Conflict, Integrity and Tolerance and the Role Driven Sense of Good

My experience is that when I enter a church, or my work place, or join a group of friends preparing for a Sunday afternoon football game, my Sense of Good is experienced in sometimes very different ways. The impact of peer groups, be they work colleagues, friends or recreational team mates all represent the differing facets of my community and Sense-of-Community. I realized at some point I needed to develop a Sense of Good that aligned with all these facets and at the same time tied those facets together with integrity.

The first Pause in The Good Decision was about developing a practice in which you can enter into a space of non-judgement to access your singular Sense of Good. Over time and practice you will find both the energy and motivation from that space to use throughout the decisional process. You may need to ground and re-ground yourself in your Sense of Good as you call up your particular Pause II Sense of Community. Pause II introduces a new level of judgement into your considerations for the decision at hand. In developing your Sense of Community, you will find yourself looking at the precepts of your religion, the ethical code of your profession, and the range of good that resides right in front of you in the names of family, friends and care givers. For some people judgement is a good word when one is being complimented for exercising good judgment, but instantly transforms into a bad word when applied to a charge of violation of family codes of behavior, morality or ethics. For The Good Decision, judgement is the product of an interior/exterior conversation with your community in which your Sense of Good evolves and matures in relationship to your immediate community. We can only grow our Sense of Good through an active conversation with the community you anticipate to be impacted by your decision. This conversation or sometimes negotiation can only happen in an atmosphere of reasonable tolerance. This applies to individuals, organizations, corporations and nations. I have had most of my work in this area come from organizations that need to update their Pause II Sense of Community. Most conflict in your life stems from the Pause II community based role derived virtues and not from any single community member’s Pause I Sense of Good. In Pause II you carry your Sense of Good into the complexities of community to negotiate what you can. The goal of Pause II is to update your Sense of Community by coming to terms and integrating your personal Sense of Good with the community derived virtues prior to the yes/no of the decision in front of you.