Last week the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s oldest and largest Islamist organization, a group that has been banned, off and on in Egypt since 1948, won 47 percent of seats in the lower house of parliament.

Which leads me to ponder a question that has always intrigued me: how does a political party, or an individual for that matter, make the transition in identity (and action) from a radical activist position, outside the mainstream, to the head of government?

Major political transitions are seldom considered to be psychological as well as political events, but how could they not be? The citizens of the former east bloc countries didn’t just wake up one morning with a democratic understanding, attitude and behavior. Growing up in a totalitarian regime results in a state of mind, a set of behaviors that doesn’t shift when government does. Being a member of a banned, radical extremist group to suddenly being the party in the seat of power is a profound shift in identity. Looking at history, the track record for making this transition is not good. Many radical parties entered through revolution and proceeded to jail, torture, ‘re-educate’ or assassinate opponents.

It takes people years to grow into their sense of power, to grow from a young adult dependent on others to being the one responsible for others. Companies grapple with this all the time. Someone is promoted from front line or factory floor into a management position but doesn’t or can’t fill those leadership shoes: they see their new staff still as colleagues, and react competitively with the people they are meant to develop. And this is true everywhere, not just in the business world: parents struggle with this, often failing to recognize their higher rank and resorting to yelling, screaming, even violence when provoked by their children. Teachers who feel insecure or who need their egos stroked are every student’s nightmare. (more…)

My nephew posted this on his Facebook wall this morning:

We all have dreams, but how much are you willing to sacrifice to realize yours? Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Indeed. Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Martin Luther King Jr died at 39. And he predicted his own death. On the eve of his assassination he said, in an eerily prescient passage:

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land.

Taylor Branch, the historian who wrote a trilogy of books on the life of King, said in the PBS show, Citizen King,

The Movement took a huge toll on him. When they did the autopsy, they said he had the heart of a 60 year old, he’s 39. So yes, it took a big toll on him, and he was constantly fantasizing about getting out of the Movement

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My friend who writes about parenting, bullying, and schools wrote an article called, Parenting a Life of Meaning, In it she asks: Is it really normal that children should hate school? Should we as parents and society tolerate that children spend 6-8 hours a day bored, uninterested, and uninspired?”

There’s a lot written now about the crisis in our public school system. But is it a crisis, or as one author writes, just a bit “like democracy itself, loose, shaggy, and inefficient, full of redundancies and conflicting goals?” Whether crisis or not, right now education is in need of innovation and I don’t just mean technology. Real innovation, and not just sustaining innovation is needed, starting with the goal of education.

The folks at RSA put out a video well worth the 12 minutes to watch. Changing Educational Paradigms asks some very simple yet disruptive questions about education

Which path to choose?

Happy new year. This year a lot more space and time opens up for me, as I step down from my role as the director of training at the Process Work Institute. But I’m finding that the freedom of having more space and time comes with a huge challenge. Do I use this time for what’s most important?  How do I know which one, of the many paths, I should pursue? (more…)

And yet another good podcast from a reader.  Hellene Gronda from Melbourne sent me this podcast following some of the posts I wrote this past summer on making, keeping, and breaking habits. One of the points I made was that feelings couldn’t be trusted when it came to both starting and stopping habits. For instance, waiting till you felt like working out probably won’t work. You have to just do it, even if you don’t feel like it.

Which raises the issue, that contrary to a lot of popular psychology, trusting our feelings and instincts often times just leads us to make poor choices. The reason? Psychologist and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, Deirdre Barrett says, we’re better coded for threats that are happening right now than threats in the future. Listening to your body, following your gut is good for some things, but not a universal panacea. A great interview with Barrett on her book, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose, can be heard here, on ABC (Australia).

Well, it’s a wrap…. almost. We’re shipping boxes of binders, exhibits, books, and hundreds and hundreds of pages of documents tomorrow to the accrediting commission, and now it’s a waiting game. It’s been a grueling year – the first application last spring, and now this past fall, responding to their comments and concerns, we had to significantly revise and re-submit.

We hit some real stumbling blocks, some moments when we were all tempted, seriously tempted, to just throw up our hands and walk away. The project was a total meditation on power and effort, of digging deep and pushing forward. Yet at each obstacle, the question came up, is it worth it?

It’s extremely hard to know, because of the psychology (and economics) of sunk cost and opportunity cost. Sunk cost is an economic term for the money or sweat equity you’ve put into something. And opportunity cost is about the future: for every minute or dollar you spend on something, there’s something else you’re not spending it on. And it’s extremely hard to tell which is the better route. Knowing when to push and when it’s not worth it is extremely hard, psychologically. We get attached all the time, to our detriment, because of sunk costs: relationships, jobs, habits, military campaigns, etc.

With this project we had to consider each time we hit an obstacle (and sometimes it seemed to happen daily), what is the future benefit? Can we imagine it? Can we weigh this level of effort against the future cost? How do we know we’re not just hanging on because of sunk cost?

Working with change of any kind, whether with people or systems, understanding the psychology of investment and loss, is critical. Just as I was cooking on this all, my friend Carol Zahner, sent me this link, The Upside of Quitting.

As some of you regular readers know, I recently did a three part series on  habits – changing, developing and letting go of habits.It got a lot of interest. And in the course of discussion, you raised some thought provoking questions about change.

In light of that, and the recent Occupy Wall Street movement sweeping North America (and parts of Europe) right now, I am struck with the question of change unaddressed in my posts:

When does change happen?

Many were caught by surprise by the Arab Spring, the fall of Mubarak and Kaddafi. And did anyone predict  the Occupy Wall Street movement would spread to (as of this writing, according to the wikipedia) 70 US cities?

What makes us decide the time is now? What makes a movement take off, and not fizzle? What makes the time ripe?

Kairos, the ancient Greek concept of the ripeness of time, speaks to the mystery of time, but doesn’t explain how it happens. Kairos, in both ancient Greek and modern Greek, means ‘weather.’ Weather, as we know is unpredictable, or perhaps, predictable, if we can track the millions of variables in the atmosphere and now exactly how and when they will interact.

Human change, whether global or personal, is as mysterious as the weather. In spite of all of our focus, energy and intention, when things ripen, is still beyond our grasp. All we can do is prime the pump, recognize the opportunity, and develop the courage to disrupt and disturb our comfortable identities. We cannot force ourselves to make change unless the time is ripe, but we can challenge ourselves by asking, am I ready to change?

This is the third, and probably last for now, in a series of posts on habits. The last post I focused on creating new habits, and how to make them sticky. This one is about breaking a habit, or, to stay with the same theme, unsticking a habit.

This  is far more complex because  un-learning something involves more analysis and more steps than simply doing something new.

Primarily, to un-stick a habit, you  first have to hack it. You have to investigate the eco-system of behaviors surrounding the habit. You have to do a little sleuthing to decide, who is the real culprit? It’s not always the habit that’s the bad guy. Here are three important things to consider before trying to stop a habit:   (more…)

In the last post, I talked about three common misconceptions around forming habits and making a change to your daily routine: discipline or will power alone is needed; inspiration should be enough, and having a fixed routine ruins spontaneity.

This post looks at some ingredients to forming a new habit, and making it stick. These are by no means conclusive – there are other things that help, but  I have found these 5 points to be key.

1. Know the difference between a goal and the activity. I realized that the main reason I wasn’t writing more regularly was that though I had a goal, I didn’t have a specific activity targeted. “Writing a post” is not a specific activity. Nor is “exercising” or “meditating” or “eating healthy.”  (more…)

I’ve been thinking a lot about habits lately. Everywhere I look, habits seem to play a role. Making headway on solving our biggest social problems ultimately comes down to changing ordinary, everyday habits. How do we switch to using public transportation instead of driving, or using reusable grocery bags instead of paper or plastic? Whether we’re tackling health care, the environment, or the global financial crisis, individual’s habits, behavior and choices play a role.

Closer to home, I’ve been thinking about my blog. I’ve had it for almost 3 years now, and my goal has been to write more regularly, ideally twice a week. And for three years, I’ve failed to attain that goal. What’s most frustrating is that I’m a fairly disciplined person. I exercise regularly. I answer emails promptly. I balance my bank accounts every month. I floss twice a day. The list goes on. So why do I fail to post twice a week? Well, here’s what I tell myself: it must not be important enough to me. I’m lazy. I’m undisciplined. I must be ambivalent about it. I make other things more important. I don’t take myself seriously. All of which has truth. But none of which helps me change. Here’s the simple reason. I haven’t posted regularly because I haven’t developed the habit. (more…)