FONM Fear of No Meaning
FONM …..Fear of “ No Meaning”
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I thought I would jump on the FO ?( fear of) bandwagon. Through the last decade we have embraced VUCA introduced by the U.S. Army War College in 1987.
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Then with the advent of social media we alerted our adrenal systems and suddenly we are at the highest nonsense level of attending our devices. To the mature and studious, the device calls for deep engagement in the most tragic elements of our past and present. Those are rare book worms that read the equivalent of 100s of pages of content daily.
Most of us though I believe are addicted to the snacking of reels, friend updates, inspirational quotes and stories and of course the ads for side hustles that pelt us with wonder. Today I want to introduce another potential void. “Fear of No Meaning”.
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Maybe the greatest fear is to have a lack of desire for meaning at all!?
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Would it be shocking that I can scroll for an hour and find nothing but numbing fascinations with whatever comes next? The answer is…? I either don’t care, don’t think I have any control, or I’m filling my time in a way that numbs my senses, takes my time and distracts me from ….well, meaning.
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There is good news however,
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1.??????????????? We are in control of much
2.??????????????? We do care a lot
3.??????????????? We can choose differently depending on our personal values
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FONM like VUCA can be turned around.? The corollary for VUCA is as follows:
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We could go to the assumption that it all has meaning. But is it useful? Adopting this question as we interrogate our truths is the real question.
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Meaning Scale
Take your subject, action, behavior, value
What does it mean?
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0 Little to none -----5-------- 10? Vital to Life
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As we place numerical values on the meaning scale, we can quickly determine what to spend time on reduce our waste and well live a life of more meaning intentionally.
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Meaning. ?Much of what we do is triggered by or fed by stress.? Do we know what those stressors mean? Can we keep track and learn real time?? Our friend Ed Beltran has written a book FIERCE RESILIENCE? that defines Resilience as “the courage to be self aware to take action”. ?What he refers to is the application they developed that goes along with the book that collects biometric intelligence. Understanding the what of our own stress through wearable devices is the beginning of self-awareness.
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Can you imagine a high performing executive team that measures their stress periodically, finds the root cause of the stress, brings that awareness into the team culture and shares it with one another for a disciplined culture enhancement?
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We may need Brene Brown’s help here for the power of vulnerability and transparency. We need that in the executive suite anyway!
Director of Recruitment & Client Success | Ph.D. in Leadership | Expert in Strategic Recruiting, Customer Success and Client Partnerships for Optimal Business Results
1 个月So many great nuggets of reflection. The one that hit me most was how for myself, my very own definition of meaning has changed so much over time. I feel that in the early stages of my life and career I was a victim of "forcing" myself to create meaning that wasn't really...meaningful. Appreciate the post!!!