How can we see the good in life if we do not look for it in our lives?
My very limited (and possibly incorrect) understanding of quantum mechanics is that certain things only exist in a certain state when we measure them. While this may not be wholly true, nor the greater generalisation that if you do not measure something it does not exist, it does feel true that if you do not look for something it is much harder to see it.
That in itself raises the question what may you be missing in life because you simply do not look out for it?
Neuroscience has shown that our brains filter for the thing on our mind. I recently rented a car and now cannot stop seeing the same car when I walk around. It can also be more focused. In being clear on what we want we can see opportunities or signs that remind us or move us closer to what we want, which is why goals and visions can be so central to coaching.
So what do you unconsciously see because your mind is on it?
How may that thing in the back of your mind then show up in every aspect of your life?
One example is reading the same book at two different points in life. I distinctly remember reading a novel as a teenager and seeing the plot as a great romance when in reality that was only what I was looking for at the time.
Similarly when things have felt financially difficult or uncertain, both when running a charity and running a business, it was amazing how often my thoughts about money and the cost of things was present in other areas of life. (It turns out telling someone the private jet their boss hired is more expensive than the money you’re fundraising to employ one person on more than the living wage at a charity is not great dinner conversation).
We have written about the subject-object move before and in this case it could also be summarised in the saying where the attention goes the energy flows.
And often where our default attention goes, when we are subject to a situation, it is not always helpful for the energy to flow. With hindsight the times where finances have felt uncertain have led to strategies that perpetuate that state as I act from a mindset of scarcity, and so I see scarcity is always going to be the case so it is about getting through in that context.
A mentor of mine once reframed ‘seeing is believing’ as ‘believing is seeing’ and it feels pertinent here. The reality is it doesn’t have to be that way of seeing something and when we zoom out we can choose how to approach a context and to see a situation.
In the cases of those moments of financial uncertainty another way of seeing them was as an opportunity to innovate to create more certainty or to more skilfully approach the reality that uncertainty may be the norm.
The myth of Sisyphus is the story of Sisyphus being sentenced to roll a stone up a hill only for it to roll back down and for him to start again, for eternity. The French philosopher Albert Camus used this myth as a metaphor for finding meaning in life. For Camus, one could see life as this constant process of rolling a stone up a hill and it rolling back down again. Instead of being a depressing possibility though, Camus suggested it was in this process and in our inability as humans to know the true, objective meaning of life, that we could find a meaning to life in how we rolled the rock up the hill.
And so, like a rock rolling down the hill again, we come back to how we look at things.
One of the most impactful activities I have done with clients is to get them to list an increasing number of successes or positive moments every week. These can range from small successes like a good night’s sleep to life-transforming successes like becoming the leader of an organisation. In some ways the success or positive does not matter, the practice does. It has meant that when things are most difficult, when the stone feels heaviest and the hill steepest, clients are more able to see the opportunities, to find perspective, and to find joy and meaning in the stone rolling.
This is not to promote a toxic positivity only to consider that even in the most challenging circumstances there is always some light (sometimes the positive has just been to be alive). Nor is it to deny that there is much suffering in the world. In a world where we have access to and are exposed to more information than ever, a world that sells us things by telling us we need them for our lives to feel whole, the process of starting with the positives is to acknowledge that while things can be really difficult if we’re tuned to look for it, even in those hardest of times there is something good and that alone can be the spark that is needed to navigate the challenge.
What practices would help you see more of the good in your life and the world?
What would the impact be of noticing more of the good for you, for others and for the world?
References
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
