The Direction of Intention

618. 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’m revisiting old themes. As a coach it is a constant fascination for me to witness again and again: the way we ask our questions determines the possibilities we see or do not see. Too often the thing we seek remains invisible to us simply because of the way we’ve asked the question.

A great cultural example is the question currently dominating education: we are asking how we might raise standards. We want a system that supports great learning in a 21st century world and it remains invisible to us because we are asking a 19th century question. What might we see if we asked questions about creating a system of great learning instead of questions about raising standards?

If you ask yourself the question, “What is missing in my life?” you will begin a search for what you do not have. The assumption beneath the question is that “it” is out there somewhere and must be found. So, the only option is to seek something that you currently do not possess. The question necessitates separation; your fulfillment is elsewhere. The question reinforces separation because the question assumes separation.

Ask the question another way: “What do I want to create in my life?” Instead of a treasure hunt you will begin to generate from within. As a rule, fulfillment is rarely something we find outside of ourselves, it is something you live; fulfillment is not an outcome, it is something that follows. The question reinforces wholeness because the question assumes wholeness.

What are the questions you ask? What do your questions reveal about your assumptions? Is there a better question?

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

Don Miguel Ruiz’s 4th Agreement is: Be impeccable to your word. Say what you mean and mean what you say. What was most striking to me, most curious, the first time I read The Four Agreements, was the connection Don Miguel Ruiz makes between being impeccable to your word and self-love; he writes that being impeccable to your word is the most self-loving thing you can do.

I think and write often about the power of language. What we think is what we create. The labels we assign to people and experiences are more potent than we know. Our language is not passive. And, it is another step beyond the notion of language as powerful to language as self-love. How can being impeccable to your word be the most self-loving thing that you can do?

For some reason, this question was on my mind during my late night flight from Chicago to Seattle. I was too tired to read. The flight was not full so I had plenty of space, empty seats all around me. I let my mind roll around language and self-love. When you love yourself you have no need to hide, to manipulate, to justify, to deflect, or judge or diminish. You have no need to change the thinking of another person. That is not yours to do. You no longer have any need to control what others might or might not see, might or might not think. What they perceive is none of your business. Your business is to attend to what you perceive. And, what if your perception was rooted in the absolute love of self? What would you perceive? What would you say? What would you no longer need to say?

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

This has been a week with a theme: limitations. All week, clients, friends, people on the street, have wanted to talk about their limits. Actually, they have wanted to talk about transcending their limits. And, although they think they have been talking about freeing themselves, their focus has been on the limit and not on the freeing (“Pay attention!” I say to myself. When conversations come in clusters there is a boat I need to catch and am about to miss).

The question comes in this form: How do I get beyond my limit? Or, how do I stop limiting myself? This is a very specific question that can only serve to reinforce the limit: it is a “how” question with the focus on a limit. The verb or action is rooted in wrangling with a limit. Wrangling with a limit will only make it stronger.

Recently, at a wedding reception, I met a woman who was recovering from a motorcycle accident. She said, “I know better! You go where your place your focus. I saw a pothole and thought, ‘Don’t hit the hole!’ and went right in it.”’

How you ask the question determines the possibilities you see or don’t see. How you ask the question determines the actions you take or don’t take; like the motorcycle woman told me, you go where you place your focus.

How would the action change if the questions were asked in this form: “How do I create more freedom of movement?” Or, “How do I fulfill my potential?” Place the focus of the question on the freedom or on the fulfillment and an entirely different field of action becomes available. Instead of wrangling, why not create?

We go where we place our focus. Pay attention to your language and you will see where you have chosen to go. Sometimes the only thing necessary for a breakthrough is to ask your question another way.

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

Language is beautiful and never precise. I can only assume that when I use a word or phrase that you, as the hearer, interpret the meaning as I intended. And I’m convinced that is hardly ever the case; I say one thing and you hear another. We think a single word has a singular shared meaning; we may bob our heads in agreement; the best we can do is approximate.

I often hear the word, “love” used to mean the word, “need.” We toss about words like, “data” or “statistic” as if they were absolute and unassailable. Data is collected by and for humans so it is subject to interpretation; it was gathered with a point of view in mind. Say the word “turquoise” to me and my associations will be personal, precise, tactile, and loaded with sensual experiences that you can’t possibly intend. In the airport yesterday I heard someone say, “Turquoise is common.” And I thought, “Oh, how sad. Turquoise is the color of desire, it radiates against the red earth and tanned skin; it floods me with memories of Santa Fe.” There is no way I can reduce any color or stone to something common. Or, perhaps I misunderstood their use of the word, “common.” It’s possible.

Luckie-the-dive-master told me that, in Belize, when you say, “Right now,” you mean “not yet.” I laughed because Luckie has one of those smiles that leads you to think he is pulling your leg – and he often is – but this time he was telling me the truth. I listened to the guys on the dive boat say, “Right now!,” I heard people in the village say, “Right now!” and no one moved. It made me nervous because their “not yet” was my “right now” and I jumped to help every time. Luckie’s wife is Canadian; early in their relationship they got into a fight because she was helping him fix a motorbike; he’d say, “Right now” and she’s rev the motor. “No!” he screamed, “Right now!” and she’d rev the motor again. “No!” he screamed, “I said right now.” They were deep into the battle when they realized that they were using the same words for two diametrically opposed meanings.

I asked Luckie, “If ‘right now’ means ‘not yet’, what do Belizian’s say for ‘now?’” He looked at me with his grin of mischief and, as if I was an idiot, he said, “We say ‘now.’ I laughed and he shrugged his shoulders, saying, “Now means now, right now means not yet. It’s simple.”

Language is beautiful.

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398.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Sometimes a day is loaded with amazing phrases. Today was one of those days. It was one long found poem of delicious word candy. At first I thought someone was playing a trick on me! Feeding me yummy word bites so I would slip into a sweet language coma. Some of these phrases came from a class conversation, some from a walk down the street, a few from the porch of the library and some from standing in line at the grocery store. It was raining word dances and with no umbrella there was nothing to be done but tilt back my head, close my eyes and open to the bounty. Taste these words (eat slowly):

“I fell into your language and found myself.”
“Don’t be seduced by the complex, the fancy. Transformation happens in simplicity.”
“Forgiveness is ongoing. So is change, transformation, conversion and resurrection.”
“I’ve learned that most of the aggression that comes at me is a projection of the other people’s pain. The same must be true of my aggression.”
“I became real so he became real.”
“Contact the world!”
“Burst! And roll away the stone.”
“Who are you being when you’re just being?”
“The gift of the dream is to let go of trying to be anything else.”
“You know what would be cool? Neither do I!”
“What is movement when you are perfectly still?”
“Who is like me? There must be somebody!”
“Do you know the word I love saying today: “fascinating.” Say it slowly.”

Martín Prechtel writes of speaking beautifully to feed the world. Don Miguel Ruiz writes of being impeccable to your word as an act of self-love. Say what you mean, mean what you say and say it lusciously. If language is the building block of the story you tell yourself about yourself, then the language you choose creates your world. Change your language, change your story, change your world. Today, the people around me fed the world (and me) a feast. I fell into their language, was seduced and found myself saying slowly over and over again, “fascinating.”

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