Maybe finding some serenity is the best anyone can do
This will be a long article, but please bear with me. I need to explain some things first, but there is a practical outcome, I assure you; one that might just save you from a good deal of today’s pain and unhappiness.
Today, many people are afraid. Still more are insecure, both personally and in career terms. Probably most are looking for fresh sources of hope to see them through the bad times and point to a better future. I was interested therefore to read an article by Margaret Wheatley (entirely by chance) that suggests the best way forward might be to give up both hope and fear and find a place beyond either.
What struck me at once was her view—not original to her either it seems—that fear is the ‘price’ of hope. You cannot have one without the other, since the moment you fix your hopes on something, your mind automatically generates a corresponding fear that you may not get it. Every hoped-for triumph produces a reciprocal fear of failure. Since most of us assume that hope is a good thing, and that life without it would be either impossible or hopelessly negative, we tend to get equal ‘doses’ of hope and fear that alternate to produce a kind of mental roller-coaster ride.
Reading her article (and not being very attracted to the metaphysical approach she takes), I began to wonder: might today’s constant obsession in organizations with results, results and results not be counter-productive, especially in bad times?
Another kind of cost-benefit analysis
If fear is the inevitable companion of hope—and I can see how this would be the case—today’s emphasis on achievement and results as virtually the sole purpose of work (and the goal of every career) will only increase people’s fear—probably to the same or an even greater extent. Unless you are so confident as to entirely dismiss the idea that your hopes might not come about, you are likely to be rather more afraid of failure than confident of success.
It it worth the price?
Organizations full of fear are not likely to be successful in their endeavors or pleasant places to work. The coin flips over to the other side and, in place of expansive hopes for the future, you get a constricting fear of failure that quickly leads to obsessive attempts to ward it off. Such constant pressures brought about by these fears is also likely to increase the prevalence of command-and-control forms of management and autocratic leadership.
That is what we have certainly seen in recent months: a quick ‘flip’ from irrational exuberance, to recall Alan Greenspan’s words, to equally irrational terror and near despair. What if the former brought the latter along with it? What if the cost of all that wild hope now has to be paid in fears?
A hard look at hope
How could you live without hope? Wouldn’t that be (literally) a hopeless life?
Hope is about having a vision of how things (you hope) will be at some future time. The fear it brings along with it is based on knowing (or at least fearing) that things will not turn out that way, whether by your own failure, other people’s interventions or some ill chance. You cannot change the past, so there is nothing to hope for, or even fear, there. The present should be a place of immediate perception and action, equally free from hope because hope cannot deal with what is already here. In practice, I think most people more or less ignore the present because their minds are so fixed on what they hope for from the future.
Fear, like hope, is future-based. It fills the mind with images of what might happen and dread of the result. That’s why it makes sense to me to see it as hope’s counterpart. If I don’t hope for anything, or even care much about the future, there will be nothing for fear to get its teeth into.
Our desire for security
To increase the chances of what you hope for, and simultaneously decrease those of what you fear, you plan—and that is where security comes into the equation. Hope and fear create the desire for security. If you can be secure in your plans, hope is replaced by gleeful anticipation and fear doesn’t come into the picture at all. Is it any wonder that managers constantly demand that their subordinates produce no surprises? Security looks like heaven itself.
Planning is all about creating an illusion of security around something that you can neither control nor trust—the future. The more carefully and fully you plan, the more you tell yourself that either nothing can go wrong, or you can deal with anything that does. Every plan is a mass of hopes wrapped up in attempts to remove the accompanying fear and insecurity; and because so many people persist in the feeling that the universe ought to be just, we fall prey to the urge to over-plan in the hope (that word again) that doing so will earn us the security we crave.
What would happen if you gave up on the search for security altogether?
What we all surely know, even if we don’t like to admit it, is that security is illusory. The reality of this world is that everything is insecure. Whatever it is, it’s subject to unpredictable changes at any time, and never certain in form, timing or outcome.
People go on seeking for security precisely because they never attain it. It’s an endless and futile search that most of us spend a good deal of energy on every day. Since “no surprises” is the mantra of the majority of senior managers, all that time devoted to planning, budgeting and organizing priorities has a single objective: to remove insecurity about the outcomes. Sadly, that objective will never—and can never—be met, do what you may.
I suspect that the real alternative to seeking security is to cultivate curiosity. Whatever the outcome, you can be curious about it without seeking to control it. If you enter the future wrapped in a mass of hopes and weighed down with plans to obviate insecurity, you are bound to be both fearful about the outcome. Rightly so; at least some of those fears will always prove true. If you look forward with curiosity to what might happen, unattached to any particular outcome, neither the lure of hope nor the pain of fear will have any power over you.
The need for some grounding
Left at that point, what you have is a metaphysical argument: attractive, somewhat logical, but likely to be rejected by most people as impractical, especially in the workplace. No business can exist with some objectives; no job can be framed purely on the basis of “let’s do something and see what happens.” It all appears far too idealistic to be useful in day-to-day terms.
I think this is wrong. What you need to do is frame the concept in a more down-to-earth way.
- First let’s deal with hope and fear. You will always have hopes and always suffer from the fears they bring. The trick, it seems to me, is to accept the link as inevitable. Where our problems lie is in trying to have the one without the other.
- If you accept that hopes produce fears, as well as the other way around, I suspect you can deal with both perfectly well. As you look at what you hope for, you need also to accept and live with the fear that it may not be possible. You don’t obsess about it or tell yourself that it’s ‘wrong’ to be afraid. You don’t try to ‘buck up’ or drive your fears away by an act of willpower.
You know that whatever happens will still happen, however much you either deny your fears or resort to paroxysms of effort to drive them away. If you simply forget all this obsession with the future and get on with things right now, doing whatever seems best in present circumstances to lead you in a positive direction, neither hope nor fear can lead you very far astray.
If things go well, that’s fine. If they don’t, you change in whatever way is needed to cope with the new situation. That’s it.
The real wisdom of accepting insecurity
I think the futile pursuit of security is altogether a more insidious and dangerous problem. If I hope to hear good news, and fear I may not, both are simply thoughts. If I plan assiduously to make something I want happen, I quickly become attached to my ‘creation’ and invest a great deal of myself in it. Then, if it appears to be about to fail, two things happen.
- I cling to my plan even more, probably pouring more resources into trying to make it succeed by brute force. Organizations are full of ideas that didn’t work, but were not abandoned until huge amount of time, effort, resources and people’s energy were wasted in trying to rescue them.
- I feel angry (and probably guilty) as well as disappointed. It ought to have worked. It should have been successful. Now I’m suffering still more. I’m not just disappointed at the outcome, I’m railing against the injustice of it all. I’m depressed that my creation, something I set my heart on, has failed.
Accepting insecurity as the way things are seems to me to be essential if you want to navigate life and work with some degree of equanimity and sanity. Curiosity could well be a good attitude to future events where it is possible. In other cases, where some specific result is needed, the answer seems to me to be to do what you can, concentrate on the present, and leave off worrying about the rest. If what you do fails to work, try something else; but don’t feel bad about it or obsess over it. Life is insecure. Hope always brings fear. That’s the way life is.
Looked at another way, such an attitude might be even more useful. Even the worst of fears must have a corresponding hope. In these tough times, maybe the way out is to look our fears full in the face and ask what hope is the opposite of each one. That might at least provide some notion of what direction to take to find a way out of the mess.
The very worst thing to do is to cling to failing hopes and deny real fears, all the while persisting with actions that have already proved a failure. That is only going to make any suffering far greater than it need be. It’s also what those in charge seem to want to do.
Now that’s really scary!
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March 5th, 2009 at 9:38 am
I have hopes, and I have fears. But that is all they are; they are not reality, they are not me, they are not what I have to work with. They are just some background to my attitude. They do not prevent me from seeing my environment objectively, from weighing pros and cons, or from making rational decisions.
I think that the best way to improve my odds for realizing my hopes and minimizing the effects of my fears is to be awake, aware, to pay attention, to see the world for what it really is; to understand what I can control and what I can’t; to understand how I set priorities and allocate resources affects my potential success; to know that perfection is unattainable and that improvement is extremely valuable; to know what I value, what my principles are, and to live accordingly; and to forgive myself for failures after my best efforts, be proud of my attempts, and learn from my experiences.
This allows me to experiment when I don’t know what to do, to take calculated risks, to view “failure” as a learning experience, and to confidently make choices (when I would otherwise feel paralyzed by the inevitable imperfect information available) to attempt really creative and challenging things.
I think the biggest, most consequential, most significant and long-term beneficial efforts often require the willingness to take on risk. If you want to do great things, you have to be willing to fail. Perhaps a number of times. An unwillingness to fail, a compulsion to play it safe, will prevent meaningful progress. Fear is just some background. Understand it but don’t let it control your actions.
I think my staff appreciates the freedom my attitude gives them. They are comfortable doing things that have never been done before. I am prepared to face ANY professional challenge with these folks. They are not “fearless,” but they possess great courage. And I think that courage comes from the model I describe above, that we share.
Thanks much, and best wishes.
PS, I think it is very interesting to compare this article and its responses to your article on “belief.” Some who give fear free reign often resort to belief to mitigate their pain.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
@Coif Clark: Thanks for dropping by and leaving your comment. I’m glad you found the article helpful and I agree that some beliefs, especially superstitious ones, seem mostly calculated to keep fears at bay. Keep reading, my friend.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Thank you for the article. I agree with what your saying, but I think the real issue is the conflict that occurs in the workplace when someone does try to approach work with an open, curious mind and is not easily distressed by others’ fears or swayed by false, super-high hopes. When an experienced, confident, (and dare I say, Zen) individual presents a courageous new idea or course of action to solve a problem in a crowd of peers and superiors who have been motivated mostly by fear or superhero worship throughout their collective careers, that person is immediately met with suspicion and contempt.
I have often witnessed that when a person approaches an issue with an open curiosity, a “child’s mind”, and presents an experimental solution, or simply requests the opportunity to “try it out”, they are immediately chastised or belittled, buried in administration to get approval, or threatened outright. In the worst case, a manager told the subordinate that his idea probably wouldn’t work, that it would require weeks of research by other experts to get approval, and discouraged him from “pursuing the matter at this time”. Later that week, that same manager presented the idea to other managers and a customer—in a closed door meeting. Everyone liked it, so the manager took credit for it.
I realize that this was an extreme case, but it illustrates my point. The real challenge is being open, curious, brave, and even-keeled in a crowd of people who have either been conditioned and have conditioned themselves to be 1) fearful, distrustful, and insecure, or 2) over-confident, winner-takes-all superheroes. Persuading both types is a regular challenge today, but I have to say that the pessimistic fear-mongers are the worst. When you approach things with a more open curiosity than they do and provide a potential solution, the immediate feedback you receive is, “I am afraid, and I am smart, so why aren’t you? Therefore, you must be naive. Your idea will never work, especially because it wasn’t mine. So shut-up and conform.”
March 19th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
@Coif Clark: You are so right about how the right mindset allows you to take calculated risks. Some people have let their fear of failure and constant need control get the best of them, so they misunderstand “Risk Management” to mean “eliminate ALL risk”, and “a bias for action” to mean “I am panicking, therefore so should you.” At best, they apply a knee-jerk solution and cut their losses. I just left an organization that was ultimately fear-centric. I’m glad to know you exist. It gives me hope of finding a new job where people are not threatened by an open-minded, centered, yet careful approach.
March 19th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
@Free Thinker: You raise something that is indeed worrying, but I guess has always been so. It seems to be the fate of those who are open-minded to be persecuted by those who are not—probably because they cannot stand having their ideas questioned or doubted.
Still, if free thinkers and the open-minded don’t keep speaking out, all we are left with is mindless conformity and rule by the most macho. I hope that, like you, others will continue to say what they believe is correct and encourage more to join them. As Victor Hugo said, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
Thanks for your comment. Keep reading, my friend.