Innovation mindset #259

Almost everything is always changing, and yet the natural tendency for many of us is to shy away from change, suffer through change, avoid change, retreat from it when it happens placing barriers and creating stories stacked on top of each other ad nauseam. We tend to like and attach our idea of selves to what used to be, or what currently is, scared of what could or will be.

A practical and natural approach to change is to fully welcome it, all the time whatever its nature. We can experience sadness, joy, fear, excitement, and whatever else stems from each change we confront. But we don’t resist change and all the sensations that may stem through it. We open up, accept, allow, welcome, owning whatever is there at any time. It’s a micro shift that generates macro shifts. Micro somatic/behavioral shifts that naturally foster a systemic change and integration of truth throughout our life, no matter the situation.

Living through a state of nimbleness, acceptance, innovation, experimentation is desirable for us humans precisely because everything can and is always changing. Small changes, big changes. Resisting leads to compounding in most things. Acceptance leads to natural dissolution. We allow whatever is there to be there, without fleeing from it but welcoming it instead.

And whatever is there gets integrated into ourselves, loses strength, slowly dissolves and dissipates in the background, while we continue naturally living free from additional knots and blockages. Because the foundations (the seeds of human beingness, so to speak) are stable, not significantly changing, and they are always there in the background of our lives, in the way we live, think, act, be. Spaciousness, stillness, connection are always there, literally.

Practical tools:

• Awake awareness (source: Shift Into Freedom, Loch Kelly): practice this glimpse. Let your attention move down from the head to the body, below the neck.

  Connect with the sensations in the body.

  Notice how everything around and within you is fundamentally still and spacious.

  Maintain the observer view and then ask: what is here now when there is no problem to solve?

  Notice and stay with whatever comes up.

• Experimentation mindset (sources: Joe Hudson, Anne-Laure Le Cunff): consider running experiments akin to a scientist. Sometimes a new revelation or insight manifests itself in your consciousness or thoughts. Welcome it with wonder and consider defining an experiment you can run for a certain timeframe to determine if it is something you wish to incorporate in your life longer-term.

  A practical experiment follows a streamlined version of the scientific method: start with a clear hypothesis (what you predict will happen), define a timeframe (e.g., 1 week, 1 month, 3 months), specify a methodology (how you’ll run it), and determine concrete measurements (how you’ll evaluate your prediction)

  For example, say you have been waking up with an alarm your whole life so far. One day, you wonder what it’d be like to wake up without an alarm. So you devise an experiment.

  Hypothesis: if I wake up naturally without an alarm, I will feel more energetic and generative drive (motivation) throughout the day.

  Timeframe: wake up without an alarm for 1 month

  Method: wake up without an alarm every morning for 1 month. Go to sleep around the same time every night.

  Measurement: journal about mood, energy levels, and other interoceptive sensations at the end of each day. Once the time frame of the experiment has elapsed, make a decision on whether to continue, stop, revise, or whatever else.