The Direction of Intention

46.

Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Here’s one from Victor Frankl: When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

During my stint in Los Angeles I sat in many traffic jams and watched people in cars around me pound their steering wheels and scream at the cars in front of them, scream at their circumstance, scream at their luck, scream at their kids because they needed someone to receive their frustration, scream at something over which they had no control and no amount of screaming was ever going to change their predicament.

I, too, was a famous screamer at things I could not control and it was in one such traffic jam that I realized that I was in pain. I realized that the traffic was a metaphor for my life. I was in pain because I was invested in trying to control things that I could not control, I was screaming at no one in particular (though some very specific and special people took the brunt of my pain because I needed someone to receive my screaming; screaming reinforces a nice victim story…without a recipient you will sooner or later have to look to yourself).

Once you look to yourself, you have the capacity to look beyond blaming, you are able to see beyond the idea that something needs to be fixed (that something in you is broken), your eyes and mind and heart will alight on the realization that you are in choice; you are making choices every moment of every day. And, with this realization comes the understanding that it is only yourself that you can change. Pounding the steering wheel is a nice momentary pressure release but only serves to reinforce your pain.

The brilliant coach and my dear friend, Alan Seale, developed a model he calls the 4 Levels of Engagement (you can read more about the 4 Levels in his upcoming book Create A World That Works). It is the most elegant and simple articulation of this process of transformation. Moving your eyes from blaming to the choices you are making is how you begin the process of meeting the challenge of changing yourself.

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