Be The Source

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

While preparing a new curriculum this morning, I reviewed work from the past and came across this phrase, something I wrote 4 years ago: In our language usage we often say, “_______ gives me joy.” So, for instance, “Painting gives me joy.” This phrasing leads us to believe that the joy is in the painting and you are the recipient of the joy. It leads us to believe that these “things” like joy, happiness, and contentment are external gems, separate from us, something we must seek to find.

Joy, happiness, and contentment are not things, not nouns. The painting does not give you joy, you bring the joy to the experience of painting. The capacity for joy is in you and ignites within you when you put yourself into a generative relationship. As I too often quote Viktor Frankel, “Happiness ensues.” Happiness and joy are not something you seek (separate from you), they are qualities that follow (originating from within you); joy is movement; a feeling is a verb. You are the source not the recipient.

I realize that I am writing a lot lately about the power of language to shape our perception. At present I am in a coffee shop and I just heard the barista tell her coworker that this upcoming year she will learn to say “no.” The couple at the table next to me are having an intense conversation and I just heard, “That’s just the way I am!” followed by, “Why can’t you be happy?” These are stories and the language is not incidental. It matters if you define yourself as separate from you joy. It matters if you believe that you are separate from your creativity or that you must do something to “deserve” happiness. If you define yourself as separate you will live separate from your powers of happiness, joy and contentment. You will think you need to seek them from others. You will define yourself as fundamentally powerless because you will orient yourself toward what you get from experiences instead of recognizing your infinite capacity to bring power to your life, to be power and vibrantly alive. Be the source of dynamic movement instead of a chaser of nouns. It matters.

See The Elegance

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.

Open And Experience

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

Walking through a driving rain in downtown Seattle, I had my hood up and eyes down and stepped into a flock of pigeons just as a bus passed spooking the entire pigeon squadron into taking flight – straight at me. I was suddenly and completely engulfed in a swoosh of wings and riot. I don’t know why but I closed my eyes, not for protection, but because I wanted to feel the experience of so many wings flapping around me. The sensation was as if being lifted, stirred and then returned to the ground. After having so many crow attacks I am generally skittish when birds fly at my face; my first reaction is to duck and cover. Not today. For some reason (that is beyond my capacity to reason), rather than close and protect, I opened and experienced. Lift, stir, gentle return to the ground. “The pigeons took me with them,” I thought as I opened my eyes and laughed.

I flipped back my hood and looked up into the rain. The pigeons vanished and I was getting soaked and awakened. It was as if I left this plane of reality for a moment and needed a cold splash of rain to bring me back. It was just a few days ago, upon Marilyn’s request, that I went outside to pick a fight with the crows and instead of having a good crow bout I ended up doing the same thing, hood back, looking into the sky as the rain soaked and cleansed me of my dark mood. This time, staring into a steel grey sky, rain running down my cheeks and off my forehead, I remembered a phrase that I read this morning from Thom Hartmann’s book, The Prophet’s Way: “You must behave as if your every act, even the smallest, impacted a thousand people for a hundred generations. Because it does.”

I stared into the sky surprised at my reaction to the birds and asked myself, “What ripple would I send through a hundred generations if my first response to any situation was to open and experience rather than close and protect myself?” And, an even better question followed, “How different would I be in the world if I lived open to any experience?” Isn’t that another way of saying, “be present to what is?” Flipping my hood back up I discovered in a chilly rush that my hood was filled with water that poured down my back so I took flight a second time, howling and dancing my own version of the pigeon launch, chanting, “open, open, open…!” Of this I am certain: a hundred generations from now they will most likely still be laughing!

Think “I Can!”

657. 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 in the last few days of living in the apartment I have occupied for nearly a decade. And, because I see the move coming, I am aware of my patterns and rituals, the unconscious actions that have come to define my normal, my everyday. For instance, while unloading the dishwasher this afternoon, I was amused by my automatic movement, spoons, forks and knives into the drawer, pivot, dishes up above, cups one at a time to the hooks above the counter, straighten the rug. I have repeated these actions so many times that they are worn into me, paths through the woods of my life. I appreciate them today because I will soon be without them; I will soon be awkward in the creation of new patterns and intentional in creating new rituals of definition.

I realize that thoughts are like these rituals. Thoughts are patterns that define us. If you think, “I can,” then you certainly will. If you think, “I can’t” then you will wear that pattern, too. I see my impending step out of my patterns as an opportunity to create new patterns, especially new thought patterns. There are rituals of thinking that I am ready to release. A new friend recently told me of her solstice ritual: friends meet around a bonfire and write on slips of paper what they are ready to let go. Then, they commit the slips to the fire. My move is like a bonfire. My patterns are now written on a slip of paper and in a few days I will commit them to the fire on not-knowing. I will then be free to create new patterns of thinking, new rituals of belief.

It is the time of year for resolutions and, like most well intended resolutions they fall prey to the groove of old patterns. Everything begins with a thought; repetitive thought is a pattern, investment in the pattern is a ritual that defines the life you choose to live. If you are not living the life that you desire, if your patterns are thought-prisons or somehow keeping you small, join me in creating new rituals of definition. You need not leave your apartment or your mate; you need not lock the door and walk away from your life. You need only, one day at a time, one step at a time, create a new pattern. My bonfire friend is now saying to herself, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,….” And, one small step at a time, one small thought at a time, she will. And, so will I.

Shine

656. 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 woke up this morning thinking about lights under a bushel; hiding your light. Now, I’m not really a bible guy. I think there are many paths up the mountain and the higher you go the more distinct and individual is your path – and the more universal are your revelations. The path is yours and the recognition is oneness. So, it always piques my curiosity when I have a distinct image pop into my noggin, especially in this season steeped in metaphor and with the portent of transformation.

A week ago I put out an offer for 10 free coaching sessions and was delighted when over 30 people responded. I decided to try and honor each request. I have been bah-humbug during this holiday, looking for some way to reconnect with the deeper meaning and rituals of this season; I wanted to create a ritual for myself that was truly a gift of giving and receiving. I bumbled into my ritual with these calls. Each was rich and warm and magical. Each call in one way or another was about removing the bushel from the light – these amazing brilliant, beautiful people recognizing and desiring to offer without inhibition their gift to the world. I was more than once moved to tears at the yearning and courage and simple perseverance of their impulse to life. In every case, they wanted to share their light. Think about that for a minute. Isn’t that true of you and every person you pass on the street? The impulse to offer yourself and your gifts without inhibition is at the core of each of us. As Joe once said, “Our impulse is to wholeness.” What would it take for you to remove the bushel and fully share your light? I ask myself that question, too.

I realized that the light-under-the-bushel image was actually my wish – for myself and for you. If you are hiding it is a good bet that you think you will be judged. If you are hiding it is a good bet that you think your light is not worthy. Or, perhaps you have invested in a mistaken idea of humble. In any case, why are you blunting the light? I no longer believe in angry judgmental gods (they seem particularly human to me – gods worth worshiping certainly must live beyond the fields of judgment and selection); these notions live at the heart of separation and the need to hide. My wish for us in this new era is to share our light, without inhibition or editor, to throw away the debate of worth, to know unequivocally that the whole of nature needs what you bring, how you bring it, and masking it robs us all of the magnitude of our collective brilliance. Put down the bushel. Show up for me and I promise I will show up for you.

Stand In Happiness

655. 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 drive to Capitol Hill early every Saturday morning to take Tai-Chi class. I go early to get some coffee and a scone and have started a special ritual of sending photos of my incredible morning bounty to torture Megan-the-brilliant who responds in kind, sending me photos of her bagel and jet fuel coffee from The Blue Moon café. Soon I plan on recording my scone enjoyment moans and sending the sound effects along with the photos. Torture is torture and I can’t wait to see how Megan-the-brilliant responds; she has a competitive nature and will one-up me somehow. Video maybe, or her food enjoyment sounds will come with a Hollywood soundtrack. She’s young and has the technological advantage in our torture game.

Although there are several coffee houses within walking distance of my class I now go almost exclusively to the Starbucks – not because the coffee is better or because the scone is world class, I go there because of the way I’m greeted by my barista. As I come through the door he shouts, “Hey! You’re back!” He’s often singing a song or bantering with his co-workers. His joy and enthusiasm is infectious. And, although I am only there one early morning a week, he no longer asks what I want; my coffee and scone just show up. We laugh at something, I pay and move on, and then he brightens the day of the next person in line. He has unwittingly made my Saturday morning ritual, previously a time of quiet reflection, a solitary act, into a homecoming. A simple thing, a greeting, a decision to stand in happiness, has deeply impacted my life to the point that I build my week around walking through a door into a welcome that warms me.

It is a season of giving (and, really, why do we need to define a season when this life could be a generosity fest) and when I think of all the amazing people in my life, the people who nourish and enrich me, my mind does not go to the big events, it goes to a video chat, the pizza that showed up at my door, a barista, a note from a top secret person, a tai chi teacher who has no idea of the impact his quirky sense of humor has on my life. My barista hasn’t a clue that he is my barista and has no idea that he enriches my life. My top secret person knows but has no idea of the profound impact she’s having on my life. At the center of each of them is a pattern, a ritual of generosity, an intentional sharing of heart that these amazing people bring to each day of their lives. From their point of view, their generosity is ordinary; they do not see it as special. They greet. They act. They support. Today, I count myself the most fortunate man on the planet to walk in their circles.

Pick A Fight With Birds

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

Marilyn dope slapped me after my last post. She wrote, “PLEASE turn on the light rather than curse the darkness…go to the shore and fight with your birds.” After all, we did just mosey passed the solstice and are now in the early days of light’s return. A good bird fight would do me some good. As a side note, my favorite chuckle of the day: last night as a precaution to prepare his audiences for imminent Mayan end-of-the-world-ness, Andrew, artistic director of Jet City Improv, and his players stood at the doors of the theatre and passed out bags of air as people exited. One can never have too much air especially amidst so much concocted uncertainty.

In preparation for my bird fight I pulled on my warm clothes, my rain boots and coat. It’s wet out there and the birds with their fancy all weather feathers have an unfair advantage. I meant business so I left my glasses inside: I’m a better bird fighter when I can’t see what’s coming. Also, if I took a wing to the nose I didn’t want my glasses to break. They’re new and I’m told make me look smart – which implies that I don’t look smart without my glasses and it’s better strategy if the birds underestimate my intelligence and mistake me for a simple street fighter.

I splashed out to the end of the street, the place where the birds hang out and look for snacks: it is the shore of the Puget Sound and there are plenty of snack options for hungry birds to choose from. My foes, the crows, were sitting in the trees. It was raining really hard. I said some disparaging things about the design of crows (I made fun of their beaks) and not a single bird flinched. They just sat there bobbing on branches, looking out across the water. They didn’t even glance my way. I mocked them, flapping my arms, splashing through puddles, running in circles and perched on the breaker wall. Nothing. Not even a “caw.” So I did it again, flapping arms, puddle dancing, circle running with a necessary perch break to catch my breath.

A policeman stopped, rolled down his window and asked what I was doing. I told him that Marilyn suggested I come down to the shore and pick a fight with the birds. He asked me, “Who’s Marilyn?” I told him that she was a fantastic teacher in Nebraska. He wrinkled his brow and considered asking another question but instead offered a suggestion: “Maybe throw something at them. That usually works.” I told him it was a great idea and I’d give it some thought though secretly I didn’t really want to fight anymore. Splashing in the puddles was much more light-giving than bird fighting. The cop wished me luck, rolled up his window, and drove on. I jumped in puddles until my shoes were soaked, turned my face to the rain and let it wash all of that darkness away.

Change Your Story

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.

Take A Number

652. 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 person without a story does not exist.” Shekhar Kapur

Recently, I had to deliver a tax document to the IRS building downtown. Over a year ago I received a letter saying, “Congratulations, you’ve been randomly selected for a special educational audit….” I turns out that it was not a helpful educational audit in store for me but a year of medieval torture. My personal IRS agent has been trying to break me on the wheel. He is new to his job and has something to prove. His investigation is proving fruitless – which has only served to drive him into an income tax fervor, a numbers induced fanaticism – he’s redoubled his efforts, turning over figures, dumping columns, reaching back into my infancy to find anything to justify his time. And through it all I have, despite the stated intention of the audit, remained fairly uneducated and am now distinctly ungrateful for my random selection.

Luckily for me I have an accountant with a sense of humor. She represented me in all of his demands so I’d not met my inquisitor. She told me, “I’ve been doing this for a long time but never met anyone so singly dedicated to a lost cause.” And then she said, “He’s just cold. I think he’s angry about his life and is taking it out on you.” After 12 months – a full year of rooting through my documents, issuing threats, fines, fines revoked, re-requests, forms and re-forms 1120s, 4828, 2848, 6525a, I decided it was time to meet him. He sent a letter demanding that I deliver an original document, the scan that he initially requested was not good enough so he wanted the original and gave me 24 hours to comply (he sent his request via US Mail and I received it 4 days after his deadline). His request for the original was my opportunity to meet this very cold man.

When I first passed through the metal detectors a security guard told me to start my quest on the 34th floor. Exiting the elevator I came to a desk with a “take a number” machine. No human was in sight so I took a number. I realized at that moment that I’d left normal reality and was in Dante’s Inferno. This was the first level of hell. My number flashed on a screen and I was directed to find cubicle 8. Walking down a row of empty cubicles (there were rows of empty cubicles) I came at last to a person imprisoned behind a glass partition. She would not look at me and instructed me to go to the 16th floor. I was descending to the next level. Where was my Virgil?

On the 16th floor, although there were long corridors, I found 3 wall phones next to a locked door. There were no signs. There was not another human. Picking up a phone a person came on the line, listened to my quest and advised me to pick up another phone. My second choice of phone proved no different so I finally found a person through phone number 3 who told me to go to the 24th floor. (note: I am not making this up). On the 24th floor I found an identical set of phones and a single locked door. I looked around to see if I was on Candid Camera; how could I be sure that I’d traveled to another floor? What if this was Ellen DeGeneres’s idea of a joke and I was on live TV and the studio audience was howling at my incredulity? Or, perhaps I’d been hit by a bus and died and this was my version of Sisyphus. It only took two phones to find my tax man. A monotone voice told me that he’d be out in a moment. I made sure there was no food in my teeth – just in case Ellen came around the corner to say, “Isn’t this funny?”

My special agent came timidly out the door. He was very young – someone’s little brother, a son. He was not yet a man and he was shaking. I suddenly realized that he was afraid of me, afraid that I’d yell at him or perhaps hurt him. I knew in that moment that he knew that his audit was unreasonable and mean-spirited. He’d hoped that he’d never have to meet me. The moment was awful for him; filled with shame. I was seeing the Oz behind the curtain and he hated having to reveal himself. He was playing a power-over game with me because he had no real power in his life. I saw it and so did he. I held out my hand and said quietly that I thought it was time that I met him and handed him the original document. As Ann Quinn taught me, I killed him with kindness. Like his counterpart in the cubicle on floor 34, he was unable to look at me. He took the piece of paper and, visibly relieved, he disappeared again behind the door. “I am not in hell,” I thought, “…this man is. This man must come here everyday.”

As I left the building, returning to the land of light and humanity, I felt sick at the system that requires a young man to be a bully in order to feel powerful. His shame was palpable and I am certain I will be hammered because I saw his truth. As a nation we are asking ourselves serious questions about what caused such a horrific act of violence at an elementary school. We look for causes instead of the daily rituals that leave a soul so empty and frustrated that he must flame out of existence and take others with him as the only act of meaning that he can imagine. It is a failure of imagination; life in an empty story. Our rituals have descended to the level of collecting stuff and there is no substance or support to be found there. The daily rituals of our lives are meant to open us to the greater identification with deep meaning and sacred connectivity – with each other and our world. Our daily rituals are meant to bring us to the recognition of the enormity of being alive. I turned back and looked at this building and mourned for the people that must take their hearts from their bodies to go to work everyday; we are a tribe that only pretends to have a story. My heart broke for the young tax man who so early in life has made the choice to not exist.

Buy The Man A Coffee

651. 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 all night at the studio. When I spend the night in the studio I become gushingly grateful for the Starbucks that opens at 6:30am. It is only a few blocks away and I staggered the distance and collapsed on the counter. They know me so I didn’t have to speak – a good thing because I was desperate beyond words – and the nice baristas tilted back my head and poured the rejuvenating elixir into my mouth. My dad used to call coffee “the nectar of the gods” and on mornings like this I am certain that there is nothing more true in the entire universe. Soon I was sitting upright at the corner table, holding my enormous coffee cup with both hands, watching the early morning commuters’ bustle in on their way to work. “How can anyone bustle at this time of day?” I pondered feeling vaguely assaulted by the brisk pace of business.

In the far corner of the café, slightly hidden by the holiday products display, a man was sleeping. Like me, he was holding his cup with both hands but I could tell, even from across the café, that he’d pulled a used cup from the garbage, maybe several days ago; his cup hadn’t seen coffee in some time. His head had fallen backwards, his mouth was wide open, and he was snoring. The other customers pretended he wasn’t there. A barista tried to wake him but he was sleeping the sleep of someone, like me, who’d been up all night but unlike me, he’d been out in the cold and freezing rain. He believed his paper cup gave him admission to be inside; if he could not afford to be a patron he’d pretend to have coffee and hope no one would notice – at least until he was warm. I’m certain it was not in his plan to sleep but the truth of his exhaustion took over.

The police came. They were about to call the paramedics when the exhausted man blinked open his eyes and, confused, not knowing where he was, so deep was his sleep, that he jumped up. The police tensed as if facing a threat and almost as an act of unconscious surrender, the man sat back down. Then he recognized where he was, groaned and looked for his cup. It was gone, and with it, his hope for staying warm. “Are you alright?” the cop asked. He was kind. The man nodded his head, “I fell asleep I guess,” he said. The cop nodded his head. “Do you need some help? Can we take you somewhere?” The man shook his head, apologized to the police, pulled his coat around himself, and walked out into the wet dark morning.

“Is he alright?” a barista asked. The cop wanted to say, “No!” but instead looked out the door and said, “I guess so. He’s gone.” The cops went to their next call. The bustle resumed. Genuine concern eclipsed only by the needs of commerce. None of us transcended our inability to connect with the real human need even in the midst of this season of giving. We betray so much in the actions that we do not take and the things we do not say.

Sitting at my corner table I remembered a phrase that I learned last week from Kevin Honeycutt. He was talking about doing anything and everything to change the culture that produces bullies. He called it – us – The Mean Culture. Bullies are not the aberration that we like to pretend; they are an expression of cultural value, dog-eat-dog-business-is-business and all of that. Sometimes the beating is subtle, more public, and so commonplace as to be invisible amidst the hustle and bustle. Sometimes changing the mean culture can begin with something as simple as buying a man a cup of coffee or perhaps simply letting him sleep.