Hold The Image

Posted on January 30, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

692. 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 shared this image with k.erle a day ago, and with my class this morning and it feels like some kind of message. I can’t shake the image because it is speaking to me. Some images are powerful that way. This image wants me to pay attention. It is the image of the Wayfinder.

I came across the image in Wade Davis’ book, The Wayfinder. The title refers to the navigator in a traditional Polynesian canoe, sitting in the bow, sensing and reading the waves, the air, the stars, the rings of the moon, but mostly, the navigator holds in her mind the image of the island that they are attempting to find. Wade Davis writes that, according to the Polynesian belief, the canoe is still in the water and the Island finds them. The power of the Wayfinders’ image calls the island to them. They must simply point their canoe in the proper direction while the Wayfinder holds the image.

I ask myself as I sit in the bow of my canoe, what image do I hold? What island do I draw to myself? In my urban ocean have I developed the sensitivity to read the currents, the subtleties of energy in the waves that help me point my craft in the direction of the island that rushes from the future to meet me? Or am I out to sea? This ocean is vast. I have an image for home, a smell, a taste, an undeniable energy that makes me shake when I allow myself to fully feel it, and in the midst of this vast ocean I am taking my cue from the Wayfinders to remain still and know that the power and potency of my image will soon call my island home to me.

Filed under: Metaphor, Possibility, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

i.magine

Posted on January 18, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Skip told me that the innovation of the app store changed the world. We can design our access to information, we can design how we locate and inform ourselves in our daily travels, we can customize how we organize, shop, play and how we connect with our friends. We can design our products before we purchase them. Our options have options.

We look more at our screens than at each other.

In the age of the app the user is not necessarily the customer, the seller is not necessarily the producer. Our buying habits and travel patterns and preferences and impulses are tracked and sold and re-tracked and resold. Advertising is personalized to our computer-generated preferences. The impersonal identifies the personal.

Any 12 year-old with a modicum of computer savvy can construct an app and enter the marketplace. Access to information, to communication, the modes of creation and sharing have never been this limitless, varied or non-local.

Above all, it is fluid, ever changing in form, always expanding. The single most important skill in this geography is how to tell the gold from the dross. What has merit and what does not? Often, the answer to that question is personal.

Design. Options. Personal. Access. Limitless. Fluid. Ever Changing. Ambiguous. Shape shifting. Self-Organizing. Self-Directed. It is an infinite space. It is a way of being.

This is the world that exists right now. I just had a conversation with Sylvia about organizational culture change and the pressures all systems are experiencing to adapt to this changed world. It is a culture change, a perspective shift. Imagine what our education system might look like if it understood the world that existed today – not to mention the world that our students will live in and navigate tomorrow! Can you imagine it?

Filed under: Education, Emergence, Possibility, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

No, Right!

Posted on December 31, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

662. 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 man in front of me in line calls me “Dude!” and affirms my statements by saying, “No, right!” He speaks in exclamation points and I like him a lot. He’s a free spirit although, like me, his hair is going grey and he’s traveled more than a few miles. He asked me if I make resolutions this time of year. I liked the question because it includes the possibility that I might make resolutions at other times of the year. I told him I make resolutions everyday right before I don’t keep them and he laughed and said, “No, right!”

There is a moment I look forward to when flying out of Seattle. It is the moment that the plane lifts through the clouds and punches into a clear blue sky; it is a cusp moment and I see that the clouds are local and temporary; the broad blue expanse is universal, ever present. Occasionally the plane rises above the clouds at the moment the sun rises. The moment before was grey and bleak and in an instant it is vibrant orange, turquoise, cold and clear shades of blue. Those moments are rich in paradox: they evoke quiet and excitement, a thrill that washes me in peace

I am more capable than ever before of living with my head above the clouds, seeing the universal and standing in awe of the color even when my eyes can’t see it. I know it is there if I open myself and breathe it in. “Dude! What are you thinking?” my line mate asked. “I think I’m going to fly above the clouds this year,” I replied. He wrinkled his brow at my odd resolution before nodding his head and saying, “No, right!

Filed under: Possibility, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

See The Elegance

Posted on December 28, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Bryan and I talked tonight about the elegance of design. He told me that many years ago he became interested in the Golden Mean, which led him to research the Fibonacci sequence, which led to an interest in eclipses. He became fascinated by the simple elegance and paradox of astronomer’s capacity to precisely determine when an eclipse would happen and the impossibility (due to weather) of predicting if we would be able to see it. The Golden Mean and the Fibonacci sequence are simple equations that, when replicated, maintain the integrity of design throughout very complex structures and calculations. They are fractals. Much of classic architecture is based solely on the Golden Mean. Much of what you will learn in contemporary art school about composition is based on the Golden Mean.

Our physical bodies are complex structures based on a simple cell design. We are at the same time miracles of complexity and simplicity; more space than solid, more water than mineral, reducible to a small pile of dust and yet expansive beyond all imagining. We are elegant in our design, as nature only designs elegant forms from the same simple notion and very simple (yet complex) building blocks.

Our thoughts run according to the same principle. I once read a statistic that showed that we think mostly the same thoughts each day, day after day (don’t ask me how you measure such a thing….). We build our thought on a few replicable principles and then go holographic with them. A few simple assumptions will lock you in prison or set you free. Check out the pattern of the story you tell yourself each day. Are you locking yourself in or opening the cage? I realized years ago that the epicenter of my coaching work – or any other form my whacky work takes – was really about story change. I often say this to groups: change your story and you will change your world. They mostly respond, “It can’t be that easy!” or “Pie in the sky!” I didn’t say it would be easy – we are after all deeply invested in our stories; we are great fighters for our limitations. The wrong assumption is that it need be complex. We are elegant in our design, even down to our repetitive thoughts. Change the simplicity and you will some day be capable of manifesting an entirely new soaring cathedral of thought.

Filed under: Awakening, Body, Possibility, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Think “I Can!”

Posted on December 26, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

657. 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 in the last few days of living in the apartment I have occupied for nearly a decade. And, because I see the move coming, I am aware of my patterns and rituals, the unconscious actions that have come to define my normal, my everyday. For instance, while unloading the dishwasher this afternoon, I was amused by my automatic movement, spoons, forks and knives into the drawer, pivot, dishes up above, cups one at a time to the hooks above the counter, straighten the rug. I have repeated these actions so many times that they are worn into me, paths through the woods of my life. I appreciate them today because I will soon be without them; I will soon be awkward in the creation of new patterns and intentional in creating new rituals of definition.

I realize that thoughts are like these rituals. Thoughts are patterns that define us. If you think, “I can,” then you certainly will. If you think, “I can’t” then you will wear that pattern, too. I see my impending step out of my patterns as an opportunity to create new patterns, especially new thought patterns. There are rituals of thinking that I am ready to release. A new friend recently told me of her solstice ritual: friends meet around a bonfire and write on slips of paper what they are ready to let go. Then, they commit the slips to the fire. My move is like a bonfire. My patterns are now written on a slip of paper and in a few days I will commit them to the fire on not-knowing. I will then be free to create new patterns of thinking, new rituals of belief.

It is the time of year for resolutions and, like most well intended resolutions they fall prey to the groove of old patterns. Everything begins with a thought; repetitive thought is a pattern, investment in the pattern is a ritual that defines the life you choose to live. If you are not living the life that you desire, if your patterns are thought-prisons or somehow keeping you small, join me in creating new rituals of definition. You need not leave your apartment or your mate; you need not lock the door and walk away from your life. You need only, one day at a time, one step at a time, create a new pattern. My bonfire friend is now saying to herself, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,….” And, one small step at a time, one small thought at a time, she will. And, so will I.

Filed under: Awakening, Body, Identity, Possibility, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Feel The Possibility

Posted on December 19, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

650. 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 in the backseat of Lisa’s car. It is night and we are driving one of those amazing highways that knows no large city. This road is a ribbon connecting the occasional community, none with more than 10 stoplights. It’s been several miles since we passed through the last town and it will be many more miles until we see another light. My face is resting on the window because I cannot believe how many stars are visible when not obscured by the glow of a city. And I am counting my great good fortune because on this night there is a meteor shower. It looks as if stars get so excited that they have to flame and run. “There’s one!” Megan calls. “Where?” Lisa says, peering over the steering wheel. “You missed it.” I rest my face on the glass so in love with this moment and my two companions that I can barely breathe.

We pull off the road so we can gaze at the stars without worrying about driving. We stand on the edge of a fallow field, shivering in the cold winter air, necks craned to the sky. It is not lost on me that we are returning from Kansas where we attended a Launch for presenters; a workshop that, when we are old and rocking on the porch, we will look back and say, “That two days with Kevin Honeycutt changed the trajectory of my life.” And on the way home from a life changing experience called a Launch, the universe decided with great humor to coordinate with Kevin and gift us with a meteor shower. “This is what love is supposed to feel like,” I think to myself, linking arms with Megan who gasps, exclaims, “Oh My God!” and points to the latest sky streaker.

Shivering, I remember Holly from my coaching class having an epiphany, saying, “I feel possibilities. I make lists of them, all of the endless possibilities! They are visceral, like stars! It’s like, constantly discovering a new star, feeling the possibility – the gratitude extends to the possibility and the possibility extends to helping someone and the helping circles back to me! It’s a cycle. It’s an adventure and I feel it!”

“OH!” Lisa, Megan and I gasp and point at the same moment. “Did you see that one?” we chime in unison.

Filed under: Gratitude, Love, Possibility, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Stand In The Cornfield

Posted on December 16, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Many years ago I painted a portrait of my father standing in a cornfield. It was an odd painting for me to do at the time as I’d stopped doing portraits years before. I just had to do it. I wasn’t working from a photograph; I just knew he had to be standing in a cornfield. It is a painting I never show. It is a painting of yearning fulfilled.

My father was born in a small farming town in Iowa and spent his adult life yearning to live in the place of his birth. He moved for work and then for love and although he knew where he wanted to be, he could not find a way to return. I put him in the cornfield because symbolically that was where he most wanted to be: in a small community, contained, where life made sense, where people knew where they fit and where people were not in so much of a hurry that they would stop and talk.

Yearning is a funny thing. Yearning is a necessary thing. Yearning is not what is missing; it is the space between where you are and where you want to be. Yearning can be fuel. It can help clarify what you want and energize your actions toward manifesting your desire. Or, it can twist your guts and make you bitter: unspent energy needs to do something and if it is not moving toward your fulfillment it will knot your belly and make your neck tense. Once in a class, I watched several people give speeches. Many put their energy into the speech and where poised, present. Many others were ungrounded and unconsciously pounded the podium or wiggled their legs; energy must have someplace to go.

Yearning can be proof of separation (“I don’t have what I want”) or proof of connectivity (“this is what I will create”). The difference lives in how you define yourself: if you are in this life looking for what you can get, your yearning will probably feel a lot like separation. If you are in this life living according to what you bring to it, your yearning will be an umbilical cord to what you will create and will nourish you in the creating.

Filed under: Perspective, Possibility, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Tug On The Idea

Posted on November 30, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Sean drew a picture of a tug-of-war. The rope was taut. He said, “Any good process has two sides pulling on the idea. To stay out of the extremes and off the margins we need the tension from the other team. We need the other side to pull as hard as we do; that’s what makes it all work. That’s what keeps us playing in the center. ” And then he paused and thought about it, adding, “In a way, it’s this kind of tension that makes collaboration happen. Collaboration isn’t about absolute agreement – that’s not generative at all; collaboration is how we do conflict. Collaboration is healthy conflict.”

I laughed at the phrase and I think it is accurate. If we can pull on the idea rope without negating each other, if it’s not personal, then it is healthy. It’s all about focusing on the idea, pulling on the idea instead of diminishing the other; a great collaboration is subject centered, it is about a better idea and that requires some tugging. It is not about being right or winning; it is the game that is essential.

I once took a class from the great Kichom Hyashi. One day he divided the class into two teams from a mock organization: 1) the finance folk and 2) the creative team. He posed a challenge and asked the two teams to try and pull the other side into their point of view. We immediately began diminishing the ideas of the other side. Kichom stopped us. He asked us to begin again only this time he would facilitate our conversation. He did not allow us to diminish or negate the other team. We entered the heat, argued the idea instead of negating the people, and an extraordinary thing happened: the tension mounted until it was palpable, crackling, and then a 3rd channel broke open. A better idea, previously hidden, burst forth. It was not a solution but a better idea, an expanded vision. The tension transformed into excitement. The two teams were now one voice chattering about the possibilities.

Kichom sat back in his chair and smiled, saying, “It’s not a mystery. This is how it is supposed to happen.”

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

Help Marisol

Posted on October 2, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

We just cleared through security at the airport and were putting on our shoes, and belts, and rings; we were zipping computers back in their cases. Several feet away stood a small woman. Later, I would learn that her name was Marisol. She was from the Virgin Islands. She was lost. She was punching the button for an elevator that would not come. She looked straight at me, smiled and said in her broken English, “Help me.”

I stood with her for several minutes at the elevator-that-would-never-come and when we finally gave up, I took her bag and we approached the escalator. Marisol approached the escalator as I might approach a pond of crocodiles. She closed her eyes and stepped boldly, leaving one foot firmly planted on the landing while the other foot landed squarely on the line soon to separate into two different treads. She would have fallen, she expected to fall, but I clutched her as she clutched me and we rode the demon stairs to the bottom and leapt to safety. In addition to a train, we had two more escalators to navigate, each as fearful for her as the first, each a near accident, the result of a fearless closed-eye stepping, clutching and rescue, a ride on modern terror, and a leap to safety.

When we at last arrived at her gate, we left her in the good hands of the gate attendants (how’s that for a metaphor) and walked on to find our flight. As we left Marisol I was struck by her ease – even in the midst of being lost, she easily reached out for help, easily extended to me her trust, easily stepped into something that terrified her, again and again, easily knew that she would arrive where she needed to go. She closed her eyes and stepped.

During our adventure I learned that she was on vacation. This tiny adventurous soul came to Seattle because it was a place that she’d always wanted to see. She made no plan and followed the adventure of the day – I can only imagine she looked at strangers all along the way and said, “Help me.” And, like me, they helped. She was so generous in her request that I would have missed my flight to get her on time to hers. I am certain she altered the course of the day for every stranger that she met.

Marisol expects the world to be generous and so it is. She expects people to be caring, careful, and supportive – and so they are. Marisol sees a world that begs her to come for a visit. And so she does. Easily.

Filed under: Possibility, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Join The Conspiracy

Posted on October 1, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

As we boarded the plane to Tucson, the flight attendants pulled us aside and in a conspiratorial whisper asked, “Can you help us?” Peaking around the corner, wary that they might be overheard, they shoved a brightly colored package at us and unfolded a piece of paper, a laser print of a photo. The picture was of their co-worker, Diane. “This is what she looks like.” They whispered. “Take a good look. At some point during the flight, will you give her this gift? It’s her birthday.” We nodded as we peaked around the corner, now fully complicit with the surprise. They held up the photo once again and mouthed silently, “Diane.”

As we continued down the aisle we saw her, Diane. Lora leaned forward and whispered, “That’s her! There she is!” We pretended not to stare, acting casual, taking our seats as if we were ordinary passengers. We noticed the eyes of other conspirators, secret carriers of brightly wrapped packages.

Later, in the air, as the beverage cart made its way down the aisle, Diane handed out snacks and passengers handed her presents. There was great laughter with each new revelation. Diane opened her packages in the aisle and showed her new treasure to the giver, her new friends. Later, people rang for the attendant and when Diane came, instead of asking a question or requesting a beverage, they gave Diane her present. The pilot’s voice came over the loud speaker, announcing that it was Diane’s birthday. We knew already and laughed and clapped for her.

Lora whispered, “When should we give her our present?” “Soon!” I responded, looking around to make sure Diane was not within earshot. We had no idea what was in the package, had never met Diane, but now it was “our” present and we were both excited to give it. The moment came when she was collecting trash. Diane leaned forward to gather our used cups and Lora leaned forward and gave her the present. More hilarity. More gratitude. By now, the people on the flight were chatting, the party was in full swing; the flight was a surprise both for Diane and for the passengers.

The line between stranger and friend is so thin. We step over that line when we make the choice to include others as opposed to excluding them. I sat in my seat and watched the generosity of strangers morph into a festival of connectivity; people opened. The capacity for making a day extraordinary is ever-present and so close at hand. It only requires a wee bit of conspiracy to make someone’s day.

Filed under: Possibility, Surprises, Truly Powerful People | 5 Comments »

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