Three Paths!

Multiple routes to the blue zone

If we recognise that operating in the blue zone is where we want young people to be when they leave school and modelling their behaviour on the behaviour of adults is such a large part of young people learning how to become adult, then this leads clearly to the need for adults in school to move to operating exclusively in the blue zone as well.

There are three paths to take.

Personal practices, help rewire our own plastic brains to as to operate more and more in the blue zone. This means practicing the use of sustained attention to trigger the global view and allow new experiences and ideas to flow into our brains without triggering the local view and its immediate desire to compare and categorise. It means meditating to quieten down the red zone, it means being mindful.

One-to-one practices, explicitly use sustained attention combined with a complete focus on the well-being of the other – kindness, a desire to improve their happiness, and compassion, a desire to remove their suffering. Neither of these desires, however, are associated with the urge to rescue or otherwise take on the other person’s issues or suffering. It is the acceptance of the other as they are that helps to build their courage, whereas rescuing will do nothing, or at least nothing permanent for their well-being.

Team practices, create the environment for people to be engaged in meaningful work with others and, as we see that people care, and that they can be relied upon to do good work we operate more and more in the blue zone – we operate collaboratively.

This will be the last blog for 2016. Back again mid-January 2017.