Change Your Story

Posted on December 22, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

653. 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 just finished reading Thom Hartmann’s book, The Last Hours Of Ancient Sunlight. It’s now on the top of my, “If you want to understand the forces that are shaping our world and thought, you have to read this book” list. Turn off the television and get this book. It’s that relevant; it’s that important. I’ve been diddling around these past few years with my observations and beliefs about power-over and power-with cultures and his book has slapped me into immediacy.

On the front page of my website is the banner, “Change yourself, change the world.” I work with people to change their personal story and it follows that they will then inhabit and create a different world. In reading Thom Hartmann’s book, my words are coming back at me with a force that takes my breath away. It’s not just a good idea to change your story and change your world; it is a necessity. It’s the second time in as many weeks that I’ve been smacked with a call to urgency. Kevin Honeycutt said, “Our kids are dying in our schools. What are we waiting for?” His call to action was a few days before New Town. He meant it metaphorically and the literal horror happened yet again. It is not that we do not know what to do; it is that we do not believe that we have the power to do it. The wall between our political will and the corporate dollar, something our forefathers warned us to keep distinct and well maintained, has disappeared. Is anyone truly in doubt about what force drives our national debate?

I realized this morning that my previous two posts have been about bullying. In a power-over culture like ours there are predictable and horrible impacts on the community. These things, bullies, school shootings, gun violence, disenfranchisement, gang warfare, stupidly high teen suicide rates, etc., are expressions of a power-over culture not anomalies of that culture. Manifest Destiny is a story of violence visited upon others. The narrative of a chosen people is a story of violence perpetrated against others. Power-over cultures wreak havoc on others but ultimately the sword cuts both ways: it is a cancer that eats the communal body from the inside out. Haves must have have-nots. It will always create a resource gap and separation that collapses the center, luxuries are confused as values, money with morality, and resources are exhausted in the insane pursuit of perpetual growth (consumption). Historians will surely write of us that yet another power-over culture relegated itself to the trash heap. We are playing the story perfectly.

I used to teach that there was a radical difference between self-help and self-knowledge: the difference, of course, is where you seek your answers. In a self-help world we look for our answers in other people; we want to be saved (savior stories are big in dominator cultures). In the pursuit of self-knowledge the answer is sought and found within your self. You don’t need saving because you are not broken or separate from the nature that surrounds you. In a power-with culture, your nature is not corrupt so there is nothing to tame or suppress or deny or control. These stories are fundamentally different; they are fundamentally different orientations into life. Cultures of power-over breed stories of self-help as a power-over culture is comprised of people who seek power from others. A power-with culture necessitates seekers of self-knowledge and is comprised of people who know that power is something that is created with others; all are powerful or no one is.

Our challenge is not about guns or violent video games or Hollywood movies; these are expressions of the story we tell and nothing will change, no matter the laws we pass or fingers we point until we decide to tell a different story. It begins with you and me. No one is going to save us. Change your story, change our world.

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

Honor Your Choices

Posted on December 6, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

637. 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 my drive home I listened to a story on the radio about several thousand former football players suing the NFL because they are now suffering the ill effects of repeated impacts to the head. This is confusing territory for me because I am certain that no one plays the game of football without knowing that there will be repeated blows to the head. So, who is culpable for the injury? Who is responsible for the choice to play? Part of the discussion was about the improvement over the past few decades in helmets and the attention to the rules of the game to minimize head-on collisions and the inevitable injuries that follow. The science now confirms what we’ve known (I hope) for millennia: repeated blows to the head are not good for you. So, if you choose to play, and you know the risks involved, who is responsible when you are injured or suffer the long-term effects of your choices?

Of course, there are other forces at play. The money in football is huge. Entire university athletic programs are floated on the revenues from their football programs. Sport is a route to a better life for many young athletes; the risks are apparent and the rewards are very high. Who doesn’t remember high school and the reverence afforded to the football players – especially during a winning season! Warriors in our culture are revered in all their forms and it is nice to be revered. To a young person, reverence is a high commodity.

My question is ultimately not about football players but about choices and responsibility. Despite our desire to believe otherwise, awareness does not equate into better choices. If awareness led to better choices there would not be a single smoker on the planet. We are not the rational creatures that we pretend to be. Feeling and emotion are the drivers.

Ownership of choices leads to better choices. Responsibility for actions leads to considered choices. This is hard to see in a country defined by ubiquitous litigation and that asks us not to claim responsibility. It is an expression of the separation mentality inherent in power-over stories (see my rants from the previous 2 days): no one is responsible when everyone is a victim. There is a vast difference between, “I didn’t know” and “I knew and decided to do it anyway.” Power is found in choice; power-with is available in a community that values and supports the choices that its members make.

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Change Your World (part 2)

Posted on December 4, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

[continued from 634]

One of the greatest dysfunctions in a power-over story comes with the emphasis on individual achievement. The dog-eat-dog story is only sensible to a community (I use the word “community” loosely) that suffers from the illusion that the members are distinct and separate…and consumable. Claw your way to the top, get your slice of the pie, and push others down to elevate yourself. Someone eats, someone starves. Isn’t it a mighty paradox that we individualists are rabidly eliminating cultural and ecological diversity from the face of the earth – the stuff of healthy life? We homogenize. We homogenize seeds to our great peril, shop from the same six stores, have proudly invented the cubicle, and embraced the standardized test as a measure of individual achievement. Power-over stories are riddled with insanity and isn’t it the hallmark of the insane that they can’t see their psychosis? Psychosis leads one to believe that they are all alone.

Picasso, arguably the most innovative western artist of the past century didn’t create anything that didn’t already exist. He is the artistic gold medal winner of the 20th century. Yet, when you understand what he was doing, you recognize that he played with forms from all over the world, combining and recombining. He knew that he did not create from a vacuum. He knew his roots, his artistic ancestors and his influences. He said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” He was a mighty thief. We place great emphasis on innovation in the arts – we want to make people see something anew – ours is an art of abstraction. A shift of perception is highly revered. Seeing differently, opening to a new perspective – noble stuff. And, to facilitate the new perspective our artists must stand outside of the society so that they might see it with some clarity. They must isolate, separate. Cubicles commenting on cubicles. In a power-with community the artists live at the center; they are the keepers of the story, they are the guardians of the communal identity. In a healthy power-with culture, the arts carry, nurture and maintain the identity of the community. Art is not meant to make you see differently; it is meant to help you know yourself in relationship to the community, and beyond.

No one creates in isolation. No athlete becomes a champion without a coach. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, we owe a great debt to our teachers and mentors and cousins and friends. We eat because someone grew, picked and shipped the vegetable. The atmosphere we enjoy is not separate from the trees that exhale it or the ocean that churns it. Power-over storytellers have the insane notion that they can control it, the consumer is somehow distinct and impervious from toll of consumption. Individual merit, the inane notion of a chosen people, and the equally insane roll to Armageddon, are rooted in the same narrative. They (we) are outcome focused, forgetting that this magic life is nothing if not a continuing dynamic relationship. Separations are fantasy and outcomes are illusions.

A community celebrates individuals because of what the individual brings to the community. A power-over community is destined to collapse because its members understand themselves to be distinct and are oriented according to what they can get from the community. An individual is not a center; only a relationship can serve as the core; relationship is the gravity that holds. Every community is nested in a greater community. There is no greater imperative than to see the power-over story that we play and the misery it causes (us and others) and begin entertaining a narrative of power-with. It is simple to begin the shift: start by asking yourself, “What do I bring?”

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Power, Seeing, Story, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Change Your World (part 1)

Posted on December 3, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Almost 2 years ago I began writing this blog because I was walking in many worlds: corporate, educational, artistic,… I was coaching people and teaching and just beginning to see the theme that ran through all of those worlds. There was a common story at the base of the challenges and dysfunction: I called it power-over. There was also a common story at the heart of health, organizational, personal or otherwise: I called it power-with.

Because I began playing with the language of these common stories I’ve more recently come to understand them (beyond the abstract) as cultural stories. Power-with is a culture. Power-over is a culture.

A culture that fundamentally believes that humans have dominion over all life is telling a power-over story. It is a story of separation. It is a story of domination. It is a story of dysfunction. As I’ve recently been reading, power-over cultures are particularly blind to the damage they wreak; they see the world as a resource so the ends are worth the means. These cultures usually end badly (and quickly) when they exhaust their fuel supply. The story of dominance does not allow for interconnectivity so the idea that they are soiling their own nest is inconceivable. They are separate, above it all, consuming. This is our story and we are re-playing the cycle of fuel exhaustion perfectly.

This same story plays out in the individuals that comprise the greater power-over culture. The story is holographic; it plays on all levels. People who believe that they are separate and must control nature must also control their own nature (sin, temptation, thoughts, impulses ya-da-ya-da). It is the separation of self from self – and leads to all manner of insane notions like your mind might be separate from your body or your spirit; or that your ego and your soul are combatants; that your intuition and your intellect are contrary, or that you don’t belong or fit; or that there is a lack of deeper meaning or purpose in your life. Can you hear it? It’s a power-over story. Separations are everywhere in this story: where is your happiness if not right here? Where is your purpose if not within you? Resources like time and energy are limited because if you tell this story you see yourself as limited. I’ll wager most of us have, at one time or another exhausted our personal fuel supply. We see ourselves as consumable resources. In this story, heaven is some other place – it has to be when we have so readily defined ourselves as being in hell (a place where we are consumed).

Lately, I’ve been telling people who inquire that I facilitate culture change; I facilitate a story shift. It’s two way so saying same thing. I do it with organizations and with people; it, too, is the same thing; personal change and corporate change follows the same process. It is to tell a different story, a power-with story. It starts with using a different language which, in turn, engenders a different focus.

When I began writing this blog I thought I’d run out of things to say within 30 days: I saw myself as a consumable, too; a limited supply. I have discovered that when you begin creating power-with, when you begin telling a better story, an extraordinary thing happens: you become the medicine you seek. You become your own self-help book. You begin bringing things to life (careful, there are multiple meanings to that phrase).

[to be continued]

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Stop Pushing

Posted on December 2, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

633. 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 love when lessons come in clusters. Sometimes it seems the week has a theme that will keep coming until I pay attention.

This morning, Saul-The-Chi-Lantern gave us an article from a magazine about yoga injuries. “It’s never good to push too far, to try and be a super person,” he said. He asked us to face the mirrors in the room and guided us though a series of minimal movement exercises. “Find the edge of your movement and learn that edge.” As we moved through the exercises he told stories of dancers and martial artists that left their center, that strained their bodies beyond what was natural and sustained career ending injuries. He told us of a doctor he once knew that treated joint and spinal injuries with the minimal movement exercises we were doing in class. “The edge moves. You gain flexibility by finding the edge, working with it, and not by forcing yourself past it.”

“Power comes from relaxation, not through resistance,” he said as he demonstrated a martial arts move. “If someone punches, I am most effective with the least amount of energy,” he said, showing a simple twist of his arm to deflect a blow. To meet the force with force will knock me off center. It will hurt!” he laughed. Power is not resistance. Power is relaxation.

Earlier this week I worked with a class of entrepreneur’s preparing for their investor pitches; they were working really hard to be memorable. They were tense, pushing. I told them that in a past life I used to audition actors, sometimes I’d see dozens of people in a single day. I told the class that I’d never remember the actors who worked hard, who tried to get me to remember them; the actors I remembered where simple, honest, centered, and clear. The actors I remembered were relaxed. Minimal effort. Easy. Powerful. The actors I remembered were honest.

Yesterday, Judy-Who-I-Revere, after listening to my tale of woe said, “You don’t need to work so hard. You already have everything you need. Relax; you can stop pushing.”

When Saul started his lesson this morning I smiled, thinking, “Alright already! I hear it! I’ll stop pushing. I will relax.” I am a slow study and sometimes it tickles me that I make the universe work so hard to teach me….

Filed under: Awakening, Edges, Power, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , | 3 Comments »

Do As Lexi Does

Posted on November 19, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

620. 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 don’t eat sticks, David,” she said to me. And, with a shake of her head added, “Ick!” Her 2 year-old eyes, brown and deep as a well to the center of the earth, looked into me to make sure I got the seriousness of the message. I did, so we went on to the next, “We don’t eat stop signs, David. They are no good!” I shook my head and said, “Ick.” She shook her head with me. “Ick,” we said together and made faces of distaste and disdain.

At two years old, Lexi already has a vocabulary that matches mine. She will soon outpace me and I will need to look down at the 3 year-old version of her and ask, “What does that mean?” She will sigh, choose to have patience with me, and slow down long enough to explain. At dinner the other night I attempted to secure my superior word status and set a trap for her: I used the word “pterodactyl” and she looked at me (again with those eyes that look into my soul), spotted my trap, all but yawned and said perfectly, “pterodactyl.” Then, as if to torture me, she said, “hanguber (hamburger).” It is refreshing to be with a little Buddha that has yet to learn the word “can’t.” Everything is possible and trying is everything. It is infectious; I have seen otherwise constipated adults giggle and scribble outside of the lines in the presence of a 2 year-old. With Lexi, I make faces and outrageous bear sounds (do you know the sound a bear makes when it laughs?); hang out with us and you are certain to hear it.

Picasso famously said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” He is also said, “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” With two quotes he states the problem for living a good life and solves for it. Problem: how to remain an artist once we grow up. Solution: always do what you cannot do in order that you may learn how to do it. Hint: do as Lexi does and eliminate the word “can’t” from your vocabulary. Try with gusto! Mispronounce everything! Do what you have never done because you have never done it! Turn to the person nearest you and declare with awe and enthusiasm, “I kicked the ball, David!” (keep the “David” part even if the person closest to you is otherwise named; it tickles me to think that I will be the universal recipient of your unbridled enthusiasm. Note: that is not a trap).

Filed under: Art, Power, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Receive The Gift

Posted on November 16, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Push hands is a core practice in Tai-Chi. It is a done facing a partner, forearm-to-forearm, feet rooted to the floor, moving to sense the center of balance of the other person. If it were a game, the objective of push hands would be to knock the other person off balance.

I am a novice and am learning that the skill is to not assert force, which seems counterintuitive. In my western mind, if I am to knock my partner off balance, I need to push; I need to assert. It’s called push hands, after all! But that is not the case. As Saul-the Chi-Lantern says, push hands is a “listening energy.” Pushing with force knocks you off balance, not your partner. Listen. Feel. Stay rooted in your center. The skill is to feel my partner’s center and the moment they move off their center, I help them, no force necessary. I use my partner’s energy, helping them move further off center, moving them in the direction they are already going – off balance.

There are life metaphors a-go-go in push hands. Today there were two in particular: first, it is too easy for me, the novice, to focus on the moving hands and forget about the still center. The power is not in the moving hands, the power is maintained in the still center. A powerful person is not distracted by the moving pieces – we live in fast-river world with no end of rapidly moving pieces – it is easy to lose center with so much pulling at our attention. A variation on lesson one: a powerful person does not push with their arms (that is to assert force, thus throwing myself off center); a powerful person pays attention to and operates from their center. They sense. They feel. They listen. They move from their center, not from their extremities. The mind wants to assert, to force, to achieve; the mind is all about moving from the extremities. Power is in process. To force is an attempt to control; the moment I attempt to control, my partner supports my attempt and launches me across the room.

The second lesson was even more potent for me: power doesn’t feel powerful. It feels like helping. Push hands is a great exercise in creating power-with; there is no defeat, no winner and loser, there is a greater and greater capacity to listen, to embody a potent center, to support your partner in occupying their center. As Saul-the-Chi-Lantern often says, “Learn to receive the gift.” Translation: occupy your center; stop trying to make things happen; surrender your need to resist: Listen. Participate. Use what is right in front of you and amplify the energy. Help your partner stay in their center is the best way for you to learn to inhabit your own.

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Dial Up Your Gratitude

Posted on November 12, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

613. 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 topic on our call today was gratitude. The transformational presence coaching community comes together once a month to check in, share insights, best practices, bring professional questions, and share personal triumph and tragedy. A member of our community lost her home to Hurricane Sandy. Everything is gone. Another is losing her mother to cancer. Another member is experiencing exponential professional growth while another member shared her recognition that growth doesn’t have to be painful; with presence comes new eyes to see opportunity everywhere. With presence, the story of pain drops away.

In each case, amidst the stories of chaos and clarity, the cliffs and the solid ground, the people on the call dialed up their gratitude. In each case the community supported each other in their growth and strengths. I was moved by their dedication to supporting the best in each other; I am in awe of how dedicated this community has become in reinforcing each other in their power.

What do we support in each other? This question has been on my radar for several months. My work often begins with helping groups recognize their patterns of support. In cultures of control you will most often find that people unknowingly ally with each other’s pain, they will support each other in their victim story. Listen to conversations around you. Are the conversations stories of drama and blame? Are the listeners commiserating and then telling blame tales of their own? If you think of the conversations as alliances being forged you will begin to see the pacts being signed with dysfunction, “I will support you in your pain if you support me in mine.” Communities of control produce victim alliances.

In a culture of power the stories you hear will be stories of choice and opportunity. You may hear experiences of devastation but the accent is not on blame or helplessness, the accent is on “how I am within my circumstance.” Empowered people know that they are distinct and separate from their circumstance: no one else is responsible for how they feel or the actions they take. No one can control their circumstances but they have infinite control over how they are within their circumstance. In communities of power there are no victims; there are participants. Listen to their forged alliances and you will see pacts being signed with generosity. Communities of power produce alliances with power. Communities of power know that empowerment is not an individual sport; power is created with others and is made visible in their patterns of support.

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Choose To Be Powerful

Posted on October 15, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

[continued for 584]

This is what I wrote in my journal about strings to pluck when telling the students the Polar Bear King story. These were my 3 lessons about power as told through the story:

1. Power is something you can learn. And, because it is something you learn it is something anyone can create. Power is not something that happens to you; you choose it. You create it.

2. You can only create power with others. No one is powerful alone. Personal power comes from how you are with others. How are you within your circumstance?

3. It matters how you enter a space, just as it matters how you enter you life each day. You have the capacity to intend. How you come in, why you come in, determines what you do within the space. So, for instance, if you enter the classroom expecting the teacher to control you then you have already given away your power; you will wrangle for control all day and only feel the illusion of power when you think you have won control. The first confusion is to mistake control for power. Power is not control, control over others is not power. Enter the space in control of yourself. Decide to enter your day, each and every day, as a powerful person.

It’s so simple.

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Commune

Posted on October 9, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Harry and I talked into the night about communion. Most cultures have their unique version of the communion meal. For the Makah, the whale is their god. To hunt and consume the whale is to take the body and blood of the god into their body. In return, they perform rituals to resurrect the god. For the Mayan, it is the corn that gives life; corn is a god. The people take it into their bodies and become god like; their commitment is to create the conditions for the gods return. They tend to the god. The god feeds them. It is a cycle of life. There is no end, no outcome. There is no rapture. There is a relationship. “This is my body. Take it and eat. This is my blood. Take it and drink.” The form is different; the ritual is the same.

Harry pointed out that regardless of the form the purpose is to commune – thus a communion meal. The people commune individually and collectively with their godhood. They take it in; they become the god. They, in return, perform the rituals and ceremonies; they live in such a way as to give rebirth to the godhead. It is a cycle of renewal. It is a participation sport: it is personal, intimate, an infinite game.

At its most potent, it is a way of living. It is not something confined to a single day of the week or an observance performed once in a while. It is not something you can leave behind when you leave the church. The whale chooses you because you are worthy, because you live each day an existence worthy of being chosen to consume the body, take in the god, and have proven yourself capable of performing the rites necessary to give rebirth to the god that feeds you. It is a mutual responsibility: I will feed you if you will attend to my re-creation.

And, at the heart of this relationship, is this thing we call art. The rituals, the dances, the music, the images are (were) meant to facilitate the communion; the coming together of human and muse to reaffirm the community's identity, to transform and transcend the everyday. Wear the mask and you become the god. Pete told me that he picked up a brush for the first time and froze; to make a mark carried an enormous responsibility. He put the brush back in the can and thought, “I am not yet ready for all that this will unleash and I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”

Filed under: Art, Identity, Metaphor, Power, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

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