July | 2012 | The Direction of Intention

Give Robert A Hand

Posted on July 21, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Robert is like a circus. When he comes to town I find myself following him around and doing the most unusual and extraordinary things. If you went to his house and asked for a cup of tea you could be certain that he grew the tea, made the cups and saucers, wove the table mats and probably built the table, too. If he didn’t design and build the chair in which you were sitting then he certainly restored it.

Robert reads the rulings written by the Supreme Court, the plays of the great poets, he knows more history, more literature, and more social science than any person I have known. He sews, he constructs, he plumbs, he paints and he does electrics. He is an actor by profession, a jack-of-all-trades by birth. His curiosity is insatiable and he’s consciously nurtured his capacity to follow his questions. To me, Robert is the master of possibility, the muse of “what if….” He turns over rocks to see what’s beneath, he acts before he knows; he designs projects based on what he might learn not upon what he already understands.

He was in town this week preparing for The British American Youth Theatre Festival, an organization he founded and has run for over 20 years. This year, they will perform with giant puppets and he needed help constructing the hands. “How about giving me a hand with puppet hands?” he said when I answered the phone. “Of course!” I said. Robert knows I jump at every chance to play in his field of projects.

“Do you know anything about making puppet hands?” he sang.

“No. Nothing.” I replied.

“Perfect! I’ll see you at 10!” he said, hanging up the phone.

Robert reminds me that this upside-down, fear-crazed, you-have-to-know-before-you-act world is unnatural. The most extraordinary thing about Robert is that he is ordinary. He simply does not invest in the idea of limitations.

Filed under: Art, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: possibility | 4 Comments »

Nurture Spirits To Fullness

Posted on July 20, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

My relationship with the crows grows stranger every day. This morning as I was leaving the apartment for my morning walk the crows went bonkers. They swarmed to a telephone post at the end of my street and, as I approached, in chorus they insulted my entire ancestry. And then one particularly snide crow swooped me. I knew it had no intention of hitting my head (I’ve learned the signs after so many assaults). Their offensive was so pronounced that Margery stopped and stared. She said, “There must be a fledgling close by. It unnerves me when they get like that.”

I said, “Do they swoop at you, too?” I thought I’d found an ally in crow abuse!

She shook her head, “no.” “Only once,” she replied, “A few years ago. It was unnerving.”

I didn’t tell her that this was a daily occurrence for me. I didn’t tell her that, in fact, it would be odd if the crows actually ignored me. Margery stepped closer to inspect the crows and we struck up a conversation. The crows flew away. I can only imagine that the crows knew I needed to meet Margery. You might say that the crows introduced me to Margery.

She is a retired teacher. She if filled with good humor and hope. She told me about the school she helped start in the 1960’s so that her children might learn and not simply be prepared to man the factory floor. I loved her clarity. She’d spent her life working as an advocate for children, a muse of curiosity. Her enthusiasm was infectious.

She told me of a time that her grandson was struggling. He was 6 years old, his family was falling apart, he was angry and scared and striking out at the world. Margery said, “ He had the good fortune to have an extraordinary teacher; she knew what was happening in his life and so she just loved him. No matter what he did – and he was difficult – she heaped love on him everyday. Now, my grandson is 13 years old and he’s stable and rooted and knows that he is okay. That’s what his teacher did for him. That’s what teaching is about and that’s what we’ve lost in this madhouse we now call education.” She told me that teachers were never meant to deliver content; she said, “Teachers are supposed to nurture spirits into fullness.” I would have applauded but I was afraid it might scare her.

Before we parted ways she told me one final story. This one was about her son. She said, “He was always clear about what he needed and wanted.” Once, while he was in college, she asked him about his course work and a particular class that he loved. The semester had just ended and she wanted to know how he did in the class. He said, “I don’t know.”

She was surprised and responded, “Well, how’d you do on the final?”

He replied, “I didn’t take it.”

“What? Why not?” she asked. She told me he smiled and said, “Mom, I went to school to learn not to prove that I was learning.”

Margery smiled at the memory and said, “That’s the day I knew he was going to be okay. That’s the day I knew he’d do well in the world no matter what.”

She winked and said, “It’s not about passing a test, is it.” I smiled and said, “No, it is most certainly not.”

Filed under: Education, Surprises, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Tickle Dr. Freud

Posted on July 19, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

The blue ribbon for word slippage goes to Lora. Doctor Freud would be most proud of her today. Not long ago Lora was telling Megan-the-brilliant that I am sometimes useful as her repository of knowledge. Though, instead of using the word repository she inadvertently substituted the word “suppository.” Doctor Freud spit out his pipe with the force of his delight. I am now and will be forever known as the suppository of knowledge. The phrase stuck. It’s what I get for tossing around expressions like “crap thinking” these many years. Megan’s brilliant ice-hot blue eyes were on fire with the torture possibilities. I could see her imagining speaking at my funeral, a eulogy that she’d waited years to share, “He was many things but above all….” She will never introduce me at a conference if I can help it.

And then, this very afternoon my dear Robert, ally in all adventures, friend for life, keeper of secrets, he-who-can-play-the-bagpipes-with-no-bagpipe told me that he’s always seen me as a horse of knowledge – but was never quite sure from which end of the horse I was speaking. I told him I was a knowledge suppository and he said, “Everyone knows that!” What I thought was the emergence of a weekly theme was suddenly much more comprehensive!

Like everyone I, too, have searched long and hard for my true purpose. I had imagined something more lofty or profound, something Gandhi-like or maybe Picasso-esque. Apparently I have been looking in the wrong… direction. Now that I have finally discovered what no person should ever know – namely, their true purpose (as Mr. Spock would say, “Having is not so great a thing as wanting.”), I will dedicate myself to honing my craft, aligning my message, polishing my skills – maybe a new website is in order. Please do not imagine the logo possibilities. I intend to have more fun at cocktail parties; now that I know definitively what I do, I at last have an answer to that irritating introductory query, “So, what do you do?” You’ll forgive me if I am evasive by replying, “Oh! Are you certain you want to know? My work can be alarmingly cathartic.”

Filed under: Random, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Think Twice Before Parking

Posted on July 18, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Years ago I consulted with some financial guys. They wanted to know about story. They wanted to know how to tell a better story. Before I could teach them about story I needed to know the story they were currently telling. My friends call me a “circular” thinker so I imagine outside eyes would have seen a brilliant comedy routine: several “linear” financial thinkers trying to squeeze my circular mind through their two-dimensional picture. I knit my brows so many times they were bruised. When I am older I will have deep furrows cut in the field of my forehead from that difficult day.
Although I had to squeeze my thoughts across the chasm I was able to finally grasp their story. Here’s what I learned: Money needs to move to grow. Our entire system is designed to entice the average Joe to “park” their money in a bank or a 401k or an insurance product. Most of us still imagine that our money goes into an impenetrable vault; the money goes into the vault and is safe, secure and the nice banker/broker will pay us a tiny percentage to keep our money parked in their vault. That image is a carefully crafted illusion to make us feel secure and grateful for the return on our parking job.

Their job is to make the money move. And they make it move a lot. There isn’t a vault, there is no parking lot; there’s a racetrack. They make the money make lots and lots of money because it never sits still. They will make your money grow 7 to 10 times larger than the amount you parked in their lot-illusion. But wait, there’s more: even it they lose the money they have a fail-safe built into the program; it’s not their money being lost, it’s yours. They were very serious when they said to me, “You never work with your own money.”

Here’s the core of their story, the story beneath the story. It is finance 101: their job is to keep you and me on one side of the debt line (we pay the interest) with them on the other side of the debt line (they receive the interest). They need to create debt for us to pay (think credit card, mortgage, student loan). As they said, “Debt is not a bad thing, it just depends upon which side of the debt you are standing.” That’s why crashes like the 2008 disaster made money, lots and lots of money for some well positioned financial guys: They created lots of good debt and it wasn’t their life savings that they gambled away. They play a game in which they win either way and, in the story they told me, are careful not to consider the consequences for others.

I was not much help that day. I couldn’t get over the notion that it was not a better story that they needed but a better intention, perhaps a bigger conscience, or maybe even a better understanding of the word community.

Filed under: Business, Perspective, Story, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

See Like Merlin

Posted on July 17, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Every morning for the past five days, the blue-grey heron has fished in the same spot. It is as if he watches for me, too. I imagine him thinking, “That guy walks the same path every morning.” The foghorn is the sound track behind our mutual spying. The fog gives the heron the mystique of appearing from nowhere. “Magic,” I think as he emerges from Avalon. “Merlin in a heron shape.”

And, indeed, each day that the heron served as my portal guardian I have experienced enchantment. One day I called to visit Aboriginal art that brought tears to my eyes and a new vision to my heart. I learned what it truly means to dream. One day I entered the nether world of Chihuly and the museum designed to honor his imagination; it took my breath away with whimsy and color. On another day I met a hundred new people who left the comfortable patterns of their lives to wander the studios of artists. Brave hearts.

On a day I will never forget, I rolled up my pants and walked into the Sound to a sandbar 50 feet from the shore. “So, this is what Merlin sees!” My feet were cold, the fish were safe. “Yes, silly! This is what it feels like.” I heard a voice whisper on the wind and I understood what it is to see like a magician.

Filed under: Art, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Take Off Your Container

Posted on July 16, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

For weeks I have been meditating on containment. Specifically, how I contain, limit, confine, stifle or otherwise inhibit my spirit. I want to be free. It is funny to me since this is the very thing I teach. It is the center of almost every coaching relationship (personal and organizational), it defines the work that I have done with artists and leaders and entrepreneurs. And here I am, taking a good long look at my self, laughing at what I’ve discovered. I am glued into a tight container.

The good news is that I am surrounded by angels and people who see through wise-eyes; many do not know they are helping me step outside of my tight container; some know and are giggling with me: teacher teach thyself.

The route out of the container is actually a path into my body. In another life my acting teachers would have called this rooting myself. Yoga instructors would call it grounding. Saul-the-Tai-Chi-Lantern would call it, “receiving the benefit.” In any case, I am compelled to let go, to run in meadows, to play hard and fall down laughing. Ian, my twin, re-introduced me to the necessity of free play. Catherine said my emergence from the river after my game of chase with my twin was a kind of resurrection. It certainly felt that way; coming back to life. As a rocket thrusts into the earth to reach into the sky, so must I.

Alan listened to me talk about what I was experiencing and said, “Oh, man. You made people uncomfortable before, I can’t wait to see what you start doing with groups when you work with them.” We laughed because it had not occurred to me that by stepping into and fully embodying my life, that I might have a wee bit more fervor when calling people into a circle of transformation.

I’ve never been comfortable wearing a tie (containment); don’t ask me to wear dress shoes (suffocation), it’s hard for me to button the sleeves on dress shirts (constraint), I was a miserable wretch sitting in a desk (or behind a desk), I do my best thinking when walking or running or biking, if you work with me you will move, explore, experiment, bump into others, and communicate without language (so your will use your body). I suppose it is relative. I am more in my body and aware of my need to live beyond the boxes than many people, and apparently not as aware as I thought I was.

When Alan and I were done laughing, he asked a world-class question: “We need containers to get stuff done (limits orient us) yet how can we know what the optimal container is until we know what it is to live without a container?”

I guess I am about to find out.

Filed under: Awakening, Edges, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Lose Your Balance

Posted on July 15, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

In the language of story, the story begins when the main character is knocked off balance. Stories are about transformation and transformation cannot happen in stasis. Losing balance creates motion so the story can begin.

You are the main character of your story and the rule applies to you, too: loss of balance is necessary for change. Although when knocked off balance our first impulse is to hold on to the known, which is a necessary impulse, an important action, yet ultimately you have to surrender to the new reality. You have to surrender to the unknown. Paradox warning: The new reality comes with the clarity that you do not know what to do. Admitting that you don’t know is a necessary and vital part of learning; it is a key to transformation.

We resist the new circumstance (being off balance) by treating it as if it was the old circumstance. We pretend that nothing is happening. This, of course, is an attempt to reassert balance and to make sense of what we don’t understand. Trying to regain balance is a good strategy for increasing discomfort and creating further imbalance: more heat, higher stakes, more motion. It is a form of creative tension.

This dance of holding on to the known in the face of the unknown splits us; it comes laden with contradictions. You love and hate your spouse. You fear and anticipate the move. It is a complexity: there is no black and white, no simple and easy answers. The point is to dissolve, to lose your orientation, to have nothing solid to grasp. The absence of stability facilitates the surrender: with nothing to hold on to, a step into the unknown is the only possible step; letting go becomes necessary; the only way out is into the void.

And it is in that moment, the moment of stepping into the unknown that the task or the journey seems insurmountable. That is necessary, too. If you knew you could survive, the journey would not be worth taking. When the only way to regain balance leads through the insurmountable, the story, your life, suddenly becomes worth telling.

Filed under: Awakening, Story, Transcendence, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: balance | 1 Comment »

Catch A Thought-Bobber!

Posted on July 14, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

492. 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 have lately been thinking a lot about learning. Something has been niggling at the back of my mind and today during my morning walk it bobbed to the top of my consciousness. These thought-bobbers are the reason I take morning walks; insight evades me when I sit at a desk. When I move physically, my thoughts move; my perspective changes and those little thoughts lurking near the bottom of my consciousness ocean catch some air bubbles and shoot to the surface.

The thought that bobbed to the top was leveraged by a question someone recently asked me about me ebooks. They asked, “What is your hope for your books? What do you hope they bring to people?” My first thought was, “I hope they sell a lot!” My answer was blah, blah, blah, save the world, open perspectives for people, etc., but it was a good question and started tickling my mind. My focus was on the ebooks, on the material as if they might actually do something for someone, not on the person reading the book.

Here’s how the thought bobber popped up. It was simple and complete: The idea is to open the person, not illuminate material. My hope is that the material helps people open. Isn’t that elegant? And, isn’t it where we so often lose our way? We think learning is about the content, the delivery of the content, and the reception of the content. Learning is not about the content. Learning is about the learner. And, what about the learner?

In my work, when all the context and content is boiled away, whether workshops, retreats, coaching, business consulting,…when it is stripped of it’s circumstance are all processes that reinforce self-discovery. Isn’t that also true of math, science, English, and all of the other topics we think we are “delivering?”

There is a profound shift that happens when, 1) someone begins to see that they make the meaning of their life, that meaning is not something they find. And, 2) they are capable of seeing/reading their life metaphorically – which simply means the great stories become personally relevant. Imagine if history was taught with the intention to open the learner to a greater purpose: to discover in themselves the universal story cycle and pass along what they discover in their unique history to their descendants, just as their ancestors tried to do for them. They become a link in the story chain. They become connected through time.

Filed under: Education, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: learning, meaning | 1 Comment »

Learn To Learn

Posted on July 13, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Dr. Alan shared his notes from a lecture on education given by Daphne Koller, professor of computer science at Stanford University. This phrase jumped out at me:

Testing is a learning tool, not just an assessment tool.

Such a small phrase to be sure but it is loaded with sanity in a world of education that has lost its mind, its bearings, and its purpose in a cesspool of testing. This single note gives me hope. It is a small cry from academia to stop the madness.

It sounds so simple: testing is a learning tool. Yes, testing is a tool in service to learning. However, learning should never be in service to testing and yet that is what we’ve created; listen to the national mantra: how do we raise our scores? We’re not asking how do we open minds or how do we support critical thinking or how do we create a citizenry capable of participating in its governance; we want test scores that somehow translate into business acumen. Could the bar be set any lower?

People do nonsensical things when they are panicked and I can only make sense of our Obsessive Compulsive Testing Disorder through a lens of panicked, lost, people. The aim (learning) is in service to the tool (assessment); the tail is wagging the dog and the dog is in hysterics.

Learning has nothing whatsoever to do with testing. Learning has everything to do with experience, with exploration, with “seeing what’s over there.” Learning is about opening a heart and mind to possibility, the pursuit of curiosity. Learning is to take off the shackles and the blinders; it is to, at its best about self-discovery.

It sounds so simple.

Occasionally we need to stop and assess where we are. It’s a good idea when on a journey to pause periodically and get your bearings. Locating yourself is useful (getting lost is also useful though that is a topic for another post). Testing a hypothesis is what science is all about, a contemporary form of call and response. However, the point of the journey is not the assessment; the point of the journey is discovery; the quality and level of engagement with life. Reinforce discovery and a test is useful. Reinforce testing and discovery withers. Compulsive assessment is a sign of fear, starvation, and madness.

Dr. Alan’s notes gave me hope. Perhaps we are nearing the point when we are in too much pain to continue pretending that we can test our way into learning. Maybe an education system designed for the 21st century is closer than we think.

Filed under: Education | Tagged: learning | Leave a comment »

Stop The Bus

Posted on July 12, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

The dog came from nowhere. It bolted out into the street and the bus needed to brake hard not to hit it. At first, the bus driver thought it was my dog and gave me a sour look. Through sign language she asked, “Yours?” and I signed, “No.” She made a sign that at first I didn’t understand – her hands went to her throat and it looked like she was strangling herself. She read my puzzled face and mouthed slowly, “Check. The. Tag.”

By now the dog was 100 feet away. It was trotting down the street looking at the odd gestures the humans were making. I could see it was waiting for the chase. I took one step toward the dog and it ran. I stopped and it stopped. The bus driver watched and waited. I took another step toward the dog and it sprinted farther up the street.

The bus driver looked at me in disdain, drove the bus to the next block, and pulled over. I do not know what she said to her busload of passengers – or if she told them why she was getting off the bus. She put on her emergency flashers, turned off the engine, and jumped out. Now the dog was between us. We both assumed goalie position while the dog, ecstatic at its good fortune, turned a complete circle, feigned a move toward the street, making both me and the driver jump, and then sprinted up a driveway and disappeared through a fence.

The bus driver called to me, “Did you see the tag?” She was serious. The dog was never closer than 100 feet to me. I loved her question, the absurdity born from concern, so I replied, “My eyes aren’t that good.” She wrinkled her brow, caught my meaning and tossed her hands in the air, a gesture of disgust and surrender. She turned, stomped back onto the bus and drove away.

I wondered what her story would be as she recounted the experience later in the bus barn. Was it a tale of the inept near blind pedestrian dog chaser? Or perhaps she recounted the drama of almost hitting a dog and attempting a rescue? My story was hopeful. A bus driver with a bus full of commuters stopped her route for a few moments to corral a wayward dog. For a moment she took responsibility for the safety of the pooch. She was gruff, lovely, and absurdly hopeful. As far as I could tell, her passengers sat politely and watched the drama unfold. Of course, I imagine the dog later in the day at the dog bar buying a round of drinks, making his pals howl with the story of stopping a bus and making two humans dance.

Filed under: Random, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

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