Perspective | The Direction of Intention

See The Story

Posted on November 27, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

628. 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 haven’t a thought in my head. It’s late and I just finished teaching a class on story to entrepreneur’s preparing to make pitches to investors. They’ve created apps and need capital to fulfill their business vision. I helped them to stop thinking of their apps as “things” and to start thinking of them as “motion:” a pitch is a story of a yearning meeting an obstacle, just like any story they see on a screen. Yearning initiates motion. They were amazed when their focus shifted from selling a product – a focus that limits – to the recognition that telling a story always opens possibilities – a focus that expands. Motion.

It is funny where life takes you. Not so long ago I was a pariah to the business community; I am an artist and, therefore, non-essential. It occurs to me that I spent a long time being a pariah, going where I knew I would not be welcome, saying what I knew no one could hear. Apparently I am clearing some karma or I’m an odd sort of masochist! At this late hour I can’t even remember why I thought it was a good idea so long ago to go into businesses hocking my story wares. I knew I could see what they could not and what I saw was useful and beautiful (I’d never use the “b” word in business, it makes their ninnies twist and eyes bulge). I’d attempt to get them to look through the lens of story and they’d roll their eyes.

So you can imagine how delightful and existentially curious it was for me to live long enough to witness the swing of the pendulum: my business pals are now routinely asking me in to help them learn to thrive in ambiguity. Tonight a class full of MBA candidates listened to me like I held the key to obscene wealth (I do, by-the-way). The key to better business is story. Consider this: a world of absolutes needs stasis: black and white thinking is useful to folks that refuse to change. So is a hierarchy. In our world, where change is the only constant, it is useful to know how to shape shift, it is essential to learn to dance with what is there, not what we think should be there. Assumptions are routinely popped in this fast moving stream. Hierarchies need a bottom-up energy or they move to slow to be useful. Motion, shifting forms, ambiguity.

Prior to class I went to the Apple store to pick up a new printer and the man that helped me told me the most difficult (and rewarding) part of his job was staying on top of the changes. “Things are obsolete the moment they hit the shelves,” he said. “I’m constantly learning and adjusting to the next innovation.” I wish I’d recorded him so I might play this fundamental insight to the public schools so they might recognize the mismatch. This economy is not their grandfather’s Oldsmobile.

Tonight, a student in the class said, “Seeing our app as a story has made me realize, much to my surprise, how human our work is.” I smiled a crooked tooth smile. She hit the nail on the head: “product” is anonymous; story is personal. Business is not business anymore.

Filed under: Art, Business, Perspective, Story, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Step Into The Dark Night

Posted on November 21, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Two quotes collided right in front of me and there resonance took my breath away. First, from a television series on culture, the amazing Wade Davis met with Gretel Ehrlich in Greenland. In the interview she said, “Despair is a sin against imagination.”

Saul Bellow wrote, “I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos – a stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.”

I am never so quiet as when I paint. I am never so present as when I create. And I am certain that my culture no longer understands the power and role of its arts. It has confused art with distraction; it has relegated its primary mechanism for transformation to the basement of entertainment. Only the artists still recognize the door to the quiet holy.

Despair is noisy. It is urban and abstract. It is the chaos of an untethered mind, the heart gone dry. It is what happens when electric light blinds us to the stars.

Imagination is stillness. It is our most natural state, cousin to curiosity. My friend Carol once told me that, when going to Alaska, you reenter the food chain. If you think you suffer from a lack of imagination, step into the dark night and walk into woods. You will learn that it is not imagination that you lack but contact with anything that is real.

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Perspective, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Understand My Confusion

Posted on November 20, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

621. 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 not getting you anything for Christmas. It’s not that I don’t want to give you a gift. I do. It’s just that I’m having a crisis of value; I’m not sure what is valuable anymore.

For instance, I was unplugged from the news last week so I missed the disappearance of the Twinkie. Honestly, I probably would have missed it had I not been unplugged from the news. What I didn’t miss was the profiteers that raked clean the Twinkies from store shelves only to sell them on eBay to panicking Twinkie fans for a hundred times the market price. And they are selling, thus establishing a new market price. I recognize the rules of supply and demand, the demand-fever produced by a limited supply and all of that; I can even entertain the appeal of Americana, the passing of the Twinkie era and the emotional crisis that might evoke. But, truth be told, I am shaking my head in disbelief.

Just for kicks I googled the list of endangered species and wondered where is the frenzy over the limited supply of Assam Roofed Turtles or Australian Sea Lion’s? If we have the energy to horde and save Twinkies, where is our verve to protect the Bactrian Camels? I understand there is a very limited supply. Of course, it is a rhetorical question; according to the law of supply and demand they have no value. No demand. No market. Best to just let the supply disappear. You can understand my confusion. For kicks, google the list, read it, and see how long it takes you to get to the bottom. You might want to sit. You’ll certainly want to brew some coffee; it will take you a while.

And then there is the day we set aside each year to give thanks. We gather with our families. We make a big meal to demonstrate and celebrate our abundance. Given enough time we might even sit around and tell stories of the people who came before us that lived hard lives so that we might enjoy our abundance. But, this year the stores open at 8:00. I hadn’t recognized the shortage of stuff – or perhaps it is a shortage of time to get stuff; either way, somehow we’ve managed to turn our ritual of Thanksgiving into a festival of lack. I’d ask you to explain it to me but I think that might only serve to depress me.

Given the clear value message displayed by my community, I have learned that the best gift I can give to you this year is a Twinkie. And, I can’t do it. I value you more than that. You can understand my confusion.

Filed under: Perspective, Random, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: abundance, value | 1 Comment »

Eat At Tina’s Kitchen

Posted on October 21, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

591. 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 am having a twilight zone moment. I’m sitting in the reception area of Doctor Knapp’s office staring at a very large aquarium filled with vibrant green plastic seaweed, colorful plastic shells, fake corral, a bubbling aerator, and several tropical fish swimming. It’s all so clean and well constructed, designed and contained. It is meant to be peaceful and calming for nervous patients and in another context I might see it as it is intended. However, I just spent the last two weeks diving off the coast of Belize on one of the world’s great barrier reefs. The only real things in the tank are the fish; everything else is plastic, constructed. I’m watching the fish swim within the limits of their container. They circle; they touch the top and dive to the bottom, again and again and again.

Because my mind can’t see a doughnut without equating it metaphorically I am staring at the aquarium as if was a symbol of contemporary life in America. I am horrified. The colorful magazines on the table next to me declare that, Jen is being unfaithful, Christian has a broken heart, there is a lovechild, a shocking divorce, a deathbed confession! The receptionist is sitting behind a counter, wearing a headset, answering calls as she simultaneously asks a patient 101 questions about insurance coverage; the patient is wracking her brain trying to remember the minutia of her coverage. How many parts of Medicare are there and have you already fallen through the doughnut hole?

There is an elderly couple sitting behind me and they are talking about the episode of a television show they watched last night. They are deeply concerned about the safety of one of the characters. Their conversation for a moment became heated as they argued about whether the character should have opened the door or not. “That was stupid!” the man exclaimed. “No! He had to do it!” she retorted. He crossed his arms not liking to be challenged on his perception of a character in imaginary circumstances. I suppress the urge to flee.

As I look around the office I realize that, other than the people and the fish, everything is constructed, designed, assembled, and fabricated. There is a wall of charts, rows of chairs (not too comfortable), art on the wall meant to compliment the color scheme but otherwise says nothing (or, perhaps, that is exactly what it says about us), textured wallpaper that is not vibrant nor listless; people walking within the limits of their container, testing the top, diving to touch bottom, and circling again and again and again.

I know this moment will pass. I am suffering from travel re-entry and am prone to twilight zone moments. Last week I entered a shack, sat on a plastic chair and watched as Tina made for me rice, beans, and a fish just pulled from the river. Tina’s kitchen was also constructed but it wasn’t hiding anything, it was a human place, functional and gritty and barely qualified as a structure. Her 6-year old daughter, Darcy, strummed a guitar that only had two strings and sang songs. No one tried to shoo her away or was concerned about decorum. We laughed, clapped and were grateful for the breeze off the ocean that cut the heat. There was no need to talk about imaginary conflicts because life in Tina’s Kitchen was real and so was our conversation. The culture of comfort had not yet seeped into her village; insurance was the relationship she had with her neighbors and the hard lives of the people in her world were far more tangible and compelling than anything screaming from a magazine. She had no time for Jen’s faithlessness or Christian’s broken heart. Her world might have looked poor but I could see no glass containing her and all of the plants were refreshingly rooted and real.

Filed under: Perspective, Truly Powerful People | 4 Comments »

Exit The Grey

Posted on October 18, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

588. 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 many upsides to modern air travel. Namely, you can get someplace really fast. No more wagon trains, no more pony rides across the prairie. No more months or even days of going only as fast as the wheel can roll.

And, no more transition time. The downside is the same as the upside: you get places really fast. You enter into a grey space called an “airport” and exit from a similar grey space into an entirely different location. Yesterday I began the day walking on the beach while the sun rose over the coast of Belize. I waded into the warm ocean waters of the Caribbean. I swam. And then I packed my bag. 12 hours later I stepped out of the grey Seattle airport into the freezing rain.

My mind can make sense of this rapid change of environment but my body struggles to comprehend it. How can I be in warm summer in the morning and freezing winter by midnight? Enter the grey and things can change very fast. It is a metaphor for our time. While in Belize Lora turned 59, she looked at me and said, “How did that happen?” I thought, “We are always in the grey.” One day you are twenty, you enter the cubicle and emerge 60 on the other side. Whoosh!

I was amused in Houston to hear my fellow travelers huff and gruff about how long their flights were going to take. Another 3 hours! Tom told me that once he flew across the country looking down at the immense expanse that his ancestors crossed in a wagon. He said, “I don’t have that in me. They were made of much sturdier stuff.” When you left your family, it was a good bet that you would never again see them. The word “distance” had an entirely different meaning than it does now. The word “dream” rarely came with an expectation of immediacy.

While away I turned off my phone. We were in a place with a sketchy internet connection so after a day I recognized the boon and stopped trying to be connected. I created distance. All my abstractions fell away, the pace of my expectation slowed to a more human rate, and my dreams took a lung full of air and sighed. “What shall we do now,” I asked. “Just this.”

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Look To The Little Things

Posted on October 12, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

582. 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-the-Brilliant and I talked late one night about the little things in life; we both agreed that they are the most significant things, those little moments that we almost always miss. She told me of being stunned into silence by the yellow leaves falling in a perfect circle beneath a tree. No other tree in the park was shedding its leaves. This single tree was ringed by a brilliant yellow circle of it’s leaves and in the morning light, it was electric. The next morning, on our way to the airport, she took me to see it. I gave her an assignment: I asked her to go to the tree the following morning, take off her shoes, and walk in the circle of leaves. I am waiting for a full report.

Sometimes the small things surprise you: you discover the circle of leaves. Sometimes you create the small things: you drive to the circle in the early morning light, take off your shoes, and walk through the brilliant leaves. I am practicing moving though my life looking for the small surprises. It makes me move slower, to expect the surprises. I am never disappointed as each day, everywhere I look, I see the little miracles, the kindnesses, the generosities, the electric trees, the mesquite smell in the air.

I am also practicing creating the small memories. Last week I stepped into the river. I climbed a fallen eagle tree and peered into an abandoned nest. I threw bark in the water to make a splash. I ate slowly my chili and smelled a warm, freshly baked cinnamon roll. I splashed paint with a little blonde miracle. I sat before a fire late into the night, drank wine and talked of small things.

Filed under: Education, Emergence, Love, Perspective, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Once Upon A Time

Posted on September 21, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

561. 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 the past several days I have watched Lora pull out old photo albums, unpack boxes and old suitcases searching for photographs of her mother, Margaret. She is assembling a slide show for Margaret’s memorial celebration. Her intention was simple: to gather photographs documenting Margaret’s life but as she looked for images she found something far richer.

Photographs tell a story. There are photos of the infant Margaret, the little girl with grandparents, a rowdy teenager on a motorcycle, giving a friend a boost up a tree. There is the moment, as a young woman that she held a string of fish and laughed at her father’s antics, and the shot taken in a club of a gorgeous sophisticated lady surrounded by soldiers on leave from the war. Then, there was a photo arm and arm with the one soldier, a pilot, wedding photo’s, a happy couple in a home of their own, a new mom and her baby. The frozen moments continued through surprise parties, Christmas days, a second marriage, becoming a grandmother, cruises with her daughter, widowhood and the years of Alzheimer’s, becoming a fragile little bird.

Lora’s search for photos became a family history treasure hunt. Puzzle pieces fell into place. Love letters gave a two dimensional memory its third dimension. Curious stories resolved and the veil lifted from mysterious characters. Not only has Lora documented her mother’s life, she has enriched her own life, she located herself in a narrative with more color and passion and dreaming than she realized. In weaving Margaret into the fabric of ancestry she has woven herself into a greater connection to the story line. She belongs.

Today as I walked I was aware of the many, many photographs I saw people take. I live near a beach so the opportunities are plentiful. We live in an age where the photograph is easy to take, easy to erase, easy to store, easy to forget, easy to lose as the technology evolves. As I watched people pose for their moment I couldn’t help but imagine each photograph, someday, marking the arc of the long body, how this photo might tell the story of this particular life once this particular life story has been told – and who might find a deeper experience of belonging when they dig through old files and discover this special moment once upon a time when their loved one posed for a camera on a beautiful day at the beach.

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Put Down Your Book

Posted on September 17, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

557. 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 Johnny stood on the edge of his life and made a very brave choice. He’d spent years pouring through self-help books trying to correct what was broken, adjust what needed to be fixed, find the piece that was missing (insert the analogy that applies to you). Standing in the middle of his nest of books he had a revelation: each time he read a new self-help book he was reinforcing the idea that he needed help. He poured his life energy into fixing himself instead of pursuing his dream. He decided, in that moment, to place his focus on what he wanted to create.

This may not sound like a bold choice. This may seem like a very easy thing to do but consider for a moment all that you need to surrender when you are no longer willing to tell yourself the story that you are broken and need to be fixed. Who do you become when no one else on the entire planet has your answer or is responsible for your happiness? Consider for a moment all that you need to embrace when you decide to operate from an understanding of wholeness.

Johnny said, “I could wallow in a pool of self-help books forever. They’re kind of addictive; they keep your eyes off of what scares you the most. I decided, instead of reading about action, I might as well take action. I might as well make a practice of walking toward what scares me and no book can tell me how to do that.”

Because of his brave choice and new focus placement, Johnny creates each day the life he desires. When you make it your practice to walk toward life because it scares you, monsters and gremlins lose their potency; close up they’re never as big as they seem.

Filed under: Education, Emergence, Perspective, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Glow

Posted on September 14, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

554. 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 in the early morning, before the sun rises over the ridge, the osprey will soar high, higher than the ridge, catching the sun light before we land dwellers can see it, and burst into orange fire. The markings of an osprey look Egyptian to me, a pharaoh’s bird, so when they catch fire with the sun, not only am I dumbstruck with their beauty but feel as though I am witness to the appearance of a god or goddess, Thoth maybe, or Isis. And then the osprey dips beneath the ridge line and the glow extinguishes; they are once again gorgeous in their mortality, mere birds of prey. But, I caught a glimpse into their true identity, their godhood.

I feel that way about people everyday. We walk on this earth beneath the ridge line, beautiful in our mortality and every so often we rise above ourselves, we show up even for a moment, and the fire reveals itself.

During intake sessions for new coaching clients I like to ask, “What is yours to do? What is the thing that drives you?” I’ve been asking this question for years, it has become an experiment of sorts. You might be surprised to know that 100% of the time my clients respond, “I want to help people.” The form of helping varies but the impulse to serve others is universal. People seek my services because they feel they have not fulfilled their potential and fulfilling their potential always means helping other people.

It’s a paradox unique to a society that celebrates individual achievement over communal health and well being: we place our focus on personal achievement and feel vacant, unfulfilled if our work has no impact on others. We focus on the gold medals and miss the moments that truly matter. Artists who paint but do not show their work soon stop painting; there is no point without the other.

Dado delivers my mail everyday. Ron fixes things in my apartment when they break. What would I do without them? The good folks at Alki Auto fix my flat tires and don’t charge me. Jen checks me out of the Metropolitan Market; she knows my name and always asks where I’ve recently traveled. Someone I don’t even know stocks the shelves at the grocery store, someone I will never meet grew, nurtured and tended the peach that I just ate: it was so flavorful that it made me moan.

The osprey does not know when it flies above the ridge line; it does not know it is glowing with sun fire. Perhaps we would recognize the godhood in each other and ourselves if we sought our fulfillment, not in an abstract outcome like “potential” and instead took stock of the little generosities and service that we offer each other every single day.

Filed under: Awakening, Gratitude, Perspective, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Know Your Name

Posted on September 8, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

On the corner of Beach Drive and 63rd Street is William Stanton Jr. park. Each day I pass the sign with his name and I wonder who he was (or is); why does this park carry his name. It was meant to be an honor, certainly, a commemoration.

I used to consult with the Lincoln Unified School District in Stockton, California and one of their elementary schools was named after Claudia Landeen. She was a pioneer of the district and an inspiration to many educators. I met Claudia once before she died. She was a mentor to my mentor, Tom. I met her at the elementary school that carried her name and when she was introduced to the crowd as “thee” Claudia Landeen, she rolled her eyes. She whispered to Tom, “Be careful, they name a school after you when they want to put you out to pasture.” Tom, closing in on his own retirement, said, “Oh, god! There’s talk of to sticking my name on the men’s room door.”

In Seattle, we have Edgar Martinez Blvd (he was a player on the Mariner’s baseball team for a very long time), we have Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, our state is named for George Washington; I know because his picture is on the state flag. I have several times visited the Vietnam Memorial in the other Washington; it is a wall of names that we do not want to forget; names that we hope to honor far into the future.

We are masters of naming things. Isn’t that how we locate ourselves? Don’t the names we put on things also carry a history? Don’t they serve an intention? The name gives the place an association, a meaning. I grew up in Jefferson County, Colorado and there is no doubt in my mind which Jefferson the county is named after; his name links me to a tradition, a value set, and an origin story.

Political seasons always make me perk up my ears to the names we place on other people. Like the names we stick on places, the names we stick on other people are not passive; these names carry history, intention, and many levels of meaning; and they also serve to locate us. The candidates call each other names, the parties name each other, the media adds a name or two; there are so many pundits telling me what I just heard and interpreting for me what it all means – apparently they must name my experience for me; it is a veritable circus of name calling and interpretation of the name that was just called. Often, I ask myself, “Given these names and with so many people dedicated to telling me what I just heard, working so hard to locate me, how do I locate myself?” How many of us are truly locating ourselves and how many of us are outsourcing our point of view (location)?

I just heard about a study showing that where belief is concerned, party affiliation trumps education every time. In other words, we’ve stopped thinking critically (and independently – despite what we like to believe of ourselves) and will swallow any name the party asks us to swallow. Perhaps we are lazy or too busy to think for ourselves; either way in the absence of a questioning mind the name we give to others carries a dangerous kind of power: locating “them” also serves to locate “us” and since the name we stick on “them” has little or no substance, the location we give ourselves will also be void of substance.

It is no small question when I ask, “How are you locating yourself?” Who is naming your experiences for you? To what are you sticking your name?

Filed under: Perspective, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: locate, location, naming | 3 Comments »

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