You Need A Bigger Ladder

It's now dark when I take the dogs on the trail. I go early morning because I let the dogs run off-leash. These days, I'm running with a headlamp, and boy, there's nothing like a headlamp to make all the spider webs super visible.

I know there aren't more spider webs in the early fall, but it looks like that when I'm getting face full after face full of those sticky webs. If I am walking, I can dodge most of them, but they seem to fly at me if I'm running. It's a weird illusion. I know my perspective is off, but the spider webs seem to fly full speed into my face.

It's weird how much my speed affects my perspective. When walking, I can realign my thinking. Still, when I'm jogging, the illusion is that persistent-the spider webs are flying toward me.

Our perspectives are formed by experience, cemented by history, and preserved by confirmation bias. It's a pretty sturdy wall against alternative viewpoints. This wall grows exceptionally high when a lot is going on. When decision-making speeds up, when problems need quick solutions, I lean more on my initial perspectives to find answers. 

Recognizing that I'm relying on my perspectives is a big challenge. The first big challenge. The second more significant challenge is finding a way over the wall that narrows my viewpoint. It takes a ladder to get over the wall, a ladder with rungs of curiosity. Climbing this ladder gets me over the wall, expands my view, and allows me to shout out for other ideas: "What do you see? What might we try?"

In the heat of disagreements, it's easy to forget to build a ladder. But when I slow down, stop jogging towards a solution, and start walking, I can see that my perspective is just mine. I can slowly climb my curiosity ladder step by step until I see variety, complexity, new vistas, and unexpected sights.

You might enjoy the Harvard Business Review article, In a Crisis, Great Leaders Prioritize Listening by Erika James and Lynn Perry Wooten, which points out how vital it is to listen for alternative points of view when facing challenges.