Serve

Posted on May 20, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
A painting from my archives. This one sold in 2007.

A painting from my archives. This one was 4′ x 4′ and sold in 2007.

Jim asked a world-class question: When did customer service become a firewall against serving customers? If you’ve had to call about a mistake on a bill or to try to get some support from your insurance provider you’ll appreciate his question. How many buttons do you have to push to get to a person? How many levels of supervisor do you need to ascend to get to the person who has the authority to serve you?

What does it meant to serve?

Quinn once told me that the world was ruined with the advent of the salad bar. He was far sighted (and funny) and recognized that it might at first be attractive to build a salad your own way but the trade-off, the loss, would be much greater than the free-will-illusion that the salad bar provided. Service would become equated with efficiency; it would become a cost saving strategy. Quinn suggested that the “salad bar concept” would forever redefine the essential relationship of the business; it would reduce the word “customer” to something consumable for the business. In other words, it would no longer matter whether or not a customer was happy because there would always be someone else to sidle up to the salad bar. In a salad bar world, the word “service” would forever be subject to a strange ongoing cost/benefit analysis. The society would shift the emphasis from service to others to service to self. Do you remember, after the introduction of the ATM, having to pay a fee to your bank if you needed to talk to a teller? Serve yourself. Save time. Do you remember when the airlines started charging travelers for bringing luggage? Or recall the introduction of extra fees for extra legroom? It may seem as if we have product choice but Quinn would tell us that we are forever standing at a salad bar.

What does it mean to serve others?

Martin Prechtel writes that transcending self-interest to put your life in service to the greater communal interest is called maturity. In order for the community to thrive, to grow and renew, the members must be oriented toward serving something greater than their own individual need. Without this necessity of service the society descends to the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy.

What does it mean to serve something greater than you own self-interest?

I’m preparing to go over seas and do a workshop on “team,” so I’m asking many questions of people who are trying to facilitate teams in organizations. “What’s the greatest challenge you face?” I ask. The response is universal: trying to get employees invested in something other than their own personal gain. In my mind I can hear Quinn laughing; he’d call this  salad-bar-blowback. When customers become consumable, employees also become consumable. The essential relationship in business, the one it has with its customers, is merely a reflection of the relationship it has within itself. Vested action is not something that can be manufactured. One must care in order to be invested. Vested action is the blossom of service to others.

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Give Yourself Some Advice

Posted on April 9, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
Horatio as a young man

Horatio as a young man

A few days ago I received an email from Horatio. He is an amazing filmmaker and gifted visual artist. We’ve wiled hours and days away talking about art and acting. He’s a treasure. His email was advice that he wrote to himself, the artist (what a great idea!) and with his permission, over the next three days, I will share it in segments. If you are impatient and want to read ahead, visit his blog or take a gander at his work at www.fidalgofilms.com. Here’s his email with the first portion of his Advice To Myself:

The evening after screening The Bath at Taos Shortz Film Festival in March, 2014, a very adept interviewer with the wonderful name Tamara Stackpoole (straight from Downton Abbey or Jane Austen?) asked if I had any advice to emerging filmmakers. My answer, as I recall:

“Let your teachers go. Just tell your own truth. Learn the craft – setup and payoff, three-act structure, and so on – and learn it well. But then let it go and tell your own truth, your vision. You’ll know it when you see it.”

When I woke the next morning, I realized that I had a lot more to say, and that it amounted to advice to myself. It follows:

You only can control yourself, which means your choices. You cannot control anything else.

Choose ethically, you will regret anything else.

The foundation of ethics is to respect others. Treat others as you wish to be treated. Be humble. Pride is the foundation of all the deadly sins, according to Dante and his mentor Virgil.

Your work is the essential ingredient of your life, an expression of your choices, your ethics. 

Connection to others is the essential mechanism of ethics.

A reciprocal connection of human to human (parent/child, student/teacher, artist/audience, friend/friend, or lover/lover) is the basic means to give yourself to others and to receive from them, to further yourself and others.

You will always be learning and practicing that kind of connection. You will never be finished. 

[to be continued]

Prompted by Horatio’s inspiration, I’ve started writing my version of Advice To Myself. It’s a great exercise and amounts to yanking the blankets on what matters to you. It begs the question: what will be your legacy? What might you write to yourself?

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, title_pageSeeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Or, go here for hard copies.

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Eat Well

Posted on March 6, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
"Lovers," a work in progress by David Robinson

“Lovers,” a work in progress by David Robinson

[continued from LOOK BEYOND THE BOX]

I’m looping back to Craig’s questions concerning boxes and stages. I think the next question to wade into is about what I see from my stage and when did I know to create my stage.

This is the view from my stage. It may sound bleak at first but stay with me:

Yesterday I had the opportunity to travel into Chicago and work for a couple of hours with Skip’s class at the Illinois Institute of Technology. They are budding entrepreneurs. There’s lots of energy in the world today bubbling around this word, “entrepreneur.” Accelerators and incubators are popping up everywhere. We are now a society gorging on new technology; since we are modeled on the Rome of the Caesars we have little patience for digestion (it takes time) so we prefer to vomit what we just consumed to make room for the next course. We are living at the time of an idea feeding frenzy and mind blowing technological advances. Folks with resources but few ideas are hungry to link up with folks with ideas and no resources. Everyone is insatiably hungry. No amount of gorging will satisfy the hunger.

In our world of rabid consumption, nutrition isn’t necessarily a high priority. I mean that literally and metaphorically. For evidence, look at what the networks call “news.” Long ago we realized that entertainment is more profitable than reporting so reporting is now entertainment. It matters little if there is substance to the story so long as people consume it. More evidence: one of my favorite rants of the past decade came from Dane, a neighbor, who was sitting on his stoop eating a bag of potato chips. He called me over to look at the ingredients listed on the package. High on the list, in fact the second ingredient listed, was sugar. Dane screamed, “There’s more sugar than salt in my chips!” He fumed, “I’ve been reading the ingredient lists on everything and there’s sugar in everything. It’s more important to get us hooked than to feed us anything of substance!” Of course, the punch line to the story is that he ranted with his mouth full of chips. Another bit of evidence: I stopped counting the times I’ve heard a politician say, “We have to weigh our interests against our values.” You can find a variation of this statement in the news of the day everyday. You can find an example of it in your life each day, too. How do you weigh your interests against your values?

This consumption/nutrition question is the epicenter of confusion for lots of people. It is the reason many boxes and stages are constructed.

Most people that I work with are seeking greater meaning. They want a richer experience of life. They want to fulfill their potential. In the midst of their consumption of time, they feel consumed. They have little time to breathe. They have little capacity to develop deep, meaningful relationships. They are finding that their stuff doesn’t fill the void. They are finding that their achievements are hollow unless they serve the real needs of others. They always find that what they seek is something that they’ve had all along: relationships.

There is no magic to sustenance. Slow down and enjoy your meal: literally and metaphorically. Slow down and make the meal: literally and metaphorically. Slow down and make the meal from food that hasn’t been processed: literally and metaphorically. Care for the soil and you will grow healthy food: literally and metaphorically. This requires slowing down. All of these are about the relationship you have with your world. All rich relationships require lingering and the riches are always in the relationship. Always.

Substance is always about a relationship. Relationship can’t be consumed; it must be entered and/or engaged. Tend the relationships, especially the relationship you have with yourself. In this way, the box or stage you construct will be built from self love and self love is the wellspring of love for others.

I see riches in the relationships all around me and a species (homo sapiens) trying to remember what it means to eat from the tree of life.

[to be continued]

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, title_pageSeeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

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Filed under: Awakening, Emergence, entrepreneur, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Learn The Space Between

Posted on April 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

763. 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 this phrase in an old notebook. I’m not sure who to attribute it to though it sounds as if it came from Ana-The-Wise: Between the inhale and the exhale there is an empty state. It is from this empty place that we create.

The “space between” has emerged as the theme this week.

A few days ago I had a conversation with a class about the space between actors on a stage. The play is never about the actors or the characters, the play happens in the space between them. It is the space of relationship. It is the place where the verbs express. If the actors are honest, the space between them opens and the audience joins the story. The audience participates. If the actors are pretending, if they are dishonest, the door closes and the audience can only witness the lie.

In Transformational Presence coaching class we also worked with the space between. In this case, it was the gap between what we know and how we live. Alan calls this praxis and has defined praxis as integrating belief and behavior. He writes, “Praxis is closing the gap.” In exploring the gap we worked with the relationship between what we know and how we live. They are not separate concepts but a living relationship. The gap is a dynamic space. It is the space where you will find your fears and stories of limitation. Close your gap and you will discover and transform all the reasons you believed you couldn’t walk your talk. And, just as actors on a stage discover, bringing an honest intention to the space between (relationship) creates movement, openness and flow. Bring dishonesty to the space between and the door closes. Fear takes over. Limits flourish.

The space between is always a relationship. It is never and empty space in the sense that is a void. In meditation it is the door to stillness. Learn the space between your inhale and exhale and you will find a quiet mind; it turns out that your thoughts and breath are as integrated as the rhythms of your heart and lungs. Place your focus outside of yourself, put it on the space between you and the world, and you will find a fertile, vibrant, creative realm ripe with possibilities.

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Listen To The Story

Posted on March 29, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

750. 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 another rich tidbit in the archives and have updated it slightly:

Where is the story that unites us? Story is the gravity that holds communities together, pulling individuals into a common orbit. It is the irresistible cadence of invitation: come. Sit. It is singular and essential; it holds the space of affirmation. It reinforces the knowing of, “This is who we are. This is where we belong.”

Story is the gravity that holds us together, this we’ve forgotten. And like the musicians in an out-of-tune orchestra, when we no longer recognize our common story then the gravity reverses itself, we spin off into the void, alone in a cacophony of inner monologue. Hell is a community of individuals lost in the fog of their own story. Hell is the universe that has forgotten the existence of shared music. Hell is where you compare yourself to others and in a comparison the others will always win. In Hell you think you have to be perfect so you are never good enough. Hell is where you invest in false notions of who you should be, have to be, could have been. In Hell there is no present moment because you are too invested in the fears of the future and regrets from the past. It’s a dense fog, an inner wasteland. In hell you are alone. Staying in Hell takes a real commitment to the story that you tell!

Not only is story capable of holding us in a coordinated orbit and conversely, blinding us to each other, story also holds the power of guiding us through the wasteland and back to the garden. The old stories are like maps capable of telling us. “This is how your trials will look and feel. These are the challenges you will face. This is what you can expect.” Knowing the stories won’t save you from your trials but they will bring greater meaning to them. Stories guide.

Every human that has ever walked the face of the earth has been born, grown to adulthood, wondered what was theirs to do, loved and lost, fulfilled themselves or not, grown old, and died; their advice comes to us in the form of a story. If we listen metaphorically, the wisdom it holds will spill its guts. Stories don’t need to be tortured to reveal their secrets, they are eager to share. However, treat them as fact and they will clench their jaws and clutch their fists and hold their breath until they pass out. Their treasure lives beyond the realm of facts, beyond the superficial. Read a story as literal or as fact and you cage what is wild. Listen deeply, go beyond your chattering intellect and engage it, feel it in your body. Story desires a relationship with you.

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Let Go The Separation

Posted on February 27, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

It is Sunday night and I am reviewing my week. Sometimes I am astounded at how much happens in a single week of life. I’m sure this is always true but lately I am acutely aware of the passing of the days, the variety and richness of my experiences every day. I started to make a list and after filling a few pages I stopped. There was no point in going on because the point was made: there is no list capable of capturing the enormity, the passing of a single week of life.

In order for lists to be meaningful the items need to be separate, discreet. Generally, this is how we look at our lives, things on a list: grocery shopping, driving kids to daycare, lessons, dinner with friends, a trip to the gym, etc.; separate achievable actions checked from the list.

From another point of view there is no separation. Place the emphasis, not on the achievement, but on the quality of process, the level of presence and meaningful engagement, and the list blends into a single experience with many textures and colors. The separations are constructs and largely false. How can I separate experiences like the conversation in the gallery from the chips and salsa and beer from the walk along the river?

Last Sunday a friend made me dinner to celebrate my birthday, I flew on a plane with a woman who was very ill so we talked of the comforts of being home, I stood by the river on a freezing cold evening and watched with awe the geese swirling like locust in the sky, I sang “Yesterday” with Lexi on Friday night, drank too much coffee and sat up half the night writing emails, walked through the galleries of the Joslyn museum, stopped in awe at the El Greco and Thomas Hart Benton and laughed through my first grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When did one experience stop and the other begin?

I flew, I sang, I celebrated, I stood, I drank, I walked, I stopped in awe, I laughed… They are only separate actions because the limits of language make them so – or because I might have chosen to see my life as a list. I could write: I lived. I could write: I loved. These are also true.

I stood over the Missouri River watching the ice like enormous frozen lily pads flow beneath me. Depending upon where I looked they seemed to be rushing by or almost standing still. It depended upon where I placed my focus. When I focus on achieving my lists the days rush by as I race through my days. When I let go the separations, all days become varied and rich; the moments like the icy lily pads move by me though I have to distinct impression that I am standing still.

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Know The Value

Posted on February 26, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

I once read a series of books in which the main character, a successful real estate broker, so despised the emptiness of his life that one night he took off his clothes and walked away from his life. He literally left everything behind. He stepped away from every illusion that he maintained. From zero, he rediscovered himself and emerged a man rooted in the essential, living in the present. He relinquished the culture of comfort and embraced the textures and struggles of a life unprotected.

These past few months, as I stepped away from what was known and am now wandering, I have thought often of these books and this character. Just as the character learned that his needs were never fulfilled by possessions and always fulfilled through relationships, I am learning that I can only truly offer my gifts to the world when I fully allow myself to fully receive.

In these months I have stayed with Alan, Judy, Megan, Mark and Teru, and Carol; I have traveled from Boston to Hastings to Champaign to Denver and Seattle. I have enjoyed the retreat of my parents’ empty home (they are snowbirds). I’ve received untold kindness and experienced the generosity of friends and strangers. And, the lesson over and over: I need do nothing to deserve it; I need only receive it. In my life I’ve learned to give but have protected myself from receiving and am apparently out of balance. Carol said, as she threw her apartment keys at me, “It’s time for you to learn to receive!” And then she laughed at the pained look on my face. Judy reiterated the lesson. Mark told me I am always welcome to stay. These generosities are worth more than gold to me.

Todd and Lone are keeping tabs on me. Mark takes me to lunch when he knows I’m in town. Chris popped me on the head and told me to drop my illusions – I know more than I am willing to admit. David called as I drove across the country to touch base and hear my voice. Kerri toasts me with java everyday; this list could go on and on. I am like the character in the book. I’ve always known that the real value of my life was in my relationships, I just had no idea how rich I really am.

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Click, Click, Click

Posted on January 5, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

SeaTac airport. 5:30 am. I’m sitting in the atrium holding coffee with both hands, staring into the void waiting for consciousness to catch up with my body or at least to know that my heart is beating enough to sustain life. I am not alone in my stupor though my stupor is decidedly less active than the stupor practiced by others. There is a different dull hum of voices in the morning; luggage wheels click over tile at a slightly slower rate, setting a tempo for the morning rush.

There are more business folk than families at this obscene hour. If I were a farmer I’d fly at this time of day and I’d move through the airport as if it were one of my fields. Slow, respectful. Business travelers have forgotten their inner farmer and walk with a deliberate goal in mind: get “there.” Even at this early hour and in their pre-coffee diminished capacity, they move with a studied determination. Click, click, click. No time to waste. A plane to catch. A sale to close. A deal to make. Ten minute rest interval. A trip to the gym. A light meal. Most have heads down and are answering emails as they move with intention to their portal.

Don’t get me wrong. I love business people. I work with business people. They live in a different culture than I do. They play by a different set of rules; they hire me because my rules are different and so I can see what they cannot. For instance, I do not believe that “time is money;” were we living in the industrial age that might still be true but it was an antiquated notion before my parents were born. I’m certain that “relationship is money,” that the path to efficiency is to slow down and not speed up (I can prove it). From my vantage point the prerequisite for success is cooperation, not competition. Cooperation is an infinite game and competition is finite; competition can live within cooperation, but not the other way around. I’ve learned from famous consultants that the only real purpose of a business is to serve a customer – that is cold language until you realize that the verb is “to serve” and “customer” is an antiseptic word for “human being.” Do you want to succeed in business: serve a human being. Serve lots of them. Focus on what you bring to them and not what you can get from them.

As I contemplate another cup of coffee (oh, okay…if I have to…) I want to whisper to the morning sprinters, “Markets are made-up just as are economies; they are constructs and not forces of nature; we make the rules, we thrive or suffer according to the world we make up. Let’s play a different game. Let’s practice health. Slow down. Live today. Take a look around: you are surrounded by those you serve.

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Be The Source

Posted on December 29, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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.

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Truly Powerful People (457)

Posted on June 9, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

457.
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’m on the bus with 3 ladies from Wisconsin. They landed in Seattle without a plan and the wrong clothes for the weather we’re having. They came prepared for summer and were not prepared for the cold winds and freezing rain. It has not dampened their spirits. They are on an adventure and the wrong clothes are now part of a big story of stepping off the edge of the farm belt and into a new land called Seattle.

They’re asking me for tips: where to go to buy wool socks, what to do at the Market, how to best get around. Note: they purposefully did not rent a car because they wanted to navigate the city, to ask questions, to bump into people, to get lost; their plan was to step out of easy and into relationship. “People are so friendly here!” they exclaim. I am stunned at their brilliance and realize that the 3 ladies from Wisconsin are actually Midwestern-Buddha-ladies-in-training. They are not from the big city so talking to strangers is, in their rulebook, polite, so they are talking with everyone. The culture of the bus transforms as the usual stone-faced crowd opens and giggles with the Buddha trio.

We hear a harrowing tale of the drunk man that sat at their table the previous evening. “We were having margaritas!” they declare, “But he was too young for us!” and giggle riotously. “But we did ask if we could borrow his car.” They smiled knowingly as the nearest Buddha to me leaned close and whispered, “We didn’t want him to drive home in that condition. Plus, we thought we could stop by the store for supplies on the way.” Then, she winked.

“Do you have a plan for the day?” another rider asks, wanting to join the fun. “NO!” The Buddha trio chime in chorus. “We want to see what the day holds.” Buddha number one affirmed. “We’ll know our plan when the day is done!” added Buddha number two. Buddha number three smiled and announced to the bus: “Isn’t this great!”

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