Feelings

It has been said of me that I am a 'head guy'; thinker not so much feeler. Umm. False dichotomy me thinks. We have thoughts about our feelings and vice versa. And what is a thought if not some kind of feeling? Oh yes, I know, it's the extent of the symbolism involved, particularly where language enters in to our mind. Our mind? Umm, it's getting deep already. There is I think (see I am teasing you already) a good approach to this in the east; the chakra system. And one can place one's attention at the various chakras. Let's consider the heart chakra.

Companies (by which I mean businesses) are not exempt from the laws of interdependence; they don't exist. They are the relationships of individuals. Yet somehow they develop a life of their own and the people in them start believing in notions of job specifications and person specifications. Well, this all might be a useful set of tools but all too easily people can shift their attention to the head and forget the heart. My experience is that things start going pear shaped at that point since the head can then also close down. People take their jobs personally. However hard we might try to be professional cogs in the machine we can't escape that we are people. And that's as it should be. So generally thoughts and feelings run hand in hand at work as elsewhere. Open minds and hearts work well together but it's hard to keep them that way. We can compartment off aspects of being and so end up with ideas of thoughts and feelings. This fragmenting can take hold and our thoughts and feelings can get out of kilter with feelings being hurt.

Behind all this there is of course the ego. And there is nowhere quite like work to see egos in action. What would the current financial problems look like if every company had a heart chakra Key Performance Indicator? And not a token one, an honest one.