How will you survive the economy and climate change? Some say it will take a miracle. But the miracle is the mind itself and the flexibility with which we make meaning! My work as a meditation instructor and coach affirms it every day.
It’s always a revelation to see how differently we each respond to crisis. Advocates of global catastrophe compete to find evidence to support their prognosis. While those who say, “there are no real problems, only opportunities to find new solutions,” may find limits to test their optimism. Or not.
What are your values? The ones which form the lens through which you see the world? Is your glass half-empty, or half-full? Is you optimism or pessimism insurmountable?
The particular metaphor of the glass represents something we call a meta-program – meaning that you tend to incline in one direction or the other fairly consistently. The lens may work differently for different areas of your life. For example, you may see the upside when it comes to relationships, and focus on the downside when it comes to money or the global economy. It’s not something that’s set in stone. Whichever way you lean, you can change it – but it takes a little work.
One of the things I notice about people when I first meet them is how they see that glass. Do they focus on the downside or the upside? I also see how quickly people with similar orientations gravitate towards each other.
There’s no intrinsic problem here – unless your particular tendency to see the glass as half-full or half-empty is making you miserable – in which case, as your coach or meditation teacher my job becomes helping you to change it – in whichever direction is going to help your life work best.
This view, this lens, this meta program, transcends ideology. Buddhist thought, religious thinking in general, can lean either way, as can any group or individual.
Do you your glass as half empty or half full?
This meta-program is only one of about 72 that we pay attention to in our work.
The miracle is not so much that we face challenges. It’s that we are each so uniquely different in how we respond to the world and to each other.
See upcoming meditation retreats and trainings for more on meta-programs and personal change.
Meta-programs are an exquisite tool to use in hiring, as well as in testing computability in couples, or resolving conflicts between individuals, or within organizations. It’s a way to cut to the chase in a very essential way, to look deeper than surface content and ascertain how each person ticks. Once revealed and understood, computability, or potential conflict, can be understood and addressed easily.
- Climate Change made the typhoons in the south pacific very destructive. Typhoon Ketsana made a lot of mess in Philippines and Vietnam