I guess, we are often being given this advice of "Look within" at the current juncture when we are increasingly becoming empty within. That is the paradox of today. While change has to start from within, that change is often not sufficient for most of the real world problems today. Mind you, I'm NOT saying internal management is not needed. I'm saying, while that change IS needed, that change is often NOT sufficient.
When the problem is created due to external circumstances, managing oneself internally forever not only amounts to adapting oneself to change but sometimes also to changing oneself to fit into an inappropriate system or environment. It's not just changing, but derailing from one's ideal or optimum self.
So while I appreciate self-help advice such as these where help comes from assessing internal factors, I wonder why there is not enough focus these days on assessing the external factors. True, there might not be enough control or power to change the external environment one is in. But sometimes one needs to realize that it is NOT always possible to change oneself beyond a certain limit! The next alternative then is to shift to a different environment.
It will be wrong if the capacity of a fish is assessed based on how high it can fly or if the capacity of a bird is assessed based on how far it can swim. Neither of them can do the other's job. They are best in their own environments. These are examples that starkly bring out the incapacity of the beings in inappropriate environments. Unfortunately, the real world scenarios are NOT this direct and we are often lost adapting ourselves to systems we NEED NOT fit into! We would rather do better elsewhere!
And it need NOT always be shifting to a different environment. Sometimes our assertiveness in NOT adapting to a system also brings the essential change in a system which remained stagnant for long, just because the actors operating within it did not care to feed it back honest responses.
I can go on and on, but I hope you are getting my point. I would have loved to depict it through a picture, but I'm absolutely in no mood to put those efforts to create one! But for the technically inclined, I can go ahead and explain it through more text in technical terms. Let's say a couple of components, say X, Y and Z are interacting faultily in a system. And let's say you are responsible for "managing" one component A. Now, let's say the owners of components X, Y and Z are complaining that component A is sending incorrect responses all the while. Would you try and fix component A to send the responses X, Y and Z "want" or would you check that maybe A is sending responses as it should, but the fault could actually be with other components' expectations? Or sometimes, the fault could be on both the sides and all the components might have to be altered.
While we might be intelligent enough to think properly when it comes to such problems in the technological world , in real world we are being forced to incline more towards "internal management" and that always might not be the complete solution. I'm sure you got my point by this time... So go ahead and look outside so that you give somebody else a chance to do their "internal management" instead of you banging your head at it, doing it alone and aloof all the time...so that you do NOT foster a system that is tough on most of the people...a system that most of the people are unhappy with! Because systemic changes are waiting!
When the problem is created due to external circumstances, managing oneself internally forever not only amounts to adapting oneself to change but sometimes also to changing oneself to fit into an inappropriate system or environment. It's not just changing, but derailing from one's ideal or optimum self.
So while I appreciate self-help advice such as these where help comes from assessing internal factors, I wonder why there is not enough focus these days on assessing the external factors. True, there might not be enough control or power to change the external environment one is in. But sometimes one needs to realize that it is NOT always possible to change oneself beyond a certain limit! The next alternative then is to shift to a different environment.
It will be wrong if the capacity of a fish is assessed based on how high it can fly or if the capacity of a bird is assessed based on how far it can swim. Neither of them can do the other's job. They are best in their own environments. These are examples that starkly bring out the incapacity of the beings in inappropriate environments. Unfortunately, the real world scenarios are NOT this direct and we are often lost adapting ourselves to systems we NEED NOT fit into! We would rather do better elsewhere!
And it need NOT always be shifting to a different environment. Sometimes our assertiveness in NOT adapting to a system also brings the essential change in a system which remained stagnant for long, just because the actors operating within it did not care to feed it back honest responses.
I can go on and on, but I hope you are getting my point. I would have loved to depict it through a picture, but I'm absolutely in no mood to put those efforts to create one! But for the technically inclined, I can go ahead and explain it through more text in technical terms. Let's say a couple of components, say X, Y and Z are interacting faultily in a system. And let's say you are responsible for "managing" one component A. Now, let's say the owners of components X, Y and Z are complaining that component A is sending incorrect responses all the while. Would you try and fix component A to send the responses X, Y and Z "want" or would you check that maybe A is sending responses as it should, but the fault could actually be with other components' expectations? Or sometimes, the fault could be on both the sides and all the components might have to be altered.
While we might be intelligent enough to think properly when it comes to such problems in the technological world , in real world we are being forced to incline more towards "internal management" and that always might not be the complete solution. I'm sure you got my point by this time... So go ahead and look outside so that you give somebody else a chance to do their "internal management" instead of you banging your head at it, doing it alone and aloof all the time...so that you do NOT foster a system that is tough on most of the people...a system that most of the people are unhappy with! Because systemic changes are waiting!
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