Week 4 - Reading - Be the Board

This week’s reading has been a bit difficult for me to get my head around as it seems to go against some personal philosophies as well as the difficulty I am having with other aspects of my life.  There may also be misunderstandings on my part on how this practice works. 

I often have followed the philosophy that I am responsible for my actions. I realize that I have limited control over what happens to me but I do have total control over how I deal with it. 

Zander (2002) offers the practice to take yourself out of a situation and choose to be the framework of your life. Although I understand taking a step back and looking in, I often keep myself as a player. I not only need to see the situations that are happening in my life, but I need to see myself as a player and how I react to the different situations. Overall, this practice seems similar to some of the practices I use in my life but the terminology is quite a bit different. My possible misunderstandings of this chapter could be me just not getting out of my own way to understand the terms of the practice. 

I often use visualization in my life through difficult situations. I become an observer, rather than a player in my practice. When I put all of the people and situations in front of my, I watch what happens. When I was in a Directing course for theatre, our instructor took us through a practice called center stage. In this practice we would have the actors work out the scenario we needed to work through. There would be a stand-in playing ourselves. As director in this visualization we could move actors to different places on the stage and even change the script. Once happy with the scene, we would take our place on stage where we had a stand-in. Outside of the visualization practice, it is then up to us to objectively assess the circumstances and move on without blame (of others or self) to learn from the different situations that arise in our lives. 

The consideration of being the board is possibly to put all of a situation on yourself to visualize how the game is going to be played. Then put yourself as a player in order to make a difference.

Sources:

Zander, B., & Zander, R. S. (2002). The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life. Boston: Penguin (Non-Classics). (Original work published 1942)

Game Board Art from: http://dir.coolclips.com/