AlexMartynov

Humanistic libertarian leadership coach. Serving as a thinking partner for people building a world with more peace, love, liberty, prosperity, beauty, and fulfillment

Co-owner of The Borsch bistro in Prague.

Before that: software developer and engineering manager.

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Last Notes

2024-08-14 13:48:51

Empathy is striving to understand what is.
The greatest enemy of empathy is wanting it to be something else.

2024-08-12 19:49:55

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Also 'A chair is still a chair even when there no one sitting there' from 'A house is not a home'

2024-08-12 19:48:14

'...we’re more aware of simple processes that don’t work well than of complex ones that work flawlessly. This means that we cannot trust our offhand judgments about which of the things we do are simple, and which require complicated machinery. Most times, each portion of the mind can only sense how quietly the other portions do their jobs.'
Marvin Minsky. Society of Mind

2024-08-10 11:49:26

That's a great quote from Stephen Nachmanovitch's 'The Art of Is'
In coaching, often the realization that stuckness is really a process of 'sticking' and that one is actively participating in it, is the first step to change.
https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/46259aecb63f8959f116f84d94564761f8f9126ac4f71a50da240e7b4937d9d2.webp

2024-08-09 09:20:38

Edgar Schein 'A General Philosophy of Helping: Process Consultation'
https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/da942bfad4ce99b17a9965d022d8f36ddcbe30fcf1769f53bff05ec20831d37e.webp

2024-08-05 09:49:29

'In oneself lies the whole world, and if you know how to look and learn, then the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either that key or the door to open, except yourself.'
Jiddhu Krishnamurti. You Are The World
'The body has a much wider organization, and it also moves on into a step of further living. When you attend to this level in the body, what comes there will move you on through whatever is stuck just now.'
Eugene Gendlin. When You Feel the Body From the Inside, There is a Door

2024-08-01 17:26:06

From Edgar Schein's 'Process Consultation Revisited: Building the Helping Relationship'
https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/f67bf6aa5837b1eb38ad6ca2c3998a8e303c93ba452639259ae006eaf2f87559.webp

2024-07-22 08:26:57

From 'The Art of Is: Improvising as a Way of Life' by Stephen Nachmanovitch
https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/347c0e3c8eed6edebe9808661af00fe3f518d39e129d68f6d785f4b12047bfeb.webp

2024-07-20 15:29:26

'If we are to live a deeper, more vividly alive and awakened life, we need to know both our repressive and expressive tendencies regarding our emotions, along with the factors that can catalyze such tendencies. This means not only being more open with our emotions, but also being more aware of them in both their detailing and overall presence.'
Robert Augustus Masters. Emotional Intimacy

2024-07-19 16:13:07

I don't even know what to write about this passage from Korzybski
This is just a paragraph of pure wisdom
https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/60107be0a549c76d91265ab18d511930b79135c42fda53459f502a8a23c3feb5.webp

2024-07-18 13:12:46

Woohoo! I made it to the middle of Korzybski's 'Science and Sanity'
Now I am on the page 460 of 910
Not an easy read but, boy, deep it is
https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/a3eda76c1fdedb96f23e30efdc5af5315b7cbef7d97bbe856f07bc782be175ea.webp

2024-07-17 19:43:56

From Hayek's The Theory of Complex Phenomena (1964)
https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/1787c5dac7ba9969e6e47e9cd018880f2ea0d9a301c5f7cefbab5933c53f7723.webp

2024-07-13 09:24:19

Korzybski wrote this in 1933 and around half a century later Gendlin found a very practical way to accomplish just that
It's mind-blowing to see these connections. I'm super curious if Gendlin was familiar with general semantics or came to this independently.
Rogers was familiar with general semantics and was friends with Hayakawa. So it could be that Genlin was too.
https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/c86d85dff47331c1e13663254832e1bf32f35a056bbbcd2844535d19f54fd802.webp

2024-07-11 18:32:45

- reply

Kahlil Gibran is beyond amazing

2024-07-11 18:32:02

This week as an experiment, I increased my daily meditation time from 30 minutes to 1 hour
Paradoxically I feel that I accomplish much more even though I have less clock time available

2024-07-08 08:11:11

Empathy means a continuous process of looking, listening, and clarifying
Empathy is not an event where one has correctly guessed what's going on with another person

2024-07-06 12:12:42

This quote has haunted me for years
'In every consulting room, there ought to be two rather frightened people: the patient and the psychoanalyst. If they are not both frightened, one wonders why they are bothering to find out what everyone knows.'
Wilfred Bion

2024-07-06 10:50:06

My second and final in the series of two blogs about complexity is ready
https://alexmartynov.com/carl-rogers-complexity/
and if you missed the first one here it is
https://alexmartynov.com/complexity-anti-patterns/

2024-07-05 17:57:13

This is immensely clever :)
'The appeal to a class to perform the services of a proper entity is exactly analogous to an appeal to an imaginary terrier to kill a real rat.'
A. N. Whitehead

2024-07-04 10:09:58

There is a difference between learning and discovering.
The majority of our most important questions require discovery and not learning.
Discovery is about tinkering, messing up, experimenting, reflecting. That's the creative process that both scientists and poets use. Be more like a scientist and a poet and less like a schoolboy or a schoolgirl.

2024-07-02 15:12:43

From Korzybsky's 'Science and Sanity' https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/213c2f176ee43feb5e2effcbdc1e40d0d05ed23cd5334292ecdd7a361678cb26.webp

2024-07-01 11:45:43

Carl Rogers talking about his decision-making https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/a0809b5d6d4c12ebda3379d83d6b7758cc7077537ed54fd5f00a5b00068d15cd.webp

2024-07-01 06:18:44

Being with the messiness of ourselves is the first step to being with the messiness of the world

2024-06-21 11:31:26

It's a pity that so few people are familiar with the work of Carl Rogers, even those interested in psychology.
Among the prominent psychologists, he is the closest to be considered libertarian (even though he would call himself one). Here's his quote from 1951:
'How do we look upon others? Do we see each person as having worth and dignity in his own right? If we do hold this point of view at the verbal level, to what extent is it operationally evident at the behavioural level? Do we tend to treat individuals as persons of worth, or do we subtly devalue them by our attitudes and behaviour? Is our philosophy one in which respect for the individual is uppermost? Do we respect his capacity and his right to self-direction, or do we basically believe that his life would be best guided by us? To what extent do we have a need and a desire to dominate others? Are we willing for the individual to select and choose his own values, or are our actions guided by the conviction (usually unspoken) that he would be happiest if he permitted us to select for him his values and standards and goals?'

2024-06-21 11:30:24

2024-06-17 16:26:17

Thomas Gordon. Group Centered Leadership (1955):
'Traditional leadership approaches have often failed to bring out the constructive forces that exist in group members, because many of these present forms of leadership have tended to foster group members’ de- pendency upon their leader. The individual members of many groups in our society learn to react to their leaders by submitting to the authority upon which the group’s leadership has usually been based and upon which it has depended. For many of the existing patterns of leadership in our society can be characterized by different degrees of control and manipulation of the individual by their leaders, often for the purpose of satisfying nonhuman values or for satisfying only the values of the leaders themselves.'

2024-06-17 09:15:39

Sometimes, a perceived problem is not a problem but a plateau. We don't need to fix plateaus. It's enough to be with them as they are until they start changing.
Useful questions to reflect on:
- what's the impact of not fixing it for now
- what I can learn from this experience (the answer to this question often revolves around how one can learn to better deal with uncertainty, foster more patience and resilience to fear and stress)

2024-06-12 12:33:29

From Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski
https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/a2acd44ad4cec841b1e2f35ee4606384e314238cb73e4d283f70383da24e0d23.webp

2024-06-09 07:11:09

https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/18fef34efe5cf558b44fc3d7a0234cb323cef765f19a9ef68209b96a0f443d2d.webp

2024-06-01 12:14:22

That our brains are meaning-making machines doesn't mean (no pun intended) that produced meaning is correct one

2024-05-23 15:51:39

From Korzybski's Science and Sanity
Interestingly he considers money as a symbol
And s.r. stands for semantic reaction
https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/28ec1ad0d2078f13018c5e3e93d48b9681c38456c30345970fe9eb4039164f4b.webp

2024-05-21 06:32:39

Carl Rogers. Becoming Partners https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/d3cd7c0aacf2c900d4d42abd3c0efb9c7f4447e1ba46af6fa322afed8de3caa8.webp

2024-05-19 08:40:14

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Also
'A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.'
Alfred Korzybski

2024-05-13 16:54:59

complexity vs simplicity
centralization vs self-organization
real-world vs laboratory
as in
Hayek vs Keynes
as in
Rogers vs Skinner
as in
Gary Klein vs Kahneman

2024-05-11 08:44:00

- reply

https://nostrcheck.me/media/13d00aaf2d25d537564a17cd06cacb4bfe008b0da2dbfde6596ed43c889a9e81/448cbfa5c496e9912f87181d561ee825898f5f3a7c45b90d09b7c2234a855b3a.webp

2024-05-11 08:43:08

The time has come to finally read it through and through

2024-05-09 06:40:17

When I meditat I noticed an interesting thing. Self-talk stops during transition periods: from inhaling to exhaling, exhaling to inhaling, or from inhaling to holding a breath.
Is it like that only for me?

2024-05-06 13:41:49

The biggest blocks with almost anything are:
-Confusing one's thoughts or emotions for who one is
-Confusing one's thoughts or emotions for what is real
It may sound incredibly dull and obvious, but no matter how smart we are, we are doing it incessantly

2024-05-05 12:45:04

There are often two aspects to a new and challenging situation in coaching.
The first one is about what coaching 'intervention' to make.
The second one is often more elusive. It's about how we need to change to be able to facilitate a change for them in this challenging situation.

2024-05-04 11:33:28

This is a great podcast with Fred Kofman who's probably the only notable author in the leadership development space who clearly talk about liberty, non-aggression principle, and why the state is coercion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXyb3pk4VR4

2024-05-03 15:58:55

'I don't have anything to explore for today...'
When I start working with a new client I often invite them to show up even when they think there is nothing they need help with.
Here are some of the things we uncover when they do show up 'without a request':
- things that bother them but they learned to tolerate them (this week a client came 'without a request' and then we spent a session exploring her fear of a new boss, a fear that made her consider leaving the company)
- things they decided are impossible to change (I remember how early on in my coaching days one client said with a big sigh in a penultimate session: 'I wish I knew from the start that we could have worked on that?')
- where in their life they stifled their wants, needs, or ambitions
- apathy, lack of motivation, purposelessness
There is always something.

2024-05-02 15:21:09

Werner Erhard quoted in ‘Speaking Being’:
'if you take something which is true and add to it an “in order to” or even a “because” or a “therefore,” you’ve changed it. And you’ve changed it so dramatically that it’s no longer the truth. It’s the truth used for something—to prove something, to coerce others, to be right or make someone else wrong. The truth used like that isn’t the truth any more. It’s closer to a lie—something pretending to be the truth.'
'What you call love is not love: it’s love in-order-to; love to keep somebody around; or love to get something out of them; love because you need. That’s not love. When you take everything else away, what is left is love.'

2024-05-02 06:58:09

Hello world!
This is my first nostr post