Black-and-white thinking and quick judgment are in vogue – big time. It’s easier than ever: Whichever piece of information happens to back up your opinion/mood/agenda today, it’s available. It’s also really rewarding: Having opinions and making a lot of people hear them has never been this easy and that, if anything, makes our egos go “YAYYYY! Finally people are hearing me and my special thoughts!” But unfortunately it’s also flaky: The quality of the information available to us varies greatly.

We are still relative infants in using the "new" information technology. Too often we take any piece of news, "research" or opinion as equal information. We love the emotions these colorful sources provoke: Compared to the delicious menu of blogs, discussion forums and tabloid headlines, the old days when the whole nation gathered on the sofa to watch the evening TV news seem like a hazy memory from the Soviet Union.

However, I'm afraid it is not just about technology (as it never is just about the enabler). Although the new technology makes running into convenient evidence and voicing our inner snap judgments via Facebook and Twitter easy for us in our spare time, the phenomenon is also shaping many professional arenas. And not just any professions, but ones that are in charge of the biggest shared topics in our society – like politics. Real understanding of complex phenomena, the cornerstone of any problemsolving, is being demoted to less and less significant side roles. It has a rival: Attention in the fast-paced reality TV show called life. 

It is quite disturbing to watch the parliament’s plenary session and count the percentage of minutes used to make “the other party” – holding the opposite, i.e., wrong, opinion – look bad. Politicians don’t seem to use their greatest efforts for really working to understand other people and viewpoints – neither is it considered cool or the sign of professionalism – but rather are part of a great race towards misunderstanding others. Who cares about the complexity of the problem and the exciting chance that if we all put our heads together, we just might be able to come up with a real solution?

This is all, well, understandable. Not understanding is easy. Understanding, on the other hand, requires effort. And that little creature, if anything, is not in vogue right now.

The race to misunderstanding is worrying to me. We seem to think it’s cool to not apprehend others – other people, other perspectives, and phenomena that is strange to us and our particular life context. And this is not limited to certain professions and fields. Since poor politics is so often ridiculed, let’s think about academia for a change. It is not rare that different fields of science actively mock another field for looking at the same problem somehow inadequately. Take Western medicine and psychology, for example. They seem to keep arguing over who understands the fundamental, deepest core of the human being better. Are psychological symptoms the result of physical illness or pain, or do mental problems in fact cause also the somatic symptoms? How about putting the two wise heads together and looking at the problem jointly (in this case: the human being) – and we might just stand a chance to finding real solutions?

The reason for jumping to make quick judgments of others instead of trying to understand is that we appreciate an easy message. It gives us a clear judgment. Think about it: As an average citizen, it’s relatively easy to react to a news headline saying “Politicians said no to the student financial aid raise”. You can go “Oh those bastard politicians, once again bailing out on promises. They should be thinking about the youth!” However, it is very different to hear the same phenomenon described more truthfully: “The budget meeting decided to prioritize special education and basic schooling in sparsely populated areas over increases in student pay, because there simply was no money to allocate for all causes”. To react to that, you have to weigh the alternatives, perhaps compromise your own view, question old patterns of action and think about better ones. You would have to admit that life is about trade-offs, big and small - not easy answers. 

In this way, hunting for clear judgments, we try to create order to the chaos of life. We still have naïve fantasies of being able to categorize people, acts and perspectives into “good” and “bad”. These fantasies date back to our childhood, when we were told stories were bad guys did something threatening but eventually the good guys won. For kids, this kind of black-and-white simplification serves a purpose: It shields children from complex phenomena they cannot yet understand and that have the potential to be very scary and interfere with their feeling of security growing up. For adults, it’s denial and laziness. And sadly, it does not create structure to the chaos. Quite the opposite: since any object can be made look incomprehensible, pointless and foolish, nothing makes sense any more. Wild flaming opinions with no desire to understand the other party create a confusing, restless society – a bit like the one we live in.

This is of course a part of the larger problem family of our time called “lazy thinking” (which again is one evil sibling in the even larger "life should be easy" base illusion clan). But I think it deserves a little special attention, and here’s why: Any real progress we can make as mankind requires understanding. That’s why the allure of misunderstanding is not only stupid, but also dangerous. If you don’t understand a phenomenon truthfully and resist the temptation of hopping on the train of black-and-whiteness, you most likely become unable to solve it. If we don’t take the first step – understanding viewpoints different from our own – our hands are tied.

My dream is that we start making it cool again to take effort to really think. Start to appreciate the ones who voice their balanced opinions with real, thought-through pros and cons. They are not necessarily able to sell their views to complex societal phenomena in a simple "HELL YEAH!!" or "FUCK NO!!" format - but the content that's behind the headline might compensate for the effort needed to listen to more than two syllables.

A good, simple test for determining whether someone really has thought thoroughly before shouting out a judgment is to ask: Can you list the upsides of the solution you are not supporting? (For example, for someone campaigning for raising kids at home, posing the question: “What advantages do you think kindergarten has compared to raising kids at home?”) I use this in everyday interaction when needing to rely on other people’s judgments in topics I don’t know and they are experts in. If a person can calmly and diversely list the upsides of the solution they are not supporting, as well as the downsides of their own favorite solution, then they have at least considered the other option before jumping to conclusion. 

The plain truth is, the real problems of the world cannot be solved by frantically pushing real or imaginary like/unlike buttons. Thinking and feeling, real use of the head and the heart, grasping trade-offs and real understanding of people, things and phenomena are required. Thank God for that. Otherwise the best of what we as the humankind have to offer would go to waste.

One of the many things I adore in my native country Finland’s rising enthusiasm towards entrepreneurship is the way it shifts how we view learning in a fundamental and good way. Although I don’t necessarily believe the world will be saved by a bunch of eager kids pitching business ideas to each other in a sweaty hall, it sure as hell is a step in the right direction. We no longer encourage the most talented young people graduating from universities to expect the fulfillment of their potential to emerge on its own from some magical place separate from themselves. Today’s kids are taking charge; with zeal, motivation and a hunger for learning.

This goes also for some other areas of life: as a society, we are no longer stuck on an illusion of permanent capabilities weighing us down. We have started to believe we can learn and thus create, develop, grow – be it companies, technologies, or our skills. As Prof. Carol Dweck would say it: we have embraced the growth mindset (see her excellent work in her book Mindset if you haven’t already). 

There is one area of life, however, which does not enjoy the sweet touch of the growth mindset quite yet. And this area is everything but minor – it affects our lives in monumental, but often hidden, ways. It is a real bitch since it’s hard to measure, record or even identify. That’s why in many realms – for example politics, business and academia – we think we’re better off without it. That complicated bastard.

That creature is a set of skills which I, being the provoker that I am, call spiritual maturity. With that vague-sounding concept I mean a group of concrete abilities: e.g., the ability to really listen without a hidden agenda, genuinely practice empathy, identify and control your ego, and think independently to be able to make wise decisions regardless of which one is the easiest way out for you personally. The essence here is: I believe they are skills. But that’s not at all the way we’re used to seeing them.

Implicitly hidden in our basic view of the world is an illusion that spiritual maturity is something you’re born with – or not. Even if we don't explicitly state that assumption, it often lays behind our argumentation: "John just isn't, you know, a people person" or "Mary just isn't the kind of person who can see things from someone else's perspective. She just does things her own way." That is problematic mainly because if we don't know that spiritual growth is something to be learned, we don't cultivate it. Nor expect ourselves and others to practice it. And I think that is a big shame.

As a result, many adults in our society, regardless of age, level of education and profession, actually lack basic knowledge of how to grow in the spiritual arena. Many may notice a trait in themselves they don't like and are ashamed of it - e.g., that they weren't a "big enough person" to make a real intervention when an unjust decision was made in their work place - and spend their entire lives trying to hide these weaknesses. The problem is that they regard this "trait" as something permanent, while it is everything but. We all have egos and have to work with them day-to-day. In fact, those little voices about where we are lacking at the moment are actually invitations to steer your energy towards developing those very skills - which could well even become your strengths.

This is a matter of prioritization in our society. It has its roots in some basic values and manifests itself already in early education of children. In a society highly appreciative of sciences of all kinds, I find it odd that we don’t demand knowledge of even the very basics of psychology in our basic schooling. And this goes even for the so-called best education systems in the world, for the most privileged people living in our little Scandinavian welfare states.

To give this somewhat funny prioritization some concreteness, let me give you non-Scandinavians an example. When we were 11 years old, my classmates and I needed to learn and memorize all the different types of swamps there are, and specific lists of flora, fauna and other attributes typical to them. (Gotta love the Finnish school system!) Now, I am not saying swamps are not important – they are indeed, and a great feature of the Finnish nature. I’m saying: We teach our children all sorts of things in school, which is great, because any education is a privilege. What I wonder, though, is how little of those great education resources we put into teaching things which most dramatically affect our capability to sail through life without damaging ourselves and others around us significantly and unnecessarily. Like, say, spiritual growth.

I would love to see this change, and as an eternal optimist, I believe it will. If I have kids one day, I would love to see them graduate from high school knowing not only how to differentiate and integrate, enumerate the phases of 2nd world war, and list all the different types of sand there is - but also how to spot when it's their ego that’s talking and how to help themselves heal their childhood wounds that we all to some degree carry from our pasts.

(An important clarification: This is not a criticism towards Finnish teachers - vice versa, I believe this particular highly vocation-based profession is one of the key actors holding our society together, teaching us "do not hit each other on the playground" types of basics. However, I believe the good intentions of our teachers are not supported on a system-level: for example, making courses on psychology / spiritual maturity mandatory in elementary school, high school, trade school and university. Whether we're studying to be a car mechanic, a hairdresser, or a doctor, the one challenge we all have to master is: living with ourselves and others. This is a broad, society-wide topic, and requires a system-level solution.)

However, the misunderstandings regarding spiritual development don't end there. In today’s Western society, spirituality is quite a taboo and has a reputation of being something extremely private. It has been outsourced from our societal and professional lives to our free time – a generally safe place to dump stuff that doesn’t quite fit the prevailing norms and rules. Along with spirituality we can push out of sight other inconvenient topics that we can’t find easy answers to – like meaningfulness. No wonder so many people have externalized the whole bucket of these huffy-fluffy things into their personal lives that happen at home behind closed doors. “Yeah well, I don’t really believe in this “finding your passion” and “meaningfulness” BS at work. This is just a place where I get things done. What’s really meaningful and important to me is my family / my cat / my hobby / the 4 weeks of the year that I’m not working - and that's really no one else's business.” 

That way of dealing with the huffy-fluffy is very human: it’s safe, and we don’t have to expose our shaky DIY definitions to the public eye. We don’t really have to engage in societal discussion about it.

Except that we do. The time has come to realize that spiritual maturity is, in fact, not just a private issue. It affects our collective wellbeing much more than many other capabilities which don't enjoy the protection of being "strictly private matters" but are rather a bit of everyone's business: your education, how much taxes you pay, whether you smoke or not, your choice of number of children (if any), how you sort your garbage, whether you pick up your dog’s poo after he’s done or leave it lying there – and many other little things we are used to criticizing in each other with the valid excuse of them having a collective impact on our society.

Whether we can control our ego when making decisions, really listen to another human being without a hidden agenda, and genuinely practice empathy when choosing a course of action, have an enormous impact on our societal, collective, shared life. (And, interestingly enough, these skills are in a key role, powerful enough to even make many of our sets of rules designed to control the negative externalities caused by the absence of them, unnecessary). That’s why it’s time to acknowledge and collectively understand that spiritual growth is a matter of skills – something we can and should teach, support, encourage, demand and expect. If we don’t, we are leaving a huge portion of the human potential untapped and unutilized.  

A little bit of grace and mercy is in place at this point: It is very understandable that many people get anxious just when hearing the word “spirituality”. That is very human indeed: it is a big topic to approach on our own. That’s why we need collective actions to support sneaking a closer peek at the monster. At the moment, when lacking it, many don’t even try – and some, at the other end of the continuum, resort to the most creative and sometimes even destructive means - e.g., drugs, to gain a valid and commonly known channel to explore what’s on the other side of the shallow peel of our existence.

But that's enough lecturing. Why does all this matter, really, and what on earth does it have to do with leadership? 

I have spent a good part of the past year thinking what really drives the impact of our actions as human beings. For a long time, I couldn’t quite crack the problem and summarize the solution into a clear format. Until one morning last spring, when I was sitting at a dark breakfast table early on a February morning. I listed all the attributes that we, in this society of excessive doing, know how to measure, demand and appreciate. I came up with a huge list. And a common denominator for all of the items on it: getting things done.

Now, that is great. Without getting things done, we wouldn’t, well, get anything done. So it’s extremely important we have developed to master this: from running away from predators, to catching and gathering stuff to eat, to making a factory run with minimum input and maximum output.

However, it’s obviously not enough. If optimising "getting things done" would also optimise our wellbeing, we would already be quite a happy bunch of people on this planet. Something fundamental is missing in terms of what we expect from our society, and thus especially from its leaders - anyone who's in charge of something bigger than himself. It must be something really complex, abstract, intangible, and scarce.

Except that it isn't. The conclusion of my thought process is everything but rocket science: In order to start making more sense, we need simply combine two dimensions of human action into what we do. These dimensions, sets of skills, are: 1) The ability to get things done, and 2) The ability to determine what should be done. The first one can be summarized as “performance and drive”; and the latter I choose to call “spiritual maturity” – meaning the holistic ability to determine the right thing to do regardless of and independent from any dogma, external sets of rules, or what your ego may want. 

As I hinted in my little introduction, I think we are starting to be good at adopting a growth mindset in dimension 1. On dimension 2, however, we are pretty lost - on a collective level at least. While many individuals have the urge to develop themselves also in these very subtle, internal abilities, we are lacking commonly accepted, widely used methods for developing them as a society. 

In my view a major part of unnecessary and unproductive human suffering is caused by that shortcoming. When almost solely understanding and appreciating the “getting things done” dimension, we let speed dominate over direction. If you ask me, that is quite dangerous and outright stupid. 

I am on a venture to not just talk about this, but also actually try to do something about it. I am working on a marathon mission to introduce spiritual maturity as concrete skills into the everyday life of everyman – not just as a topic for an academic niche, a curiosity for a few hippie-natured explorers at your lunch table, and definitely not something we dump on the overloaded, authority-deprived and partly lost institution of the church. (Faith in a particular religion, and skills in living responsibly and lovingly as a human being, are two different topics – and there is no get-out-of-jail-i.e.-spiritual-development card available by declaring that the church is not your cup of tea.)

To emphasize that this is not just an individual, but also a collective matter, my choice has been to start with people who readily accept that they are impacting a scope larger than themselves: those whom we call "leaders". The definition is broad, as all of us are leaders of some sort. The humble and ambitious goal of the project is to gradually, slowly and concretely make leadership serve its original purpose – guide human action wisely with the intellectual, emotional and social human ability – in our society. If you share my curiosity towards why we let “high-performing spiritual babies” run this world – and perhaps also my will to do something about it – I welcome you to check out The Real Leadership Gap project (www.realleadershipgap.com). It is my effort to collectively put our brains to use to make this universe more loving, wise and kind.

I think accepting the S word as part of our everyday vocabulary – and more importantly, our everyday conduct – is one of the most thrilling no-regret  improvements we could bring to this world. Think about the potential we could have with all these amazing brains we train and cultivate, when combined with the humble will to use them right.

And the positive externalities are endless. For example: with a humming adventure like this available, who needs drugs?

At times, a casual discussion over Friday lunch with your colleagues turns into a little mind game: “What would you do if you won the lottery and didn’t have to do anything anymore?” People start telling their different little fantasies. (I remember one particular chat like this from a few years back: One of my colleagues wanted to own a cheese shop that would turn into a disco at night (?), one wanted to move to Brazil and become a farmer, one wanted to start his own religion, and another wanted to stay at home and have half a dozen of babies and puppies.)

These stories are fun to share. Until some rational person, usually the one who’s also the first to notice when your office is running out of stamps or someone has taken two cookies out of the jar instead of one, brings us back to reality: “Yeah yeah yeah. Dreams are nice because it’s nice to every now and then forget about our crappy everyday lives and picture ourselves living on a paradise beach. But come one, get real: If everyone did what they want to do, nothing useful would ever get done. We can’t have only princesses, rock stars and astronauts.” Right? Wrong.

The biggest mistake we make when talking about dreams is assuming that adult dreaming is the same as childhood dreaming. That assumption is about as crazy as presuming that adults choose what to eat the same way kids would do, if we let them. No, most of us don’t have cotton candy for breakfast every day. And yes, most of us can run a company/team/school class/gas station better than we would have in elementary school. People change, evolve, develop, grow. That’s what this thing called life is all about.

And still we assume that if we all on this planet were to do what we really wanted to do, we would end up with a 6-billion-actor cast of a special edition of Peter Pan in Wonderland.

Why is this? Because for most of us, the last time we dreamed, really and properly, was when we were kids. It could be that you wanted to be a spaceman, a prince or Cinderella. Or a lion, or maybe a rainbow. I wanted to be a truck driver, because I thought the guys who came by to empty our trash cans were awesome since they got to stand on the little rack at the back of the truck while the truck was moving. That was the coolest thing I knew of when I was four.

However, I don’t want to be a truck driver anymore. Not because there’s something wrong with driving a truck, but because I’ve grown up, learned about myself, learned about the world, about what I can offer it, and how I can best be of help to others. I have become an adult. Also spiritually, not just by age. I now have a clue of what real, sustainable and holistic wellbeing both individually and collectively could perhaps be about.  And I love dreaming about what I could give to the universe, using what I’ve learned.

But that doesn’t come without effort. The shocking news is: Real, proper dreaming requires practice, like any other skill. Don’t be fooled to think that if you haven’t done it since you were 8, your skills are up-to-date. Or did ever develop to your adult standards. Have you really answered to your deepest question of not what you want to be (as kids and narcissists do), but what you want to do and give (as responsible adults do)?

Practicing dreaming means doing it not just as something that crosses your mind when you’re waiting for the bus, hating your boss after a long crappy day, or about to doze off. It means making an effort to hear yourself out, asking what really counts and looking for an answer for longer than two minutes. Maybe even keeping score of your dreams.

And all that practice is not just nice for you as an individual; it benefits the society at large as well. The revolutionary thing that I have learned lately after dozens of good conversations with a bunch of fellow adults is this: People who have actually learned to dream (i.e., who have practiced it and taken it seriously) have very sensible, responsible and collectively beneficial and valuable dreams. In my thorough one-woman silent survey, I haven’t met a single adult (please note my definition: physical age alone does not suffice) who sincerely would like to be a princess, live in a castle and sing with angels all day long. Or even be a rock star, charm a dozen teenage girls and get wasted every day.

(And yes, I do know people who actually are rock stars or rock-stars-to-be, but their dream has nothing to do with the outer appearance of the life of a rock star – it’s about being themselves holistically and truthfully and giving their best to the universe via music.)

There are certain patterns in these dreams I have heard from people from very different backgrounds, ages and fields. Examples of these recurring themes include:

• A dream to work for something that contributes to the world in a way they can find to be meaningful (i.e., is aligned with what both their conscious values and unconscious inner voice tell them about what is right)
  
• A dream to put their own specific skills to work to genuinely help other people
  
• A dream to live an everyday life that is balanced with regards to work and rest, giving and receiving, being and doing

Now those are some pretty damn healthy dreams to me. They are not unrealistic wishes from Laa Laa Land. Actually, I think we would be better off as a society if these “dreams” were the ground rules of the way we work and live.

Having dreams and actively going after them is not just fun and fulfilling for an individual, but important for the society as whole. Dreaming is not just something we do when we're bored and then brush it off. Dreaming is our duty as human beings. Why? Because it puts our conscious brains to use to ask the question which our unconscious mind already has an answer to.

The biggest wisdom in this society is not in any individual person, any outer object that we worship, or any individual system of rules. It is in every single one of us, but usually hidden from our conscious minds. We have it in us to know how to make this world make more sense. The problem is that we don’t listen to it: We let that potential slip away, because we think those inner voices of what we could do are just distraction. No, quite the opposite. I think they are our biggest assets when it comes to building a better global society.

Dreams are a channel through which to tap into our real human potential, the capacity that is not restricted by illusions of what can and cannot be done. These cant’s and wont’s and not-me’s are probably the single most influential factor undermining the human potential to overcome our struggles.

So, next time you shoot someone else’s – or even worse, your own – dream down because you think it’s ridiculous, think again. It could be that our lives depend on it. After all, who are you to deny your dreams?

Why looking like a busy little very important squirrel isn’t going to save the universe.

Out of all the concepts that live a lonely existence of being completely, utterly misunderstood in today’s society, I have one favorite. It’s a word loved, hated and feared by companies, politicians and individuals alike: productivity. Now what on earth is it, really?

Don't worry, I am not talking about the typical news media laziness in using the concept mathematically accurately (that topic is a story of its own – but let’s not get confused here). I am talking about the way in which we as individuals define the productivity of our actions - and kid ourselves every single day. And how the little groups we form, like companies and associations, kid themselves, too. And how that actually does matter.

Most of us skip the philosophy and semantics of productivity and take care of the little bastard by defining a way in which we feel productive. In a world overly appreciative of rational thinkers, I have seldom run into a concept as widely treated as feeling-based as productivity. You don’t agree? Think about large companies and their struggles today. They may be totally lost with how to boost their productivity, and look around in an office full of half-asleep people due to so many factors (lack of motivation / sense of direction / skills / speed / smarts / incentives), and feel so powerless that they give up on the analysis. Some organizations do try hard to tackle the problem, which of course is a great step out of the ignorance. However, often that analysis and hence its conclusions fail to be truly effective due to the restrictiveness of the solution space: If we rule out things like motivation, sense of purpose and individual flourishing as huffy-fluffy ambiguous distraction, and instead give the problem cheap explanations (like “Shirley is sleeping on her desk because she’s lazy and getting old” or “John is running around like a crazy squirrel, so he must be productive!”), we do not give our efforts a chance to succeed.

Now, one can define “productive action” in a few different ways, depending not only on underlying values, but also on the resilience given to exploring this concept.

Possible definitions include:

1. Doing something (as opposed to being idle)
2. Doing something that someone pays you to do (common definition used unconsciously in everyday discourse, as well as the underlying assumption in traditional thinking of productivity in economics)
3. Doing something which takes you closer to your real priorities
   

It is quite easy to do something productive as defined in definition 1 - just don't slack on the couch all day. It is also relatively easy when using the second definition - at least as long as you have a job or can generate one for yourself. The game gets really interesting only after you enter the third definition. This is due to the facts that A) many people do not know what they aim at, B) many people seem to think it is okay not to know what they aim at, C) only few people really are curious towards what we do, why we do it – and what could thus drive us to be better as an organization, a local society, a global society, a universe.

Now, my education in engineering was not entirely just Finnish tax payers’ money down the drain. I have a great tendency to squeeze stuff into equations, to make them look more scientific. With productivity, I argue that all of us have an implicit or explicit personal equation for it, which we use for allocating our energy between numerous competing objects (iPhone, work calendar, reading a book your friend gave you, actually doing your work, talking about your work with your colleagues, sleeping, ...) around us.

My equation used to be something like this:

I bet you can spot multiple problems in my former equation. For me, there were two that eventually led me to ditch it:

1. Any random outcome (even if it made someone else satisfied and/or happy, looked good on my CV or even earned me money) did not fulfill my need for meaning, which inconveniently lies behind my existence.
   
2. "Time needed" did not take into account all the energy I borrowed from my days to come, as time is not a very good measure for holistic effort. I was not living as an energy-neutral human being, at all. Quite the opposite, I was systematically using up all the energy I could possibly generate / borrow / steal from other activities. Thus, the divider “time needed to produce the outcome” became a very unreliable downstairs neighbour.
3. (The equation made me miserable.)

The reason for using very bad, downright dysfunctional and illogical equations in our lives is – well, human. It is simply because: we don't have a better one. And why do we not know of a better one? Because we have not answered to our priority 1 question in life: What should I as a free, capable and loving human being do with all that has been given to me on this planet? Now, that question can be a real bitch. Mainly for one reason: no one can answer it for you.

I don't mean to be harsh, but let's face it: We are quite lazy when it comes to answering that most important question in our lives (What actions should I take within this lifetime, that branch out from my immediate survival, well-being and convenience?). We hope someone else would provide an answer for us, and at the same time conveniently give us an insurance against the plan backfiring right in our faces.  (Also, the society as we have designed it today does not exactly support embarking on the journey of really answering that question. We are constantly lured to skip the question and find a short-cut through catching that great place to study, awesome job that no one else can get, beautiful partner that will lift us up and make us happy, etc.) 

For me, a concrete outcome from answering the question what should I do with all that I have been given has been an Excel file (once a consultant, always a consultant!) and a firm commitment to it. The file has in it all the things I want to change in this world, their order of priority, their sensible timing given that I am only one 29-year-old woman with two hands and one brain. The commitment is my most sincere, most solemn vow to dedicate my energy to the things I really value – and do it consciously, not just drift along the river of life as a passive observer. 

As you may have guessed, I no longer use my old equation. My new equation is:

There are two main differences compared to my old equation:

1. I no longer value any random outcome, any change in the status quo as a leap of achievement, but rather have a carefully defined and conscious mission for my existence (e.g. “always act with responsibility and genuine love towards yourself and other people”). For me, this is the only way to stay sane in this “doing and achieving like busy little rabbits, thinking only when absolutely necessary” society.
   
2. I no longer simplify my input resources to “time” as if I was a machine with 24 running hours per day, but rather talk about energy for which time is only one component of many.

All in all, pretty eye-opening thoughts have entered my mind lately. You would think a recovering perfectionist/overachiever like me would be dying to find a legitimate justification for my existence through some very familiar friends of mine – achievements. What is at the same time shocking and pretty spectacular is that I am actually, for the first time in my life, not just feeling but being fully productive. That means I am actually using my energy to approach my top priorities in life. 

And let me tell you, it feels pretty damn good.

I’m having an affair.

So far it has cost me much of my sanity, my former map of the world, and my job. (Or, in the name of honesty, let me put it more precisely: The career I was trying to want.)

It has also cost me some relationships. I understand, how could it not. What I am experiencing can be a lot to take, even for the observer.

It almost cost me my marriage, too. However, to my gratifying surprise, the three of us are now learning to get along. I am hopeful about the future.

You may be horrified to read this. But the thing is, I’m in love. And there’s no turning back.

As you may guess: In exchange for all these things, my affair has given me quite a bit. I have gained new friends: Dialogue Beyond Bullshit, Peace Of Mind and Sense Of Direction to name a few. Also my relationships with many human beings have been lifted to a whole new level. I am very lucky, and very grateful.

Latest at this point you must be furious with me not defining what I mean with “the truth”. I mean pretty much the same thing as the dictionary does: Truth is the state of being the case. However, it is the last thing we typically accept as being the case. If we did, things like politics, business and parenthood would be totally different – maybe a bit more painful, but definitely more productive.

As you may read from my little introductory story above, we are often more familiar with what the truth is not. Why is that? There are many reasons behind this, but I find the most significant one to be: We are afraid we couldn’t really cope with it. We put so much energy in this life into developing mechanisms to help us escape from reality – for example, we tell ourselves stories about how we are too weak/small/insignificant to do what we really want to do; we exercise like crazy and mask ourselves with the most creative creams, make-up and even surgery to kid ourselves from the fact that our bodies are mortal; we go out of our way to prove that we are not to blame for our unsatisfying, crappy everyday life. It is quite a crisis for the ego to admit that actually, we are better off without these little mechanisms that consume most of our energy on a daily basis.

But back to my affair. Let me tell you a little about how we met. I first got to know Truth when I was born. I don’t know when that was, but I have a feeling it was quite a long time ago. It wasn’t love at first sight. Truth wasn’t exactly the kind of partner I thought I would end up with. To prove my expectations right, for many years I kept looking for a more good-looking and more suitable partner. However, as it turned out, and as it often does in romantic stories, I had the right one beside me all my life. I guess if this were now a wedding scene in a great movie, I would be tempted to say something as cheesy as: “On some level, I always knew.”

But the truth is: I didn’t. I thought the voice inside me, my intuition, was occasionally a handy tutor – but more often than not, an outright distraction. I guess this is why we spend so much energy escaping Truth: It is much easier to make decisions that influence many people (with completely different backgrounds, positions and needs) when you don’t have a clue of all that complexity. It is very tempting to think there is a simple textbook answer that can be learned – without having to go inside yourself searching for the answer. I guess everyone dreams of it at some point: Once it’s learned, you know what to do. Always. Righteousness guaranteed. Great!

(This is what much of our society is based on: Doctors learn a pattern of routines, which can be matched with the corresponding problem. Once they’re done, they’re done. The test is not whether the initial problem was solved – for example, the root cause behind a patient’s mysterious stomach pains resolved.  But the test is: whether what was supposed to be done was done. This brings us a great sense of security and predictability. The only handicap is that these emotions are based on illusions – not reality.)

So now I have come clean. I have outed myself as a lover of Truth. I guess we are now beyond the point of chitchat, so let me ask you: Are you friends with my lover?

If you share my curiosity towards what life can look like if we ditch the old theatrical mannerism, do read on. All you need is your curiosity. And some readiness to laugh at life, me, yourself, and all the funny things we do. This is my adventure. I invite you to join me.

You are reading an essay blog about the ongoing revolution of working, doing and being. Already for some time, academics as well as everyman have realized the institution of work is changing: No one seems to have an appropriate amount of it – some have so much they are hardly going to last until their 40's, while others have none and sit at home feeling useless. But it’s not just about the quantity: We are confused about how concepts like the GDP, productivity, prosperity, wellbeing and happiness really link together today. 

Things are fundamentally different, for good, and they are about to get even more different. But I don't think that is scary at all: I actually think it is exciting, radical and full of opportunities for a better life for all of us. I invite you all to wonder and analyze about what is going on around us, and bust some dusty old myths with me. This is not only to share some interesting curiosities or niggle about societal change. No, I am an incurable visionary obsessed with saving the world, and sincerely believe analysis and societal discussion like this is needed for us to steer the boat (i.e. the system of work, incentives and productivity in our society) – not watch it sink.