From Systems Thinking to Systems Feeling and -Healing

What if our most pressing and complex sustainability challenges are rooted in a disconnect from our feelings and lack of healing? How might feeling and healing enable deeper renewal needed to take on our sustainability challenges??

This article connects the dots from Systems Thinking to Systems Feeling and -Healing - and suggests radically new approaches to promote sustainable development as well as human development and flourishing at large.

Why systemic?

In the face of accelerating change and complexity, the need for systemic approaches is growing within and across organisations and societies. In my previous article I introduced a few systemic approaches to sustainable development offering guidance and hope. Among them, I pointed towards deeper aspects of our human nature, such as our primal emotions and affective feelings, as drivers of mindsets and behaviours shaping our lives and systems – and therefore possible root causes of challenges and potential enablers of change. Hence, an essential dimension of sustainable development is to understand, observe, nudge, and cultivate key aspects of our human nature - and to design our human systems accordingly.

With this entrance point, I will explore feeling and healing as approaches to human and systems transformation.

What does feeling and healing mean?

I first want to clarify what I mean by feeling and healing in this context. Inspired by this rich article on feelings and emotions, I define feeling as perceiving sensations about what is happening in our body - internally and in relation to the external world - and emotions in the form of experiences or states resulting from sensations following some sort of event or stimuli and often influenced by social context and cognition. The broader and scientific term for sensing our body is interoception, whereof the relationship between interoception and emotion is at the core of this article.?

To me, the influence of cognition is a a key aspect of our emotions and the relevance of healing. In short, it implies that our past experiences and existing response patterns influence how we perceive and respond to current experiences. In particular, more or less stressful or traumatic experiences from the past may negatively influence us and how we function in present situations, and our feelings can help us become aware of such negative influences that we carry with us from past.

Within this context, healing can be defined as detaching from negative events that have hurt us - be it mentally, emotionally, and/or somatically - so they do not interfere with our present moments. Over time, healing can help us leave behind patterns that don’t serve us - for example patterns in how we perceive and respond to different persons, situations, or the world at large - and to establish new and more desirable patterns. Hence, feeling and healing can be seen as key enablers of human development - starting with?our ability to navigate our human nature.

"An essential dimension of sustainable development is to understand, observe, nudge, and cultivate key aspects of our human nature - and to design our human systems accordingly."

Why connect more deeply with our human nature?

1. Embracing our conscious and unconscious human capacities

We are living in a complex world offering rich experiences. However, our working memory has a limited bandwidth and can only perceive and process a fragment of our full experience. Research indicate that our conscious bandwidth is limited to around 50 bits per second while our unconscious bandwidth amounts to stunning 11 million bits per second, i.e., a ratio of 50:11?000?000. This insight points towards many important aspects of our conscious and unconscious mind, and this blog post on Conscious and Unconscious Thought Process summarises some key concepts, theories, and research findings. It can even be argued that consciousness itself is also an unconscious process, as our conscious thoughts or rational systematic thinking is a consequence of habit - and hence a barrier to new thinking and mindsets.

There are many implications of this knowledge, but to me a key takeaway is that when we solely stay with and rely on our conscious mind we disregard vast amounts of information, intrinsic capabilities such as a strong ability to deal with complexity, and important aspects of our human nature, experience, and ultimately what it means to be human. Susan David explains this well in a beautiful TED talk about the gift and power of emotional courage, where she points to the importance of emotional agility in navigating our lives and human capacities:

2. Tapping into and unleashing our full human capacities

Feeling into our sensations and emotions is a great tool to take part in a broader experience and expression of ourselves in relation to the world around us, such as enjoying or creating arts and connecting more deeply with people or nature. It can also be used to tap into our deeper intelligence, beyond our limited conscious processing capacity, for example when making decisions in uncertain situations and seeking new insights and solutions in response to complex or wicked problems. Tapping into our deeper intelligence?can be described as utilising our intuition, and while disregarded in many contexts there is a growing interest in intuition as navigation tool and leadership quality as briefly described in this and this article.

"When we solely stay with and rely on our conscious mind we disregard vast amounts of information, intrinsic capabilities such as a strong ability to deal with complexity, and important aspects of our human nature, experience, and ultimately what it means to be human."

Being more fully present in our current experiences can also be a great way to become aware of and more deliberately navigate important aspects of our human nature, such as our tendency to think and behave on autopilot, skew our perception of reality as a result of cognitive biases, and relate to situations instinctively based on affect rooted in primal emotions. In short, we may say that our physiology and instincts rule our conscious mind and rational thinking until we learn to feel into and navigate our full human nature.

By observing our thoughts, sensations, emotions, and behaviours from a more holistic perspective, we can gain a broader understanding of ourselves in relation to the situation and factors influencing us such as external stimuli and past experiences. From this presence and understanding we can choose to relate and respond differently to situations, and proactively explore and develop ourselves to seek new understanding, experiences, responses, and paths forward.?

"Our physiology and instincts rule our conscious mind and rational thinking until we learn to how to feel into and navigate our human nature."

By being more fully present, aware, and less stuck in past experiences and existing patters, we can also become more attentive to new patterns, opportunities, and what wants to emerge as we lean into the future.

Summarised, our feelings are a great doorway for interoception, introspection, and development - especially in times when the outer world calls for new mindsets, ideas, ideals, priorities, decisions, actions, and habits. In short, the most personal development enables the most systemic change.

"By being more fully present, aware, and less stuck in past experiences and existing patters, we can become more attentive to new patterns, opportunities, and what wants to emerge as we lean into the future."

3. Inviting our human nature into collective development and human systems

While we first and foremost need to understand and navigate our human nature and inner world on individual level, it is also key to understand and navigate our relations and outer world on group, organisational, and societal levels. By utilising our full human capacities, we can - as individuals and collectives - better make sense of, connect and interact with, care for, and contribute to the people and world around us. On collective levels, actively inviting, cultivating, and utilising our human nature enables human systems such as organisations and societies to become more intelligent, self-conscious, and deliberate - key qualities to foster meaningful and sustainable cultural and structural change.

"Our feelings are a great doorway for interoception, introspection, and development - especially in times when the outer world calls for new mindsets, ideas, ideals, priorities, decisions, actions, and habits."

You may think this is obvious and something we should already have integrated into our collective development, including how we design and operate human systems such as education, work life, politics, and media. But think for a moment about the current reality along questions such as:

• How much does an average student, employee, manager, politician, journalist and so forth know about our human nature and how to navigate it?
• How much effort do we put into helping people learn about and lead themselves?
• To what extent are our collective ideals and frameworks such as principles, structures, processes, and methods - at school, in work life and politics, or elsewhere - in line with our human nature?

My personal conviction is that a weak understanding of and poor alignment with our human nature are root causes of key challenges we are facing as individuals, groups, organisations, societies, and humanity as whole - for example mental illnesses, addictions, sick leaves, burnouts, and destructive behavioural patterns such as rivalry, abuse of power, excessive consumption, and destruction of ecosystems.

In the case of climate change, this scientific article elegantly describes and illustrates key relationships, dynamics, and recommendations in the intersection of mind and climate change:

"A weak understanding of and poor alignment with our human nature are root causes of key challenges we are facing as individuals, groups, organisations, societies, and humanity as whole."

By individually and collectively understanding our human nature and its role in the challenges we are facing, we can better orient and organise ourselves to develop effective responses and create sustainable progress - such as transforming our human systems to become more human, circular, and regenerative.

"Our human nature is key to understand and navigate our relations and outer world on group, organisational, and societal levels."

The other way around, our human systems such as organisations and societies offer great arenas for human development. If designed more in line with our human nature - and with an expressed intention to support the development of individuals and groups - we can make leaps in our individual and collective development and ability to take on sustainability challenges.

"By utilising our full human capacities we can better make sense of, connect and interact with, care for, and contribute to the people and world around us."

How can we better team up with our human nature?

I see at least three complementary approaches to team up with important aspects of our human nature such as our autopilot, cognitive biases, reactive patterns, and primal emotions:

1. Learn about, observe, and reflect upon our human nature to integrate new understanding and respond more deliberately to situations.
2. Develop supportive communities, at different scales and arenas, in line with our human nature.
3. Cultivate our human nature through health, mindfulness, and personal development practices to be and contribute at our best.

?"The most personal development enables the most systemic change."

1. Learning, observing, reflecting, integrating, and responding

Moving forward, a natural starting point is to share knowledge and tools to help people understand, get in touch with, and better relate to our human nature.?This can be done on various arenas such as education, work life, and media - and I believe we would come a long way simply by making insights from scientific fields such as psychology and neuroscience become common knowledge.

"By individually and collectively understanding our human nature and its role in the challenges we are facing, we can better orient and organise ourselves to develop effective responses and create sustainable progress."

Beyond knowledge sharing, we also need to remind ourselves and each other to observe and reflect on how we perceive and react to different situations in order to integrate new understanding of ourselves and hopefully start to respond more deliberately. Straightforward practices such as mindfulness, journaling, and debriefing can be helpful to create spaces of observation, reflection, and integration - allowing us to notice, learn from, and respond more deliberately to the more subtle things happening inside ourselves in different situations.

2. Developing supportive communities at different scales and arenas

We influence each other and shape our shared future wherever and whenever we relate and interact, and our communities are key arenas for this to happen. Communities can exist at any scale, from small groups to whole societies, and their nature can range from temporary to permanent, flexible to fixed, and so on. We can be part of communities on many arenas such as:

• Work life: Teams, departments, organisations, professions etc.
• Private life: Family, friends, neighbourhoods, leisure activities, religion, nationality etc.

By introducing knowledge about our human nature - and practices to incorporate and cultivate it - we can develop more supportive, productive, and valuable communities that promote the wellbeing, growth, and contribution of individuals - including their ability to deliberately and constructively interact and collaborate with others.

Collaboration in work life is a great example of an arena with huge potential for renewal, progress, and value creation. On group level there are opportunities for progressive development rooted in ideals, frameworks, and practices promoting qualities such as radical openness and trust, curiosity and sense-making capability, creativity, agility, and problem-solving capacity. This type of development is already available through up-to-date facilitation and group development practices such as the Art of Hosting and the Collective Intelligence model we are pioneering at Influence. At the core, such collective practices help us co-regulate how we deal with uncertainties, risks, threats, and fears - and instead invite openness, trust, curiosity, playfulness, creativity, and learning so much needed as we move forward.

These approaches can be scaled on organisational and inter-organisational level to develop more human and humane organisations and societies. Combined with emerging leadership and organising ideals and frameworks - tapping into drivers such as purpose, autonomy, participation, and authenticity - we are moving into new territories of creating progress and resilience together. The Scaled Agile Framework is a well-established example of an organising blueprint promoting agile development in response to rapid change and high complexity, while I see Sociocracy 3.0 as a more novel and organic framework to align collaboration with our human nature and enable more nimble and dynamic organising.

Summarised, we can develop communities such as workplaces to align with our human nature and support human development on individual and collective levels. This needs to be done in many different ways depending on the context, people, situation, and needs. To some extent this is also new territory where we need to explore and develop new practices as we move forward, and I will elaborate on this in a later article about building breakthrough organisations by upgrading leadership and goverance.

"If we design our organisations and societies more in line with our human nature - and with an expressed intention to support the development of individuals and groups - we can make leaps in our individual and collective development and ability to take on sustainability challenges."

3. Cultivating our human nature through health, mindfulness, and personal development practices

Going one step further, we can individually choose to cultivate our human nature to promote personal health, wellbeing, vitality, and performance. By doing so, we also strengthen our ability to be, relate, interact, collaborate, and contribute at our best on arenas such as work life. This is why we should inspire and enable relevant development practices at our workplaces and other key arenas in society, making such practices widely known and available for the benefit of all.

Health, mindfulness, and personal development is a huge field that I will only scratch on the surface here, but the main dimensions I have in mind are:

• Health and mindfulness practices - related to sleep, diet, physical exercise, breath, interoception, cognitive activities etc. - shaping our biology and ability to function well through mechanisms such as neuromodulators, hormones, the autonomous nerve system, metabolism, focus, and neural plasticity.
• Personal development practices - related to navigation of our human nature, past experiences, intrinsic qualities, and life at large - enabling us to become more free and deliberate in how we relate to present moments and lean into the future through stronger self-awareness and -leadership strengthened by emotional intelligence and healing.

There are many different starting points and possible ways forward for those who want to learn more about themselves and work on their own development. Luckily, there are also many sources of knowledge and practices - rooted in scientific, religious, indigenous, and other traditions - that can help us befriend and navigate our human nature.

"We can individually choose to cultivate our human nature to promote personal health, wellbeing, vitality, and performance. By doing so, we also strengthen our ability to be, relate, interact, collaborate, and contribute at our best on arenas such as work life."

The Inner Development Goals (IDG) framework is a promising, science-based initiative to promote and support inner development as a key enabler of sustainable development. It highlights 23 transformative skills along 5 dimensions that are key to deal with our increasingly complex environment and challenges. The recently launched IDG toolkit contains a growing library of development methods oriented towards inner development in an organisational context, and thereby offers a good starting point for organisations who want to work more actively with human development.

"We can develop more supportive, productive, and valuable communities - that promote the wellbeing, growth, and contribution of individuals - by introducing knowledge about our human nature, and practices to incorporate and cultivate it."

On the more specific topics of feeling and healing I would like to mention a few practices I find valuable based on my own experience:

• Mindfulness and relational practices such as meditation in various settings and formats, focusing, circling, constellations, and nature immersions (in a later article I wrote more about boosting well-being and clarity in nature).
• Body-, breath-, and energy work practices such as yoga, chi gong, active meditations, liberating dance, sound journeys, and tension, stress and trauma release exercises (TRE).
• Personal development and coaching practices based on frameworks such as gestalt psychology, psychosynthesis, neurolinguistic programming (NLP), family constellations, inner child work, emotional freedom techniques (EFT), and somatic experiencing.

To me, the essence of such practices is to become a more present, connected, nurtured, and free being - capable of noticing dysfunctional patterns, healing trauma, and creating new and more desirable mindsets, habits, and choices - thereby reframing and reshaping how we relate to ourselves and the world.

When we do so on individual level, in growing numbers, we also enable our human systems to become more present, connected, nurtured, and free - capable of healing collective wounds and embracing new ideas, ideals, development paths, frameworks, and solutions - thereby enabling deeper cultural and structural renewal.

At the core, efforts to team up with our human nature are key to break free from stucknes and embrace renewal and progress - in challenging situations and life at large - transitioning from autopilot to deliberate learning, flow, and development. The following illustrations summarise key choices and development paths on individual and group level:

Ideally, development takes place on several levels:

"Efforts to team up with our human nature are key to break free from stuckness and embrace renewal and progress - in challenging situations and life at large - transitioning from autopilot to deliberate learning, flow, and development."

Emotional, cultural, and structural healing of dysfunctional patterns

To summarise, I believe feeling and healing are key aspects of human development needed to take on the root causes of our sustainability challenges. Emotional healing, on individual and collective level, is a great starting point but the concept can also be extended to cultural and structural healing on collective levels.

Based on this thinking I argue that the essence of human development is feeling into, healing, and transforming dysfunctional patterns in ourselves and our humans systems - fostering flourishing in the form of wellbeing, meaning, contribution, and regeneration. To me, a key dimension of this is closing the spiritual, social, and ecological divides described as part of Theory U. Combining these perspectives, the following three dimensions - including illustrative examples of ways forward - are key to human development on collective levels:

A. Emotional healing of trauma and spiritual divides, e.g.,

• Uncovering and letting go of individual and collective trauma
• Reconnecting to our inner core; dreams, passions, and gifts

B. Cultural healing of dysfunctional mindsets, ideals, practices, and social divides, e.g.,

• Gathering around rituals of community, integration, and co-regulation
• Inviting diversity and our whole being including emotions

C. Structural healing of dysfunctional frameworks and ecological divides, e.g.

• Redesigning organisational, legal, financial, political, welfare, and industrial systems
• Embracing ideas of participation, communities of life, and practices of regeneration

"The essence of human development is feeling into, healing, and transforming dysfunctional patterns in ourselves and our humans systems - fostering flourishing in the form of wellbeing, meaning, contribution, and regeneration."

How does this resonate with you?