Peak Performance Newsletter #9 | Off Week Smörgåsbord
Hey All,
I was away this weekend for a wedding and didn't have the time I typically do for a more fleshed out written piece. In lieu of our regularly scheduled programming, I'm offering a smörgåsbord of thoughts and curated content.
Enjoy!
What the Heck is Self-Actualization?
I'll often describe the end goal of coaching as self-actualization. Realistically, you can use any number of terms, including Maslow's Self-Actualization, Jung's Individuation, or Josh Waitzkin's Unobstructed Self-Expression.
But what the heck are those things?
In simple terms, actualization is the process of discovering more about the self and integrating it into an increasingly comprehensive whole. That process has a ton of different activities, not limited to but including the activities of self...
Discovery
Awareness
Understanding
Compassion
Choosing
Expression
Creation
Transformation
It's a messy and nonlinear process. If you're engaged in any of the above activities, you're on the path.
The Paradox of Improvement
One common pitstop during the process of self-actualization is evaluating your relationship to "improving yourself". It generally looks something like this:
"I want to make myself better, but the actual problem at the bottom of it all is that in wanting to make myself better I am assuming something is broken within me. How do I reconcile the authentic desire to grow with the problematic brokenness it presumes?"
I think a good way to think about this is to consider the concepts of "improvement" vs. "growth".
The paradigm the problematic relationship to improvement assumes is mechanical and inorganic. We think of ourselves like a car: a car is either fine, or something is wrong. Therefore if I desire to make a modification to my car, something must be wrong. We then abstract this metaphor to the self and assume that, if we want something to change, it means there must be something fundamentally wrong with us.
An alternative paradigm is that of growth. This word conjures the image of plants, animals, and nature, by definition a more organic process. Why do plants grow? Because it is simply what plants do! They grow no matter what happens. Change is the rule. As responsible caretakers we wish to tend to them with water, sunlight, and nutrition as they need it. But these things are not required for growth, nor does providing them mean that we are responsible for the growing. The growing happens no matter what.
What would it be like to relate to yourself from the organic place? Growing is what you do! It does not mean that anything is wrong. You can be active or passive in the process. If you wish to be more active, you can attend to yourself and lovingly provide nourishment when you sense you need nourishment and challenge when you sense you need challenge.
Alan Watts has one of my favorite talks ever on the paradox at the heart improvment. I can't recommend it enough.
Rational Optimism
I've been making my way through The Rational Optimist. I picked it up because I sensed it would be a useful perspective to cultivate.
In a world where pessimism reigns, being able to take optimistic perspectives is a much needed skill. Much like how biodiversity supports healthy ecosystems, diverse worldviews support the continued survival of humanity. Rational Optimism is an endangered species, and one that we need more than ever.
Understanding Complexity for Better Thinking
I'm taking a course on applied complexity science. Our instructor kicked off the course with a pedagogical overview, explaining that learning applied complexity is primarily about:
First, Unlearning the way you currently think
Creating a new intuition about things from that fertile ground
I suggest reading this short article he wrote. It provides a useful new frame for thinking about complex matters.
He recently sent another article on a topic which lies at the heart of complexity, Irreducibility.
“So what does it mean that something can be reduced? Simply, that you can study all the parts separately, without seeing how they relate or interact with one another, and you in principle will know everything you need to to understand the behavior of the total system. The behaviors of the parts SUM. They’re just “added together”, without any structure. You won’t lose any information when you break it apart.
So when we say something is irreducible we mean that if we take it apart and try to study the parts separately, we will lose something. Not necessarily everything, but something. The parts don’t just SUM. There is structure, there are relations, organization.
Irreducibility is in general the case for systems we encounter in the “real world”. They are highly organized and structured. Irreducibility is everywhere. When we dismember, we destroy.
Reductionist science has assumed that reducibility is the general case, with some irreducible special cases here and there. This assumption has taken on the mantle of “self-evident”. But it is not self-evident, it is in fact wrong.
To take complexity seriously really amounts to taking irreducibility seriously — as a general feature of the world — and recognize that only special circumstances grant any degree of reducibility.”
You can read it here. Learning principles of complexity and systems-thinking is a great way to level up your critical thinking skills. As the world grows in complexity, I suspect it will become table stakes for enacting meaningful change.