The Desert of Arizona
Cloudy 56 Degrees – 4:02 p.m.
For the past few days, my wife has been hosting the second annual Indie Birth Midwifery Conference.
We livestreamed the event all over the world in addition to hosting 60 attendees in person. It’s quite an event and one that truly sends waves of change out into the world.
The conference centers on restoring the relationship women have with birth in this world. In case this topic isn’t on your radar, there’s a lot of work to be done.
The work involves restoring the understanding about how birth worked for thousands of years before it was coopted by the powers that be. This includes remembering ideas that used to be known by almost everyone. Things like:
- Birth is not a medical event.
- Pregnant women are not sick and they do not need to be “saved” from what is a natural physiological process.
- Women do not need permission from anyone, nor should they ask, to have their children as they see fit.
- Birth cannot and should not be governed by the male approach to just about everything–which is the never ending need to control, measure and quantify in order to feel OK.
This last item is the one I want to highlight for our purposes today.
In business, we’re BIG into measuring. We’re supposed to measure just about everything. While this sounds good, it doesn’t take too much critical thinking to realize it’s really wrong.
Not only does this idea mean you become blind to a large part of the spectrum of possibilities, it also leads to a mindset where things that cannot be measured do not get attention.
Whoever said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” never really thought very hard about what is an obvious falsehood. That’s someone who never developed themselves enough to get out of their monkey mind.
Of course you can improve things that can’t be measured.
In birth, when you measure things, you give up power by pursuing control.
Not only is this short-sighted, but it renders you unable to bring your full power to bear in any situation.
The obsessive need to measure just kills it.
I make my way through the world with a business that cannot be measured.
I know what I put in, I know what comes out.
There’s magic that happens in there somewhere that is beyond measurement.
“That’s a silly way to fly,” say the experts.
I’m ok with them thinking I’m nuts.
I’m not willing to give up power in pursuit of control.
Sometimes asking, “How do we measure success?” really is the WRONG question.