- Time of past OR future Camino
- 2023
Sometimes, like in this (closed) thread 'Let's Start A Pilgrim's Albergue in Santiago de Compostela!' https://www.caminodesantiago.me/com...rims-albergue-in-santiago-de-compostela.61752/
by @Daniel Beaumont people come up with good ideas that quickly get shot down on the forum and sometimes, as a result, the original poster leaves as suggested in this conversation between @henrythedog and @alexwalker Post in thread 'Let's Start A Pilgrim's Albergue in Santiago de Compostela!' https://www.caminodesantiago.me/com...-in-santiago-de-compostela.61752/post-1104954
Now sometimes the initial criticism is people who disagree with the idea and want to suppress it but, fortunately, this doesn't happen too often here. I suspect that more often it is people commenting while in "Problem Solver" mode. Let me explain.
I am a problem solver and I am very good at that (as are some others btw) but sometimes I get so into solving problems that I start operating automatically and soon the world about me starts to occur as a continuous stream of problems that need solving. This has some major downsides because that isn't how the world occurs for others.
This was bought home to me very powerfully some years ago when one of my daughters came to me very happy and excited to tell me about this fabulous new idea that she had. I started commenting on her idea and as I spoke I could see her excited face crumple as I spoke. Fortunately, I caught myself, stopped commenting on her idea and asked her what was wrong. She said "you are always critical, why can't you believe in someone else's ideas?"
I thought about this for a moment and to be honest I was taken aback because I didn't think that I was being critical but then putting myself in her place I could see that she would think that my comments were critical. I apologised to her and asked her to explain her idea to me and I concentrated on just listening to her.
After we had finished discussing her idea I explained to her two related things. The first thing was that the opposite of love isn't hate, it is indifference and similarly the significance of an idea is not measured by the number of supportive comments vs critical comments but by the total number of any comments because who can be bothered commenting on something that you are indifferent to? I then explained that I am a problem solver and so my automatic way of behaving when I come across an idea that I am interested in is to first work out why it might not work so that I can then find a way of getting the idea to work. I asked her to keep this in mind and whenever she found me to be critical then she should point this out to me so that I stop being an automatic problem solver but remain able to solve problems when this is needed.
I suspect that there are lots of problem solvers on this forum and that sometimes us problem solvers need reminding that we should hold off being critical of new ideas until there is enough support for an idea that it can survive a little criticism.
BTW, I am interested in problem solving as an area of research and I have come across one method for solving certain hard problems.
Some problems (or projects if you like) are inherently difficult for one person to complete. As an example, Barry Brickell OBE was a Kiwi potter and conservationist, (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Brickell). Barry had an idea one day, his idea was that he wanted to create a Kauri forest for the children of Aotearoa where they could experience what it was like to be in a native forest before there were mammalian predators in this land (as told to me in direct conversation).
We need to know something about Kauri forests to see the inherent difficulty in this idea. Kauri trees (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agathis_australis) take hundreds of years to grow to maturity and a Kauri forest may well take a thousand years to properly establish. Us mere individual humans, including Barry, would be long dead before this project completes.
Barry knew that he needed two things for this idea to come to fruit. Firstly he needed to express his idea in such a compelling manner that some people, on hearing his idea, would want to step in and say, "what a really neat idea, what can I do to help?" Secondly, he needed to create an environment around his idea that would act as a conduit to bring people to the place where he was creating the forest so that they could hear this compelling message and choose to step in to help and to carry on this idea after Barry's death. This environment also needed to be self sustaining financially.
Being a potter himself, Barry's first action was to create an artists community on his land where creative people could come for a residency. This started drawing people onto the property, then as he started planting trees on the steep hills of the property, with the help of the resident artists and creatives he needed a way to get water up to the top of the hills so that he could water his seedlings until they were established enough to survive on their own. Here, Barry was brilliant. Instead of building a boring old network of pipes and pumping the water up Barry decided to build a miniature railway track and train and so was born The Driving Creek Railway (https://drivingcreek.nz/?gclid=CjwK...HCNBbaY6pDQv0ip6uLZwdUCXlpNh1m6RoCME8QAvD_BwE) now a major tourist attraction on the Coromandel peninsula. This attraction brings thousands of people to the property and when they come they hear Barry's story about his idea for creating an original Kauri forest for Kiwi kids and every now and then one of these visitors steps forward and says "Wow, what a neat idea, how can I help?"
Perhaps a note for people wanting to share a new idea, try to be a bit like Barry and express your idea in a way that others might see a place for themselves in your idea.
Buen Camino!
by @Daniel Beaumont people come up with good ideas that quickly get shot down on the forum and sometimes, as a result, the original poster leaves as suggested in this conversation between @henrythedog and @alexwalker Post in thread 'Let's Start A Pilgrim's Albergue in Santiago de Compostela!' https://www.caminodesantiago.me/com...-in-santiago-de-compostela.61752/post-1104954
Now sometimes the initial criticism is people who disagree with the idea and want to suppress it but, fortunately, this doesn't happen too often here. I suspect that more often it is people commenting while in "Problem Solver" mode. Let me explain.
I am a problem solver and I am very good at that (as are some others btw) but sometimes I get so into solving problems that I start operating automatically and soon the world about me starts to occur as a continuous stream of problems that need solving. This has some major downsides because that isn't how the world occurs for others.
This was bought home to me very powerfully some years ago when one of my daughters came to me very happy and excited to tell me about this fabulous new idea that she had. I started commenting on her idea and as I spoke I could see her excited face crumple as I spoke. Fortunately, I caught myself, stopped commenting on her idea and asked her what was wrong. She said "you are always critical, why can't you believe in someone else's ideas?"
I thought about this for a moment and to be honest I was taken aback because I didn't think that I was being critical but then putting myself in her place I could see that she would think that my comments were critical. I apologised to her and asked her to explain her idea to me and I concentrated on just listening to her.
After we had finished discussing her idea I explained to her two related things. The first thing was that the opposite of love isn't hate, it is indifference and similarly the significance of an idea is not measured by the number of supportive comments vs critical comments but by the total number of any comments because who can be bothered commenting on something that you are indifferent to? I then explained that I am a problem solver and so my automatic way of behaving when I come across an idea that I am interested in is to first work out why it might not work so that I can then find a way of getting the idea to work. I asked her to keep this in mind and whenever she found me to be critical then she should point this out to me so that I stop being an automatic problem solver but remain able to solve problems when this is needed.
I suspect that there are lots of problem solvers on this forum and that sometimes us problem solvers need reminding that we should hold off being critical of new ideas until there is enough support for an idea that it can survive a little criticism.
BTW, I am interested in problem solving as an area of research and I have come across one method for solving certain hard problems.
Some problems (or projects if you like) are inherently difficult for one person to complete. As an example, Barry Brickell OBE was a Kiwi potter and conservationist, (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Brickell). Barry had an idea one day, his idea was that he wanted to create a Kauri forest for the children of Aotearoa where they could experience what it was like to be in a native forest before there were mammalian predators in this land (as told to me in direct conversation).
We need to know something about Kauri forests to see the inherent difficulty in this idea. Kauri trees (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agathis_australis) take hundreds of years to grow to maturity and a Kauri forest may well take a thousand years to properly establish. Us mere individual humans, including Barry, would be long dead before this project completes.
Barry knew that he needed two things for this idea to come to fruit. Firstly he needed to express his idea in such a compelling manner that some people, on hearing his idea, would want to step in and say, "what a really neat idea, what can I do to help?" Secondly, he needed to create an environment around his idea that would act as a conduit to bring people to the place where he was creating the forest so that they could hear this compelling message and choose to step in to help and to carry on this idea after Barry's death. This environment also needed to be self sustaining financially.
Being a potter himself, Barry's first action was to create an artists community on his land where creative people could come for a residency. This started drawing people onto the property, then as he started planting trees on the steep hills of the property, with the help of the resident artists and creatives he needed a way to get water up to the top of the hills so that he could water his seedlings until they were established enough to survive on their own. Here, Barry was brilliant. Instead of building a boring old network of pipes and pumping the water up Barry decided to build a miniature railway track and train and so was born The Driving Creek Railway (https://drivingcreek.nz/?gclid=CjwK...HCNBbaY6pDQv0ip6uLZwdUCXlpNh1m6RoCME8QAvD_BwE) now a major tourist attraction on the Coromandel peninsula. This attraction brings thousands of people to the property and when they come they hear Barry's story about his idea for creating an original Kauri forest for Kiwi kids and every now and then one of these visitors steps forward and says "Wow, what a neat idea, how can I help?"
Perhaps a note for people wanting to share a new idea, try to be a bit like Barry and express your idea in a way that others might see a place for themselves in your idea.
Buen Camino!
