Seesaw Principles in Life

What can we learn in life from a simple seesaw?
Take a look at the next picture.


What can we conclude? Can you deduct any principals from this picture?

Before discussing some principles it's interesting to study and to be aware of the mathematical equation and the corresponding 'relational equivalents' that are behind balanced seesaws.
A seesaw with one person (L) on the left several persons on the right is in balance when:

M_L . D_L = Σ M_x . D_x

with
M_P = the weight of person P
D_P = the distance of person P to the center of the seesaw

For non-mathematicians, this formula simply states that in order to 'play' and keep balance, the sum of the "weights" times the "distances"(to the center) of the people on the right of the seesaw, have to equal the same sum of people on the left (in this case only one).

Some simple conclusions from this formula are:

• To keep balance on your own (no persons on the right of the seesaw), you'll have to sit in the center of the seesaw (D_L=0)


• Two persons, L and M, of equally weight must take place at the same distance from the center (D_L=D_M)


• In order to balance more persons of equally weight on the right, the person on left has to take place at a larger distance from the center

Now let's relate this formula to relationships in real life.

• Balance
  Read the word "Balance" as being "balanced in life". Things in life run smooth, are stable and can be influenced and managed


• Distance
  Translate the physical entity "distance" to real life as either "physical, emotional distance", or the "amount of connection" between people

With this knowledge, please study the picture again.

Although the number of possible associations is enormous, some interesting examples can be given in the next three :

Seesaw Principles

1. Solo
   When you're on your own, it's hard to keep balance in life
   
   
   
   • If you move, there's no one to keep you in balance.
   
   
   • You depend solely on your own view and interpretation of things.
   
   
   • You've got no one to discuss things with.
   
   
   • You're fully focused on keeping balance and making no mistakes.
   
   
   • You are not able to watch, enjoy, relax or remark things around you.
     


2. Partnership
   Partnership gives stability in life.
   
   
   
   • To maintain balance you'll have to keep the right distance between two partners. "Right" means often not exactly identical but weighted with each other's competencies, positive and negative characteristics, preferences and wishes.
   
   
   • Even if your partner differs from you, you can still bring the seesaw back into balance by letting him give in or pulling him closer to you (bringing him closer to the middle of the seesaw).It's obvious: Don't give in yourself, things will get more worse. Of course you may also increase your own distance to get into a balanced position. After balancing, this could invite the other (he or she feels more save) to come closer after all, in which case you can also come closer to establish a new balance.
   
   
   • If you and your partner get 'too close', the relationship becomes unstable.
   
   
   • Even if you live or work with a partner that's totally different, you'll be able to find the right balance, by increasing the distance (meet less often, use telephone or write letters instead of physical meeting(s), move away, take a holiday or break, etc).
   
   
   • When you and your partner (e.g. the seesaw) are in balance, giving and taking (e.g. 'playing seesaw, going up and down) take no effort at all and is fun.
   
   
   • By applying seesaw principles it's possible to create a sort of lever with which you can increase your force or that of your partner, whatever the situation requires.
     
   
   
3. Management
   Managers have to keep distance.
   
   
   
   • Although you are perhaps a real 'people manager' or a 'family organizer', if you work with larger groups (more than two people on the right side of the seesaw), always increase and manage your distance in such way that you are able to 'steer the group' and that mutual respect can be maintained.
   
   
   • If the situation urges you to work more closely together, create sub groups or plan individual one-to-one meetings.
   
   
   • If, for what reason, you can't create enough distance, ask the 'right team member' to join you in steering (let this person join you on the left of the seesaw).
     
   
   

Next time you're having difficulty in keeping your balance, remember the Seesaw Principles.

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Keep Moving

Take the next four experiences:

• While riding a bike you have to keep cycling. If you don't you'll loose speed, get out of balance and will finally fall


• While moving (on your bike) you'll be more difficult to catch than when you're standing still.
  Compare this with: It's easier to hit a dartboard on the wall than a moving one


• If you've got enough speed on your bike, your bike is in balance and you'll have your hands free to do other things


• After a little exercise you'll be able to ride a complex non linear vehicle that a bike is, without thinking.

It's just like Albert Einstein stated in a Yiddish quote:


Life is like riding a bicycle.
To keep your balance you must keep moving.
Albert Einstein

That's why people who give up on live, or slow down too much by listening too much to multiple advices of other people, eventually fall and die.

However, don't speed up too much on your life-bicycle. Anticipate and adjust your speed of life to the circumstances.

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Never change parachute

You're moving in the right direction. Finally, with lots of effort an concentration your long intended goal is within reach.

Suddenly, last minute, someone comes up with a new idea or sudden change to turn your goal into an ever better or greater success...

Don't do it
and
Don't accept it




Never change a good plan that runs well.

Never 'Change from parachute while your jumping'.
Unless of course things are not running smooth and your parachute is on fire or won't open.

However, keep in mind that to have continuous success, your mind must be just like the parachute: OPEN

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Keep Smiling

What's the right response when people treat you unfriendly in a dominant way?

By nature you could probably respond in two ways:

• Defending yourself, find or make up excuses, explain
• Express your irritation or frustration

Neither strategies will help. It's probably better to react paradoxically and react with friendly dominant behavior.



You could do this for instance by asking open, non-directive questions. This way you will gain the initiative.

Hold on!
One paradoxical intervention will certainly not be enough to get grip on the situation.

You'll have to keep up and sustain your friendly behavior, even if this means you have to act against your feelings.

From the heart
Try to make this way of reaction a matter of the heart and not of acting against your nature.

It's simply a matter of keeping up your dominant friendliness for a longer period of time than the other person can keep up his dominant unfriendliness.


This approach will finally lead to results, when the other person, according to the mirror principles, responds with what is called 'submissive friendliness'.

Once the other person eventually starts answering your questions and following your line of conversation, success is within reach.


So remember, keep smiling, from the heart.

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Optimal route in life

Do you also intent to follow the simplest, direct or easiest route in Life?

Right you are....

Going from A to B in life is like a risk management game.

As the captain of your Body&Mind-Ship (BMS) heading for a New Land at Port Novaya Zemlya, you'll have three starting issues:


Three starting issues

1. Define your target (B): Know where you want to go in life
2. Define your starting point (A): Know Where an Who you are in life
3. Define your Route: Know How you want to go from A to B

In terms of risk management there are two main targets:


Main Risk Management Targets

1. Long term Target
   Reach your final target (Novvaya Zemlya)
2. Short term Target
   Avoid short time risks, tackle problems along the way (avoid ice floes)

So, what kind of approach is right for reaching your goal?

• If you concentrate too much in life on your 'final goal' or you want to achieve your goals too fast or too direct, you'll certainly hit a short term problem, like an ice floe, and end up crashed as a hero or a martyr.


• If you concentrate too much on the short term problems in your life, you'll loose sight on your final goal and certainly fail to reach Novaya Zemlya.

The solution is (of course) to concentrate on the short term goals as well as keep an eye on the long term goal at the same time.


The optimal route?

But what is the best strategy for finding the optimal route in life?

Take a look at the next map to find out the best strategy for this ship.




Strategy I: Don't think, go to your target in a straight line

The most logical route from A to B would of course be a straight line. However following this line as a blind man would certainly lead to failure.


Strategy II: Keep as much is possible to the straight line

As BMS captain might look like the 'best strategy' solution. This is how we often directly respond in life when we do not succeed in getting what we want the way we planned it.

Often this route is 2 to 3 times longer than the 'straight line route' and does not always guarantee that you reach your goal in the labyrinth of life.

As mostly in life , the best advice is....


Strategy III: Get help and plan!

As BMS captain with the right attitude and perseverance to succeed, you consult your friends and foes and draw yourself the best possible satellite map, so that you'll be able to oversee the 'seascape' of your life, with all relevant problems, like ice foes ahead.

Often this optimal ice route is 1.5 times longer than the 'straight line route', but it guarantees the highest success rate.


But what to do if you have no information at all? That's when thinking and mathematics come in, or it gets time for an alternative approach before you freeze in reaching for Novvaya Zemlya....

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Zero Sum Thinking

Ever heard about a Zero Sum? We all grew up by what's called


Zero Sum Thinking

Zero Sum Thinking (ZST) is the view that one party's gain is another party's loss

Simple illustrations of ZST are:

• If I get the biggest piece of the cake, you won't
• If I get this job, you won't
• Producing more cars leads to more air pollution
• Because the rich get richer, the poor get poorer
• Playing check or tic tac toe
• If I get happy, you'll feel bad

By playing all kind of "zero sum games" as a child, ZST has become a part of our life. Often an unconscious part.

Zero Sum Games are a part of the game-theory or economic game theory. They fundamentally influenced our way of thinking when we were young.

For some people, like Colin Powell, Zero Sum Thinking even became an obsession.




Often later on in life, we discover that there is much more than ZST


Non Zero Sum Thinking

If you are a stubborn pessimist, Non Zero Sum Thinking will probably lead to Negative Sum Thinking. You think that everything you do in life is worthless. You think you only create damage to others and the world. Life eventually will become a hell for you. A hell created by yourself, a self fulfilling prophecy.


However, let's practise


Positive Sum Thinking

Yeah, Positive Sum Thinking (PST) means that you search for ways where not only you, but all parties benefit from a certain action. PST creates value.
This "creating more value" can be done in many ways, like cooperation, innovation, creation, sharing, caring or investing.

In fact PST could be defined as a fundamental kind of attitude in life.


You either believe that everything in this universe adds up to nothing or know that if all advantages (created value) are crossed off against the disadvantages (damage), something positive is left.
That something positive is "what you are doing it for" in life. In fact that "something positive" is life, is love, is you and me in the heart. It makes the difference.

Remember when you face a new challenge...., Start PST............

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Reach the top

We often think that, to reach the Top or to achieve a specific goal, we need that very special person, or a specific tool. For simple goals in life, like ’repairing the water closet’, that’s true.
In case of more complicated or ambitious goals, it’s not that simple.
Take the example of climbing one of the highest mountains in the world, e.g. the Himalaya.




To achieve an ambitious goal like that, it takes different instruments and help, depending on the phase you’re in:

• Going to Tibet, your feet won’t help you, you’ll need an airplane
  
• Climbing to the sub top, the airplane isn’t of any use, you’ll need the help of sherpa’s
  
• Climbing the last 100 meters to the top, you don’t need sherpa’s, you’ll need oxygen masks

Beside this, it’s clear that in these cases you’ll need to develop a plan and divide the preparation tasks between the team members.

As you notice, just like climbing the K2, every new phase (in time or life) on the way to your (whatever) personal defined goal, urges a different kind of help.
Although this Himalaya example looks very simple, we often don’t act up on this insight.


Some simple examples:

• We think the luxury car we bought will also help us in case we have to transport grass-patches.
  
• We try to break down the wall with the help of a nail hammer instead of buying a brick hammer.
  
• When filling in a vacancy, we keep searching for a candidate that is a ’sheep with five legs’.
  
• After happy holidays with a new person we met, we automatically assume that this person shall become your best friend
  
• You think that because your wife is a good mother, she will also have the skills to be your best business partner.
  
• You think that because your husband is good at fixing a bicycle, he will also fix your TV set
  
• We assume (implicit) that a successful manager in ’Greenfield operations’, will also be successful in case of a grown business.

Possible reasons for this blind sight are:

• We like to stick to our positive experiences and translate or extrapolate the current developments linear to the future
  
• We like to be ’penny wise’, but are (in fact) ’pound foolish’
  
• We don’t want to disappoint our friends or family or we have unrealistic expectations about them

So don’t get stuck in the old axiom that

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to approach every problem in life as if it were a nail

Looking from another perspective. If circumstances, times or goals change and you no longer fit in an organizations’s or a relationships’s mission or goal, quitting, divorcing or getting fired is sometimes the best solution. These situations have in general nothing to do with worries like ’I wasn’t good enough’ or ’People don’t appreciate me’.

Pick up your hat and create new steps in life.
So stay awake to reach the top and dare to change people, instruments, your vision or yourself, if your goal urges you.

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Flow Chart Control

You're having success on success, your life 'flows by'. It's fun, challenging and exciting. Then... suddenly things start to go wrong and your not in your flow anymore. You're out of control. What happened?


When your challenges and skills are in balance things run smooth in life. This is called Flow


Managing and controlling your personal ´flow chart´, is done by consecutively increasing challenges and skills step by step.
To achieve higher goals we cannot simply set higher challenges. In case of too much challenge, the healthy amount of challenge (arousel) emerges to stress and finally to anxiety. We often blame the world, but in fact we've to blame ourselves. Bring down the stress, relax or take time to improve your skills (school, training, or reprogramming at an older age in life) until you feel that challenge and skills are rebalanced again.





This principle of balance between challenge and skills is described in Mr. Mihaly Csiksczentmihalyi's book 'Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience".

A summary of Csiksczentmihalyi's teachings is given by the next interesting paradoxes and insights:

• Happiness
  We cannot reach happiness by consciously searching for it. Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot by pursued; it must ensure....as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself." (p. 2)
  
  


• The Paradox of Control
  What people enjoy is not the sense of being in control, but the sense of exercising control in difficult situations. It is not possible to experience a feeling of control unless one is willing to give up the safety of protective routines." (p. 61)
  Achieve control over one's consciousness, overcoming the common perception that our lives are shaped by forces beyond our control. Everyone has experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like. This is what we mean by optimal experience (or flow)
  
  


• Best moment paradox
  Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments of our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times... The best moments occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile...in the long run optimal experiences add up to a sense of mastery - or perhaps better, a sense of participation in determining the content of life - that comes as close to what is usually meant by happiness as anything else we can conceivably imagine." (pp. 2-3)
  
  


• The Purpose of Consciousness
  The Purpose of Consciousness is to represent information about what is happening outside and inside the organism in such a way that it can be evaluated and acted upon by the body (p. 24).However, it is noted that consciousness also shapes and filters what enters our consciousness, thus determining what we experience as our life.
  
  


• Optimal Experiences

Examples of 'optimal experiences' are activities such as making music, rock climbing, dancing, sailing, chess, and so forth. What makes these activities conducive to flow is that they were designed to make optimal experience easier to achieve. They have rules that require the learning of skills, they set goals, they provide feedback, they make control possible. They facilitate concentration and involvement by making the activity as distinct as possible from the so-called "paramount reality" of everyday existence." (p. 72)




• The Transformation of Time
  One of the most common descriptions of 'optimal experience' is that time no longer seems to pass the way it ordinarily does...
  
  


• The Paradox of Work
  In our studies we have often encountered a strange inner conflict in the way people relate to the way they make their living. On the one hand, our subjects usually report that they have had some of their most positive experiences while on the job. From this response it would follow that they would wish to be working, that their motivation on the job would be high. Instead, even when they feel good, people generally say that they would prefer not to be working, that their motivation on the job is low. The converse is also true: when supposedly enjoying their hard-earned leisure, people generally report surprisingly low moods; yet they keep on wishing for more leisure." (p. 158)
  
  


• The quality of life
  The quality of life depends on two factors: how we experience work, and our relations with other people
  

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