When it comes to the turning point in how we explain human behaviour – i.e., environment instead of character – Martin Seligman identifies the following marks: people no longer are responsible for their actions; situations must be isolated and corrected (money being the primary intervention); the focus of inquiry is on bad events, not good ones; and, ‘we are driven by the past rather than drawn by the future.’*

There’s no denying environments are important, but when people no longer have to take responsibility for their actions they are robbed of choice and growth and creativity which emerge from growing their character and their Strengths.

The best intentioned environments can be disabling, rather than re-enabling and awakening people’s dreams – essential if people art to identify and delight in that thing they alone can do, which they can push further and further through deep practice.

‘When you practice deliberately, you intensify the tasks or knowledge that are just outside your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly.’**

When we learn something by doing we’re increasing personal choice.  When we learn skills – whether relational, actioning, or cognitive – we are developing speed.

And when we develop speed, we create time.

We make more time to develop the special skills and focus which bring something very unique into the world.  More of the right kind of environments are springing up: ‘makeshift classrooms, often held in “maker” or “hacker” spaces where people come together to build and create.’^  You become ‘The only person on earth who could do what you just did.’^^

When the Nobel laureate Isidor Isaac Rabi came home from school, his mother did not ask “What have your learned today?”  She asked, “Izzy, did you ask a good question today?”^

A question emerges from choice.  Learning, though an environment of improvement, may not be about choice.

(*From Martin Seligman’s Flourish.) 
(**From Susan Cain’s Quiet.)
(^From Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.)
(^^From Seth Godin’s Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?)

What’s your dream or idea of skill or itch or call?  
Ask as many questions of this as possible (think twenty for starters, rather than three of five.
Improve these questions, then identify which are the most important to you.
Imagine how you could act on these.
Then identify the questions which emerge through this action.

‘The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher.’*

(*From Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way.)

Some things happen which have more up than down; other things have more down than up.  Rarely are things all up or all down.  The same goes for people.

We no longer live in a Newtonian world of constant rules.  Our universe is more about chaos and disorder which uncannily has a way of producing beautiful things, including life.  The shifting of tectonic plates causes earthquakes and tsunamis, and at the same time are important to the production of our atmosphere.

Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno conceived the idea of order being the exception to disorder.  This is not a popular idea to those who like the illusion of an orderly world.  A quick look around Western society and you’d think we’ve just about got everything under control; it’s a shock to come across things or people not fitting in.  We live in our orderly bubbles whilst people like Nassim Taleb tell us we’re living in Mediocristan (somewhat chaotic) and Extremistan (full-on chaotic).

‘The universe story and the human story are a play of forces rational and nonrational, conscious and unconscious,of fate and fortune, nature and nurture.’*

We prefer our data and statistics over the anecdotal, yet the exceptions help us to see a greater or deeper reality to respond to: ‘This is the great turnaround!  It all depends on whether we are willing to see down as up’.*

The story of “all is well and under control” leads to a hopeless place.  The story which somehow holds together the good, the bad, and the ugly not only allows for chaos and pain, but significant joy and hope.  Life in all its fullness seems to invite us in when we give all.

‘The journey will demand much of you.  In fact it will demand all of you.  All your passion.  All your courage.  All your talent. All your discipline.  All your life.’**

This journey does not begin with rose-tinted hope, but when face what really is and we live forward between our pride and courage, our greed and generosity, our foolishness and wisdom.

(*From Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)
(**FromErwin McManus’s The Artisan Soul.)

You’re at the end of the interview, briefing, seminar, and you’re offered the opportunity to ask your questions.

Do you?  Maybe one or two basic questions?  Someone else throws in their usual explosive-missile question.

Perhaps you don’t ask questions because you know the person, the context, the time, or the culture, and you know, there are only a limited kind of question you can ask.  And people who ask lots of questions are (not divergent questioners but) troublemakers, right?

I’m the worst of offenders – both ways: not leaving enough time for questions and not asking any when offered the opportunity.  So, now I’m on a quest: to create environments where we can learn to ask more questions together.

We unlearnt how to ask questions at an early age and we can learn the art of questioning again.

Questions allow people to cross thresholds.  When we do this, we become guides to others – dreamwhisperers, whose art is to ask questions and listen and ask more questions.  We each form these questions deep within us, where dreams and passions and needs and desires and gladness and imagination converge.  Each, then, brings a different kind of question, because they come from a unique place.  Our questions can make it possible to move towards the future through anticipating, reflecting, imagining, synchronising, designing, and creating.*

We’ve arrived in a time when questioning is being democratised.  It’s no longer the province of the rich or powerful or privileged or educated or cool or celebrity.  We don’t have to know the answer to ask a question, opening up questioning to everyone: how brilliant is that?

The paradoxical thing about asking lots of questions towards better questions is we get smarter together, rather than airing our ignorance – which is our fear.

What do you think?

How about saying that again as a question?

(*These are six reasons for thinking about the future.)

I’ve been asked to share my story at an event later.

As I’ve prepared, one of the things I’ve realised is how my life is marked by leaving.  There are the forced leavings when I’ve been made to move on, but the most notable leavings are when I have left what I know for what I don’t know.

I have tried to leave into the more.

In a complex age, we’re tempted to run back to old certainties – whether political, religious, employment, nationalism, or something else.  Our generation, though, has probably the best opportunity ever to move into an expansive life and we’re struggling to keep up.

‘This [modern life] is changing everything and evolving consciousness at a rather quick rate.’*

We’re being invited to move into a deeper way of being Human.  We need rites of passage for this, but we’ve none because we don’t recognise what we’re on the cusp of, what is possible.  The will offers us a way.

‘Will is the discipline of the heart and soul.  The will is the one things  we  control completely, always.’**

We may be thwarted in our next actions and our actions after these, but if our will is intact and growing, we have the power to try another day.  We talk of people who’ve lost the will, lost the ability to try again on another day.  What’s important, then, is to understand the will, to develop the will.

Teacher Deborah Meier identified five “habits of mind” she employed in 1970’s Harlem, teaching her students to think about information through connective inquiry, rather than feeding them information:

What is the Evidence for this?
What if you saw this from another’s Viewpoint?
Is it Connected; how is it connected?
Use Conjecture: what if?
How is this Relevant?^

When we inquire, we move from what we’ve previously understood at face value.  We become creative with what we discover because we see more of the components within the systems and how they work together, and we can introduce new things or reconfigure components in multiple ways.

We’re moving towards more life.  And we can begin where we are, and leave.

(*From Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)
(**From Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way.)
(^From Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.)

I guess we’ve all heard the refrain: “We need more out the box thinking!”

Sometimes the call is for more in the box thinking?

There’s always a box.

The first half of life is about growing ourselves to be lifelong learners and contributors.  For this we need the creative tension of boundaries (the box) and freedom (curiosity, questions, and imagination).  Everyone frames their response with boundaries, whether they or others set these:

What’s the problem?
How many people do we have?
What’s our budget?
When do you need this by?
Who do we report to?
How far into the future are we looking and thinking?
What resources are available?

These questions, and more, are attempts to define the reality of the box, more than anecdotally or first perception.  The best boxes invite us to become “one with the box,” responding to deep wisdom, inviting better questions over easy answers.  But even poor or nightmarish boxes are places in which we can learn: see Viktor Frankl‘s experience of boundaries and freedom in work-camps and death-camps.

Each of us has grown up within different boxes, which we have defined, explored, understood, and learnt from.

We all start within a box but we are not meant to stay there.   In the second half of life (which isn’t about years but growth) we get to move beyond the box.  I’m slow, so I’ve spent thirty five years within the box of my institution; I’ve learnt a lot, but am about to move beyond the box.  It will still be there, but in a different way.  When we move beyond the box we create larger boxes for others to explore.*

The Industrial Age demanded people stay within the box – and away from the boundaries – but the new age which we all find ourselves in, ‘demands citizens who are self-learners, who are creative and resourceful, who can adjust and adapt to constant change.’**

(*See Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolution for a very helpful explanation of how in the box and out the box thinking works.)
(**From Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.)

Weak-willed or strong-willed?

Willfulness is often thought of as negative, yet without it we might as well be a blancmange.

‘Will is our internal power, which can never be affected by the outside world.  It is our final trump card.’*

We have to be strong-willed enough to do what it is we must do – which is to leave our present self to journey towards others, towards our world, and towards our future Self.  It’s like the power of a rocket needed to break away from the gravitational pull of the Earth.

‘In actuality, will has a lot more to do with surrender than with strength.  True will is quiet humility, resilience, and flexibility; the other kind of will is weakness disguised by bluster and ambition.’*

Interesting.

The person whose will is weak will not take the risk to leave.  Neither the person who is too strong-willed – they have too much to lose.

Willfulness is an art we must learn if we are to engage the second half of our life.**  When we get it right, we get to make our art for others, living with creativity, generosity, and enjoyment.

‘To make our lives a creative act is to marry ourselves to risk and failure.’^

‘The process of discovery in creating something new appears to be one of the most enjoyable activities any human can be involved in.’^^

(*From Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way.)
(**This is not about years but maturity.  I’m maturing late in life.)
(^From Erwin McManus’s The Artisan Soul.)
(^^From Tina Seelig’s Ingenius.)

I am thinking of finding our way again.

Fate declares everything is predetermined, is meant to be, but really:

‘The future is dynamic, active, interactive.’*

The protagonist moves towards a larger understanding of how every person is creative and can be an artist or artisan of something – an almost infinite number of possibilities is mind-blowing and inspiring at the same time.

Looking back into the myths and legends of history, Richard Rohr notices how, ‘The hero or heroine is by definition a “generative” person.’**  There is in every person an “engine room” capable of producing a ‘surplus or an abundance of life.’**

When our protagonist realigns, she falls through life as it is into something deeper, into what Rohr deliciously calls deep time – where past, present, and future exist at once: ‘all of us can live in the present as if we’re back from the future.’*

This falling through, or realigning, begins when she opens her mind to more than WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is); opens her heart to feel all of what the lives of others, the world, and her future life are opening to her; and, then, to face the crucial realignment, posed in the question What will you do with this new life?

She helps us to see the ancient, present, and future experiences of the hero: the protagonist does not know what will happen until she enters the journey, then she allows the journey to speak to her, and, then lets go to be able to take hold of what is emerging.

The entry points to the journey may be some change in circumstance, or a growing discontent, or an anger at some injustice, or a crisis,^ or an irritating itch of curiosity, or even a word at a particular moment which resonates.

Whatever the call, the protagonist seizes the moment.

(*From Erwin McManus’s Uprising.)
(**From Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)
(^Maybe we ought to see midlife crisis as a positive call?)

But you are capable of making one.

Caminante, no bay camino, se bace camino al andar.

“Traveller, there is no path, the path must be forged as you walk.”*

A closed mind cannot see the future path.

A closed heart cannot hear the future path calling.

A closed will cannot let go in order to take this future path.

The journey before us, though, is from closedness to openness; from invulnerability to vulnerability; from fragility (through resilience) to antifragility.

If the liken the Future Self to a seed, the open mind allows it to penetrate our seeing and understanding; the open heart allows it to go deeper into our feeling and connecting and knowing – where it might germinate into possibilities of who we can become and what we can do; and, the open will understands it must let go of the good for the best, otherwise the new possibility with be suffocated before it can grow.

(*Antonio Machado, quoted in Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly.)
(Today’s cartoon will appear over time.)

Leaving again?

Odysseus put the odyssey in odyssey.  He’d finally made it home: to his wife and son and father and dog.  But then he’s called to a second journey.

This second journey was not across water but to the mainland and a journey inland, or, we may say, inward.

Myths hold before us the great Human narrative of life and death, with all its inexplicable and paradoxical content.  Through these stories we make sense of who we are and the Human journey.  Appreciating their generalities rather than their specificities, we understand them to be as powerful as ever.

I’ve often seen myself as on a “slow journey in the same direction,” not a linear one but leading me somewhere.  Just recently I’ve come upon my own myth-like elements in this.  I recently wrote about an old gentleman visited in hospital who told me how he voted for me to go into training for the work at the same meeting he was retiring at.  Two days ago, he died – some thirty six years after he voted for me.  At the same time, I realise I have a second journey to make.  I am thankful for this man’s graceful life and how he shared these things with me in the last few days.

I don’t know what Odysseus must have felt like as he set out again.  Had he hoped for a Happy Ever After ending?  Do I?  Or do I relish the opportunity of doing what I love to do which takes me on again.*

‘Wisdom unleashed our capacity to create the good.  Wisdom not only sees the good that must be done now, but catalyses such events that result in a good future.’**

(*It might be some difficult thing which awakens us to the second journey.  Quoting Barack Obama’s 2008 election advisor Rahm Emanuel, Ryan Holiday brings encouragement in this direction: “You never want to let a serious crisis go to waste. … A crisis provides the opportunity for us to do the things that you could not do before” – The Obstacle is the Way.)
(**From Erwin McManus’s Uprising.)