The Circulo Backstory
This is the story of how Circulo came into being in May 2020.
The short version of the story is that I had an idea that refused to go away.
The time between testing the first prototype and the website launch was less than two months.
That’s the easy part.
The part that is harder to unpack is the path it has taken for me to get to this point, and the multiple threads of my life that are woven into Circulo.
Luckily, my friend Tom Uhlhorn from Tiny CX interviewed me for his podcast just after our launch.
You can listen to the full podcast below, or read the truncated transcript below.
The many threads to Circulo
Adapting to change
Originally from Indonesia, I’ve had a pretty unusual life path where I was sent overseas from the age of six years old, before moving to Australia when I was 16. I’ve lived and worked in Hong Kong, Myanmar and Singapore, and have recently returned back to Melbourne a few years ago.
A recurring theme of my life is getting dropped into a new environment and having to make sense of a situation very quickly.
Spending time in different bubbles
I’ve probably spent time in more bubbles than the norm.
In my career, I’ve worked in both the corporate and not-for-profit/international development bubble.
Being naturally curious, I’m always trying out and learning new things.
I’ve spent time in the start-up bubble where we talk about lean start-up and minimum viable product (MVP).
I’ve completed my MBA (Masters of Business Administration) so there’s the strategy bubble where you’ve got Michael Porter and all of those frameworks which the strategy consultants love rolling out.
I‘ve also spent time in the mindfulness bubble, which is a big part of my life since I was first introduced to it about 20 years ago.
Fractal/repeating patterns
In my corporate life, I’ve been a fan of the body of work around complex systems and organisational culture that came out from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) — in particular, (Edgar Schein’s model) about iceberg, beliefs and paradigms and how they shape how we see the world.
You can use that model to understand organisational culture. And the same pattern also plays out at a personal level, as well as the societal level.
I am very curious about what’s underneath the iceberg — the dimension that we can’t see or measure objectively that is really driving everything — and how can we (as individuals and organisational leaders) hold space for change and transformation.
Holding space for transformation
Paradigm shifts
I think I got intrigued about the idea of holding space because there have been some powerful moments in my life where I’ve either experienced this myself, or helped someone uncover and shift their beliefs.
There is an aha moment when someone makes the connection that — because I have a certain belief, it is making me see things a certain way. When that belief is either dropped or shifted, the way they see the world will change — or you could say that their reality has shifted.
How beliefs are formed
Beliefs are formed when something happens the first time and we kind of assumed that it will probably happen a second time.
And then if it keeps happening enough times, it becomes part of our belief system and the way that we make sense of the world.
And then what happens though is when we gets into a groove, it’s hard for us to get out of that groove, and we may not even notice potentially our opportunities to leave that groove.
So the idea of Circulo is about potentially through conversation with someone, allowing that person or multiple people to actually understand that the groove they are in, isn’t the only groove that exists — through holding space and exploring the iceberg from another perspective.
Why bother?
So why should someone bother exploring their iceberg?
If I can use a real example, when I was working through the decision to leave my family and volunteer for a year in Myanmar, I realised that I had a belief that says: “I can’t do what I love and still make enough money for my family.”
I was the primary breadwinner at the time, and as I long as I have this belief, I feel stuck, and kinda torn between (what appears to be) two mutually exclusive choice.
Sometimes the mind can get very fixated around an idea (or a deeply-rooted fear). And I’ve learnt when this happens that one of things I could do is to do a thought experiment or treat this as a hypothetical situation, which seems to take the mind down a different route where it becomes open to a different possibility.
Once the mind cracked the financial question, then the other belief that came up was my role as a partner and mother.
So I had to allow space for that. It wasn’t an answer that would come straight away. There’s something that still needs to be worked out. It’s almost like internally there’s different parts of me.
There’s the part of me that have massive guilt about leaving my husband and two children in Australia, that has beliefs around what a mother should do.
And there’s another part of me that gets massively excited when the monthly newsletter come around listing international volunteering opportunities — such as working on a microfinance project in Mongolia. There was an undeniable and visceral feeling — a resounding, internal and unequivocal OMG YES!
But nevertheless I felt stuck. And I’ve learnt that there’s really nothing much I can do about this. There are some things you can’t push and I just had to allow things to get to its own place of resolution
Some questions can’t be answered at the conceptual level. You need to bring in a deeper intelligence.
I sat with that tension and allow it to be there (for a good part of one year). And where I finally ended up was: What we want for our children is for them to be prepared to face the world, to be brave and pursue their dreams. I saw how hypocritical it is for me to stay in my safe little box. I can’t look them in the eye and ask them to do what I’m not able to do myself. And even worse, what’s the alternative? Am I telling my children that life is just this treadmill that you should just stay on because it’s too risky and you should wait till you’re retired before you do what you love?
So it became clear to me that it is exactly because I loved my children that I had to lead by example and follow my truth.
I reached a point of inner peace and clarity. There was also a broader perspective and more inner space to hold what were previously irreconcilable positions.
Mind and Body
How our mind works
We are understanding so much more about the mind and how it works. Maybe our brain is a lot more powerful than we realise. Maybe we can access more parts of the brain if we don’t try to work the left side quite so much.
In other words, you can rewire your brain, but first you need to be aware of what programs you’ve been putting into your mind (operating system).
The mind is a wonderful servant and a terrible master. You have to know when it’s practising servitude and when it’s controlling you.
Mind-Body Connection
If we go with the body analogy, you realise that everything is interconnected. It’s not just about exercising, sleeping or eating the right foods. We would drive ourselves insane if we were to try every single advice out there and try to tackle it at the symptom level. But if your system is in balance, it works itself out.
The mind is also part of the broader body/biological system. Where does fight/flight response comes from? The mind sees something and an old program starts to run — danger! danger! — which triggers adrenaline that you need to run. And what’s that in modern day? That’s stress.
How beliefs shape our lives
Tribal truth
I think almost everyone can relate to taking on the beliefs that our parents and the significant people around us have during early childhood — their truth becomes our truth.
Most of us have a common story around needing to go to school, graduate, work hard, save money, etc.
Examining beliefs/paradigms
Because I’ve lived apart from my family since such a young age, I had to learn to make sense of things on my own.
After my husband and I got married and have kids, we did the usual thing and have investment properties, successful careers etc.
But what I noticed was we’re actually not that happy. Life seems really stressful and we were always running from one thing to the other. We owned two restaurants and lots of stuff.
And I started wondering about things like — how many TVs do I really need? how many cars? how much is enough?
I started really challenging the (tribal) paradigm that we’ve inherited.
Unlearning and letting go of stuff
Since my husband no longer enjoyed running our restaurants, we decided to un-entangle our finances so that we can live on one income and focus on what’s really important to us — which was freedom, choice and being in control of our time. Or what we called our “Simplify Project”.
If you subscribe to the belief that you need to have all a lot of stuff, which requires a lot of debt, which requires servicing — you’ll never have freedom. So we start to really explore that and go — you know what, maybe we can let go of some of this stuff so that we can have more time.
It became a journey where I almost start to unlearn all the things that I thought were important. And what’s fascinating is as I let go of the material stuff, there seems to be more space, which allows me to explore beliefs. It’s like peeling an onion.
There’s many people and blogs nowadays exploring similar ideas — such as the minimalist movement. We started our simplify project during the GFC and we’ve not looked back since.
How life works
Learning to trust life
One of the cool things about getting old is we start to collect horizontal data about how things work.
And one of the things that my horizontal data revealed is that many of the most significant events or turning points in my life actually happened not because I planned it. They were accidents, happenstances and serendipitous moments.
The space between stories
And I heard recently something which I loved which is about the space between stories.
I’ve discovered that it’s actually through those moments that I grew the most.
It might be hard to relate to but right now where I sit, my inner reality is not really affected by my external reality.
Indeed, I’ve learnt to welcome those moments when things don’t go according to my preferences, or when things don’t quite go to plan. Because that’s a signal to me that something is going on and my (inner) container is being expanded.
The space between stories is also what author William Bridges described as the neutral zone, where there’s lots of uncertainty.
Most of us haven’t developed the capacity to sit in this neutral zone.
We tend to struggle when our known world is disintegrating and we are shifting from the known into the unknown.
Chaos and Order
If you take an even broader lense, isn’t that the cycle of life.
Chaos and order goes hand in hand. We’re always moving from order to chaos, order and chaos.
We all have to go through transitions and life stages whether we like it or not — we get old and eventually we die.
We can either learn to flow a bit better with it, or we can continue to be miserable during these moments.
How Circulo came into being
Coming full circle
When COVID-19 hit in the early part of 2020, I found myself in a very strange place where I was just coming out of two years in near self-isolation and contemplation.
I know it sounds crazy but I was curious to explore what would happen if I stop my normal mode, which is my comfort zone, of being an over-achiever and doing lots of things.
It seems like for whatever reason life has brought me to a point where it was no big deal to me to self-isolate because that’s what I’ve been doing for the last two years.
Stepping Up
As I reflected on what was happening around me (due to COVID-19), I felt a responsibility to step up and share what I’ve learnt over many years.
Many threads of my life came together and what I started to think about was how could people learn to hold space for themselves and look within.
It’s a reverse journey. It’s learning to let go, rather than accumulate more knowledge. It’s the opposite of everything that we’ve been trained (as a society) to do.
And it’s probably not very useful to replicate what I did because people don’t have 15 years to spend on developing a meditation practice.
So I started to really look at this problem from different angles. And being a bit creative about this.
Changing directions
Where I got to was — it doesn’t matter where people are at and we are all on different parts of the journey. The main thing is learning to turn to the opposite direction and start building that muscle.
You don’t learn to run a marathon overnight, but you have to start somewhere.
If we keep grasping for answers, keep looking outside, and keep listening to more experts, we’ll just become even more confused. When actually, it’s the direction that needs to shift because we’ve got the answers in us all the time.
If we can learn to tune in to ourselves a bit more, I really don’t care what level the iceberg we get to. I’m more interested in helping people experiencing that inner movement and building that muscle.
The Circulo Practice
There are three legs to the practice.
Circle Way/Practice
There are many different variations to circle way/practice but the all come from the same ancient lineage that started when the first humans first live together in tribes. Essentially our ancestors would gather as tribes around a campfire and every person in the tribe would have a voice. It was a way that tribes listen to each other and have a group conversation.
Mindfulness
This is another ancient lineage. And my hypothesis is that maybe we could enable certain conditions that may make it easier to bypass the normal circuitry of the brain and help someone surface their beliefs and assumptions — without having to spend years learning how to observe their thoughts.
Action Learning
Action learning is learning through practice. You can read all the books you want about riding a bicycle, and you’ll still be crap and fall down the first time you get on a bicycle.
The Circulo Journey
And there you have it.
The story of Circulo and how we started.
Thank you for sticking with us — to the end of this circuitous story, and the start of the Circulo journey.
If there was an easier way to teach all the things that we’ve discussed in the above, I would have done it.
Like most things in life, it is a journey that everyone has to go through.
And I hope I’ll get to meet you someday on the Circulo journey.
