Stillness In Motion

In 2020, the global pandemic taught us many lessons including a valuable caution to avoid extreme reactions. For example, many people asserted that we should “just stay positive”. This is uplifting advice but it’s actually dangerous. Humans did not evolve to be carefree when faced with invisible threats and mortal danger. In his best-selling book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl describes inmates of a Nazi German Concentration Camp, noting that positive thinkers were often the ones who broke down and didn’t make it. Blind optimism can be counter-productive in the face of real challenge.

Alternately, what we call ‘negative emotions’ are actually pre-programmed biological responses to serious threats. They are healthy and helpful, eliciting a rapid fight or flight impulse known as the “Amygdala Reaction”. Where there is a risk to our physical safety, this kind of early warning system can save our lives. However, most of the challenges we face are not life threatening so fighting or running away are also not typically appropriate. Related to this, negative opinions and judgements usually lead to impulsive reactions that create friction and more challenge.

Although many of us want to experience our emotions, we can’t see facts clearly when we are anxious or in shock and it’s simply unhealthy to remain fearful or angry for prolonged periods. We cannot pivot in panic or anger and we cannot adapt in anxiety. We cannot become creative or collaborative when we are tense and rigid with stress or fear. So if blind positivity isn’t appropriate and the fight/flight/freeze reaction isn’t conducive, what options are we left with?

Developing Stillness In Motion

Organizational leaders need to develop a perspective and mindset that facilitates a calm objectivity, to allow us the space to navigate whatever our business or life is serving up to us. As leaders, our mandate and purpose in any situation is to transcend challenge and transform it into value for us, our teams and our organizations. We need to remain patient and in balance while unexpected circumstances arise, being fully present with it, cognizant of what is happening, what actions are within your control and what outcomes are possible.

“Stillness In Motion” is the most useful perspective to cultivate and adopt for situations that involve danger and crisis. The key to cultivating this mindset is by building upon the time-tested attitude of equanimity. 

Equanimity

Equanimity does not mean staying in a neutral state where you deny your emotions. It is a state of psychological stability and composure which is undisturbed by experience or exposure to emotions or anything that might otherwise cause you to lose balance. It is an impartiality that is free of either grasping or aversion.

The perspective of equanimity sees past our conceptual labels that we compulsively put on people, things and events as being “good”, “bad”, “beautiful”, “horrible”, etc. These are conceptual labels that we stick on nearly everything around us out of sheer human habit. They are unconscious preferences that are based on our past experiences which form our current opinions and judgements. Qualities such as good or bad are not inherently woven into the fabric of any person, thing or event. They are like colours, which do not exist in the real world, they only exist in our mental experience of it, perpetuated within our own minds. Consider this: We may see a building as ugly while others see it as beautiful. There are no “beauty molecules” in the bricks of the building, nor “beauty photons” striking our retinas. It’s all in our heads!

Additionally, neuroscience research has discovered that our minds are incapable of fully comprehending the vast complexity of the reality of most people, places, things and events. Our disposition is to “slice” reality into easily understandable pieces, and focus on these pieces as if they constitute the entirety of the person, place or event. To make matters worse, we all have a “Negativity Bias”, meaning that we tend to focus on negative aspects over positive aspects to a magnitude of eight to one! For example, we focus on a person’s selfish actions but we fail to recognize the wonderful characteristics that drew their spouse to them and makes their grandchildren adore them. Thirdly, we tend to freeze our image of people and things in a static picture, not considering the dynamic changes that have occurred since we last encountered them. Picture someone you knew in grade school; do you still see them as young? Are they?

Equanimity acknowledges all of our rich emotions as biologically essential, without trying to artificially control them. The secret here is witnessing the emotions, but not allowing them to pull us along like a puppet pulled by strings. Turn your attention inward and feel the adrenaline, the heat, the tension. Watch the process unfold while remaining as mentally neutral as Switzerland.

Effective equanimity also means recognizing rumination, our human disposition to magnetically dwell on emotionally charged thoughts for hours or days. Thoughts have a natural shelf life of 3-5 seconds unless we are compulsively linking them together, perpetuating them. It can happen with both negative and positive thoughts and emotions. Ever had a song stuck in your head for days? Equanimity is an impartiality that demagnetizes this compulsion. It provides us with the space we need to allow thoughts and emotions to rise and fade on their own accord.

As we have pointed out, equanimity means being able to stay in mental balance in the midst of thoughts and emotions that might be suggesting otherwise. It means using our power of logical thinking to recognize that an emotional reaction may be under-informed or even illogical. Equanimity is patient, remaining curious about the bigger picture and dynamics of any given situation. It means we witnessing our thoughts and emotions like lighthouse, unmoved by the waves of a storm, observing but not getting swept up and carried away. It means remaining unbiased and unswayed by preferences and impulses, keeping you and your team in balance like a boat’s keel keeps a ship steady despite the waves of the sea.

Building on this, equanimity is knowing that every situation, no matter how dire, is workable. It doesn’t mean things are good or bad, or that the situation will get better or worse. It does not state that ‘everything will be okay’. These are judgements that help nothing. It is what it is, or it will be different. If something is beyond your control, there will be acceptance and adaptation.

By it’s very nature, equanimity creates space for genuine wisdom, creative option analysis and courageous action in challenging situations. With it, we shouldn’t tell ourselves or others that “everything will turn out fine” as this denies justifiable fears and it risks people never trusting us again if we are wrong. Likewise, we should recognize if we are succumbing to our negativity bias by seeing someone or something as inherently negative.

Equanimity means every person or situation, however foreign or ominous, can be worked with to create something of value in terms by bringing more purpose, empathy, and connection into the moment. It is an evenness in which you see the value in everyone, regardless of their title or ethnic background. It is a mental recognition that any path can be the right path and have just as much meaning or value as long as it is considered clearly. Have you ever fallen down so bad that you could not get up? Have you ever learned something from dealing with a tough person?

A key difference between positivity, negativity and a perspective of equanimity is that the latter focuses on what is within our control, and accepts what is outside our control. If we work with what is, and accept that which we can’t control, we can then transform pressure and stress into the energy of confident, effective action. Through this how we grow. 

Equanimity allows us to express empathy and facilitate a response that our people need, even if it is not what they want. It empowers us to communicate that the glass is both half full and half empty. It allows us to see problems through multiple frames before we decide how to respond. We can change our point of view in relation to an issue, seeing it from four, or even six, different sides. We remain curious, never locking onto one frame of reference, either positive or negative.

Stillness In Motion is a mindset that allows us to remain in balance, remaining composed, maintaining a sense of cognitive openness without getting carried away by blind positivity, selectivity or biased attention, rumination or mistaken judgement. Only then are we able to create the space needed for the wisdom of transformative leadership to emerge.