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find it!
""When we are mildly excited, we
may feel curious or alert. As our excitement increases, words like focused or courageous may be an appropriate answer to our "What am I feeling?" question. Intense excitement may make us feel bold, powerful, strong or even invincible. When a person is filled with excitement, we say they are passionate.""


Excitement & Certainty
Can
excitement & certainty go hand in hand?
Our lives are often a quest
for excitement. Yet, they're also a quest for certainty. Can these 2 go together?
Isn't certainty the very antithesis
of excitement? By seeking certainty, are we ensuring monotony & boredom?
In our quest for certainty,
are we depriving ourselves of the excitement of welcoming the unknown?
Can a repetition, a certainty,
have a quality of excitement that's brought about by uncertainty & the unknown?
We seek certainty because
we fear the uncertain & the unknown. Our anxiety for our own survival & security makes us seek certainty. Yet, the
fact is that life is an unfolding of the unknown. As we live, we're constantly called upon to encounter uncertainty & the unknown.
Life is an unfolding of the
unknown amidst varying degrees of uncertainty. In this uncertainty is the excitement of seeking to receive & adapt, seeking to cope & understand, seeking to survive & overcome.
By seeking & ensuring
certainty, by setting up predictable patterns of thought & action, are we putting an end to the excitement of living spontaneously?
Are we setting ourselves up
for lives filled with monotony & boredom? Can a life driven by fear & defensiveness be exciting? What is excitement? What's certainty?

Excitement
makes life worth living along with pleasure, challenge, love, joy, peace & contentment.
The presence of peace & stability doesn't imply the end of excitement. To me, excitement
is the unfolding of the new, the thrill & exhilaration of discovery.
To feel
excitement, one needs to participate in a process of discovery. If we've built our lives on predictable patterns, if we've allowed our needs for survival & security to dominate our lives, we've reduced life
to a predictable sequence of events & circumstances.
In the certainty of predictable
patterns, however grand, there's no joy of discovery & therefore, no excitement. The thrill of discovery is the joy of excitement. There's an air of anticipation & uncertainty.
This is seen most clearly
in little children. For a young child, every moment is a process of discovery, filled with excitement
& joy. Even predictable & oft repeated games can bring excitement to a child because he meets
every moment anew.
Therefore, it's not merely
repetition that spells the end of excitement. Our inability to die to the previous moment,
our tendency to live with the accumulated impressions of the past makes our lives burdensome & repetitive.
When we see the present moment thru the lens of past conditioning, we fall into repetitive patterns that bring monotony & boredom. A recycling of our past impressions isn't a process of discovery. Without discovery, how can there be excitement?
Our need for certainty is a survival response of an anxious child. A stable adult learns to live with the fact of uncertainty. Uncertainty is a fact of life. Our willingness to face facts also means a willingness to face uncertainty.

This means that life is forever
dynamic & we're constantly called upon to meet its challenges in various ways. This doesn't call for exceptional courage or creativity. However, it calls for a constant emptying of ourselves.
By emptying ourselves, we surrender past impressions & images; we die to the previous moment & live each moment anew. By keeping
our mind empty of images & notions, we're totally receptive to life as it unfolds in the present moment.
In this total attention &
receptivity to the present moment is the continuing joy of discovery. This discovery includes the joy of discovering ourselves.
Therefore, the unfolding of
life is also the unfolding of our own awareness; our life in the world is a meeting with our deepest self.
By an inexplicable law of
universal synchronicity, we encounter circumstances necessary for our continuing progress on the journey of discovery.
We may not get what we want
but we always get what we need. This means that judgment & labelling as good & bad are merely conveniences for daily living. In an absolute sense,
labels like good & bad are absurd.
Every circumstance of our
life can be a discovery, a process of learning & in this discovery is joy & excitement. In this sense, the art of living is the art of being a child, unconditioned
& spontaneous.
Our need for certainty expresses our need for survival & security. We can seek conditions that favor or promote
our survival & security. Yet, life is full of surprises & absolute
certainty of either survival or security
can be elusive.
Therefore, no matter how well
placed we are in terms of our own survival & security, the future
is still uncertain & it's unknown. Therefore, the opportunity for discovery is forever present. So is the opportunity for self-discovery.
If we seek to lead meaningful
lives, we can't deny reality; we must embrace the facts of life as they are. That the future is uncertain & unknown is a fact of life. In fully embracing this fact, we honor reality & thereby our own awareness.
For each of us, if we're willing
to let go of the past & future & remain centered in the present moment, life is a process of discovery. The journey of life is simultaneously the inner journey of self-discovery.
If we're receptive to each step, endless joy, excitement & ecstasy await us; we discover an unbounded awareness completely free from conditioning as the very essence of our being, as our own deepest self.
© Ashok Gollerkeri



Stability Vs. Excitement
by Christine Kniffen, LCSW
What are you really looking for in a relationship? What do most people really want from a healthy partnership? Stability is what most people want whether they know it or not.
Many things in life are unpredictable. Therefore,
it's essential that we create some sense of stability somewhere in our lives. This
is exactly what we need from a relationship. Sure, there are no guarantees that it'll last, but you don’t
need to be in a relationship that constantly adds to the world’s unpredictability.
Have you heard anyone say, “he was nice, polite, has a good job, seems stable…but I’m just
not attracted to him…he’s not very exciting”?
If you need exciting, then why don’t you take up bungee jumping?
This is your life & you need to create your own excitement. It's not the
responsibility of your partner to entertain you because you don't know how to do it yourself.
This is the type of pressure that often drives a relationship apart. If you're not comfortable in your own skin & do know how to rejuvenate your self with things that bring you peace & joy & excitement….then you'll never be satisfied
in any relationship.

Until you solve these things for yourself you'll always have unrealistic expectations, putting unnecessary pressure on the relationship… to give you what you can't give yourself.
In a stable relationship you have plenty of energy to work on you. In a roller coaster relationship…your emotions are on overload & there's nothing left in the reserve tank.
Many
people in long-term relationships will describe themselves as good companions. However, they too weren't entirely
comfortable with that word in the beginning.
Have you ever met the couple that almost sounds apologetic for having a stable relationship? They'll often say things such as, “I
guess we're pretty boring…we like to stay at home a have good friends over.”
However, as time passes they become grateful for this “boring stability,” as they continue to hear horror stories from their friends cycling in & out of bad relationships.
Most people are looking for companionship on some level. We all want a best friend to talk with & someone to wake up next to. This
stable companionship is at the core of most good, solid relationships.
A relationship with a stable foundation can whether many of the storms that
life throws us. If you need excitement, then create it for yourself. Be
thankful if you have a “boring, stable” relationship. After all you just may still have it this time next year.
Christine Kniffen, LCSW is a Relationship Coach and Therapist.
What Makes Teens Tick?
By CLAUDIA WALLIS, TIME
Can Science Explain What Makes Adolescence
So Exciting – and Exasperating?
Five young men in sneakers & jeans troop into a waiting room at the National Institutes of Health Clinical
Center in Bethesda, Md. & drape themselves all over the chairs in classic collapsed -teenager mode, trailing backpacks,
a CD player & a laptop loaded with computer games.
It's midafternoon & they are, of course, tired, but even so their presence adds a jangly, hormonal buzz
to the bland, institutional setting. Fair-haired twins Corey & Skyler Mann, 16 & their burlier big brothers Anthony
& Brandon, 18, who are also twins, plus eldest brother Christopher, 22, are here to have their heads examined. Literally.
The five brothers from Orem, Utah, are the latest recruits to a giant study that's been going on in this building
since 1991.
Its goal: to determine how the brain develops from childhood into adolescence & on into early adulthood.
It's the
project of Dr. Jay Giedd (pronounced Geed), chief of brain imaging in the child psychiatry
branch at the National Institute of Mental Health. Giedd, 43, has devoted the past 13 years to peering inside the heads of 1,800 kids & teenagers using high-powered magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI).
For each volunteer, he creates a unique photo album, taking MRI snapshots every 2 years & building a record as the brain morphs &
grows. Giedd started out investigating the developmental origins of attention-deficit / hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) &
autism ("I was going alphabetically," he jokes) but soon discovered that so little was known
about how the brain is supposed to develop that it was impossible to figure out where things might be going wrong.
In a way,
the vast project that has become his life's work is nothing more than an attempt to establish a gigantic control group. "It
turned out that normal brains were so interesting in themselves," he marvels.
"And the adolescent studies have
been the most surprising of all."
Before the
imaging studies by Giedd & his collaborators at UCLA, Harvard, the Montreal Neurological Institute & a dozen other
institutions, most scientists believed the brain was largely a finished product by the time a child reached the age of 12.
Not only
is it full-grown in size, Giedd explains, but "in a lot of psychological literature, traced back to [Swiss
psychologist Jean] Piaget, the highest rung in the ladder of cognitive development was about age 12 - formal operations."
In the past,
children entered initiation rites & started learning trades at about the onset of puberty. Some theorists concluded from
this that the idea of adolescence was an artificial construct, a phenomenon invented in the post–Industrial Revolution
years.
Giedd's
scanning studies proved what every parent of a teenager knows: not only is the brain of the adolescent far from mature, but
both gray & white matter undergo extensive structural changes well past puberty.
"When we
started," says Giedd, "we thought we'd follow kids until about 18 or 20. If we had to pick a number now, we'd probably go to age 25."
Now that
MRI studies have cracked open a window on the developing brain, researchers are looking at how the newly detected physiological
changes might account for the adolescent behaviors so familiar to parents:
Some experts
believe the structural changes seen at adolescence may explain the timing of such major mental illnesses as schizophrenia & bipolar disorder.
These diseases
typically begin in adolescence & contribute to the high rate of teen suicide. Increasingly, the wild conduct once blamed on "raging hormones" is being seen as the by-product of 2 factors:
-
a surfeit of hormones, yes, but also a paucity
of the cognitive controls needed for mature behavior.
In recent years,
Giedd has shifted his focus to twins, which is why the Manns are such exciting recruits.
Although most brain development seems to follow a set plan, with changes following cues that are preprogrammed into genes, other, subtler changes in gray matter reflect experience
& environment.
By following twins,
who start out with identical - or, in fraternal twins, similar - programming but then diverge as life takes them on different
paths, he hopes to tease apart the influences of nature & nurture.
Ultimately,
he hopes to find, e.g., that Anthony Mann's plan to become a pilot & Brandon's to study law will lead to brain differences that are detectable on future MRIs. The brain,
more than any other organ, is where experience becomes flesh.
Throughout the
afternoon, the Mann brothers take turns completing tests of intelligence & cognitive function. Between sessions
they occasionally needle one another in the waiting room.
"If the
other person is in a bad mood, you've got to provoke it," Anthony asserts slyly. Their mother Nancy Mann, a sunny paragon
of patience who has 3 daughters in addition to the 5 boys, smiles & rolls her eyes.
Shortly
before 5 p.m., the Manns head downstairs to the imaging floor to meet the magnet. Giedd, a trim, energetic man with a reddish
beard, twinkly blue eyes & an impish sense of humor, greets Anthony & tells him what to expect.
He asks
Anthony to remove his watch, his necklace & a high school ring, labeled keeper. Does Anthony have any metal in his body?
Any piercings? Not this clean-cut, soccer-playing Mormon. Giedd tapes a vitamin E capsule onto Anthony's left cheek &
one in each ear. He explains that the oil-filled capsules are opaque to the scanner & will define a plane on the images,
as well as help researchers tell left from right.
The scanning
will take about 15 minutes, during which Anthony must lie completely still. Dressed in a red sweat shirt, jeans & white
K-Swiss sneakers, he stretches out on the examining table & slides his head into the machine's giant magnetic ring.
MRI, Giedd
points out, "made studying healthy kids possible" because there's no radiation involved. (Before
MRI, brain development was studied mostly by using cadavers.) Each of the Mann boys will be scanned 3 times.
The first scan
is a quick survey that lasts 1 minute. The second lasts 2 minutes & looks for any damage or abnormality. The third is
10 minutes long & taken at maximum resolution. It's the money shot.
Giedd watches
as Anthony's brain appears in cross section on a computer screen. The machine scans 124 slices, each as thin as a dime. It
will take 20 hours of computer time to process the images, but the analysis is done by humans, says Giedd. "The human brain
is still the best at pattern recognition," he marvels.
Some people
get nervous as the MRI machine clangs noisily. Claustrophobes panic. Anthony, lying still in the soul of the machine, simply falls asleep.
CONSTRUCTION
AHEAD One reason scientists have been surprised by the ferment in the teenage
brain is that the brain grows very little over the course of childhood.
By
the time a child is 6, it's 90% to 95% of its adult size. As a matter of fact, we're born equipped with most of the
neurons our brain will ever have - & that's fewer than we have in utero.
Humans
achieve their maximum brain-cell density between the 3rd & 6th month of gestation - the culmination of an explosive period
of prenatal neural growth.
During
the final months before birth, our brains undergo a dramatic pruning in which unnecessary brain cells are eliminated. Many
neuroscientists now believe that autism is the result of insufficient or abnormal prenatal pruning.
What Giedd's
long-term studies have documented is that there's a second wave of proliferation & pruning that occurs later in childhood
& that the final, critical part of this second wave, affecting some of our highest mental functions, occurs in the late
teens.
Unlike the prenatal
changes, this neural waxing & waning alters not the number of nerve cells but the number of connections, or synapses,
between them. When a child is between the ages of 6 & 12, the neurons grow bushier, each making dozens of connections
to other neurons & creating new pathways for nerve signals.
The thickening
of all this gray matter - the neurons & their branchlike dendrites - peaks when girls are about 11 & boys 12˝, at
which point a serious round of pruning is under way.
Gray matter is thinned out at a rate of about 0.7% a year, tapering off in the early 20's. At the same time, the brain's white
matter thickens. The white matter is composed of fatty myelin sheaths that encase axons & like insulation on a wire, make
nerve-signal transmissions faster & more efficient.
With each
passing year (maybe even up to age 40) myelin sheaths thicken, much like tree rings. During adolescence, says Giedd, summing up the process, "you get fewer but faster connections in the
brain."
The brain
becomes a more efficient machine, but there's a trade-off: it's probably losing some of its raw potential for learning &
its ability to recover from trauma.
Most scientists
believe that the pruning is guided both by genetics & by a use-it-or-lose-it principle. Nobel prizewinning neuroscientist
Gerald Edelman has described that process as "neural Darwinism" - survival of the fittest (or most
used) synapses.
How you
spend your time may be critical. Research shows, e.g., that practicing piano quickly thickens neurons in the brain regions that control the fingers.
Studies
of London cab drivers, who must memorize all the city's streets, show that they have an unusually large hippocampus, a structure involved in memory. Giedd's research suggests that the cerebellum, an area that coordinates both physical & mental activities, is particularly responsive to experience, but he warns that
it's too soon to know just what drives the buildup & pruning phases.
He's hoping his studies of twins will help answer such questions: "We're looking at what they eat, how they spend their time - is
it video games or sports? Now the fun begins," he says.
No matter
how a particular brain turns out, its development proceeds in stages, generally from back to front. Some of the brain regions
that reach maturity earliest - thru proliferation & pruning - are those in the back of the brain that mediate direct contact
with the environment by controlling such sensory functions as vision, hearing, touch & spatial processing.
Next are areas
that coordinate those functions: the part of the brain that helps you know where the light switch is in your bathroom
even if you can't see it in the middle of the night.
The very last part
of the brain to be pruned & shaped to its adult dimensions is the prefrontal cortex, home of the so-called executive
functions - planning, setting priorities, organizing thoughts, suppressing impulses, weighing the consequences of one's actions.
In other words,
the final part of the brain to grow up is the part capable of deciding, I'll finish my homework & take out the garbage & then I'll IM my friends about seeing a movie.
"Scientists
& the general public had attributed the bad decisions teens make to hormonal changes,"
says Elizabeth Sowell, a UCLA neuroscientist who has done seminal MRI work on the developing brain.
"But once
we started mapping where & when the brain changes were happening, we could say, Aha, the part of the brain that makes
teenagers more responsible isn't finished maturing yet."
RAGING HORMONES Hormones, however, remain an important part of the teen-brain story. Right about the time the brain switches from proliferating to pruning, the body comes under
the hormonal assault of puberty. (Research suggests that the 2 events aren't closely linked because
brain development proceeds on schedule even when a child experiences early or late puberty.)
For
years, psychologists attributed the intense, combustible emotions & unpredictable behavior of teens to this biochemical onslaught. And new research adds fresh support. At puberty, the
ovaries & testes begin to pour estrogen & testosterone into the bloodstream, spurring the development of the reproductive
system, causing hair to sprout in the armpits & groin, wreaking havoc with the skin & shaping the body to its adult
contours.
At
the same time, testosterone-like hormones released by the adrenal glands, located near the kidneys, begin to circulate.
Recent discoveries show that these adrenal sex hormones are extremely active in the brain, attaching to receptors everywhere
& exerting a direct influence on serotonin & other neurochemicals that regulate mood & excitability.
The sex
hormones are especially active in the brain's emotional center - the limbic system. This creates a "tinderbox of emotions," says Dr. Ronald Dahl, a psychiatrist at the Univ. of Pittsburgh.
Not only
do feelings reach a flash point more easily, but adolescents tend to seek out situations where they can allow their emotions & passions to run wild.
"Adolescents
are actively looking for experiences to create intense feelings," says Dahl. "It's a very important hint that there's some particular hormone-brain relationship contributing to the appetite
for thrills, strong sensations & excitement."
This thrill
seeking may have evolved to promote exploration, an eagerness to leave the nest & seek one's own path & partner. But in a world where fast cars, illicit drugs, gangs & dangerous
liaisons beckon, it also puts the teenager at risk.
That's especially
so because the brain regions that put the brakes on risky, impulsive behavior are still under construction. "The parts of the brain responsible for things like sensation seeking are getting turned on
in big ways around the time of puberty," says Temple Univ. psychologist Laurence Steinberg.
"But the
parts for exercising judgment are still maturing throughout the course of adolescence. So you've got this time gap between when things impel kids toward
taking risks early in adolescence & when things that allow people to think before they act come online. It's like turning on the engine of a car without a skilled driver at the wheel."
DUMB DECISIONS Increasingly, psychologists like Steinberg are trying to connect the familiar patterns of adolescents' wacky behavior to the new findings about their evolving brain structure.
It's
not always easy to do. "In all likelihood, the behavior is changing because the brain is changing," he says. "But that's still a bit of a leap." A critical tool in making that leap is functional
magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). While ordinary MRI reveals brain structure, FMRI actually shows brain activity while subjects
are doing assigned tasks.
At McLean
Hospital in Belmont, Mass., Harvard neuropsychologist Deborah Yurgelun-Todd did an elegant series of FMRI experiments in which
both kids & adults were asked to identity the emotions displayed in photographs of faces.
"In doing
these tasks," she says, "kids & young adolescents rely heavily on the amygdala, a structure in the temporal lobes associated with emotional & gut reactions. Adults rely less on the amygdala & more on the frontal lobe, a region associated with planning & judgment."
While adults
make few errors in assessing the photos, kids under 14 tend to make mistakes. In particular, they identify fearful expressions as angry, confused or sad. By following the same kids year after year, Yurgelun-Todd has been able to watch their
brain-activity pattern - & their judgment - mature.
Fledgling
physiology, she believes, may explain why adolescents so frequently misread emotional signals, seeing anger & hostility where none exists. Teenage ranting ("That teacher hates me!") can be better understood in this light.
At Temple
Univ., Steinberg has been studying another kind of judgment: risk assessment.
In an experiment
using a driving-simulation game, he studies teens & adults as they decide whether to run a yellow light. Both sets of
subjects, he found, make safe choices when playing alone. But in group play, teenagers start to
take more risks in the presence of their friends, while those over age 20 don't show much change in their behavior.
"With this
manipulation," says Steinberg, "we've shown that age differences in decision making & judgment may
appear under conditions that are emotionally arousing or have high social impact." Most teen crimes, he says, are committed
by kids in packs.
Other researchers
are exploring how the adolescent propensity for uninhibited risk taking propels teens to experiment with drugs & alcohol. Traditionally, psychologists have attributed this experimentation to peer pressure, teenagers' attraction to novelty & their roaring interest in loosening sexual inhibitions.
But researchers
have raised the possibility that rapid changes in dopamine-rich areas of the brain may be an additional factor in making teens
vulnerable to the stimulating & addictive effects of drugs & alcohol. Dopamine, the brain chemical involved in motivation & in reinforcing behavior, is particularly abundant & active in the teen
years.
Why is it
so hard to get a teenager off the couch & working on that all important college essay? You might blame it on their immature nucleus accumbens, a region in the frontal cortex that directs motivation to seek rewards.
James Bjork
at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism has been using FMRI to study motivation in a challenging gambling game. He found that teenagers have less activity in this region than adults do.
"If adolescents
have a motivational deficit, it may mean that they're prone to engaging in behaviors that have either a really high excitement
factor or a really low effort factor, or a combination of both." Sound familiar?
Bjork believes his work may hold valuable lessons for parents & society. "When presenting suggestions, anything
parents can do to emphasize more immediate payoffs will be more effective," he says. To persuade a teen to quit drinking,
e.g., he suggests stressing something immediate & tangible - the danger of getting kicked off the football team, say -
rather than a future on skid row.
Persuading
a teenager to go to bed & get up on a reasonable schedule is another matter entirely. This kind of decision making has
less to do with the frontal lobe than with the pineal gland at the base of the brain. As nighttime approaches & daylight
recedes, the pineal gland produces melatonin, a chemical that signals the body to begin shutting down for sleep.
Studies
by Mary Carskadon at Brown Univ. have shown that it takes longer for melatonin levels to rise in teenagers than in younger kids or in adults, regardless of exposure to light or stimulating activities.
"The brain's program for starting nighttime is later," she explains.
PRUNING
PROBLEMS The new discoveries about teenage brain development have prompted all sorts of questions & theories
about the timing of childhood mental illness & cognitive disorders. Some scientists now believe that ADHD & Tourette's syndrome, which typically appear by the time a child reaches age 7, may be related to the brain
proliferation period.
Though
both disorders have genetic roots, the rapid growth of brain tissue in early childhood, especially in regions rich in dopamine, "may set the stage for the increase in motor activities & tics," says Dr. Martin Teicher, director of developmental
biopsychiatry research at McLean Hospital. "When it starts to prune in adolescence, you often see symptoms recede."
Schizophrenia, on the other hand, makes its appearance at about the time the prefrontal cortex is getting pruned. "Many people have speculated
that schizophrenia may be due to an abnormality in the pruning process," says Teicher. "Another hypothesis is that schizophrenia
has a much earlier, prenatal origin, but as the brain prunes, it gets unmasked." MRI studies have shown that while the average
teenager loses about 15% of his cortical gray matter, those who develop schizophrenia lose as much as 25%.
WHAT'S
A PARENT TO DO? Brain scientists tend to be reluctant to make the leap from
the laboratory to real-life, hard-core teenagers. Some feel a little burned by the way earlier neurological discoveries resulted
in Baby Einstein tapes & other marketing schemes that misapplied their science. It is clear, however, that there are implications
in the new research for parents, educators and lawmakers.
In light of what
has been learned, it seems almost arbitrary that our society has decided that a young American is ready to:
Giedd says
the best estimate for when the brain is truly mature is 25, the age at which you can rent a car. "Avis must have some pretty
sophisticated neuroscientists," he jokes.
Now that
we have scientific evidence that the adolescent brain is not quite up to scratch, some legal scholars & child advocates
argue that minors should never be tried as adults & should be spared the death penalty.
Last year,
in an official statement that summarized current research on the adolescent brain, the American Bar Association urged all
state legislatures to ban the death penalty for juveniles. "For social & biological reasons," it read, "teens have increased
difficulty making mature decisions & understanding the consequences of their actions."
Most parents,
of course, know this instinctively. Still, it's useful to learn that teenage behavior isn't just a matter of willful pigheadedness
or determination to drive you crazy - though these, too, can be factors.
"There's
a debate over how much conscious control kids have," says Giedd, who has 4 "teenagers in training" of his own. "You can tell them to shape up or ship out, but making
mistakes is part of how the brain optimally grows."
It might
be more useful to help them make up for what their brain still lacks by providing structure, organizing their time, guiding
them thru tough decisions (even when they resist) & applying those time-tested parental
virtues:
—With reporting by Alice Park/New York
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November 2000
SPECIAL FEATURE
Ignorance Adds Excitement?
David J. Skyrme
This was the theme of BBC
Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day' on the morning after the US Presidential Elections (around midnight
West Coast time).
The speaker commented that
if people knew the result of the election beforehand (do we now??) they might not bother
to vote. Similarly, that if the result of a football game is known there is less interest in the replay.
It's the ignorance, the 'not knowing' that adds some excitement to life (tell that
to American voters in this period of ignorance nearly two weeks after the event!). He does have a point, though.
Have you seen managers in
your organization get excited because they're kept in the dark about something, even more
so if those around them who should know, don't know either.
"No surprises" is how many
managers want to run their organization. I recall well the comments of David Smith of Unilever, who is often asked about the
cost & justification of knowledge management.
His response: "The cost of
knowledge management is high, but that of ignorance is higher."
Knowledge Adds Boredom?
The corollary of 'ignorance adds excitement' is that 'knowledge adds boredom'. We use knowledge to reduce risk, to avoid surprises & thru mechanisms such as opinion polls, to make better predictions (& yes, the US opinion pools did indicate a close race "too
close to call".).
Armed with this knowledge
we can lead a more routine life. In organizations, it's usually the R&D departments & marketing departments that add
some excitement (plus of course all the personal gossip that
is shared better than most organizational knowledge!).
Behind the exciting parts of the organization, it's the support departments who manage the processes
& make things happen that are often far from exciting.
They do their job meticulously
& well & often don't receive the gratitude that they deserve. The problem, as it is with much knowledge, is that it may not get the recognition it deserves unless it rises about the threshold of routine & breaks through the flow of information that daily causes
information overload.
In many 'surprises' for governments
& military (e.g. The Iraqi's invasion of Kuwait), the information is there but its importance misinterpreted. It was just another piece of information.
Take another perspective.
Good information management underpins good knowledge management. Yet many of the people with the
best IM skills - librarians, information scientists, analysts - are people who adopt a methodical approach & don't want
to exaggerate or hype their findings.
Similarly, many information
intensive websites are seen as "bland & boring". All examples that good knowledge may not be exciting.
Should it be?
Adding Excitement
There are some positive things about making people excited:
- it raises their attention level
- it engages them (research indicates
that making school lessons exciting increases involvement & help learning).
- it can be motivating
- it adds sense of urgency
- it can be a taster of more to come (think of a movie trailer & how it adds interest & excitement)
- it can raise the adrenalin level & keep the mind honed
to the task in hand (ever been white water canoeing?).
There are, of course, negatives if too much excitement causes stress & carelessness.
But perhaps, providers of
knowledge should occasionally add something above the ordinary that wraps knowledge into something more interesting. Even
Reuters has recognized the need for the "wow factor" in some of its newer services on entertainment news.
Perhaps knowledge managers
should think of infotainment as a way of getting their knowledge across. Here are some example of how knowledge can be made more interesting
& exciting:
- On expertise directories, rather than the traditional CV mug-shots,
add human interest pictures - on BP Amoco's personal ages you'll see people driving 4 wheeled trucks over the desert to the
oil well head.
- Use multimedia (including streaming
audio & video) - The META Group, among others, offers & audio-visual streaming of their analyst's presentations,
ads well as Powerpoint slides (but don't put off those people who would rather scan a 20 page document
in 5 minutes rather than sit listening to a 20 minutes presentation).
- Add some human interest - pictures of the author, even a hotlink
to the author's informal home page.
- Add some intrigue to headings & subheadings on stodgy reports
e.g. "Will China surpass the USA?" is more likely to attract reader's attention than "Internet Penetration Research Results"
(For information on what captures news readers' attention see the Stanford Poynter Project at http://www.poynter.org).
- Add discussion & chat facility to your intranet & Internet
- often underestimated, special events that make use of these as an adjunct to a video presentation can engage the wider community
of interest.
- Give knowledge consumers something to play with (I like Drkoop's diabetes risk calculator & Searle's Drug Pipeline Game.)
- Create some hype & marketing razzmatazz - several knowledge
centre managers hold special events, with competitions, refreshments & other inducements to publicize new services or
particular additions.
I'm sure you can think of many more - if you make it part of your daily working practice. Next time that you're about to write a report,
add some new entries to your knowledge base, or create some new Web pages, just think for a moment; "How can I add some excitement to this knowledge?".
Done in an effective way,
you'll not detract from the authority of content, but you'll engage your readers more. Knowledge, after all, opens up new opportunities, gives new insights & can inspire us to achieve wondrous things.
If, as knowledge providers
& managers, we use some of these techniques, then perhaps we won't need to rely on ignorance to add some excitement into our colleague's daily lives. Furthermore' the excitement will be of a positive motivating variety, rather than one of ignorance anxiety.
What excites
you? Please share your ideas with readers, by sending me your comments to the email address below.
Email: david@skyrme.com.
P.S.: I know, I have got to take some of these lessons on board in my own writing and at our website.
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Changing Fear into Excitement - By Ted Schredd
Fear scares people.
That’s what it’s supposed to do; it’s just a matter of how much & how often do we really
need to be scared? Basically, there are 2 kinds of fear. Real fear allows you to save your butt in challenging situations (like being chased by a predator or facing imminent danger).
Then there are imagined fears - which hold you back from experiencing life. Imagined fears may come from a previous unpleasant experience, other people’s fears or bad information. The way your brain sees it there is no difference between an imaginary fear & a real one.
Fear can provide stress & physical anxiety as you prepare for new experiences. It can cause you to lack good judgment or to do irrational things.
Chicken-heartedness can turn into terror & complete immobilization. Or you can change your panic into an
exciting edge when stepping out of your comfort zone.
What’s scary for some is sheer delight for others. Confronting your fears will give you an incredible sense of satisfaction & confidence.
Your happiness is directly related to whether fear runs your activity schedule or your courage does. In a modern world, fear has minimal uses, especially if the perceived concern has no basis in reality.
When you're full of fear, you end up worrying about events that'll never even happen. We worry about the environment, the safety
of the neighborhood or world peace.
We worry about murderers, terrorists & the stock markets. Some people call it worrying; others call it being
realistic. But worrying is a waste of time; it'as never paid a single bill nor stopped a hurricane.
If the situation or problem can be remedied, there's no point worrying about it. If there's nothing you can
do about your problems, there's no point worrying either.
Think about the fears & worries in your life & how they affect your fun level. You don’t have to deny your fears, just question if they’re truly looking out for your best interests.
Are you focusing on what could go wrong instead of what could go right? So many people are consumed by worry,
hoping that one day their lives will get better, as another day slips away. Instead of seeing the worst-case scenario in your mind,
see the best-case scenario.
Become what motivational speaker Brian Tracey calls an inverse paranoid. Become convinced that there are hundreds
of people waiting around every corner to show you some form of fun or pleasure.
Become paranoid that the world is out to do you good.
Now, fun people
don't deny their fears. Are they scared when they face their fears?
You bet, but devoted delight detectors make it a habit of facing their fears instead of tucking their tails behind their legs & hiding under the bed. They change their fears from a debilitating annoyance into waves of adrenaline & excitement.
When you face your fears, whether you succeed or not, you're a winner. You're a winner because you've chosen to be motivated by your passion for living & not by fear.
The way to counteract your fears & worries is to gain knowledge, which gives you courage. Use wisdom, not worries, when traipsing out into the world. If you were to head out hiking in
the mountains, would you worry that you could fall off a cliff, become lost, get eaten by a bear or get hit by an avalanche?
These are all possible scenarios, but only remotely possible. The more you worry about it, the more likely you
are to create it. If you stay away from the cliffs, take a map & a compass, avoid taping salmon to your body & stay out of the avalanche zones, you’ll be fine.
We
do so many dangerous things in our everyday lives & yet we worry about a little adventure. What about crossing the street?
Do you see yourself getting pegged by a bus?
Of course you don’t. So when we consider new or unknown activities, why do we create such terrible visions?
Chances for a major injury are much greater crossing a busy street than traipsing in the mountains.
If something does happen while you’re enjoying the world, at least you’re living! Watching TV &
eating potato chips may be safe but you'll get fat & it’s boring.
If you say no to snorkeling in the ocean because you’re scared of sharks or sea monsters, you’re the one who loses. You'll never see the magic of the underwater world. Yes, there's
that chance that a water monster might go for a snack while you’re splashing around, but the chances are so slim.
You've a better chance of being hit by lightning or winning an Olympic gold medal. Thousands if not millions
of people have been in the ocean & survived. Why would you be singled out for tragedy?
You'll
never be able to remove every potential danger, but you can diminish the threat by following the
golden rule of adventure: safety first.
If there’s a way to lower the risk factor, do it. If there’s protective gear, wear it. If there’s a need for common sense, then use it. Take the proper steps to ensure your safety. Do you need a life jacket, a helmet or special training before you try this activity? What about learning from a professional?
Yes, every year, a few people die while they’re out having fun, but often that’s because they haven’t
been smart about safety precautions. So be smart.
Dying because of stupidity makes you stupid & dead. And being both dead & stupid is definitely embarrassing. Avoid at all costs.
Let’s say you want to go kayaking. Kayaking is a much more
enjoyable experience if you know how to swim & how to self-rescue. Learning to minimize the danger of any activity will
help you face the world.
The more you understand something, the less you'll fear it. The more people you meet who are doing that activity, the more confidence you’ll have in saying, “They’re no better than me-I can do this!” You may find that this activity
you’ve perceived as treacherous isn’t that dangerous after all.
So you’ve
gained some knowledge & you’ve made arrangements for a safe experience, but you’re
still too scared to get on the roller coaster or get out on the dance floor.
Then turn your fear into excitement. Feel the fear & do it anyway. Be thankful that you have this highly tuned system that recognizes danger & lets your senses sharpen. Let it send tingles to the tips of your toes & enjoy the burst of energy.
Fear will multiply your excitement sensations. You may be scared now, but when you come out the other side, you'll feel fantastic, confident, proud & reliving your wonderful adventure. Another positive twist on being scared is that the more scared you are, the more intense your pleasure will be during & after your fun activity.
Most
of your fears are imagined & should be treated as imaginary. Learn to distinguish the fears that are valid & those that aren't. The next time you feel scared, challenge your fear & the thing you fear will disappear.
Ask yourself, “What would I do if I wasn’t feeling fear?” then act accordingly. When you confront your fears, astonishing things will happen. Remember you're the master & you're in control.
Each time you challenge your fears, you add another brick to a solid foundation for happiness. Each tiny little fear that you face & conquer will give you courage against all your other fears. If you’re unable to take control of your fears or have some kind of panic disorder, go & seek professional help.
Moving past unreasonable fears will give you astonishing amounts of self-respect, confidence & satisfaction. Use courage & knowledge to assist you in your journey. If there is a fun activity that you want to try but are afraid, make a plan to conquer your fears.
Investigate it, take some lessons, learn what you can, turn your fear into excitement, pretend to be brave & then go for it. Who runs your life, unfounded fears or wonderful you?
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