Truly Powerful People | The Direction of Intention

Truly Powerful People (246)

Posted on November 12, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

246.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

There are two quotes that populate my old website. I love them both and together they are the bookends of what I value. Tonight I recognize that they are the acorns for this meditation on power.

The first is from Reynolds Price: “The need to tell stories is essential to us, second in necessity to nourishment and before love and shelter.” Reynolds Price was precise in his choice of language and it was not an accident that he chose the word “essential” in reference to our need for story. Story is how we make meaning of our lives; we story ourselves every minute of the day. Without the story we would wither and die just as surely as if we were deprived of water. The story that you tell yourself can be generative or toxic; it can support your growth or stunt your potential. Either way it is a story that you tell.

The second quote is from Glade Byron Addams: “Chase down your passion like it’s the last bus of the night.” Today, I spent the day in a high school and many of the kids (and teachers) have let the bus leave without them. They’ve forgotten that there was a bus to catch. I thought about this quote a lot today and wished I had the Promethean spark to rekindle their heart fire. I wanted to shout, “The bus is here and it is leaving, run now! You can catch it if you run now, bang on the door and force it to stop for you!” I wondered if they know that their passions are worth chasing.

I wondered if they know that there are passionate people in the world like Lisa, Jill and Megan that believe in them and are willingly throwing themselves in front of the bus because they think passions are worth chasing. They are amazing and carry with them that sacred spark, reigniting hearts and reminding students and teachers alike that someone cares about their passions more than their performance scores.

They know and live boldly the essential power of story. Those voices you hear as you chase that last bus of the night are these three incredible people cheering for you to run like the wind and catch your hearts desire.

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Truly Powerful People (245)

Posted on November 11, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

245.
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 is 1978 and I am miserable in high school. I have learned to jump through the hoops to get my requisite “A” yet the closer I get to graduation the more untenable the hoop jumping becomes. I do not yet know there is another way and although I am at the top of my class I am considering dropping out. And then I sign up for a class in comparative religions taught by a most unusual man. His name is Robert Place and unlike most of my teachers he seems to love his job. Everyday he enters the room whistling and I am always surprised by what we do. Actually, to be clear, I am surprised because we do more than listen to him and take notes; we explore, we question, we challenge, we reach, and are encouraged to think for ourselves. I work harder in his class than I have ever worked in a class because I am more than a mere receiver of information; I am engaged with questions that matter to me and for the first time in my path through education I believe that what I have to say matters. In fact, in Bob Place’s class, what I have to say seems to be just as important as anything he has to say. What we say together is never an end result – an answer – it always leads to a new question and a necessary action. It leads to a powerful engagement. My classmates and I are bonded in our pursuit; we become powerful together.

I am thrilled and I suddenly understand what learning is all about: it is the quality of the pursuit, not the rightness of the answer. I tell him of my insight and he winks and says, “It’s a funny thing, that is also what life is about.”

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Truly Powerful People (244)

Posted on November 10, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

244.
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 a call and response from Judy. She took a look at http://www.trulypowerful.com and sent this thought: “Just a quick musing at this unworldly hour. Power in Spanish is ‘poder.’ Poder also means ‘to be able to’. So ‘disabled’ is ‘without power’… not a fair title when you look at the power within the disabled in our lives. Not sure how it all relates; perhaps you can finish my thought.”

And my idea back at her: “Do you know the term ‘label-libel?’ It is from Marshall McLuhan and means that once we slap a label on something we no longer need to think about it. Isn’t it true that we have a progressive history of labels leading to this latest word ‘disabled?’ Perhaps true poder is in the capacity to peer beyond the label, to see the potential, the possibilities, and the abilities in each and every unique human being.”

I’ve worked with and known many, many people who wear the “disabled” label on their lapels in the eyes of society. They are miracles of perseverance and power, love and gratitude, generosity and courage. They have a lot to teach the rest of us otherwise disabled folk about true power if only we have the eyes to see it.

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Truly Powerful People (243)

Posted on November 9, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

243.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Mark works for a government organization and he told me of a great revelation he had a few years ago. For the first 14 years of his career he got into a lot of trouble. He couldn’t figure out why he was in so much trouble all of the time because he was performing his job to the best of his abilities. And then, one day in the shower the reason hit him like a thunderbolt: his superiors didn’t really want him (or anyone, it wasn’t personal) to do the job. They didn’t want anyone to improve things because, as Mark so beautifully said, “Improvement makes waves.” He did an experiment and stopped doing his job and almost immediately his approval ratings began to rise.

Years ago I had a conversation with a banker, a vice president. I was doing work in system’s change and he told me that if I worked in his department he’d have to fire me. He said, “My job is to keep the status quo. The people that work for me want to come to work and go home with a paycheck. They don’t want change – even if it actually made things better. They want consistency.” I challenged his position. I haven’t met very many people (outside of management) who desire routine over effectiveness. And, his big misperception from my point of view is that change lives in opposition to consistency. In today’s world of business, the only consistency is change.

Recently I heard a speech by the outgoing Washington State Auditor. He’s been around for 20 years and told us that he can’t audit the departments of state government unless they request it; he’s the auditor but he can’t audit anything that will reveal waste and corruption unless the wasters and corrupters request it. You can guess how many requests he’s received in career.

Do you see the pattern? This is thinking of a time-gone-by. Compartmentalization and control are dinosaurs in a digital age. The only thing consistent in our world is change and the pace of change increases every year. Compartmentalization and control are power killers; an expansive economy requires expansive thinkers who know how to engage with multiple possibilities. The folks in the executive suite need to learn a new pattern of empowerment and fluid motion. We have a job to do and pretending that we’re doing it is flushing a ton of potential, time, energy and creative ability down the tubes.

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Truly Powerful People (242)

Posted on November 8, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

242.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

There is a simple image that I love from the book, Brain Rules: a researcher places a toy just outside the reach of a very young child and then places a plastic rake nearby. The child wants the toy and soon recognizes that the rake is useful in reaching the toy. Once the toy is acquired, explored, and scrutinized the child tosses the toy away so it can reach again with the rake. The toy is repeatedly raked within reach and just as quickly the toy is hurtled farther away.

The fascination is not with the toy, the thing, but with the challenge, the process. Left to his or her devices, the child will create greater and greater challenges; they will seek limits so they can expand beyond them. It is in their nature. It is in your nature. It is in our nature. Curiosity, exploration of the unknown, and mastery of greater and greater challenges is what we are designed to do. Boredom is unnatural and an acquired taste.

For reasons beyond my comprehension, we make education so convoluted and disturbingly difficult. We educators have designed and continue to support a system that is about the toy (the attainment of the “A”). What’s more, we teach students that we are the rake; the “A” is reached through us by performing what is expected for us – they look to us to see if they’ve reached the toy or not. Contain the curiosity, prescribe the exploration, eliminate the unknown; define the hoop and teach the student to jump through it – and call that learning. Is it any wonder our dropout rates are astronomical? You’ll find the kids in the park repeatedly falling off their skateboards – breaking bones if necessary – until the new trick is mastered.

Hoop jumping is controllable; true learning has nothing to do with control and everything to do with focus directed at an intention. It only takes a toy and a rake and the capacity to understand the difference between the two.

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Truly Powerful People 241

Posted on November 7, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

241.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

As luck would have it (isn’t that an interesting phrase! Luck personified and with an intention!) this morning I began reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It is lucky or serendipitous or coincidental, depending upon your belief about such matters, because last night I was working on the sequence for my upcoming class and needed a good story or example that clearly illustrated the power of community and connectivity. The introduction to Outliers is about a little town in Pennsylvania, Roseto.

In the 1950’s heart disease was an epidemic in the United States. Heart attacks were the leading cause of death among men under the age of 65 – except among the residents of Roseto. Heart disease was virtually non-existent there in people 55 or younger. Among people 65 or older the rate of death from heart disease was half that of the rest of the United States. Why?

Multiple studies were done to investigate this abnormality. Diet was considered and ruled out; the people of Roseto ate foods high in cholesterol, higher than most parts of the nation. Exercise, genetics, geography were each considered and ruled out. What was the difference?

As Gladwell writes, “The Rosetans had created a powerful, protective, social structure capable of insolating them from the pressures of the modern world. The Rosetans were healthy because of where they were from, because of the world that they created for themselves in their tiny little town in the hills.”

This little town had virtually no crime, no homelessness, no suicide, no drug addiction or alcoholism, no one was on welfare, no one was dying of stress related conditions. In short, they were actively supportive, concerned and engaged with each other. They created a communal culture in which all members matter, all member care for the wellbeing of the others – no one was racing to be some other place.

Gladwell continues: the researchers “…had to convince the medical community to think about health and heart attacks in an entirely new way: they had to get them to realize that they wouldn’t be able to understand why someone was healthy if all they did was think about an individual’s personal choices or actions in isolation. They had to look beyond the individual. They had to understand the culture he or she was a part of,….”

No one lives in a vacuum. No one creates in a vacuum. No one develops in a vacuum. The health of the community expresses as the health experienced in the individuals. Power follows the same channels: if only the few dominate through power-over others then none are powerful, all are powerful when all the members are supported and supporting each other to realize their true power.

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Truly Powerful People (240)

Posted on November 6, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

240.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Someone once told me that many people come to the Pacific Northwest to heal. It is a magic place. It inspires quiet in the winter months. In the dark of winter it can be like going into the belly of the whale. When the sun returns or breaks through the winter clouds, all work stops as we pile out of our office buildings and stand with eyes closed, palms open absorbing the heat and the light; we are sun worshippers here.

I have been here for over a decade and there is a particular phenomenon that continues to take away my breath; the first time I saw it I almost crashed my car. Mountains surround Seattle though you could live here for months and never know it. The clouds and fog and rain are like a magician’s assistant – they make the mountains disappear; they hide them until we forget that they are there. And then, one day, the magician sun parts the curtains and the mountains, glowing pink and orange and purple in the early morning step forth reborn. We say, “The mountains are out today.”

I took a walk early this morning. It was raining and grey and cold. I felt something looming over my shoulder. I turned to look at what was behind me and the mountains were there, close enough to touch, staring back at me. Just for a moment. And then the magician’s assistant, said, “That’s enough,” and pulled the curtain, and they were gone.

Of course, I am self-centered enough to think the curtain was pulled back just for me. Just for a moment as if to say, “Don’t take this – any of this – for granted. The magic is always there and available at a moment’s notice. You never know what is coming just around the corner or walking just behind you. Pay attention. It is magic. Don’t forget to look.”

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Truly Powerful People (239)

Posted on November 5, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

239.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

This is a day for staring out of windows. I am marveling at the cycles of living and the timing of this day’s news.

A few moments ago I received word that Kim Bush, one of the most amazing people I have ever known, died last night. When I talk of empowered people empowering others it is often Kim and his wife Judy that I reference. Kim used his days on earth to enrich the lives of others – and so he had a very rich life. He suffered a massive stroke 4 years ago. It is enough to say that over the past 4 years on days that I needed to know the power of the human spirit, I paid Kim and Judy a visit: after the stroke Kim’s light did not dim as I would have expected, it intensified and shone brightly through the wreckage of his body. He became more present, more alive, more full of mischief and humor and curiosity after the stroke.

There is circumstance and there is who you are within your circumstance. Kim did not resist his circumstance; he lived a vital life within it (thank you, Judy).

15 minutes after I read the news of Kim’s passing, I got a text from Rafael. He is the proud papa of a new baby girl born last night at approximately the same time that Kim left us. The tides go out, the tides come in; the story is unique and universal, essential and inevitable, and ultimately about renewal.

My to-do list seems utterly unimportant, even silly. I will never have this day of life again and I think I will sit here and be amazed by it all.

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Truly Powerful People (238)

Posted on November 4, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

238.
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 a year ago I was doing research for a performance project and bumbled into a notion, an aspect of belief in some cultures that has intrigued me: hungry ghosts. Hungry ghosts are not the same as other ghosts.

In many traditional belief systems people become ghosts when they die. Shadows, shades, wisps, or spirit without a body – all are variations on the theme. Generally it was thought that ghosts did not have an eternal life as a ghost, but slowly weaken, dissipate and eventually dissolve into mist; essentially ghosts are a transitional step toward unity.

Hungry ghosts are different. Hungry ghosts are exceptional cases! When a person no longer appreciates their ancestors, when in life they do something very bad to others (all crimes against others dishonors the ancestors), if they are greedy or the worst possible crime: forcing people to move from their ancestral home, thus disgracing both families of ancestors (the ancestors of the forced and the forcer), then this person will die and become a hungry ghost. Desire, greed, anger and ignorance all are factors in causing a soul to become a hungry ghost because they are motives for people to perform evil deeds against others. So, the bottom line is this: do something bad to others = shame to the ancestors = become a hungry ghost.

There is no eventual unity for a hungry ghost. There is no rebirth in the cosmic cycle, no resurrection, do not pass “Go,” do not collect $200, go straight to hungry ghost. It is not a transitional phase; it an end result. It is forever.

Here’s the kicker: there is a single get-out-of-hungry-ghost card but it is very, very hard to achieve. The ghost must convince a mortal to feel compassion for it, to show compassion for its choices, its crimes. This is not forgiveness and certainly not absolution. It is a search for that rare person capable of looking beyond the fear, the greed, the horror, the hunger, the cruelty and see, truly see the essence of the soul. This person has to be able to see the unity even in the hungry ghost – and then the ghost can see it, too.

Sometimes as I walk down the streets of my city I see people as hungry ghosts seeking for that one rare mortal capable of seeing beyond their weakness, their yearning, their flaws and humanity; people who want to be seen. Sometimes, I refocus my eyes and see everyone as that mortal, not so rare, capable of seeing beyond the mess; people capable of seeing. Either way, the action is the same: the hider seeks the seeker, the seeker seeks the hider, compassion ensues and unity becomes a possibility: the ancestors welcome both home.

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Truly Powerful People (237)

Posted on November 3, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

237.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

As a child you probably asked yourself, “How do I change myself to be accepted?” Although it is a necessary question to ask while figuring out who you are, it is a question that will plague you all your adult life until you stumble into the second question, when you finally ask yourself, “How do I accept myself as I am?”

Resistance, frustration, anger and fear are the hallmarks of the first question if it is carried beyond its usefulness. Placing your acceptance in the hands of another is a recipe for disaster and will make your life’s story a dance for approval.

The second question is always with you. It is your ally, your friend, and your guardian of power. While asking the first question, while trying to change yourself for the eyes of others, you will feel that your life is just beyond your reach; you will catch glimmers of your power but it will sift like sand through your fingers. That is the second question waiting for you to place your acceptance where it belongs. It touches you on the shoulder every so often to remind you that it is with you, waiting for you to place your acceptance within yourself where it belongs.

The absence of resistance, frustration, anger and fear are the hallmarks of the second question, when your life story becomes about creating power with others in all the amazing shapes, sizes and forms available to you when you finally decide to stop the dance.

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