Deed – Effectiveness: Part Two

Adapt to reality fluidly – Fluidity.

Modeling to acting – the reality.

Think of your awareness as a model of reality you carry around in your head. The more accurate your model (i.e. the closer it correlates to reality) the more useful it is to you. As discussed in the last post you act on your awareness. When the model does not correlate to reality you are acting on a faulty awareness.

Anytime you act on your awareness you need to be prepared to adapt. You may think you know what you want, you may think you know relevant current reality, you may think you know what it will take to achieve your goal. Until you act what you know is limited. Physically interacting with reality will give you knowledge you can get no other way. And this knowledge is much more useful than any limited model you have created.

You: scientist at large.

Consider yourself a scientist. You have developed an hypothesis (i.e. your awareness) and now you are conducting an experiment to determine if your hypothesis is correct (i.e. you act on your awareness). If your experiment suggests your hypothesis needs to be amended you can respond one of two ways: you can continue trying to support a faulty hypothesis or you can amend it to reflect the results.

The old adage “if at first you don’t succeed try, try again” is good advice only if you don’t take it literally. You must try again in different ways. Doing something that doesn’t work over and over again will not make it work any better. Persistence combined with intelligence is the order of the day.

Quick like spaghetti?

The quicker you are able to adapt your approach the quicker you will be effective in your actions. That is why I use the word fluidity. Water changes its shape to accommodate any vessel into which it is poured, instantly. (Another image just came to mind. Picture a handful of hard, uncooked spaghetti. Imagine trying to stuff that into a tea pot so that you could close the lid. The spaghetti would break. If the spaghetti was boiled adequately it would easily be flexible enough to accomplish that. But the phrase “Adapt to reality like boiled spaghetti – Boiled Spaghettiness” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Your choice, though. I’m sticking with Fluidity.)

As soon as you are aware that what you are doing is not yielding the result you want do something else. Allow the situation itself to suggest a better course of action.

Adapt where needed.

It may not even be the action that you need to adapt. This principle can affect any of the others. You may find out you don’t want what you thought you wanted. Something you learn may change how honest you realize you are being. You may change your mind on being consistent with your word because the circumstances were not what they at first appeared. Perhaps, knowing what you now know, you can’t continue because it’s not consistent with your Self-Identity.

Acting on your awareness is the fastest way to learn. By adapting to reality fluidly you demonstrate that the learning is having an impact.