Accessing Possibility Space

PRACTICE GUIDE – Exploring Possibilities

What is Possibility Space?

Possibility Space is the place where all your ideas live before you bring them into your conscious mind.  It’s real in the same way as your life is real: it is created in language. See it as a metaphor for Google or Facebook. We use it to make sense of our experiences, settle differences, find solutions, share common feelings, etc. It can place boundaries on a search of our mind and constraints on how we perceive our world. When we talk about thinking “outside the box” we are entering Possibility Space where we can use language to get ideas for new actions that will bring forth a new reality. Offers, requests, promises and declarations expand Possibility Space and make change happen.

“Every human act takes place in language.”  Humberto Maturana & Francisco Varela

Conversations are how we use language to design new Possibility Spaces. The mind helps us make sense of our experiences and generate new thoughts before we even become conscious of them. They emerge as insights from previous experiences or can be stimulated by the thoughts of others in conversation, stories and metaphors. We look to others, because of our knowledge and “way of being”. It makes us different observers and capable of offering unique insights.

Linking past and future to explore possibilities

We can only generate possibilities in language as thoughts, assessments, and declarations in the present moment. We combine what we “know” to be true from past experience and make declarations to bring about a desirable future by making requests, offers and getting promises from others.

The future is unknown to us, yet it takes up a large part of our thinking time as we are always looking for ways to predict and control what will happen to us. Because these assessments can only happen in the moment, we create stories to weave our assertions from the past with our declarations for a desired future.

The mind provides the Possibility Space from which we search for new insights and ideas. This process is obviously limited by the amount of knowledge we have stored in our brains. We use language to expand our existing knowledge with more distinctions, but our mood state also plays an important role in stimulating the desire for collaboration.

Living in a state of becoming you tend to either hold onto or change your story depending on what makes sense to you and makes you feel OK about yourself. Which of these tendencies then dominates your thinking, in any given moment, will depend to a large extent on whether you are feeling hopeful or fearful about the future.

So what does this mean?

In a complex and fast-moving world, the past is not always a reliable predictor of the future. As a result, we can experience resentment, resignation, and anxiety until we can accept and face the facts, explore new possibilities and embrace the uncertainty that is generated. Resentment can occur when we cannot accept that change needs to happen. Resignation happens because we cannot even see the possibility of change and anxiety because we fear an unpredictable outcome when we can feel out of control. This constrains our ability to expand the Possibility Space for new questioning and thinking.

Based on the work of Professor Alan Sieler at the Newfield Institute

As the diagram above explains, the result of non-acceptance is that we remain stuck in our comfort box. Without a mood of wonder and curiosity, we will not question our beliefs or observations to see what clearly isn’t working for us and accept the need to change and explore Possibility Space. These basic moods affect our quality of life because they impact on our personal performance and well-being. They arise from our assessments of what we believe we cannot change but wish we could.

Perhaps a promise has not been honoured or we cannot see the wood for the trees. This can lead to a mood of resentment, resignation and even anger. The mood state then creates a predisposition to respond in a particular way. If the mood is recognised and accepted it can remove the need to blame or seek revenge, which opens the mind to explore Possibility Space.

The key to addressing these moods is by exploring possibilities as they open the mind to think about what is normally outside our awareness or knowledge. To make a choice between different or competing possibilities is to be clear about what is important to you, and how it reflects your deepest intentions and takes you towards a declared goal or vision for your future. What’s important is that the chosen outcome is “well-formed”.

It can be helpful to engage others in conversations that focus on shared intentions where there is a “coupling” of what you sense and what it means. Stories are powerful ways of “making sense” because they connect language and emotion with meaning. But it’s the stories in the conversations that stimulate and create new possibilities as different interpretations are shared. Obviously, you cannot know what you’re not aware of, but this leaves you blind to other perspectives on reality.

The meaning of something remains transparent to us, like not seeing the glass in a window, until it is pointed out and we become aware of it. There has to be an ‘AND not but’ approach to everyone’s contributions in order to open up the mind space. Techniques such as Open Space, Future Search, and World Cafe open the mind to a proposal that is then explored to stimulate new thinking that can combine many different perceptions.

Now What?

The only thing we are ever up against is the insecure feelings generated by our transient thoughts and imaginings. These thoughts are driven by fear and uncertainty, but if we let these thoughts settle and put a boundary around them, we can find the relative quiet and peace needed to expand our mind space for generating possibilities.

Practices

1. Consider the possibility that you live in the feeling of your thinking, not the feelings generated by your circumstances.

For example, when you are aware of a feeling entering your body, reflect on the thoughts that could have generated it. What would happen if your thought differently? Say, you saw threats or fears as a stimulant for action or criticism as an opportunity for reflection and learning?

2. If you were to see your mind as a place that holds infinite possibilities, a place where our imagination and creativity could flow freely to find positivity, peace, clarity and well-being, in what way would you wonder more and worry less?

If you had 5% less fear of the unknown you would be able to  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Were you able to generate more answers when you adopted a more open and grateful mind, one that stopped frantically searching for answers?  Just keeping asking “What Else?” and see what metaphors come to mind

3. If you were to accept that your mind-made world emerges through language, and your mind is a vast space of infinite possibility, how would deal with a mood of resignation?

4. Where were you and what conditions existed when something new came to mind and you went home with a positive intention to change or your concerns floated away?

Was it that peace of mind was the natural state that you disrupted with insecure thoughts or empowering insights?

References

Navigating Complexity by Arthur Battram.  Industrial Society 1998

Coaching to the Human Soul Vol 1 by Alan Sieler. Newfield Australia 2003

Language and the Pursuit of Happiness by Chalmers Brothers. New Possibilities 2005

Clarity by Jamie Smart. Capstone 2013