simplicity | The Direction of Intention

Change Your Song

Posted on January 13, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

675. 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 funny to me the confluence of thought-rivers meeting in my life. For instance, Lexi recently introduced me to the Pete The Cat series of children’s books. When Pete’s white shoes turn red from treading in strawberries, is Pete upset? Goodness, no! He simply changes his happy song from “I love my white shoes” to “I love my red shoes.” A very complex thought delivered through a children’s book simplicity; motivational speakers the world over try to convey the same message with startlingly less finesse.

Just as Pete The Cat flowed into my day, Skip and I are in the midst of collaborating on a series of support mechanisms for entrepreneurs. For me, the heart of the series lives in my passion wheelhouse: change your story, change your world. This thought is a simplicity that gets lost in the adult world’s need for complexity. More than once in my consulting life I’ve heard, “But it can’t be that simple!” Translation: that is something I can do so I can either embrace it or insist that it is not possible. Often in the world of adults, complexity is equated with value. If it is simple, it is suspect (note: this is why our education and health care systems are in advanced states of collapse). Our attachment to complexity is often protection against owning our responsibility for change we know is necessary.

And, because Pete The Cat met Skip in the playing fields of my mind, my work with Skip is now finding children’s book simplicity. I heard the adult in me (admittedly a very small, some would say, stunted part of me) just exclaim, “It can’t be that simple!” The voice of Pete The Cat followed immediately saying, “Oh, but it is. It is so simple. Change your song, celebrate your world!”

Filed under: Business, Education, Perspective, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: collaboration, complexity, simple, simplicity | Leave a comment »

See The Elegance

Posted on December 28, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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.

Filed under: Awakening, Body, Possibility, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: assumption, complexity, fibonacci, fractal, Golden Mean, hologram, limitation, nature, simplicity, story, thought | Leave a comment »

Truly Powerful People (449)

Posted on June 1, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

449.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

My great aunt Dorothy was wise. She lived a simple life in the mountains above Central City, Colorado when it was still a mining town – long before the casino conversion turned it into an amusement park. Dorothy pieced together a living with my great uncle Del. They moved through their days with the sturdy simplicity of two people content to be right where they were – alive and grateful for every day. Their aspiration was to walk the hills, appreciate the seasons, and learn the deep quiet of the mountain. In turn the mountain evoked the deep quiet from within them.

For some reason they welcomed their rowdy nieces and nephews; we’d stay for weeks at a time. We shattered their quiet and complicated their simplicity and they loved us for it. Dorothy cooked hearty meals on a wood burning caste iron stove in a house that felt as if it might slide down the ravine at any moment. She collected blue glass, kept the hummingbird feeders well supplied, and made sure Poncho, their ancient dog, was in the sunniest spot.

Once, she took me on a hike. We followed a path through an aspen grove and crossed a field into a stand of pine trees. On the far side of the pines stood the remains of two-story house. Trees grew through the floor and branches reached out the windows; it was as if the trees were wearing the house for a coat or a Halloween costume. We peeked inside and tried to imagine people living there. I’d never before seen the earth reclaim a house. As if she read my mind, Dorothy said, “You never really own anything, do you. It’s all on loan.” Her eyes sparkled as she poked the rotted floorboards with a stick before stepping on them. “Isn’t it beautiful,” she sighed admiring the dilapidation. When I wrinkled my brow she laughed and said, “I suppose you have to know you are on loan before you can really see the beauty.”

Filed under: Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: beauty, seeing, simplicity | 4 Comments »

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