At a family holiday dinner my older daughter asked the table, “What are your hopes and dreams for 2019?”
As we went around to each person, most folks wished for less political craziness and more environmental sanity.
I agreed with those sentiments, but in my customary role as the outlier, I said I hoped to exude more calm in the current crisis, to stay positive in a sea of negativity, and to focus more on timeless, spiritual seeds instead of being continually distracted by timely, political feeds. I also wished for more meaningful conversations, more opportunities to help others achieve their dreams, and more gratitude for the beauty that Nature so generously provides.
As I continued to reflect on my daughter’s question, I began to wonder how much mindshare I was giving to each of these desires.
I realized that too much of my mindshare was devoted to politics and not enough to philosophical principles and constructive action.
To further compound my consternation, I read an article in the New York Times about AlphaZero, an AI tool developed by DeepMind (owned by Google) that consistently beats professional chess players not only by computing faster, but also by thinking smarter.
While DeepMind’s AlphaZero examines 60 thousand positions a second, compared to 60 million for Stockfish (another AI chess champ), it also discovers the principles of chess on its own and makes wiser decisions than competing AI or human players.
In a commentary in Science, Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov (the world chess champion defeated by IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997), said that DeepMind developed a style of play that “reflects the truth” about the game rather than the “priorities and prejudices of programmers.”
In short, DeepMind generated beautiful and subtle insights to win vs. brute, computational force.
It seems to me that we could all benefit from more subtle insights and less brute force in our world. I just hope those insights come from humans instead of machines.
These two events made me question not only the quantitative aspects of what dominates my thinking, but also the qualitative aspects, i.e. what are the topics I’m thinking about, how deeply am I thinking about them, and am I continuously learning along the way.
I was sharing these thoughts about what occupies our minds when my 7-year-old granddaughter asked, “What does occupy mean?”
Once again, her innocent and curious question forced me to come up with a meaningful answer. I responded, “Just as your physical body takes up space wherever you may be, there are feelings and thoughts that take up space in your mind.” The questions to think about are 1) am I conscious about the space my body is taking up at any moment i.e. am I invading someone else’s space? and 2) am I aware of the thoughts and feelings that are occupying my mind? In short, what dominates your mindshare?
It seems to me that most of the people in the world today are suffering from TrumpBrain—a disorder caused by the continuous bombardment from multiple sources of the impulsive, impetuous and dangerous decisions Trump seems to make every day. His words and actions dominate way too much of our mindshare.
Surely, there must be better things to think about in 2019 than the narcissistic Trump-bombs that keep exploding in our minds.
I’m determined to occupy my mind this year with more timeless ideas. Still, I’m hopeful that his extreme actions will mobilize both the resentfully unsuccessful (his base) and the condescending elite (the resistance) to come together in the fight to save our democracy. In order for that to happen, his base will need to own their bitterness and the resistance will need to own its arrogance. Both will need to reduce the mindshare of those divisive feelings.
As a result of the AI article mentioned above, one of the questions occupying my mind these days is “How do humans become the masters of AI and other technologies instead of becoming their slaves?”
As DeepMind continues to advance the science of AI, we seem to be slipping ever so insidiously into ShallowMind by our obsession with screens, games, and news.
We know that people are spending less and less time in face-to-face conversations and that levels of inquiry and empathy are declining. If it’s true that the range of thinking is narrowing and the depth of conversations is shrinking, then how do we turn that around in 2019, i.e. what do we want to occupy our mindshare this coming year?
We need more than machine learning to solve the problems we are facing.
For me, it is important to stay calm and positive—not to react with rage at every breaking news story.
I want to cultivate a healing energy and remain focused on my mission of helping people succeed in accomplishing their dreams. I want to keep reading and writing and looking for creative solutions to individual and organizational challenges. Most importantly, I want family and friends to occupy the greatest portion of my mindshare. In short, I want love and gratitude to dominate my mind. I think humans are more capable of achieving those goals than machines.
In my work with leaders, I want to take greater risks in helping people increase their mindfulness—to be more aware of the thoughts and feelings that dominate their mental, emotional, and spiritual lives; and to bring more of themselves to more moments.
I want to help them become more focused on what’s important, to be more centered in what’s real, and to find a greater harmony with the universe.
In 2019, I want to encourage organizations to ask what dominates their mindshare: profits and market share, people and culture, social responsibility. I’m hoping to challenge them to think about the right balance of all those competing concerns.
So that’s what on my mind as we enter this New Year. I share these thoughts with the hope that they stimulate a deep reflection on what occupies your mind now and how you might want to shift your mindshare in a positive way. May it be so.
Also published on Medium.
Thanks Ricky! Well done
Happy New Year and thanks for the inspiration Rick. The world would be a more peaceful, balanced place if we all heeded your advice to reduce or eliminate Trump brain and instead focus on what really matters- one another, our communities, our physical, mental and spiritual health, and that of planet Earth. Stay present and mindful.