Flip It!

Posted on September 3, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

890. 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 has been a summer of flips. Things that seemed so difficult a few months ago are now easy. Things that seemed so easy a few months ago are difficult. My paradigm is flipping. For instance this morning I had a difficult conversation that ultimately became about the necessity of giving voice to the hard-to-say stuff. What seems confrontational often goes unspoken because it doesn’t feel safe. I’ve often withheld what needs to be said so that I might remain safe. Here’s the flip: hiding (not speaking) is an acknowledgement that you do not feel safe. It might feel safe to withhold your voice but it’s not. What goes unspoken festers and grows. It becomes a monster that gobbles you up. In truth, what goes unspoken is fundamentally unsafe. Giving voice to the most difficult stuff is the safest thing you can do. Giving voice in the difficult moments is like shining a light into a dark corner. There may or may not be a monster lurking in the corner but you’ll never know until you shine the light on it. I’ve lost many a precious relationship by withholding my voice, by not saying what needed to be said.

It’s not lost on me that during this time of flipping that I am partner in a business start up, appropriately (and coincidentally) named Flipped Start-up. The original purpose of the company was to flip the perspective of new start-ups. They generally focus on the wrong stuff and step into some obvious potholes because of it. However, there was a false premise lurking under our original intention. I’ve known and taught ad infinitum that you can never control what another person thinks, feels, or sees so to create a company based upon the premise that we could change what people see was…clumsy. It seems that the purpose of Flipped Start Up was to flip me.

People do not change. They grow. They learn. They look into dark corners. They learn to speak. They see that the monsters that they imagined are, indeed, imaginary, self-made monsters. And the primary thing we learn to do when we become powerful is to illuminate, to reveal, to give voice. To show up, not as we think we should be, but as we truly are.

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Pick Up Your Ordinary

Posted on July 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

842. 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 his book, The Pilgrimage, Paulo Coehlo writes that the path to wisdom can be identified by three things: 1) it must involve agape (love), 2) it must have practical application in your life, 3) it has to be a path that can be followed by anyone. My pilgrimage this winter has brought me face-to-face with the third characteristic.

I’ve many times taught the phrase, “Put down your clever and pick up your ordinary.” This concept comes from the world of improvisation and it reveals the path to full uninhibited expression. What you label in yourself as “ordinary” is actually your most extraordinary and potent gift. You think it is ordinary because it is natural to you. Because it is natural to you, you assume that everyone has it. They don’t. In addition, trying to be clever or smart pulls you out of the moment. It creates a façade. It pulls you away from your extraordinary gift. To put down the need to be clever or right actually allows you to show up. It’s a paradox, to put down your clever and pick up your ordinary is the route to extraordinary fulfillment. It is the route to presence.

The path of the ordinary is a path that can be followed by anyone. To distinguish or attempt to be above the herd is an excellent way to block the flow. It is a remarkably effective strategy for creating inner poverty. This winter I have been summarily stripped of my many devices for distinguishing myself. I have been expert at keeping myself aloof and above it all. I have preached a path of unity while investing in a devoted separation. I isolate myself in a studio, walk like a ghost across a city each day, belong nowhere and refuse to join. And since I desire to walk a path of wisdom I have necessarily been crushed and ground into a fine powder. I have, in the process, crushed others in my confusion, acted poorly and been reintroduced to the ugly side of my nature – the part that makes me ordinary and human. I have been messy and brutal and can no longer be above it all.

I have no clever left to heft. All that remains is basic, essential and very ordinary. And now, because there is no more illusion of “special” or “different,” perhaps I can begin. Perhaps my artistry will find its community because I am no longer attempting to be distinct. Artistry is about joining. And this brings me back to the first characteristic, agape. Love cannot exist in a world of better or worse. Love is never found in the separations; separations preclude agape. Agape must include everyone, no exceptions, even when the exceptions are self-imposed.

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Step Into Nonsense

Posted on June 25, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

828. 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 took a break from work today and turned on the radio. The first words I heard were, “Is the government doing enough to stop intelligence leaks?” It’s an old joke but it got me anyway and I laughed heartily. Governing is hard. However when the same people who got embroiled in the debate about whether or not pizza is a vegetable are the crew with their finger on the scary red button, it is an important question for the public to ask: Is our government doing enough to stop the intelligence leaking from the ears? And, more to the point, is it a slow leak or do we need to pull off the road and change the intellectual tires?

In all fairness, I am drawing cartoons today. On these days everything becomes fair game. I look for the ridiculous in everything, especially myself. I have been on a literal and metaphoric walkabout for months. The more I try to make sense of things the less sense I make. Truly. It is like a mathematical equation. Try to make sense = no sense. Perhaps there is no sense to be made. There are only choices. And when the available choices make no sense it is time to put on the cartoon artists eyes. Or, it is time to stop trying to do anything and sit still. The intelligence has long since leaked from my tire-brain and I am miles from the nearest air pump. I am like a cartoon character that tries to clean the house and ends up making a mess of everything. Dr. Suess would love me. Lately I have Cat In The Hat tendencies.

There is a moment in the Sisyphus story when Death knocks on Sisyphus door and in a grand moment of tricksterism, Sisyphus chains Death to a post. With Death held captive all motion stops and the world begins to suffer because of it. Sisyphus has no idea what to do so he sits. He does nothing and considers his options. He comes to see that his choice is really between two types of death. The first is death by all things known. This is the death that most people choose. It is death by boredom, slow and predicable. It is to hang on for ten years until retirement. It is an imagination killer. The other kind of death is to step into the unknown. It is unpredictable, fiery, and fast. This type of death fuels his imagination. It runs wild. He chooses the unknown, the death that brings life. He releases Death from the chains, unleashes Death on himself.

The metaphor is clear. When transition comes knocking and we choose to hang on to what we know, intellectual and spiritual death will come slowly through boredom and control. Let go, step off the edge, embrace the unknown and the death will come quickly but so too will the transformation. It’s a cycle. Life feeds life. Winter only looks like death when, in fact, it is a necessary part of the cycle of life.

On the surface it makes no sense to unlock Death. It makes even less sense to keep Death chained up and continue the suffering and boredom. None of the choices makes sense because growth is never in the direction of the known. Growth has nothing to do with sense. Growth is always on the path through the unknown.

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Get Messy. Get Human.

Posted on June 20, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

823. 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 shocked me when she said it. “Roles are clean. People are messy.” On the surface it doesn’t sound very radical. However, spend a moment considering how many roles you play in your life, how often you pretend things aren’t messy, how often you sand the edges off of what you think (to the point of saying nothing) and you’ll find yourself standing in a large pile of radical revelations. Who are you separate from the roles you assume? And, how does that impact what is yours to do or yours to say?

Her follow-up question almost killed me: “What would it take for you to put down all those nice clean roles and just be a messy person?”

It is messy to say what you want to say. It is messy to say what you need to say. It is messy to say what you think. It is messy to disagree, to have an opinion, to defend an unpopular point of view. It is messy to say, “We can do better. This is not right.” Go against the grain. Break the chain of easy mindless action. Roles are constructed on the “should” principle. Roles are necessary to know where you belong in the herd. Stepping out of the role is scary because it reveals the person behind the curtain.

Recently I’ve been learning that innovation is the blossom of disruption. Steve Blank writes that entrepreneurs need to learn to navigate and thrive in a constant state of disruption. Disruption opens eyes, disturbs patterns, shakes the complacent awake. The vice president of sales will probably not cause disruption. The bank president will sustain the status quo. The teacher or principal are not likely to stir-the-pot as disruption will threaten their paychecks. Roles are clean.

Her third question dropped me to my knees: “Why are you so protected against being a person?”

“What is it,” she asked in conclusion, “what is it about the messiness of being real that makes you seek safety in your role?”

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Invite The Soul

Posted on June 12, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

[continued from 811, 12, 13, 14]

Bali Journal Excerpt #5
Madeleine asked me if I would go with her to see the Balian. She wanted me to scribe for her – to take notes of her session with Jero Manchu. I’d written off my previous experience at Jero Manchu’s compound. I didn’t listen to the inner voice. I ignored the imperative to, “Ask the Balian what was missing.” Now, I sat with Madeleine before the Balian. The Balian sang, breathed incense, and was quiet for a moment or two. Then, she turned and began speaking to me. I’d not asked a question. I was there in support of Madeleine.

Jero said (through a translator): “The one in you wants to be purified at the beach. One is pulling you there; one is pulling you in another direction. This is why you feel at a crossroads. I suggest you pray to the one not committed to you. Pray at the beach before the sun is rising. Invite the soul – he is still in the water – invite him into your body. Ask him to be happy in you.”

I was stunned.

It seems, thirteen years later, my work in the world is to invite the soul. I did my ritual on the beach (it is a journal entry coming soon) and my soul eventually came out of the water and into my body. He is very happy and getting happier each year.

The lesson or action is universal to people, organizations, communities,…the internal tug of war reveals the split gate, the investment in being right. It reveals the place where we divide and pull in opposite directions. Power over or control are usually the drivers of the split. There is nothing worse than having two experts come to dinner. There’s nothing better than having two masters come to share a meal.

Heal the split by stepping into the space between. This is to invite the soul into the body. Heal the split by shifting the focus from the points to the vectors, from the fixed to the fluid, from the staid to the movement, from the particle to the wave. Invite the soul. Ask him or her to be happy in you, as you.

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Come Home

Posted on May 9, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

790. 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 generally tell stories about others and lately my pals have been asking me to turn the story mirror around and have a crack at myself. I am aloof. Tom once told me in frustration that I was the only person on the planet more aloof that he was. I wanted to deny it but couldn’t so my only recourse was to laugh and accept that I am often a balloon floating just out of reach. If you knew Tom this would be a profound statement because no one in the history of humanity was as aloof as Tom. That is, until me. I chose my mentor wisely. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about his accusation. I am not naturally aloof. No one is naturally aloof. We are pack animals. One of our strongest impulses is to belong. Perhaps “aloof” my way of belonging.

I sit comfortably at the edge of the village. I watch. I translate between worlds. I bridge without knowing it. I have deep diving conversations at the most casual dinner party. People I do not know betray their deepest secrets to me and wonder why. Balloons that hover just out of reach are safe. We balloons are conduits to the spirit world. We are transformers. Someone recently told me that I am a magnet to the island of misfit toys. And aren’t we – all of us – misfit toys?

During these past several months two words have repeatedly thundered down upon my head: 1) receive and 2) availability. These are big words especially when, like me, all established patterns come together in the word “aloof.” With so much thunder the message for me is clear: to grow, to fulfill this big voice, I must walk to the center of the village. I must sit and receive. I must open and become available to the community. This one-way communication is nice but two way communication is relationship and to thrive I must open the two way channel. I will always know how to do aloof. I will always be a transformer. Now I must learn to be accessible, too.

In Holland Chris guided us through a constellations exercise. The entire community gathered in a circle and I remained aloof. When I was beckoned and joined the circle, I quivered and quaked with conflicting desires: to belong and to run. To step in and step out. I have wandered my whole life. I am on a pilgrimage that, until recently, had no destination. And today, like a light turning on in my heart, I understand that “receive” and “availability” will be obtainable only after I finally arrive home. Home is the end of my pilgrimage. Home is a person. It is a place. It is a place inside me and outside me. I can see it from here. So, to my pals, I am soon to sit in the center of the village. Come join me there. I’m ready to come home. I have lots of stories to tell.

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Listen Beyond The Wall

Posted on May 6, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Megan told me that there are cultures that never talk about disease. They believe that the spoken word has power so rather than talk about the disease they speak about the road to health. Or, they assume health and speak about it in the present tense, thus creating health.

We walk a path defined by our assumptions. We see what we expect to see. We see what we believe. When we talk about not being creative or not being good enough, that is what we reinforce. That is what we assume so that is what we create. Or that is what we create so that is the role we assume.

I learned again today (apparently a lesson with no stickiness) assumptions are tricky because they are hard to see. Assumptions are the rules for the game we play, they are the guidelines for the roles we believe we must fulfill. At the base of every miscommunication is a dueling set of assumptions.

People withhold their voices because they assume they know how others will perceive what they say. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” is a statement steeped in assumption. Can you ever know how others will hear what you say? People diminish their truth because they believe they know how others will react. Can we ever know?

Assumptions are scary to challenge because they orient us. We locate ourselves in the world through the assumptions we make. It takes some fortitude to suspend our assumptions. It takes a desire to reach beyond what we think we know. The skill of listening is really about hearing beyond the noise-wall of our assumptions.

I can say, “I love you” and you will hear that I am cold. You can say, “I want to be near you” and I will hear that you are pushing me away. This is the power of assumption. We crush what is dear when wrangling with our assumptions and not what was actually intended. And so the story goes.

The spoken word has power. The internal monologue has power. When Richard Bach wrote, “Argue for your limitations and sure enough they are yours,” he was writing about assumptions. He was writing about the power of the word. Implied in his caution is the flipside of the coin: argue for your liberation and sure enough it is yours. The message is the same: flow happens when we can see and step beyond our assumptions.

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Invite Creativity

Posted on May 3, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

To invite creativity it is necessary to first coax curiosity to open the door. I know that is an odd statement. Why would curiosity close and lock the door?

It is impossible for a human being to not be creative. We are in our nature creative. Every moment of our lives we are creating.

However, it is possible a human being to experience him or her self as not creative. Many people above the age of 5 years old define themselves as not creative.

If you have defined yourself as “not creative” it is a good bet that at some point in your life you got slammed for being curious. Your endless stream of questions was not welcome, your scribbling outside of the lines was not appreciated, and opening doors to see what might happen was not convenient. You might have stuck your finger in a light socket and it hurt. Your great capacity to ask “what if…” was curbed. You got into trouble. You put a lock on it.

It is possible to shackle your curiosity. It is possible to bottle your imagination. It is possible to restrict your voice. It is possible to define yourself too small. We are free to reduce ourselves to the lowest common denominator and we do that from the fear of what might happen. “What if…” can cut both ways (note: either way is a process of imagination).

The story goes something like this: curiosity called us out to play and we answered the call! Answering the call exposed us, made us vulnerable, and when we were completely immersed in play and unprotected, singing loud or dancing without bounds, someone laughed at us or criticized us or shook us or told us in front of the whole class that we were no good. BAM! The curiosity door slammed closed. We installed locks and began looking at the world through a peephole.

We develop an overzealous control mechanism to reign in our curiosity and strangle our creative range. We begin this process by dulling our curiosity. We sit still. We color between the lines. We learn to raise our hands if we want to speak. We play a game called “search for the correct answer” and do not ask too many questions. We develop and profound commitment to finding a right way. We make profound control commitments called trying to be perfect. We show up but not too much. We decide we need to know BEFORE we step.

To have the full human experience of wild creativity, curiosity needs an open door. Curiosity needs to run free. Creativity follows. Creativity ensues.

Learning is creativity and creativity is learning. Mastery in any discipline requires unbridled experimentation and play. This is curiosity.

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Start A Fire

Posted on March 17, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Dale was my seatmate on the flight from Minneapolis to Seattle. He’s a firefighter and had donated some time to the nature conservancy to do a controlled burn in northern Nebraska. We started talking before he’d stowed his backpack in the overhead bin and didn’t stop talking until we landed in Seattle almost 4 hours later. It was as if we were picking up a conversation that we started yesterday and continued today on our plane ride.

Dale is like an artist who has mastered the technical skills and now wants to transcend his technique to fulfill his artistry. He knows fire. He knows how fire behaves in a variety of circumstance and in the face of shifting forces – in a windy canyon or in a warehouse filled with chemicals. Fire has been his life’s pursuit. To hear him talk about his work is like listening to a painter whose canvas is combustion and whose brush extinguishes. Fire meets water. He has the utmost respect for his medium.

What baffles him is people. He can talk to fire easier than he can communicate with his fellow firefighters. They don’t get him and he is at a loss to understand them. People behave unpredictably in the face of shifting forces. Of course, the person that baffles him the most is himself. He asked, “Why do we put so many limits on ourselves?” He knew the answer even before he asked the question, so I sat still and kept quiet. After a moment he said, “I don’t hesitate to run into burning buildings but it terrifies me to show up as I am. All of those limits keep me safe in my comfort zone.”

I asked him if he granted himself as much respect as he granted to fire. He knit his brow. “What if you are your medium? Could you study yourself with the same passion and respect as you study fire?” I asked, followed by, “What would you need to let go to show up?” He eyed me for a long moment and then said, “I’d need to let go of my belief in all of these limits.” After another moment he added, “I’d need to give up my dedication to staying in my comfort zone.” When I smiled he said, “Sometimes it is so simple. Easy to say, hard to do.”

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Leap Or Show Up

Posted on March 13, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

734. 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 inner sociologist shared his notes with me. He tugged on his sweater and pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose before positing that personal edges only come in two varieties. Both varieties, he asserts, fall under the single category of “where the known meets the unknown.” Just as the sea meets the shore, the known meets the unknown in a convergence of elements. He told me that it makes no difference whether you are a sea or shore dweller, the other place, the unknown place, marks the line between comfort and discomfort. It also marks the line between stasis and growth. Stay in the known and stagnation is a certainty. Put your toes in the water or your fins on the shore and you will learn something new. I nodded my head. I agree with his assertion.

He tapped his pen on his yellow pad (my inner sociologist eschews technology) as he knit his brow and told me that stepping across the line into the unknown defines the first variety of edge. He labeled this first variety of edge, “The Leaping Point.” Apparently we visit the leaping point many times before actually leaping. We know what we need to do long before doing it – yet we pretend that we don’t know what we need to do. He explained that the most common mistake we make is to think that the discomfort comes from stepping across the edge; it doesn’t. The discomfort comes before the step. The discomfort is what drives us to finally do the thing we know we need to do. The discomfort comes from delaying the step. The step is liberating. The step transforms the discomfort.

He cleared his throat before telling me the second variety of edge comes from facing the thing we fear the most: being seen (note: fulfilling your potential is a subset of being seen). Being seen is a mirror-action to the first variety of edge. In this variety, the step is not from the known into the unknown; it is a step from the unknown into the known. He explained that the unknown in this case is the accumulated clutter of who we think we “should be;” we reject who we are. And then, one day, when we can no longer sustain the mask, we have to pull the mask off and reveal who we really are. We have to step into who we know ourselves to be. The transformation is from unknown to known.

He smiled, pulling his glasses from his face, and said, “It is really quite elegant if you think about it. Leap or Show Up. Those are our only two edges.”

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