‘It was as if they had chosen a particular kind of life and then changed other circumstances to accommodate it.’*

“It all started with a dream, but then I followed that dream.  Following the dream made all the difference.”**

Sometimes I catch myself breathing tightly, usually because I’m concerned and anxious about something.  I need to relax my breathing, to be aware of it filling my whole body, my whole life: rigidity is my enemy.

Rigidity is not only about my breathing, but also the way I see and understand things.  What do I do when I become the obstacle to who I want to be and what I want to do?

”Rigidity – by which I mean the determination that one’s own view is the correct one – can be hard to recognise at first.’^

Rigidity makes me my own worst enemy.

When I relax, though, I hear the thin|silence, sometimes coming from without, sometimes from within – a greater reality, a more generous possibility.

‘The opposite of click moments are planned situations with expected outcomes.  On their own, these don’t generate the chaos and randomness needed to discover new, unique ideas.’^^

It is in the thin|silence – where I am most open-minded, open-hearted, and open-willed – that I find myself most hopeful.  When I am closed – another word for rigid? – the problem is yours, or the system’s, but not mine.  I am the system, though; I am the obstacle.

‘By reinforcing the separation of people from their problems, problem-solving often functions as a way of maintaining the status quo rather than enabling fundamental change … where problems often arise from unquestioned assumptions and deeply habitual ways of acting.’^^

When I deal with my rigidity, I find myself able to pursue my dream and do all that change stuff with my circumstances to accommodate it.

(*From Chris Guillebeau’s The Happiness of Pursuit.)
(**Musician Stephen Kellogg, quoted in Chris Guillebau’s The Happiness of Pursuit.)
(^From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(^^From Frans Johansson’s The Click Moment.)
(*^From Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski,, Otto Scharmer, and Betty Sue Flowers’s Presence.)