Monday, September 26, 2005
Mindfulness Part Three
Now, being OK doesn’t mean being perfect. OK is not perfect. Perfect is not OK. Again, perfect is not OK. Perfect is impossible. Oh, I can hear the yeowls and screams! How can you not strive for perfection? Easily. As a goal, perfection is an I’m not OK and you’re not OK life position – a lose/lose. Doing one’s level best in most situations, is a humane goal. Anything else, anything like perfection, is unattainable, guaranteed to stress you, and everyone around you, out. Ever worked for a perfectionist? Perfection as a standard or criteria accounts for a great deal of misery. And, if we’re so busy being perfect, what about risk, creativity and innovation?
Mistakes are OK. We can’t know everything, so mistakes are inevitable. It’s what we do about them, that counts. Do we hide them, deny them or blame others as some of our foremost current political ‘leaders’ do? Or do we exercise our response-ability? Airplanes are off course 90% of the time. They reach their destinations by a series of thousands of minute course corrections. In fact, one definition of intelligence is detecting and correcting gaps between anticipated and actual conditions. Stupidity is hiding, denying, blaming and going down with the ship.
Why do so many important high level, but ineffective ‘leaders’ fear their mistakes? Why, instead of fixing them, do they rush to judgment? Is winning the “blame game” a reasonable substitute for results, for doing OK? NO! Perfectionism deludes us about what’s possible, and holds us to ridiculous standards that must fail.
And the penalty for failure is punishment.
It’s clear, black and white, very simple, very basic – just the way people seem to like things these days. [Perhaps this is why so many are having such problems with the complexity of real life.] If we are judged failures, we must be condemned to punishment.
But, this attitude toward judgment, as with the belief in the clean and simple desirability of perfection over OKness, reveals a fundamental flaw in our understanding of judgment. Judgment is critical to effectiveness. Yet we are abjured to “judge not, lest ye be judged.” And in my earlier post, I said something similar, “be mindful without judgment.” So how do we judge without judgment?
By realizing that judgment is composed of two, distinct concepts: discernment and punishment. Discernment means observing and clearly seeing the gap between the anticipated and the actual, the goal and the current position. We must be able to do this, else how can we make a course correction? Punishment, on the other hand, condemnation, is almost totally useless, except in legal proceedings. And even there, many experts are questioning its usefulness in building a good life, community or business.
So, we want to discern, but not punish, when we judge. Being mindful, we see we have made a mistake and we fix it – immediately, as soon as we’re aware of it. But if punishment is included in judgment, and no one except a masochist wants to be punished, then we do not fix our inevitable mistakes, because we’re perfect and not guilty. Instead we hide, deny and blame to avoid punishment.
Mistakes are OK. We can’t know everything, so mistakes are inevitable. It’s what we do about them, that counts. Do we hide them, deny them or blame others as some of our foremost current political ‘leaders’ do? Or do we exercise our response-ability? Airplanes are off course 90% of the time. They reach their destinations by a series of thousands of minute course corrections. In fact, one definition of intelligence is detecting and correcting gaps between anticipated and actual conditions. Stupidity is hiding, denying, blaming and going down with the ship.
Why do so many important high level, but ineffective ‘leaders’ fear their mistakes? Why, instead of fixing them, do they rush to judgment? Is winning the “blame game” a reasonable substitute for results, for doing OK? NO! Perfectionism deludes us about what’s possible, and holds us to ridiculous standards that must fail.
And the penalty for failure is punishment.
It’s clear, black and white, very simple, very basic – just the way people seem to like things these days. [Perhaps this is why so many are having such problems with the complexity of real life.] If we are judged failures, we must be condemned to punishment.
But, this attitude toward judgment, as with the belief in the clean and simple desirability of perfection over OKness, reveals a fundamental flaw in our understanding of judgment. Judgment is critical to effectiveness. Yet we are abjured to “judge not, lest ye be judged.” And in my earlier post, I said something similar, “be mindful without judgment.” So how do we judge without judgment?
By realizing that judgment is composed of two, distinct concepts: discernment and punishment. Discernment means observing and clearly seeing the gap between the anticipated and the actual, the goal and the current position. We must be able to do this, else how can we make a course correction? Punishment, on the other hand, condemnation, is almost totally useless, except in legal proceedings. And even there, many experts are questioning its usefulness in building a good life, community or business.
So, we want to discern, but not punish, when we judge. Being mindful, we see we have made a mistake and we fix it – immediately, as soon as we’re aware of it. But if punishment is included in judgment, and no one except a masochist wants to be punished, then we do not fix our inevitable mistakes, because we’re perfect and not guilty. Instead we hide, deny and blame to avoid punishment.
