Screening Your Resolution for Effective Outcomes

​Screening for Persuasive Resolutions

The most important thing for resolutions
to manifest is committed self-persuasion. [1]
But that doesn't mean a resolution must be achieved by yourself alone.

With a quiet turn of the New Year, and now being able to say with some degree of confidence that I survived three full decades on earth, I'm starting to realize celebrations (many of which I barely partook in) also exist as a form of persuasion. And celebrations can be significant even away from other people, though never far or completely independent from others.

Just as important, the way we form our resolutions--setting intentions can be done in a way to remind us why we're committed to taking action toward something we want rather than discourage us from not reaching our goals.

Effective resolutions come from one's capacity for effective self-persuasion. What if, instead of mandating a specific future and living under the tyranny that comes with limiting one future for yourself, that people entertained the opportunities of their lifetime with questions to keep them moving forward? Like how scientists might create a hypothesis before diving into experimentation.

I often champion the worth of thoughtful questions because they allow you (or organizations [2]) to find and create new answers in multiple situations, time and time again. From a scientific point of view, the value of a hypothesis is that it lets us move closer to the truth by discerning whether a specific influence will have an effect on an anticipated outcome--and just as important, we can potentially let others replicate the results too. And my friend Onyx is often quick to warn people that "committing to only *a* future can be a dangerous false choice."

Life is a creative endeavor, why must our aspirations terminate into a specific sentence or outcome like "losing weight" when you can commit to experimenting with specific and intentionally chosen actions that will always contribute to manifesting multiple goals?

"How might I consistently improve my health?" or better yet, "How might *we* improve our health?"

"How might I enjoy more activities that contributes to my physical fitness?"

"What does eating well look like?"

"What does taking care of myself, or loving myself look like?"

When we engage in long-term efforts to create systemic change that require more than what an individual or group can explicitly control, and it's the same kind of thinking that's probably necessary for people to make meaningful change as individuals who live in a world filled with plenty of people and experiences that go well beyond their own selves.

Does it change the fact that we still need goals and milestones? No, what matters is the *resolution* our goals are framed with--and yes, that's a play on words. Think about resolution in terms of digital screen definition -- how granular is your goal?
If it's too specific, it warps your reality in unfavorable ways--watching a youtube video in high definition on a clunky old computer sometimes brings the entire computer to a halt. Watching it at a 180pixel resolution might not overburden your graphics card, but it might not do service to the viewer in showing the details of an event or a picture of a map that might be important to remember in the near future. How can you take more effective steps toward making a good resolution? Look to the trajectory of your past experiences and the ingredients playing into their circumstances. If none of it has changed and you're setting sights on lofty goals for your New Year's (or any other time of year) resolution, you might need to create more persuasive ways to reach that goal.

If eating healthily isn't easy because healthy food is rarely if ever available, maybe it's to find ways to increase your chances with being in places that offer healthy food--deepen your friendship with a local gardener, work toward a new job or promotion that provides better mobility for taking care of your basic needs. These are roundabout but important steps to your bigger priorities, and it's important that you honor the challenges even when it didn't seem like part of the bigger picture you envisioned when looking from the cusp of a new year.

        .       .       .

One of the many gifts genuine interpersonal connection brings us is that a friend, a sincere coworker, or even kind strangers can help "screen" out unnecessary information and put part of the reality you live with in check -- though it goes without saying to engage wisely as some don't know where you want to go, and bad relationships can have powerful negative repercussions. So another person's agency and ability to check in on you can count as a system, just like making commitments to yourself for exercising with goals or milestones with your rest, eating, and emotional health habits too.

In other words, friends can boost your ability to achieve what you set out to do that becomes a form of persuasion that better futures are possible--and you can do the same for them too!

Last year international life coach Bere and I put together an event called "Party Like it's 2019!!!" [3], where the value of the activity comes from being able to experiment with iterations of who you are, and set up systems that help keep you on track with what you aspire to do along the way. One of Bere's biggest points of emphasis in her coaching came from being able to break down big endeavors with specific and achievable goals.

In the world of organizational and systemic change (complex systems) I studied and worked with during and after University, the same concept's about recognizing how the things you have direct control over plus tangible reminders can create structure to influence your paradigms about the world [4].

It's how gratitude exercises often succeed by letting people realize visceral past experiences and outcomes can present them with reasons to be happy (or satisfied, or hopeful) because they show us a different trajectory of choices available that we didn't see before.

That's the magic of empowerment too--that you can suddenly generate 300% more with 100% of the ingredients you already had with a simple shift in perspective.

Confidence at its essence is about trust--trust in oneself, trust in others, or trust in an endeavor--including the promises or resolutions we make. Often when we're overwhelmed, we lose track of what we've done before and what we remain capable of doing.

My friend Marnese Jackson and I would also check in with each other on a weekly basis as we worked through unstable housing, irregular transportation, living with kids, family challenges, and professional priorities that also extend into community and civic impacts. Sometimes the best thing that came from it was the ability to unpack our overwhelm and remember what we've done or sought out to do.

And as strategists, futurists, and science fiction writers might all agree: good strategy is the practice of good science fiction. When we create believable futures, they're often rooted with discernable, plausible, and replicable truths that allow us to leap beyond the ingredients we know into new places.

Since the future becomes the present with every moment, you'll have plenty of opportunities to find a persuasive resolution. Hopefully you're finding something for moving together forward now.

[1] https://lighttelecommunication.blogspot.com/2019/01/persuasive-resolutions.html

[2] http://ismotion.co/2013/12/purpose-in-questions/

[3] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/refreshing-your-vision-party-like-its-2019-tickets-43259414072# 

[4] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6ZWASyBqmHHcGFyVkxWNTEyYTA/view

https://www.inc.com/young-entrepreneur-council/how-turning-your-goals-into-systems-can-change-your-life.html

Possibly related and useful--for setting more feasible systemic goals; one of my biggest challenges was the feasibility side of goal setting, a lot of visioning processes and goal setting processes are admittedly very time and effort intensive to the point of feeling overwhelming--I have some ways for dealing with it but I'm certain there are better and curious to see how the following turns out:
https://www.inc.com/heather-wilde/3-simple-steps-for-setting-your-next-business-goals.html

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash
I don't know who this woman is but she's definitely looking at a screen and reaching
with what could be described as resolve. By the way, staring at
blue light from screens can degrade your eyes
so try to look out to the real world instead.

"Fair isn't an option in your life. You'll have no choice but to go forward."

Two quotes burning in my mind today:

"Choose to take care of yourself, or else you won't have a choice." ~paraphrasing Minda Zetlin
(I'm overcoming some health challenges at the moment too)

"Fair isn't an option in your life. You'll have no choice but to go forward." -a grandmother

This quote stuck with me today as it captures how I used to, and likely still look at a lot of social and environmental justice issues. It's why I don't see much productive in protests on their own aside from its fleeting public presence and media attention, nor do I share news that's devoid of or taxes my ability to find actionable next steps to change what's going on around us. I'd call that attitude proactivism: make the solutions that don't yet exist. Yes, if you need to talk it out to process what's going on, that's fine and important to heed stories too, just don't get stuck.

It normally isn't an issue or something I think too much about. Today's a bit different, here's how it knocked me in the gut:
I heard it from--here come the labels--a black female entrepreneur who cited her grandmother's advice for resilience. Hard wisdom from the oppressed. I say oppressed because the quote says a lot about a status quo that denies the dignity of choice to a certain degree.

I think it resonated so much because I realized that's where my perspective comes from--a lot of us are still on the ground or digging ourselves out of a hole of problems made by someone else's legacy of hatred, apathy, neglect, or unknowing. A core part of my worldview still comes from reacting to what's a painful reality for a lot of people in the world.

This evening, in the same day, I sat down for soup a restaurant in "America's most educated city" where a woman asked me where I was from. When I answered "Michigan" she tried correcting by saying "no, where is your family from"--this line of questioning normally entails that a person thinks I'm from another country, usually China, sometimes Korea. Today, she thought I was Chinese and then Korean. When I got up to pay my bill, my waitress cashed me out and asked if I was a professor and then with certainty claimed I was an engineer "because I looked like one".

To be clear, I don't view being Chinese, or Korean, or an Engineer as wrong, or bad--I have friends who truly are of those nationalities, one of them is among the most brilliant people I know. For many people, their nationality isn't an item of choice. As a profession, engineers tend to strive to create and improve things.

The issue is this: Starting a conversation with "where are you from" creates a narrow set of assumptions when asking that to a person who looks like they come from a different ethnic background. The assumption being that their identity can be simplified--even stigmatized--into a specific set of characteristics, values, and behaviors. It's a question set up to impose an identity and denies the person being asked an opportunity to represent or fully create the reality of who they are.

Choice is fundamental to dignity. Your choices become very limited when you're asked to represent something you had little to no control over choosing.

By the way, I honored the first woman's curiosity by answering the question. After I ate and was willing to put up with conversation, I politely shared that some people can find that question offensive and culturally insensitive.

Sometimes the only solution to oblivion and apathy is empathy.

Empathy and patience for education take a lot of energy to educate someone who could have cared less about what they do or say. It's an odd paradox--more work for the people who need to be heard and heeded than the people who make the problem.

Yet it's your responsibility to tell them else it keeps happening.

This quote didn't cross my mind today until I started writing, but since the arc of the universe needs some bending, and since the content's just as timely and topical, I figured I'd throw this picture off Martin Niemoeller's quote from the Boston Holocaust Memorial.

Fair isn't an option in your life. You'll have no choice but to go forward. Hopefully, you're quick enough to create it as an option for others before choking on your own soup.

Fairness isn't an option in your life. Eliminate it as an option and you can adjust faster, hope to create it for others.

Fairness isn't an option in your life. Eliminate it from your expectations and you can move forward faster.

It hurts a bit to realize the insight comes from a place of oppression. It's good to know it was embraced by personal choice and from a creative stance. There's a subtle and equally important difference between being told to accept a reality versus choosing one for yourself.

Fairness is an option in our lives. Embody it in our intentions as we move forward. Will you choose that?

Rice and the fist

A revelation: The "take rice from the hand of a kung fu master" thing we see in movies is a really practical exercise for proper* fist formation in a punch. You must keep swift and relaxed, tighten your hand to a fist as you propel forward and immediately withdraw for a proper snap-punch.

Taking the rice isn't the outcome where mastery lies, it's the practice of swiftly delivering and restoring oneself with elegant force, repose, and clarity of intention. Honing how to get what you need even in messy situations.

*note: it's not the same a striking--there's a nuanced difference in distance and the exact moment for clenching the hand--but the essential motions and general timing approximate well to one another.


A tangent on rice and the fist:
Is anyone familiar with and able to explain the conflict between First Nation's rights to wild rice harvest and the DNRE's permitting for mining companies in Northern Michigan? Is this a regulatory outcome of environmental conservation which overlooks other aspects of our existence? It seems there's a double standard between the regulation for harvesting and how the State's departments permit mining and other activities that may/already harm the area.
I overheard someone explain as I was signing out of the Michigan Environmental Justice Summit but wasn't able to catch the whole conversation.

EDIT (!): In retrospect (and after a lot of googling to find where the idea/media inspiration for this post really came from), I guess I've never seen a kung fu movie where the student takes rice from the hand of their teacher. I'm guessing it's actually a pebble. Now that I found the clip below, I'm glad I didn't. Otherwise, I probably never would have made the connection between striking form and reaching for rice. I like my example better, but the advice in the clip on humility's nice to hear too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1wjvP-raOI

Aikido and the Land Ethic: Parallels in humane transcendence

Roughly translated, the martial art Aikido stands for "the way of harmonious energy":
Ai=harmony
ki=energy/spirit (AKA Chi/Qui in Chinese)
do= way/"an artful path to discovery" (I like how the site articulated "do")

Foremost, aikido has compelling appeal to me because it's centered on a win-win approach to drastic situations.  Opponents don't (or rather more accurately, shouldn't) exist, a practitioner simply acknowledges the situation, momentum, and redirects it to a more favorable outcome for everyone.  Reading up on the philosophy of the art again, I found the following quote:

"We believe that since we all share a common energy source, that in some important way we are all truly members of the same family, and truly sharing our lives with all of nature. We do not have an attack form in Aikido, because attacking an opponent would be like attacking a family member that you love." (source)

Those familiar with Aldo Leopold or beliefs frequently held among First Nations people might find this concept familiar: we share fundamental similarities and needs, and thus merit respect for one another and across species.  Leopold's essays use common sense to lay out nuanced wisdom, and it strikes a chord with people of very diverse backgrounds.  I know hunters, vegans, conservative and liberal friends who continue to appreciate the writings found in his essays.  Of particular pertinence to the quote found above in Aikido, Leopold's Land Ethic came to mind immediately.


While Leopold undoubtedly held a different paradigm about life and his relationship to the world prior to writing many of the essays found in his "Sand County Almanac", it's interesting to note how his views developed and the development of Aikido as a martial art share a similar story of transcendence.  Read Leopold's "Thinking like a mountain" essay and then read his "Land Ethic" essay to get a chronological sense of Leopold's discoveries.  Then recognize that Aikido emerged out of combative martial arts for samurai--life/death techniques which went from a mentality of winning via attacker/defender to a co-creative ethos revolving around redirecting force for favorable outcomes.


In accessible English, Aldo Leopold expounds on the scientific matter-life-energy processes of ecology and builds up to an ethos that considers how we rely upon and share our existence with other living things.  For those with biological/ecological/environmental science backgrounds, it's a familiar foundation to our education, but it can be a daunting challenge to make clear and accessible for any reader--Leopold describes it well.  From this he advances the idea that we live with the land, not just on it or as owners of land.  Leopold then adds that our notion of ethics ought to extend toward considering those we share the land as neighbors in a community.

This may be the first time I've written about Aikido and the Land Ethic, but it's been in my mind for a long time.  The concept is among one of my core principles for conflict resolution and problem solving, and friends might even recognize threads of it in my musings and research.  All of it frequently examines this kind of collaborative/embracing participatory approach.  More to come...

Raw links to noted sources:


Aikido:
http://www.intermartialarts.com/philosophy/aikido
http://www.seishindo.org/2005/11/17/the-ki-of-aikido-energy-self-and-mind-in-aikido-philosophy/


Thinking like a mountain (two places for the same essay):
http://honorsbiology.wiki.lovett.org/file/view/Thinking+Like+a+Mountain.pdf
http://library.fws.gov/wildread/thinking-like-a-mountain.pdf

Land Ethic abridged: http://www.aldoleopold.org/AldoLeopold/LandEthic.pdf

The full "Land Ethic" essay: http://neohasid.org/pdf/landethic.pdf

New pardigms for walkability--the 2007(?) Saturn Ion commercial revisited

WHOA! A friend suggested "walkpooling" for school children in the Dearborn Sustainability Master Plan, and I then remembered this 2007 Saturn Ion commercial where all the kids and a bus driver were walking on the street sans the bus (at 0:39 seconds):

Watching it again with a new paradigm for walkability in cities, a better understanding of infrastructure and sustainability, I can't help but think that it's a bit ironic and hope that it's a bit prophetic too.  You may ask, "Ironic?"  Think about it, this commercial came from a car company--even though I owned a Saturn and loved it--much of our road infrastructure and city planning (especially for those living in Michigan--even more so for those in Southeast Michigan) was designed around car transportation by the push of the Automotive industry.

Feel free to converse with me in person about the gritty details, I think a lot of people in the Automotive sector are trying to do the right thing at this time (though it may be a bit late) and don't want to unfairly characterize the efforts of the people who are doing good by giving the darker aspects of the company's (GM's) history here).  That said, James Kettering (of GM and also Kettering University's namesake) had a big role to play in shaping a worldview for consumerism, and I suspect not being able to afford a new car over other things has a lot to do with the skew of hyper-consumerism in the economy.

That said the same time it's an outstanding teaching tool for grasping how much attention and space is devoted to vehicles rather than people.  That's the beauty of this Saturn commercial.

It reveals how we approach the way we travel, and where we go to do the things that make up our lives.




It's not always apparent, but when we look at how cities scale their roadways, it tends to be done with respect to making it convenient for a car rather than the people in the city.  In my end of Michigan, there's a fair number of people scraping by to get to work via car, even I commute over a hundred miles almost on a weekly basis for school and work.  That brings a big question based on a plausible what if:  What if we couldn't take this kind of long-distance transit system for granted (say, gas is too costly)?  How can we make the immediate locality--the place we live in--more vibrant and economically resilient?

The Saturn Ion commercial captures an intrinsic truth about human travel so well that years later even without the company's existence we can look at it as an opportunity to rethink walkability and livable communities. In case you were wondering, this is one of those rare "blew my mind with a new paradigm" moments.