Seek The Open Door

Posted on March 2, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Era’s begin and era’s end. Sometimes the line marking the end is distinct and sometimes you simply discover that a chapter closed. The early phase of a new chapter always feels like being lost. Feeling lost is a certain sign that a new chapter has opened.

When dealing in story you learn that beginnings, middles, and ends are arbitrary designations because they are not linear. Stories are cyclical. At what moment did the infant become a toddler? At what moment does vitality become contentment: when does becoming transition into being? When do we cross into old age?

Once, many years ago, while watching a rehearsal, an era ended. I was the artistic director of a company that I’d nurtured and grown for years. I was directing a play and it was a few weeks before opening; in that rehearsal, in a single moment the door closed, I knew I was done. I knew I needed to leave. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done to finish that rehearsal process and open that play. I had to work very hard to treat the people around me with kindness. I did not know how to leave the people I loved. I did not know how to leave so tried hard to push them away. They knew. Sherry came into my office, sat down, took my hand and told me that it was okay if I needed to go. She assured me that everyone would be fine. Sherry knew the truth: once you are done, it is soul crushing to pretend otherwise and she was looking after the health of my soul. “Take the step,” she said. “You can’t receive a call and not follow it.” A door closing is a calling. It is guidance that says, “Not this way. Look for a door that opens.”

Throughout the fall and winter I have closed the door on an era. And, just when I think the door is fully closed, there is another closure, a further completion (how’s that for a paradox!). It can only mean that another era has begun. Today, I pull closed another door, turn and look to the horizon and wonder in which direction to step. As new doors open the horizon tends to be 360 degrees; limitless possibility and lost-ness often feel the same. I’ve decided that it is not necessary to know which way to step. It is only necessary to step. It is only necessary to listen to the guidance and like a treasure hunt seek the open door.

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Call Your Name

Posted on February 4, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

697. 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 not lost on me that I’m unable to get back to Seattle. The initial flight delay set off a ripple of stand-by lists with actual guaranteed seats on planes 2 to 3 days from now. I waved the white flag, let go of what I thought was so important, and decided not to spend 3 days in airports. Instead, I went on a road trip. I made a run for Omaha, renting a car and driving seven hours, into and through a white-out-snow-blowing-so-that-I-followed-the-tail-lights of the car ahead of me because I literally could not see the road. I talked with friends on the phone while I drove. I had hours of silence and quiet. I saw a part of America that I don’t often see because I fly over it instead of drive through it.

When I looked at the ticket agent and said, “I’d rather not wait in the airport,” she thought I was nuts. How could I make the decision to walk away? She said, “But, we can’t change and itinerary, we can’t transfer your flight to another city. You’ll have to buy another ticket.”

“That’s exactly right,” I thought. I would rather go off the reservation and drive, not knowing when or where I will find a portal into Seattle. Spending 3 days of my life sitting in an airport waiting for the smallest possibility of a seat on a plane seemed crazier than walking out of the airport and asking, “Well, what’s next?” I’ve spent too much of my life waiting for something to happen. I no longer have it in me. The ticket agent had a rule to follow and I realized that I did not. Rather, I have one rule and my rule is: don’t wait.

I have a mantra new to this year. It wasn’t a resolution; it just seemed to find its way in: Act. Try. Aim. In other words, practice what I preach: step into the unknown as a way of being, not as a once in a while activity. Act. I don’t need to know where I am going before I take a step. If something seems to take life from me, walk the other way. Try. See what happens. And then aim.

I now have a seat on a plane out of Denver on Wednesday. I will have driven or trained halfway to Seattle before getting on a plane. I’m having adventures, spending time with people I love, and not knowing what tomorrow holds. And, I am certainly more alive now than I would have been had I decided to sit and wait for my name to be called. “Isn’t it time.” I thought as I left the airport in my rental car, “that I started calling my own name.”

Filed under: Awakening, Gratitude, Possibility, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , | 10 Comments »

Await

Posted on February 3, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

696. 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 awoke this morning to snow. It has been bitter cold during my days in Illinois but no snow. I put on my boots and took a walk across campus so mine might be the first footprints across the quad. There is rarely snow in Seattle so it was a treat to leave tracks, circles, arcs and squares in the fresh snow. And then I was very cold so ran into the Union for more coffee. The Barista said, “Welcome Back!” My first cup of coffee came just before my walk so it hadn’t been an hour since I was last at the counter looking desperate. “Your nose is red,” she said. I replied, “Yeah, I’ve been on a bender.”

My taxi didn’t show so the front desk called another cab. It, too, did not show up. The third and lucky cab came and the driver got lost on the way to the airport. I have been really bad at some of the jobs I’ve done in life and I wondered if my cabbie was having a moment of career revelation. I was certain I would miss my flight and busy making back up plans when we found the airport. Dashing into the counter, I learned that my flight was delayed for more than an hour due to snow in Chicago. I laughed and loitered and finally went through security. I’d be worried about my connection to Seattle but so far tmy assumptions have been distinctly off the mark so I’ve decided to deal with what’s in front of me and not what I think is in front of me. Lessons re-learned!

Megan-the-brilliant despairs and I am to blame and at a loss for words. Isn’t that an interesting phrase! I’ve lost all of my words. It is a blatant lie – clearly I am using words now – and yet I remain speechless. So, I sit in the airport more alive than I have been in years. It is not yet noon and the day has already been full of experience and texture and stress and forgiveness and snow. And coffee. And cabs. And, unexpected tours of Champaign. And, baseless assumptions (like all assumptions). I am in awe of a language that without question makes sense of a phrase like, “full of holes.” I am full of holes or perhaps full of wholes and either way I await what the next step will bring.

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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?

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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!

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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 »

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