Wisdom Practice: Field Notes

Field Notes is where your Wisdom Practice meets the road. They enable you to track and to measure errors (“falling off”), wins, and recoveries in all your important negotiations—the secret to continuous enhanced performance. You can use Field Notes to track your discoveries in cultivating Integral Resilience which will translate directly in enhanced performance in all your negotiations. With even a month’s dedicated practice, you should be able to detect tangible and measurable progress in your Integral Resilience Quotient and Big Heart Intelligence which are foundational building blocks of Wisdom.

Here is the Field Notes Form

Field Notes Essentials

The purpose of Field Notes is to provide a means for you to track, assess, and measure the development of your and your cohort’s Integral Resilience tested in the crucible of real life situations.

The first feature you will notice is that Field Notes are tilted toward your success with one important bias which we will make explicit: the secret to success is to become self-aware, irrespective of the outcomes, which you can never control. As was written at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, Field Notes adopt  the maxim of the Oracle of Delphi—Know Thyself!

Thus, when working with Field Notes, accurate awareness and self-assessment transcend in importance specific outcomes. The key is to use Field Notes to understand the reasons (secrets) for why you Win, Fall Off, or Recover. This is how you score points and truly win the game.

For these reasons the three categories are rated equally—because each has its unique importance and value.

Winning allows us to celebrate, which encourages enthusiasm (in ancient Greek literally  to awaken the “inner god” (in ancient Greek– en (inner) theos (god)

Falling off enables us to discover the reasons for our defeats. If we do not fear failure, defeat, or being thrown and understand their causes, we become extremely powerful and resilient. Falling off is the first step to Recovering.

Recovering—lies at the center of Integral Resilience. When we know we can recover, we are more willing to take informed risks.

So long as we carefully examine and write down the secrets of each interesting “resilience encounter” or challenge,  from the perspective of the overall Integral Resilience system, you win. It is quite amazing when you do this, how defeats, disappointments, and reverses of life can rapidly transform into victories.

When you are resolved to cultivate your Integral Resilience through Field Notes, you immediately encounter another challenge, which we call Seeing the World As It Is. There is a natural tendency to exaggerate, distort, and fashion “reality” to reflect our own biases, desires, and story lines. Almost all of us accept our own thought forms and emotions as reality, simply because they are ours. So the cultivation of creative doubt is a very useful resilience habit.

Borrowing from the writer Byron Katie, it is very helpful to ask yourself these questions when assessing how you managed any Resilience Challenge:

In working with Field Notes it is useful each week to check the Trendline and see what patterns you can discover, and which Wisdom Practices are most helpful.

We invite you to become curious around what practices appear to reinforce a Compounding Multiplier Effect (CME)of Integral Resilience. Based on our research over many years, we have noted the following:

Gamifying the Kokoro Field Notes System for Developing Integral Resilience

To make Field Notes an engaging and fun tool, it should feel like an immersive, real-life game where users track their resilience progress through interactive challenges, real-world applications, and historical case studies. The key is to transform the experience into a wisdom dojo, where players actively practice, measure, and refine their capacity for Integral Resilience. Below are ways to gamify it effectively:

1. Real-Life Missions:

Each player takes on 30-day resilience quests, like your “Tranquil Mind Challenge.” Players identify a Resilience Focus Area (e.g., equanimity, courage, adaptability) and track their Field Notes daily using the three states:

Examples of Missions:

Each challenge integrates Field Notes tracking to build self-awareness.

2. Historical & Leadership Simulations

A player is given a high-stakes moment from history where resilience was crucial, and they must analyze how they would have responded.

Example: Cuban Missile Crisis Challenge

Other possible Resilience Mastery Simulations:

Each correct decision earns points based on how well it reflects Integral Resilience.

3. The Kokoro Wisdom Ladder (Winning Without Winning)

Question #2: How Do You “Win” If Self-Knowledge Is the Goal?

Winning is not about competing against others but about self-mastery. Here’s how points convert into meaningful progress:

  1. Self-Awareness Points (SAPs): Earned by noticing patterns—when and why you fall off or recover.
  2. Resilience Mastery Badges: Levels that unlock new challenges, reflecting wisdom levels.
    • Beginner: Field Observer (Noticing patterns)
    • Intermediate: Field Strategist (Adapting rapidly)
    • Advanced: Integral Master (Turning setbacks into advantages)
    • Mastery: Sage Warrior (Able to transform crises into profound learning)
  3. The Wisdom Multiplier Effect: When you integrate a lesson so well that others around you start applying it too, you unlock community wisdom challenges.

4. Social & Group Play:

Kokoro Field Notes Tracker

Track your journey toward Integral Resilience by recording your responses to real-life challenges.

🔹 Instructions:

  1. Identify a Resilience Challenge you faced today (e.g., stressful meeting, unexpected setback, difficult conversation).
  2. Choose a Field Notes Category:
    • 🟢 WINNING – You handled the challenge well (Rate: 1-10).
    • 🟠 FALLING OFF – You lost integrity or composure (Rate: 1-10).
    • 🔵 RECOVERY – You regained balance & adapted (Rate: 1-10).
  3. Reflect on your insights – What did you learn? What will you do differently next time?