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Fear loves stories; it thrives on them. The more fearful the stories you can tell, the more your fears grow. Stories expand your fear, and they distract you from the feeling, disconnecting the thought about the story from the emotion it triggers. You tell yourself this discomfort you’re feeling has nothing to do with the fear you are experiencing, as long as you tell the right stories. I have many stories around my fear of water. I tell myself it's not really fear, because I know how to float and can move myself with basic strokes. But the truth is, even if I'm maneuvering in water, I'm experiencing stress. I'm not able to relax in the water. I feel fear.
Have you ever sat in a meeting that you knew was going nowhere? The conversation continued to swirl around questions no one in the room could answer. You all bemoaned the uncertainty of it all. Or you were convinced that this time, one more conversation would get the answers you knew were out there. Or you were just stuck and didn’t know what to do, other than explore the question again. At best those conversations are frustrating. Often the unanswered questions just suck your energy and leave you tired and defeated. At worst, they are dangerous. They can trigger desperation that leaves you open to magical thinking.
Build Adaptive Capacity
In a complex human system, you can’t be certain of “top-down” control; you may not be able to predict of the future. Your every interaction shapes emergent patterns of behavior and decision making. The world you know is open to known and unknown forces that influence from inside and outside your system’s immediate boundaries.
“It’s supposed to be uncomfortable,” my cycling instructor told me. “That’s how you build muscle. Add a little more tension during each training session,” she continued.
Build Adaptive Capacity
Any new paradigm challenges fundamental assumptions and beliefs. Old habits make it difficult to step across the line into new ways to think and act. For 20 years, the HSD global community has built bridges from the closed-system paradigms of the past to the open-system opportunities of the future. We have tried our best to be gentle, patient, and subtle in our invitations, but time is running out! The challenges are urgent, and we are impatient! So, we are engaging in two initiatives to break through into the future: Dragons of Complexity and Adaptive Action for Sustainability!