One You

One You fosters a philosophy of exploring, discovering, inventing and creating stellar inner and outer experiences, for working and for living.

Here are five ways to make your work fulfilling.

1.  Mind Your Own Career:   First, you may want to earn as much money as you can with as little work as possible. Second, you may want to work as effectively as possible, so you are as free and as capable as you can be to experience your non-working life. You can satisfy these two common desires by adopting two basic principles. First, live a philosophy that keeps work and money in perspective. Second, discover, invent or create work that is balanced and integrated with a full inner and outer life.

2.  Work on the Inside:  Your inner experience influences, and is influenced by, your life at work. You can improve your inner experience of work by considering possibilities, keeping a clear focus on where you are and where you want to be, accepting what is and what comes, and always thinking clearly and deliberately.

3.  Choose Your Way:  Your ability to make confident, timely and appropriate choices determines how easily and effectively you maintain control of your work circumstances including the direction and pace of your career growth. You make the best choices at work when you choose with all cylinders firing.

4.  Live with Your Work:  You make the most of your outer experience of work by knowing what to say as well as when and how to say it, knowing what to do as well as when and how to do it, doing what is necessary and sufficient to pay your way in the world and doing what you can to contribute to and improve your own and others’ experience of life and work.

5.  Make Your Work Work for You:  Your work is a natural part of who you are. You bring your purpose, integrity, values and needs to your work, and you can deliberately create work habits that protect yourself while creating results that are meaningful for you.

The effective heart needs to understand why things are the way they are and why things happen the way they do. Good models can help You with this understanding.

Good models help You to anticipate and to influence the way things are and the way things happen, so that effective choices are possible.

You may have different models for different areas of your life, to help you understand specific things in different situations.

A flight simulator is a working model of an aircraft. It represents the complex reality of the cockpit, monitoring the flight and operations of an aircraft that carries no passengers and does not fly.

Likewise, a child’s paper airplane is also a working model of an aircraft. It represents the complex reality of the aerodynamics which enable things to fly. It has no control panel and carries no passengers, but it actually flies.

An ideal working model is characterized by six traits: It is Coherent, Insightful, Relevant, Cohesive, Useful, and Simple.

1.  A coherent model fits smoothly with all of the events and circumstances which it serves to explain, to anticipate, and to influence. The coherent flight simulator creates scenarios that are consistent with real possibilities in the real world — there is no need to pilot a trillion ton aircraft upside down through Jell-O. There are no jagged edges between the model and the reality it represents. Remember this is not just a model, but a working model.

2.  An insightful model accounts for all the conditions that surround the events and circumstances it describes. There is a place for everything, and everything is in its place. An insightful model reliably anticipates conditions and events. The insightful paper airplane, respecting the aerodynamics of flight, is carefully folded into a symmetrical delta wing shape. A flat or crumpled piece of paper, tossed into the air, would simply waft or fall, never achieving the more elegant flight of the more insightful model.

3.  A relevant model is most realistic with respect to whatever is most meaningful and important for You. A relevant flight simulator is most realistic with respect to the cockpit and ignores other aspects of a real aircraft because what happens in the cockpit is most meaningful and important for training a pilot. A relevant paper airplane is most realistic with respect to the aerodynamics of flight because actual flight is most meaningful and important to a child.

4.  A cohesive model has internal integrity. Each working and non-working part fits smoothly and consistently with all other parts. No essential component is left out, and no non-essential component is included. The cohesive flight simulator is a real cockpit, with real instruments, real dials and real controls – there is no snack bar and home theatre system built in just for fun.

5.  A useful model so effectively represents the reality it emphasizes and so effectively respects the reality it ignores that you can reliably use the model to anticipate and to influence both realities. Your due diligence when making your models coherent, insightful, relevant and cohesive pays back many-fold in the usefulness of the working model. In fact, it is in its usefulness that a model truly becomes a working model.

6.  A simple model emphasizes only what is most meaningful and important to make the complexities of the real world manageable without introducing complexities of its own. A simple model does not multiply terms, concepts and assumptions beyond necessity. Each part of the model is exactly what is necessary and sufficient for explaining, anticipating and influencing a particular aspect of reality that is meaningful and important for You.

For years, I have been fascinated with the 4 Kinds of Intelligence, and especially with how they become engaged when You are making choices.

You make choices constantly – some big, some small – some deliberate, some habitual – some conscious, some non-conscious.

Regardless of the nature of the choice, You always bring some mix of sensing, intuiting, thinking and feeling to the process of identifying and considering options, and to the act of making a choice.