The Direction of Intention

40.

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

It is my habit to look beneath behavior to the underlying “structures of the land” (from Robert Fritz, behavior like water follows the path of least resistance – behavior will change when you change the structure of the land). I’ve coached hundreds of people and the process of fulfilling potential or expanding thinking usually entails reaching beyond the realms of behavior.

The other day Ana Noriega, coach extraordinaire, dropped a thought-bomb on me (she always does) that went something like this: if you want to change your belief, change your justification of the belief. It had never occurred to me to think of belief in the same way I’ve come to think of behavior.

I was about to say, “What!?” but she was already filling in the idea – Ana is like a kid with a new coloring book and a purple crayon. She is usually 3 steps ahead of me and said, “Think about it. If you believe you are not worthy or something like that, there is always a justification beneath the belief. You justify the belief. I’m not worthy because….” Beneath every belief there is a justification: a reason you use to hold onto the belief.”

Justification is a form of story. Most of us are attached to our stories – why we can or cannot do something; why the world is this way or that way. Usually our justifications have to do with maintaining comfort – making sure we don’t stray into lands that challenge our beliefs (that would require a peak into our justifications).

Take a look at the things you want to change in your life. What are your beliefs about it? What are you justifying?

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39.

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

If I wore shirts with buttons they would be a’poppin’ today with my great pride and pleasure for the brilliant Megan. She will not believe me when I say that she has become one of my teachers. But it is true.

In short order she sorted out and let go the pursuit of THE ANSWER – something I claimed to have. Megan knows me well enough to know that I can’t find my shoes so it is unlikely that I have an answer to anything. But she played along;-) Here is what she posted on Facebook (used here without her permission because I delight in the face she will make and the trouble I’ll be in):

“Megan…has decided that having the answer is severely overrated, and that in fact the pursuit of the answer often results in the need to cleverly (and consistently) prove that you have the answer, thus compromising the purity of said answer as well as inhibiting your ability to hear what you should have been looking for in the first place: the question. Sheesh David Robinson. Obviously ;)”

She said more in that brief post than I have said in 39. She said more in that post than sages have said in their thick books and long sermons.

From now on Megan will be writing this blog and I will be looking for my popped buttons (and my shoes).

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38.

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

Today I walked with my partner Lora in the MS Walk. Lora is my

S-hero. Several years ago she was diagnosed with MS and amidst the pain, discomfort, the assault on her mind, the tidal wave of depression that comes with the disease, the loss of mobility and her capacity to work and travel in the ways that she has always done, amidst all of this, she laughs. She walks as far as her feet will let her and today, in spite of her pain, she walked the full 4 miles. Her humor and heart are immense.

Before the walk she wandered through a stadium full of people taking photos and came upon the booth for Shared Solutions – the nurses who teach people diagnosed with MS how to do their injections; nurses who are available 24 hours a day to help with any question, any emergency. Lora went straight to the booth and told the nurses how much she appreciates them and how they have made her life better.

For Lora, that is not unusual. That is how she walks through life. She looks for opportunities for gratitude. She follows complete strangers holding her umbrella above their heads to keep them from the rain. She taught me to make 3 “peace offerings” everyday – to look for the little things that make other people’s lives better. She makes people laugh. If you wait on her table she will know your name and your life story before the end of the meal. People feel better after bumping into her on the street or standing beside her in the checkout line at the store.

How would we be together if we were more like her? I aspire to be a truly powerful person like Lora.

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37.

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

I sit at his kitchen table holding my head in my hands. I have successfully melted down my life, ruined everything, destroyed my relationships, my job, and run away from everything and everyone. I ran hoping – believing – that I would find some air and be able to breathe. I’ve only just discovered that the thing that suffocates me… is me. He is laughing the laugh of knowing. He had this same moment when he was decades younger – when he was my age.

The last vestiges of my former life are the hundreds of paintings I carried with me when I ran. For weeks I’ve known that I need to be rid of them. I have this unbearable urge to burn them but how can I burn my own paintings? Serendipity brought me to this island and this man that was once a famous artist, a rising star in the New York art scene. He loved the art making and hated the art scene. The society and selling revolted him yet he was succeeding. His work was selling. He had collectors who wanted his paintings, not for the beauty of the art but for the investment; art as real estate. Art as part of a diverse portfolio – like stocks. He couldn’t breathe and one day without really knowing why he burned all of his paintings, locked his studio door and walked away. He walked for 15 years.

I was not seeking this man. I didn’t know his story until I was sitting at this kitchen table. He eventually stopped walking. He began painting again but he does not sell his work. He trades it for services or scrap for sculpture. Mostly he gives his pieces for pleasure. His life scares me because I know that I must take a similar leap. I know that my 15 year walk is only beginning. That is why I hold my head in my hands and that is why he laughs; he knows I have already made my choice and that I am standing on the edge, all that remains is to light a match and leap.

I look at him and ask, “When does the leaping stop?” He roars with laughter, his eyes fill with mirth-tears. He tells me what I already know the answer. “For you, never! The leaping just gets easier because you know that you must leap. Eventually you will stop fighting it so hard.”  He stares at me for a moment and adds, “Besides, after a few leaps you will learn that every leap is really an opportunity. You are scared because you are holding on to what you know when every fiber in your body is calling you toward uncertainty. What are you holding on to? Leap and don’t forget to breathe!”

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36.

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

Change starts internally. It is not possible to initiate external change if you don’t begin inside. The change begins in asking some form of this question: what is the story-you-tell-yourself-about-yourself and the world?

Truly powerful people are aware of the story they tell. First, they are aware that it is a story – an interpretation, not a fact. They are aware that they cast themselves in the story they tell (one person can and does play many roles in a single day!). The real potency comes when they realize (and own) that they are the teller of their story. Of course, the obvious next question is, as the teller of my own story, what story do I want to tell? That question marks the place where transformation begins.

Think of it this way: when you recognize that you are the teller of your story, you also recognize that the same is true for every one else. You stop enabling. You stop trying to manipulate what others see or don’t see. Imagine what you could do in the world with all of the time and energy you to spend on trying to be ‘right!’

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35.

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

Ask Doug if art is necessary.

Once upon a time he was a young a soldier on his way to Vietnam. He was going to fight in a war before he could legally drink a beer. He was in an airport returning from a leave home between boot camp and his tour and for reasons he still does not understand, he went into the airport bookstore and bought a paperback book of poetry: The World’s 100 Greatest Poets.

Doug was not a reader. He was an angry young man who valued bar fights and chasing girls (he managed to find ways to drink despite his tender age…). He was drafted and going to war. And suddenly, unexpectedly, he was stuffing a book of namby-pamby poetry into his duffle bag.

Each day for a year in Vietnam his job was to walk point. He was the guy that was the easy target; he was bait. If he was killed the rest of his platoon had the opportunity to take cover. Each night, he’d take out his book of poetry and read poems. At first, the guys teased him. He read poems because his mates gave him grief. Soon, they were asking him to read poems – to help take their minds off of their fear and grief. Toward the end of his tour the guys in his platoon were making requests for their favorite poems and he was able to recite many from memory. He understood them; they were in his body, that place of meaning beyond words.

In a single year Doug was introduced to the full spectrum of what people are capable of doing: the greatest horror and the highest art. For a while he was pulled between the two poles: the horror and self- annihilation in a tug-of-war with love and compassion. He could have tipped either way.

Ask Doug if art is necessary. Ask Doug what is point of music or dance or poetry or painting. Ask Doug which pole has more power.

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34.

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

I am preparing to tell a segment of a story at a conference. 500 people are returning to the main hall from various breakout sessions. I have prepared a story in which the conference participants can identify themselves. They already see themselves in the story and are beginning to speak from a common narrative; they are beginning to share metaphors and have vulnerable conversations that would not otherwise be possible. I’ve already told two segments; they are eager, coming back to hear what happens next in the story.

I am nervous (as usual) as I go through my ritual preparation. I’ve done this a thousand times, the stretching, the breathing, the calming of my heart and mind. I wonder why I am nervous and then it dawns on me: I am preparing as if the people assembling are going to judge me. My preparation is about steeling myself. My preparation is about protecting myself.

My actions are the antithesis of what I believe. The power of any performer is in their capacity for presence. If I am protecting, I am hiding.

This thought stops me cold. Why do I assume that these people are dangerous, judgmental? I’ve met many of them in sessions and at meals. I’ve yet to meet someone who is adversarial or who isn’t already captured by the story. My audience is not my enemy.

I recognize that this is not about them; it is about me. It serves me to cast them as dangerous because then I can hide. An old pattern no longer necessary. I am here to tell a story, not control what these people see.

I am ready to make a completely different assumption. I assume that these people are my friends. I assume that they are generous and supportive; in fact, that has been my experience. I decide to show up and offer without armor what I have to bring. It is time for a new kind of preparation.

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33.

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

Lately I am interested in two words: the first is ‘control;’ the second it ‘attachment.’ These two words are dancing partners. Truly powerful people recognize that these words are two faces of the same coin.

It is a worthy exercise to take a step back and ask, “Exactly what am I trying to control?” Try it. Identify exactly what you are attached to controlling. You’ll learn some interesting and useful things. Becoming aware of how you dance with these words will help you grow!

Are you trying to control your future? Are you trying to force an outcome, perhaps make others see things your way?

There is a vast difference between pursuing a yearning and trying to determine a result. The pursuit of yearning is not really attached to form (did you catch the word ‘attach’?); yearning is more about the pursuit rather than the attainment. Yearning understands the necessity of obstacles to propel the story forward. A good story (a life well lived) is nothing without obstacles.

Trying to determine a result is another way of saying attaching to an outcome. A focus on a single result will inevitably lead you to think that life is only valid if it is subject to measurement. You’ll begin asking odd questions like, “Do I measure up?”  And since no one can measure up to an external standard, you will learn to play the game, you will master the craft cheating on your exams; it will be more important to be seen as measuring up than actually doing your work well (from your own point of view). That’s a kind of control, isn’t it? And then you will need to justify either your measurement or your cheating. That’s control, yes? And hide your actions. More control? And justify your hiding. And so on. It is an attachment to how you appear. That makes all obstacles dangerous and in serious need of removal. More control. More attachment.

No obstacle, no story. How do you dance with control and attachment?

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32.

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

Truly powerful people inspire others to be powerful because they are operating from a clear center. In the simplest terms this means that they are being by their intention and not by their circumstance.

Circumstance is a force in every person’s story and if you are not careful circumstance becomes the story. As the brilliant coach Alan Seale has taught me, you may not have control over your circumstance but you have infinite control over how you are with in your circumstance.

The word “control” is the operative word. Hurricane Katrina happens; tsunami’s and earthquakes are out of our control. I can blame, shake my fist at the sky and ask, “why me?” I can be angry at the hand fate has dealt me and simmer my life away in a stew of self-pity. Or, I can choose to step toward life. I can embrace “what is” and work with that. I can look for opportunity. I can offer my gifts regardless of circumstance. I can control how I am within any circumstance or I can let circumstance control me.

What if you recognized that your circumstances were just circumstances and had no power over what you choose to see or the actions you choose to take? Who would you be?

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31.

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

I am sitting on a ledge 70 feet above a river. I am trying to jump but am too afraid. My knees are so rubbery that I had to sit down. Across the canyon a group of young people are cheering me on. My friends John and Tim tread water in the river below and wait for me to do what they did easily a few hours before.

“You can do it!” the kids cheer.

“We’re getting cold down here,” John urged. “Jump already!”

Earlier in the day we were swimming upstream and came around a bend in the river. We found the kids taking turns jumping. John and Tim eagerly climbed the path up to the ledge and joined the kids and jumped. And jumped again. I have a fear of heights so I begged off. There was no pressure; no one teased me. I sat in the sun and was the cheerleader of jumpers.

We swam further up the river and as the afternoon waned returned. The kids were drying off and packing up to leave.

Suddenly, I knew I had to do it. I had to jump. Or at least try. I swam to the path, pulled myself out of the water, and began climbing up to the ledge.  In truth, I was in a place in my life that required jumping from everything that I knew to be true. I was dying (spiritually) and I needed to jump but was as terrified of stepping into the unknown as I was jumping from the ledge. If I could jump, maybe I could step.

I sat on the ledge and shivered. I tried to tell John and Tim that I couldn’t do it but I was so afraid that I had no voice. I was so afraid that I could not stand to climb back down. And then, through my fear came a clear quiet thought: If you put as much energy into jumping as you are into the idea that you are afraid, you would have jumped already.

I do not remember the jump. I remember standing. I remember the calm and the ease of the step I took toward the edge.  I remember bobbing to the surface to the cheers of the kids and my friends.

I will always remember that were I put my energy is a choice.

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