these conversations, usually right at the beginning, thinking stops.
Ease works easily. Storms may rage outside. But inside we can be still.
And with our attention the person thinking in front of us will, almost certainly, begin to think well.
But strangely, after experiencing Ease from us, they do not automatically do it for others. lt is as if they don’t see what is happening. It is right in front of them, but they don’t recognise it. They don’t inquire about it, take it apart, understand it. They love it, but without instruction they don’t learn it.
What if you could make Ease conscious, and offer it to people as a skill, a competency, like skydiving or SWAT analysis?
I am glad I did, because teaching it works. People can learn how to generate Ease, particularly when they see first-hand, often dramatically, how much better people think around them as a result. People want to be around Ease.
So, yes, after experiencing it, they step back into their ways; interrupting, criticizing, tensing, overtaking in order, they think, to get ahead.
What is the cost of NOT being at ease?
How much are you losing?
How much is at stake for your business?
I invite you to book a complimentary review with me to see how you can make a REAL DIFFERENCE in your world.
You can book either 30 minutes, or 60 minutes, whatever works best for you …
30 min Call
60 min Call
Have a great (and EASY) weekend!
With warmest wishes,
Korinne