‘Five times a second, at an unconscious level, your brain is scanning the environment around you and asking itself: Is it safe here?  Or is it dangerous?’*

‘[G]ossip plays an important social role by reinforcing community values: it makes people feel closer to each other, it unifies people who play by the rules, it helps people get a sense of the values of their community … .’**

When we sense danger things become black and white.  Do we run or stay?  I’m wondering if this is something of what we see in gossiping.  Making black and white judgements, deciding who is with me and who is against me.

Michael Bungay Stanier offers four drivers for engagement, or sticking around, using the acronym of TERA, which he links to terroir, the influence of a specific region upon the grapes grown there, and therefore the wine produced.  These are four ways of influencing the environment.

T is for Tribe, which I would translate as enlarging your tribe to include others – or better still, let’s create new tribes together.

E is for Expectation, which I understand to mean creating a better future together, hoping for the best rather than expecting the worst.

R is for Rank, so why not treat others as equals, imbibing humility and, so, standing in our dignity and providing this for others.

A is for Autonomy, which is about giving others their say, their moment, to bring something awesome.

You may have noticed that each of these can also be used in a disengaging way, tribes disengage from other tribes, my expectations can come before yours, my rank supersedes yours, and, my autonomy is paramount for survival.

We have a choice, then.  This is a choice over whether we are an influencer towards a bigger world or a smaller one.  Gretchen Rubin, warns us that the things we say about others comes back to shape what others think about us:

‘What I say about other people sticks to me – even when I talk to someone who already knows me.  So I do well to say good things.’**

(*From Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit.)
(**From Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project.)

If you had these two questions to choose between, which one would you pick?

Why did this happen to me?

What am I now going to do?

In reality, we don’t have to choose one over the other, but we can get so over-focused on the first that we lose sight of the second.

The first allows us to dwell on what others, circumstance or the system has done to us.  The second puts the responsibility upon us and the kind of action we’re going to initiate – because we can’t wait for others.

This kind of Why question creates a loop that can both comfort and trap; offering the appearance of moving towards what we want, it becomes difficult to escape.

Marshall Rosenberg identifies nine needs behind our wants: affection, creation, recreation, freedom, identity, understanding, participation, protection, and subsistence.*

What is my need?

‘The lesson is to know your own motivations.  That way, you’ll keep going even if no one else cares.’**

Identifying our needs helps us to begin moving from Why did this happen to me? to What am I now going to do?  If we’re not clear about our needs, and therefore, motivations, we can lose our way when difficulties come along.

Something else to help us move on.  Forgiveness is an important tool for freeing us from the cycle of Why:

“[I]f a society does not have an apparatus for forgiveness, then its members are fated to live forever with the consequence of any violation.”^

I’m thinking of organisations and individuals too, employing this means by which they can voice their hope and dream wants.

When we clear the gravitational pull of this kind of Why then we find traction towards the future.

(*Referenced in Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit.)
(**From Chris Guillebeau’s The Happiness of Pursuit.)
(^Hannah Arendt, quoted in Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination.)

‘The more clearly we remind ourselves we can have no unnatural influence on nature, the more our culture will embody a freedom to embrace surprise and unpredictability.’*

Originally these dolls, made in the form of witches, would be stuck with pins with the intention and hope of breaking the power of witchcraft over someone’s life by causing pain to the witch.   More popularly, they’re seen as a way of exercising control over the life of another.

Perhaps we don’t use voodoo dolls, but we do try and blame others for situations and circumstances that aren’t working the way we want them to: someone in the family, someone at work the system.  By blaming, we somehow try to control what others do, forgetting that we can really only control ourselves.  As a coach Michael Bungay Stanier would find people wanting him to coach the other person or people, but for the coach:

‘The key thing to know is that you can only coach the person in front of you.’**

It took me back to something I stumbled on more by accident almost twenty years ago.

I’ve previously mentioned how I was going through a really tough time for which I could have blamed the system or certain people using and abusing it.  Instead, I decided to focus only on my own part in the situation, believing I could only work on what I was willing to take the blame for.  Perhaps from some belief that I shouldn’t blame others if I was going to make the most of a time of study, what I wandered into was the truth that I can’t control others – I can only make decisions for myself.

What I didn’t know then was how this would bring me to a place of peace, and to the beginning of an adventure.  Here are three “scriptures” which make a lot of sense to me as I read them together:

‘True storytellers do no know their own story.’*

‘People don’t need new facts – they need a new story.^

‘I wonder if real art comes when you build the thing that they don’t have a prize for yet.’^^

As I breathed deeply at the beginning of the day, feeling the breath move through my body, I realised I can only experience this for myself; I don’t know what this must feel like for someone else – their experience is unknown to me.

I can only help another reflect upon their own story, knowing that my own story changes for the better when someone helps me to reflect – we can even come to use the negatives someone directs towards us to improve our story.

The best though, if I might borrow the words of Walter Brueggemann is to offer ‘passion and compassion that completely and irresistibly undermine the world of competence and competition.’*^

I don’t know if the people who’d wanted to control me moved into their own adventure – I hope they did, but I do know that taking control of our own life allows us to move into surprise and unpredictability, serendipity and synchronicity.

(*From James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.)
(**From Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit.)
(^From Blake Mycoskie’s Start Something That Matters.)
(^^From Seth Godin’s Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?)
(*^From Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination.)

There’s nothing quite like getting another chance.  Just when we thought we’d messed up so badly that we’d completely blown it.

We need to remember, though, that life is drama rather than theatre; it is unscripted, unfolding.  We can always write the next sweep of story.

The key is to go deep, kindly:

‘Focus on the real problem, not the first problem.’*

Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne write about the difference between red ocean and blue ocean strategies.  The red gets nasty when we engage in a small, competitive ocean of scarcity; this is theatre-thinking – we think we know how things work and what will happen.  The blue is about opening ourselves to the new possibilities no one else is thinking about or imagining – this is a dramatic story of who knows what will happen next.**

When it comes to the things we’ve got wrong, we think it’s going to be red ocean – getting bloody and very messy, so we avoid facing our wrongs and mistakes like the plague.

The blue way, however, promises that if we go deep, kindly, then we’ll see things differently, we’ll grow wiser, and we’ll find new possibilities because the universe can be about abundance we can share with others.

Our choice.

(*From Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit.)
(**From Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.)

What does it mean to you to be human?

There are as many answers to this question as there are humans.  It’s a real question, and our answers will show just how fond, or not, we are of facing searching questions.

If it were a fake question, it would be telling you how you ought to be human.  It’s only asking for your best imagination and hope – fake questions offer advice in the form of a question.

Another kind of of fake question is the switched kind, like, Who has most inspired you? or, to switch the switch, Who would you not want to be like? – they are  less-demanding than the answers to the real questions.

Fake questions allow us to absence ourselves from the deep work, covering up the real issues even more – closing down minds, hearts, and wills.

Real questions help us to get to the source, not to a symptom – being deeper than we imagine, they make it possible to journey closer to knowing what we are capable of – whatever that might be.

‘When people start talking to you about the challenge at hand, what’s essential to remember is what they’re laying out for you is rarely the actual problem.’*

‘People don’t need new facts – they need a new story.’**

(*From Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit.)
(**From Blake Mycoskie’s Start Something That Matters.)

There are times when questions are not servants.

When they’re after the answers the questioner wants to hear.

When they want to prove you’re wrong, or stupid, or unfit.

“And the point is to live everything.  Live the questions now.”*

Quick answers, easy answers, predictable answers, steal from us the exploring of possibilities.

Great questions are beautiful in their form.  Michael Bungay Stanier offers “And what else?” as a question that can be asked several times to go deeper:

‘More recent studies have found that follow-up questions that promote higher-level thinking (like “And what else?”) help deepen understanding and promote participation.’**

Another example is, “Why is that important to you?”  A simple question that can be asked several times.  Krista Tippett holds that a beautiful question elicits a beautiful answer, and a generous question elicits a generous answer.

Servant-questions desire the best for others, trying to help people across the boundaries preventing them reaching their future Self.  We live, though, in a culture that goes for quick answers, running too quickly for structure.  Questions prolong the mess, yet the mess is where some of the most beautiful of future possibilities can appear.

“I’m a firm believer in the chaotic nature of the creative process needing to be chaotic.  If we put too much structure on it, we kill it.”^

(*Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)
(**From Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit.)
(^Pixar producer Lindsey Collins, quoted in Creativity, Inc..)

Humans move into the unknown one life at a time, each person being capable of uncovering something new, something we didn’t know before, somehow making the invisible visible.

No matter how far we’ve journeyed – and we’ve come a very long way, there remains more that is unknown than is known.

Some move forward as if they know what they are moving into, but in reality, the unknown requires we make endless course corrections.  Something then begins to happen.  It’s as though the future is telling us what wants to happen.

‘[T]here is a sweet spot between the known and the unknown where originality happens; the key is to be able to linger there without panicking.’*

“The most important thing about art is to work.  Nothing else matters except sitting down each day and trying.”**

We do not go blindly into the great unknown; we each carry a curiosity for something – call it our art – which we pursue in the form of questions – open questions, not closed ones, and not one but many.

When we relax and go with the flow, more opens up.

Which also brings failure and the need to start over, so we need to be kind to ourselves.

And we need to believe that what is unknown, will reveal itself when it wants to, to the people it wants to reveal itself to.  To those who humbly ask, knock, and seek; not to those who demand, not to the violent.

To people like you.

‘We are partners in the unfolding of the universe.’^

(*From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(**Steven Pressfield, quoted in Chris Guillebeau’s The Happiness of Pursuit.)
(^From Joseph Jaworski’s Source.)

‘How can we reconcile these two facts – that we hate randomness, and yet need it to succeed?’*

‘An infinite player does no consume time but generates it.’**

‘Ask the question.  (And then shut up and listen to the answer.)’^

In this universe of randomness, passion is our guide, claims Frans Johansson.  If we’ve identified what most energises us, we know our passion will never lose its way.

Passion also does something strange with time.  It can feel like time is standing still.  We seem to move faster and get more done.  When passion is not involved, though, time can drag and we get less done than we wanted to.  We even say, we’ll make time for the things we love.

Questions are always better than advice, and one question is never enough.  Questions are the best way of drawing out from someone the advice that already exists within them.

When we begin to grasp the power of passion and time and questions, and turn these into daily practices, we find ourselves being reborn into complexity and perplexity and harmony – a universe that is complex and random in the extreme, yet beautifully and amazingly holds together to make life flourish.

‘By practice, we mean doable habits or rhythms that transform us, rewiring our brains, restoring our inner ecology, renovating our inner architecture, expanding our capacity. We mean actions without our power that help us become capable of things beyond our power.’^^

(*From Frans Johansson’s The Click Moment.)
(**From James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.)
(^From Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit.)
(^^From Brian McLaren’s Naked Spirituality.)

[I]n Japanese Zen, [the] idea of not being constrained by what we already know is called “beginner’s mind.”  And people practice for years to recapture and keep ahold of it.’*

Brian McLaren frames life in terms of four seasons: simplicity, complexity, perplexity, and harmony,** so I thought to use these as a way of exploring our universe of randomness.

Simplicity believes, once we have learned or experienced something, that’s it – but complexity challenges us to see that this way of seeing and understanding cannot help us navigate an ever-opening universe.  Our openness is critical.

In perplexity, we understand things to be far more complex than we’d thought; life is absolutely random.  But there are more skills we can learn, helping us to interact with randomness as in a dance.  Here we find some of the richest possibilities – for ourselves, one another, and our world.  Whilst complexity corresponds to Nassim Taleb’s Mediocristan, perplexity is Extremistan.^

Harmony lies beyond perplexity, where we identify something rich and significant for us, worth investing ourselves in for others.

If, at the end of it all, we’re still absolute beginner, we’ll have made some of the greatest contribution we could possibly have made.

(*From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(**From Brian McLaren’s Naked Spirituality.)
(^See Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan.)

Disguises are what we wear to hide our true identity from others, for all manner of reasons.  But possibilities also come in disguise.

Surprises are the many possibilities the universe throws in our direction, what we miss if we’re only focused on certain things or the same things or the wrong things.  Surprises can also come in disguises.

‘[W]e are what we pay attention to.’*

‘If we are looking for something specific, we set aside anomalies and stay focused.’**

Triggers are the things which cause us to behave in certain ways – positively or negatively: “Why do we feel guarded or suspicious when we’re with this person?” or “Why do I feel elated when I’ve been doing this task?”  Triggers often surprise us, because they were disguises.  (We don’t usually notice what’s on our mind.)

The world needs us to turn up without disguise, bringing our beautiful art, whether this is thinking, relating, or doing.

Turning our attention to surprises can lead us into new dimensions of life and the contribution we can make.  We need to surprise ourselves by using different ways of asking questions or being curious, or watching and listening.

Recognising triggers can help us create more positive trigger-times, and replace or manage negative triggers with positive ones.

Throwing off our disguises, following surprises and being mindful of triggers, make it possible to enter into a beautiful place of possibility:

“Synchronicity is being open to what wants to happen.”^

“Possibilities can be disguised.  They can be blurred, and the most important thing – they flicker.”^^

(*From Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit.)
(**From Frans Johansson’s The Click Moment.)
(^David Morsing, quoted in Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski, Otto Scharmer, and Betty Sue Flowers’s Presence.)
(^^Former Ecuadorian President Jamil Mahuad, quoted in Frans Johansson’s The Click Moment.)