Story | The Direction of Intention

Ask A Simple Question

Posted on August 15, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

524. 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 initiated a new practice in my life. This summer was very difficult, perhaps the most difficult stretch of my life, and I fell into some old patterns and wandered through some deep dark valleys so a new practice was necessary.

Here’s the practice: When I wake up, before my feet hit the floor, I ask myself this question: what do I want to bring to this day?

It seems like a simple question until you consider the possible responses. Do I want to bring anger to this day? Anxiety? Do I want to infuse this day with despair? Shall I bring a big dose of depression? How about investing in blame? That is always a salty sweet snack! Those possibilities do not exist outside of me. They are mine to choose or not.

I’ve been amused by the answer that has been the most dynamic, most interesting and vital to climbing out of the trenches: I want to bring my curiosity, every last bit of it. I want to bring all of my inquisitiveness, 100% of my capacity to not know. That’s it. That is my choice for what I want to bring to my day. You’d be amazed at the difference in the world I see since deciding to bring curiosity instead of my resistance.

I am reminded of two things each morning as I ask myself this question: 1) choices of significance always come down to matters of my being and have very little to do with aspects of my doing, and 2) I may or may not have choice in my circumstance (things happen) but I have infinite choice about who I am within my circumstance.

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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

How Are You Filling Your Cup?

Posted on August 8, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

517. 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 odd image but go with me. Lately I’ve been looking at people as if they were empty cups that fill themselves according to the story that they tell. For instance, yesterday I watched a man fill himself with angst and frustration. He stood in front of a photograph muttering, “I could never do that!” I watched as his body began filling with frustrations; it began to rise from his toes, filling his legs and his belly, seeping up into his heart, clogging his voice and drowning his brain in a thick liquid, “I can’t.” His story thwarted completely his desire to be a photographer. What liquid story might have filled his cup had his story been, “Cool! I’m going to learn how to do that?”

According to the research 90% of what runs through your mind is the same stuff that ran through it yesterday. The story you tell yourself is on a loop. The story you tell yourself comes from a specific point of view. I don’t need the research to know that I tell myself the same story loop each day from the same point of view. Consider, for instance, if you assume the universe is against you, your cup will fill with a story of resistance, hard luck, and victimization; no matter what you do, the universe is against you. Every traffic jam, every paper cut will reinforce your story and keep your cup filled with liquid negativity. And, you will fill every relationship, every choice and opportunity, with the negative liquid in your cup because that is what you bring to the party.

I don’t know about you but if 90% of what runs through my mind is the same stuff then I might as well tell a story of opportunity, choice, and support. I’m seeing others as story-cups because I feel within myself how easily I can fill up with anger or blame. “Look how I just filled myself,” has become an awareness tool, a mantra as I literally fill myself with a story of poison or a story of pleasure. Either way, it is my choice and that is the point. I have choice about the story I tell. I have choice about the point of view from which I tell the story. I have choice about where I place my focus: what I choose to see, to emphasize…I choose how I interpret every experience.

How are you filling your cup?

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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What Do You See?

Posted on August 1, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

510. 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 number one reason for understanding the power and impact of the-story-you-tell-yourself-about-yourself-and-the-world is (drum roll, please): We see what we believe, not the other way around. And what we believe is a story. If you have ever wondered why there is so much shouting on the airwaves (masked as “news”) these days you might consider that your belief is the rope in an ideological tug of war: if the shouters can get you to believe it you will most certainly see it – and if you see it you will call it truth.

After we believe the story we tell, we commence a search of the world for the data (proof) that supports our belief. Tell the story of a scary world that is a dangerous place and you will see plenty of supporting evidence. Tell the story of never having enough and lack will be ever-present. Tell yourself that people are generous and kind and you will find them in every grocery store, office complex, and on every street corner.

In this sense, truth is relative. What is true for you is not necessarily true for others. Like you, others are scouring the world for proof that what they believe is true. Everyone is telling a story. Each story is beautiful, relevant, and unique to the teller and so they assume it is truth for all because it is truth for them. If it is normal for me it must be normal for you….

What binds us is not a single truth but our capacity to story ourselves.

The difficulty is not in multiple truths, multiple stories; the challenge arises when there is the expectation of one story – one truth. When I believe that your truth must match my truth, that my truth is the only way and yours is inferior, that I must convert you to my truth, then we are on an untenable path. With the expectation of one truth we step into the dark woods and get lost.

There are many ways – as many as there are people on the planet. There are many truths because there are many stories. If there is a single story it is that between birth and death we will make sense of our experiences and we will do that through a process of story creation in our active search for proof that supports what we believe.

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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Story Yourself Strong

Posted on July 30, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

508. 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 was sitting in Muse waiting for Elizabeth and listening to the conversations all around me. Most were focused on what was wrong. Most were steeped in what was missing. It was a lack-fest.

Brendon Burchard teaches people in business that stories of struggle are more effective than stories of success because people will more readily identify with the struggle. Stories of success put people off. They don’t want to hear about your victories; they will buy your stuff if you identify with their pain. Doesn’t that speak volumes!

So try this experiment: Identify your strengths. Stop and consider what you do well. Focus on what you love to do? Make a list of what you love to do and what you believe are your gifts. Make a list of your strengths. Enjoy it. Brag to yourself. Relish it. Try it.

Then, ask this question: Is it possible to identify your strengths separate from your needs? Make another list of the things you think you need. Embellish this list; have fun with it just like you did in making your list of strengths.

Compare your list of needs with your list of strengths.

Now, throw away your list of needs. The odds are good that this list dominates most of your time and focus so toss it. You can dig it out of the trash later.

It is useful, creative and productive (not to mention generative) to focus on your gifts and build upon your strengths. If you want to create something new, your strengths will help you. Placing your focus on your needs will generally lead to lots of excuses.

Bring your strengths to the party. They are far more interesting than what you think you need.

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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Mind Your Metaphors

Posted on July 27, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

505. 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 and I just facilitated a forum on transformational leadership coaching. We worked with the importance of language and metaphor and I was reminded why I believe all change begins with a change in language. To change your language is to change your story. To change your story is to change what you see and experience – it is to change your world.

Language is metaphoric. Language is always referential to experience; language is not the experience, it is the interpretation of the experience. How you story your experience – the language that you use to define yourself – gives meaning to your world. Language is much more powerful than we understand!

You create your world through the story you tell. Your metaphors reveal the story you tell.

Ask yourself what is the difference between “problem solving” and “working with potential?” Are you “fixing” yourself or “creating” the life you desire? Are you “blocked” or “empty” or “jazzed” or “on fire?” Are you “enough” or “authentic” or “present?” Have you “arrived?” Is your life “broken into compartments” or is there “flow?” Have you “fulfilled your potential,” “given away the farm,” or are you “seeking clarity?”

Are you still in doubt about who defines you? Who tells your story if not you?

Filed under: Language, Metaphor, Story, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Bring Back The Boon

Posted on July 24, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

One of the things I most appreciate about stories is this: all stories are about transformation and usually the transformation is about the change in the inner life of an individual. But, individual transformation is hollow until the boon is brought back to the community. It only seems that we live for our own betterment. None of us lives in a vacuum. All of us need to contribute or we wither. This was Scrooge’s recognition. Frodo returned the ring to the fire to save the Shire. He was changed in the journey and so the Shire was also changed.

Greater self-knowledge impacts the lives of everyone in the community. Personal growth, deeper self-knowledge, sends a ripple through the society. We rarely see or understand the full impact of our lives on others because the ripple does not stop. My mentor, Tom, had a mentor, Demarcus, who had a mentor…. Understanding the impact of a single life on the world, across time, is one of the purposes of story. Who might you become if you recognized that you mattered, that fulfilling your potential serves the fulfillment of potential in others far beyond your capacity to see. Blunting yourself serves only to blunt others, too; we all lose.

When we step toward our fear and face our bear, we face it for ourselves and for everybody we know. And our stories of facing the bear serves to help others face their bear when their time comes. And their story helps others face their bear…

Filed under: Perspective, Story, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Fly Like Lucy

Posted on July 23, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

About 6 years ago I wrote and illustrated a children’s book entitled, Lucy & The Waterfox. It is about a fox with a natural capacity to fly. She keeps her flights of fancy secret because she knows her pack-mates will not understand. And she is right. When they discover her ability to fly they shame her; they convince her there is something wrong with her. She stops flying and starts withering. The rest of the story is about reclaiming her natural gifts. By the end of the book, Lucy soars without apology. She flies because she can.

Like us, Lucy has a desire to belong. As Catherine once told me, “Sometimes a talent can hold you hostage. It separates us from the pack. It conflicts with the necessity of belonging.” As creative tensions go, Catherine described the mother lode. I work with so many people who have squelched their natural gifts in exchange for acceptance. I’ve done it. And, like Lucy, it is the path of withering. Cut off your gifts, diminish your offer, and you will put a kink your life force.

Of course, Lucy’s story is universal. The tension between belonging and expressing your nature is a pull that every human being feels. W.B Yeats called this tension the right hand path and the left hand path. Do what society expects of you and you are walking the right hand path. Follow your nature, separate from the crowd and you are on the left hand path. The trick is always integration; finding the middle way. That is the grail path.

Catherine also recently sent me a reminder that the entire story depends upon where we place our focus. We can be surrounded by supporters and only see the critics. We can have one foot on the left hand path and only see the limitations. She reminded me to “Just fly! Be true to your range of gifts and abilities and just do it.” Good advice from my dear Catherine who, in this story, just became my Waterfox.

Filed under: Gratitude, Metaphor, Story, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Think Twice Before Parking

Posted on July 18, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Years ago I consulted with some financial guys. They wanted to know about story. They wanted to know how to tell a better story. Before I could teach them about story I needed to know the story they were currently telling. My friends call me a “circular” thinker so I imagine outside eyes would have seen a brilliant comedy routine: several “linear” financial thinkers trying to squeeze my circular mind through their two-dimensional picture. I knit my brows so many times they were bruised. When I am older I will have deep furrows cut in the field of my forehead from that difficult day.
Although I had to squeeze my thoughts across the chasm I was able to finally grasp their story. Here’s what I learned: Money needs to move to grow. Our entire system is designed to entice the average Joe to “park” their money in a bank or a 401k or an insurance product. Most of us still imagine that our money goes into an impenetrable vault; the money goes into the vault and is safe, secure and the nice banker/broker will pay us a tiny percentage to keep our money parked in their vault. That image is a carefully crafted illusion to make us feel secure and grateful for the return on our parking job.

Their job is to make the money move. And they make it move a lot. There isn’t a vault, there is no parking lot; there’s a racetrack. They make the money make lots and lots of money because it never sits still. They will make your money grow 7 to 10 times larger than the amount you parked in their lot-illusion. But wait, there’s more: even it they lose the money they have a fail-safe built into the program; it’s not their money being lost, it’s yours. They were very serious when they said to me, “You never work with your own money.”

Here’s the core of their story, the story beneath the story. It is finance 101: their job is to keep you and me on one side of the debt line (we pay the interest) with them on the other side of the debt line (they receive the interest). They need to create debt for us to pay (think credit card, mortgage, student loan). As they said, “Debt is not a bad thing, it just depends upon which side of the debt you are standing.” That’s why crashes like the 2008 disaster made money, lots and lots of money for some well positioned financial guys: They created lots of good debt and it wasn’t their life savings that they gambled away. They play a game in which they win either way and, in the story they told me, are careful not to consider the consequences for others.

I was not much help that day. I couldn’t get over the notion that it was not a better story that they needed but a better intention, perhaps a bigger conscience, or maybe even a better understanding of the word community.

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Lose Your Balance

Posted on July 15, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

In the language of story, the story begins when the main character is knocked off balance. Stories are about transformation and transformation cannot happen in stasis. Losing balance creates motion so the story can begin.

You are the main character of your story and the rule applies to you, too: loss of balance is necessary for change. Although when knocked off balance our first impulse is to hold on to the known, which is a necessary impulse, an important action, yet ultimately you have to surrender to the new reality. You have to surrender to the unknown. Paradox warning: The new reality comes with the clarity that you do not know what to do. Admitting that you don’t know is a necessary and vital part of learning; it is a key to transformation.

We resist the new circumstance (being off balance) by treating it as if it was the old circumstance. We pretend that nothing is happening. This, of course, is an attempt to reassert balance and to make sense of what we don’t understand. Trying to regain balance is a good strategy for increasing discomfort and creating further imbalance: more heat, higher stakes, more motion. It is a form of creative tension.

This dance of holding on to the known in the face of the unknown splits us; it comes laden with contradictions. You love and hate your spouse. You fear and anticipate the move. It is a complexity: there is no black and white, no simple and easy answers. The point is to dissolve, to lose your orientation, to have nothing solid to grasp. The absence of stability facilitates the surrender: with nothing to hold on to, a step into the unknown is the only possible step; letting go becomes necessary; the only way out is into the void.

And it is in that moment, the moment of stepping into the unknown that the task or the journey seems insurmountable. That is necessary, too. If you knew you could survive, the journey would not be worth taking. When the only way to regain balance leads through the insurmountable, the story, your life, suddenly becomes worth telling.

Filed under: Awakening, Story, Transcendence, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: balance | 1 Comment »

Catch A Thought-Bobber!

Posted on July 14, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

492. 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 lately been thinking a lot about learning. Something has been niggling at the back of my mind and today during my morning walk it bobbed to the top of my consciousness. These thought-bobbers are the reason I take morning walks; insight evades me when I sit at a desk. When I move physically, my thoughts move; my perspective changes and those little thoughts lurking near the bottom of my consciousness ocean catch some air bubbles and shoot to the surface.

The thought that bobbed to the top was leveraged by a question someone recently asked me about me ebooks. They asked, “What is your hope for your books? What do you hope they bring to people?” My first thought was, “I hope they sell a lot!” My answer was blah, blah, blah, save the world, open perspectives for people, etc., but it was a good question and started tickling my mind. My focus was on the ebooks, on the material as if they might actually do something for someone, not on the person reading the book.

Here’s how the thought bobber popped up. It was simple and complete: The idea is to open the person, not illuminate material. My hope is that the material helps people open. Isn’t that elegant? And, isn’t it where we so often lose our way? We think learning is about the content, the delivery of the content, and the reception of the content. Learning is not about the content. Learning is about the learner. And, what about the learner?

In my work, when all the context and content is boiled away, whether workshops, retreats, coaching, business consulting,…when it is stripped of it’s circumstance are all processes that reinforce self-discovery. Isn’t that also true of math, science, English, and all of the other topics we think we are “delivering?”

There is a profound shift that happens when, 1) someone begins to see that they make the meaning of their life, that meaning is not something they find. And, 2) they are capable of seeing/reading their life metaphorically – which simply means the great stories become personally relevant. Imagine if history was taught with the intention to open the learner to a greater purpose: to discover in themselves the universal story cycle and pass along what they discover in their unique history to their descendants, just as their ancestors tried to do for them. They become a link in the story chain. They become connected through time.

Filed under: Education, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: learning, meaning | 1 Comment »

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