Recycle, Repurpose, Restart.

Happy Holidays!

The “graduation” theme comes to its culmination with the end of December and the start of the New Year. Finally! There’s a sense of getting our “diplomas” and beginning a life in “the real world”.

This past weekend, I wound up taking a class in “Design Thinking”, and it really encapsulated the themes of 2020 and 2021.

20/20 Hindsight: Gravity Problems + Acceptance

One of the concepts they delved into was this idea of a “gravity problem” — one that you can’t do anything about because it isn’t actionable since it’s a circumstance. Identifying this gravity problem leads to the first step in design thinking: Acceptance. This past year seems to have been a huge exercise in get 20/20 (gah! I couldn’t help myself) clarity on what our gravity problems are as individuals and as a society and undergoing a process of acceptance. Acceptance allows us to finally REFRAME the gravity problem and create a new space wherein we can conceive of other potential realities, identities, trajectories into the future.

It was also a year in which willingly or not, there was a lot of being disabused of our most dysfunctional beliefs — ones that disempower us from co-creating coherent lives that allow us to align “Who am I?” with “What do I believe?” and “What do I do?”

In having to question and reexamine the fundamental structures of our realities that we’ve taken for granted since the last time Saturn was in Capricorn, three decades ago, we are now ready to enter into the new era ushered in by the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction at 0º Aquarius.

2021 Foresight: The Year of Ideating, Prototyping, and Testing

In 2021, especially with Jupiter co-present with Saturn in Aquarius until May and then again from July through the rest of the year, we have the opportunity to prototype the ideas and possibilities that will allow us to create our individuals identities and a society and economy based on meaning-making — by recycling and repurposing what 2020 left behind.

One of the lessons from the class was about decision making models and it imparted some really great advice for how to handle 2021: The human brain can hold 4-7 possible choices in mind at a given time. More choices than that is as good as no choices at all. When confronted with more than 7 choices, eliminate the rest and don’t worry that maybe you let “the one” go. It isn’t about the best decision but making a good decision well. Most importantly, there are no “unemotional” decisions — listen to your gut! To your intuition — which unfortunately, since it’s wired into your basal ganglia, has no access to the lingual centers of your brain.

We often confuse articulation with intelligence and discount our “gut” feelings because we just can’t explain “how” we know something; BUT THAT IS THE ANTI! That’s tantamount to throwing out our emotional system of wisdom. Listen to the unarticulated KNOWING and allow it to inform your actions…Making a good decision well involves synthesizing our IQ and EQ…and then LETTING GO and MOVING ON.

2021 is committing to making decisions, trying them out, and moving forward incrementally and steadily.

Happy New Year! Happy New Era!