Yoga and Personal Greatness: It's Not a Stretch

Some friends came to visit over the weekend. At one point they encouraged us to do yoga with them led by some guru on a DVD. It was brutal. First of all, some of the moves I couldn't come close to performing (you want me to put that leg where?). Second I realized how very inflexible I am (see leg). However what struck me was the encouragement of the couple who told me not to be discouraged, that the body responded very quickly to the yoga moves. They told me it is like the muscle memory from any sport and that once the body knows it can do the movement it is much easier. I hope so. But my reflection on flexibility stretched a little further.

Individuals who achieve personal greatness have a powerful sense of who they are and where they are going. They set very high goals and are relentless in pursuing those goals. But it is a mistake to believe that they are rigid in either their thought process, or their path to their goals. It is this characteristic of flexibility which allows them to continue pursuing goals when others have given up.

For me, and I suspect many others, it's easy to fall into the trap of believing I know most of the ways to do things, or how things work. I have strong mental models that corral me into thinking certain ways, or coming to the same conclusion over and over. And it's this inflexibility that inhibits creativity and innovation. Recently I was attempting to remove a light bulb that had broken, leaving the metal casing still in the socket. I was trying to use a pair of pliers, but the twisting was just making a mess of the remainder of the light bulb. A friend who was watching me grow more frustrated asked if I had an old potato. He pushed the potato into the broken bulb and twisted out the remains of the bulb. A potato? Really? But if the goal was just to get the bulb out, why did I resist using something other than pliers? It wasn't my mental model.

So I'm trying to look at challenges differently. Rather than thinking in a linear fashion, i.e., if this is a nail I have to use a hammer, I try looking at the whole problem i.e., I'm trying to attach something to the wall. It opens up other possibilities and answers. The second thing I'm learning to do is slow down my thinking. If I think quickly I tend to come up with the same solutions because they are easy and I fall into routines. However if I take a little more time to think about the challenge and about my immediate reaction I can hold my first answer aside and see if I can come up with something else.

One additional thought about individuals who achieve personal greatness and their flexibility. What, on the outside, looks like a demonic rigor to pursuing a path, on closer inspection reveals that the end goal might be set, but the path to get there is open to flexibility and change all along the way. This is how they succeed. Where others might stop because they can't get traditional funding, these individuals figure out new ways to gain funding for their ideas. When others fail because a part is not available these individuals figure out how to create their product without the part, or with a different part. The key is that they have the end goal in mind, but realize that the road there might not be a straight line.

Physically we need flexibility to flourish and thrive, especially as we age. Yet also mentally we need to understand where we are not flexible in our thinking and stretch ourselves. Who knows? We might find a different and better way to do something we've done for years. It just requires a little flexibility. As for me, I'm not ready to buy a yoga mat, but I might try some of those stretches again.

The Affliction of Certainty

The day started very simply. We asked the 23 leaders arranged at four tables to dialogue about what the opening time should be for a new tourist attraction. Seems simple? But the exercise launched a day of innovation and change that challenged everyone in the room, including me. The most important attitude highlighted in the day is to be curious, not certain.

As adults most of us move into the day, the workplace,  or our vocation with the affliction that we are supposed to know what we are doing. Okay, I'm being a little factitious here but we are afflicted with the "certainty" bug. This is the attitude that we think we need to project that we know what we are doing and we have the answers we need to proceed with our work, art, etc. This attitude is important to achieve something in the day, however it inhibits growth, learning, and moving toward personal greatness.

Curiosity is an attitude which allows us to move through the day with a mind open to new ideas and suggestions. We treat the world as a place to garner new ideas and thoughts to propel us to breakthroughs in our work and leisure. Without curiosity we tend to repeat the same behaviors over and over again and never get new results. We imprison ourselves in our own thinking without examining it from another's viewpoint and we never open up to the possibilities that new ideas might present to us.

Just try today being more curious about the world around you, about your work, about your artistry. You will find that others share some of the same challenges you do, but might have very clever ways of overcoming the challenges. Or, as the leaders in our program yesterday learned, by being curious they surfaced new ways of moving through challenges or toward opportunities. All they had to do was let go of the affliction of certainty.

Baseball and Mental Models

Last night I finally saw the movie "Money Ball." Briefly the movie is about a baseball manager who learns to think about baseball differently than just getting superstars on the field, and his new ideas, though successful, are  tossed aside by many people. But it is about more than just baseball, it is about greatness. At one point the general manager, Billy Beane, says to his managers "innovate or die." Well, it's not quite as drastic as that, but many times in order to succeed, we have to change and it is not easy.

Many of us attain a level of success in our endeavors by doing what has always been done in our field, whether its art, science, athletics, literature, etc. However we can become stuck in our way of doing things by falling into the trap of believing there is no other way to achieve success. We become wedded to our "mental models." Mental models is a concept promoted by Kenneth Craik in the 1940's which held that we create our own mental models of how the world works, how we interact with others, how we do business etc., through our experiences. These models contain our belief of how things should proceed in our world. However mental models can become outdated. The famous quote that "everything that can be invented, has been invented" was stated just before the industrial revolution. Wow, talk about a wrong mental model.

The importance of mental models is primarily recognizing our own and occasionally challenging them. Breaking through to a new level rarely occurs by doing the same thing. In order for the breakthrough to occur, you have to do something different, or examine your worldview  and choose to see things differently. That takes discipline and courage.

In Money Ball, Billy Beane learns to view the world of major league baseball in a totally different way. He encounters a lot of opposition, because he is also challenging the mental model of others, but succeeds in changing the way the business is perceived. What mental model do you need to challenge?