Truly Powerful People (441)

Posted on May 24, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

441.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Today the world has me shaking. It’s cold in Seattle but these shivers have nothing to do with temperature. Sometimes I am so overwhelmed by the beauty and immensity of living and feeling that I quake: too much energy through too small a wire.

I was walking and thinking about the people I love and those that love me (it’s a great practice – give it a try) when an eagle flew 3 feet above my head pursued by a murder of crows. The eagle seemed to be playing with them, a game of chase and for some reason I was included in the game! It was as if the eagle used me as a post or tree; a spot to circle around, change directions and confuse the crows. The eagle looped back to me several times, each time changing directions just above me. The frustrated crows slamming on the breaks, skidding through too-fast-direction changes, swerving chaos trying not to knock each other out of the sky. I have an antagonistic relationship with the crows so I appreciated the eagle’s game more than I ought: I imagined the crows as Keystone Cops chasing an eagle-Charlie Chaplin and roared with laughter.

I stood still to better play my part (plus, I was enrapt by the antics). Paradox alert: In my stillness the entire universe came into focus, which means everything lost its distinction. Clarity is indistinct. I was no longer a watcher or a participant. The eagles and the crows and the Sound moved as if in sync; it was a ballet; a dance of giving and receiving. It was one motion -or better – one being in motion. I was so stunned and overwhelmed that my body, my little piece of the infinite universe, started shaking.

I sat down and this thought slammed to the front of the line: Perhaps it is not too much energy through too small a wire. Perhaps the shaking has nothing to do with capacity. Perhaps it is an invitation to love and play: too much desire for life and too little practice embracing it. Perhaps the shaking is my little piece of the infinite universe opening to the dance.

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Truly Powerful People (440)

Posted on May 23, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

440.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Some days I have to look for the theme. Some days the theme grabs me by the shoulders (I rarely wear lapels) and shakes me, shouting, “Listen up!” Today I am getting a good shaking. The theme is pace.

In response to a recent post, Judy-whom-I-revere wrote: “I wonder too, for as I re-enter this working world I am stunned (like a fish in a stream) by the pace of the world. Then I think of the sense of time in other cultures where we’re not on a conveyor belt moving forward ever faster, rather in a row boat facing the past and anchoring in what has come before, as we back into the future, getting closer to what ‘wazee kukumbuka’ — ‘the elders remember.’”

Isn’t it an amazing image? Read it as lines of poetry:
Rowing into the future,
Facing the past,
Anchoring in what has come before,
Moving every closer to “what the elders remember.”

This is circular time; story time in which we are additions to a story that reaches forward because it reaches back.

And while I was pondering Judy’s email I had a brilliant conversation with Skip about success in business and pace. He is an amazing business entrepreneur and visionary and so many of the questions of business success deal with how to get pace into the system. He described a loop outlined in John Boyd’s book, Winning In Fast Time: observe, orient, decide, act. The premise is that whoever does the loop the best (fastest) wins.

If you didn’t know the premise, the loop would also read as a simple bit of wisdom or a poem:
Observe.
Orient.
Decide.
Act.

This might read as linear time if we didn’t know that action leads to observation. It’s a loop. It might help to know that John Boyd was a fighter pilot and what he is attempting to describe is the same process that a musician learning an instrument might describe: how do I put the notes in my body in such a way that it moves beyond my thinking? He is attempting to describe presence through the lens of intentional action. The stakes are slightly higher for a fighter pilot than a cellist but the point is the same.

Neither “poem” speaks explicitly about pace. In fact, I might observe and orient to the past, deciding to anchor in what has come before, choosing my actions as movement that brings me ever closer to “what the elders remember.”

Here’s the difference that I see. Judy’s poem is embodied; it is anchored into nature, ancestry, and tradition. John’s loop is not. John’s loop has no anchor other than action. We are only there in the abstract. The point is pace. Perhaps the reality of our world is pace: action anchored, not in tradition, but in change.

It is the ultimate split intention: business (people driving business) is trying to find ways to get pace INTO the system. The people working within the system are trying to find ways to slow the pace or at least manage it. Or, at the very least, survive it. One foot on the gas; one foot on the brakes.

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Truly Powerful People (439)

Posted on May 22, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

439.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Debra decided to be miserable. There was water damage in her apartment and the when the landlord identified the source he found the extent of the damage was much worse than he expected. The repair was nothing short of reconstruction. The work was scheduled to take 45 days. She told me, “I’m going to hate every moment of it. If I can’t control my space I go nuts. I’ll just hate it.” Assigning two “hates” to a single circumstance left no room for doubt: Debra was going to be miserable. Fifteen days into the repair I passed her in the hall and asked how the repair was coming along. Her answer, “I hate it. I hate every moment of it.” I was not surprised. She’d carried the two “hates” into her life just as she’d planned.

Ellen decided that there was nothing she could do. Like many educators she told me she “loathed” the standardization and testing madness that continue to drive the public schools into the dirt. She told me that her children were suffering, the teacher’s were suffering, and the community was suffering. And then she said, “There’s nothing I can do so I just go with it. What else can we do?” “Loathe” is a powerful word. So is “helpless.” Apparently, “helpless” is more powerful than “loathe.”

What is it to loathe and still choose to participate? What is it to decide that you are helpless? What is it to decide to “hate” your experience before you actually have it?

Once, while sitting in the passenger seat of a car spinning out of control on a freeway, time slowed and I closed my eyes because I’d decided that what ever was about to happen was surely going to hurt. I heard the tires squealing and the beating of my heart. And then, nothing; stillness. There was no crunching of metal, no breaking glass or screams of pain. I opened my eyes and saw my brother gripping the steering wheel. We were facing the wrong way and all the cars around us had stopped. We didn’t hit the concrete barriers, other cars, rails, or plunge into the river. We were still. My brother, with his eyes wide open said, “Do want to get a drink?” and then, “Welcome to Kansas City.”

We decided that we were fortunate. We decided that, although losing control of a car on an icy freeway bridge was thrilling, it was only necessary to do it once. We decided that there was a lot we would do differently if circumstance ever presented us with another icy bridge.

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Truly Powerful People (438)

Posted on May 21, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

438.
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 I’m editing and rewriting this book, pieces are jumping up and demanding my attention. This one won’t let go of me. It’s from a previous post (I think):

If there is one thing we’ve learned in the past century it is that change is the only constant. And, the subsidiary lesson that is perhaps more potent: the pace of change is escalating. When buying my latest computer I told the sales person my current computer was only three and a half years old and he said, “Only! That’s ancient.”

Whether we realize it our not we are always in a process of change. The Dream Society, a book published over a decade ago by the market futurist Copenhagen Institute, suggested that the dramatic escalation of the pace of change has thrust us beyond the age of information and into the age of story. Information and data can locate us in a moment, describe a point in time, but the point is of limited use. We are living so close to the event horizon that the point in time that the data describes is obsolete before we can translate it into meaningful action. The best we can do is create multiple scenarios and live our way into an unknown future. In this sense, it brings us around to something our ancestors understood with certainty: true stability is found in the story that we tell, not in the things we possess or the roles that we play. We recreate ourselves in the story we tell.

Of course, therein exists my favorite paradox: Our stories are both road maps for change and anchors of stability. We know who we are by the stories we tell. We know who we want to become through the stories we tell. We know what we want to create through the stories we entertain. It leaves me pondering wonder why this story of escalating pace and not enough time is so central to the story we create?

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

Truly Powerful People (437)

Posted on May 20, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

437.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work with teachers and watching these incredible people give their hearts and souls to in service to children has brought to mind the amazing people who’ve had a profound impact on my life – and will never know it.

Jackie Fry was my first art teacher. I took oil painting classes from her at the local rec. center every weekend. I was the youngest person in a class of ancient women (they seemed ancient to my 12 year old eyes though now I am certain I’d see them as kids) and I was duly intimidated. Unlike my classmates I was not a tree or flower painter; I was drawn to paint people. I thought something was wrong with me. Jackie’s first lesson to me was this: she said, “Tree painters are a dime a dozen. Let’s find out what makes you tick and then learn to paint that.” Like all great teachers she set me on a pursuit and then followed, helping me see and paint when I was ready for the lesson. She is at the heart of my belief about great teaching. She was the first person to help me recognize that my thinking clouded my seeing. To see, I needed to see beyond my words and abstractions. She helped me develop and protect my gifts. And she never knew how profound was her impact on my life.

Paul Barnes used to say to actors, “Never underestimate your power to impact other people’s lives.” He was right about that. Not only can we never underestimate our power to impact other people’s lives – we will rarely know when we have impacted other people’s lives. The wisdom Jackie initiated in me has rippled through every person I have taught, every artist I have supported, every CEO I have coached or person I have called friend. She continues to touch lives through me. Our ripples carry forward for decades and we will never know how far or potent is our reach. Her teachers touched my life through her; their strong offer lives within me and I never knew them or heard their names.

That is the point of transformation. Transformation happens in the inner life of an individual – but it is useless until the boon is brought back to the community. Change your story; change the world. Greater self-knowledge impacts the lives of everyone in the community – for generations. That is the power of a teacher. And everyone is a teacher. We may never know our impact but can live, as Paul taught, with an appreciation for the potency of our choices and the reach of our actions.

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Truly Powerful People (436)

Posted on May 19, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

436.
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 asked Alan to apply his wise-eyes to my workbook for The Ground Truth as I intend to publish it in book form before too long. He is a gifted author and helps me clarify my thoughts when they veer off into space. In the final pages of the book I used one of my early posts about Service and it disturbed him. In the post I wrote that there is a common step that people take when they move into power: they put themselves higher on the priority list. In fact, no one is higher. Alan gently tugged my sleeve and said, “Say more about this. I know what you mean and this is not exactly what you mean. What do you mean exactly?”

I live life at 30,000 feet. I see big pictures and connections. Details are not my thing. Details are like a cornfield that I step into and disappear; as Ana-the-wise might say, details are what I am here to learn. Here is my revision:

There is a common and necessary step when someone moves into their power: They cease serving the needs of others at the expense of their happiness. They step into their center and begin operating from a different kind of priority list: they cease seeking their fulfillment from others and begin living from their fulfillment. Fulfillment is in the offer, not in the reception of the offer. It is a necessary trick of language to make fulfillment a verb, an ongoing action of intention. In a sense, people moving into power honor their needs as a priority and as the means of truly serving others.

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 at 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, or control. They offer their best because it is their best offer. The rest is out of their control and none of their concern.

The devil is in the details and the magic, too. You can’t imagine how grateful I am for all the wise-eyes that surround me. You know who you are.

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Truly Powerful People (435)

Posted on May 18, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

435.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.</e

Last night Horatio and attended fundraising pitch for an independent movie. Horatio is a filmmaker and was invited to attend the pitch so I tagged along. I like stepping into unknown cultures. Both Horatio and I were underdressed in a room of suits and slacks. His shorts and flip-flops accompanied by my jeans and painter’s clogs made us curiosities at the cheese tray. We were not careful with our wine – spilling held no danger to our clothes – and unlike the real investors we exhausted our quota of laughter in the first 3 minutes; we were forced to borrow laughter from the others unused laughter bank. I think we left it fairly empty. We had fun.

The screenwriter/director of the film told us of his background and qualifications. We saw clips from his past projects, actors read portions of the screenplay and then the executive producer made the pitch and gave us some idea of the return on our investment if we bought in and if the film made money. Horatio and I nodded our heads as if we had the $50,000.00 to buy in and were seriously considering it. “Hmmm,” I said. “Yessss,” Horatio wrinkled his brow and nodded; a mixed message. I was tempted to roll my program like a telescope and look through it but refrained. This was a serious artist trying to finance his next project and telescope antics seemed disruptive. Had he been a real estate developer I would not have hesitated. Peering through my program/telescope I would have said, “Those numbers seem awfully small!”

Horatio is a tall drink of water and I am not. I teased that we were like George and Lenny and he said, “If I start picking up mice slap me.” If I slapped high I might catch his shoulder. He held a plate of cheese so I scanned the floor just to be sure. Mice can climb and I was feeling more and more like I was in the movie and not the pitch for one. Anything is possible.

We knew it was time to go when the nice young man, the intern, sauntered over to learn who we were. Horatio had credentials and I opted for mysterious. I can be pleasant and obscure, saying nothing with too many words, though I liked the intern and asked what he dreamed of doing. He said, “When I graduate I am going to Japan to spend two months in a Buddhist temple, then I’m going to spend 3 months in India before I go to Rio.” He told me that, at 18 years of age, he was aware that he saw the world through Western eyes. He wanted to shake things up a bit. “Why wait for graduation?” I asked. He didn’t understand but neither did I at 18. I was tempted to give him my telescope but thought better of it – he’ll be better served by learning to roll his own telescope. Anything is possible.

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Truly Powerful People (434)

Posted on May 17, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

434.
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 studio is an extension of the sandbox and the kindergarten playroom. It has a dynamic unlike any office or factory. It’s a room at the service of a dreamer on her way to becoming a master.” Robert Genn

The indomitable Patricia sent this quote to me. I love it. If you get the chance to see what comes out of her studio you will know that the quote describes her perfectly. She is a master though will deny it emphatically (the sign of a true master).

My first nickname for her was The Accomplishment Hog because she accomplished everything and left nothing for the rest of us to achieve. Had I been wiser at the time I would not have demanded to share in the accomplishment pie; I did not know the true meaning of freedom until I lost it beneath a pile of accomplishments. When I finally learned that my identity had nothing to do with the stuff that I’ve done (or not done or will do) I found myself skipping more, whistling, and doing things because I just wanted to do them.

I cannot find an accurate antonym for accomplishment but I suspect it might look something like “learning,” or “play.” Because I complained that she was hoarding the accomplishments Patricia sent me a large cardboard cutout in the shape of a dancing hog; it wore a party hat and had a noisemaker. I added Accomplishment Taunt-ress to my growing list of nicknames for her. The dancing Accomplishment Hog was the centerpiece of my house for months. I giggled every time I passed the Hog and said, “Oh, yeah, watch this!” One day with wrinkled a brow Lora asked, “Can the pig go somewhere else?”

I believe Patricia and I are both attempting to measure our lives, not by what we achieve, but by the depth and breadth of our experiences. She is my ally in a world gone accomplishment crazy. She walks on her mountain and lets the wild look deep into her eyes. She knows the truth behind the totem, the worth of the seed. She helps me remember to see.

When I told her that I loved the quote she responded, “Given that we both have sandboxes, I figured out that we are actually getting younger.” Yes. The key to perpetual youth: find a sandbox and play, play, play your way to mastery.

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Truly Powerful People (433)

Posted on May 16, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

433.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Today was lonely-odd-object-on-the-beach-and-beyond day. The morning was overcast and cool; the smell of rain was in the air. It was quiet. The tide was out and the Sound was unusually still.

As I walked my usual loop I saw, sitting all alone on a bench, a microwave oven. It’s long grey cord stretched behind it as if the oven had slowly crawled across the street and lifted itself up onto the bench to stare longingly at the sea. Since I recently fired my inner archeologist for excessive storytelling I was left to my own devices to understand how a microwave oven came to be sitting on the bench. I sat down next to the oven hoping to strike up a conversation but it was not in a talkative mood. After a while I felt oddly responsible for its melancholy so I moved on.

A hundred yards later I spied a bunch of balloons, blue and white, sitting at the water’s edge. Clearly the bunch had escaped a wedding or birthday party and had finally come to rest at the exact spot where water meets dry land. I suppose that might have been an accident but it seemed much too intentional (not to mention metaphoric) so I went to have a look. The balloons were clearly exhausted after a long flight; their once tight rubber skin was now wrinkling. The shine of festive blue and white was fading. Life, it seemed, for this tribe, had been about flight – running from a celebration that must have seemed false or like a prison. They flew rather than suffocate. I wondered if they individually or collectively had regrets but it didn’t feel appropriate to interrupt their meditation.

I arrived downtown and while walking from my studio to a meeting I passed the train station and came upon a huge statue of Anubis suspended from a crane. The jackal-headed Egyptian god weighs the hearts of the newly deceased; if your heart is lighter than a feather you may pass go and collect 200 afterlife dollars, if not, you are crocodile lunch. Anubis seemed embarrassed to be swinging from a crane. Exposed. It broke my heart to see such a powerful deity so ungrounded. I wondered what he thought about doing his heart-weighing at the portal of a modern train station. It was clearly the wrong time to ask so I walked away.

On the way back to my studio while crossing the street a man with a crazy red beard ran up to me and sang, “Do Your Life and Do It Out Loud!” A seer? A message? Personal? Random? By the time I recovered myself he had moved on. So many unanswered questions!

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

Truly Powerful People (432)

Posted on May 15, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

432.
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 walked slowly through downtown today. It was such a gorgeous day that I couldn’t help myself. It is not as easy as it sounds to walk slowly through downtown. I felt as if the world was moving in fast motion or like I was a little kid playing on the freeway; people move fast! Folks in business attire whizzed by, some careening into walls to avoid crushing me. I thought it was a courtesy to slam into a wall rather than mow down a slow walker. Some people slammed on their leather-shoe-brakes and danced behind me looking for a passing opportunity. One lady cussed; she was late for something and I was an impediment.

The community resource guides – nice folks in yellow shirts that ride bikes and ask people if they need help or directions – stopped to ask me if I needed help or perhaps directions. Walking slow in the city signaled that I must be a tourist; locals have things to do and places to be. I said “No thank you,” and they said, “We’re here to help if you need us.”

“Wouldn’t it be a great world,” I thought to myself, “if people extended to their fellow citizens the same courtesy they extend to visitors!” Can you imagine a city whose citizens were dedicated to helping anyone at anytime find their way through life? A society dedicated to helping all members get where they need to go – as personal acts of generosity?

Of this I am certain, members of this imaginary culture would never rush through downtown.

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