“And above all, if you must:
shine!”*

So, I thought, “whatever it is you must do, give it to others.”

I’m reading through Nesta‘s Visualise Plan Test Build & Launch and it’s asking me these questions about what I feel I must do:

What does it enhance?
What does it replace or make less desirable?
What does it bring back?
What does it flip when pushed to the limits?**

So I wrote down my answers, …

How I want to enhance the lives of others, not only my own.
How I want to replace “the story so far” as the way it has to be into the future.
How I want us to be able to respond to our primal needs to be free to choose, to do something uniquely well, and to live for something bigger than ourselves.
How I long to be part of a gripping story passed from one to another.

I continued to reflect on this, knowing this is not about people being pushed from outside, but motivated from what they find within.  Edward Deci offers this thought:

‘The proper question is not, “how can people motivate others?” but rather,“how can people create the conditions within which others will motivate themselves?”^

Seth Godin dreams of as many people as possible choosing this way:

‘When it’s your turn, it’s your turn.  You own it.  Your choice.  Your freedom.  Your responsibility.’^^

I found myself imagining a city of dreams.  A place of belonging for those who would  bring out and explore their unique dreams, around who we are, not who we are not; where we’re aware of what we have, not regretting what we lack; knowing we have enough to take our turn.

Now it’s your turn, and what will you do?

(Create, give, enjoy.)

(*Kerry Hillcoat, quoted in The Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer for the 10th January, 2016.)
(**From Nesta’s Visualise Plan Test Build & Launch.)
(^From Edward Deci’s Why We Do What We Do.)
(^^From Seth Godin’s What To Do When It’s Your Turn.)