Hello awesome people!
Before anything else, you can enjoy 1 brief story from the book 7 Habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey:
Stephen writes his book on unnumbered sheets of paper. All of the sudden, a gust of wind starts blowing his papers. His first impulse was to pick up his papers from the floor, to limit the mess created by the wind, so he does just that. Fortunately he figures out his approach looks like 1 never-ending cycle, because the wind continue scattering his papers. He's willing to stop from his ineffective action to invest several seconds in closing 1 window to end the wind. Happy end :)
- What's your opinion about this story?
- Can we learn something from it?
- What can we learn?
By the way: you can consider this article a continuation of the previous one.
In this story, when he used the first approach, he made zero progress, even though he took action. Why?
His first approach leads nowhere, because his action had nothing to do with what he wanted: Picking sheets of paper from the floor while the wind blows, is not the the kind of action that helps him get his sheets back in order, because the wind blows the sheets back on the floor. When is he more effective:
- when he takes the time to pick sheets of paper from the floor while the wind blows, or
- when he takes the time to close 1 window to end the wind.
We can even say his first approach is counter-productive:
- in the best case: he loses time.
- in the worst case: the wind blows more sheets than he picks.
My perspective about this story is this:
- Not any action creates the results we want.
- Our first impuls can be ineffective.
- Haste makes waste: it's worth it to take the time to think our approach.
How can we apply the moral of this story in overcoming our challenge?
How can we overcome our challenge as long as we don't know what's our challenge?
Overcoming our challenge might imply: informing ourselves and informing others. We might have more chances in overcoming our challenge when we know what we're dealing with.
When we find information about our challenge, about our reality, our first impulse to share it directly, can be ineffective.
i know this because i was in this pattern: When i found our reality, i was so eager to share it that i didn't think at my approach and i shared it too directly, only to notice it has zero effect, it's a waste of time.
i also know this because i was approached that way: a while ago, when i was blind about our reality, some friends asked me:
Do you think they track us through Facebook?
Their question encouraged me to think at that idea. However, they asked for too much: i had no reason to consider it, because that idea was too different from what i believed & they offered no context, so i denied it. i said:
It's just a social network, so Why would it be used in this purpose?
When are we more effective:
- when we ask for more or
- when we ask for less?
At that point, their question had the opposite effect:
- It made me believe that such 1 claim is 1 lie.
- It pushed me further away from our reality = it increased polarity.
Ignorance is not a virtue. Our negative realities are part of our reality, part of our challenge. So addressing them might be useful for overcoming our challenge. Still, when we take them out of context, when we don't think our approach, even though we take action, we end up nowhere, because our action is ineffective:
- we waste our time or even worse
- we push them further away from our reality.
When are we more effective:
- when we push people further away through our approach or
- when we take the time to think our approach?
It's pretty obvious what's the result of even bigger assumptions, isn't it?
The bigger is our assumption,
- the bigger is the proof we have to offer to back up our assumption.
- the bigger is the denial we cause, when we don't offer proof.
When we share less obvious realities, without context,
- We go too far.
- We ask for too much.
- People tend to deny them.
Asking for too much is like asking people down the street to buy your stuff.
How effective would you be in this approach?
People might be interested in buying your stuff after you helped them see benefits by establishing the right context.
What's your opinion about offering affirmations?
Offering realities directly through affirmations might
- be even less effective than offering questions.
- trigger even stronger denial.
Before you share an article you can ask yourself some questions:
- What am i trying to achieve with this article?
- What's the purpose of sharing information?
We share information to help people be conscious of our reality, so some good questions might be:
- What are we actually achieving?
- How many people do we reach when we share our reality directly?
The title of an article is what people see first, so How effective are we when we share:
- articles about less obvious realities i.e. we go too far?
- articles about negative realities?
People deny ideas, as long as they didn't figure out for themselves. So then,
What can we do?
How can we help people without triggering denial?
What would be a more effective approach?
We don't have to function from extremes:
- Ignoring negative realities,
- Sharing less obvious realities,
- Sharing them directly,
- Remaining stuck in them.
We can:
- start low-key,
- ask questions about more obvious realities.
When we ask people: What's the proof for the invisible enemy? we help them figure out the obvious: the lockdown is based on zero proof.
Can you see the difference between the 2 approaches?
Returning to the story from the beginning,
- Closing a window to stop the wind is 1 more effective approach.
- Offering questions about more obvious realities is 1 more effective approach.
Why would we continue 1 ineffective approach even though we have 1 more effective one?
i believe people ignore our reality’ community (people who share realities) because it's too small: way too few people get involved, so it appears that a few people contradict the mainstream. i believe growing our reality' community is a natural consequence of working on the cause of our problem.
How can we work on the cause of our problem?
People who govern us use their power:
- to reduce our freedom, because free people can't be governed.
- to create a population of non-thinkers, because thinkers don't want to be governed.
How can we
- be effective in overcome our challenge without addressing its cause?
- work on the cause of our problem as long as people want to be governed by others?
- break our never-ending cycle of freedom loss & reach a point where we govern ourselves as long as people're non-thinkers?
- think as long as we allow other people do the thinking?
- create 1 better world without having it in our mind?
- create 1 vision, without taking our creativity out of mothballs?
- be creative without practicing our creativity?
- practice our creativity without activities that demand creativity?
- write our own articles as long as we rely on sharing other people' articles?
How many people talk about the cause of our problem & how many cowards run away from it?
Returning at the question from the beginning of the paragraph:
When are we more effective in working on the cause of our problem:
- when we wait solutions because we're incapable of thinking because we're non-thinkers or
- when we use our ability called: creative thinking?
Sharing other people' articles in a discord community is a copy-paste operation.
How much thinking is necessary to copy and paste someone else's article?
Instead of promoting other people, How about you promote your own articles?
The more people write their own articles the more we grow our reality’ community, so
- it's no longer about a few people who contradict the mainstream,
- it's about a lot of people who ask questions.
The more people think, the closer we get to a point where we govern ourselves.
How can we be more effective in overcoming our challenge?
We can help people be conscious of our challenge when we establish the right context. Instead of taking negative realities out of context, we can include them in context, in 1 article. Writing your own articles is not a big deal:
- You can formulate the title as 1 question about obvious realities,
- You can share questions about more obvious realities to create curiosity,
- You can share resources, so people can take a look at realities,
- You can share mainstream media resources, so people see that freedom will only decrease,
- You can share solution-oriented questions to encourage solution-oriented thinking,
- You can share other people’ articles in your articles, so people find different perspectives.
You already know my perspective from 1 previous article.
Do you want to share articles in our reality’ community?
You can consider that our reality’ community encourages:
- Creative thinking and
- Solution-oriented thinking.
So, you can share your own solution-oriented articles.
To make sure this community stays solution oriented, when you share your article, you can mention in what way it's helpful for overcoming our challenge.
Thanks for visiting my blog and reading my article.
By the way: this article is part of a book.
Hive community. Discord community.
What do you think? How can we be more effective in overcoming our challenge?
You can comment below and let me know.
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