Trance Formations

A recent article in the Guardian newspaper had one of those articles by a self styled business ideas guru… the fundamental premise of this article was that we should all strive to be the one person that stands out, that when someone walks into an organisation, the one person that gets immediately noticed.

We should all strive to be the person Bono is looking for

Well, you know something? Bullshit.

In fact the article goes on to say “Shining isn’t compulsory. If anything, the opposite is true. Society certainly won’t encourage you to shine…” before comparing most people with ants as a metaphor… the fundamental presupposition that came out again and again from this trivial piece of pop psychology was that if you are not a mold breaker, you are a nothing, an insect, a worker ant, a drone.

Again, I call bullshit.

This is a typical piece of binary thinking turned into a linguistic (NLP style) double bind. If you are not an Elvis (the metaphor he uses for success in these terms), if you do not visibly make your mark, you are a failure.

Well, you know something? What about those people who make their mark on those around them? You already know these people… you can credit them for making your life better at every turn. Just as others can credit you for making their lives better. For being in the right place, at the right time, and saying the right thing. Or simply not saying anything at all. All those people that Bono may not notice when he walks into the building (and do we really care?) but actually make the world and civilisation work. We do not have to meet Bono’s criteria for importance or Mr Baréz-Brown’s criteria for success. We can define our own, thank you very much ;-)