The small box of my chaotic attention

 

It’s strange. I love writing, but I don’t feel like writing. I love my beautiful view to the sparkled snow and handmade bird feeders, but I am not really ‘here’.

Instead, I’m compulsively drawn to ‘assess the state of the world’ through any kind of device. I’ve convinced myself that this move is necessary, so I can plan accordingly.

I check CBC 24 Live to learn whether Covid-19 has finally made it north. I peruse the Guardian App to see what went down in Europe. Concerned about my friends abroad, I check my email to found out if they’re safe and going to make their way home.

How we move, buy food, work, learn, play, celebrate and travel now pivots around mitigating risk and preserving fragile health systems. So much has changed in just four days in North America. I find I’m unsettled, at many different levels. Being on ‘alert’ has me listening from, what MIT professor Otto Scharmer would describe as, a pretty shallow place.

Instead of listening to what qualities are called upon me at this chaotic time, I’m paying attention to and collecting information that confirms my way of seeing and being in the world.

What and how are you giving your attention, in this uncertain moment?

In Chaos, your Go-To Level of Listening is….?

 

Otto Scharmer has teased apart four levels of listening, which describe our attachments to our own judgments and assumptions. Most of us go about our day in the first two tiers, at the downloading and factual level, rather than the deeper levels of empathetic and generative.

Here’s what he means (framed in the context of this viral chaos!):

When I’m downloading I’m paying attention to how everything is bad, everything is going down, and my parents are going to die (select digestion of info that affirms my assumptions)

When I’m factually listening, I’m noticing the patterns of epidemiology, border closings, flight cancellations, and slowly coming to terms with the fact I have to let go of my holiday plans! (more open minded, fewer judgments, responsive to new and different information)

When I’m empathically listening, I’m melting at the sounds of the Italian neighbors singing to lift the spirits of everyone (I’m listening through the eyes and hearts of others, dropping my own judgments/assumptions to feel into the life of another).

When I’m generatively listening, I’m marveling at the incredible ingenuity and resilience of the global family, while feeling into the possibility that something new may emerge (I’m listening for what future is emerging, that enables a profound personal and potentially broader shift)

The basic idea is that navigating complex and chaotic change requires the capacity to listen at deeper levels to birth something radically new.

The only way to do this, at all levels of leadership, is to become aware of how we’re listening and shift, when needed, to more nuanced capacities of empathetic and generative listening.

Flexible Listening for Radical Hope-Making

 

Now all of us play in each of these spaces. And when chaos hits and uncertainty stings, it’s natural that we spend more time in the first two levels of listening. We need to figure out where to buy more rice, whether to work from home, and how to juggle childcare.

But as we grow and develop as leaders and influential humans, the skill of listening- and its infinite teachings- is  our strongest capacity.

Because when we’re able to get off auto-pilot, and cultivate empathetic and generative spaces, it spurs a feeling of radical hope that things can and will be different.

Practice for You: Shift the Place from Where you Listen

 

When I’m in panic, fear, or judgment- I tend to hover in the most shallow levels of listening- downloading and factual. The sense I get is my head is buzzing, my chest feels a sensation of tightness, and there is an impulse to ‘move ‘up and out’. Everything in me prefers to move on- to a new conversation, activity, latte, or space.

In order to let go of preconceived ideas and assumptions and listen more deeply, I can use a simple somatic prompt. Using this, I can actually shift the place from where I’m listening and allow something new to emerge.

Experiment with this invitation:

• Imagine a stone dropping deep from your mind’s eye into your chest, and then deeper into your solar plexus.

• Let your breathing begin to rise and fall naturally on its own. Soften your gaze, and keep imagining that stone dropping.

• Physically imagine yourself listening from a place deep inside of you….

• Spend a few minutes here, breathing and softening your gaze.

• What emerges? What becomes available to you? What can you release from the grip of your assumptions, reactive emotions, and circular thinking?

Now I’d love to hear from you! What and how do you pay attention to during times of chaos? If you could contribute to something new,  from this difficult global time- what would you say?  Tell us in the Comments below!

Xo

Jennifer