Perhaps the most important benefit of systems thinking, as it relates to our way of thinking, is that it lets us grasp the notion that a lot of things in the world that seem immutable actually aren’t immutable—they’re just kept that way.

“By what?” You might ask.

By a systemic structure.

One of the key concepts of systems thinking is that “events” are generated by patterns of behavior, which are in turn generated by a systemic structure. This structure is predicated on certain underlying principles—certain goals and ideas that cause the system to have that particular shape:

Our experiences of who is “a runner;” who has “a runner’s body type,” etc., are no exception.

Continue reading My view? Everybody is a runner. Nobody is “a runner.” →