You have seen the quote, I am sure:
We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
— Anaïs Nin
It occurred to me that this may be too simple – because who are we? And how stable is that? We are rarely the same people as we were 10 years ago. None of us. Not the 20-year-old and not the 60-year-old. Wouldn’t it be absolutely horrible if we didn’t ever change?
What does this mean for the quote?
We don’t see the world as it is, but as our current “operating system” biases us for seeing it.
I have a friend who as a generalist has filled many roles throughout a long and fine career. She has worked from legal to sales, and each of these roles required different approaches to the business, the customers, and the colleagues.
As you can imagine, a VP of Sales is very oriented towards possibilities: How can we serve this client? Which ways to sell work better, motivate the sales force, and make potential clients interested?
And as you probably can imagine as well, if you as the are the backstop for risk management, your outlook will be very different: What can go wrong here? In Legal your questions may be whether these terms are likely to get us in trouble later? Can this paragraph in the contract be read to mean something else that we want it to mean?
Not surprisingly, when my friend took MBTI tests during different periods in her career, the profiles came out completely different.
Roger Martin quoted in one of his posts (#28) a client realizing that he met the world overly critical:
“I always listen from a judgemental standpoint… I listen for what’s wrong and who’s to blame not what’s right and how we can build on that.”
If you see the world from a judgmental standpoint, you are highly likely to find someone to blame and something that you can argue against.
In his post, Roger went on to describe the competitive environment that would reward such behaviors. (If you haven’t read Roger’s great piece, follow the link above.)
The role we play for hours every day, year after year, rewires our brain. If you look for risks as your day job, the chance is that you will also look for risks when you are not working. And if you look for opportunities, that, too, becomes a default. What you look for, you are more likely to find. Thus, the risk manager sees many more risks and the sales manager sees more opportunities. They may even look at the very same event and see a risk and an opportunity respectively. That can be a good thing. That is the diversity of thinking a team needs to move forward boldly and thoughtfully. But should you use it indiscriminately with your children? As a parent, you need to be both a cheerleader and a risk manager.
Some years back, I stopped my blog because I noticed that I experienced my life narrating it as it happened. If I went to an interesting event, rather than being present for the event, I was already mentally writing the blog post about it. While it at times can be useful to act as an observer in our own life, it should not be the program running when going to Joan Baez’s farewell concert.
If we realize we are very critical, like Roger’s client, or, like me, that I was distant, perhaps we can ask what function it may serve in our profession, and whether it serves us having this as our default – our operating system – when we are not in that role? There is no need to shame ourselves for having adopted ways of thinking that were required by our role. Yet, we can end in paralyzing shame – “I am not a good enough person and there is nothing I can do about it” – if we take Anaïs Nin’s quote too literally.
The first release is to realize that we are not our job. If we have overidentified with our role – and that is often the main way we label ourselves – grab hold of all the other labels that are also true. I might be a blog writer – but I am also a human being, a woman, a wife, a mother, a friend, a sister, a facilitator, a daughter, a member of my local community, a volunteer…and most of these roles not only mattered far more to me than writing my blog; they also require that I am fully present where I am. So being present should be my default OS.
The good news is that our brains don’t stop rewiring. If our role “wired” us into behaving in ways that are not in our overall best interest, being aware that we are biased this way allows us to try a different program. It takes mental effort, sure, but so does repairing relationships if a too-judgmental default makes people avoid us or if salesy thinking makes us too pushy.
What is your operating system?
(Do you dare ask your best friend how they see you?)
