Linear fallacy says that if things aren’t working we try harder, throw out the strategy and bring in a new one, fire the person in charge and promote a replacement. Linear fallacy also says one step leads to another, and then to another and so on. It gives us the impression that we’re on a straight line from where we are to where we want to be. Maybe the road winds a bit here and there, but it’s still about going from one place to another.
Circular reality begins with an entirely different premise, that we’re on a wheel and that no matter where we go, there we are. We can challenge the status quo, criticize the strategy and call out where we’re falling short, yet we’re moving in a circle in which one step leads to another, and then to another, and eventually back to where we started.
Sound like semantics? Perhaps so, but consider this reasoning. The linear approach is based on the notion that we’re never happy because we’re always on a road from one place to another, that we are delaying our happiness until we reach a certain destination. Circular reality accepts the fact that life is a wheel and that in order to be happy all we need to do is choose to enjoy the ride, since it is just that, a continuous motion of one experience after another.
So we can chew out the director of operations for screwing up the shipping schedule, or ride the sales director for consistently missing projections, or fire the accounting firm for errors, or we can be in a state of total acceptance of where we are, every single piece of it, because we choose our life, our industry, our partners, our hobbies, our areas of specialty and even our talents. Yes our talents too, because we naturally become talented at the things we throw ourselves into with joy and passion.
I’m offering the concept of Circular Reality as a way of viewing and approaching our greatest obstacles from the perspective of acceptance of all that is. Not to sound ‘woo woo’ here, as this is a blog designed to instill balance in business, yet part of the problem with business is that we’ve worked too hard to separate our understanding of how business works from our deeper philosophical, emotional and spiritual understandings of how life works.
As an alternative to the standard practice of,
How about?
The subtle difference between these two approaches flows from an acceptance of what is. In the linear approach we react, and in the circular approach we move through things. When we are linear we are doing things, when circular we just are. With the linear approach everything is a means to an end. With the circular approach, everything is an extension of who we are.
Special thank you to Geoff Fennell for the amazing Mandala art for this post, Windsweep Arts
Glenn, I love it; Linear Fallacy and Circular Reality. I’m reading an amazing book right now called Integral Recovery by my buddy John Dupey. In it he talks about Clare Grave’s “Spiral Dynamics” construct. It (your construct of Circular Reality) very much reminds me of his; I see it as a double helix like our DNA. Grave’s construct does point out that linear/cause and effect, what I perceive as synonymous to your construct of “Linear Fallacy”, has given humanity some amazing advances (i.e. curing of diseases, computers, super-conductors), and has caused us to be caught up in what Grave’s calls the “Blue Meme” (i.e. “black and white thinking”, rigidity, lack of creativity). I intuit your model is exponentially more powerful/potent and equate it to what Grave’s has called “Second Tier” development of the individual and collective conscious. It reminds me of comparing knowledge to wisdom. Ah ho!
Thank you Eric. I will put “Integral Recovery” on my reading list.
I am really finding your blog a nice well of wisdom in which to drink from and
reflect. Thanks Glenn!
Great post. I just googled “linear vs circular reality” and this blog came up at the top of list. Very interesting and aligned with what I was thinking about. Thanks!