I recently read with interest an interview with the musician Cate Le Bon, and how recording\u00a0an album during lockdown helped her embrace a new way of thinking.<\/p>\n
When faced with the prospect of trying to make a record when her plans were no longer\u00a0compatible with a new reality, she took the bold step to abandon fear and surrender to not\u00a0knowing, by leaning into curiosity and hope.\u00a0 From this space she found she was able to\u00a0innovate and be creative in a way that helped her music feel more spontaneous and\u00a0authentic.<\/p>\n
Cate credited this to reading about what the poet John Keats called ‘negative capability’. Keats himself only used the phrase fleetingly to describe the qualities he saw in the greatest\u00a0writers of his time, who he saw as possessing the ability to accept \u201cuncertainties, mysteries,\u00a0doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason\u201d. Negative capacity is not just\u00a0the preserve of the artistic world though, the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion proclaimed the\u00a0importance of purposely holding an openness of mind to new possibilities whilst tolerating\u00a0the discomfort of feeling lost.<\/p>\n
Many of us will have had to reach into the unknown over the past two and half years.\u00a0 Many\u00a0of us will also have supported others via our coaching to grapple with the uncertainty of\u00a0these times.\u00a0 But it is not just pandemics where we as health coaches work with people\u00a0experiencing uncertainty, and complexity.\u00a0 Whether it is fear following a new diagnosis, the\u00a0uncertainty of being on a waiting list unsure when a treatment or operation will be\u00a0scheduled or navigating a path to live with a chronic condition.\u00a0 Coaching people in these\u00a0situations can be some of the most challenging but ultimately rewarding work we engage\u00a0in.<\/p>\n
All this may seem an antithesis to the approach of encouraging positivity that we often\u00a0deliver in our leadership and coaching interventions. Positive capabilities however are the\u00a0resources familiar to us, our strengths, skills, and knowledge. Thinking of it in this sense\u00a0negative capability is not pejorative but an opposite, one of two poles. Developing negative\u00a0capability therefore offers us an alternative to our often default approach to change.<\/p>\n
So that brings us to the question of how do we work with people in these situations to build\u00a0their own negative capability?<\/p>\n
These ideas however are just a starter, and I am interested to hear what you think about\u00a0this topic of negative capability. How do you support others to lean into curiosity, and be\u00a0comfortable with not knowing?\u00a0 Send us your thoughts and ideas we would love to learn\u00a0from you.<\/p>\n
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I recently read with interest an interview with the musician Cate Le Bon, and how recording\u00a0an album during lockdown helped her embrace a new way of thinking. When faced with the prospect of trying to make a record when her plans were no longer\u00a0compatible with a new reality, she took the bold step to abandon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2497,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-2496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-negative-capability"],"yoast_head":"\n