The Thinkitation Institute is focused on business, philosophy, education, wisdom, contentment and other topics. That includes:
This A Better Life educational blog, fully featured with exercises. (Not associated with other organizations or programs called Better Life.)
Substack thoughtletter spanning philosophy, spirituality, business
YouTube channel
Wait!
Welcome to the A Better Life blog! But before you proceed to the first post, be sure to read all of the following…
Contents of this Post:
- Context
- Purpose
- Why Better Life?
- Who is It For?
- Disclaimer/Warning
- Preliminary Topic List
- Niche
- How to Read this Blog
- Comments
- Getting the Right Answer
- Acknowledgements/Credits
- Copyright Notice
- Contact Us
- Proceed
Context
There are a lot of problems in the world: some that are newer such as plastic pollution, space debris, cybersecurity, climate change, and the dangers of artificial intelligence; others that are variations on ongoing themes: disease, natural disaster, war, violence, poverty, pollution.
Our ability as individuals, groups, and societies to respond to these challenges depends on our knowledge, skills, habits, methods, tools, and many more factors, but underlying them all is learning, teaching, and education — our ability as individuals, groups, and societies to stop making the same mistakes, to improve on what’s been done before, to capture lessons, to learn from them, to make changes, to teach others — in short, education.
But education here is not imagined simply as currently institutionalized with a focus on acquisition of knowledge and skills that are directly applicable to academic or vocational needs. Those aspects are necessary, but they aren’t enough.
Lacking in modern education are: life preparation; critical thinking; emotional intelligence and relationships; ethics; historical and sociological basics; how to evaluate information and make arguments; dialogue and debate; applied numeracy; scientific literacy; and many more areas.
It would be ambitious, to say the least, to attempt to address all of these in any detail. Many people and organizations are focused on one or more of these and are doing good work. This effort is a parallel, complementary effort to explore a few basics in each of these areas, to point to additional resources and methods, to raise awareness, to ask questions, to start another ball rolling.
Purpose
Perhaps you’ve read some of these improvement quotes:
- You must be the change you wish to see in the world – Mahatma Gandhi
- Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results – Albert Einstein
- Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything – George Bernard Shaw
Well it’s only the faintest starting point to read a quote. You can find millions of quotes on the web (many of them incorrect or falsely attributed – let me know if mine are wrong!). So what? I can see that a quote points to something, perhaps something useful.
But really, what am I supposed to do with it? I hope to point to some options about what you can do to contribute to improvements at various scales from the personal to the planetary.
Think of a personal role model who has made a positive change in the world.
How did they get to where they are?
- What are the factors behind their successes?
- What’s obvious, visible, hidden, accidental?
- What and how did they need to learn?
- What were the context and environment and social systems they were embedded in that contributed to their results?
- How did they collaborate with others and deal with setbacks?
These are just a few of the questions that I wonder about. A broad range of skills of various kinds are needed.
I want to make the world a better place by creating engaging resources that anyone can use to improve their impact. I’ve always envisioned being a professor of sorts, so I’ve made my own path.
Plus this is my idea of fun! It makes me happy to research, write, coach, facilitate, plan, implement, and see the results in people, groups, societies, ecosystems.
Why Better Life?
A Better Life is about the personal journey of learning how to learn, think, feel, relate, decide; and how to be effective, resourceful, wise; for long-term and sustainable results from tiny to tremendous.
Who is it For?
Anyone. The language and difficulty is for adults, but no prerequisite education is assumed. If you are willing to wrestle with the ideas, you will get some value out of it. Don’t worry about getting everything: focus on taking away small pieces, and on connecting the pieces together. While it’s open to everyone and intended to be accessible to most, you might find it’s not for you. That’s okay.
Disclaimer/Warning
The material will be challenging — intellectually and emotionally. I will ask you to question beliefs, habits, thoughts, feelings, actions, across conceivably any topic, including some you might feel very sensitive about, or triggered by. I will offer personal opinions and various examples about many situations, and these may not agree with mainstream thought. Proceed at your own discretion, and engage as much as you feel comfortable with. It’s okay to disagree. I don’t claim to have all the right answers (just many of the right questions.)
**This is not intended to be a substitute for any kind of professional help of any kind, including but not limited to: medical, psychological, financial, legal. Consider seeking other personal and professional opinions before making any significant decisions.**
Neither Thinkitation Inc., nor any of the writers, editors or other contributors/participants accept any responsibility or liability beyond what you have paid, if anything, for physical or electronic goods or services. By proceeding, you accept full responsibility for your own decisions, behaviours, and actions, and any direct or indirect effects on your mental or physical health or any aspect of your life conditions and situation and of those you interact with.
Partial and Preliminary Topic List
A Better Life starts with discussion of personal improvement, which also includes foundations for any type of improvement. But the intent is to move into much broader issues of business, society, and science. Whether additional types will have their own umbrella title remains to be determined.
This list may sound dry and abstract but the materials will tackle the topics in bite-sized and practical ways. Applying and testing concepts will be the general approach.
- What is better? How do you know/decide?
- What is most important to focus on?
- Types of improvement
- Taking an organized approach to improvement
- Types of problems
- Approaches for problem-solving
- Approaches for complex problems
- Decision-making
- Techniques for collaborative improvement
- Ensuring improvements achieve the desired results
- Applying these ideas and methods to many different areas
Niche
What’s different about this initiative?
1. We’re going to go deep and wide. Few resources give you practice with the breadth and depth of thinking about complex issues. Single-discipline resources often don’t show how to connect the dots in practice, or expose the underlying approach, assumptions, and limitations of their methods. We’ll explore different tools and methods. I will invent and extend a lot of elements, and also synthesize, integrate, curate, and teach. The onion metaphor is applicable here. We will start shallow and peel the layers of the onion. Hopefully cutting into the onion won’t make you cry 🙂
2. Application. In my research I’ve encountered a lot of resources (in various formats and media) telling me what do or think or feel, either directly or through manipulation. There will be a component of that in these sessions – I’ll pass on some knowledge. What is different about this journey is the exercises. By leading you through a process of doing, you won’t just learn about improvement, you will actually improve. I’ll encourage you to adopt structured approaches to inquiring and caring and decision-making and action.
3. I’m trying to keep these posts accessible to as many as possible. That doesn’t mean I will avoid deep and powerful thinking, but I will avoid specialized terminology unless it’s crucial for progress. As we get deeper into the journey I will link to resources that will likely use the language of the relevant field.
4. A joint learning process. I hope that from your input we will explore, learn, improve, and co-create together. It is an active study, experimentation, and learning process, not a passive one.
5. Spiritual but secular. The title is A Better Life. Life includes spirituality in the sense of belonging, meaning, connection, ethics, and so on. At some point matters fade into faith and mysticism. I may explore the boundary and various relevant questions, but I will advocate for reasoning with a healthy role for feeling.
How to Engage with this Blog
While it is in blog format, it is better to approach it as an online workbook or a textbook with exercises.
This blog and program and post are are all evolving. They will continually be revised and extended. The blog is the forum for many of the materials that I am sharing through the Thinkitation Institute of my company Thinkitation Inc. The company may have several programs – this forum is focused on Better Life.
The content is best read on a larger-than-phone screen. I’m creating and testing in the Chrome browser on a desktop. I realize the formatting is not consistent – and I’m working on it.
Comments
Why no comments? You may have noticed that commenting is off for this blog. Discussion is a powerful learning tool but public commenting rarely achieves meaningful dialogue. I hope to eventually provide structured discussion opportunities.
You can reach me by email if you have a suggestion or question. I will attempt to answer simple and general questions either directly or in a future post. Responses may be delayed.
Getting the “Right” Answer
We live in a world of search engines and vast repositories of knowledge. It’s so tempting to see what others might answer. I urge you not to do that for the exercises I provide. One of the muscles we’re exercising is your inner voice: what do you think and feel? Skills are only developed by doing. You can’t learn to ride a bike by reading about it and talking about it.
The habit of needing to get the right answer is ingrained in us in school, work, home. It’s can be a hindrance. I encourage you to play, to try, to experiment, and be curious. See what happens. Every question is right. Every answer is right. The question might not be on the path that I had envisioned. The answer might not be directly for the question in the way I intended it. But you maybe needed to answer a different question first, or understood the question a different way, or just came at the situation with a different context, assumptions, and knowledge base. Be gentle with yourself if it turns out you took a detour.
Acknowledgements/Credits
I will aim to provide references, links, where I know and/or remember the source. I’ve encountered, synthesized, integrated, modified a lot of ideas, so I may no longer be aware of where something comes from. If you have a concern or a specific reference to point to, please let me know.
A few sources that I will work from:
- systems thinking, modelling and dynamics work by Jay Forrester, Donella Meadows, John Sterman, Kim Warren, Peter Senge
- critical thinking framework of Richard Paul and Linda Elder
- human learning ecology and human venture metaframework of Ken Low / Action Studies Institute / Human Venture Institute / Leadership Calgary
- a year-long education program that I designed, developed, and delivered called Explorations in Citizen Leadership
Copyright Notice
This blog is my original work, with copyright held through Thinkitation Inc. Links to the material are welcome. Short excerpts with full credit and this copyright notice are permissible for non-commercial learning and education purposes. Please contact me for other licensing or usage.
Proceed
Thanks for reading, and carry on to the first post!