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The heart of Strategic Narrative Embodiment (SNE)

September Muse Letter

There is a war going on – a war for your heart and your soul, for mine. A bit melodramatic?

I wake up in the morning with an unreasonable fear lodged in my chest. What if I lose? Lose what, I ask myself?

  • The battle against boredom and overwork.
  • The fight to stay fit and healthy when all I want is another doughnut and a good long sit in the sun.
  • The struggle against loneliness, as I long to be with my family but despise them for crowding my headspace.
  • The strife I feel when trying to get friends to come over – do I even have friends? And then the fear that they won’t enjoy it here; so why bother?
  • The war against entropy, in my money matters, my house, my garden, my paperwork, when at the same time I would rather turn a blind eye and read another novel.

I am not one of those people caught up in the rat race: I refuse! I have been there and bought into all its frenzy, and I didn’t get the big house and the two cars, the housekeeper and the swimming pool.

In fact, my rat race brought my family and me to the brink of bankruptcy as we ploughed all our resources into ‘making it’ and failed.

Now that both my husband and I have jobs in education – with a good enough income to survive, but not to get rich, or even get ahead – ­we are much happier and have much more time for our kids, each other, the garden, the house, the friends, and the paperwork.

BUT…

  • We long for action.
  • We yearn for significance.
  • We pine for the opportunity to express our innermost selves.
  • We wish with all our hearts that someone else would wash the dishes, do the garden, organise our papers.

We now have the time, but no motivation to do all the things on the list. So, and I will only speak for myself here, I sit around wishing for action, for someone to come visit, for some external impetus to get me off my butt to go, go, go! Of course the moment the impetus comes I resent it for stealing my peace and dictating my responses. When is sitting in the sun ‘being mindful’ mad when is it laziness? When is being present with my children healthy and when is it an excuse not to engage with something else?

How much more divided can I get?

This is the war that is destroying my heart and soul.

Inside the race, I feel controlled, diminished and taken advantage of. Outside it I feel useless, insignificant and without value.

Where is the third side of this coin?

That is the essence of my quest through war-torn territories: the search for the third side of the coin – not just in this current struggle, but in all struggles that seem so two dimensional, so binary, so colourless:

Does this mean we should take up more colourful and complex struggles like the one between the students and the government with the Universities and the parents and the whole of South Africa’s history in between?  The same one that colours all organisational and leadership interactions, whether we know it or not: the struggle between those who have and who can and those who have not and can’t – along with all the colours of our rainbow nation getting involved in the mess?

I think so.

This is the heart of the SNE lens: between the strategic plan and embodied reality, you find the narrative, the story, which can integrate opposites, transform ambiguities, dance with contradictions. Between the head that plans and the hands that act, lies this treacherous landscape of the heart, the landscape of stories. Stories long to heal the broken heart. They yearn to bridge the chasms between warring opposites and mend the rifts between binary dichotomies.

Join me on this quest to mend broken hearts – especially those broken by the race for more money, opportunity and power.

Meet me at the next Pig Catching session to help process the grief of your broken heart.

Date:     7 OCt 2016
Time:    7am for 7:15 to 10am Pig Catching
10:30-12:30 Research conversation or maybe we simply continue with the session. NOTE: We will start at 7:15 sharp to make the most of our time.
Facilitator: Petro Janse van Vuuren
Cost: R250
Venue: 305 Long Ave Ferndale
Dress: Comfortable clothes you can stretch and move in
Refreshments: Coffee, tea, muffins and fruit on arrival.
RSVP: by  Wed 5 Oct.

Other Pig Catching dates this year:
9 Dec
Please diarise!

Join our group on Facebook<http://playingmantis.us10.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=bd2144f97d4741293f68d899e&id=5904ae36ee&e=ef28aa4955>:

Bring your curiosity, your open minds and your questions.

About Pig Catching:

Pig catching is what coaches and facilitators do when we chase the moment of insight that brings shift and transformation in our clients.

Please note: No pigs get harmed, our pigs are purely metaphorical and they have wings.

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What irks you about trying to change the world?

June Muse Letter

Whether you are on the receiving end or on the giving end of a learning/change process, I invite you to write to me and vent all your frustrations about it. You are welcome to play the ‘meanie’ and let rip – even if just for fun. As they say, many a truth is spoken in jest!

Let me make three points as context to this invitation:

  • Thank you for your engagement
  • Playing Mantis’s service to you
  • Engaging with what irks you

Thank you for your engagement

In my last Muse Letter, I explained that Playing Mantis was going through some changes and I invited you to have a cup of coffee with me to talk about the topic ‘What do you think of an ethics of artistry? Can such a business make money?’

I had beautiful conversations with Christian Freisleben-Teutscher, Graham Williams, Wilhelm Crous, Katya Ratcliffe, Wendy Cooke, Josh Ramsey, Steve Banhegyi, Bobby Gordon, VasinthaPather, LurindaMaree,and others. I also tip my hat to the Playing Mantis Pig Catchers

ho happily engaged with the questions, as well as many of my students at Wits.

Because of these conversations –

  • Christian and I will launch an online Pig Catching group (for coaches and facilitators who want to change the world for good).
  • Graham, Steve and I have collaborated with a few others to design a leadership retreat for battered bosses.
  • Vasintha and I are talking about a cohort of people like us who use playful methods for serious business.
  • I found someone who can redo my website in response to these changes (please be patient, he works full time and is doing this for me as a favour).
  • Wendy and I have begun to laugh together.

Most importantly, though –

I have a much clearer picture of what Playing Mantis could offer.

Playing Mantis’s service to you

Playing Mantis wants to help thought leaders like you to change the world with the help of Strategic Narrative Embodiment (SNE).

With the Strategic Narrative Embodiment model you will find courage to play spontaneously and passionately, to connect with yourself and the people around you and to transform your everyday life into a force for positive change. And then to do the same for your clients, your team and your community.

Let’s return humanenessto the workplace and transform the world of work into a healthy thriving place where generosity, collaboration and social justice can be a reality!

So, our service has three parts:

  1. Your personal transformational story (strategic narrative) embodied in your own work.
  2. Helping your client find and embody their transformational story.
  3. Creating a community of thought leaders who learn from each other’s stories and collaborate to change the world.

Engaging with what irks you

True, I could cook up a million benefits of SNE if I wished, but who says it would mean anything to you? So, that is why I want to know what it is that irks you.

If you let me see into your frustrations with your own or others’ attempts to change the world, we could find ways to reduce the frustration together.  You could think of it from any [ers[ective that makes sense to you: the one who tries to change something or someone, or the one who is being asked to change.

  1. Set your watch for three minutes.
  2. Rant without stopping.
  3. Mail it to me as is.

Give it as it comes. Be nasty, funny, satirical, ironic or just plain mean–as long as you enjoy the game. I will listen to what you care about and the values that lie beneath the storm. I will feed it back to you just as in the facilitation game ‘The Rant’. It will help us discover what is important to you and address the frustrations together.

By all means, use the game in your practice and see what happens …

If you know the exercise already, tell us what it does for you and your clients.

Bonus facilitation notes for using ‘the rant’:

Sometimes I give two people who really have it in for something a rope to tug at between them. I might also give each member of a group a rolled up newspaper and instruct them to hit a chair with it. I let them imagine their frustration sitting on the chair and motivate them to attack it with as much vehemence as they can muster. Notice, it is not an imagined person on the chair but an imagined issue.

I once did this with a group of health insurance agents from one of our prominent medical aid providers. They had a blast! Then we sat down and recorded all their grievances about their work, along with positive suggestions to management about solutions. The work was productive and meaningful because emotions had been cleared and the things they really cared about were articulated, then heard and seen.

Of course, some people enjoy this exercise and others hate it. They hate it because they see themselves as positive, peace-loving people. Others hate it because they have to work so hard at keeping those emotions down that allowing them to bubble up can be painful. Keep it light and only use props if they seem appropriate.

Back to you

Please set the timer and rant, then mail. I can’t wait to hear from you!!!

OR

Book me to tell a story, design a conference, engage people in your vision.

OR

Simply invite me for a cup of tea.