This blog post is a derivative of a entry in my personal journal, that I just wrote in trying to get clarity about where to focus my energy during the time to come. When I started writing, I thought it would be about to-dos, setting up meetings and reminders and sticking to a schedule. It turned out a bit different. The bottom line: look within.
My underlying assumption, that drives me to do the things that I want to do is as follows: The competitiveness of humanity is a focal point in the n-dimensional Venn-Diagram of challenges. I have noticed this pattern recently very clearly: In trying to think about the challenges that humanity faces from different angles, competition always shows up as an issue. No matter if I’m thinking about economic circumstances, environmental impacts, systems dynamics in our neighborhood, my personal relationships to my peers or even my own emotions: competition always seems to play a major role – and not a pretty one. I have arrived at this state of seeming clarity through the living of my personal experiences and exposure to the ideas of others through channels like Rebel Wisdom and Future Thinkers. The layers on which I feel clarity about competitiveness as a problem are:
Within myself. Different parts of me are competing over which one holds the ultimate truth. My job is to make them get along and realize, that none of them holds the ultimate truth, but all of them hold partial truth. In reconciling all the partial truths I hope to encounter a sense of increased coherence with myself and clarity about what to do with the time that is given to me. Between me and my peers. Even with the people closest to me, I often notice feelings of envy or superiority, where it is completely uncalled for. How can I aspire to collaborate with my peers in building a better future, if I am secretly trying to outcompete them? My job is to practice noticing these competitive emotions and thoughts when they arise and to come up with alternative perspectives, that I can step into, whenever I notice competitive patterns. Between groups. Even between groups that seeks to build a cooperative future, I often notice competitive moments. Once I start practiving cooperation on the individual and peer level, it will become easier to identify those moments and act accordingly.
To give myself a formal practice for working on this, I will write down the following things, every evening for the next 30 days:
One moment where I felt torn between two parts within myself, whether or not I was able to reconcile both perspectives and how, or how I could have done that.
One Moment where I felt or thought in a competitive way towards a peer, whether or not I was able to step into a more cooperative perspective and, if not, what perspective I could have taken.
If any of this resonated with you, I invite you to try this out for yourself, reach out to me at jonas@derknoten.wien or make of it what you will 😉
I will report on how it went on this blog in 30 days time!