Truly Powerful People | The Direction of Intention

Truly Powerful People (206)

Posted on October 3, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

206.

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

Shortly after meeting Patti I bought a black and red hardcover notebook in an attempt to contain my thoughts and notes from our conversations. My usual system of Post-it notes, index cards and loose college rule three hole punch pages proved inadequate for the task of capturing the idea cascade of our exchanges. Sticky yellow post-its overran my desk and spilled onto to the floor. It was too much for the old system to handle and there was no sign of our idea-flood drying up so I took the leap and bought a real notebook with heft and presence. It was the first of many.

Taped into the first page of the first black and red notebook is a Xerox copy of the Vicious and Virtuous Circles (we now call them “circumstance-driven” and “intention-driven”). We created them one morning, very early in our collaboration, sitting at Patti’s dining room table in North Carolina. The Circles spilled out amidst a mad volleyball-banter of concepts sparked by the likes of Parker Palmer, Charles Hampden-Turner and a few others I can’t remember. We were attempting to give coherence, direction and shape to the flood. We were trying to answer questions like, “How do you address the real issues inherent in organizations and communities without placing any of the participants in an untenable position? What are the conversations we as a community and as a culture are avoiding? What conversations are we incapable of having around issues of difference or diversity? How do you facilitate change in a system when change will upset the power structures and alter the essential identity of the system?” The Circles grounded our thinking and gave us direction and coherence and more importantly clarified a single guiding intention for our work together: to facilitate the journey from the Vicious Circle to the Virtuous Circle. The creation of the Circles helped us to ask better questions, “How can we, all of us, live expansively together and support each other in fulfilling our potential? How can race or age or gender become a horizon, something to step toward, instead of a barrier, something to move against?”

On the page facing the Xeroxed Circles I scribbled two notes. The first is derived from a book by Robert Fritz called The Path of Least Resistance; in blue ink I wrote: It is impossible to change behavior until you change the underlying structure, the path water (behavior) takes is always determined by the structure of the land. I underlined the words “behavior” and “structure.” I wrote the second note in black ink, it reads: Mastery is concerned with process not product. Master the process and the product takes care of itself.

We’ve yet to meet a person, a company, or an organization that isn’t running around on a Vicious Circle (a circle of reduction, driven by circumstance). Walking the path between the Circles – walking the path to becoming truly powerful – requires two things: 1) A willingness to look beyond behavior and see the underlying structures, and 2) A desire for mastery; focus on the process and let the outcomes take care of themselves.

Said simply, it is this: are you moving toward what you want to create or are you running from what you fear? It’s a choice.

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Truly Powerful People (205)

Posted on October 2, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

205.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Most stories are about changing from one way of being to another way of being. Sometimes the change is forced upon you before you think you are ready. Sometimes you seek it. The process is generally messy and the outcome is rarely what you’d imagined when the story began; usually, it is better than you’d imagined.
In 1998, I left the work that I’d created for myself, work that was secure, creative, challenging and I’d assumed mine to my death. I ran a theatre company during the summer months and a communications academy in the winter. Both were odd-ball programs imbedded within a school district. Despite the endless hoops and regulation-manipulations necessary to keep peace within a hopelessly broken education system, I could do what I wanted to do, create what I believed to be helpful for students and myself, and explore new territory. The theatre and the academy were magical places; students transformed, teachers took risks, daydreaming was valued because it always led to, “what if…?”
One August day while writing the final report for the summer theatre, I found myself concluding the report with a letter of resignation. I was seized with the need to go; I could not stay another day. I had no plan and meager savings. It was not the first leap I’d taken and would not be the last but at the time it felt like madness, like I was leaping for the sake of leaping (my inner monologue screamed, “Don’t do it! Take this year and make a plan. Make a plan! Don’t be foolish!”).
I have never been good at ignoring inner imperatives. My inner Virgil is an impatient man and deeply values the hidden treasure in, “What if…?” It is true that sometimes I chastise myself for believing in “What if…?” but mostly I say to myself, “Why not? If we can create this why can’t we create that?”

This week I worked with teachers who are routinely abused for asking, “What if…?” I feel as if I just landed from the leap I took so many years ago. It just occurred to me that my work in this world is to marry these phrases, “What if…?” and “Why not?”

What if you loosened the nozzle that shuts down the flow of your dreams? Why not open the cage and see what is possible beyond the bars?

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Truly Powerful People (204)

Posted on October 1, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

204.
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 young couple pulled up in their battered white Ford truck. They were coming to pick up an old table that Lora sold though Craig’s List. We loaded the table into the bed of the truck and then Clay, the young husband and I, stood in the street and talked for an hour.

He talked of his love of remaking things and restoring old furniture. He told me his ability to restore stuff was life giving and I could see it in his eyes when he said it; he literally meant “life-giving.”

He told me he’d just been through a rough patch and struggled because he lost a bunch of work – he was a private contractor – and didn’t want to go back to being a cop. The thought was killing him. He told me the crucial moment came when he stopped entertaining the notion that he had to go back. He realized he didn’t have to do anything. He would choose to go back or he would choose not to go back – either way, it was a choice. His choice. And, he realized that he’d already made it. So he “stayed the course” and some work came his way.

He said, “A man with a plan can get through anything.”

I asked, “What’s your plan, now?”

He said, “To restore this table! It’ll be life-giving and there is no better plan than that!”

Do what gives you life! There is no better plan than that.

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Truly Powerful People (203)

Posted on September 30, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

203.
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 is a common and necessary step that I see when someone moves into their power: They place their needs higher on the priority list – higher than all other needs. They cease serving the needs of others at the expense of their happiness.

This does not mean they stop serving others! In fact, it means that they are capable for the first time in their lives of truly serving others. It is an equation of sorts: when you stop making other people your priority you stop seeking your happiness from their reactions and responses. Your investment shifts. You give for the sake of giving, because it is what you decide to do and not what you need to do to feel useful or valid or worthwhile; your worth is not located in the responses of others. Your worth is no longer a question so you do not need to seek it in the eyes of others.

It is the distinction between service and enabling. It is the step that makes someone truly powerful because they exit the power games. They no longer need to play – to diminish others, triumph over, defeat, negate,…. They offer their best because it is their best offer. The rest is out of their control and none of their concern.

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Truly Powerful People (202)

Posted on September 29, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

202.
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 am 18 years old and all I’ve ever wanted to be is an artist, a painter. I am in my first year of college and I am dismayed to discover that my art classes bore me. I can barely sit still. I don’t know why, this makes no sense to me, I feel as if I am suffocating every time I go to class. And, I can’t stay away from the theatre. I’m there everyday. I take the class available to a non-major. I audition and play minor roles in plays.

The next year I jump to a new school and a new degree. I am studying acting and know deep down that I will never be an actor – there is something more beyond this study but I can’t see it (yet) and I expend massive amounts of energy and anxiety – again – wondering what I am doing and hiding the feeling that I am pursuing something without knowing what it is. It is an imperative yet makes no sense; I’m chasing a phantom and feel like I am lying to my teachers because I’m still under the illusion that most people know what they want and have a clear sight on what it is (so, I feel like I am lacking somehow).

In the next several years I direct plays, I consult with schools, I paint paintings, I coach and for a while these feel like different actions – energy in opposition. I tell myself that when I am in rehearsal I’m not painting so I’m not growing. And, if I am painting, I am not growing as a director. I am at war within myself and neither side can win.

The surrender comes when I recognize that painting and directing and consulting are forms; and beneath the form there is an intention. Alan calls this a soul mission – when you recognize that what is yours-to-do can take many shapes. I am a particularly adept chameleon; mine-to-do is to open stories for people, to illuminate paths to self-knowledge (it is what an artist does).

Ana-the-wise busted my chops the other day when I was whining that I didn’t know what form I wanted my work to take. I said, “What do I want to create for myself?” She said, “You will always be confused until you ask a different question. It is not what you want to create for yourself, the question is what do you want to bring to this world.”

Amen. And bring it!

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Truly Powerful People (201)

Posted on September 28, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

201.
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 read a friend’s dissertation. He is an educator and his work is a model of leadership development for administrators. It is an elegant model, well researched and written and yet there was something troubling about it. The assumptions defining an administrator’s role are about “minding the outcomes of student achievement.” Achievement is the goal.

There is nothing wrong with achievement – everyone wants to achieve something in life – but the real question in public education is “achievement of what?” What are we trying to achieve? And, why? We’re learning that test scores are not great indicators or predictors of success yet “achievement” has become synonymous with “test scores.” Really? Our intention is better test scores? Our best intention for our children is preparation for a job in the marketplace?

This is from Neil Postman’s book The End Of Education: “Thomas Jefferson…knew what schools were for – to ensure that citizens would know when and how to protect their liberty. This is a man who produced an essay that could have cost him his life, and that included the words: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal: that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ It would not have come easily to the mind of such a man, as it does with political leaders today, that the young should be taught to read exclusively for the purpose of increasing their economic productivity.”

Has the bar for public education always been this low? I suspect it has and that’s the challenge. “Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic,” the mantra of a bygone era, rings hollow in an age screaming for complex thinkers. Reducing all learning to a mechanical skill is a notion from an industrial age. If the role of the principal is the equivalent of the manager, the superintendent as CEO of achievement, then imagine what the role of the student must be: chassis on the assembly line; sit still and listen. No wonder 25% of our kids drop out of school before graduating!

What would be the administrator’s role if the intention was to ensure that citizens would know when and how to protect their liberty? What would the administrator’s role be if the intention was to ignite ferocious inquiry? What if we wanted more than another generation of consumers and decided we wanted to support the development of children hungry, capable and unafraid to bring their best to the community and the world?

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Truly Powerful People (200)

Posted on September 27, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

200.
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 few years ago Duncan sent me an article about Nature Deficit Disorder – children who are deprived of nature. I rolled my eyes. I don’t have kids and I grew up running through the mountains, playing in the streams, riding my bike off of cliffs, throwing mud, looking at stars and sneezing in the spring (I had terrible allergies). I was wary about the article because it seems to me we have a cultural predisposition to see pathology everywhere. “Where are the parents,” I thought. “Go outside and play!”

And then…. I’m now convinced that we are so used to the reproduction that we rarely recognize the authentic. Our environments are constructed, our realities artificial. I’m now collecting phrases overheard in public spaces, things like “Those stars look just like the ones in the planetarium!” Or, “Those frogs sound just like a soundtrack!” I delight in the term “reality TV;” do an experiment: point a camera at someone and note the face they put on (note how you change when a lens is focused on you). The island is constructed, the race is scripted; there is a cameraman behind that camera so that intensely private moment you think you are watching is…a performance.

It is less a disorder than how we construct order. Distraction. Comfort. Disconnection from nature (unless used as a playground) is an intention. These are our priorities. Nature is messy and there are bugs. It is not an accident that the soundtrack is more recognizable than the frogs. And the frogs – the real ones – are disappearing (a phenomena known as “mystery declines”). From what I understand, a frog’s skin is porous and absorbs water so it is especially susceptible to pollutants in the environment (hmmmmm). Some researchers say that disappearing frog populations are an early warning signal of ecosystems in trouble.

Isn’t this yet another case of label-libel (the label absolves us from further thought). Place side-by-side the terms, “Nature Deficit Disorder,” “mystery declines,” and “Ecosystems in trouble” and ask yourself, is this really a mystery? Are these labels particularly sanitary and devoid of personal relevance?

Perhaps an early warning signal that we are in trouble is that the stars look just like the ones in the planetarium. The next time you wonder what life is all about, go outside, find someplace that you consider to be nature and sit for a spell. Take your shoes off. Get dirty. Feel the rain. Swat the fly. Imagine that you are a participant, part of it all.

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Truly Powerful People (199)

Posted on September 26, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

199.
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 a slip of paper tucked in an old journal. It carries a message to myself, a vow that I made on a weekend retreat several years ago. This is what I wrote: I will leave starving behind and orient my life according to the feast.

I used to create starvation because I used to fear starvation. I used to feel as if the world was too big and that I had no capacity or skill to negotiate it. My way of controlling – of fending off the starvation was to retreat from the world, to hide as if the hounds of my fear would not find me in my retreat.

One day, the day I wrote this note to myself, I realized that I was starving myself – it was not “the world” that was starving me or my size relative to my desires – it was my fear that kept me from the table and the table was rich with taste and texture. The hounds of my fear created my retreat. I’d never literally starved (which was my fear) but I had never fully fed myself, never allowed myself to feast at the table of life because I was clinging to the shadows. The realization of my starvation-creation took my breath away.

Fear was my focus so fear was my creation. Starvation was my focus so starvation was my foundation. I’m grateful I found this note! It has been a long time since my emaciated soul stepped up to the table and took a seat. The feast is now my focus and yet everyday I see people just like me, starving, trying to control the things they cannot control, creating the things they fear the most.

I long ago learned I cannot open anyone’s eyes to the abundance of this life, but I can make room and keep an open seat at table.

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Truly Powerful People (198)

Posted on September 25, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

198.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Occasionally I have days when there is no gas in my tank, no thought in my head, no impulse to do anything. I call them “filing days” or “no power tools” days. I used to resist them. I used to push through them and force some kind of movement (and sometimes nearly cut off my fingers, thus the “no power tools”). I always paid a price.

Today I am empty. I am more empty than I can possibly describe. It is passages through emptiness that taught me – or required me – to distinguish between the energy (the feeling) and the story that I tell myself about it. Working with the energy is useful. Investing in the story is not. Emptiness provides an opportunity to sense – to stop all action and pay attention to what I feel.

The story was (and is) always a story of resistance. I am as puritan as the next guy in my orientation to the world but I have slowly recognized the power of non-resistance, the necessity of non-pursuit. Rejuvenation is sometimes only found in stillness, in non-action. My inner-puritan wants toil and hard pews, it warns me that rest is for the wicked and I smile (a particularly wicked smile) as I sit in the sun with my book. It yammers for a spell and quiets after a while, it has learned that I’m no longer invested in inner persecution.

Productivity will sooner return if I honor the emptiness of this day. And feel the sun on my face.

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Truly Powerful People (197)

Posted on September 24, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

197.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

My topic has been power, not the kind that people exercise over each other, but the kind people cultivate within themselves and others. “Power with….”

Most of my life my arena has been the arts and I believe the arts are meant to be a dynamic force in community. The arts, when functioning, are the force of identity and identity change. The arts are a great training ground for sorting out power.

In rehearsals and fine art collaborations, I have seen over and over again what happens when people stop wrestling with others for status and position. They stop waging war outside themselves and so, stop waging war inside themselves. People blossom when they stop eating each other for lunch. People excel when they align, focus on something bigger than their individual agendas and offer their best game. All of the energy of combat is rededicated to creation. All the energy of tearing others down is repurposed to calling forward the finest in everyone. Instead of diminishment and negation there is generative action and support. Everyone is necessary. Everyone matters. The competition moves from between people (externally driven) to within each individual (internally driven) – mastery becomes the focus.

Pie-in-the-sky? I suppose that depends on your point of view: are you in this life to bring your best to it or are you here to see what you can get out of it? Bring your best – even for a day – give what you have without inhibition and notice what happens to the people around you. I believe you will find that when you become truly powerful you invoke true power in others. Don’t take my word for it. Try it.

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