_edited.jpg){kind=logo}
„We need to attend to events that are always occuring in the „background“ of the more „foreground“ activities we do deliberately; these background events, usually occuring without our awareness, are in fact what make our more deliberate activities possible.“
(John Shotter)
The father of one of our clients' families is a lawyer in a reknown Brno law office. He always comes to a network meeting with a number of tasks that we should deal with. "I think Elena should talk about her dog," he might start and goes on: "My wife and I could follow up on the topic from the last session, and I am sure that Matěj has also something to say... right, Matěj?"
At one of the last meetings, we reflected on this tendency to bring up many topics, and he realized that it was a certain habit from his job, when he has to solve as many tasks as possible in a very short time, because every minute is very expensive.
Well, family therapy is not cheap either, but the purpose is different. We are definitely always curious about the topics that people come up with, but we do not solve them. Rather than as agenda items, we approach them as exotic fruits that we have never seen before. We observe them, smell them, carefully look into them, taste them in small bites, and then share our impressions with others.
Trapped by Urgency
After five years of working with Open Dialogue network meetings, I have noticed that one of the indicators of successful collaboration with a family or network is a certain shift that clients go through. Like the father mentioned above, they often come at the beginning with something urgent that needs to be addressed immediately.
Of course, we do not reject this. We invite and listen to their words, we connect with them in a collaborative relationship, but we do not fully join in that urgency. Instead of quickly searching for a solution, our attention is directed to what is happening in the process of finding a solution. We invite clients to inquire with us and hope that they will accept the invitation.
Simply put, instead of fixing IT, we begin to discover the events and contexts that co-create IT, and when we look into them, IT transforms, ceases to threaten us, or disappears altogether. To paraphrase Harlene Anderson and Harry Goolishian, IT is not solved, but rather dissolved.
I went through a similar shift in my life. My dad was not only my father, but also my tennis coach, and these two roles were not easy to keep in separation. Under his guidance, I was ready to become a Wimbledon champion, and I wanted to dedicate every minute of my time to this goal. Practicing, training, going to tournaments, and constantly improving was the program of both my sports career and my life. Unfortunately, I was not very successful at it. I often felt like I was failing. Both in sports and in life.
In my early teens, I withdrew from sports because I perceived a more important task: to succeed among my peers. I understood that although tennis is a beautiful sport, bouncing balls is something different from bouncing off the taunts of classmates, and successful exchanges on the court do not guarantee success in conversational exchanges with female classmates. So I exchanged the tennis court for pubs and parties, the racket for a pint of beer, and the tennis rankings for the number of girls I had picked up.
But one thing remained the same: I wanted to be the best. To be the funniest guy who could drink the most beers and win the favor of the most girls. It is fair to say that not only because the last two items are slightly contradictory, I was not very successful at it. I often felt I was failing.
Finally, my career in the helping professions began in the same way. My first steps in social work and psychotherapy were focused on learning and applying the most effective and innovative methods to help people change. I wanted to see progress. I was proud of myself when people started making successful changes in their lives after a few sessions. But they often said that nothing changed. And I immediately felt like I was failing.
So, hand in hand with the desire to achieve success, there always came feelings of failure, and because I wanted to be not only good, but the best, I experienced them quite heavily. However, it did not lead me to transformation of my goals or ambitions. On the contrary. I always gritted my teeth, as my dad taught me, and tried even harder. And it was precisely those gritted teeth, together with a great desire for success and fears of failure, that created an urgency that did not bring me any closer to success at all, quite the opposite. Moreover, it was almost impossible to leave it.
Catching the Pattern
I suppose I am not alone in finding myself trapped in this feeling of urgency. And no wonder. We live in a world that is designed this way. Our entire society is based on achieving. Getting into high school, getting into college, finding the perfect partner, having a happy family, excelling in your field, securing a retirement, seeing the world, and ultimately finding the best place for your urn.
To keep the market economy going, we have to be going for something. Having points on the agenda, having goals in front of us is the normal way of functioning, supported by the government, the media, our neighbors, even some of the lifestyle gurus. I don’t know if there is any point in changing it, but even if we wanted to, we wouldn’t change it ourselves. And neither will our Open Dialogue networking meetings.
But we can try to accept this pattern, to catch it, to look at and into it. Name it, talk about it, play with the language we can use to describe it. Share our observations and hear comments from our loved ones. Laugh about it together or find something beautiful in it.
A networking meeting can become the very place where we can touch our lives as we currently experience them, where we can see how our goals and agendas are shaped in the process of our conversation, with what feelings they are associated. It is not only interesting, but it can also lead us to important insights about how we want to continue our lives.
Focusing on the patterns that govern our lives is one way to get in touch with the events "in the background", which John Shotter, a prominent theorist of dialogic practice, writes about in the opening quote.
Without necessarily wanting to change anything, this focus itself can improve our experience of life. For example, by moderating the intensity of our desire to be better and better. In short, we realize that we are already good enough. And sometimes we even realize that our loved ones are good enough as well.
Feeling the background
But feeling your own patterns in the background doesn't have to happen only at networking or other therapeutic meetings. And it doesn't have to be with other people either.
I've recently developed a habit that I usually do alone and that is in direct opposition to my performance tendency. It's very simple: I will lie on my back. On a mattress, on a carpet, or simply directly on the ground. I try to do this especially in those moments when I feel the opposite tendency, when I feel urgency, when I'm trying to achieve something.
The moment I lie down and feel the contact of most of my body with the ground, I suddenly have the opportunity to better perceive what's happening inside me. I can literally feel my background, the part of my body that I can't even see. I feel tiny twitching in the muscles of my limbs, a slight pain in the middle of my chest, tension in my shoulders. At the moment of noticing it, my breath lengthens and my heart rate slows down. The muscles stop twitching, my ribs expand, my shoulders relax.
At the same time, other thoughts come to mind. And often those that were in the background a moment ago. I realize the connections of what I am doing, what I am trying to do, I notice that I am thirsty or that I need to go to the bathroom.
By doing this, I am not running away from unpleasant duties "up there". It is just that "down here" I come into a different contact with myself, my inner dialogue changes, I come up with new connections, I gain new stimuli. Sometimes I find that what I am doing is not actually that urgent, but other times I realize that it really is a priority and everything else must now wait. I get up and work.
To be honest, I don't really want to get rid of my goal-orientedness completely. I don't even think it's possible, it's kind of hardwired into my body. I'm not going to completely turn my life around and meditate. I still want to pursue something, to strive for something. I enjoy it.
What I'm trying to get rid of is the oppressive sense of urgency that goes hand in hand with these tendencies, as well as the belief that every second of life needs to be used for future success. I remember when I was a kid lying in bed on Sunday mornings and didn't feel like going to the tennis court at all, my dad would say, "If you want to achieve something, you have to sacrifice something for it."
I don't want to achieve anything with this self-sacrificing attitude anymore. But I want to watch this attitude in a way I would watch my old Dude. It's getting me really excited.
Comments