The Direction of Intention

358.
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 never read one book at a time. I always have a few in progress and that sometimes makes for interesting information overlap. Right now, I’m tapping my foot waiting for George R.R. Martin to release book 6 in his Song of Ice and Fire series, The Game of Thrones. It is like cocaine; once you start you need the next book. I’ve had the shakes for a few months. If you know George, please tell him to get on it.

As I was reading book 5 I was also reading Dylan Ratigan’s Greedy Bastards. It helped me resolve some questions that I’ve been pondering for a while – for instance, my question: Given what we know about learning and education, what keeps us from creating a system that supports what all the data and research (and common sense) suggests? We’ve known the problems with the current system for 40 years! Why are we so incapable of acting on what we know? He has a very specific and compelling answer. Read the book – and do not take what he says at face value; spend 10 minutes researching some of the data he presents; you will ask yourself, “How did we let this happen?”

George R.R. Martin’s done a great study of feudal life and Dylan Ratigan helped me see some practices from the medieval world that I thought were long gone but have now realized are with us still. For instance, it was common for a lord or king to raise the children of a conquered foe – or potential foe. The children were an insurance policy against an attack. They were credit default swaps. You’d think twice before making an act of aggression when your opponent had your child.

Marriages worked much in the same way. Powerful families were intentionally linked through arranged marriages. You do not want to go to war against your in-laws, especially when there are grandchildren involved. A marriage was a power alliance. Mixing a bloodline was a way to increase power and assert control.

The hostages and arranged marriages of our day have taken a slightly less visible form but are they operate according to much the same principle. Dylan Ratigan asks us to consider this: the actual author of the health care reform bill was employed by the healthcare industry; the actual author of banking reform legislation was a banker. Our representatives do not write the legislation they propose. Why? Big business is like a feudal lord who holds hostage the children of our politicians: politicians will undertake no legislation hostile to those who hold the purse strings – which means they cannot undertake legislation that serves first the needs of the people.

The marriages are also arranged. You can’t get to into higher office without an extraordinary amount of money and the money is not freely given: there are expectations in return for support. Don’t you love the term, “super-pack?” I learned that there are dozens of paid lobbyists for every single politician in Washington. That’s a lot of money in play and favor to curry.

None of this is new news – and that’s my point. A crisis of leadership is really a failure of the followers. Here’s another of my questions: I’ve done a lot of work in the private sector and I have yet to meet a company that has the nation’s best interest at heart; why do we assume that a business model should be at the center of our public decision-making processes or that the private sector produces public-minded leaders? Self-interest is not the same as public interest.

In my George R.R. Martin/Dylan Ratigan information overlap there is an image that serves as the perfect metaphor: when it does finally and inevitably come to battle, the kings sit on the hill and the well protected lords lead the common people to slaughter. The people have no say in the game of thrones but pay the price in full. My question: why do continue to follow?

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

277.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Control is not power. Power is not control.

Power is misunderstood as control because most of our associations are with power-over-others. We are literally confusing Power with Control. As Peter Block writes, our businesses, schools and departments of government are structured on models control and compliance. He asks a relevant question: how can a people that so identified with democracy and freedom model all of their institutions on compliance and control? How can all of our leadership ideals be based in models of power-over? Beyond the rhetoric, cultures always betray their real values in the institutions they create.

True power is the release of control: it is focused action in service to the greater good.

As a friend recently said, “I’m afraid of becoming powerful because of what I might do to other people.” Her fears, our fears, have nothing to do with power. To hammer the point: power-over-others has nothing at all to do with Power and everything to do with Control. Her fears are not about what she will do to others; her fears are about what she will become if she ceases to control her power and unleashes her potential.

True power is ever present. It is amplified in relationship. It is not a possession or the dominion of a few. It is not something to be wielded like a sword by a single person. True power is a force that is intensified through a relationship of intention. A strong offer is power with a focus. True power cannot diminish or be exclusive; if anyone is diminished it is not power at work, it is control. If anyone is excluded it is not power at work, it is control.

Truly powerful people have no use of control over others because they are too engaged in the creation of power with other people.

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

265.
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 think one of the reasons we have so much trash associated with the word “power” is that it has been for centuries confused with material interest (control of resources). The confusion in shorthand reads like this: Power is control. To make matters stickier, when power and control are switched in their cribs, a more insidious confusion follows: the person that controls the resource is understood to have a divine mandate or is somehow more blessed than the rest. In shorthand it reads like this: morality is money.

In such confusion, what is one to believe? What values are we to hold when no values can stand in the wasteland of such confusion? When power is mistaken for control of resource and control will do whatever is necessary to control the resource – no matter the cost to the community or other communities, and the only explanation available is moral authority… we’re all losers. Only the most pathological among us will knowingly seek power in this form. I think the proof is all around us.

It is the mistake the OWS movement is making: it knows what it is against but can’t articulate what it is for – so it is engaging control with tactics of control – and missing the point entirely.

Power is not control. Control is control, money is money, and morality has nothing to do with either control or money. Power is neither good nor bad, it is a force to be used and can limit or amplify. Alan writes that the limiting kind (power-over) is an immature use of power; power-with becomes available when we mature; he calls it power-to-be.

Power-with, power-to-be, either way it is the same thing, it’s time for us to grow up in our understanding and practice of power of how we are in the world.

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

264.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Here’s my favorite phrase from class today (it didn’t come out of my mouth but I wish it had). It is a thought from the amazing Alan Seale:

“No one owns power. Power is energy; it is everywhere. It is everything. How you relate to it determines whether it serves you and others or whether it gets in the way and depletes you and everyone else. Using power as power-over-others is an immature form. The mature form of power is power-to-be.”

The phrase that I most appreciate, the part that is most important to pay attention to, is “How you relate to it.” In listening to the class participants today I realized how much trash we have around this word, “power.” Most of us have had it wielded over us or we have used it over others. We resist it. To imagine amplifying power WITH others is…unimaginable. Yet, it is just as possible as using power to control.

We think power is something we have or do not have – it is our experience. The growth comes when we learn how to relate to power in a different way because we learn to relate to ourselves in a different way. Power is energy and it is everywhere.

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

263.
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 long time ago that I do my best thinking with a big drawing pad in front of me. My doodles become maps. What initially looks like and awful mess of scribbles emerges as a circular form of coherence.

For the past few hours I’ve been mapping the class I will teach in January: Bring Power to Life. Sometimes the maps come easily! All the scribbles fit on the first pass. If I were Joe looking at these scribbles, I’d use the word “elegant.” This map, this thought-path, is elegant (get ready Joe!). It looks like a well-constructed play – clear actions feed a spine that scribes an arc of inevitable transformation.

The spine of the six weeks course is “to create power-with-others” which I maintain is our natural impulse; needing power-over-others is only necessary once you’ve given your power away (you have no need to take power from others when you ARE the source of your power). I suppose the subtitle would be: Return AS the source of your power.

The course is constructed around six relationships; each relationship requires a movement that is easily described by a shorthand phrase and made tangible in a single action. So, for instance, the first relationship is with Control; the shorthand is Stop Enabling and Start Empowering; the action is to draw a line between what you can control and what you can’t control. Drawing the line (boundary) changes your relationship with control and creates movement toward empowerment. Empowerment activates Choice, which is the second relationship we’ll engage in the course; the shorthand for Choice is Stop Blaming and Start Choosing; the action is to draw another line making a distinction between “things happen to me” and “I make things happen.” This new boundary creates movement toward Choice and Choice activates Intention, which is the third relationship to explore. The remaining relationships are Motivation, Seeing, and Ownership.

The relationships are linear in the individual pieces but together create a cycle: Ownership is Control transformed. Empowerment, creating power-with-others, is not a mystery; the path is well worn and available when you decide to walk it.

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

262.
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 261]

Horatio,
You’ve been teaching me about the art of filmmaking and recently you told me that all movies are about pain; when the pain is relieved the movie is over. I have a similar definition for stories (regardless of the medium): a story begins when the main character is knocked off balance and ends when balance is restored.

Everyone is starring in their own movie. Everyone is telling their own story.

My years of leaping were years of resisting what I didn’t want and grasping for what I believed I didn’t have. The dance of resisting and grasping is a dance of pain that leaves you dizzy and off balance. It is a box dance with people pretending to follow but deeply invested in manipulating the lead – or the opposite: pretending to lead by manipulating the followers. I have been guilty of both and learned that either way it is dance of seeking wholeness in the responses of others.

T ran a small company. He was constantly frustrated and couldn’t understand why no one would take even the smallest action without first coming to him. He wanted people to take responsibility for their work! One day he saw to his chagrin that everyone came to him because, if they didn’t, he’d find fault with something and make them do the work again according to how he thought it should be done. He told me, “I was blind to what I was doing. I was telling people I wanted them to be responsible and then punishing them for making choices. I was the problem.” He thought for a moment and added, “I was really trying to control them. I hated it when I realized that putting down my employees made me feel powerful. They were fine; I was upside-down.”

J said it best when she told me, “I have been seeking liberation from others, from my boss, from my work, from systems and from society – I was looking for permission when what I really wanted was liberation from myself! Liberation is something I give myself! No one has my liberation! No one has the key to my chains. I have it! No one else knows who I am or what I want so why am I seeking approval from others so I can be who I am?”

These are tales of pain or disequilibrium. And the threshold to a better story happened for both J and T when they realized that they were seeking their power from other people. Both are deeply interested in service. Both are learning that they are incapable of service as long as they are drinking power from others; true service comes with true power and true power is in what you bring to a relationship, not what you get from it.

[there may be more…]

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

260.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Here’s another snippet from the workbook (you know, the workbook that is trying to tell me that it aspires to be more; it knows in its heart that it is a book-book. For the first time in my life I am trying to write less instead of searching for more to say. This problem would have come in handy all those years in school. Alas, all my efforts at containment are futile):

When people believe they need to control what other people see, think or feel they are creating stories of power-over-others or fear-stories of others having power over them. People play power-over-others stories (or the reverse) when they’ve lost their true power; they put it down somewhere. They can’t remember where or when. They are afraid others can see that they’ve lost it. They’re afraid others will see the hole in their being. When people are no longer the source of their own power the only option left to them is to drink power from others.

It is a fantasy story born of the fear of being seen; no one wants other people seeing behind their mask. No one wants others to see that they are missing a piece of themselves. In the midst of so much fear, attempting to control what others see is an imperative. So much potential shame! So much danger of being seen as lacking! So much emptiness groping for the feeling of fulfillment!

How can so many people be trapped in the same tiger pit and yet believe that they are in it alone? It is a form of hell: a community of people so enrapt in their individual stories of need that they can’t really see the other members as allies. No one realizes that everyone is in the same trap. Everyone is hiding so no one can see. This kind of Separation is one of the side effects of Control. People trade their true power for control fantasies every single day.

It’s a paradox: what’s really happening in the control story is that people are giving their power away. In trying to control other people’s perceptions they’re actually giving away the only thing that they can control: what they think, feel and see and believe about them. They are dancing according to what others might think, they are changing themselves based on what others might see, and stifling their growth based on what others might feel or think. It is to practice the art of giving themselves away.

Are you playing an inner story of diminishment? Are you reinforcing in yourself the notion that someone else has your power? Are you trying to get your power based on others responses to you? Are you drinking your power from others or letting them drink their power from you?

You might not yet see it but it’s a waste of your energy, a drain on your creative potential. It requires you to manipulate others instead of dedicating your energy to the creation of what you want. Your thirst for power from others is, in truth, a series of actions dedicated to reinforce your powerlessness. It is a vicious cycle.

All you need to break the cycle is a boundary.

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

259.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Last night I wrote this for the workbook for the class, Bring Power to Life, that I am offering in January. It is impossible for me to make an outline and then write a workbook, I have to do it in reverse: write and then organize the thoughts by creating the outline. I’m writing the first week of the class and it is already outgrown the workbook; too many thoughts spilling over the edges of my intention. Here’s a snippet:

When the actor in training stops trying to determine what the audience sees (power-from-others) and instead places his or her focus on their intention, they become powerful (power-with-others). Trying to control what an audience sees is an attempt to hide from what the audience might see.

It is paradox that most young actors, like most people, want to be seen but are afraid of what others might see if they were actually seen. It is a split intention: they want to be seen and at the same time fear being seen so they attempt to control the wrong thing. Fear will always have you believe that you have the capacity to control what others see which, in truth, is an action of masking, editing, or diminishing yourself. To control is to hide. As the young artist learns, trying to control the feelings and perceptions of others is in essence pouring their creative energy into a black hole. It is a winless game guaranteed to make them feel less safe in the world. It is a rule that holds on or off the stage.

Once they learn to control the controllable, instead of hiding, they participate. Instead of investing in power-over they place their focus in the play and begin creating power-with. They become clear and simple. They become available and present. The power comes when they learn to draw a line between what they can control and what they cannot. The power comes because they invest in relationship creation instead of relationship manipulation. They learn that they are only as powerful as the relationships they create. They are truly powerful when they are powerful-with-others. This is true on or off the stage.

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