Step Change/thinking aloud (2)

A couple of weeks later, with the @Arachne conversation still rattling around on the back burner, I attended a taster workshop with Amanda Ridings, mentioned in this post.

I came across Amanda’s work sometime last year and have uncovered many symmetries and synchronicities in our exchanges, and in our lives.  We have a lot in common, and enough differences to make for a rich engagement.

She seems to have a talent for making the complex seem simple, if not necessarily easy to negotiate.  The image above is a model she introduced, representing one strand of her work.  From the middle blue bubble down towards the lower left corner are everyday conversations - buying a pint of milk, arranging to meet a friend for lunch, routine transactions.  

The upper right red cloud is where ‘high stakes’ conversations take place.  The language in the image is business-oriented because all the other participants were either high-ranking Civil Servants or in leadership positions in business.  I was there to play and explore.  Retirement is a wonderful thing.

The key part of the diagram for me is that modest little blue curving arrow between the blue bubble and the red cloud.  It says that a STEP CHANGE IN THE WAY OF BEING is required when you find yourself in a ‘high stakes’ conversation, one that really matters.

My first thought was that so often we’re just pootling along in an everyday, low complexity mode thinking we know the score, have the measure of things, business as usual.  Only to find someone threw a spanner in the works and suddenly everything is up for grabs.  There are no certainties any more.  In any relationship an unexpected event can reveal vast differences in worldview, values, desires, expectations etc.  It becomes a high stakes conversation if security [money, job, roof over your head] or love are involved.  So this model is as true, if not more true, for our personal relationships as it is in business.  Amanda agreed, in fact her comment was that the complexity is ten times higher when love enters the picture.

So that was an interesting frame for me.  Whenever I feel challenged by an unexpected disruption, life is inviting me to a whole new level of being.  This is as true of a train delay as a sacking as the end of a relationship.  It’s all invitation.

But what the heck IS a step change in the way of being?  And how does it relate to endings?

#am writing