WisdomDice – update – 10/10/09
This is an update on an earlier blog with some extra thinking and ‘how to’ use them…
* Conversations usually stay at a superficial level, often appropriately. But maybe life can be richer with more understanding and learning if some of that chat time with other people was spent exploring more challenging/meaningful subjects.
With a little help from a couple of books I have read (see below) and some thinking time in the bath, I came up with an idea for randomly stimulating deeper conversations: WisdomDice -one with 6 challenging concepts, the other more aspirational. It’s important to use both at once, and whatever two subjects come up, that’s what you have to include in your conversation. Simple. You can give yourself time limits if you want and then roll the dice again!
Why not give it a go – I’d love to hear how it goes!
(Perhaps you could buy 2 sets of dice of different colours, say red and white, and then take one of each, and give the other mixed pair to a good friend. Number the subjects below 1-6 in a notebook or in your ‘organiser’, so if you throw a 1 on red it would say Meaninglessness, whilst a 4 on white would say Freedom… do you get the drift?)
Here are my suggestions for what to put on the dice:
1. Meaninglessness; Complicity; Aloneness; Death; Expertise; Judgement
2. Uniqueness; Belonging; Purpose; Freedom; Accepting; Noticing
Books:
‘Love’s Executioner and other tales of Psychotherapy’ – Irvin Yalom
‘The Dice Man’ – Luke Rhinehart
** Further re the dice – my rule is that they have to be used together so you can’t use just the ‘challenging’ one or the ‘aspirational’ one. The idea behind that is that the aspirational ones provide ‘lift’ to help counteract the ‘heaviness’ of the challenging ones. You may choose a different metaphor system to think about the qualities of the dice and subjects!
Freedom was originally going to be on the ‘heavy’ die! Irvin Yalom talks of four key areas usually driving a need for psychotherapy: death, existential loneliness, meaninglessness of life, and freedom. You’ll notice the first three already on the ‘heavy’ die – and I substituted ‘complicity’ for freedom. The challenge of freedom is about the challenge of decisions – if you are free to make a decision, then you are free to ‘kill’ other options, so true freedom is inexorably linked with grief (for what could have been). But I think most people will see freedom as positive, so I wanted an ‘opposite’… Complicity for me means falling into line whether you like it or not, ie not exercising freedom, and for me, is the root of evils like the Final Solution, or the massive inflation of asset values through financial derivatives…
Again for me, the opposites of death, meaninglessness and aloneness are uniqueness (we are special and therefore worth being alive), purpose and belonging. Which left me with 2 sides to fill on each die.
I find one of the most corrosive of concepts for individuals and their self-belief is ‘being an expert’ – how limiting is that!? There’s nothing left to learn, and then you’re always comparing yourself with everyone else to check you’re still an expert. Many would find it surprising to see that on the heavy die. Its opposite could be noticing, in a mindful sense.
Finally, judgement, expert’s terrible twin, the packing tape which seals tight the box into which we can be tempted to put ourselves! How much better it is to accept what could be?
But these are my takes on the words – yours will be different. Enjoy.
*** Further, further… WisdomDice on your own!
Perhaps every day? Or once a week?
Here, I suggest combining it with one of the most powerful & clean self-emergent thinking processes, the Power of Six (from David Grove’s work, see also Philip Harland’s excellent book, The Power of Six: A Six Part Guide to Self-Knowledge, advance copies available now at www.powersofsix.com and http://www.amazon.com/Power-Six-Part-Guide-Knowledge/dp/1448647800/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255623526&sr=1-2).
Throw the dice:
Taking each die/word in turn, ask yourself, ‘What do I know about that?’
And then for each die/word, ‘What else do I know about that?’, five times.
Then ask, ‘and what do I know now?’
And then ‘and what difference does that knowing make?’
It will take a few minutes. But could make the rest of the day much richer.
