"The structural conflict most common in everyone's life is formed by two competing tension-resolution systems. One is based on your desire. The other is based on an incompatible dominant belief that you are not able to fulfill your desires." ~ Robert Fritz from The Path of Least Resistance
In his great (!) book, The Path of Least Resistance, Robert Fritz says our behavior is determined by the "structures" we create in our lives.
The easiest way to get it? Per Fritz: "The next time you're in a building, notice how the structure of the building determines your path through it."
If an elevator shaft is put in a certain place and a stairway somewhere else and a hallway here and a door there, unless you have some super powers that get you through walls and ceilings, you're BEHAVIOR (how you get to where you're going) will be determined by the STRUCTURE of the building.
Make sense?
The whole book is about the (very!) big idea that we often have (very!) bad structures in our life and that until we learn how to create new ones, all the positive thinking in the world isn't going to help us create the sustainable results we're looking for.
So what's a structure look like in our life? Try this on:
Imagine you're in the middle of a room. The wall in front of you represents what you want. The wall behind you represents a feeling that you can't get what you want. There's a big ol' rubber band around your waist that connects to the front wall—pulling you toward what you want. And, there's an equally big ol' rubber band around your waist pulling you backward—toward the belief that you can't have what you want. Both rubber bands are mellow when you're right in the center of the room.
You move toward your goal. You're getting closer and closer to the wall in front of you! What happens? The tension in the rubber band connected to the wall behind you (fear you can't have what you want) is getting tighter and tighter until...Snap! You're pulled back toward the other wall...
Then what happens? The rubber band connected to the front wall pulls you forward toward it.
Then what?
Exactly. The rubber bands want to resolve their tension and as they do, you move back and forth. Back and forth. Fritz calls it "oscillating" and THAT is structural conflict—a structure that, as tension is resolved, has you bouncing back and forth.
That's what life in the "oscillating" pattern looks and feels like. You have a conflict in your structure that, by its very design, bounces you back and forth and back and forth in a never-ending cycle. You oscillate rather than achieve desired results.
Until...You adopt a whole new structure that resolves rather than oscillates.
Exit Structural Conflict. Enter: Structural Tension.
--> Structural Tension
"The discrepancy between what you want and what you currently have forms the most important structure in the creative process, that of structural tension." ~ Robert Fritz from The Path of Least Resistance
Easiest way to describe this one: Remember the rubber bands on the wall? Good. Now get out of the room and bring one (big ol') rubber band with you.
You're standing outside. Picture your ideal vision for your life on a cloud. Keep one end of the rubber band around your waist and staple the other end to that cloud (work with me here! ). Now float back from that ideal cloud toward your current reality on the ground. You feel that tension?!?
THAT is structural tension.
Hold the vision of your ideal. Know where you're at. Feel the tension between the two.
Guess what?
THAT structure doesn't resolve its tension by sending you back and forth. It slingshots you toward your ideal.
Fun!
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PhilosophersNotes on The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz | |||||
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