Think, before it's too late

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John Bittleston

succeed@mediacorp.com.sg

IF WE want to prevent the imminent end of the human species as we know it, we need all the creative thought we can muster.

We have less than 20 years to manage technology and keep our ability to decide our future. The alternative is a controlled species of semi-sentient automatons responding to a central decision-making organisation run, perhaps, by bankers.

Several unsuccessful attempts have been made to measure how happy we are. The basic ingredient of happiness - selflessness - is hard to grasp because it has to do with motive as well as action. We do not understand our own motives and are usually wrong about other people's, because everything we do is done for a mixture of selfless and selfish reasons.

That is what the human race has at stake. Our world is interesting and challenging because of its imperfections, not in spite of them. Eradicating them is seen as the road to Valhalla. The journey provides opportunity for character-building, for fun and as a test of our capabilities. The material destination is within sight. The emotional destination has yet to be identified. Now is the time to do that by concerted creative thought and effort.

What do we need to know? What must we do?

Understanding our personalities, what makes us aspire to create "beyond the single need" and how we work should now be top of the agenda, ahead of technological development, more important than health, wealth, longevity and material comfort.

The mind has been neglected in our researches. If 10 per cent of the effort to understand, explain and promote the soul had been devoted to fathoming the mind, we would have been an infinitely more balanced world than we are. If the amount spent on missile shields was matched by that on expanding the mind, the need for missile shields would disappear.

Even setting up the plan for such research requires creative thought beyond what we have achieved so far. We need to put thinking back on the pedestal it occupied in ancient Greece. Many have tried to do this over the centuries. Some have had modest success, but the conclusion has almost always ended up as a reckoning to be reached beyond death rather than one to be achieved on earth.

When we become immortal - very soon - we shall need to address "heavens below" as well as "heavens above".

Brain and mind research must merge so that we discover how developing the one can be matched with expansion of the other. Unleashing the abilities of the mind, which even today are barely understood, will allow man to put technology and material matters in perspective and give us control of our destinies in ways that we have not yet begun to achieve. Singapore is in a unique position to spearhead this.

The arts let us glimpse the potential of our thoughts and feelings, yet we neglect them in favour of war weapons. The emotional intelligence (EI) of the young is more precious to humanity than is the trick of programming stock market transactions, yet there is no EI programme in Business Administration or Economics.

Desire to communicate with and influence millions of people is less important than the yearning to attend to a fellow creature and, in return, receive the same attention from that person.

An uncontrolled race for wealth and technology deprives people of their right to freedom of choice, to self-understanding and to the balanced lifestyle of which we hear so much and for which so little is being done.

Can we pause to put thought before action, mind before matter and understanding before it is too late?

John Bittleston mentors people in business, career and their personal lives at www.TerrificMentors.com

From TODAY, Business – Monday, 28-Sep-2009

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Emails and triggers

Some tips and pointers about e-mails, not only in the office, of course. This is applicable to anything about e-mails, office, home, or just anywhere else where e-mails are used as a means of communication.

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I HAD never thought of an email as a weapon of mass destruction. Not, that is, until I received a couple from different sources, both of which had me smoking from the ears.

They were abrupt, rude, insensitive and totally lacking in emotional intelligence. I used two words that rarely pass my lips to describe them. The second of the two was "off". Fortunately, I kept them to myself.

When my temperature returned to normal, I revisited the emails and examined them carefully. Both contained important information as well as the irritating prods at my integrity and ego. But I had to read them twice to get at the valuable facts because I first had to sweep away the emotional needling and control my instinctive violent reactions.

On examination, the writers had good points to make. Even the poorly expressed feelings were valid. In a calmer mood, I addressed them and took the heat out of the battle.

Not everyone is patient, and I see a lot of poor communication at the root of many of my mentees' problems. Inevitably, today, much of that communication is by email. So, why has the problem come about and what should our standards be?

The cause is always thoughtlessness. We write as we feel, to purge ourselves of the anger inside us. We should write so that the recipient reads, understands and reacts reasonably to our point of view.

We say what we want to say; we should say what we want the other person to hear and act upon in such a way that it will enhance our communication, not chop it off.

What I am saying applies to all communication, of course. Emails pose a particular problem. Their virtue is that they are fast. No envelope addressing and sealing, no stamp licking, no pause between writing and popping into the mail box.

The email's vice is that it is too fast. It has none of the previous pauses that allowed us to think twice about what we are sending.

To ensure that our email communication is effective in the way we intend, I suggest four thoughts about how we might compose these dangerous little bullets.

1 Before writing the email, make a note of (a) what you want the other parties to do as a result of your email and (b) what words you think are most likely to encourage them to do it. Those words will include acknowledgement, praise, kindly disposition as well as requests or orders. They will not include threats, real or implied, nor will they use emotive adjectives or challenging nouns. In particular, the word "trust" will be avoided; it is a double-edged sword.

2 We do not want to waste time — ours or theirs — but good communication is achieved when the pace at which we write is the pace at which the reader is likely to absorb and understand what we are saying. Emails that appear abrupt to the other person have failed even if they have said all you want to say.

3 The words we use to make our points should be as conciliatory and soothing as the message and context allow. Let the sun generate the heat; we should aim to soothe by cooling.

4 Greeting and closing. In a world of fast messages, we have lost the art of greeting. Nevertheless, when we are sending controversial or tricky messages, how you start and finish matter. The abrasiveness of the message can be much reduced by keeping the formalities civil. If we want to avoid our emails triggering the worst reactions, let them be at least polite.

John Bittleston mentors people in business, career and their personal lives at www.TerrificMentors.com.

Email your views to news@newstoday.com.sg

From TODAY, Business – Monday, 01-Jun-2009

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