What’s Built-In?
Have you ever watched someone who can't work their phone very well?
They tap at it, fuss, get frustrated, and then (if you're anything like my friend Jake*) blame the phone.
At times they have created some really long winded workarounds to do simple things that the phone will just do. It's a bit like they are carrying a phone book, a calculator, a camera and a sat nav in their bag with them when the phone would do all of those things for them.
From over their shoulder, you can easily see why they are struggling, and know what they could be doing to make it easy for themselves. Clearly it's not the phone, and it's not Jake's fault either, he just doesn't know how the phone works and all of its functions. So let's leave Jake tapping away in frustration...
What if the same thing applied to how we understand and use our human ‘operating system’?
No-one ever gave us a manual, we just started using it. The human operating system is so good we don't need a manual to operate it - we’re here aren’t we? And we get by! But, a quick flick through the manual might enlighten you to some of the functions built-in to us all that we don't realise we have or think that we have to learn or develop in order to access.
Take resilience for example, it looks like we develop resilience by going through hard stuff or testing ourselves. But our capacity to be resilient; to bounce back, to go again, to learn and grow, to endure and to heal; is built in to the system. Being challenged means we uncover it in ourselves, we have to reach for it, at times we have nothing else to go on, and we surprise ourselves and find a glimmer.
Resilience appears to be like a muscle that grows as we use it. But our take is that it's a function of the system that we use more when we know it's there. If we haven't realised that we have these capacities within us we doubt ourselves, we don't trust that we can go again, we don't look for new perspectives or have that hard conversation.
And resilience is just one example of a whole host of capabilities that are built-in to human beings, as a default, that we don't have to enact, learn or acquire. We just have to realise they are there.
We want everyone to know what's built in to them. Because when people realise the capabilities they have access to, moment to moment, they stop overthinking, stressing, worrying and potentially burning out and instead start to navigate whatever they are up against with agility and clarity. And who doesn't want that?
*name changed to protect the innocent