Thou shalt create complex characters rather than merely complicated story.
(Robert McKee)

[M]ost valuable discoveries don’t make sense at first; if they did, somebody would have discovered them already. […] We should test counterintuitive things – because no one else will.**
(Rory Sutherland)

To know isn’t the same as understanding and understanding isn’t the same as wisdom. Though wisdom requires both knowledge and understanding, it brings more to the party, getting head and heart and hands to dance together.

When it comes to our lives, we know it’s easier to shape a complicated story than it is to spend the time on developing our character and personality.

Robert McKee’s quote was for a webinar on building story characters and I noted with interest three of the four elements:

• Creating a Character from the Outside→In
• Creating a Character from the Inside→Out
• The Benefits of Combining the Two Approaches^

Wisdom requires we become complex characters but this we cannot become alone, we need help from outside. If we’re not finding this where we are then we need to move:

A drab looking cage produces a drab looking brain.^^

(And hearts and life.)

But we also need to know and understand our inner complexity and allow this to play upon our outer worlds.

When wisdom in all its complexity gets to play in complicated worlds then what follows can be positively unreasonable.

(*From Robert McKee’s Story.)
(**From Rory Sutherland’s Alchemy.)
(^From Robert McKee‘s blog.)
(^^From Jonah Lehrer’s Proust was a Neuroscientist.)

A startover is an amazing thing: to have the opportunity to begin again, to bring our learnings whilst wiping out the mistakes and failures.

The thing is that you have a pocketful of them to hand out to others.

There’s no monetary cost and you’ve already paid the price of becoming the kind of people who will listen to others deeply, ask humble questions, see the truth others may not be able to see in themselves, and offer your particular support.

ask a dumb question with an open mind*
(Rory Sutherland)

Rules are great when they help us move through the day smoothly and without a lot of the hassle of wondering about things like who should go first or clean up after themselves, or where on the escalator we ought to stand.

And, of course, the best rules are those that externally work with our internal rules

What we can lose, though, through an overdependence on rules, is the development of our internal ones, which are often more complex, imaginative, empathetic and creative.

It’s always worthwhile questioning rules, why we do things the way that we do. Many only exist because no-one is willing to ask the dumb and simple question. We might come to an answer we never imagined.

(*From Rory Sutherland’s Alchemy.)

A few years ago, a small crowd of friends gathered a couple of times around the reading of Seth Godin’s It’s Your Turn, to explore the possibilities of what we might get up to for the good of others.

Somebody came up with the title #libraryofawesome for our endeavour and it has remained an experimental project for me.

It directly led to the last two VOXedinburgh events, focusing on telling our stories and making a difference for others, involving many of the people who’d originally gathered.

I’m beginning to wonder, What next?

It’s people that make the most incredible libraries of all – books, DVDs, podcasts are all extensions of people. We have so much to offer collectively, but also individually, making ourselves available to another can make a huge difference.

Yelling at the ref because you don’t like a call against your team is not nearly as effective as insisting that your team train harder or find a better strategy.**
(Seth Godin)

Don’t wait for permission to express your potential, you already have permission.

Moving every day in the direction of your curiosities and fascinations means you’ll discover the things you have no idea about in this moment of time.

Around fifteen years ago, I was reading about how, if you’re 45 years old and people are still speaking about your potential, you need to excuse yourself, find a cupboard to step into and weep.

Erwin, who wrote these words, helped me take a leap towards doing what I really wanted to do but I didn’t know it. And it all followed a conversation in which we found ourselves talking about the things that fascinated and intrigued us both.

Come to think of it, that conversation took place in Los Angeles. I’d travelled for an event I believed I needed to get to, but as I couldn’t afford a hotel, Erwin and his family put me up.

Forget potential, keep moving:

You and your environment are extensions of each other.^

(*Morgan Freeman’s character Monte Wildhorn in The Magic of Belle Isle.)
(From Seth Godin’s blog: The process vs. the outcome.)
(^From Ben Hardy’s Willpower Doesn’t Work.)

I’ve lived through six recessions and learned two big lessons: 1) fear and anxiety will paralyse you if you are not prepared, and 2) a crisis that forces you to stop, just stop, can be a meaningful moment to learn and prepare for your next stage. In hindsight, recessions (and other types of crises) pushed me into my most creative roles […].*
(Bruce Nussbaum)

It’s a rain-all-day Friday.

There’ll be no blue sky today, no sunshine, not even wind.

A perfect day to turn back to a blog from Bernadette Jiwa with the picture of a little girl and her pink guitar, eyes closed, singing her heart out.

Here’s the blog; go take a look at the picture:

It’s easier to be heard when we shout. But being heard needn’t be our ultimate goal.

What if we aspired to be listened to instead?

To be embraced rather than just noticed.

To be valued rather than used.

To be sought out and remembered.

To be recommended and treasured.

To be loved.*

Today’s a wonderful day, full of so many possibilities, because we are capable of filling today with these things: so many ways to listen, to embrace, to value, to seek, to recommend … to love.

(*From Bruce Nussbaum‘s article: How to Recession-proof Your Creative Practice.)
(**Bernadette Jiwa’s The Story of Telling: Being Heard is Overrated.)

The posture of generosity and connection replaces a mindset of scarcity, and Lionel [Poilane] modeled this philosophy every day. […] Generosity, abundance and idiosyncrasy in service of craft and community.*
(Seth Godin)

When we take something to heart, we also are helping it to move from scarcity to abundance.

It can feel as though we have something scarce when we have valuable information, but when we take it to heart, becoming curious and inquiring, we find ourselves generating it into all manner of possibilities … and there you are, abundance.

It’s why having tools isn’t nearly as valuable as becoming an adapter or maker of tools.

Seth Godin tells how his friendship with Parisian baker Lionel Poilane altered the arc of his writing. When Poilane and his wife were tragically killed in a helicopter accident, Godin wanted to dedicate a book to him. It turned out to be Purple Cow.

Here’s how this book altered my own arc of work.

This book had been the first I picked up from Godin – I can’t even remember how I became aware of it. I loved the content and the format of the book, so much did it resonate with me about how I wanted to live and work, it led to me reading as much of Godin’s writing as I could afford, including V is for Vulnerable, illustrated by Hugh Macleod.

This in turn led to me reading Macleod’s three books in print at the time. I really loved the doodles as well as the ideas in these, and when it came to contemplating a year of blogging every day for a year, and I needed a degree of difficulty, inspired by Macleod, I decided upon doodling.

Six years on, I’m a dawdler and a doodler, bringing illustrations wherever I can.

When information moves from our head to our heart, all kinds of surprising and wondrous things can take place – we’re on a journey from scarcity to abundance.

(*From Seth Godin’s blog: Bread and books.)

We consume stories to discover life, to use our minds in fresh experimental ways, flex our emotions and add depth to our days.*
(Robert McKee)

All the superhero has to do to make the story great is struggle with count, face their demons, and muster enough strength to destroy the Death Star.**
(Donald Miller)

Robert McKee is asserting that ‘Writing is about archetypes, not stereotypes.’*

Taking these words to heart for life in general, we can say, our lives are not meant to be stereotypical but archetypal:

Deep down you desire the freedom to live the life you would love.^

John O’Donohue is making sense of our desires, how we use these to lift ourselves to reach for and possess something more: specifically more freedom to choose or make our path, more skill in walking it and a path that is not only for us but is also a gift to others.

Brian Maue‘s use of the image of the rocket freeing itself from the gravitational pull of the earth is helpful:

Watching a rocket leave its launch pad gives us an idea. To lift off and escape from our earth’s gravity, a moon-bound traveler requires enough energy to move at speeds of 7 miles per…second!  This “escape velocity” effort and the billowing clouds of energy exhaust seen before a rocket ever starts to rise offers another insight – a lot of energy will be used if we are serious about moving our body to a new reality. A “moonshot” destination, such as an engaging life performing “Greater Good”, also requires effort to find … but once reached, the energy requirements are easier and the sights more enjoyable.^

We have to find velocity and our story is how we can do this. Not a fanciful story but one crammed with information about our values, our talents, and abilities and our enriching and enervating environments.

Part of my work is with the University of Edinburgh’s Chaplaincy. When I research the word chaplaincy, I find that it reaches back to St Martin of Tours and this soldier’s sharing of half of his cloak or cape with a scantily clothed beggar.

The other half of the cappella was eventually preserved in a chapel (the place of the cape), so I like to think of Chaplaincy as a place where we get to identify our superhero cape.

With all due deference to Edna “E” Mode, our cape represents our story, it is how we find our launch velocity to escape the stereotypical and live an archetypal life – which has as many iterations as there are people. It peculiarly involves us facing our doubts and demons and mustering all the strength we can to do what we have come to see we must do.

(*From Robert McKee‘s blog: The Perils of Stereotypical Storytelling.)
(**From Donald Miller’s Scary Close.)
(^Brian Maue, from gapingvoid’s blog: A blast for the better.)

Yet the imagination gives to everything that it touches a peculiarity, and it seems to me that the peculiarity of the imagination is nobility, of which there are many degrees.*
(Wallace Stevens)

We make our biggest contribution when we dare to do what only a handful will do.**
(Bernadette Jiwa)

I may have read her book seven years ago but I still remember Pamela Slim‘s encouragement as if she was saying it directly to me: You need to find a niche an inch wide and a mile deep.

Every person’s niche is peculiar, formed by our curiosity and passion, our talents and abilities, and our experiences of life.

Never underestimate how powerful a thing this will be in the world.

(*From Wallace Stevens’ The Necessary Angel.)
(**From Bernadette Jiwa’s post The Story of Telling: One of the Few.)

About nobility I cannot be sure that the decline, not to say the disappearance of nobility is anything more a maladjustment between the imagination and reality. […] It is not only that the imagination adheres to reality, but also that reality adheres to the imagination and that interdependence is essential.*
(Wallace Stevens)

In his important book Homo Ludens Johan Huizinga argues that playfulness and seriousness should be held together, that is is only civilisations’ growing sophistications that have separated these.

Add to this Wallace Stevens’ assertion that reality and imagination ought to exist in an interdependent state, and you begin to wonder what we are missing out on when it comes to living with each other, our planet and ourselves.

I hope you get a chance to bring some playfulness and imagination into today – because it’s usually these, and not reality and seriousness, that are left out.

Stevens adds a further level of jeopardy when he claims human nobility is at risk. Nobility may seem a fancy concept but it’s a very functional state of being that is grateful for what we have and seeks to be generous. It is all about how we see and treat each other and our world.

(*From Wallace Stevens’ The Necessary Angel.)