Tuesday May 5th was definitely one of the most historic days for Alberta I can remember. Not only did we see sweeping political change but the Flames pulled out a thrilling playoff victory on overtime!
You could feel the buzz in Calgary on Wednesday morning, there was excitement, nervousness and a bit of fear about what is going to happen next. I was standing in line to get coffee and I heard no less than 3 different conversations happening around me about how this new government was either the best thing that could happen or the worst thing that could happen. You could hear people digging into their points of view and defending why they were right and the other person was wrong.
It’s so interesting to see how people react to change, there’s the excitement of something new followed quickly by the reality of something new. Will this new thing be better or worse than the old thing? What’s going to happen to me and my world because of this new thing? Is it a threat or an opportunity?
We are assessment machines by nature, constantly assessing the future to look for threats and opportunities. Throw a big change at people and we go into assessment overdrive. We try to map our expectations against an unknown landscape. What happens if we can’t imagine a future with this new change? Then we panic, we assess that our safety is threatened and we prepare to fight. That’s what I heard while I waited in line for coffee this morning. I heard a lot of people trying to map their assessments or expectations about the future against this new change in the political landscape.
The danger of getting to entrenched in your assessments (good or bad) is that they begin to look like facts, like what you believe is the truth and anyone who doesn’t believe it as well is wrong. We limit ourselves when we dig in on our piont of view so strongly. It’s so important to be thoughtful, open and considerate of another point of view. You never know, you could discover a whole new way of seeing the world.
Unless it’s about hockey… GO Flames GO!
j