Navigating the Second Wave
Hands up if 2020 is still refusing to play along with your plans?
One of the most unifying things we have at the moment is that fact that we are together in not knowing what’s coming next. And while the unexpected is to be expected, few of us think of ‘not-knowing’ as a desirable state. Your local pub may well have re-opened but you probably won’t be far into your first reassuring pint before someone will warn you of the ‘second wave’. You can have your pint and drink it but at any point the pub may be closed for the foreseeable.
The stakes rise, along with our anxiety, when pints are replaced with our plans. Some of us are ploughing on with our original expectations of 2020 as best we can in spite of the changes. Write the play, and see what happens later in the year. Book the flight, but double check the cancellation policy. Tweak the business plan, and hope for the best.
What can we use to anchor ourselves? I would suggest becoming a little more conscious of and deliberate with the things that inform our decision making. Recalibrating how we work in the world from the linear and specific to the tangential and value based. We might have a vague sense of what is meant by ‘values’ in this context. If you are as naturally cynical as me you might assume vales to be: a variety of colourful sounding words that generally imply nice things (i.e. compassion, humour, authenticity etc). Like me too, you might only get about three down the list before dismissing the rest as being common sense and getting on with your life. However, modern leadership training, the American military and strategic planning models the world over operate from a values-based perspective. So it’s worth exploring the concept of values in decision-making a little deeper in order to understand their relevance in the current climate.
Every psychology student (and anyone working in marketing, politics, advertising and propaganda) will know how key our values are to our behaviour. If I have to attach clods of rubber to my feet and pay for the privilege, any bit of rubber will do. But if Nike are selling me that foot rubber they need to appeal to my values to get me to pay more for their particular rubber. Your choice of profession, to a large degree, will be value driven. As will the clothes you wear, your partner, where you live, what you read, how you travel, the kind of TV you watch and the kind you are ‘above’ watching. You will judge others by your own set of values both consciously and unconsciously. Whether you choose them or not, values are constantly at play as a part of the way we perceive our world. Unconsciously we can limit our experience of the world and our opportunities within it by making such judgements. I recently made the foolish value judgement that Married at First Sight: Australia was not intellectual or meaningful enough TV for me to watch and almost missed out on one of the greatest dramas of the year. Don’t judge me!
Married at First Sight: Australia (seasons 4) … no one forgets what happens on a boys night!
The problems with values can be categorised very basically as (A) Not recognising their influence on the decisions you make, (B) Working unconsciously from someone else’s values or (C) Making decisions that run in opposition to your own values. If while pursuing your acting career you find yourself torn between hating mainstream American superhero films and also wanting to be in them, you’ll recognise all three issues happening simultaneously. Until we seriously consider what’s important to us we will to a large extent be working unconsciously from the values of others. The values of our parents, nationality, culture, advertising… Beyonce and Steve Jobs are all more likely to have a strong influence on the decisions we make than our own unacknowledged values.
The values worth exploring as good navigational tools can be split loosely into two categories: (A) The ones that have been most meaningful and beneficial to our lives up to this point and (B) The ones we want to adopt in order to create more meaning and benefit to our lives going forward. Becoming clear on both of these for yourself would result in a simple list of what’s most important to you. The cynics among you will accurately point out at this stage that we’re back where we started, with ‘a variety of colourful sounding words that generally imply positive things’. But at this level of ‘just words’ they are as useless to us as the shiny points in the night sky are to sailors with no knowledge of astronomy.
But when values are understood and used as the starting point from which to base your next actions or to map a life-long journey, even the most cynical can see their relevance. In a pandemic they offer us a constant amidst the ever-changing landscape. They serve as our compass, and who doesn’t want one of them at the moment? When compared to goal-specific decision-making (the category from which it is hardest to work from in our current predicament) they offer a more adaptable way forward in complex, volatile and unpredictable conditions. Let’s consider them both:
Goal-based decision-making:
Multiple meanings
Outside in
Static and rational
Deconstructive
Know destination
Focus on future
Short term gain
Emphasis on execution
Value-based decision-making:
Simpler focus
Inside out
Dynamic and holistic
Integrative
Know direction
Focus on present
Long term growth
Emphasis on experimentation
Value-based decision-making allows us more flexibility. Enabling us to adapt quickly to ever changing conditions, to move forward when there’s no fixed point to aim for, and to feel grounded when we are very much at sea.
So, what would it be like to abandon our expectations completely? To let your values be your rudder and let the winds and Gods do what they will? To adopt a different kind of mindset, one that accepts reality for what it is, looks hopefully towards the future but remains grateful for what there is right here, right now? I have no idea, but in a recent interview with Irish acting legend Niall Buggy, as a part of the #CreativeCareerTalk series, I got a sense of what it might be like…