I love HBR!
“Harvard Business Review” for those of you that aren’t into it.
I love that they can charge $16 per magazine (price of a book) and that crazy curious and insatiable people like myself pay it to read it. OK, OK, OK… I sometimes pay to read it… they have a lot of their articles on-line and I reat them for free.
ANYWAY…
I love that they are constantly connecting business and science, leadership and strategy, people and everything ;-)
As you know, I believe the absolute truth is that it is all SO VERY CONNECTED. The leaders that at a minimum have an APPRECIATION for that reality, are so very successful.
I know many business leaders that are not necessarily themselves curious or passionate about it, but as long as they APPRECIATE the importance of tying business strategy, leadership, people and science together… it works!
So, I was reading the article this week, “A Primary Task of Leadership is Attention”. I recommend it highly. Not just for its relevance to leadership and business, but very much so for being a better parent, spouse, and human being.
The article groups our need for attention into three categories;
SELF
OTHERS
WHOLE WIDE WORLD
It speaks to how our brains chemically are able to FOCUS on each one of these and how they are different.
Simply categorizing our minds, our attention into these three categories, has value.
We have talked about the fact that finding harmony in your life requires understanding “multi-dimensional” harmony. On the one axis, is time… our ability to think about the truth of our lives and our wants relative to periods of time (i.e. moment, day, month, lifetime), and on the other axis is number of people, simplified by HBR nicely into SELF, OTHERS, WORLD.
When you think about living a life of harmony… embracing and being grateful and cognizant of what IS (the absolute truth) and then thinking about your WANT…
So as you think about harmony,
Or feel stressed,
Or feel that pang of disharmony…
PAUSE
Is it that you may be WISHING something about your SELF? If so, what? How can you turn that wish into a want?
Is it that you may be WISHING something about a relationship / another person / another group? If so, what? Tricky part when thinking about our harmony with others is that the truth is that we CAN’T CHANGE ANYONE other than ourselves… but where is the WISHING coming from and how can you turn it into a WANT?
Is it that you may be WISHING the world was different? If so, what? When it comes to the world, a lot of it is about ACCEPTANCE. “WANTING” to change the world is noble, but in and of itself it is a WISH, because its out of your control. We can’t change the WHOLE WIDE WORLD… we can ONLY CHANGE the WORLD AROUND US… and then possibly the WHOLE WIDE WORLD WILL FOLLOW… SO maybe its about turning your wish into a want, and maybe its about accepting the reality of the world (i.e. evil will always exist, it’s cold in the winter, poverty will always exist, most people have to work on Monday’s, etc.)
I find that understanding where my disharmony comes from, is the very first step in being able to convert it.
Divide and conquer…
So that you can multiply and enjoy!
Hope you had a great week. I will try not to be a stranger.
Yours in harmony,
Nestor