Soren Kierkegaard

Before you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee
are ahead. . . .  You can only see one thing
clearly and that is your goal.  Form a mental vision
of that and cling to it through thick and thin.

Kathleen Norris

Every result you get in your life is the combination of the challenge you receive from the reality around you
and your capacity to respond to that challenge.

Fred Kofman

What Power Is Not
(An excerpt from Lay Waste No Power)

It's also important to keep in mind what power is not.  Much of the misuse of our powers comes from our inability to distinguish between what truly is power and what is not power.  Sometimes we think that we can or should do things that we neither need to do nor should do, especially when it comes to our dealings with other people.  Sometimes this tendency stems from a desire to control other people's actions or thoughts, and sometimes it comes from a desire to control a particular situation.  Often, it even comes about because we want to help someone else by "making sure" that something turns out well.  As a teacher, I often get papers that obviously were written mostly by a student’s parents—an effort to help, indeed, no matter how misguided the motivation.  In these cases, though, we're talking about influence and not true power.  The parent who wrote the paper may influence the grade, but hasn’t used power to help teach the child.

Unfortunately, there are very few programs around that teach people how to deal with other human beings and how to use their powers effectively, so we tend to get our ideas of what we're supposed to do from other people who also haven't been taught how to effectively use their own powers to deal with other people without trying to control or manipulate them.

Parenting offers a perfect example of this phenomenon.  Many parents think that it's their duty to make sure their kids know right from wrong and behave in "socially acceptable" ways.  If they become too obsessed with this idea, then they try to control their children's actions so that they can't make any mistakes.  They often use their power, then, to try to control and manipulate, as if their kids were puppets on strings that can be controlled by a puppetmaster.  They really don't have any power over their children, though—they're using their power to try to influence the kids, who either accept their attempts and acquiesce, or reject the attempts and rebel.

If Heather drinks a beer when she's fifteen, then, her parents may use their energy devising punishment for her and trying to "force" her to see things their way—she shouldn't be drinking beer because it's against the law and because it can lead only to worse problems.  Typical behaviors on the part of parents are to tell Heather that she's wrong, that she's doing something terrible, that her actions are very disappointing.  They're using their energy, then, to say these things, hoping that their influence will affect Heather.  Their energy can't do so.  When punishment is involved, then they're using the punishment to try to create fear of future punishment that will influence Heather's future decisions.  Physical punishment works the same way—people use their energy to strike someone else, hoping that the fear of more physical abuse in the future will influence the other person’s decisions about what to do and not to do.

If Heather rebels against her parents' reactions, then the parents will use even more energy, now for two things:  first, to convince her that they've been right all along, and second to deal with the problem of rebellion.  Now the parents have to convince their daughter that she's wrong to question their judgment, and if they're unsuccessful in the attempt, what will the final result be?

Quite simply, there probably will be no final result—this conflict probably will go on for quite a while without any resolution at all.  And how much energy will the three people have used against each other, only to fail to convince the other side that they're in the right?  How much energy will have been spent in anger, resentment, fretting, obsessing and worrying?

This type of situation is quite understandable in societies in which people tend to see life as a series of conflicts.  In cultures in which many people have a "you and me against the world" philosophy, conflict is seen as the norm.  And while most people don't wish to be involved in conflict, they nonetheless see it as the most effective (and sometimes the only effective) means of problem resolution.

Reading along in Edward De Bono's book New Think, I came across this most interesting paragraph:  "Many great discoverers like Faraday had no formal education at all, and others, like Darwin and James Clerk Maxwell, had insufficient formal education to curb their originality.  It is tempting to suppose that a capable mind that is unaware of the old approach has a good chance of evolving a new one."

The important point he makes there--actually, there are two important points--is that a knowledge of an old approach always tends to stand in the way of our coming up with a better idea, and the fact that too much formal education tends to curb originality.  They're actually one and the same answer since too much formal education tends to give us too many already accepted solutions.

Many people don't trust their own ideas because they're self-conscious about a lack of formal education.  Don't ever make that mistake.  Some of the best ideas and most important discoveries have come from people with very little or no formal education--Thomas Edison wasn't a bad example.

Albert Einstein never learned the multiplication tables, which makes me feel good since I never did either.  It's the sevens and eights that get me.

Not knowing the solution to a problem is often the best thing that can happen to us.  It gives us the opportunity to come up with a wholly new, and possibly much better, solution.  People armed with old solutions tend to keep digging the same holes.  The world can pass them by.

Lateral thinking, the kind Edward De Bono talks about, means moving laterally and digging brand-new holes in brand-new, virgin land.  Sometimes the old solution is best.  If so, by studying the problem and looking seriously for the answer, we'll come across the old solution and use it.  But we just might come up with a new and better one before we learn the old one, too.

People will say, "Surely they must have thought of that!"  Not necessarily.  As De Bono says:  "By far the greatest amount of scientific effort is directed toward the logical enlargement of some accepted hole.  Many are the minds scratching feebly away or gouging out great chunks according to their capacity.  Yet great new ideas and great scientific advances have often [get that--often!] come about through people ignoring the hole that is in progress and starting a new one.  The reason for starting a new one could be dissatisfaction with the old one, sheer ignorance of the old one, a temperamental need to be different, or pure whim.  This hole hopping is rare, because the process of education is usually effective, and education is designed to make people appreciate the holes that have been dug for them by their betters."*

So be a hole hopper.  Don't keep digging the old hole deeper.  Try digging some new holes--break some new ground for a change--and see what you can come up with.

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* Edward De Bono, New Think:  The Use of Lateral Thinking in the Generation of New Ideas (New York:  Basic Books, 1968).