Listen To Fuji

Posted on April 19, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Over the next few days I’ll be hanging out with Judy’s cat, Fuji. Fuji is a wise old soul and her needs are simple. She wants attention when she wants it and not a moment before. She is unequivocal when she wants space. She requires food and water and has specific preferences for her food. Fuji is not a goat. Fuji is very clear about what she wants and expects. Fuji has very clear boundaries.

This morning was my first morning alone with Fuji. I’ve never had a cat. I am a dog person. I assumed that I would have trouble understanding Fuji’s needs without a cultural informant but in a relatively short amount of time Fuji taught me the essentials of cat communication. Fuji is a love and appreciates being greeted in the morning. We had a nice pet and then she walked to her bowl and stared at me. Her message was clear so I put food in her bowl. Next she drank a prodigious amount of water and I refreshed her supply. While I filled the water dish Fuji settled into her favorite spot on the back of the couch and yowled at me. I responded immediately and rubbed her ears and beneath her chin until she was sated with attention. Then, she slept.

As a coach I often have conversations with clients about proper boundaries. As I watched Fuji drop into sleep I marveled at how easy our communication had been. There was no hinting, no guessing, no apologizing, no timid offers, no power games, no diminishment, and no justification of need. She told me what she wanted and when she wanted it. I complied when I could. There was no confusion and no miscommunication.

Don Miguel Ruiz writes that the most potent act of self-love is being impeccable to your word: say what you mean and mean what you say. It is self-love because it is not predicated on the needs of others. It is not dissipated by worth issues or control games. Impeccability is predicated on the understanding that your needs are valid and yours to communicate without justification or defense. In this sense, clarity and transparency are expressions of self-love.

Fuji is a great teacher. Note: as I came back this evening Fuji opened an eye and said, “Pet me, please.” I gave her a pet and she fell back into a deep, restful sleep.

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Choose Your Experience

Posted on April 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

767. 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’s after 7:00pm and I just realized that it was Sunday. One of the privileges of wandering is that days of the week blend and become one. There are relatively few patterns so markers like workday and non-workday do not exist. This has been somewhat true most of my life. The line between work and play is indistinct. My play and my work have mostly been the same thing.

This afternoon Skip and I did a test run of experiences for our new start-up business. The audience is entrepreneurs. Some members of our team are young entrepreneurs so we gathered and talked through the content with them and then threw them into some experiences. Having been a data-basher most of my life it’s an interesting flip to do things to gather data and adjust my work based on audience responses. I learned a lot today!

What came clear to me was something that I’ve known for a while but did not fully grasp the magnitude until today. Human beings come into the world oriented to the unknown and strive to pretend that we are oriented to the known. We make meaning of chaos. And, what is chaos really? It’s a made up concept. It means, “I don’t know!” It has no use outside of the human need to make story and project order onto the world. It’s like the word, “wild.” Wild is only useful when there is an expectation of tame. Chaos is only meaningful relative to an expectation of order. Both are categories. One is generally comfortable because it provides the illusion of control and the other is uncomfortable because the illusion is of no control. Tame and wild follow the same general principle. I was in the Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles and as the earth threw my house off of it’s foundation and hurtled me through the air, I learned that control was not mine to assign. I learned that wild is tame and tame is wild and chaos drives order and order collapses into chaos. It’s a dance.

It’s not the nouns that matter. It’s the verbs. It is the movement. Nothing is static. Nothing is fixed. The answers are not important. The questions matter, it is the conversation and the relationship that hold the real stuff of life. Questions and relationships are fluid. They move. Orient to the unknown and you orient to the questions. The questions will open you to discovery. Orient to the known and you orient to the answers. The answers will close you to rules and righteousness. This would seem obvious but it is not. The most potent revelation of all: how you orient is a choice. Choose to open or choose to close. Orient to the unknown or orient to the known. Orient to the infinite game or to the finite. Choose your experience.

Filed under: Business, Creativity, Education, Perspective, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Step Away

Posted on April 9, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

761. 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 actions necessary to create change are often counterintuitive. For instance, increased efficiency comes from moving slower, not from speeding up. Great love stories are filled with examples of the counterintuitive. For instance, the time and space between Odysseus and Penelope made their love powerful. Yearning creates closeness. Missing heightens appreciation. Being away from home is the best way to fully appreciate home. Perspective is gained by stepping away.

The point of a pilgrimage is to find the essential, to inhabit the center. You must journey to be still. Not to hammer too hard on a cliché but life is a pilgrimage of sorts. We walk a path that is both well known and well trod by previous generations – we know the end of the story – and yet the path we walk is unique, completely individual and surprising. I will live the metaphors in my way, experience the cycles of death and rebirth, know order because I have experienced chaos, and only live fully if I know that my time here is limited. Boredom is only available to those who have forgotten that they will someday die.

I have been wandering for months. Each day I recognize how little in this life I actually control. My wandering has brought into crystal clarity what is important and what is not. Wandering is a great way to become found. Tonight I taught a class for entrepreneurs and did the opposite of what I know to be useful; I strayed far from experience and kept them locked in analyzing and abstractions so although the discussion was interesting, it was not very useful. I stepped away and affirmed what I know in my heart to be true. Talking about life is not living, talking about learning is not learning, and talking about love is not loving. The experience must come first in order for the talking to be useful.

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Listen To Horatio

Posted on April 8, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

760. 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 dear Horatio wrote this to me in response to my recent post, Look Beyond The Word, post 758. I asked if I could share his thoughts with you (he calls me G):

Artistry, like entrepreneurship, defines a way of being not something achieved.

G,

Yes, indeed. Nice post.

But, that need to achieve something is the yin to the yang you describe. The entrepreneur and the artist have to really, really want the finished product, whatever it is. The painting which they love and caress and curse and despair, the movie that comes to life or doesn’t come to life (omigod… how could I have missed that!?), the business that needs adjusting and many many 24 hour days to flourish. While in the process, they have to love and need their product, too.

You’re right, I think. I agree. It’s a way of being, of seeing, of taking action. But it’s got a goal, it requires organization and commitment, because it’s in the world, part of our mortal span, and want to finish it in time. Before we die. We think it makes life worth it, redeemable. Without that, the way of being would be frivolous. I think that’s the risk, that’s the terror, and the juice. The redeem-ability of life by some accomplishment may very well be an illusion, a fallacy. But we do it anyway. We try. That’s the process. To try. “This painting will connect me to the eternal if I just get it right….”

The adage that “we learn by doing” comes to mind and opens a whole other set of ideas about how and why we draw, paint, sculpt, write, shoot movies, and so on, and then do it AGAIN. But we’ll talk about that later.

A way of being is defined, yes, but I think it also must be in the context of casting your bread on the water, taking that risk of accomplishing something, the risk of achievement. If not, it’s play and fun, seems to me. That’s a worthwhile endeavor, certainly, but it’s not the same thing, in my opinion.

H,
Yes, indeed. Thank you.

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What Circle Are You On?

Posted on April 3, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

There are lots of Venn diagrams showing up in my life. Today, Beth offered another that applies to education. The three circles of her diagram are Pattern, Metaphor, and Questions. Master these circles and you are a critical thinker. She brought to mind those other circles from my past, The Vicious and Virtuous Circles (I am now thinking of them as a Venn diagram – more on that in another post). I dug around and found these notes that I wrote almost seven years ago. Think about the notes as they might relate to education reform (or life change):

A Vicious Cycle has the following characteristics:
• There are winners and losers (a finite game)
• The direction of movement is “away from” something (a negative action)
• The actions are reactions.
• It is reductionary in every way (“tames” or over simplifies problems, reduces others, reduces self)
• Circumstance/Fear driven

The Virtuous Cycle has the following characteristics:
• The game is played for mastery (an infinite game)
• The direction of movement is “toward” something (a positive action)
• The actions are generative or creative.
• It is expansive in every way (allows for complex problems and identities)
• Values/Love driven

Both the Vicious and the Virtuous cycles are patterns. Just as water always follows the structure of the land, behavior always follows the underlying structural pattern. In other words, the pattern represents a way of being. The Vicious Cycle is a default pattern, an unconscious way of being. The Virtuous is an intentional pattern, a conscious and therefore, a creative way of being. The goal is to replace the default pattern with the intentional pattern.

To move from the Vicious to the Virtuous cycle, you first have to Identify & Clarify:
Identify your Vicious Cycle. Name it.

After you identify your Vicious Cycle, answer these questions:
Why move off the circle? What do you gain by staying in your default mode? In other words, what does the Vicious circle buy you (you only stay in dysfunction if you are getting something from it)?

Identify/Clarify your Intention
What do you want?
Identify/Clarify your Circumstance
What’s in the way? Name your obstacles.
Identify/Clarify your Values
What drives you? Name your yearning.

The required Movement/Action is to build a new pattern. Since the Vicious and Virtuous Cycles are patterns (structure of the land). Talk about the competencies in terms of building a new pattern. These are:

Pattern to catch your 1st thought, and then work on your second.
How: witness your thoughts; challenge your assumptions.
Pattern to suspend judgments
How: put down your need to be right, assume that you “don’t know”
Pattern to grant specificity.
How: Look beyond the superficial, own your fear,
Pattern to slow down
How: Breath, Be seen
Pattern to say yes and….
How: open your fist; entertain other perspectives
Pattern to step toward….
How: own your edges; make them horizons

Initially, the competencies may look too simplistic, however changing the behavioral structure of a human being begins with changing the patterning; also, systems never change through complexities, rather, they change through leveraging the local simplicity. It’s the pattern that reveals the local simplicity….

Thank you, Beth. Pattern. Metaphor. Question. What we do is really a matter of the direction of intention.

Filed under: Education, Metaphor, Perspective, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Listen For The Funny

Posted on March 31, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

752. 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’ve spent the past few weeks drawing cartoons. The cartoons are part of a new collaboration. An amazing thing happens when you are responsible for scripting and drawing cartoons: you listen to the world with a whole new set of ears. I’m tuning into the ridiculous. I’m hearing the absurd. Yummy phrases cross my path and I net them like butterflies. I might not yet know how to use the phrases but I am certain there is a perfect scenario for every luscious bit.

I find that I am constantly scrambling to fetch scraps of paper to capture the phrases that I’ve heard or the events that I witness. Yesterday I had to borrow a pen and scribbled furiously on a sack from Office Depot. The sack now has weeks of good material scrawled between the colorful decorative Office Depot pattern.

It is an exercise in intentional listening. I’m listening for and subsequently hearing things that are funny. Even in the most mundane conversations or serious meetings I find gems. I’m tuning into a world filled of comedians who do not know they are funny. Going into a coffee house is like climbing into a clown car. I am busting up at the most inappropriate moments. I’m certain there are people in my circle who now think I have slipped into madness. The more serious they become, the more funny they seem to me. Interventions will do no good. Take me into a room, strap me to a table and sedate me and I will find something funny in what you are doing. I can’t help it. It’s my job at the moment.

I encourage you right now – do not wait to begin drawing your own comic strip. Do yourself a favor and stop listening to this world with serious ears. Listen for the funny. There are clowns everywhere just waiting to feed you new material.

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Be A Hypocrite

Posted on March 21, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Apparently, I am a hypocrite. I do not always practice what I preach. Most days I believe that I am my brother’s keeper. Yet some days I walk passed someone in need; I turn my head and pretend not to see them, saying to myself, “This is not mine to do.”

I believe in anchoring my life in love and yet sometimes I enshroud myself in a wet blanket of fear. I say things I do not mean. I judge and run back to my safe place.

I believe in the power of possibility and yet there are days that I fill my cup to overflowing with “I can’t.” I invest with gusto in my disbelief and hide my gifts beneath a mound of doubt.

I preach the virtues of going slow. I believe in being present and yet at times I find myself racing to get somewhere. I tailgate other drivers wanting to “get there.”

I believe in the power of language and yet I have said hurtful things and am often unaware of what I am actually saying.

I believe intuition trumps intellect every time and yet I regularly justify and reason myself out of following my gut instinct. I spend an inordinate amount of time in my head (I call it my office) and talk on and on about being more in my body or in nature. Empty words.

I believe in loyalty and trust and yet at crucial moments in my life have chosen self-preservation; I did not throw myself under the bus to save the other.

I believe in self-love yet have given the farm away more times than I can count. I hurt my self regularly with my unwarranted self-judgments and unrealistic expectations. I hold myself to standards that I would never expect from others.

There are gaps everywhere. I am flawed, flawed, flawed. Accuse me of almost any hypocrisy and I will look you in the eye and admit my imperfection. I am human and by definition that means I am messy and riddled with contradictions. Hold me to a standard of perfection and I will utterly disappoint you. Ask me why I say one thing and do another and I will get angry and defend my belief even as I know that I have betrayed it with service to yet another belief.

What I do not believe is that the world is black and white. I do not believe in absolutes. For me, truth is found in the paradox. Life is lived in the contradictions. I grant my life the same principles that make color vibrant: there’s nothing like a touch of red to make the greens pop. If you really want to see the orange, surround it with something blue. As Quinn once told me, all religious traditions have one thing in common: they instruct us to find the middle way, seek the path between the pair of opposites. It is impossible to find the middle way by eliminating the contradictions; one must test the boundaries to know where they are. As Dan Pink writes, “Clarity depends on contrast.” Given my massive contradictions, I expect someday to be utterly clear for at least one brief moment. In case you expect my clarity to last be forewarned that I will most certainly follow my moment of clarity with wholehearted dedication to some new spectacular confusion.

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Catch A Glimpse

Posted on March 20, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Deep in the alcove of the side entry to an old building lurked a man wearing a faux bear hat and a too big worn out raincoat. He was doing a slow dance, in invocation and I stopped to watch him. Our eyes met for a moment, just long enough for me to know that he did not mind my witness. His slow pushing and pulling of the air seemed out of joint with the pace of commuters racing to get somewhere. This man seemed to come from another era. He was not of the city; his dance was a nature dance. After a while I left him dancing in his alcove.

I passed a family hunkered down in a doorway. They were tourists. They were dressed for Florida and seemed surprised that it was cold in Seattle. They were confused by the rain; their map of the city was dissolving into mush. “What do you want to do now?” the father asked his kids, trying to buoy their wet spirits. There was no reply. They wanted to be warm. “How about finding that glass blowing place?” he asked.

As I crossed Pioneer Square I saw, laying near the memorial to firefighters, an empty jacket, pants, socks and shoes. It was as if someone had lain on the ground and disappeared, leaving their clothes behind. I wondered if this was the work of faux bear hat man. No one else seemed to notice so I walked on.

A man stepped in front of me and asked if I was up to doing a good deed today. Then, he asked me for a quarter. I imagined he must be a genius marketing executive gone destitute. As it turned out I was up for a good deed this day and thought his ask was too low so I gave him all of the change in my pocket. I had a lot of change in my pocket. He looked at me like I was a slot machine when I handed him a fist full of coins. He smiled when I said, “Great pitch!”

Worlds collide. I once saw Stephen Hawking talk about multiple universes, like bubbles that sometimes brush against each other. In those moments of bubbles touching, we catch a glimpse into the reality of the other universe. Today it seems that we are, each of us, a bubble universe. How else can I explain these strange and wondrous glimpses?

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Tell The Other Story

Posted on March 19, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Etched in the mirror behind the counter of the Cherry Street coffeehouse is this thought: Love and Kindness work everyday. On the wall opposite the mirror, so that it reflects in the mirror, is a large bright red heart. Heart reflects heart. Kindness begets kindness.

Last week, during a difficult moment, Megan-the-brilliant told me that she silently repeated the Buddhist loving kindness meditation, “May I dwell in my heart,….” After the moment passed she told me the meditation helped. Instead of defensiveness, she chose to breathe in and reflect loving kindness. Love and kindness are intentional acts, especially in difficult circumstances.

It seems so simple. What we put out reflects back onto us. Today as I rode on the light rail to my studio I imagined the riders as mirrors of each other. I saw small acts of kindness: a woman gave up her seat for an elder, a young man helped an older woman with her luggage, a security officer made sure a tourist knew how to get a ticket and pointed her in the right direction; it went on and on.

I wonder how much of the kindness we see? It happens all around us but do we see it? I hear about the other stuff, the complaints, the obstacles, the abuse; I see it, too but it is less frequent than the generosities. I hear less often about the small acts of kindness but I see them everywhere I look. They are literally everywhere. I wonder what world we might create if we told the story of our acts of kindness as often and with as much gusto as we tell the other tales?

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Let Go The Separation

Posted on February 27, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

720. 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 Sunday night and I am reviewing my week. Sometimes I am astounded at how much happens in a single week of life. I’m sure this is always true but lately I am acutely aware of the passing of the days, the variety and richness of my experiences every day. I started to make a list and after filling a few pages I stopped. There was no point in going on because the point was made: there is no list capable of capturing the enormity, the passing of a single week of life.

In order for lists to be meaningful the items need to be separate, discreet. Generally, this is how we look at our lives, things on a list: grocery shopping, driving kids to daycare, lessons, dinner with friends, a trip to the gym, etc.; separate achievable actions checked from the list.

From another point of view there is no separation. Place the emphasis, not on the achievement, but on the quality of process, the level of presence and meaningful engagement, and the list blends into a single experience with many textures and colors. The separations are constructs and largely false. How can I separate experiences like the conversation in the gallery from the chips and salsa and beer from the walk along the river?

Last Sunday a friend made me dinner to celebrate my birthday, I flew on a plane with a woman who was very ill so we talked of the comforts of being home, I stood by the river on a freezing cold evening and watched with awe the geese swirling like locust in the sky, I sang “Yesterday” with Lexi on Friday night, drank too much coffee and sat up half the night writing emails, walked through the galleries of the Joslyn museum, stopped in awe at the El Greco and Thomas Hart Benton and laughed through my first grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When did one experience stop and the other begin?

I flew, I sang, I celebrated, I stood, I drank, I walked, I stopped in awe, I laughed… They are only separate actions because the limits of language make them so – or because I might have chosen to see my life as a list. I could write: I lived. I could write: I loved. These are also true.

I stood over the Missouri River watching the ice like enormous frozen lily pads flow beneath me. Depending upon where I looked they seemed to be rushing by or almost standing still. It depended upon where I placed my focus. When I focus on achieving my lists the days rush by as I race through my days. When I let go the separations, all days become varied and rich; the moments like the icy lily pads move by me though I have to distinct impression that I am standing still.

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