Participation through Action => Experience
Reflection on Experience => Learning

This is the essence of Chris Argyris' double-loop learning (see: https://infed.org/mobi/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/). Argyris' learning principle is also at the core of participatory action research (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_action_research) .

So what does this mean to you in building your adaptive capacity and strengthening your resilience?

Let's reflect on recent years (since 2016) and the last three in particular. The world has been transformed by geopolitical upheavals and pandemic. At almost every level, the way we operate in our world has changed. For example, the way we interact with others has transitioned from predominantly in-person contact to virtual contact to such an extent that emerging from our pandemic cocoons required rethinking about how to conduct ourselves in shared spaces. Some of us have adapted well while others are still finding their legs. Some others have chosen to remain isolated while others demonstrate open hostility in the public square.  This reality necessitates increased preparation for all types of responses from those we encounter in public.

How does one prepare for these interactions that may elicit surprising reactions, unforeseen responses, and even potential for meaningful engagement? Some of the most powerful tools are:

• Approach interactions with curiosity, a sense of appreciative inquiry
• Consciousness of your role in shared space
• Consciousness of others in shared space
• Awareness of our own biases
• Consideration of others given the context of the shared space
• Understanding your boundaries
• Respecting others' boundaries
• Finding shared aims and values
• Appreciating different perspectives
• Looking for richness in diverse experiences
• Allowing for compassion for self and others
• Creating conditions for sharing without harsh judgment or reprisal
• Listening for shared joys as well as shared distress
• Using our voices to stand up for those who cannot
• Honoring our shared humanity
• Reflecting on the experience through journaling, meditation, or being in nature
• Using lessons learned to prepare for future interactions
• Appreciating the life cycle of shared experience with grace

Since 2016, the world has become exceedingly polarized and unbalanced. Absolutes have become seemingly easy approaches to the complexity we face. The key is to understand complexity, not reduce it to simple solutions. Complexity is neutral - neither good nor bad. Complexity is at times irascible; yet, it also lends richness to living. It is vital to life.

When you approach your daily interactions in shared spaces on the road, at work, in your community, in school, at the grocery, at the gas station, at the cafe, or anywhere in which you encounter others whom you don't know, LEAD WITH APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY about the other person and what you might learn from them. You might treat complicated engagements as participatory action research opportunities.  Remember, sometimes the greatest gifts come in ugly wrapping paper. This simple shift in your presence toward appreciative inquiry will take the pressure off you to prove something and opens you to learning something from those you meet. When you are learning, you are building your adaptive capacity at multiple levels (e.g., cognitive, relational, spiritual). When you learn to share space with others in positive ways, you have more opportunities to build community. When you have built a supportive community, you have strengthened your resilience as well as the resilience of those you share space.  That's the value of the double loop!

Greetings Resilient Ones!

It has been awhile since my last post. The 2020 election cycle has come and gone. Our nation is finally on a path of recovery. As individuals, we are hopeful the vaccine will help us combat the pandemic and the new economic plan will create more stability in our lives. You may ask, so why are we still focusing on learned resilience? The short answer is that the period of recovery from adversity is the richest period for learning from experience. This is a time for reflection about what went well, what didn't go well, and how we can improve our capacity for resilience. In the spirit of reflection and learning, If we move on too quickly, we may step over some critical lessons that will have long-term consequences. By reflecting on what we have just gone through, we can prepare ourselves for future challenges so we manage them from places of strength.

I have been spending the last four months searching for answers to a bunch of "why" questions. Like, why did we go through the roller coaster ride of the last four years with so much tragedy and so little accountability for those in power? Why weren't we better prepared and why didn't our safety rails work?  Why are we so polarized and unable to communicate? Why can't we be unified instead of divided? Why are people so willing to sweep our difficulties under the rug without learning from experience? Why are we repeating past errors? 

In my research, I have come across a thought-provoking podcast called Politicology created and moderated by Ron Steslow. Some of you may recall Ron as the insightful interviewer who led the Lincoln Project's many podcasts during 2020. In December, Ron launched Politicology to dive deeply into many of the topics that had to wait for further development until the urgency of the election was over. Now, he is taking on those topics. For example, Ron is developing a series about voter suppression and Q-Anon. These are compelling discussions with experts in these fields.

In particular, this week Ron explores how autocrats can hijack political parties through pluralistic ignorance as he speaks with Dr. Catherine Sanderson, Chair of Psychology at Amherst College and author of Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels (see below).

You may be wondering how pluralistic ignorance relates to learned resilience. Pluralistic ignorance has its roots in learned helplessness. Be sure to check out my early posts in the blog for details about how learned resilience is the antithesis of learned helplessness.

Here's a link to the podcast on Spotify (also available on Apple Podcasts and TuneIn).

Dr. Catherine Sanderson on Becoming Moral Rebels
https://open.spotify.com/show/5UsvtFaTyCSCyb8O05L9VK?si=8APaaCfeQNGVQONKqY4i2A

To learn more about Ron's work, go to the Politicology website at https://politicology.com/ or Twitter @RonSteslow. Ron is launching this endeavor now. If you love what you're hearing, pitch in by donating to support future broadcasts about compelling issues that make a difference in defending our democracy. We're learning to be a resilient democracy and there's no time to waste!

If you ever  wondered whether resilience is inherent in one's character or learned, Captain "Sully" Sullenberger is the embodiment of both. Listen to Chuck Rosenberg's podcast interview with "Sully" as he describes all the factors that led up to his safe landing of US Airways Flight #1549 on January 15, 2009.

It is apparent from Sully's description of his upbringing, education, and experience he is continually learning to improve himself as a professional and human being. The view from his aircraft is awing. You may think Sully's story is the making of legends, but perhaps it isn't relatable to you because you rarely encounter problems like the magnitude of potential plane crash in your daily life. Listen carefully. Sully's lessons about resilience are vital for all of us.

In the podcast, The Oath, Chuck explores how "Sully's" past predicted his future. There are two lessons about resilience. At one level, resilience is part of one's character, developed in childhood at home, school, and in one's community. Sociological factors such as one's family, culture, religion, and civic participation contribute to the formation of character.  This is evident in the way Sully speaks about how his values were formed as a youth and informed him as an adult.

At a second level, resilience is learned through years of experience and exposure to challenges in one's life. This seasoning builds the mental models Captain Sullenberger described calling upon in moments of crises. As he points out, the decisions he made during flight #1549 may have seemed intuitive but they were based on decades of cumulative learning through several adversities. Captain Sullenberger reminds us there really are no "overnight stars." As Chuck's guests regularly say, it takes years of preparation and practice, through many challenges, to be an expert or a hero.  Captain Sullenberger demonstrates the potency of inherent resilience in character and learned resilience in practice. His motto could be "in Omnia Paratus"!

Learned resilience is important because some individuals have been shielded from managing crises and the consequences of their decisions. They lack the tools to be resilient, rendering them incapable of confidently facing their dilemmas to achieve desired outcomes. The gap may be due to well-intentioned yet misguided parenting. It may also be attributed to a socio-economic position which has enabled them to escape the fallout of their choices. In psychology, this phenomenon is known as learned helplessness. They exhibit a behavioral fragility to adversity  when their reactions is flight  instead of facing an adversity. These individuals didn't develop competencies of resilience as children and young adults, thus setting them up for heartache and failure in adulthood. To avert these painful results, it's imperative to learn resilience through programmed experiential learning, like simulations, practice, and coaching.

What does this mean to you in daily life? It means the small, everyday things we do make our character. It means our approach to today's challenges makes or breaks our ability to face tomorrow's adversity and change. Mindfulness that focuses us on being our best selves builds character. Approaching everyday problems with a sense of curiosity and openness to learning enables us to accumulate a mental library of lessons to apply when life presents us adversity. The case of inherent and learned resilience lived by Captain Sullenberger reminds us to use these two lessons full throttle.

This is an excerpt from the August 2020 Learned Resilience Newsletter. To get the tools, download the newsletter from the Newsletters tab.

In August we focus on four aspects of developing agility, which are relevant now - anticipation, apprehension, appreciation, and adaptation. We look at them as an evolution of thinking and feeling toward a workable strategy for you.



           AUGUST’S HAIKU

          Appreciation,
          Aware of each unfolding –
          Moments become fine


                 ∞ Stephanie Mohan, September 2015




Reflection on Appreciation
Appreciation is so often associated with gratitude that we sometimes overlook its meaning in inquiry and learning. This haiku reminds us of that nuance. We are in a constant state of flux right now with the pandemic, economic stress, and political chaos. This haiku reminds us not only of the importance of being grateful for aspects of life we may have taken for granted  in our busy lives, but also of the choice we can make to appreciate the unfolding occurring during uncertainty. Inquiring into our experience reveals the future to us instead of us imposing expectations through our attempts to control the outcome. It is an inversion of our propensity to command our lives.

Appreciation is a type of attention, a sometimes uncomfortable to focus on our human experience. Most humans prefer the knowns of our comfort zones. Appreciation is a competency for resilience when we forego our need for certainty. It asks us to allow flow rather than direct flow. If you have family, colleagues, and friends depending upon you, multiple time pressures compound your need for timely and effective decisions.  Appreciation seems to fly in the face of convenience. It can seem like an antithesis of agility; however, appreciation is an attitude not a time delay. It is a considered approach to decision-making, which illuminates and facilitates the process.

Allow for appreciation despite daily pressures. Remember, we make decisions in moments in time. We intend to make the best decisions we can when we have gathered all the salient information and compared the facts to the needs at hand. Conditions will inevitably change in different moments. We can also change our minds and make different decisions. It is reasonable to change our minds when given new information in the light of current unpredictability, especially considering our priorities and those of our loved ones. In this regard, no apologies are necessary.

Appreciation allows us to adapt our plans and learn from change, as well as be grateful for the blessings we have in our lives. August’s Resilience Practice will illustrate an Agility Cycle you can make work every day at home and work.

The Hero Archetype – The “hero” is an archetype that plays a powerful role in our lives both real and imagined. We are attracted to the hero for multiple reasons, but primarily the dynamic of good triumphing over evil dominates. Carl Jung (1875 -1961)pioneered psychological exploration using archetypes. In American culture, numerous movie plots focus on a hero’s journey. Scripts focus on development of the protagonist relative to an adversary. In daily life, our tendency is to look for everyday heroes, such as the perfect mate, boss, or politician – someone who will make our lives better, possibly save us from loneliness. We are disappointed when our perceived heroes are exposed as flawed humans (every archetype has its shadow). We also tend to disregard the hero within ourselves, which inhibits our own agency in life. Finding the hero within is a path toward empowerment. To start down this path, you might like to explore Carol Pearson’s book, The Hero Within – Six Archetypes We live By (2015) or one of Caroline Myss’ books and audio recordings,  like The Language of Archetypes (Sounds True, 2006). Pearson developed an assessment that you might like to consider to inform your journey. Use the embedded hyperlinks to access these resources. Don’t forget to journal your journey!

PART II
Foundations of a Daily Constitutional - Self-Compassion to Self-Care
 
For better or worse, most of us experience our minds as an elephant who sits on our shoulders – sometimes heavy when life is tough, sometimes weightless when life is grand. This elephant breathes down our necks, much less observes social distancing, no matter how much we try to push it out of the way. The elephant represents that inescapable voice in your head, which critiques your every move. How quickly does your mind jump to negative self-talk when confronted with events beyond your control? For most of us, it is likely all too often. Self-evaluation is a common habit in our hyper-drive culture.
 
To clarify, negative self-talk is not your conscience telling you to do the right thing or reflect constructively on your personal behavior in consideration of others.  The negative-self talk, like living in constant comparison to others, is toxic judgement and destructive self-criticism that has no productive purpose in your personal growth (see Resources – Carson and Helmstetter).
 
Consider envisioning your elephant operating like a mental feedback loop in your life. When your behavior produces desired results, you continue to do that behavior to continue to get the results you want, like a reinforcing or positive loop. The elephant feels relatively light; you hardly notice it is still sitting on your shoulders. When your behavior does not produce desired results, the elephant feels like dead weight. Its weight is a wake-up call to pay attention to its presence and it rarely goes away on its own. Try seeing the weighty feeling as a signal, a balancing loop - an opportunity for self-reflection and learning. Wisdom tells us that sometimes, the greatest gifts in life come in ugly wrapping paper. Negative self-talk blocks your ability to reframe challenges in constructive ways. It feeds your deepest fears and activates your defenses. Sometimes, it causes destructive behavior thus reducing your chances of attaining the outcomes you want. Reflective learning acts like a course correction and helps you constructively modify your behavior, putting you on a path toward achieving your aims.
 
How do you prevent slipping into the destructive cycle of negative self-talk? There are two, interrelated strategies – self-compassion and self-care. Both involve developing a sense of mindfulness about how you relate to yourself, others, and your world. Self-compassion (Neff, 2009, 2011) is being kind to yourself, as a friend would treat you when you seek their advice or the support you share with friends suffering through a tough time. Self-care (Denyes, Orem & Bekel, 2001) is the practice of activities individuals initiate and do on their own behalf to maintain life, health and wellbeing. It entails taking care of yourself – physically, mentally, and spiritually – understanding you are as worthy of care as anyone else. Putting on your oxygen mask before helping others in an emergency is an example of the principle of self-care. You help others best when you are primed to do so effectively - not depleted and inept. Self-compassion allows you self-care. Together, these two work best when you practice them regularly. To learn more about these strategies, check out the recommended reading selections. A mastery of self-compassion and self-care serve as a foundation for you running your life and not vice versa.
 
Routines for Purpose, Productivity, and Progress
Once you have a self-compassion and self-care in practice, you are ready to evaluate how you spend your time. Re-establishing new routines facilitates continuity and coherence when these practices truly reflect your life’s purpose as expressed in the time you spend that essentially reflects your values and priorities.  When you feel adrift, distractions make it hard to focus on what matters most. Start by taking stock of your current schedule and compare it with your priorities. Do they match or are they out of alignment? Dig into the details by documenting everything you do for a week. This comparison can be starkly revealing of priority gaps between what you think is important and how you spend your time.  Examine how you spend your hours. Compare your priorities and values with the amount of time you actually spend devoted to them.  For example, if you believe relationships are your top priority, then why are you spending more time at work than necessary? Are you at the center of your life? Or, is your work the center of your life? What do you need to do to shift more time toward what really means the most to you?
 
When we hear Harry Chapin’s Cat’s Cradle (1974), we rarely connect it with our own lives, yet it illustrates precisely the disjoint between values and actual time spent aligned with them. Are you spending your time aligned with your values and priorities? If not, then assess your life in terms of people, places, and activities occupying your time by asking – who and what boost or deplete your energy. Who supports you? What drives you? What entraps you? Self-evaluation is also self-confrontational – it takes fortitude to declutter your life of people and things that do not add meaning and value to you. Discomfort stemming from constructive self-reflection is not an excuse to pass on this opportunity for personal growth. You have just encountered your comfort zone – stretch! This is no time to stay stuck on autopilot in your relationships, your career, or your health, or your spirit.
 
While this pandemic necessitates physical distancing for health and safety reasons, experiencing restlessness, feeling unmoored, and psychic numbness compound a sense of isolation and powerlessness. Recognize your ability to act has not been paralyzed. When you get an anxious sense that you are drifting and aimless, it is time to assess your goals, priorities, and values relative to your life’s purpose or mission. Establishing new routines will help you feel a sense of structure and continuity as you reimagine your life. What does that look like?
 
Maybe it looks like honoring yourself - recognizing you deserve to keep your commitments to you! Fundamentally, it means nourishing your mind, body, and spirit with positive engagement, healthy food, daily exercise, sufficient sleep, and inspiration. You monitor the quality of the media you consume. You might read more, meditate, get your financial house in order, take an online course, or learn a new skill. You may schedule down time for your relationships with others or blocking time for yourself to reflect in a journal, explore art, start gardening, develop a craft, master a musical instrument, or virtually volunteer.  What brings you joy? Think creatively - try revisiting activities you loved during your childhood and adolescence to bring them back into your life or try exploring activities you have dreamed about doing.
 
Take some time to consider what works best for you in concert with the rhythm of your life – more or less structure. What keeps you engaged and motivated? When are you most energetic and least? Use your energy flow to reimagine your schedule. Leverage what has worked for you in the past and tailor it to your current reality. Strike a balance between productivity and play.  Once you are comfortable with your new routine, write it down and post it visibly to remind you of your commitment. Over time, your new habits will become constitutional anchors for your life going forward.

Like most of us, you may find this process challenging on your own. Professional coaches and mental health experts can guide you toward you running your life so it is not running you.

This pandemic is a major disruption in our lives. During disconcerting times, we have an opportunity to notice natural beauty as a tonic for stress that we often overlook in our busy lives. Momentary mindfulness of the beauty around us as we move through our days helps develop appreciation for the cycle of life as a continual process of revitalization. Use this opportunity to creatively destruct old routines and learn new ones that serve your future. For Part I of this article or more about Learned Resilience, see www.maryedson.com.
 
References:
Caspi, A. & Roberts, B. W. (1990). Personality continuity and change across the life course. In L. Pervin (ed.), Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research. Guilford Press. pp. 300--326.

Chapin, H. (1974). Cat’s Cradle. Verities and balderdash. New York: Elektra.

Hall, E. T., & Trager, G. L. (1953). The analysis of culture. Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED035325.pdf
 
Maslach, C., Jackson, S. E., Leiter, M. P., Schaufeli, W. B., & Schwab, R. L. (1986). Maslach burnout inventory (Vol. 21, pp. 3463-3464). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting psychologists press.
 
Neff, K. D. & Vonk, R. (2009). Self‐compassion versus global self‐esteem: Two different ways of relating to oneself. Journal of personality, 77(1), 23-50.
 
Denyes, M. J., Orem, D. E. & Bekel, G. (2001). Self-care: a foundational science. Nursing science quarterly, 14(1), 48-54.
 
Recommended reading:
Taming Your Gremlin, David Richard Carson (1984, 2009)
What to Say When you Talk to Yourself: Powerful New Techniques to Program Your Potential for Success, Shad Helmstetter (1986, 2017)
Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, Kristin Neff (2011)
Take Time for Your Life, Cheryl Richardson (1998)
The Art of Extreme Self-Care, Cheryl Richardson (2009)

PART I
 
If COVID-19 has you staying home for prolonged periods, managing your time can be unnerving. Long spans of unstructured time can leave you feeling unmoored and restless. These feelings can slip into disorientation, malaise and hopelessness if not promptly and properly addressed.[1] Sometimes, we can feel as if we have lost our way.
 
Keep in mind; feelings of rootlessness are common during transitions like starting a family, beginning a new project or business, leaving a job for a career change, divorce, or retirement. Transitions prompt us to re-imagine our lives and our roles in society. COVID-19 presents societal upheaval – a type of transition from a public focus to a private focus. This transition, prompted by necessity, requires re-imaging our lives on many levels - from how we work to how we interact with one another.
 
We are accustomed to lives designed around societal structures, so COVID-19’s disruption is naturally perturbing. Normal routines are no longer sustainable; yet, routines are vital for a preserving our notions of purpose and progress. Routines provide a sense of coherence and continuity in our lives. Disruption indicates it is time to put on our design thinking caps to rethink our lives. If we want and expect different outcomes, we must reorganize our lives by creating structures and routines that serve our current realities going forward.
 
This is the first of two posts that address re-imaging our lives in light of the pandemic. In this article, we look at the importance of routines and norms, as well as start down the path toward reconsidering them in light of a designing new, not same old, life.  
 
The Importance of Routines – Norms
 
From birth, our lives and roles in society are organized and structured through behavioral norms formed and routinized by repetition and reinforcement (Hall & Trager, 1953). Norms become routines and institutionalized over time. Norms come from our families, communities, schools, and religious institutions through explicit and implicit rituals, rules, and behavioral expectations. These are our “roots” grounding us as we form our individual identities. Norms are also artifacts of societies that mold and delineate acceptable and unacceptable behavior at individual and group levels. They are the rhythm and cadence of cultures reverberating through our daily lives from the time we wake up to the time we go to sleep. Through these institutionalized expectations and behaviors, our time is structured, bounded, and evaluated – even judged. Norms provide us bonds and boundaries of our relationships, thus coherence and continuity in our lives.
 
As members of groups, communities, and organizations from an early age, many of us follow norms without much examination. We rarely question norms or institutions from which they emanate, particularly when we see shared benefits are generally accepted and they appear to be broadly beneficial to us individually. For example, most of us see the wisdom in traffic laws – predictable order and safety.
 
When we adopt norms, instead of reinventing or resisting them, we conserve rather than waste our time and energy. We can apply our energies elsewhere, possibly in creative and productive ways. When we assume group norms to be a member of a community, we tacitly consent to let others prescribe the use of our time and schedules to some extent. For example, we arrive, participate, and leave school, work, church, and community meetings at specific times. If we want a job, we show up for the interview on time. If we want to fly to Hawaii for vacation, we arrive at the gate at the scheduled departure time. If we do not comply, then we lose the opportunity and have to make other arrangements, which is often inconvenient and time consuming. Compliance has its benefits – saving time and effort. Compliance also imposes limitations on individual freedom and expression – laughing loudly in a library raises eyebrows and elicits a, “Shhhh!”
 
Norms represent our commitments and obligations to others, as well as ourselves. Adults often have the tightest of schedules to manage their work, family, church, and community obligations. The decision to start a family comes with a shift in prioritizing work and children from their birth to adulthood. Shuttling children to school, activities, appointments, and events becomes a full-time job in addition to a “real job”. Adults caught between caring for young children while also caring for aging parents feel squeezed by dueling needs for their time and attention. After a lifetime of obligations, it can feel like life is running you instead of you running your life. Life becomes regimented you go on autopilot as you check the boxes on your “to do list”.  
 
Before we know it, decades have flown without much acknowledgement of our own personal experience of life’s ups and downs, as well as nuances, because “tomorrow is another day”. For many, losing perspective of who we are becomes problematic when what we are is limited to what we do for others. We become vessels for the expectations, hopes, and dreams of others but not for ourselves. Becoming mentally and emotionally numb is a risk. Extreme doing at our own expense that sacrifices our well-being becomes burnout (Maslach, Jackson, Leiter, Schaufeli & Schwab, 1986). Loss of identity derived from one’s sense of purpose sometimes accompanies burnout.   
 
Burnout forces self-reflection when our life’s purpose becomes blurred. Hence, the adage to slow down so we can see we are human beings not merely human doings. Pausing our lives, as we are now during COVID-19, can be unsettling as we reflect upon the truism that, for many of us, our lives are steered by others more than we might like to acknowledge. We may not want to accept the imbalance going forward. In a way, this pause is a gift, and opportunity to stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zones. The question we must ask ourselves is, “Do you want to stay stuck or do you want to expand your zone?”
 
If you are looking to stretch beyond your comfort zone and re-imagine your life during this pandemic, Part II will explore how self-compassion and self-care underpin designing healthy,  sustainable routines as a hero at home. Until then, check out the Resources, especially Take Time for your Life by Richardson. Stay tuned! Part II will be posted on May 1.

[1] If you have a sense of hopelessness, contact a mental health professional promptly, or contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
 
References:
Hall, E. T., & Trager, G. L. (1953). The analysis of culture. Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED035325.pdf
 
Maslach, C., Jackson, S. E., Leiter, M. P., Schaufeli, W. B., & Schwab, R. L. (1986). Maslach burnout inventory (Vol. 21, pp. 3463-3464). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting psychologists press.

Resources:
Take Time for Your Life, Cheryl Richardson (1998)

In my last post, we explored the balance between individualism and interdependence. Understanding the dynamics between these two existential ways of being is not only important during a crisis, but it is essential to living a robust life. When you understand when to act independently and when to act interdependently, life eases. It entails recognizing when acting for the benefit of the whole also benefits you as an individual, as well as when acting as an individual benefits you but may harm others. Ironically, when you exercise good judgment in this balance of solo versus in concert, you become less harshly judgmental of yourself and others. So, how does one get in tune with this delicate balance? Let’s start by examining needs at the individual and group levels. A good way to think about this is your personal needs and the needs of your partner, family, your neighborhood, your workplace, your community, your region, your country, and, yes, our shared home – earth.

Getting our needs met depends on not only having a healthy relationship with ourselves, but mutually beneficial relationships with others. Every day we negotiate these relationships to take care of our families, our communities, and ourselves. We have commitments to our individual wellbeing as well as the collective wellbeing as members of society. From a systems perspective, the matrix that yields relational integrity of individuals and communities relies on self-respect and mutual respect, much like interstitial fluid bathes tissues in the human body. One might argue that systems work best when the relationships between individuals and the communities in which they are members are functionally healthy. Functional health depends on constructive feedback that enables individuals and communities to evolve in ways that are mutually valuable (we will explore values in a future posting) in meeting individual and group needs.
Let’s explore needs, yours and your communities’, through two different lenses – a psychological lens and a philosophical lens. These two lenses are tempered by the realities of human development in childhood through adulthood. The first, psychological lens is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943), which he originally presented in his Theory of Human Motivation. Maslow has presented needs in a five-tier triangle (Figure 1).


Figure 1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
By FireflySixtySeven - Own work using Inkscape, based on Maslow's paper, A Theory of Human Motivation., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36551248





In the five-tier model, the foundations of the triangle are basic, physical, individual needs like air, food, water, and shelter. Moving up the triangle, physical needs shift toward relational needs, increasing in complexity like love, belonging, and esteem (self and from others).  In the 1970s, Maslow refined his model to include enhanced needs, which added tiers and distinctions to his existing model as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Maslow’s Expanded Hierarchy of Needs            Figure 3. The Chakra System

Figure 2. Sullivan, R.G., Dwyer, M.F., & Rogers, K.N. (2016). Conceptual frameworks for human interactions with public lands in the western United States. Argonne, IL: United States Department of Energy, Argonne National Laboratory.  Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Sullivan6/publication/301698819_Conceptual_Frameworks_for_Human_Interactions_with_Public_Lands_in_the_Western_United_States/links/5723725008aee491cb3772ae/Conceptual-Frameworks-for-Human-Interactions-with-Public-Lands-in-the-Western-United-States.pdf
Figure 3. The Chakra System.
Nearents, J. (2014). The Chakras: A Practical guide to everyday life. Retrieved from: https://www.slideshare.net/JenniferNearents/chakra-basics

In Maslow’s expanded model, the needs progressively move toward personal growth, self-actualization, and transcendence. This progression recognizes and reflects wisdom from Eastern philosophies. Energy centers represent needs in the subtle body found in ageless meditative practices like Tantra and esoteric Hindu traditions, like kundalini yoga and the chakra system. The latter is illustrated as seven major energetic wheels, starting at the base and working upwards, as well as several minor ones. Figure 3 shows this system simply, so you can see the parallels with Maslow’s hierarchy – a bridge between psychological and philosophical models.

Why is understanding the bridge between these models important? The bridge illustrates the interplay between individual and collective needs, in the context of psychological and philosophical meanings that we can relate to and understand as dynamics in our daily lives. These models help us make sense of our individual experience and the shared human experience. While there is so much depth to explore in these models, one lesson is clear. In sum, we cannot get all our individual needs met on our own. In other words, no one is an island. Thinking such is foolish. If we are to progress toward attaining higher levels of needs, such as love, self-actualization, and legacy, we need relationships gained through communities. As much as we would like to believe the myth so many films, particularly Westerns, we are not ruggedly, independent cowboys out on the range. We develop individual skills we share with society for mutual benefit and reciprocity – safety, security, satisfaction, growth, and prosperity.

In this pandemic, it is critically important to remember that your individual safety depends on your consideration (your behaviors) of others’ well-being as much as others’ consideration of your health. View it as a version of the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have done to you.” If you expect others to respect you, respect others. Right now, this is how we keep our communities safe for you and everyone. We all drive on the right side of the road not only because it is the law. It makes sense to avoid accidents and ensure traffic flow. Likewise, mindfulness of your behavior in public is vital to public health. Being a hero at home and using preventative measures when we must go out, we mitigate the burden on medical professionals and resources for survival. We really are in this together.  By doing your part, more of us will be here to celebrate when the sun finally breaks through the clouds.

For more information contact Mary at resiliencecoach@msn.com.