Being Awake

A Small Reflection on Mental Model

Recently my friend and I spent a few moments meditating on the beach at night. I felt stressful at that time and he suggested we could spend some times together to sense and feel the nature.

Sitting by the sea, I was intimiated by different high waves at night. They were like the monsters who could swallowed me up to the darkeness. And I was scared. The waves rumbled and so did my heart.

My friend was bringing me to the meditative moments. I could feel the wind, wave and the air and realized that how lovely they were. And slowly I came to realize that "the intimidating waves are there a part of nature and they works by their own nature even though we might try to work hard to change their motions. The key stays deeply in my mind/ thoughts. As I had sensed fears about it, then it would be come fearful. Instead, I could accept as a part of the nature.

This has really opened up something. Many times, we've blocked ourselves with fears that stops us from seeing things by its reality. Instead, from the moments, I could learn to observe things and free myself from the fears! And probably because of this attachment, one has worked hard to change the things. In the other hands, the mental frame may cause different cause-effect lines by itself either virtually/ viciously.

As my friend said, the wave did not eat me up without my "imagination".

This is something about the work of mental model that I would like to share with you.

Thanks to my friend for the meditative moments!!!

Taking Off the "Voice of Judgment" For a Fresh Learning

Recently, I have run two theater sessions focused on Team trust building to a group of students. Normally, I prefer during the debriefs opening a free flow of discussion on what sorts of learning that attendants could gain are. There are some reasons for doing this.

One of the reasons is the belief in the participants’ learning potentials. It is always interesting to notice an amazing learning capacity in each individuals. And I can see it when hearing from different learning out of an exercise. It is very true that in one game, people have different learning views on it. I may have my own understanding of the exercise. And I feel lots of joys to see a new learning coming out that I may not be able see. “That’s lovely to see!”. That’s the moment when I could feel the spirit and energy of collective learning of a group. Step by step, together we can deepen our learning. For this reason, we can learn to open our minds and see something beyond self.

My challenge as a facilitator is not to impose personal thoughts onto discussions. This doesn’t mean that I won’t have my own sticks. However, holding the sticks may lead to limits to our learning space in which either this or the other ways the learning would emerge as we can learn to let go of our mental frames.

In the book of "Presence", co-written by Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue, there is one part about “Seeing our Seeing. It says “Seeing freshly starts with stopping our habitual ways of thinking and perceiving”. That is the capacity of suspension – “hanging our assumptions in front of us”. By doing so, we begin notice our thoughts and mental models as the workings of our own mind that may get us detached from a fresh learning. And as we become aware of our thoughts, they begin to have less influence on what we see.

In this book, it also mentions Michael Ray saying about “Voice of Judgment” that is chattering of mind. “In practice, suspension requires patience and a willingness not to impose pre-established frameworks or mental models on what we are seeing. If we can simply observe without forming conclusions as to what our observations mean and allow ourselves to sit with all seemingly unrelated bits and pieces of information we see, fresh ways to understand a situation can eventually emerge”. By taking off that Voice of Judgment, we can notice and see something new alive.

What’s noticed is many of us living out by [past experiences]. That may work in some cases as they can help us do better in the following times. In the other ways, we need to watch out if we hold these experiences for the next times and for a different group of people as they are all changing and varying over time and situations.

One thing I can do is taking a deep breath and being aware of my thoughts and let them go. By letting go of my own thoughts covered by past experience or judgments, I slowly give a new space for new learning that may emerge and seeing things appearing freshly. Take a deep breathe and saying to myself “something is living around!”. And that’s a joy with learning.

Love to hear from your comments/ feedback!

What would come out as I may say "I don't know"

One thing that I notice about myself and also others is the defensive effort in the conversations. There should be something “uncomfortable/ wrong” if I would say “I don’t know about it”. Rather, we try look around to advocate that “I know it and that I may not be wrong”.

One day, my friends and I had a conversation/ debate on sex before marriage. There had been obviously around different points of views on sex and gender. At the end, we ended up the conversation by saying “this is my frame and that is your frame”. The thing is we keep holding on our own points of view regardless of a variety of perspectives.

Noticing in conversations, many of us hold the fear of “loosing face” or else, the fear of failure. I suppose this fear has been embedded since our childhood. As I could not know more than that, meaning “I am not smart enough” then I may not be accepted by a group of people. That’s how we may try hard to say “I have known it all”.

The thing is by the effort of “I know”, it may disable our learning capacity and block us from learning new things that we might not ever see before. It is the fact that we may have flaws/ limits in our current learning and experiences.

Then I suppose the first step to open up learning spirit is learning to be aware of and accept our learning flaws/ limits, then turning them into the willingness of learning something beyond us, that we may have ever not reached out.

Saying “I don’t know” and asking “may you help me to understand more?” would help us to learn and see more what we haven’t experienced. By saying that, we learn to open a new door of new discoveries/ learning.

Now what else could you see this differently?