Malcolm Ocean's roamblog

June 28th, 2021

edited 2021-06-29 · open in Roam
  • oh! I could write up a #blogpost on commitment/choice is a confused way to relate to stances/mindsets in the context of Book/The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership
    • my friend asked me what I thought of the 15 commitments of conscious leadership and I was like "the content of them seems great but committing to things like this seems to me to undermine the very mindset shift being pointed at here"
      • thinking that rejects other thinking relates to this
      • I think that choice only makes sense in relation to problem-solving or something
      • I came up with an articulation that I'm not totally satisfied with but it points at something decent
        • that's something like "never commit to anything you could imagine noticing you've already/accidentally failed to do"
          • in other words, the commitment needs to be on the level of something you can achieve by failing in the process
            • and where failing in the process doesn't imply that you aren't committed
          • for example
            • committing to marriage could make sense
              • you are going to hurt the person, and be frustrated, and whatnot, but the thing you don't give up on is the process of figuring out how to make that work
            • committing to a teacher-student relationship (in either direction) could make sense
            • committing to sticking with a company until you find product-market fit
            • committing to spending your life solving a particular problem
        • but probably much better than "never XYZ" is to just speak to what happens if you try (and do fail)
        • let's first acknowledge that you probably have no reason to commit to listening to music you like and not music you don't like—no need to commit, since you're just going to do it already
          • so the very context of feeling the need to commit suggests that parts of you have doubts or conflicts or hesitations or suspicions or resistances or disagreements - parts of you think "this is a bad idea"
            • in order to properly commit to something like a marriage, you want to at least formally invite all of those parts to veto the decision if they really aren't into it, and to be open to evolving in some not-predetermined way if you decide to go with it, in order to make good on it
          • this means committing to something means saying "I'm going to do this no matter what, even if it's a bad idea"
          • now, in relation to actual logistical choices like choosing to get on a plane or not, you sometimes need to do things you're not sure about, but once you've done them it's too late to change your mind. you can fly home but you can't not-have-gotten-on-the-plane
            • so the commitment is in the territory
          • but in relation to ongoing ways-of-operating, committing to repeatedly choosing one action over another is counteractive rather than coherence empathy-based
    • hmmmmmm somehow
    • oh - this bit about choice by Michael Smith kind of points at examples of the sorts of things you legit can choose to do, eg to "do a thing every day for 40 days"
  • Great thread by Zoe Curzi on everything makes sense
    • > Lately I've been trying this thing where I just validate the rationality of every phenomenological thing that occurs.

      Basically I just verbalize or vibe at myself, "Well, that probably makes sense." No matter how little I actually understand why what's happening is happening.
  • Probably stuff to write about rankism & dignity
  • Dimensions of Growth
  • relevant to my day off explorations