"A Calmer Perspective" by Ian Blei

Kind Ambition

Americans like their extremes.  From extreme sports to extreme make-overs, there’s something about pushing to the extreme that entices us.  It’s almost as if something “measured” or “centrist” gets branded as wimpy or not taking a stand.  We raise the threshold to a point where the joy of our normal lives can’t compete with what’s on television or the media’s quick-cut-edited versions of life.  This seeps into our emotional tastes as well.  People don’t see their everyday lives and relationships as “exciting enough,” so they add drama to ramp things up.  This never improves real lives, and usually has a downside.

In the real world, everything is gradients and degrees.  Nothing is Always.  Everything is Sometimes.  All or nothing is an exciting, extreme that sells products, gets people jazzed, and increases your stress level.  If there’s anything we need to do these days for our health and well being, it’s to lower that stress level, and stress is a function of extreme perspectives.  All or nothing is life or death.  This is flight or fight adrenaline stimulation at its subtlest. Try this yourself.  You’ll feel much more stress saying “I’ll never find a job,” than you will saying, “I wonder if today I’ll find a job?”  You’ll feel much more stress saying, “I never get what I want,” than saying, “maybe I’ll do better next time.”  Extremes are all about creating life or death adrenaline, and that isn’t a good position for long-term decision-making.

Another obvious thing about extremes that we don’t always pay attention to, is that polar opposites make each other look even more extreme by comparison.  Low looks lower from higher up, and vice versa.  This is one of the reasons people are singing doom and gloom about the economy.  If they hadn’t been making 28% returns on borrowed money, making 5% on their own money wouldn’t look like absolute death and destruction.  Earning 5% returns on your money is not death and destruction.  It’s actually a pretty good thing, compared with nothing.  After the Gold Rush, everything looked bleak by comparison. That is the result of extreme perspectives.  Going from the highest high, everything looks low by comparison.

Replace Gold Rush with Real Estate Boom, and you have a pretty similar situation: a short burst of ludicrous profits based on a limited resource, speed, and greed.  Thinking that any burst of ludicrous profits in any area would be sustainable is pretty silly.  No runner sprints long distance.  We know that we must pace ourselves when doing anything long term.  If we thought about it, we’d remember the fact of life that extremes  are not sustainable.  That’s why we don’t find them as the mainstay processes in nature.  We find gradient, paced, long-term processes throughout the universe, occasionally punctuated by Gamma Pulses, Supernovas, Volcanic eruptions, and Earthquakes.  Each extreme lasting only a short while, and each leaving long term devastation in its wake.  If we thought about it, we’d remember this.  That’s another reason why we must start thinking again.

Thinking is not generally extreme or exciting, and certainly doesn’t increase sales.  Generally, the more you think, the less likely you are to buy something, thus in service of consumerism, education and literacy have taken a back seat to cool new reality shows and extreme whatever.  “Don’t think, just buy it” has become a standard marketing philosophy, and our current economic situation is a normal outcome.  The more we get swept up in the extremes of excitement and stimulation, the more likely we are to react without thinking.  This means we become pliant tools of those who would like to empty our wallets into their own.  You’ve heard that “buying is emotional,” and this fact becomes a tactic.  Ramping up the drama, ramping up your emotional state, become ways of gaining control over  you.

Thinking, and let’s be specific: Critical Thinking becomes your best defense against everything from stress to overspending, and your greatest resource in making intelligent decisions about your businesses and investments.  The same critical thinking that sees through nonsense television commercials helps you to see the world without extremes.  When you remove the All or Nothing extremes from your perspective, you start to see ways of doing things, avenues of opportunity, and a reasonable approach for almost everything.   When we don’t look at things with a critical eye, we get taken advantage of and lied to with great regularity.

In another article I mentioned the myth regarding layoffs as a fiscal solution to an organization’s money woes.  Acceptance of this myth by “the masses,” is a great example of how a lack of critical thinking can get us into trouble.  If we use critical thinking, it’s very clear that when you take a percentage of a percentage, you’re going to get a very small number.  Only by ignoring our critical thinking can we ignore this simple arithmetic, and go along with the knee-jerk reactive decisions being handed down by bureaucrats of both political and corporate offices.  Critical thinking keeps us in a realm of realistic gradients, and away from the All or Nothing extremes.  When we’re not looking for extreme solutions, we can see the incremental ones that don’t leave devastation in their wake.

When extreme solutions are proposed, like laying off droves of workers, and then hiring them back later for fewer hours, we need to interrupt with some critical thinking.  The cost of layoffs, added to the cost of new-hires, will be higher than keeping those people on payroll.  Studies have shown new hire costs alone to average between 35% and 150% of the worker’s annual salary, depending upon their level of management, responsibility, and training.   This is why employee turnover as a prohibitive cost has been dealt with for decades now by forward thinking organizations.  Add to that the loss of any semblance of loyalty or initiative in the re-hired, angry, resentful, or fearful workforce, and you wonder if the people behind the extreme solution are thinking at all.

When S.F. Mayor Newsom says laying off 15,000 workers will shave $50 million from the deficit, is anyone doing the math?  That’s $3,333.33 each.  How is increasing costs by 35% to 150% going to save $3,333.33 times 15,000 people?   It’s the magic of throwing numbers at people who aren’t doing the math.  How did they not flunk 5^th grade?  Obviously the “powers that be” aren’t going to be much help; we’re going to need to fix things ourselves.

Once again, we have an optimistic, hopeful future ahead of us, if we approach it with our Human Resources being used to the fullest.  We can solve the problems we face.  We need the best all of us have to give to do it.  Let’s look at how to facilitate the flow of goods and services to one another, maximizing profitability.  This will re-build our businesses, and economy, and serve us far better than shutting down, in extreme reaction mode.  Look at your numbers, and see where you’re getting returns and where you’re not.  See where you can partner with others who do what you can’t, and where you can offer them your own competencies.

Between the exciting roller coaster of the extremes, there is the solid, measured calm of appropriate solutions.  Maybe we’ll see fewer short skyrocketing profits, and more steady, long-term profits?  Maybe, since stress fuels myriad diseases, we can relieve some of our health care crises by calming down and getting real?

Author’s bio:

Coach and consultant Ian Blei is the Director of the Institute for Integral Enneagram Studies, President of Optimized Results, and author of Kind Ambition – Practical Steps to Achieve Success Without Losing Your Soul. Mr. Blei has helped countless companies save millions of dollars while boosting productivity for over 30 years, blending his diverse background of Design Engineering, Management, and Operations to Psychology, Coaching, and Communications.  His mixture of organic systems and practical, linguistic approach has proven itself unanimously successful.  Along with consulting, speaking and writing, Ian conducts seminars and workshops throughout the U.S.

Contact:

www.Optimized-Results.com

IBlei at Optimized-Results.com