"It is our empathic nature, inscribed in our biology, that allows us to experience the apparent paradox of greater intimacy in ever-wider areas." Jeremy rifkin
Transcendence of the historical meaning of self
In the sixteenth century, there was a very important change in the way people see themselves. The identity, based on the tribe, in the family began to transform into an identity based on personal achievements throughout life.
Historians have been able to demonstrate this radical change in the abundance of new terms that were incorporated into the vernacular vocabulary of Europe.
One of the most significant was the English word self. It appeared as a pronoun with the meaning of proper in the 15th century. It took many years to become a noun, with the meaning of myself. But its initial use had negative connotations. It was in the 16th century that it became a positive term. At the beginning of the next century the term self became attached to so many words that it was difficult for a day to pass without it appearing in a new context.
Its meaning of own identity and personal autonomy is once again in force and, according to Jeremy Rifkin, author of "The Empathic Civilization", it will be more and more so in broader fields as well.
Rebirth terms: self-consciousness, self-love, self-regard, self-made, self-confidence, self-presenvation (self-preservation), self-knowledge (self-knowledge) and the current ones that we can add such as self-coaching (self-training), self-management (governing oneself)… are again very important. And, they will have it even more, in a world where the empathic civilization is beginning to emerge that is spreading to all humanity, encompassing the entire planet.
Objectives of self-coaching with a systemic perspective
- Know what matters most to you, a fundamental condition to start the process to achieve it.
- Become aware of the current reality with a systemic perspective to be able to see the reinforcing resources that you have for this process, also those that you lack, alternatives or options.
- Make an action plan and its follow-up to guide the process until it is achieved.
The systemic perspective is indispensable for self-coaching, the true lay learning system
In everyday use, learning has become synonymous with acquiring knowledge and skills. Instead , true learning must get to the bottom of what it means to be human in a changing and interrelated world like the one we are living in. People, teams and organizations, no matter how much knowledge they have, must be open to continuous, permanent, empathetic and ecological learning.
With this system we discover what really matters to us and, thus, we expand our capacity to create in a complex and changing reality. For self-coaching with a systemic perspective, learning for survival is not enough. Adaptive learning must be combined with generative learning. Learning that increases results and people's satisfaction. It goes beyond adapting to change. It addresses the most effective way to govern it successfully which is to create it. We can learn to see it as an opportunity rather than a threat.
You can train yourself to feel part of a creative process that can be influenced without unilateral control. It is very efficient for self-coaching with a systemic perspective to become an agent of change, achieve sustainable and ecological results.
In any learning, the approach with a systemic perspective is today more necessary than ever because complexity overwhelms us:
- We have the ability to create more information than anyone can absorb.
- An interdependence that is very difficult to manage is being encouraged.
- It is also very difficult to follow the speed of the changes that we are promoting.
- This escalation of complexity is unprecedented in our entire history.
The complexity can be of two types: the dynamics and the detail with many varieties.
Dynamic complexity occurs because change in systems occurs on different time scales and those scales sometimes interact. In dynamic complexity, cause and effect are not close in time or space.
You can only understand the effects of a storm by looking at its elements in their entirety. You will never understand if you do it individually.
All these events are separated in space and time. But they are all connected. Each one influences the rest. Although, many times, this influence is not evident.
The same is true in any organization and in all personal, social, business and ecological behaviors. The invisible frames act interrelated and can take time to produce mutual effects. As we ourselves are part of this warp, it is very difficult for us to see the patterns of change. We tend to focus on isolated parts of the system. We see only snapshots. In this way most of our deepest problems are not resolved.
The systemic perspective offers us a conceptual framework where the total patterns are clearer, it helps us modify them and see, at the same time, the parts and their subtle interrelations.
The systemic perspective is a very powerful tool for dealing with dynamic complexity and, therefore, for self-coaching with a systemic perspective.
The complexity of details makes all rational explanations incomplete. Human systems are very complex. We cannot fully understand them. There are enough experiences that we have "cognitive limitations." Our conscious mind can only address a small number of variables at a time.
The complexity of details is resolved in the unconscious. This is what we call the inner game of coaching.
When the conscious shifts the load of a task to the unconscious it takes over and becomes automatic, natural. This frees the conscious mind to focus on dynamic complexity.
When Messi sees the ball coming, his conscious mind only allows him to see how to tackle the goal. It is your unconscious mind that guides you to automatically overcome all the obstacles that stand in your way.
I invite you to remember how you learned to drive, use the computer keyboard, walk, talk… For a two-year-old child, placing the soup spoon in his mouth may be a very complex task… On the other hand, when he has learned it he does it without thinking.
The unconscious is programmed with experience. Cultures and beliefs program the unconscious. Language does too, and it has very subtle effects.
But how have we taught the unconscious to structure information?
It is not easy to describe feedback processes with our usually linear language. We usually give up on it. But this changes when we begin to dominate the systems perspective. The unconscious is subtly reeducated to structure the data. It happens like when we learn a foreign language.
The unconscious mind encompasses much more detail than our conscious mind. The unconscious mind is not limited by the number of feedback processes that it can examine as it happens to the conscious mind. Thus, dynamic complexity and detail complexity can be integrated, leaving more capacity for the conscious mind to engage in dynamic complexity.
This is the purpose of sefl-coaching with a systemic perspective.
