‘[T]he process of living itself, if you please, is a work of art, as a masterpiece of anybody’s life, holds the optimal strength and growth, and which in his life is the most important thing.’*

Every life contains a world of stories.  Stories lived and stories neglected, and potential stories too.

Though we may have chosen what we now think of as the wrong stories – the ones which satisfied us for a moment, or that pleased someone else – there are still more stories to choose from.   The alternative may be to live with a low-level discontent. It seeps into how we think about and talk to people, how we get up in the morning, the ideas we have and what we’re prepared to say yes to, and what we daydream about.

The right story allows us to “Enjoy now.”**  This word always reminds me of creativity and generosity, from which enjoyment is a product.  Erich Fromm identifies how people ‘want to live happily without know how to live happily’.*

But living happily is an art and we can all learn it.

‘In such a [well-being] culture the main purpose of life is the full development of man and not thing and not production, not wealth, not riches.’*

We know the achievement of these things, in and of themselves, doesn’t make us better human beings.  But to seek integrity, that is, an integrated life with ourselves, with others, and with our world, leads us to the stories we want to live, stories with courage and honour: works of art and masterpiece stories.

(*From Erich Fromm’s The Art of Listening.)
(*From Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project.)

‘But wouldn’t it be amazing if we could somehow encourage acts of greatness?  No order them, but create an environment where people feel they can embrace the superhero within and achieve great things.’*

Such environments would build on the best from our past and be stronger than the worst moments.

Spaces like this connect and reconnect us to our story: ‘the human mind was shaped for story, so that it could be shaped by story’.**

When we lost sight of our story, or we don’t believe we have one, we experience the “uneasiness” Erich Fromm observed in twentieth century Western society when he was speaking as a social psychologist, which we might also say, characterises ours:

‘No symptoms at all, but feeling unhappy, strange not even sleeplessness, life has no meaning, no zest for life, drifting, a feeling of vague malaise … people suffer from themselves … . Nobody who suffers from the malaise can be successfully analysed without a radical change and without  a transformation of character,’^

Richard Rohr would see our first attempts at creating our story as identifying our ego – in order that we might ‘let go of it and move beyond it’.^^  We’re not strong in our ego, though, but in our true Self.  Our ego has a victim part which Eckhart Tolle names the “painbody,” the part of us that wants to be offended, and, in extreme cases, wants to be offended in order to affirm its view of the world,*^ but, to go back to Rohr:

‘The True Self … is very hard to offend.’^^

We find ourselves in order to let go of ourselves by entering into the eco (from oikos, the whole house), into company (originally, those with whom we share bread).

Others not only help me to see what I’m doing badly and what I shouldn’t be doing, but, also, what I should be doing.

(*David Marquet in 99U’s Make Your Mark.)
(**From Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal.)
(^From Erich Fromm’s The Art of Listening.)
(^^From Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)

I met Rick briefly eleven years ago.  He’d made himself available to escort and look after Chip Anderson – the man who was to open my eyes to my talents and set me on a path to developing dreamwhispering.  Chip was living with cancer and Rick was going to make sure he was cared for throughout the day.

Erwin McManus writes of Rick Yamamoto:

‘He became living proof at individuals of great power can live under submission.’*

What I didn’t know about Rick at the time was that he was responsible for a two billion dollar investment company.

‘Humility gives us the mobility to adapt to whatever context we are placed within.’*

This is a story about developing human capacity.  The best stories, like myths, operate at the soul level: ‘not always true in particular but entirely true in general … they hold together the paradoxes that the rational mind cannot process by itself’.**  When we focus on the intelligence of the mind we can forget there’s an intelligence of the body and heart, too.   Together, these form the whole me or, as some would say, my soul.

Here is the power of story for our lives.  They provide a vessel for more than our minds and our ideas.

This morning, I had a choice of waiting for a little while for a bus or to walk on a number of stops to where I could look over the city where I live.  So, I walked on so I could enjoy looking over the city in the cold Spring sunshine, realising the wow I felt was not in my head but in my chest.

Stories help us to sense and make sense of the whole.

(*From Erwin McManus’s Uprising.)
(**From Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)

submission

səbˈmɪʃ(ə)n/

noun:
1. the action of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person.”they were forced into submission”

2. the action of a skillmaster who submits her mission to the fulfilment of the mission of another

Submission is a skill of heart and mind which, when sought and mastered, offers everything we are in service to another so their life mission can be achieved.

‘I would say that the demand for the perfect is the greatest enemy of the good.’*

What if good lies on the far side of perfection.  That life lies on the far side of an answer, in another question.

Dan Ariely points to how we label something once we believe we know it, how these labels become ‘anchors,” and how anchors influence our future decisions. In education, we use these anchors to teach children things they aren’t asking questions about.

Life isn’t so much about destinations or conclusions but in the ongoing interplay of the adventure of many things.  We are children asking many questions leading to greater creativity and more curiosity.  Warren Berger writes about children:

‘If they are permitted to do that research – to raise and explore their own questions, through forms of experimentation and without being burdened with instructions – they exhibit signs of more creativity and curiosity.’**

We let go of our anchors to move deeper into he adventure of goodness.

(*From Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)
(**From Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.)

‘It does not naturally occur to us that standing still – or in some cases, even going backward – might be the best way to advance.’*

Our talent helps us to rush forward so quickly that our character can struggle to keep pace.

To wait awhile, to even take a step backward to reflect and develop who we are becoming turns into a freeing experience as we journey into an adventure of universal proportions.

“Heroes Wanted for an epic quest to hack the universe.  Starting with Earth. Safe return doubtful.”**

Here is a cause for those who don’t worry about failing or losing or looking foolish.

When I’m not so much concerned with status, title, or position, I’m enabled to get things wrong, ask the stupid questions, and needing the help of others – all of which has an unexpected sense of freedom about it.  I’m reminded of Carol Dweck’s research^ which has shown that people who have a fixed mindset begin to protect their achievements, whilst those who know they can grow more are open to trying and failing and trying again.

We’re invited to ungrasp who we want to appear to be before others to let come an endless adventure.

(*From Ryan Holliday’s The Obstacle is the Way.)
(**From Alex McManus’s Makers of Fire.)
(^Carol Dweck’s Mindset.)

Impressionists are enjoyed for their ability to impersonate all kinds of celebrities.  I was brought up on Mike Yarwood who’d end his Saturday night show singing a song in various guises, finally saying “And this is me.”  I can’t remember anything he sang, although I do remember the one liners he created for his characters which they never said but he made us believe they did.

Impressionists in everyday life aren’t so enjoyable. As writer Rob Bell was told by his counsellor, “The world doesn’t need a second someone else, it needs the first you.”

Finding our own voice, to say “and this is me,” syncing us with our day, is not as straightforward as it sounds. We can end up sounding like our parents, our friends, our employers, but not ourselves.

And what if the people we try and copy are, or were, themselves copying someone else?  Pixar’s Ed Catmull tells of how he felt a fraud when he took up his first job in management at New York Tech, because he wasn’t aggressive and extremely confident like the other managers – he admits that he believed these to be the traits necessary for success.

But the fraud is the person who isn’t prepared to find their own voice and really change something with it.  Voice is about character as well as personality.

‘Integrity is formed in the heart of the humble.’*

Humility, not pride, allows us find our voices.   The quality of our voice will be determined by the extent to which we interact with new ideas and new people and new places.  When we close ourselves to others, we’re effectively saying, “You know nothing I need to know,”  “You are someone I do not care or need to connect with.”

The tragedy is that the isolated life becomes an inflexible life.  Unable to climb down or ask for help or learn new ways, it is a life stealing from itself the possibility of creatively employing talents and resources to find a voice the world wants to hear.

(*From Erwin McManus’s Uprising.)

‘Here was an invention that quantified the passage of time, that laid ruler and compass to the span of desire, that measured out exactly the moments of life.  It was magical, it was unbearable, it was outside natural law.  Yet the clock could bot be ignored.  It would have to be worshipped.’*

In another of his short stories about time, Alan Lightman imagines a world where pilgrims journey towards the “Great Clock,” each, in turn, taking one of twelve places around the clock and chanting in turn.

Stockmarkets open and close at precise times.  Time is money, we say.  We ask one another if we have time.

“Punctuality is the soul of business.”

“Preparedness and punctuality are two of the most important qualities of a leader.”

Time brings order, alignment, control.

It’s too easy to confuse control with freedom.

We think those who are in control are free to do what they want, but perhaps they find themselves trapped, having replaced the important for the urgent.

‘Every action, no matter how little, is no longer free.’*

Erich Fromm says psychoanalysis is “to know oneself.”**  The truth will set us free, he says.

To not know ourselves is not to be as free as we thought, or as in control.  But where is the time to “know oneself” when there’s so much to do?  How free are we to do ‘the right thing in the right way at the right time with the right spirit’?^  Something like this sounds more hopeful for the world – people who know how to move through time and with time wisely – not seeking to control only to find themselves controlled by it.

Perhaps Peter Senge would call such people animateurs:

‘An animateur (from the root animer) is someone who “brings to life” a new way of thinking, seeing, or interacting that creates focus and energy.’^^

(*From Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams.)
(**From Erich Fromm’s The Art of Listening.)
(^Alex McManus.)
(^^From Peter Senge’s The Necessary Revolution.)

‘[I]t is important to see the patient as the hero of a drama and not to see him as a summation of complexes.  And, actually, every human being is the hero of a drama. … Here is a person born with certain gifts, and usually he fails, and his life is a tremendous struggle to make something out of which he is horn with, firing against tremendous handicaps.’*

Everyone is potentially a large world to share with others.  It’s only selfishness or pride that causes this world to shrink, leaving it only large enough to support one person.  When we journey outwards, though, towards something beyond ourselves, the world that we are grows larger and we make other world flourish too.

Paradoxically, this is about valuing ourselves properly and finding our capacity to value others, too.  When we overvalue or undervalue ourselves, we struggle to value others.

”Wholeness is not found through receiving, but through giving.  This is why wholeness and generosity are inseparably linked.’**

Everyone lives an interesting life.

David Marquet writes about the “everyday superhero within,” asking how great it would be if we could ‘create an environment where people feel they can embrace the superhero within and achieve great things”^

These environments may be very simple – one person offering to another the opportunity to explore their dreams and talents.  Others are more complex – people finding each other and creating spaces for themselves and others to create and make their hero’s story.

Erich Fromm, whose words lead in today, sees rightly how this is a struggle, not glamorous, and Jonathan Gottschall highlights this further when he writes of things stories have in common: ‘if there is no knotty problem, there is no story.’^^

Here are four journeys of letting go and letting come for this big world or hero’s story living.  We must journey from consumption to contribution, from transaction to trust, from isolation to community, and from scarcity to abundance.*^

(*From Erich Fromm’s The Art of Listening.)
(**From Erwin McManus’s Uprising.)
(^David Marquet, from 99U’s Make Your Mark.)
(^^From Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal.)
(*^From Nipun Mehta’s TEDx talk Designing For Generosity.)

“If you don’t have that disposition to question, you’re going to fear change.  But if you’re comfortable questioning, experimenting, connecting things – then change is something that becomes an adventure.  And if you can see it as an adventure, then you’re off and running.”*

Rehearsing and practice are good; we all have to learn the basics.  But at some point we have to step outside of the classroom or “rehearsal studio” and produce our art.  This is a naked moment with nowhere to hide.  It’s a deeper form of questioning and experimentation.  It’s about iterating fast to see what flies and what doesn’t.

Learning and practicing is never the final goal; it’s always about what will happen with an idea, dream, hope, when it makes contact with people, when something new happens.

The daily habits and practices are always in the background, bringing us to where we need to be everyday, where we need to begin.  But every new twenty four hours is different because of the last twenty four hours of iteration.  Every day I am letting go and letting come.

“If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness.”**

(*John Seely Brown, quoted in Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.)
(**Jeff Bezos, quoted in Jim Clifton and Sangeeta Bharadwhaj Badal’s Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder.)