Understanding the truth about context

Unless you are a newborn baby, you have context. It's not my context, it's a very personal point in your life that you are at. It is formed from all your past experiences and even from how others reacted to those experiences. All these thousands of little experiences (and perhaps some very big ones) have created something that can be a real curse or a real blessing. You have a filter you view the world through.

Now it can be a real curse because we are all at different places in our lives. We have perhaps come to some incorrect or very negative conclusions, all of which get added to our filtered perceptions. So it could compound each next event negatively. These events could be as small as being cut off in traffic or spilling some coffee. It could be as big as losing a big deal or having to shut down a company you put blood into for the past few years. Now, these are certainly very negative but could be compounded in your mind into something even worse, like depression or just giving up.

The blessing can come from using these experiences to learn and to support others in their journey. This can only come when you truly grasp two things, firstly, every person on the planet are on their own very different personal journey. Secondly, don't expect people to "just-understand" because you do, you may have spent a lot of time and have hundreds of experiences to build up to an answer that makes sense. If you can accept that, the real unbias understanding that the other person is in a different place than you then you may guide them along a path of understanding. Some people may trust and respect you and take your wisdom at face value, but often those people will also be the ones to fail again in the same way later as they cheated the answer from you without understanding how you got there.

Now this will start as an academic exercise of reading these words, but the next step is for you to start examining your own life and the different interactions you have with the people around you. I can't give you a formula to apply, I'm just pointing out a few landmarks on the landscape.

So where does this leave us?

Well, as I said, it leaves us on our journey, our very personal unique journey. No one will climb a mountain in exactly the same steps. You can show them your footprints but don't expect them to step each step the same. Just remember, a company, a family, a group of friends or even a club are all made up of people. Individuals. Together they represent something, they should have common goals and hopefully the same passion to reach those goals. But it all comes down to people.