Scientists have … found that to achieve a state of flow, a task must be roughly 4 percent beyond our current ability.*
James Clear

Whether it’s splitting the [bill], getting a project done or making an impact on the culture or a cause, if you want things to get better, the only way is to be prepared to do more than your fair share.**
Seth Godin

We don’t need the conference speaker to ask us
to raise our hands as high as we can
in an experiment,
Only to ask us then to raise them
higher –
We all know that we hold back.

What if, instead of working out ways of holding back,
We experimented with ways of bringing 4% more effort
in a smarter way –
Just 4% out of our comfort zones?

We’d be zooming.^

Let us begin to learn how to bless each other. Whenever you give a blessing, a blessing returns to enfold you.^^

*James Clear’s Atomic Habits;
**Seth Godin’s blog: More than your share;
^‘According to Godin, success requires companies to stifle the “anti-change reflex” and start “zooming” – a term he uses for embracing change and mining “memes,” or ideas operating as the business equivalent of genes.’
^John O’Donohue’s Benedictus.

I believe a KID WHO IS PLAYING IS NOT ALONE. THERE IS SOMETHING BROUGHT ALIVE DURING PLAY AND THIS SOMETHING, WHEN PLAYED WITH, SEEMS TO PLAY BACK.*
Lynda Barry

So the psychological problem, the way to keep from becoming blocked, is to make yourself – and here is the phrase – transparent to the transcendent.**
Joseph Campbell

We need to play more;
It’s good for us –
We must beware the urgent life that
leaves us alone with seriousness.

Play is transcendent,
And there are as many ways to play as there are people –
That’s the fascinating and exhilarating thing.

*Lynda Barry’s What It Is;
**Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss.

Now, it’s a basic mythological principle, I would say, that what is referred to in mythology as “the other world” is really (in psychological terms) “the inner world.” And what is spoken of as “future” is “now.”*
Joseph Campbell

We are not made wise by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.**
George Bernard Shaw

What many think of as the present
is the past, whilst
others know that what is too quickly dismissed
as the future
is now;
The latter form a space or ritual to
slow down their thinking, their
speaking, their
actioning, to be able to hear
what-can-be before filling
the moment
to overflowing:
In their intense meditation the hidden
sound of things approaching
reaches them and they listen reverently
while in the street outside the
people hear nothing at all.^

*Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss;
**Seth Godin’s The Carbon Almanac;
^Constantin Cavafy from Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness.

Today we don’t have the stasis that is required for the formation of a mythic tradition. The rolling stone gathers no moss. Myth is moss. So now you’ve got to do it yourself, ad lib. … We’re all without dependable guides.*
Joseph Campbell

We are all haunted by something deep inside of us, and often a lot of our best work is the result of us trying to come to terms with that.**

Our existence lies within two worlds:
The ordinary world of everyday things,
And the special world of meaning and significance.

This is far too simple a way of
describing our worlds, for which
I apologise,
It is a starting place only.

Who am I?
is an ordinary world question that has an inkling
there is more to life than meets the everyday eye;
When asked in the special world, this question becomes
Who is my True Self?

What can I do with my life?
is another ordinary world question that is altered
when asked in the special world, becoming
What is my Contribution?

These questions arrive with us from Theory U, but
I have connected them for some time with
Joseph Campbell’s diagnosis that we each are in need
of two myths:
One that is personal and the other social.

The problem is that we struggle to shape
our necessary stories in our fast-moving, noisy busy
ordinary worlds,
And we are constantly frustrated that this is so
(How many of us have wanted to find the answer by the
close of the podcast we have been listening to,
Or the final pages of the self-help book?);
We must enter our special worlds that
very much feel to be interruptions.

Peter Senge wrote of systems-thinking that many problems
do not lie in the obvious or reinforcing loop of the system,
But rather in the hidden or background balancing loop;
Attending to this takes more time and attention,
And so it is often put off or ignored.

What Senge’s systems-thinking highlights is that
our most important questions cannot be properly dealt with
in our ordinary worlds, rather
we must find and journey into our special worlds;
I mention their plurality because
these are different for each of us, though
they contain similar questions and challenges.

What we feed with our time and focus will grow.^

*Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss;
**gapingvoid’s blog: Spiritual Redemption;
^Beth Pickens’ Make Your Art No Matter What.

Our lifetimes are specks in the universe, but they are the longest and only spans of time we will ever know.*
Beth Pickens

As Rilke says: Hier zu sein ist so viel – to be here is immense**
John O’Donohue

Hello again.

My wife and I have just returned
from three weeks of visiting
our daughter and husband
in Australia. so I wanted to leave
three weeks of doodles and quotes
to mix with your daily activities;
The author of Atomic Habits
James Clear writes
The point is to master
the habits of
showing up.^

In the middle of my sixties,
I find myself increasing thinking about
the importance of this daily practising
of turning up;
In two months or so,
I retire from my university work,
And so turning up in this way every day
helps me gain perspective for
what I have, what I can do, how soon life is over, and so,
What matters most of all.

But it’s not only about showing up;
It’s about how we show up –
These moments must contain
transcendence,
And I will be increasingly
exploring and sharing
the importance of myth and story
over these weeks;
As Joseph Campbell reflects:
myth is the transcendent
in relation to the present …
A mythic figure is like the compass that
you used to draw circles and arcs in school,
with one leg in the field of time
and the other in the eternal.^^

I invite you to join me in this journey.

*Beth Pickens’ Make Your Art No Matter What;
**John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us;
^James Clear’s Atomic Habits;
Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss.

The Laters sit in cafes sipping coffee and discussing the possibilities of life.  The Nows note that with infinite lives, they can do all they imagine.*
Alan Lightman

*Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams; where time is infinite.

There is always enough for everyone, if you share it properly, or if it has been shared properly before you got there.  There is enough food, enough love, enough homes, enough time, enough crayons, enough people to be friends to each other.*
Fairy Godmother

*Rebecca Solnit’s Cinderella Liberator.

In Asia and the Middle East, as well as in an early example of Western manuscript painting, the words and painting together made the whole picture.*
Jan Steward

Carry around a pad of white paper
and a fine black pen, and
everywhere becomes a place to doodle.

I enjoyed standing in line waiting
to be served, even got a chat about doodling
with someone.

*Corita Kent and Jan Steward’s Learning by Heart.

In Greek the word for ‘the beautiful’ is to kalon.  It is related to the word kalein which includes the notion of ‘call.’  When we experience beauty, we feel called.*
John O’Donohue

*John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty.

Thriving is where the impetus to survive meets both the craving for beauty and the need to love.*
Alex McManus

*Alex McManus’ Makers of Fire.