Debunking All Connotations
I have been swept off my feet. Like the knee-wobbling feeling of first love, the understanding dawning on me totally overwhelms me. How beautiful a world would it be if we got rid of all connotations? Where there is no lens through which we are seeing things, because we have understood the most natural state of everything – the paradigm itself has evaporated erasing all differences between new and old, hot and cold, black and white, high and low and right and wrong. And most importantly where defying all connotations has lead to realization of feats perceived undoable before- making all limits limitless.
The vibrancy of the idea that I have encountered in my class for ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ has shaken all my old beliefs. The basic premise of this philosophy stems from focusing on the high, mighty and successful in all systems, instead of the deficiencies, and in turn amplifying what makes a system work. The idea is what we focus on grows. Let’s say we have an employee in an organization not performing as expected. The old approach would be to make him aware of his ‘deficiencies’ and chart a path for him to overcome that, but tap the kaleidoscope and a whole new beautiful picture emerges, where we do not know the word ‘deficiency’, where we are focusing on what he is great at doing and hence fueling his talents all the more. This might require concrete steps like re-fitting him in the organization, but the approach would produce results that are far superior than attempting to patch-up what he cannot do.
This demands that we shatter all our paradigms and embrace a single reference that solely focuses on strength and limitlessness. The idea is revolutionary if imbibed in its total spirit and not dismissed as wishy-washy. It requires a whole new vocabulary that has only positive, strength-laden words. Fitness training is a great example of this approach. Accomplished instructors more often than not point that there is nothing like a ‘wrong’ exercise. It might work to build a different body part than what you have aimed for, but as long as the exercise does not generate pain it is working to make you stronger.
I learnt this experientially when I broke out of the references I attached to eating and food. I shared a love-hate relationship with food, loving to eat good food and experiencing bouts of guilt for over-indulgence. Needless to say the results were disastrous. I kept struggling to lose weight and it kept finding me. Fortunately I was able to break this vicious circle by applying a positive vocabulary to my eating and removing all connotations. Specifically, I broke out of the rut of breakfast, lunch and dinner as the triggers of eating and tuned my mind to understand when my body needs re-fueling – translating three big meals to probably five smaller ones. I removed the shackles attached on the portion-size and content of my plate and replaced everything with healthier alternates, even if my old connotations instructed me to follow otherwise. The results have been to my liking and the success makes my belief in breaking out of paradigms all the more stronger.
Erasing boundaries and experiencing higher levels in ‘levellessness’ must be the tacit trigger behind so many individuals aiming for what can be christened as ‘ultimate goals’. Whether it is ultra-running where the runner traverses a distance in multiples of fifty miles, century or double century in biking where the cyclist cover 100 and 200 miles of terrain, whether it is a six month long trek or a 150 floors stair-climb – the goals that seem unattainable are only so till they are trapped in the boundaries of reference. Ask any marathon runner and they would vouch that if they intellectualized the distances they run, even their minds would not accept the possibility of completing so many miles – but as you dilute the logic of limitations, you would discover that you are running half a mile more than what you did yesterday and soon you would be touching the 26 mile finishing line of the marathon.
My yoga instructor organized a celebration of summer solstice where she invited a group of us to collectively perform 108 sun salutations welcoming the summer. When I first heard it I assumed she must be joking-108 is an intimidating number for physical exertion. But consciously removing the connotations of ‘difficult’, ‘impossible’ and ‘painful’ from the thought, and replacing it with ‘health’, ‘light’ and ‘joy’, I was able to be a part of he celebration, feeling engulfed by this mega sense of bliss and energy generated by the event.
Terry Olick, an author of the book ‘In pursuit of Excellence’ and a trainer of mental strength in sports puts it beautifully,
“The greatest barriers in our pursuit of excellence are the psychological barriers that we impose on ourselves, sometimes unknowingly. As your beliefs about limits change, the limits themselves change”.
I have been swept off my feet. Like the knee-wobbling feeling of first love, the understanding dawning on me totally overwhelms me. How beautiful a world would it be if we got rid of all connotations? Where there is no lens through which we are seeing things, because we have understood the most natural state of everything – the paradigm itself has evaporated erasing all differences between new and old, hot and cold, black and white, high and low and right and wrong. And most importantly where defying all connotations has lead to realization of feats perceived undoable before- making all limits limitless.
The vibrancy of the idea that I have encountered in my class for ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ has shaken all my old beliefs. The basic premise of this philosophy stems from focusing on the high, mighty and successful in all systems, instead of the deficiencies, and in turn amplifying what makes a system work. The idea is what we focus on grows. Let’s say we have an employee in an organization not performing as expected. The old approach would be to make him aware of his ‘deficiencies’ and chart a path for him to overcome that, but tap the kaleidoscope and a whole new beautiful picture emerges, where we do not know the word ‘deficiency’, where we are focusing on what he is great at doing and hence fueling his talents all the more. This might require concrete steps like re-fitting him in the organization, but the approach would produce results that are far superior than attempting to patch-up what he cannot do.
This demands that we shatter all our paradigms and embrace a single reference that solely focuses on strength and limitlessness. The idea is revolutionary if imbibed in its total spirit and not dismissed as wishy-washy. It requires a whole new vocabulary that has only positive, strength-laden words. Fitness training is a great example of this approach. Accomplished instructors more often than not point that there is nothing like a ‘wrong’ exercise. It might work to build a different body part than what you have aimed for, but as long as the exercise does not generate pain it is working to make you stronger.
I learnt this experientially when I broke out of the references I attached to eating and food. I shared a love-hate relationship with food, loving to eat good food and experiencing bouts of guilt for over-indulgence. Needless to say the results were disastrous. I kept struggling to lose weight and it kept finding me. Fortunately I was able to break this vicious circle by applying a positive vocabulary to my eating and removing all connotations. Specifically, I broke out of the rut of breakfast, lunch and dinner as the triggers of eating and tuned my mind to understand when my body needs re-fueling – translating three big meals to probably five smaller ones. I removed the shackles attached on the portion-size and content of my plate and replaced everything with healthier alternates, even if my old connotations instructed me to follow otherwise. The results have been to my liking and the success makes my belief in breaking out of paradigms all the more stronger.
Erasing boundaries and experiencing higher levels in ‘levellessness’ must be the tacit trigger behind so many individuals aiming for what can be christened as ‘ultimate goals’. Whether it is ultra-running where the runner traverses a distance in multiples of fifty miles, century or double century in biking where the cyclist cover 100 and 200 miles of terrain, whether it is a six month long trek or a 150 floors stair-climb – the goals that seem unattainable are only so till they are trapped in the boundaries of reference. Ask any marathon runner and they would vouch that if they intellectualized the distances they run, even their minds would not accept the possibility of completing so many miles – but as you dilute the logic of limitations, you would discover that you are running half a mile more than what you did yesterday and soon you would be touching the 26 mile finishing line of the marathon.
My yoga instructor organized a celebration of summer solstice where she invited a group of us to collectively perform 108 sun salutations welcoming the summer. When I first heard it I assumed she must be joking-108 is an intimidating number for physical exertion. But consciously removing the connotations of ‘difficult’, ‘impossible’ and ‘painful’ from the thought, and replacing it with ‘health’, ‘light’ and ‘joy’, I was able to be a part of he celebration, feeling engulfed by this mega sense of bliss and energy generated by the event.
Terry Olick, an author of the book ‘In pursuit of Excellence’ and a trainer of mental strength in sports puts it beautifully,
“The greatest barriers in our pursuit of excellence are the psychological barriers that we impose on ourselves, sometimes unknowingly. As your beliefs about limits change, the limits themselves change”.
posted by Garima at 1:19 PM
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