Listen To The Story

Posted on March 29, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

750. 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 found another rich tidbit in the archives and have updated it slightly:

Where is the story that unites us? Story is the gravity that holds communities together, pulling individuals into a common orbit. It is the irresistible cadence of invitation: come. Sit. It is singular and essential; it holds the space of affirmation. It reinforces the knowing of, “This is who we are. This is where we belong.”

Story is the gravity that holds us together, this we’ve forgotten. And like the musicians in an out-of-tune orchestra, when we no longer recognize our common story then the gravity reverses itself, we spin off into the void, alone in a cacophony of inner monologue. Hell is a community of individuals lost in the fog of their own story. Hell is the universe that has forgotten the existence of shared music. Hell is where you compare yourself to others and in a comparison the others will always win. In Hell you think you have to be perfect so you are never good enough. Hell is where you invest in false notions of who you should be, have to be, could have been. In Hell there is no present moment because you are too invested in the fears of the future and regrets from the past. It’s a dense fog, an inner wasteland. In hell you are alone. Staying in Hell takes a real commitment to the story that you tell!

Not only is story capable of holding us in a coordinated orbit and conversely, blinding us to each other, story also holds the power of guiding us through the wasteland and back to the garden. The old stories are like maps capable of telling us. “This is how your trials will look and feel. These are the challenges you will face. This is what you can expect.” Knowing the stories won’t save you from your trials but they will bring greater meaning to them. Stories guide.

Every human that has ever walked the face of the earth has been born, grown to adulthood, wondered what was theirs to do, loved and lost, fulfilled themselves or not, grown old, and died; their advice comes to us in the form of a story. If we listen metaphorically, the wisdom it holds will spill its guts. Stories don’t need to be tortured to reveal their secrets, they are eager to share. However, treat them as fact and they will clench their jaws and clutch their fists and hold their breath until they pass out. Their treasure lives beyond the realm of facts, beyond the superficial. Read a story as literal or as fact and you cage what is wild. Listen deeply, go beyond your chattering intellect and engage it, feel it in your body. Story desires a relationship with you.

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Learn To Fly

Posted on March 3, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

724. 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 have a song in my heart and I’m not flying!” He was waving his arms up and down like a bird like all of the other children, his eyebrows knit, with a pout on his face. The other children were flying. Their eyes were closed, faces to the sky, arms riding the imaginary thermals. By the look on their faces they were flying high above the trees and soaring to the clouds.

We were having a storytelling. In our story a little girl (she’s a princess but doesn’t know it) must move from the country to the city with the kind old man and old woman she believes to be her parents. She is terribly sad because in the country she spends her days singing with the birds. In the city, she no longer sings. In the city she pines for the birds. She sits in her bedroom looking out of the window. Concerned for her, the old man and woman buy the girl a yellow bird.

The girl soon realizes that, just like her, the yellow bird never sings. She asks the bird, “Why don’t you sing?” and to her surprise, the bird answers her, “I’m not supposed to be in a cage. Why don’t you sing?” Together the little girl and the bird help each other learn to sing again. The bird finds her song when the little girl sets her free. The girl finds her song when the bird teaches her to fly with a song in her heart.

All the children in the classroom, save one, were flying like the little girl and the bird. “I have a song in my heart,” he insisted, “and I’m not flying!”

“Close your eyes!” someone suggested. “Then you’ll hear your song better. Then you’ll be flying!”

He closed his eyes, arms flapping, and a smile replaced his pout. “I can fly!” he exclaimed and swooped above the treetops and soared into the clouds. A little girl soared over to where I was sitting, perched and whispered to me, “Flying is easy with a song in your heart.”

Yes. Yes, it is.

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Lost & Found

Posted on February 18, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

…a long day of writing on the book. Since I have not another thought in my head, here’s another excerpt:

It is probably poor form to start a story in the middle, in a moment of high crisis. When a story stalks you through your lifetime you inevitably learn some things about stories; you unwittingly stalk them, too. One of the first things I learned was that the word “beginning” is arbitrary. An end is always a beginning. A beginning is always an end. What we call a beginning or the middle or an end is really a simple matter of our point of view. It depends on what we see.

Another valuable thing I learned about stories is that they unfold according to established patterns. Beginning, middle, and end is a simple pattern. Within this simple pattern is a more complex pattern structure. For instance, in order to grow, the main character has to leave behind everything they know and go on a journey. That journey can be literal or an inner, metaphoric journey. To leave behind what you know is part of the pattern that leads to trials, confrontations, and catharsis. It’s a pattern and since each of us is the protagonist in our own story, the pattern is alive and at work in our lives. The trick is to become aware of where you are in the story cycle. What part of the pattern are you currently living?

Stories never begin with being found. We hear a call. We pursue it blindly and discover that we are lost in the woods. Stories begin when someone, the main character, you, gets lost or is knocked off balance. In this sense, being lost is always a step toward being found.

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Exit The Drama

Posted on January 6, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Sitting in the Philadelphia airport I’m thinking about Drama. I watching them unfold all around me.

Drama is the first level of Alan’s elegant and oh-so-potent model, the 4 Levels of Engagement. Drama is story without a root, otherwise known as a victim story. Gossip is drama. Drama is predicated on enabling, there is a self-righteous gravity spinning at the heart of a drama story. I just heard this: “Can you believe what they did to me… Look what they made me feel.” Drama stories are easy to tell and often feel really good; victim stories are like sugar and are addictive. They are only tasty if shared and over time you will find that you need more and more drama to satisfy the need. They are hell if they dominate your thoughts. Literally. You are without power if you give credence to or invest in your victim story, “Can you believe what they did to me!” is another way of saying, “I need to pull someone down to feel powerful.” Drama creates power-over scenarios. Drama is usually carefully crafted to relieve us of the reality and impact of our own choices. Drama blinds us to our participation and that is precisely the point of all Drama stories. Life is happening to you.

You can never know another person’s story. You can never know their point of view, their circumstances or intention. You can never stand in their shoes. It is an easy game to make another’s story about you especially when you have no way of seeing through their eyes. We see their story through our filter. We distort what we can’t possibly know. There is one thing certain, a bet you can bank on with a Drama-teller: they will never ask the other about their story because it threatens their Victim status. They will accuse, they will blame, they will concoct, they will imply, they will manipulate, but they will never ever ask.

To exit the level of Drama requires some modicum of self-awareness and willingness to own your story. It requires acknowledgment of participation; an inward looking eye at your choices. It requires a greater concern for the story that you live than the story you tell about others. Assuming positive intent is great place to start. Asking others about their point of view before whipping up a Drama tale is another healthy technique. Practice challenging your assumptions. Practice listening. Practice focusing on your story more than the story you tell about others.

Being a participant in life requires surrendering your Victim role. It engenders generosity of spirit, an open mind and more importantly, an open heart.

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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 »

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.

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Check Your Mask

Posted on December 14, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

645. 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’s an early morning at the airport. The line through security snakes slowly forward. There is nothing to do but look at the faces and wonder at the lives that have sculpted these amazing masks. No one arrives at their face without living a big story. Some are distinct for their laugh lines; some are worn and tired. I see angry fearful masks and faces excited to step into the adventure. There are children, young faces like a new canvas, wide-eyed at this odd place, staring like me at the people shuffling along. The children dance or melt down. That, too, is part of the mask making process as their parents shush them or encourage them or simply sigh and take another step forward. Learn to express, learn to withhold, learn to ignore, learn to hide, learn to receive or reject…it all eventually shows in the face we assume.

I look at all of these faces, these distinct masks, and wonder if they recognize their story as unique, huge. Very few of us realize the enormity of our lives. Emily Dickinson lived much of her life confined to small garden and yet lived an extraordinary life; she paid attention. She looked and felt and shared. She feared and hid and failed. She loved mightily. The adventure of living, of vivid, rich experience is available in every moment.

I wonder what others see when they look at my mask. I make up stories for everyone as the line moves toward the man standing behind the desk stamping boarding passes, scrutinizing driver’s licenses, checking faces as proof of identity. I love that moment when the TSA agent lifts my license comparing the picture to my face. Sometimes I cross my eyes to get a rise out of them; most TSA agents have great humor when you treat them as humans instead of threshold guardians. They wear masks, too; masks of authority, masks trained not to show their humanity. Imagine how that imperative is sculpting their future face!

I wonder what masks we would wear if we gave ourselves full permission to share, to express, to feel… I wonder if there would be need for this slow line to face-checking if we actually allowed our humanness to show.

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Drop The Story

Posted on December 5, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

636. 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 came home from a weekend workshop with poet David Whyte carrying a few good questions. He told me about the workshop and shared the questions and this one made me catch my breath; I’ve been thinking about it for weeks: What is the old story that you need to let go? Flip the question and ask it another way: What do you get from hanging on to an old story that no longer serves you (this is the question I think educators need to ask – a post for another time)?

Often in my coaching practice I hear clients argue for their limitations. Do you remember the line from Richard Bach’s book, Jonathon Livingston Seagull: “Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they are yours.” Old stories are arguments for limitations. Old stories are like a too small cocoon; the struggle to push through to the new story is precisely what makes our wings strong.

We hang on to things that no longer serve us because they are known. They are comfortable. At least that is the easy answer. The deeper truth is that letting go of old stories invites new stories and along with new stories come new identities. Along with new stories come new powers, responsibility and ownership. Power, responsibility, and ownership are things that people say that they want but generally avoid until pushed; life in the cocoon is sweet – lot’s of naps and no culpability – although the price is withered potential and frustration.

What is the old story that you need to let go? What if no one else was responsible for your happiness or your success? What if your circumstances were just that, circumstances? This will sound as if it is a new topic but consider this experiment: turn off your television for a few months and check your personal email only once a day. Detox from the electronic time-fillers. What questions come up when you are no longer anesthetized? What patterns change? What limitations will you need to transcend when you can no longer ignore them or drown out their call?

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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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