What do these current times call for?
We each have a hierarchy of needs within us, and within our personal situation. Often, the most personal, and fundamental, of these needs must be met before we have the interior space to explore the bigger questions, and the bigger picture, of what is unfolding.
Aviv: So, Amitay, you’re saying that, based on our conversations over the last few weeks, that you want to be engaged in several processes at the same time.
One is to actually embrace the current environment, not as a temporary problem, that’s what you said already last week, but to actually embrace it as a changed environment that provides opportunities.
Amitay: Yes, that’s right.
Aviv: And you also want to have an adjacent process whereby you prepare for what might happen next. So, what would you add to this, what other layers of, or dimensions of, experience or search do you have in you when you think about that?
Amitay: Okay, so I’m accepting the idea that the future is not going to look like the past. Like we’ve talked, and like you just said, now I’m trying to see the situation as a new situation that arises in the world. And when I think practically: what can I do now if I still want to prepare myself for the future that will come?
So, the first thing is, of course, to be open and to get updated in the world, read the news, but not the regular news, like real articles about it. And still there is a lot of unknown. There is a lot of unknown in the future. So I’m trying to think: what will be the best way to prepare for this unknown future?
Aviv: Okay. Well, so let’s try to do this in steps. And let’s try to first develop something that we can call a Maslow hierarchy of response, where, naturally, the first level of response is about survival. So the first thing you’ve done in the first few days and weeks, and the natural reaction in all of us, everybody, is to ask, what do I need to do to protect myself so that I survive this experience? So that was the initial response: survival. What must I do to protect myself, my family, my situation from the virus and from the other chain-reacting events?
What then is the second layer, the second response layer in this hierarchy, which essentially what I think is partly driving your question, and drives some of the other comments you’ve shared with me over the last month, how would you frame it?
You are where? We can plot our responses to many situations somewhere on this pyramid. And the more consciousness we are able to apply to our life processes, the more we are choosing how we respond, rather than just reacting, which leads us to the doorway of learning how to elevate, energetically, the actions of our lives.
Aviv Shahar
Aviv is the Founder of Aviv Consulting, helping leaders unleash strategic innovation, and is the author of Create New Futures: How Leaders Produce Breakthroughs and Transform the World Through Conversation.
