Notice how you feel – periodic check-ins

One of the hardest things we try to do is to describe to someone else exactly how we are feeling. One of the aims of practicing Action Inquiry is to become more aware of how we feel, in the moment, so that we can gauge whether we need to change something, do something different to get a different outcome. Skillful actions require a clear understanding of how you feel about what’s happening.

But before we can describe how we feel, we need to notice how we feel. It’s surprising how many people hurry through their busy days and never really notice how they feel. Until there’s something drastic, that is. When something drastic happens, we do notice how we feel, and it can be overwhelming. I think that overwhelm comes partly from not being very experienced in noticing how we feel, so when we notice it, it’s kind of surprising to us.

So, here is a practice designed to help us notice how we feel.

This exercise is from Bill Torbert’s 2004 book, Action Inquiry.

At home and at work (to the extent possible), set your watch alarm or cell phone to go off every 60 minutes. When it does this, take 30 seconds to notice how you felt mentally, emotionally, and physically at the moment the alarm went off (including any irritation that the alarm went off!).

The intention is for you to more quickly be able to identify how you feel in any given moment, to be able to describe to yourself how you felt. “I’m mentally stimulated, emotionally calm, but my left leg hurts behind the knee.” Just like that.

Try it for a week. You might want to let me know how you get on with it. Why not leave a comment.

Related reading:

Learning Loops

When we experience something in life, we can look at it as an outcome. If the outcome isn’t what we expected, we can tell this by our reaction, even if we aren’t aware of exactly what we were expecting. It can be enough to notice that you are surprised. Or disappointed. Or some other feeling that helps you become aware that you have a result you didn’t want.

Capable learners learn from their experience. By this, I mean that when you recognize that you haven’t got the result you expected, and inquire into that result, you can change one of three things to get a better result.

  1. You can change your action, or behaviour. This is single loop learning. Don’t like what you got? Change what you do, and you’ll have a different result. If you are skillful in selecting what to try next, you may get a better result. If your husband always forgets to take out the recycling, you can try sending him a reminder email. If he still forgets, you can try having him set a reminder in Outlook.
  2. You can change your approach to the situation. This is double loop learning. Don’t like your result, even after trying several different actions? Maybe you want to change your approach. When you change your approach, or your strategy, then new actions arise as ideas to implement the strategy. If you’ve tried sending your husband an email to remind him to take out the recycling, and tried task reminders, and he is still forgetting, you might change your approach to the problem. You could decide to do it yourself. You could have a meeting to find out what he thinks might work to help him remember. Your actions would certainly change, but the key here is that you changed your strategy, or approach to the situation
  3. You can change you entire vision, or purpose. If your vision of what you are trying to do changes, then your approach will be different and your actions will be different as well. This is triple loop learning, where you can see a broad landscape and quite a distance into the future. Your partership with your husband is based on spiritual and personal development. It might not matter who actually does what task, but you might feel that re-negotiating the division of household chores so that each person has a good mix of the easy, the delightful, the mundane and the abhorrent. (For example.) Then a whole new approach or strategy is in order, to manifest this whole new purpose. And the actions you take will of course be different.

Most of us are very familiar with the single loop learning approach. We know the old adage that “insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” Think of the sentence that begins “When I don’t get what I want . . .“. Most of us can see how that might well be completed with:  “I try again“, or “I try harder“. Insanity? (hmmm.) A more adaptable, more learning-based approach, would be to ” I try something different“.

Some of us would look at an unwanted result, and think “I’ll try another approach to the same goal, because the goal I’ve set is the right one!” This is double loop learning in action.

To use triple loop learning in your life is pretty sophisticated. Only the most capable and skillful learners take such a broad or long view.

How many times have you questioned your life’s purpose? Or your vision for your life (and your future)? Probably, if you’re like most people, not often, if ever.  When you do, it can be confusing, upsetting and scary. But when you examine your life and apply solid principles of inquiring into your own actions, you have the means to create the rich, exciting and fulfilling life you want.

This is Action Inquiry, at its very best.

Four Territories of Experience

There are four areas where you can place your attention when you think about your experience. They differ slightly depending on whether your experience is only with yourself, or with one other, or as part of a larger group (and we’ll look more closely at those differences in another post). But in general, they cover four perspectives or arenas of experience.

First Territory: Outside events. Results, outcomes, assessments, observed consequences, environmental effects, market performance. In business, or in life, these are the external, measurable, observable, results we get.

Second Territory: One’s performance. Behaviors, skills, patterns of activity, actions. In business, and in life, these are the activities we perform, the things we do.

Third Territory: Strategies, or action-logics. Strategies, game plans, ploys. In business and life, this is the larger plan about how we plan to achieve a vision, how the overall intention is to be realized.

Fourth Territory: Intentional attention. The vision, the intention, what it is you are trying to create. In business, the long term vision and mission of the organization. In life, your purpose in living, what you want to create in life.

Awareness of each of these territories is the first skill to master in Action Inquiry, an approach to learning from your experience by comparing your results to what you intended.

By learning to identify which territory of experience has the focus of attention, you’re well on your way to being more effective, through Action Inquiry.