The Direction of Intention

229.
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[continued from 228]

There is a direct relationship between healthy boundaries and power. Drawing boundaries is different than controlling. Taking on the responsibility for other people’s choices or investing in the idea that you can protect anyone from feeling the consequences of their actions is a study in weak boundaries; a weak boundary is a bunk buddy to controlling behavior. When there is a breach of boundaries, manipulation games abound. It creates energy blocks, confusion, and dependency; it zaps power.

Power creation often begins with healthy boundaries. Empowering yourself requires you to empower others because you clarify the boundary: what is yours vs. what is not yours. When you own and feel the effects of your choices, you grow. When you get out of the business of owning other people’s choices, they have the same opportunity; they grow.

Growth and power often begins with learning to draw a line. Learn to recognize the power of proper boundaries and you’ll see how quickly edges can become horizons – for everyone.

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219.
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I’ve been thinking about the term “domestication” because I love it for this meditation on power. We come into the world as a wild-child, without any framing, and like a puppy, we are trained. We pick up language and to a certain extent the structure of our language frames our perceptions of the world: does your language emphasize nouns (things) or verbs (actions)?

We learn how to get our needs fulfilled and how to get attention. It is in this process that we are oriented to value sets, we begin to inherit/develop our “communication styles,” we separate and have the distinct impression that we are separate from all others. For a while we are unique and precious in our own eyes.

Our body is our first border. We know ourselves through our body. We form beliefs (Identity) about our bodies– things like “your nature is good,” or “your nature is corrupt” – these beliefs are body beliefs and inform our relationship not only with our selves but also with how we understand our relationship to the world. It is the epicenter of our understanding of “goodness” or “place.” It is our direct link to ancestry, hopes and dreams, pleasures and pains. It is the foundation stone to the-story-you-tell-yourself-about-yourself.

The underlying assumption is that you relate to others based on your relationship to your Self. It is impossible to talk about the relationship to other (which defines your relationship to power) until you surface the point of view from which you are relating.

So, making the unconscious conscious, a treasure hunt of awareness for your values, your stories about how they came to you, your capacity to see and be seen, discovering and uncovering the geography of your domestication, understanding the self as a “body revelation” is necessary to get to the place where you can understand why power with others generates power and why power over negates power in yourself and others.

If your way is learned (as opposed to “true”) then that must be the case for all other people. And it makes other ways of being possible.

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217.
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Lately, I’ve been paying attention to how people describe their day to me. What I hear are discrete chunks of time compartmentalized into little outcome boxes. It sounds like this: “I was crazy busy this morning because my alarm didn’t go off. It was nuts getting the kids ready and out the door but once we were out the door I tried to slow down, to use the commute to catch my breath, commute as meditation, right? When I got to work I put my game face on because we had a meeting right away and I needed to at least look present. The rest of the day was a grind, same-old-same-old, no lunch again, but I cut out early because I wanted to hit the gym before I had to be home for the kids. My workout was so-so because….”

It’s become a fascination for me.

I write a lot about focus placement and focus placement is perhaps the most abstract, least translate-able idea in my canon (so I’m told). What does it mean to place your focus? Why does it matter? Simply this: most people I know feel fragmented or somehow separate from the greater experience/meaning/power of their lives. If what you choose to see every day is a series of compartments, little contained outcomes not necessarily connected to each other (work, home, laundry, gym,…), each with it’s own peculiar standard or judgment attached (that comes with seeing outcomes or products), what you will experience in life is fragmentation, reactivity, and most likely you will wonder were you left your wholeness. You see fragments because you focus on the fragments and you measure the fragments.

If you desire wholeness, you have to place your focus on the whole and not the parts. I know that sounds too simple but shifting your focus onto process unifies your focus and allows you to see the meaning in your day – or at least to make meaning that isn’t based in “life as a product” thinking. Meaning is always found in the relationships, the connective tissue, how the textures of your day play with each other. There is a Native American term that I like, “the long body,” which means to see the whole of your life, the entire arc, and not the pieces.

It is true that, if you grew up in the western world, you’ve probably been reinforced in the fragmentation, but you can choose to practice another focus placement. If you do, it might surprise you to know that your mind, body and spirit are already connected, as are your head and your heart, those compartments, like all the other compartments, are constructs and do not exist outside of your seeing. You simply have to shine your light on the river of your life in order to see it.

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216.
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For the first 46 years of my life I got out of bed and reviewed my list of things I needed to do. Life was about checking things off of the list.
“Getting-through-the-list” thinking is rampant in our world, a useful frame of reference if you are a machine but not so much if you are corporeal and have a soul. I realized somewhere on this path that my frame of reference was the limiting factor in my quality of life. I’d mistakenly placed efficiency too high on my list of priorities. I’m good at checking things off of lists, quantity of outcome, doing stuff, is no problem. What about greater experience, deeper meaning, full spectrum of experience, what about quality of life?

For the past 5 years or so, I’ve been trying different strategies of entering the day. Now, I get up and ask myself, “What do I want to bring to this day?” You will not be surprised to know that my answer is never something quantifiable; I never say “more efficiency!” or “faster pace!” or “multi-tasking!” My answer is usually something like, “curiosity,” or “full presence,” “quiet” or “I want to bring the best of me (try quantifying that!).”

It also won’t surprise you to know that what I intend to bring is usually what I actually bring. It also won’t surprise you to know that my answer is never “fear” or “angst” or “self-doubt” or “anger” or “not enough time.” Those aspects occasionally show up but I have the perfect response: I ask myself, “Is this what I want to bring in to this moment?” If the answer is “no,” I bring something else.

It is not a small question when I ask you, “What do you bring?” Ask it of yourself for a while and you might just discover that you stop asking questions like, “Where’s the meaning in my life?”

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213.
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Sam and I talked often during the months that he prepared for his interactive workshop. He was both nervous and excited; this presentation represented a risk, a step into his desire. It was a conscious choice to step toward vulnerability and the unknown. He was presenting to a conference of life and business coaches. He wanted to introduce to them the notion that coaches need mentors; mastery is an ongoing ever-growing process and that requires wise-eyes. Sam is a master coach and walks his talk. He is always learning, always growing, always seeking wise-eyes and asking, “What do you see?”.

His workshop was very successful and as he described to me his experiences in presenting, I could see that he’d had a significant revelation that day.

“What did you learn?” I asked.

He was quiet for a moment and then said, “It was very humbling. I think I learned to stand in what I know and make an offer without needing an outcome or expecting a response. I didn’t offer any answers or pretend that there are 5 bullet points to achieve artistry or something like that; I asked questions. I asked big questions.” And then he said, “I was powerful in a way that I have never been before, not power over the group but powerful with the group. We all became more powerful. I was present.”

Step toward the unknown. Stand in what you know and make your offer. Seek better questions. Let go of outcome and focus on process. That’s a recipe for power-with and a step toward mastery.

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205.
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Most stories are about changing from one way of being to another way of being. Sometimes the change is forced upon you before you think you are ready. Sometimes you seek it. The process is generally messy and the outcome is rarely what you’d imagined when the story began; usually, it is better than you’d imagined.
In 1998, I left the work that I’d created for myself, work that was secure, creative, challenging and I’d assumed mine to my death. I ran a theatre company during the summer months and a communications academy in the winter. Both were odd-ball programs imbedded within a school district. Despite the endless hoops and regulation-manipulations necessary to keep peace within a hopelessly broken education system, I could do what I wanted to do, create what I believed to be helpful for students and myself, and explore new territory. The theatre and the academy were magical places; students transformed, teachers took risks, daydreaming was valued because it always led to, “what if…?”
One August day while writing the final report for the summer theatre, I found myself concluding the report with a letter of resignation. I was seized with the need to go; I could not stay another day. I had no plan and meager savings. It was not the first leap I’d taken and would not be the last but at the time it felt like madness, like I was leaping for the sake of leaping (my inner monologue screamed, “Don’t do it! Take this year and make a plan. Make a plan! Don’t be foolish!”).
I have never been good at ignoring inner imperatives. My inner Virgil is an impatient man and deeply values the hidden treasure in, “What if…?” It is true that sometimes I chastise myself for believing in “What if…?” but mostly I say to myself, “Why not? If we can create this why can’t we create that?”

This week I worked with teachers who are routinely abused for asking, “What if…?” I feel as if I just landed from the leap I took so many years ago. It just occurred to me that my work in this world is to marry these phrases, “What if…?” and “Why not?”

What if you loosened the nozzle that shuts down the flow of your dreams? Why not open the cage and see what is possible beyond the bars?

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203.
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Here is a common and necessary step that I see when someone moves into their power: They place their needs higher on the priority list – higher than all other needs. They cease serving the needs of others at the expense of their happiness.

This does not mean they stop serving others! In fact, it means that they are capable for the first time in their lives of truly serving others. It is an equation of sorts: when you stop making other people your priority you stop seeking your happiness from their reactions and responses. Your investment shifts. You give for the sake of giving, because it is what you decide to do and not what you need to do to feel useful or valid or worthwhile; your worth is not located in the responses of others. Your worth is no longer a question so you do not need to seek it in the eyes of others.

It is the distinction between service and enabling. It is the step that makes someone truly powerful because they exit the power games. They no longer need to play – to diminish others, triumph over, defeat, negate,…. They offer their best because it is their best offer. The rest is out of their control and none of their concern.

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194.
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This one comes from Diane and our conversation about sugar. I’m not sure how we got from food addiction to playing the Victim but here it is none-the-less.

The role of Victim is like an addiction to sugar. If you eat a lot of sugar your body craves it; you need it. The same can be said of The Victim. It is an addiction. The notion that things happen to you, that you are buffeted by the winds of time and the tides of circumstance affords a remarkable abdication of responsibility for the world you inhabit and relieves your from all recognition of participation. Life happens to you. “It’s not my fault,” is easy and comfortable. Above all, it is safe (saying, “this is mine to do” is dangerous. You might be seen. You might feel powerful).

The verb at the center of The Victim is “to blame.” Spend ten minutes in any coffee house, bus stop, lunchroom, etc. and listen to the stories people tell. You will mostly hear stories of blame. Once in a blame cycle, like sugar, you need to keep eating it to fill the craving. Once in the cycle you will feed off the blame stories of others – everyone will share their candy with you because it validates your craving and gives you a tribe.

And, if you break the addiction, clean your body of the need, a small amount of sugar becomes too much – it no longer tastes as good as you remember. The same applies to The Victim role. Once you break the addiction, it no longer feels safe (because it is ultimately powerless). You just can’t stomach it, anymore. Everyone will want to share their blame-candy with you and you just won’t be able to stomach it. You will have to walk away because instead of blaming you are choosing.

Recognizing that you are in choice every moment of your life is a powerful addiction treatment program.

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