The Direction of Intention

Truly Powerful People (337)

Posted on February 11, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

337.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Recently, Will was at a dinner party and told the gathering about an amazing study he’d just read. Apparently, the conscious decision (the thought) to move actually follows an action that the brain has already initiated. In other words, when you think, “I want to lift that flower pot,” you’re brain fired the muscles before the thought was launched. Thought follows action, not the other way around. I will find this research for another post on another day but let’s suppose for a moment that it is the latest brain science. This discovery is on the magnitude of the discovery that the sun does not, in fact, rotate around the earth but the other way around.

What do you think the other dinner guests did? Will said that there were several moments of silence and then they changed the subject. It was as if he’d never spoken. I imagine Copernicus sitting around the table with some friends, having just completed his nightly sky gazing, bouncing up and down with enthusiasm, and whispering to them what he’d just discovered (he had to whisper as the punishment for heresy was painful). They looked at their pal Copernicus for a long moment and then pretended that he hadn’t spoken. “Pass the wine!” calls Vincenzo. “Any more stew?” asks Ghilberti.

When we do not understand it, we ignore it and move on. I’ve seen that look on the faces of many school board members when I’ve said, “Teaching is about relationship” or “Art can save children’s lives.” Stunned silence. “On to other business!” chimes the board president. All breathe a sigh of relief as if one of their pistols accidently fired and no one was hurt.

The hand with the gavel is supposed to keep the conversation safely within the norms and will pound the table if the conversation strays beyond the bounds. There is an inner judge with the same job. The question that Will has introduced is this: does the inner judge pound the gavel because movement has begun or does the judge pound the gavel mightily and movement is the response.

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Truly Powerful People (336)

Posted on February 10, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

336.
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 talk in class today was of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: you can only know the location or the velocity/speed of a particle, but not both. It’s either the location (fixed place) or the velocity (fluid movement).

I have always appreciated the language of this principle. It gives me hope for a world that acknowledges uncertainty with a principle. And, to add paradox to the paradox, I appreciate that the principle of uncertainty is actually an either/or statement! Isn’t this a great description of human consciousness? If I were a Martian and had to describe the human mind, I’d say, “Oh, that’s easy: it’s so complex as to be uncertain but it always reduces itself to black or white thinking.” Heisenberg knew what he was doing! My Martian self would conclude, “Those humans feel better when they have the illusion of certainty. They like to be right! They like to be chosen. They do not like not knowing.”

It shows up in other ways, too. When we judge ourselves or other people we are locating ourselves. Once you brand yourself with a label like Not Good Enough, you’ve defined your location. Once you’ve branded someone else with a label, you’ve fixed them in your mind and the label inhibits any movement or growth. Armed with your measuring stick and score card you will find that movement to another location is impossible until you decide to let go of your current location and step into the relationship (movement). Listen to the political debates and you’ll hear hard fast statements of unwavering belief. There’s lot’s of flag-planting and territory claiming: location, location, location. Once those feet are planted and beliefs are fixed, movement is nearly impossible. Just ask Congress.

Location is not better than movement, movement is not better than location, both are necessary and, in truth, the movement never stops (it is part of that birth to death thing). What stops is our capacity to grow and engage with the world in a meaningful way when we fix our location for too long. That’s why all good stories start with the main character getting knocked off balance, getting kicked out of comfort and spiraling into the adventure.

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Truly Powerful People (335)

Posted on February 9, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

335.
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 story that starts like this: The salmon of knowledge was a magic fish. The first person to taste the salmon would be the wisest person in Ireland. Its skin was the color of gold. Its eyes were magic. A lot of people tried to catch it but they failed.

What happens next?

There is another story that starts like this: For months the young woman had been abused, pushed around and cursed and through it all she’d managed to maintain her calm. But now, as the cook had her backed into a corner, a cleaver inches from her face, she resolved that she must defend herself. She must fight back.

What happens next?

And yet another story that begins like this: A long time ago there lived a king who was famed for his wisdom through all the land. Nothing was hidden from him, and it seemed as if news of the most secret things was brought to him through the air. But he had a strange custom; every day after dinner, when the table was cleared, and no one else was present, a trusty servant had to bring him one more dish. It was covered, however, and even the servant did not know what was in it, neither did anyone know, for the king never took off the cover to eat of it until he was quite alone.

What happens next?

How does your story start? How does it start today? What’s the challenge obvious from the very beginning? Are you trying to be the wisest? Are you backed into a corner and out of options? Do you carry a secret that you need to protect? What happens next? It’s a great question! It is the question that defines us as human, it is the question at the base of Mount Curiosity. Where do you want your story to go from here? What happens next?

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Truly Powerful People (334)

Posted on February 8, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

334.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

In Bali you often pass through a “split gate” when you enter home compounds or temples. They are beautiful, ever present symbols. Two opposing towers that look like a single structure cleaved in two to form a gate. The halves are symbolic of the polarities, an architectural yin and yang reminding the Balinese of the polarities of our existence and the importance of balance in all things.

Budi took me to a split gate and said, “The half on the left is the masculine, the half on the right is the feminine.” He asked me to pass through the gate and to turn and look back at him. Once I was on the other side he asked, “Now which is left and which is right? What was left in now right, what was right is now left!” He threw his head back and laughed; Budi has a great mischievous laugh, a broad Cheshire grin. He said, “What is important is that you remember that you must pass between!” He was teaching me about balance, about the middle way. This symbol for balance, this split gate is the metaphor for a life transformed, for how it is to be done.

Polarity is not opposition; it is about relativity. It is about awareness. You only know the light because of the existence of dark. There is no light without the dark. There is no learning without mistakes. And there are infinite points between the poles. To walk the middle way it to embrace all the colors and textures in your story, to get out of the business of splitting yourself, to let go the notion of absolutes. It is to allow the full range of possibilities in your life.

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Truly Powerful People (333)

Posted on February 7, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

333.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Horatio asked me why I use the word story as a verb. He told me it is jarring when he reads it in my posts. I often write, “We story ourselves.” I loved his question. I believe we actively story ourselves. For me, story is a verb. And, I love that my use of story as a verb is jarring!

We are hardwired for story. We can’t help it; it is what we do. We interpret, we judge, we speculate, we remember, we ponder, we investigate, we justify we imagine,…we story. Meaning-making and interpretation are processes of story. We narrate each moment of our lives. I call this the-story-you-tell-yourself-about-yourself.

The-story-you-tell-yourself-about-yourself is often hard to see because you don’t see it as a story. It’s your life and you are so used to the inner-narrative that you stop recognizing your self as the narrator/interpreter of your life. Your thoughts, judgments, comparisons, expectations, investments, aspirations and fears are your story and you are the teller of the story. As much as you want your point of view to be fact, it’s not. It is truth relative to you but not to anyone else. These stories you tell do not exist outside of you; they are your creation. Don’t let anyone tell you that you aren’t creative! We are, each of us, masterful storytellers.

Neil Postman writes, “Our genius lies in our capacity to make meaning through the creation of narratives that give point to our labors, exalt our history, elucidate the present and give direction to the future. To do their work, such narratives do not have to be “true” in a scientific sense…. The purpose of a narrative is to give meaning to the world, not to describe it scientifically.”

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Truly Powerful People (332)

Posted on February 6, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

332.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Bob is on my mind today so I found this in the archives. It’s a snippet from a longer piece and I delight in sharing Bob with you:

Before his life as a gardener Bob was a movie executive. He was Icarus and flew too close to the sun. He lived a fast paced life and was enamored with the bright lights and the prestige of his position. He told me that his relationships were superficial and based on usury and status. He lived in that cocktail culture (you know the one) in which you smile and look over the shoulder of the person with whom you are talking to see if there is someone else more important at the party. The higher he flew the emptier his life became. One day while previewing a film in his private viewing studio he stood up, not knowing why, he fled his office, got in his flashy fast car and drove east until the car ran out of gas. He abandoned it on the side of the road and kept walking. He has no memory of how he got to Santa Fe or how he got to the nunnery. He remembers the sisters teaching him to prune and to weed the plants. They taught him to care for the garden and helped him process his grief and eventually reclaim his sanity. It was a long fall and a slow slog out of a muddy depression.

Having lived a life of wealth without meaning, consumption without substance – and having died to it – Bob had eyes uncluttered by the debris of excess that obscures most of our lives. He released his American-style attachment to lack and ceased trying to fill the gap with stuff and status. He stepped into the gap. He was powerful. Most people feared him so they wrote him off; “he was a loser,” he was “just a gardener.”

Recently one of the participants in a tele-coaching class asked, “Why don’t we do what we want to do? Why don’t we do what we know is good for us, when we know it is good for us?” In other words, why do we desire to be a writer but refuse to make time in our lives to write; why do we continue smoking even when we know it will kill us; why do we yearn for something more and turn on the television to blot out the yearning?

To do those things you have to let go of other things, you have to lean into something bigger.

I’ve come to believe that asking the question, “why?” often doesn’t matter. There is an action and there is the story you wrap around that action. In fact, asking “why” can be a dodge, a defense against making the change you want to make. It is to believe that if you can rationalize your behavior, if you can possibly understand what you do, you will change it. Despite what we want to think, there is no sense to be made of yearning, there is no rational explanation for passion; those impulses swim in pools deeper than the intellect can reach.

Bob asked himself the question “why” for years: “why do I feel so empty?” He had to fall to the earth before he stopped asking “why?” He was in love with the idea of success and traded away the essential for the superficial. He was crushed by his own social expectations. After Bob re-emerged he no longer concerned himself with questions of worth or the angst of wondering “why.” He made different choices.

Now, Bob leans into something bigger.

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Truly Powerful People (331)

Posted on February 5, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

331.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

In his chapter on Taoism, Eric Weiner writes about Wu-wei: “Wu-wei is actually ‘effortless action.’ It’s the difference between making things happen and letting them happen.” I read the chapter this morning and recognized a theme for me in early 2012. Wu-wei is popping up everywhere!

Scott and I recently talked about the difference between soulful action and willful action. Soulful action is Wu-wei.

When I paint, I know I am in the “zone” when the painting comes through me, when I am merely the conduit. I am not trying to make anything happen. It is almost as if I follow; there is no thought, no pushing, no sorting, no composing. Flow is Wu-wei.

In coaching classes for the past few weeks we’ve been discussing the difference between acting according to “what wants to happen,” and trying to force things to happen.

In Tai chi class, we practice letting the energy move us instead of trying to move the energy. Tai Chi is the practice of Wu-wei.

I suspect Wu-wei means to step out of the story of struggle. Today, I was late meeting a friend for lunch. If I hit a red light I’d tell myself a story of being blocked. If I hit a green light, I’d tell myself a story of good fortune! “What great luck!” I’d think. Being “late” was a story (in fact, I got the restaurant before my friend). Being “blocked” by a red light was a story. “Good fortune” in a green light was a story. All was willful action, pushing to make something happen. None of it mattered outside of my mind.

Here’s the paradox: effortless action is something I strive for. Funny, yes? I am most alive when I am stillness in action. I am learning not to strive but to allow.

Eric Weiner continues his thought: “Wu-wei means approaching life less like warfare and more like navigation.” Who doesn’t want to bury the sword, call a truce between the factions in the inner warfare and instead pick up a compass? Woo Wee!

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Truly Powerful People (330)

Posted on February 4, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

330.
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 thinking a lot that closet where the monsters live. That place where we stuff the things we don’t want to feel.

It’s amazing to me how we can forget about the closet by pretending that it’s not there. It limits our view by half. A full 360° would bring the closet into full view so we restrict our range to 180°. Then, we restrict our emotional range; the whole point of the closet, after all, is to never again feel something like fear or shame. And then, we regulate what others can see – or we think we regulate it. Believing that we can actually control other people’s sight is a grand illusion necessary to make sense of how and why we restrict our availability to life. A mask works conceals AND reveals.

The strategies that we employ to keep the closet out of view are clever! Like Cerberus, the 3-headed hound that guards the underworld, we develop a barking inner critic to keep us from opening the closet door. “You are an idiot!” it shouts as we consider stepping beyond our comfort zone. “Loser!” it cries if we consider reaching for the closet door. “You don’t want to feel that!” it warns if we entertain the desire to be present, to say what we actually think, to show up as we are and not how we think we should be.

Everyone who has ever dared open the closet learns a secret: the monsters only seem big when you can’t see them. Fear makes things look bigger. They only wield power-over from inside the closet. Open the door and shed a little light on them and like the Wizard of Oz they lose their ferocity. The small person behind the curtain steps out and says, “What took you so long to open the door.”

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Truly Powerful People (329)

Posted on February 3, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

329.
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 took a walk early this morning, another spring day in the dead of winter. I was lost in the bird chatter so I was taken by surprise by the pounding, dragging, scraping coming up fast behind me. I stepped to the side. I thought it was a gaggle of exhausted runners struggling for the finish but it wasn’t. It was one man. He was leaning forward into the motion of his support walker, red with wheels on all four supports and hand brakes. His feet thumped the ground like sledge hammers and he was careening left and right. He was either out of control or a master of control amidst his neurological disability; I could not tell which.

As he thundered by me he said, ‘People think I’m dangerous!”

And I replied, “Everyone thinks the other person is dangerous.”

He was so taken aback by my response that he put on the brakes and allowed me to catch up.

“What do you mean?” he asked. In my life I have known, worked with and loved many people with disabilities or debilitating illness. They are used to being stared at or ignored – which is often the same thing. One of the ways of coping with being the object of fear is to call it out, acknowledge the fear, and that’s what this man did when he thundered by me.

“Everyone automatically assumes the other person is dangerous,” I said. “People protect themselves when greeting someone new.”

We were walking together and he tried again, “I swerve to the right.” He said.

“I constantly run into things,” I replied. “I do it all the time because I don’t pay attention so you better be careful.”

He stopped and offered me his hand, “I’m Tony,” he said and smiled, “and I’m not really dangerous.”

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Truly Powerful People (328)

Posted on February 2, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

328.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

You’d be surprised by how much in common training an actor has with coaching an executive. Clarity of intention, specificity of target, honesty of relationship, and ability to honor the greater integrity of the story are just a few of the similarities. The forms are different but the path is the same. Here’s the map:

Know what you can control and what you can’t. It is impossible to clearly see choices if you are trying to control the things that can’t be controlled (like other people’s thoughts and feelings).

Once you’ve let go of what you cannot control, choices become very clear. Where you put your energy shifts from manipulation to creation. In shorthand, you begin to control what you can control: your choices, your opinion of your self, what you want to create.

Intention is a fuzzy thing until choices become clear (and owned). Your relationship with control clarifies your relationship with choice – not the other way around. Your relationship with choice, once clarified, opens the route to a specific actionable intention.

It’s dominoes: a proper relationship with control reveals choice and a proper relationship with choice reveals intention. For the actor, there is nothing more powerful than a clear choice in service to a specific intention. The same is true of an executive. And, intention is pointless if not in service to a greater relationship. In business or on the stage, this is the map to transformation (if you are business type and shudder at the “T” word, insert the word “Innovation” for increased palatability). Art is business. Business is art. The language may be different but the path to mastery is the same.

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