Trade-Offs and Letting Go: Dealing with the impact of our choices

1. Trade-Offs and Letting Go: Dealing with the impact of our choices Session 5: YL6 Leadership Class January 20, 2010

2. Objectives of Session 5 • Provide a space for the students to review and integrate their learning and insights from the past sessions and connect these with session 5 • Provide the students with important information that could enable them to deal with the effects of their trade-offs in decision-making • Enable the students to articulate their trade-offs and the effects of these given the inputs provided in session 5

3. Structure of Session 1. Review of important concepts and insights from previous sessions (1 hour) • Concept mapping 2. Introduction to Session 5 (1 hour) • Workshop: Identifying trade-offs of an important decision 3. Input 1: What are Trade-Offs (45 mins) • Plenary discussion (application): What could help you say “no” so you could completely say “yes”? 4. Input 2: Letting Go of what you said “No” to and fully accepting what you said “Yes” to (45 mins) • Triad Sharing: What were letting go moments in your major decision? 5. Final Words: Assignment and Journal • Topics and dates

4. References • The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. Barry Schwartz (also see http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html) • Making Life Decisions According to the Ignatian Method of Discernment. Hans Zollner • Positive Psychology. Synder and Lopez • Organizational Change. Barbara Senior • Blink. Malcolm Gladwell • Motivating People. Harvard Business School Press

5. Review of Important Concepts and Insights: Concept Mapping • Review and connect the different concepts below. Create a visual concept map that can clearly show the relationship of the concepts with each other and how they are all related to Decision-Making • Discernment • Hungers and Yearnings • Motivations • Personality Traits: Attachments and Self Regulation • Psycho-social contexts • Values • Personality Preferences • Clinical Decision-Making

6. Review of Important Concepts and Insights: Concept Mapping • Process: • 45 min. Discussion and Concept mapping • Gallery Viewing, Big Session 10 mins • Post your map outside, corridor walls • Total time for this session: 1 hour • Get your materials: Easel sheets, crayons, pens

7. Introduction to Session 5 • Group Sharing: Identifying trade-offs of a major decision made (current and future trade-offs) • Choose a major decision that you have made in the recent past: • Major choice: with short-term and long term implications, e.g., not getting into a serious relationship while studying medical school; saying “no” to a business opportunity • Situation presented several or a number of options to choose from • OR you can consider a current situation where you are in a process of making an important choice

8. Introduction to Session 5 • Group Sharing: Identifying trade-offs of a major decision made (current and future trade-offs) • Process Questions: • In choosing your major decision, what are you saying NO to? • Concrete trade-offs in your current situation • Important and probable trade-offs in the future • What made it difficult for you to say “No” to other options and their benefits? • What helped you in saying “No” to other options? • What mental and emotional processes did you go through • while choosing which to say No to, and • when you finally said No to other options and their benefits

9. Introduction to Session 5 • Plenary post sharing: • What were recurring and unique insights about saying “No”? • What are we learning about making choices, especially with regard Trade-Offs?

10. Input 1: What are trade-offs • Simple definition: The desirable things you said NO to when you made a final choice.

11. Input 1: What are trade-offs Key points: • Current dilemma of the information and highly globalized world: Presence of too many options, choices that can immobilize one from making any choice at all • How does this affect you? • This situation has plusses and minuses

12. Input 1: What are trade-offs • Disadvantage of many options to choose from: • Stress: delaying necessary decisions, actions • Not making a choice: stagnation, depression, misery • Not making an active choice by letting external factors make the choices for you: dependence, blaming, no ownership • Constant state of “floating” or confusion: absence of an anchor amidst all “busy-ness” of life • Other disadvantages if you are a leader? (encourage participation)

13. Input 1: What are trade-offs • Advantages of having options • Increase sense of control and feeling of empowerment: I have choices • Sharpening analysis and discernment competencies • Clarifying and re-affirming values: what is truly important for me • Re-evaluating the meaning of “sacrifice”: options enable us to see what we have to let go and to sacrifice • Character-building: acceptance of one’s limits – humility; transcendence; psycho-emotional strength from letting go

14. Input 1: What are trade-offs • Why is it difficult to say no to the other benefits of other options? • Instant gratification • Need to have more: power, info., benefits • Fear (if you are ENFP, a 2, 6 or 7 or similar profile) • Of losing out on opportunities • Of letting go what “what could be” • Of what you are saying yes to (e.g., responsibilities) • Of displeasing those who will be affected by the ‘No” • Need to control consequences of all possibilities (a perfect J or a 1 or 8) • Too absorbed in the thinking or cogitating process: the “What if’s” (INTJ’s, 4 or 5)

15. What are difficult moments in dealing with trade-offs • Making the best choice from undesirable options (best of all evils) • Think of examples of this in your life and in our society? How can this happen in the life of a doctor? • Making a choice between good options (defining moments) • Have you experienced this?

16. Plenary Discussion • What could help you say “No” so you could completely say “Yes”?

17. Plenary Discussion When we cannot say NO, when we do not want to say NO, we cannot also fully say YES to our choices. What will be the consequences of this situation, especially as you live out your decision?

18. Our calls to leadership are... “The point where your deepest happiness meets the world’s greatest hunger” Frederick Buechner

19. Where does your passion & happiness meet other people’s desires & hungers? Your deepest happiness, passion & desire Context’s hunger/need you resonate with Call to Leadership Self Context

20. Your unique personal significance Natural gifts & strengths Talent Passion Need Those that naturally energize & motivate you What the world needs enough to reward you for VOICE Conscience Inner voice that assures you what is right and prompts you to do it Steven Covery The 8th Habit

21. “The best inward sign of vocation is deep gladness…if the work is mine to do, it will make me glad over the long haul, despite the difficult days. “Courage to Teach”, Parker Palmer

22. If a work does not gladden me in these ways, I need to consider laying it down. When I devote myself to something that does not flow from my identity, that is not integral to my nature, I am most likely deepening the world’s hunger rather than helping to alleviate it.” “Courage to Teach”, Parker Palmer

23. We are not what we do. We are who we are. The rigors of trying to be faithful involves being faithful to one's gifts, faithful to other's reality, faithful to the larger need in which we are all embedded, faithful to the possibilities inherent in our common life. • Palmer

24. Some more Tips: • Consciously limit your choices to those relevant to your life goals, values “We need to be free to choose; we need to be free from endless choosing.” Limiting choices does not mean limiting or losing freedom. The trick is to seek balance; to know when enough thinking and info getting is enough.

25. Some more Tips: • Know the difference between inconveniences and sacrifices: which choice will bring immediate, temporary inconveniences, and which will require a degree of sacrifice that can take a longer time • Not all “no’s” bring heart wrenching sacrifices, some can bring inconveniences: realistic (versus exaggerated, dramatic) appreciation of consequences • Find the value behind the sacrifices: Why am I doing this? What value is it serving?

26. Some more Tips: • Assess how long-term gains of the “yes” can outweigh or compensate for the short-term inconveniences and sacrifices: temporal perspective • Enables you to delay gratification • Gives meaning to your current sacrifices • Help deal with inconveniences • Reverse: Assess what you will lose in the long run if you let go of the “yes” now

27. Some more Tips: • Find time to grieve over what you have given up and will give up because you said NO • Constantly celebrate the promise/s of your “yes”: what you will gain, the values you will affirm, the impact it will create in your life and in the lives affected by your “yes” End • 15 minute break

28. Input 2: Letting Go What do you mean when you say “let go”? What do you go through in this process?

29. Input 2: Letting Go • Letting go - • saying goodbye, entering a grieving process, dealing with psycho-emotional issues related to “death” or loss, giving up, surrendering • Giving way to something else, something new, allowing the transcendent to take over (having faith), trusting something positive will happen after

30. Input 2: Letting Go • Process of letting go in dealing with trade-offs: • Necessity to make a choice • Seek alternatives, options • Assessing consequences and trade-offs Use of different competencies and strengths • Rational mode: information, evidences, facts • Intuitive: imagination, noticing inner movements and deeper reactions, sensing signs, gut feel • Affective: naming feelings and emotions, discerning patterns of emotional reactions associated with options Identify negotiables and non-negotiables in temporal perspective: now, future

31. Input 2: Letting Go • Process of letting go in dealing with trade-offs: • “Mulling over” period sets in • A choice is beginning to shape up • Doubts may surface; need for calm and patience • Test the waters, further consultations, prayers • Going into your inner life: silencing, seeking grace • Seeking reactions of significant people • Growing inner alignment or connection with a particular choice • Movement toward a choice • Increasing certainty, leading to a quiet disposition

32. Input 2: Letting Go • Process of letting go in dealing with trade-offs: • Grieving over the trade-offs and the what if’s • Acknowledging what will be lost: naming it/them • Recognizing the psycho-emotional reactions associated with loss • Pain can be felt and expressed in different ways • Being mindful of body/physical reactions: they tell the truth • Using imagination as a way to say “goodbye” (Ignatian imaginative journey) • Patience over the period of doubt, bargaining, depression and anger as a way of dealing with the psycho-emotional pain • Paying tribute to the past, to what you have given up

33. Input 2: Letting Go • Process of letting go in dealing with trade-offs: • Accepting and witnessing the choice • Anticipating the possibilities and responsibilities • Declaring the choice publicly • Being enthused by the gains and promises • Acting on the choice • Developing concrete plans • Building, learning new competencies and networks • Sustaining and nourishing the choice • Celebrations and renewals

34. Input 2: Letting Go • Triad Sharing • What were letting go moments in your major decision? • What did you go through (or are going through) in letting go of other plusses and benefits of other options? • What helped you in letting go? What were not helpful? • Plenary • What were touching/moving points in your sharing session? • How did letting go affect your final choice?

35. Final Points • Application Paper: • Case Analysis: House, Season 3, Episode 21: "Family” • Process Questions: • Driven by the clinical situation, what is the dilemma of the parents and the medical team (analyze individually: Drs. House, Wilson and Foreman)? • What decisions must be made by the parents, Drs. House, Wilson and Foreman? • What were the options and what were the trade-offs for each option? • Whose approach did you resonate with? House, Wilson or Foreman? Why? • If you were the attending physician, what would be your approach in dealing with the parents? How would you help them in their decision making? What are your justifications for your approach? • If you were the parents, how would you make the decision? Please justify your approach as parents. • Date of Submission: November 26, 2010

36. Final Points • Journal • Review how you have made major choices in the last 5 years. Analyze your patterns in decision making, especially in dealing with trade-offs and in letting go. • How did your hungers and yearnings manifest in the way you deal with your trade-offs and in letting go? • How did your personality profile, your strengths and values influence the way you deal with trade-offs and letting go? • What areas can you improve on in dealing with trade-offs and letting go? • Date of submission: January 14, 2011

37. Final Points Next Sessions: Magis & Transcendence: January 21 Integration (orals): March 11