Quiet, I know

It's been very quiet on this blog - sorry about that. Life has been going exceptionally fast (and very slow at the same time) in this part of the world. Been working lots, applying for jobs, studying, and a decent amount of partying too!
One of my most exciting things of the last few weeks is going 4 generations back in one of my families - so on that part of my family I am 8 generations back ... and know that we came into Australia (into SA) on a boat in 1840.
Will write more soon.

Another quote

Reading another brilliant book: Resilience by Anne Deveson.

A quote that resonates with alot of what I've been thinking about over the last 6 months or so (it's conversation between two people):

"It's only when people change their thinking that action follows."
"Sometimes you need to act before you change the way you think."
"You need both approaches," he said calmly, "As I've grown older, I've recognised that the way I live is far more critical than the actions I take. Fundamental change in thinking isn't triggered intellectually. It's far more emotional than that." (p71)

I guess this resonates becauses I'm becoming more and more convinced that neither actions nor thinking, as important as they both are, really cut it for deep change - that it really is about much more core issues of who we are and how we live. Actions and thinking are part of that, but no where near the whole story - I agree with "it's far more emotional than that". Although I'm not sure if "emotional" is the word quite, although definately part of it, maybe what I would say at the moment is "it's far less tangible than that".

Living in a process world

Yesterday I finished reading "Leadership and the New Science" by Margaret Wheatley. Excellent book.

I loved these sentances and thought that many of you would too:
"the greatest challenge for me lies not in adopting any one new method, but in learning generally to live in a process world. It's a completely different way to be. Life demands that I participate with things as they unfold, to expect to be surprised, to honor the mystery of it, and to see what emerges. These were difficult lessons to learn. I was well-trained to create things - plans, events, measures, programs. I invested more than half my life in trying to make the world conform to what I thought was best for it. It's not easy to give up the role of master creator and move into the dance of life.
But what is the alternative, for me or you? Our dance partner insists that we put into ourselves in motion, that we learn to live with instability, chaos, change, and surprise. We can continue to stand immobilized on the shoreline, trying to protect ourselves from life's insistent gales, or we can begin moving. We can mourn the erosion of our plans, or we can set out to discover something new." (p153-154)

Doing or Thinking

A statement and idea I've heard a fair bit is "act your way into a new of thinking". The idea is that the way to change how people think is to get them to act differently and then they will think differently. There is much that I agree with in that - so often churches especially just major on what people think and expect it to change the way people live when so often it stops as heard knowledge rather than real knowledge which is lived and thought.

BUT I'm conscious of how different people process and people like me who need a framework to act in. That is, I need to "understand" the system/how it works, then I can know how to act and the action has a framework for it - ofcourse the action then reinforces the thinking and then the thinking reinfoces the action then ... (I won't go on!)

I think that they are absolutely inter-related and I guess I have been around lots of people who major on the "acting changing thinking" in recent times. What are your thoughts