Here’s the first of five elemental truths gathered by Richard Rohr from traditional initiation rites for males.  (I think the five stand for everyone, mind.)*

It’s an important message for a culture which hopes life will be easy.**   Significant and satisfying things seem to come to us through effort.^  (Easy can be a dead end and its outworkings may be the hardest thing of all to face.)

We have to let go of easy.

Seth Godin refers to speed and wow marketing, how we need to use the medium for something deep and meaningful:

‘What works to change mindsets, to
spread important ideas, and to create
an audience for work that matters.’

Speed and wow could describe many aspects of our life today, getting in the way of the discovery of our deepest gladness can meet the world’s deepest needs.

Life is hard, but …

We get to complete this sentence in a plethora of ways.  It can become a doorway.

There’s more to us than we know – personally and collectively – and we seem to thrive in the hardest places and times, producing meaningful work, adapting when things fail and go wrong, discovering, learning, and trying again.

I find myself intrigued by how integrity, wholeness, and perseverance are developed in people.  Daniel Coyle offers a glimpse of what’s happening behind the scenes of struggling with the hard when he writes, ‘The only way [improvement] happens is to build new connections in the brain -which involves reaching, failing, and, yes, looking stupid.’

It’s hard, but through hard, we are literally rewiring ourselves to live larger – more imaginative and creative, more amazed and grateful, more generous and enjoyable – lives.

(*I won’t give them all just yet.)
(**Although there is a hardness to life – sickness, natural and Human events, etc. – which are real for everyone, in the West we are insulated from many of the hard things of life like building our own home, growing our own food, making our own technology.)
(^I’ve just completed Albert Espinosa’s The Yellow World in which he encourages us to think and talk about our deaths.)

Which are you?

Trick question.  The problem arises when we see and understand ourselves to be purely one or the other, or seeing one as the other.

Process is not an event.  Some live in the process, step-by-step getting things done so everything works well – personally they can be doing quite well, feel satisfied, but the danger lies in never stimulating or initiating art for others.  At their best, events tell us where things are working or not.

Event is not a process.  Some live for the action, the stuff in-between is boring, empty, a waste.  The events can be pretty darn good, but with nothing being developed, an opportunity is missed to ramp up, innovate, to be awesome.  Processes, at best, incubate purpose and trajectory.

We can be more process people or more event people, but process people creating events, and events people developing process would lead to amazing world.

I speak as a process person who discovered events.

Not found in some far flung place.

The Johari tribe are those who know many things.

They know they know things about themselves no one else knows.

They know there are things they know about themselves which others know too.

They know there are things others know about them and they don’t know about themselves.

They know there are things they don’t know about themselves, and others don’t now about them.

And they know, knowing there are things unknown to them and to others about them is the most important thing they know.*

The Johari are a tribe drawn from many places and peoples, who have found themselves shunned or distrusted or ridiculed or devalued because they are always questioning and pushing beliefs and behaviours, because they know the ‘”unknown unknowns” [have] proven to be a major force in shaping futurity.’**

The Johari continually develop tools and arts and environments and journeys which allow them to move from the known to the unknown, and to move the definitely unknown into the possibly unknown.  They scan their horizons, constantly moving, to see what might be known and understood.  How else do you come across what no-one knows?

Anyone is welcome into the tribe.  Any who struggle within the parameters of their own tribe, who struggle to use only the permitted language, struggle to compromise, to to put their imaginations on hold.  Many times someone has found and joined the Johari and found helpto stay in their own tribe too.  Others have found their road opening up and calling them on.

This is all the unknown unknown.

(*I believe the Johari tribe exists, though there are few documents about them,  but here’s one aboutthe Johari Window which does exist.)
(**I’ve changed the tense in this closing line from Alex McManus’s Makers of Fire.)
(Here’s an oblique look at the same thing from Seth Godin.)

Yellow can be blue … or hyacinth … or vermillion.*

It’s really something we love and something we give away, and this looks different for each of us.

It hopes for everyone to flourish and thrive.

Nourished in the deepest places of our lives through self-awareness and mindfulness, yellowness develops through deep inquiry, and surprises us in its imperfect, incomplete beauty.  We’d been afraid of what we might find when we looked so closely, but we’ve come to see what we can be – our future self – and we know we love this.

Yellow is a no-blocking, no-outsiders, “yes, and …” way of living.  Everybody adds something, can add something, and  Yellows know this.  It is, possibly, the most courageous and generous way to live our lives, and wise too, because it comes from the future, as does wisdom.

When I think of all these things, yellow seems to sum them up, but may be another colour, smell, or object for you.  The most important thing is …

Yellow is a choice.

(*Yellows are those who inhabit Albert Espinosa’s Yellow World, helping people to grow and develop through good and bad experiences.)

Of the seasons, I prefer Spring and Summer, but I know I am a part of all the seasons and the seasons are part of me: my life has Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter experiences.

Brian McLaren suggests four seasons of experience: simplicity (where most things begin); complexity (when we realise this is harder than we thought); perplexity (when things are really tough, unjust, not right); and, harmony (when all things come together in spite of).

There are Yellows for each of these times in our lives.

Yellows are those people identified by Albert Espinosa who make a deep difference in the lives of others – more than friends. more than lovers, they may be around for a little or a  long while.

There are Yellows who help others begin things; Yellows who help us work through the bemusing complexity of life; Yellows who are their for the worst of times; Yellows who help us to bring and keep everything together in a way which flourishes and thrives.

In these ways Yellows are Makers of Fire.

Makers of Fire are people who bring heat (passion and skill and innovation and commitment) to the fuel and oxygen of individuals, institutions, cultures, tribes, and societies.*

Where there’s fire, things change, something new emerges from the flames.

We can all be Yellows, Makers of Fire, for someone.

Which Yellow are you?

(*Fuel comprises the artifacts we have inherited made up of things and ideas and people – we’re surrounded by them; the oxygen is the cultural thinking, beliefs, and worldviews.)

What would this world look like?

We know we haven’t arrived yet, for all our development and advancement as a species.  When these have been less than holistic we have made a dysfunctional world; here’s one example offered by Ori and Rom Brafman:

‘In country after country, where a society becomes
industrialised, depression and suicide rates shoot
up.  Something about the process of industrialisation
is making people very unhappy.’

If Bruce Hood is correct then our environments affect our biology.  The environments we create need to work for everyone not just a few.

Something happens in us when we identify the Why? question for our lives, the purpose we want to pursue.  This isn’t something others can work our for us, so a world which works for everyone needs to provide choice: then we can develop particular skills and live towards a purpose greater than ourselves – these three things are important for Human happiness.

When the why is found, the how will appear.

Our minds may run, and rightly, to the billions of poor in the world who must overcome poverty, illiteracy, disease, conflict, and hunger in order to have more choice, but there is an “ailment” closer to home which prevents us from identifying the Why? (and may be key to opening up choice for more).  Daniel Kahneman highlights how, in a loss-averse world (environment), even a gain can be seen as a loss, so we stay where we are.  Alex McManus claims, ‘We must awaken the human spirit to a future worth surviving for, worth living in, and worth working towards.’*

What if the world were a “Yes and …” world?

The improv game doesn’t allow you to say “No way” or “It’ll never work” or “Yes, maybe …”.  You have to say “Yes and …” to the imagining of people, adding to what we can be about together.  Not in a “Yes Man” kind of way, but in a way which allows the world we hope for, which works for everyone, to begin to appear.

We each have the opportunity to shape our lives into holistic environments for others, even if it’s one other, to make it possible for others to pursue what it is they choose to be and do, so they touch the lives of others.

(*From Alex McManus’s Makers of Fire.)
(Today’s cartoon: The quote from Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine, comes from End Malaria, which has the awesome subtitle of “Bold Innovation, Limitless Generosity, and the Opportunity to Save a Life.”)

What do leaders have in common?

This question from Seth Godin.

His first response?  Nothing.

His second response?

‘Actually they do have one thing in
common … the decision to lead.’*

Without undoing Godin’s important point of  there not being a stereotypical leader with a core set of skills, here are some things behind the decision being the common factor.

Leaders know the status quo is a dangerous place to live.

It breeds complacency, quashes imagination, outcasts people who are different, suggests safety when safety no longer resides there, is in direct conflict with how the universe is energy and movement.  It’s also where our dissatisfactions prey on us, eating away at us whilst we stay where we are.

Daniel Kahneman refers to a study of some two-and-a-half million golf putts which confirm how golfers, including Tiger Woods, are more intent on obtaining par and avoiding a bogey, than they are on obtaining an eagle.  This plays out in study after study referred to by Kahneman.  Humans can choose the loss-averse option even when they think they’re not.**

At the same time, there is what Alex McManus calls an ember in the mind, longing to begin a fire, to make a difference, to identify a purpose: not so much “where are we going?” but “why am I making this journey?.”

This is a question that scrutinises characters and personalities.  Changemakers (another name for leader) are made from the inside out.  This cultivation of character and personality in connection with others and the world and the future Self we long to be,  allows for improvisation and spontaneity when opportunities arise, to act now and not wait for tomorrow.

So we can say changemakers care for all kinds of things; they are made up of different skills and talents; they go about things in a plethora of ways.  They have nothing in common.

And we can say, changemakers care deeply for people and the world they live in, they want to make their contribution in the Human journey while they can; they know they must develop who they are at the deepest levels to be able to do more than react, but to respond and initiate too.  To move from the status quo into action is what they have in common with all leaders.

And everyone can make the decision

(*From Seth’s book Tribes.)
(**And I’m with them more times than I want to count.)

Helping us to identify what is already present or within.

Parker Palmer imagined his life as a friend who’d tried to get his attention throughout his life, finally pinning him down and asking, What do you want?

Sometimes, we need interrupting like this.

We may think this help from beyond brings to us something we are lacking, yet oftentimes the only thing lacking is the question (which can be many, many questions, digging deep, mining down into who we are and what we have, and what we long for.)

This, then, is an infinite game, an invitation from beyond to bring our talents, dreams, art to the game.

Jerry Sternin was a changemaker for starving Vietnamese families, but he says, “You can’t bring permanent solutions in from outside.”  He was a changemaker by spotting the Vietnamese mums whose families weren’t starving and promoting them as leaders to others.  Seth Godin tells this story and makes the point: ‘find leaders (the heretics who are doing things differently and making change) and then amplify their work, give them a platform, and help them find followers.’

We all need help from beyond, but it’s often not in the form we imagine  And, today, there’s more of this kind of help from beyond available to us, more connection and networking making it possible for you to do what you long to do but maybe didn’t know how you were ready or more than capable of.

Maybe this is why you’ve hung around so long, waiting to be a changemaker.

Changemakers help us see what we already have, buried beneath poorer stories or narratives we’ve been following or adhering to.  Changemakers help us change the story, then we become changemakers for others.

I asked the three other guys in a group I’m a member of: Do we meet with the expectation that we will be open to be changed by one another through our conversation?

“Yes.”

What is the cause you believe so deeply in, you’ll keep going no matter what?

‘Remarkable visions and genuine
insight are always met with resistance.’^

But there is a fire burning in you which you must feed.

Hardship, leadership, entrepreneurship – these words are connected for you.

Hardship, because you expect resistance to what you are bringing.  First, you overcome the resistance within* and then take on the resistance without.**  Yet, you also know, the resistance sharpens your vision, increases your fire, and identifies the path.

Leadership, because you know, when you understand your own fire and fan the flames of others, rather than quenching, you’re leading.

Entrepreneurship, when it means to undertake, and you will be responsible for your dream, which you know will not come quickly but with slow, hard work.  It’s akin to an ongoing steeplechase, the brutally demanding mix of fast running, hurdles, and energy-sapping water-jumps.

What burns within you may not be glamourous, as some imagine, but it is everything.  Keep going.

(^From Seth Godin’s Tribes.)
(*Otto Scharmer points to three voices we must overcome in order to open our minds, hearts, and wills: judgement, cynicism, and fear.)
(**Lately, I have realised how I have grossly under-communicated to others what I am about – I had thought they would see the value of what I’m doing, but value has to be communicated.)

We are changing and we are changemakers.

Recent research has begun to show a short-term effect in our brains following reading an engaging novel: “We want to understand how stories get into your brain, and what they do to it,” shares neuroscientist George Berns.

Our brains have incredible plasticity, an ability to continually adapt well into adulthood – though there are resistances we must overcome as we grow older which aren’t necessarily there when we’re younger – such as, preferring the status quo?

Arguably, the greatest way we can be forever-changing is in interactions with people.  Adaptability to one another is a key ability for developing as a species and continues to be the case, as we creatively and innovatively find ways around sticking points.  This is a yellow world.*

Not only do we each change others, but we are changed by others.  

This is what it means to be Human: there is always in-bound change as well as out-bound change.

Just as there are three forces (trends, events, and choices) which shape the future (predictably, possibly, and preferably), there are three ways we can meet yellows – from amongst those we know already (unlikely, if we haven’t already met), from accidental meetings (though, we’ll need to be out and about far more than we typically are), or, we go in search of them (books, videos, experiences, following leads).**

Whilst there is a person we may call the essential self, the Human paradox is, this is not the same person we once were, we are always and ever becoming more our future self – in a future more and more connected.

(*Using Albert Espinosa‘s metaphor for “yellows” being people who change us, and, also, connecting this with Walker Percy‘s yellow house story, wherein people who wouldn’t normally meet accidentally do, creating “crossing points” of lives and worlds.)
(**Yesterday, I met with a few others for a library of the future experience.  These libraries bring together books and people and experiences and videos and more, and they solve problems, allow for creativity in making things – such libraries are yellow, too.)