Power | The Direction of Intention

Don’t Give It Away

Posted on October 19, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

[Continued from Paddle Two Rivers]

Following his questions about 1) variability in actor performances/entrepreneur pitches and 2) the fragmenting nature of poor leadership on a team, Skip’s next question referred to this phrase from my post, Step Onto The Field:

Entrepreneurs, like actors, are more likely to meet success when they cease giving away their power and show up as they are.

He asked a question that lives at the center of much of the work I do with artists and clients: What does it mean to give away your power? He wrote, “… it’s like each sentence in this piece [this post] needs a story.”

I laughed because the flipside of this particular question is the reason I started writing in the first place. Three years ago I was working with a corporate team and they asked, “What does it mean to be powerful?” The notion that we explored that day is that power is something that you create with others. No one is powerful by them self. Great teams empower each member. Great leaders empower their community. Individuals become powerful when they offer their gift in service to their world. They empower. Power is created between people.Power is an aspect of relationship. Power is something you bring to a relationship, not something you get from it.

The word power is tricky because we most often associate it with power-over. The idea of having “power over others” is a misnomer because power over others is not really power. It is control. It diminishes. It takes from. These two concepts, 1) power is created with others (and therefore, expansive) and, 2) control diminishes, is what is necessary to explore Skip’s question. How do people give away their power?

If you are telling yourself a story of “I can’t…,” you are controlling/diminishing your potential. You’ve given away your power.

When you think someone else is responsible for your happiness, you’ve given away your power. You are seeking something from another person that you can only find in yourself. You are looking for what you can get. What would life look like if you believed the responsibility for creating your happiness what yours? Happiness follows. It is something you bring.

If you are invested in comparisons with others, you’ve given away your power. In a comparison the other person will always be the standard – and you can’t be them. Power returns when you bring yourself to the game without squeezing yourself into someone else’s identity. Power returns when you are the standard for your self.

If you bite the apple of perfection, you’ve given away your power. Perfection is subjective. Whose standard of perfection are you trying to meet? Most perfectionists will claim that they are the keepers of their own standard but betray themselves when someone criticizes their work. They are invested in the accolades of others. Generally, notions of perfection are really strategies of control. The rule of power-over works the same within an individual as it does within a country or an organization. Wielding the sword of perfection over yourself can only happen if you are already divided.

Another control strategy is to tell your self a false story, like: “I’m not an artist until my paintings sell.” False. Artists make art. The selling of art does not legitimize the artist. Selling is something else entirely. According to this silly scenario, poor Vincent Van Gogh was never an artist in his lifetime. False stories are great tools for justifying the relinquishing of power.

There are many variations on the theme – all apply equally to entrepreneurs, artists, plumbers, CEO’s, and tooth fairies. The general rule is this: you give away your power when you diminish yourself (I can’t), assign responsibility for your feeling to others (I have to, I should do), float through life looking for what life owes you (I’m entitled), or otherwise try and control your potential (how will I look if…). If you’ve eaten from any of the above orchards – and we all have – tell me the story and I will forward it to Skip. He’s correct: each sentence in this blog thread deserves a story.

[to be continued]

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

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Step Onto The Field

Posted on October 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

The first few decades of my career were rooted in the theatre. In casting plays and assembling companies I’ve held and seen hundreds of auditions. Generally, it was my experience as an auditor (and also in managing auditions for others) that in the first round of auditions an auditor can see everything they need to know about an actor in seven seconds or less. Whether the audition is a prepared piece, a cold reading or some form of improvisation, this “seven second” rule seems to hold. For the auditor, the rest of the audition is usually an act of courtesy or spent hoping that they are wrong about what they already know. Auditors want actors to succeed. They want to be engaged, surprised, and swept into an honest moment. They want to meet the actor on the field of possibility. They want access into the story and the door is always honest action.

What can an auditor see in seven seconds or less that inspires them to call the actor back or put their file in the “no” pile? Probably a more accurate question is, “What can the auditor feel that inspires them to call back the actor?” The honest pursuit of an intention is something that can be felt before it can be seen. This is true on or off the stage, isn’t it? Do you feel it when someone is not authentic? Do you “know it” when you are being told a half-truth? How many times have you said, “I knew it but didn’t listen to myself.” Auditioning others is as an act of listening to what you sense in the first few seconds and the scanner is seeking honesty.

In the past few years I’ve been watching entrepreneurs do pitches for investors. Auditions and pitches are surprisingly similar activities! In both cases, the “seven second” rule applies. Investors know, like auditors know, when they are seeing something honest or something manufactured. An exciting viable idea in the hands of a pretender is a useless thing – just as brilliant plays are routinely slaughtered in the hands of fakers. Entrepreneurs, like actors, are more likely to meet success when they cease giving away their power and show up as they are. Showing up is not passive and has nothing to do with information delivery. Showing up means to share the quest, to bring others along on the pursuit of a dream. Showing up is being present with others. It is inclusive (as opposed to protected).

Rule #1 for entrepreneurs is the same as it is for actors: You can’t determine what others (investors/auditors) see or think or feel or value. You can only bring your best game to the field of possibility and love playing it.

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

Filed under: Art, entrepreneur, Intuition, Possibility, Power, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Hold A Boundary. Make A Choice.

Posted on September 25, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

I had an extraordinary conversation yesterday about the benefits of having and holding personal boundaries. On the surface that sounds like a no-brainer until you consider that the epicenter of pain for most of my clients, personal, educational, corporate and otherwise, is the inability to hold a boundary. In most cases, people know that they are frustrated or in pain but do not recognize that they’re in turmoil because they are giving the farm away. They are hurting because others are stomping on their sacred ground.

My clients are my heroes because, once they recognize that they need clear boundaries, they do the hard work of establishing and maintaining their borders. They stop allowing others to step on them. And then an amazing thing happens. They become powerful. Not the power-over kind of power (that is not power, that is control), but the deep inner force kind of powerful. They “own” themselves. They stop assigning responsibility for their happiness to other people and because they lift themselves from the victim role, they become creators of their lives. This, too, probably sounds like a no-brainer. It is easy to articulate but in most cases not so easy to do. I often say (and write) this phrase and it applies here: the actions you need to take are usually simple – it is the story you wrap around the actions that make things hard. Establishing and holding a boundary is simple. What reason do you give yourself for allowing others to step in your sacred ground? What reason do you give yourself for withholding your voice? What conflict do you think you are avoiding with your silence? The answer to these questions is the story you are telling and it is the story that makes things hard.

There is an equation in boundary creation that is simple and leads directly to the capacity to create. It follows a very specific pattern and goes something like this: 1) drawing and maintaining boundaries allows you to see the choices that you make. Without boundaries it is hard to see how you participate in your pain; it is hard to recognize your choices when your choices allow others to violate your space. 2) With boundaries you see your choices. You start to make conscious choices. Owning your choices brings a magical realization: your choices are, in fact, creating your life. 3) Once you understand that you are making choices every moment of your life, once you see that you are assigning the meaning to your world, you are capable of seeing how you actively create your world. Owning your choices, recognizing your power to give meaning, necessarily leads to the real power center revelation: you are a creator. You are the creator of your happiness and your world.

If I were a mathematician, I’s scribble it on my chalkboard like this:

Boundaries x Choice = Creator

[912. 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 a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

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Accept The Gift

Posted on September 9, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

This morning in Tai Chi Saul spoke of his teacher and his teacher’s teacher and soon we students were aware that we are the burning point of a tradition that reaches back thousands of years. We were suddenly alive in a moment that rippled into an unknown future and a distant past. Our study was revealed as a link in a chain. Our weekly meeting dropped into a greater context and mattered in a grander scheme of things. Our practice was no longer about the perfection of a sequence of moves; it became an orientation to life. We realized that we are participants in a tradition in service to the vitality of life as it flows through us and expresses in the world.

I’ve written often about my lessons during this remarkable year, primarily about the release of control. I can control my thoughts. I can control where I place my focus. That’s about it. I can intend (a process of thought). I can control my action (also a process that begins with thought). My work (and I hope my growth) has been about getting out of my way. My lesson over and over has been about listening and letting go. I’ve been amazed how letting go always brings riches unimaginable. Holding on, forcing, resisting, pushing, trying to make things happen always diminishes me – and everyone around me. It has brought great heartache and even greater harm to people I love.

My tai chi practice now extends beyond the studio. Saul tells me to empty. He teaches me to listen. I have become a monk in my studio cell and I spend my days listening and drawing. This morning he led me into a deeper practice when he asked me, “What is your concern?” He showed me how I was orienting myself according to my opponents need. “Address your concern,” he said looking beyond me before adding, “Look into the vast space before you and place your focus on the horizon. Put your energy on a point on the horizon and move to it. Your opponent is incidental. Your opponent gives you their energy, their resistance. Accept the gift and do not give away your energy. Address your concern. You are your concern.”

His lesson: do not engage with the resistance. Do not invest in the obstacle. Place your focus on a point beyond all of the mind games and move your chi in the direction of your chosen point. Move your chi, and yours alone. Others will move their chi as they will. Stop giving your chi away. In this way, you will drop into your present moment. You will drop into your eternal moment and the masters of the tradition will join you there.

(896. 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 a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

Filed under: Power, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: ancestry, tai chi, tradition | 3 Comments »

Give The Gift

Posted on September 6, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Amy and I meet for coffee every few months. We usually meet early in the morning, bleary eyed and mostly exhausted by the path we’ve chosen to walk in this life. That’s why we schedule the date: we are exhausted and seeking inspiration. By the time we part a few hours later we are on fire with possibility. It happens every time. We spark each other. We ignite the imagination and remind each other of the riches of art and creativity in a community that understands the creative through the lens of commodity. We leave behind our need to assign value to our work and simple revel in our reason why.

Early on in life, artists learn to either diminish or inflate their gift. In looking for their place in this tribe that knows value only in monetary terms – and art cannot really be understood in such an abstract value system – they default to judge their own work. In the absence of any meaningful valuation they create a shadow standard. They cannot find a place so they invent one and the invention usually comes in the form of a value box: good enough, not good enough, appreciated, underappreciated, understood, misunderstood. It becomes an inner debate, a reason to hide, a certainty of inauthenticity, a story of hidden genius, a disdain for an ignorant community. It is a story of separation or suffering, a story as disembodied as the commodity system that inspired it.

I shared with Amy that a major part of my learning this year has been to get out of the valuation game. I’ve surrendered my shadow standard and am no longer interested in placing my work in a value box. I’m out of the business of inflation or deflation. I have a gift and need not concern myself with its reception. Mine is to give it. Mine is to give it as boldly and joyfully as possible. The value debate sucks air from my offer.

I’ve learned that arts live at the center so I need not seek any other place. They are connective tissue and any form of separation (belief that I am special or less than useful) is anesthetic; it is the antithesis of art. Art joins. Art enlivens. It awakens. It unifies. It does not fit in boxes. It is ordinary, ubiquitous, a path available to every human being. Gifts are meant to be given without condition. Gifts are meant to be opened and celebrated..

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Listen To Your Voice

Posted on September 5, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Today Soleil told me that she didn’t recognize my voice. We hadn’t spoken since last November and needless to say a lot has changed in my life since last November. She told me that I sounded alive and vibrant and last time she spoke with me I was a dead man walking (those are my words. She actually said I sounded sad and tired).

Her comment surprised and pleased me. I’m hearing myself from the inside so I’m not aware of how I sound to others. I feel more alive.

I have in one glorious year blown apart everything I knew, challenged everything I believe, doubted all of my first principles, tossed away all of my safety nets, and whittled away all of my worldly possessions, and a good portion of my body weight. I now own several paintings, a drafting table, an easel, and a rocking chair that needs a seat replacement. I’ve even eliminated most of the clothes I owned last November. I walk a small segment of Seattle each day, in fact, my life paths in Seattle fit within a few blocks. I live nowhere and am alive everywhere. My life is at the same time very small and infinite. Last year everything seemed so complicated and now my life is simple. I think, at last, that the world is my studio. I see art everywhere.

Last week while in Wisconsin, late at night, Kerri found a bat flying around the dining room of her house. She’s lived in the house for 24 years and has never had a bat in the house. We caught it in a mesh trashcan with an improvised lid and released it outside. Later I googled “bat medicine” because I like to know what an encounter with an animal symbolizes, especially when my encounters are unusual. Bats represent rebirth. They mark the passage from old forms into the new. They are symbols of initiation and require the conscious creation of new patterns. I laughed when I read it.

I laugh a lot these days. I laughed when Soleil told me that my voice sounded different. “Tell me what you hear?” I asked. She said, “I don’t know, it’s like you are a wholly different person. I’m having trouble reconciling your voice with the person I once knew. You are so alive!”

Before my call with Soleil I had a conversation with a chiropractor about the difference between choosing a path and defaulting to a path that by being chosen. Both are valid but for me there is an important difference. I started coming back to life when I started choosing. I believe what Soleil hears in my voice is someone who no longer defaults by being chosen. If I don’t want to play on a team I’ve learned to sit down. If I’m not sure which road to take I take a break. I’m learning to listen. I’m going nowhere and that is precisely the door to living. I’ve learned that life is vibrant now; if not now, then never, because I’ve given this moment away and I only have so many moments.

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See Her Hands

Posted on August 31, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Alan issued me a challenge today. He asked me, for a few weeks, to write about something other than the events of my day. Perhaps to write about ideas or dreams or imaginings or something that happened in the past. His challenge to me is about moving beyond the role of witness – a role I play well – and to actually inhabit the moments of my life. He asked me to intentionally be a participant more than an observer. It’s a great idea and a worthy challenge. And, I will start tomorrow. Today I have to write about Kerri’s hands.

Kerri is a musician, a composer with many albums to her credit. When she plays the piano she drops into a deep root, she grounds into her music, and a river of sound flows from her. Life flows through her. So much life flows through her that she cannot sit at the piano. She stands and life flows through her hands as sound and vibration and heart. It is her music.

The first time I met her I asked her to play something for me. I stood at the side of the piano and I watched her reach into the earth. I watched life pour through her hands. They knew just what to do. When she grounded and gave herself over to the music, her hands merged with the keys and I wasn’t sure if the hands were playing the keys or the keys were moving her fingers.

This morning while I was talking with Alan she began to play a new composition. I left the call and stood by the piano. The lid to the piano was open so I could see her hands and the hammers touch the strings as she touched the keys. I know this sounds obvious but the piano is an extension of her hands. The piano is a channel for her soul.

Later we stood on the front stoop as a storm blew through. The thunder rolled and rolled without ceasing. It was magic, something I’ve never heard before. The same power I saw in her hands I also saw in voice of the sky. I took her hand and felt the life, the thunder and the power. I felt the music. It was breathtaking.

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Use All Of Your Colors

Posted on August 12, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

873. 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 tired today and getting ready for travel. Actually, the last time I truly got ready for travel was in December when I left my last apartment. To travel one requires a stable place to leave. I’ve been traveling all winter so in truth I’m not getting ready for travel I’m preparing to shift locations. I am my only constant and isn’t that a great lesson to learn!

Over these months I’ve unloaded most of my possessions. I have my paintings and my books. I have a few treasures from friends. I’ve eliminated most of my clothes. I am light in the world and it feels good. For me, times of great change have always come with layers of stuff (literal and metaphoric) dropping off. It has happened so many times now that I recognize it like an old threshold guardian. “Ah,” I say, “time again to let go.”

In these times I am always reminded of what’s important and most real. I spent the day with friends. I talked to people I love. There is nothing better. I’ve been thinking about the last chapter of the book Siddhartha: an old man in a shack by a river. Metaphors upon metaphors upon metaphors – nothing is permanent. What matters is this moment and this is no longer and abstraction to me. It is not a cliché. Walk out of your door for a year and after a few months you will know what it is the live in the moment and recognize that all you have is a moment. Even if life looks like the same thing day after day it is not but it takes old eyes to see the impermanence in everything.

I have had the gorgeous opportunity this past year to have no patterns. Life today bears no resemblance to life yesterday or tomorrow or last year or next week. I work. I draw cartoons. I listen. I consider where to stay tonight. I eat when I am hungry. There is no day-to-day rhythm to even the most basic of my needs. I’ve never been happier. I’ve never felt so much terror, laughter, grief, joy…, all the colors of life are on my palette and I have a big brush and nothing but canvas in front of me.

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Become Life

Posted on August 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

872. 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 learned a lesson again in tai chi today: stop trying to force action or push forms into being. Instead, drop into center and listen. It is in the deep listening that the path will become clear. It is in the deep listening that the clarity of action, the simplicity of impulse will be apparent.

In class we are practicing push hands, a partner exercise in which the object is to knock your partner off center. It is deceptive because the way to successfully knock your partner off center is to NOT push. It is to listen. It is to feel when they are moving off center and simply help them go in the direction that they are already moving. As Saul says, they give you their center so you merely take it. The moment you push, the moment you try to force an outcome, is the moment you will offer your center (abandon your center) and be helped off balance.

At only 2 years into my practice, I am a novice. The more experienced students say that if I continue I will in 7 – 10 years have developed a sufficient capacity to listen. I delight in this practice that acknowledges that there is no end. There is no path to expertise. There is a greater and greater capacity to move the chi and root the energy. I believe my life is changing because of this practice and the reorientation it requires.

In the past several months I have repeatedly learned that life opens for me when I stop trying to force outcomes. Life flows when I stop pushing and pulling and fretting and worrying. When I listen, feel and respond to what’s there, when I release all impulse to control, I participate. I become a “part of…” instead of a resistor or governor. Instead of blocking the movement I enter the relationship. Instead of forcing life I become life force.

There is a vast difference between the consciousness of a controller and the consciousness of a participant. A controller withholds and resists. A controller judges him or her self and, therefore, the world (good enough and not good enough are judgments and epicenters of control). A controller separates. A participant joins. A participant becomes. Life is always found in the direction participation.

Filed under: Energy, Power, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Meet The Opponent

Posted on July 30, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

860. 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 white board Skip wrote, “The enemies.” We were planning our business and as we moved deeper into specific details, the forces of opposition became apparent. Skip listed them as “enemies” rather than “obstacles” because forces that rise against clear intention are not passive. A boulder in the road is an obstacle. A tide of opposition is an opponent and the strategy for meeting an opponent is different than that of meeting an obstacle. Both strategies begin with respect and then the paths diverge.

Innovation will always bring a tide of opposition. Several times in my life I have seen “the system” crush the very innovation that it purports to seek. It smashes the innovators that work to improve the lives of all involved. Their innovation would necessitate change and the fear that change inspires in a system is lethal to change makers and the advances that they bring. Tom used to say, “You will know the worth of your work by the size of the tide that rises against you.”

On the list of enemies Skip wrote “The Four Overcomings.” This is a reference to one of Carlos Casteneda’s books. The Four Overcomings are 1) The Fear of Learning, 2) The Fear of Clarity, 3) The Fear of Power, and 4) The Fear of Old Age. In the book, Don Juan tells us that very few people move beyond the first fear. A true learner must open to change. A true learner must embrace the unknown and become practiced at stepping into it. One in ten will face this fear and overcome their need to know. The majority will seek safety and grasp firmly to what they know.

Learning brings clarity. Of the people that move beyond the first overcoming, only a very small percentage will face their fear of clarity. As Skip explained, those who become clear are dangerous to the status quo and are ostracized or worse. It takes courage to speak truth in a society dedicated to maintaining the safety at all cost. Most will hide their clarity. They will pretend ignorance. A very few will embrace their clarity and give voice to what they’ve learned.

If one is able to face the fear of learning, move beyond the fear of clarity, they become potent. They become powerful. And the powerful must embrace their power. They must not deny their power and in fact must willingly use their power. Fear of being power defeats almost all people. As Marianne Williamson famously wrote, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” All people are powerful beyond measure but would rather measure than be powerful.

The fourth and final overcoming is old age. Skip smiled and said, “By the time you get beyond Overcomings 1 – 3 you will be old. And no one overcomes number four.

Learning, clarity, power, and old age are forces. They are not obstacles. They are not passive. They are opponents and to overcome them one must begin with respect – not for the opponent but for one’s self. And then you must ride out to meet them on the field of your life.

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