Fallow was okay for a while, but not for the rest of her life.

Taking it easy, recuperating, had been important after what she’d been through.  But now, it was becoming a way of life, a life without any future all was same old same old.

A new year and an attempt to make and keep some resolutions wasn’t working.  Only Day 9 and they were proving unengaging.

Fallow had become resistant to the new and the different as time had gone on.  

None of this is helped when we recognise, as a species, we’re loss-averse, even when, by our own admission, what we have isn’t that great.

Breaking open the fallow ground, to “do something with our lives,” is difficult … but not impossible.

Beneath the surface of our lives, lying dormant, are memories of dreams and hopes and aspirations we once held.  Recovering and reimagining these is a dangerously disruptive thing – like ploughing, breaking things open.

Moving closer towards them – as in reading, TEdtalks and events (and suchlike), and talking with others who can help us is a harrowing experience – as in, breaking down the rough ploughing into something ready for planting.

Then, when we do something, playfully and experimentally, it’s like sowing the future – here’s something capable of growing into a crop and harvest.

She had come a long way with her company of knowingll that we learn through this, prepares us for the new season, and more.

‘The primary battle of this century is with ourselves.  It is the battle between the self and the Self – between our existing habituated self and our emerging future Self, both individuals and collectively.’*

“When a great moment knocks at the door of your life,
it is no often louder than the beating of your heart,
and it is very easy to miss it.”**

Do you trust your self?

In telling the story of Pixar, Ed Catmull shares how, when he set out in his work to marry the computer to movies, it just seemed right to him to hire people smarter than himself, and for his team to share their work with a larger community trying to overcome big problems.

You have to have confidence in who your are to be able to do this, even that you’ll be grow and developing for a long timeon the cutting edge of whatever fascinates you most: this is our emerging or future Self, the person we are growing every day.

The name I give to this confidence is humility.  To know who we are and the path we must take.

This kind of humility is about loving ourselves, and when we love ourselves, then we can hear and trust ourselves – including what catches our attention and how we move towards this.

We cannot learn these things unless we’re willing to step out and be vulnerable with our dreams and skills and futures: practices in trusting ourselves and others, and get a feel for issues and situations: which gives us information, which we gleam for knowledge, and live as wisdom.

(These days, we’re even learning to trust crowds of people we’ve never met to shape the path we walk to produce our art.)

Choreographer Twyla Tharp tells the story of one of her projects being heavily criticised by the press because of a failing first act, and how she had to trust herself to be the person she was learning through her life to become:

‘My support came from my routine, my sustenance from my rituals of self-reliance.’^

(*From Otto Scharmer’s Leading From the Emerging Future.)
(**Boris Pasternak, quoted in The Northumbria Community’s Morning Prayer for 8 January 2016)
(^From Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit.)

“Without us here to witness, the universe is just pointless physics unfolding.”*

“I think we need to be training people on how to change the world. … We need to have more ambitious goals.  The world has enough resources for a good quality of life for everyone.”**

‘To pull it off, we’d have to be creative not only technically but also in the ways that we worked together.’^

Here we are, making sense of the physics which begat chemistry which begat biology which begat consciousness which begat love and ideas and technology.

We have learnt that this happens best in supportive and challenging environments: bold tribes working towards *big hairy audacious goals” (bhags).^^

What is it that you see and nobody else wants to tackle?

It’s not important that you’re unable to do this alone, what matters is that you can do this with others.

I’m a member of a number of tribes in my city who are trying to change the world, in some way or other trying to enable people to be world-changers, taking small steps.  These people are being changed themselves, even as they each towards the future possibilities that have taken hold of them, and that, somehow, they must make happen – change which make me think, this works.

What is it that you see and nobody else wants to tackle?

Use the old and new technologies and you’ll find others to join with you.  If you’re struggling to get started, connect with us and we’ll support you in starting something.

‘Yes, the cards are unfairly stacked against too many people.  Yes, there are too many barriers and not enough support.  But no, your ability to create and contribute isn’t determined at birth.  It’s a choice.’*^

(*The character Cormac Wallace in Daniel Wilson’s Robogenesis.)
(**Larry Page, quote in Peter Diamonds and Steven Kotler’s Bold.)
(**From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(^^A term coined by Jim Collins in Good to Great.  A University of Michigan summer school attended by Larry Page held, “Have a healthy disregard for the impossible.)
(*^From Seth Godin’s Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?)

Every morning, I get to begin the day with excitement and trepidation.

Here again, is the possibility and responsibility of pursuing and developing my curiosities.  From ideas into happenings.

It is the same for you, though your curiosity is different to mine.

This has been honed in both of us over many years, through taking notice of many things, and homing in on some of these.  For some reason, these have called for your attention over everything else.

So, you move in closer and one thing leads to another.

One person leads to another person.

One experiment to another.

Before you know it, you’re waking with the excitement and fear of what following this trail will mean through another day.

It’s a big, wide, open perspective on life – because you’ve been discovering, there’s no end to your outer and inner worlds:

‘To follow your gift is a calling to a wonderful adventure of discovery.  Some of the deepest longings in you is the voice of your gift..  The gift calls you to embrace it, not to be afraid of it.’*

Peter Senge proffers that love is committing ‘to another’s completion, to another being all that she or he can and wants to be.’**

I need to ask, because of this connecting of lives and curiosities and possibilities, is this what it means to be Human?  An eco-adventure.^

We must trust the longing which calls to us from the deepest part of our being.  Far from being the least trustworthy voice in our lives, it may be the truest – coming from the most developed and connected part of us – where we’ve been connecting to others, our world, and our selves, knowing we have enough to begin.^^

How this is happening in every person is a beautiful thing.

(*From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)
(**From Peter Senge’s The Necessary Revolution.)
(^From oikos, meaning, the whole house.)
(^^Here’s some astute insight from Seth Godin to go with this.)

Give us half a chance and every one of us has a roaming imagination:

‘We belong on the earth.  The rhythm of the clay and its seasons sing within your heart. … Even though your body is always bound to one place, your mind is a relentless voyager.’*

‘When it comes to creative inspiration, job titles and hierarchy are meaningless.’**

There are places to work which recognise the reality of Human imagination, places in which engagement and creativity increase exponentially.

There are also places where the message is, “All we want you to do is this one thing, unquestionably – it’s what we pay you for.”

When people are not valued for who they are and what they bring, they are de-energised and disengage.  The reverse of this sees connection being formed – we’re in this together:

‘Connection is the energy that is created between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued, when they give and receive without judgement.’^

Martin Seligman goes as far as to say, out of his research, helping another person ‘produces the single most reliable momentary increase in wellbeing of any exercise we have tested.’^^

No-one needs permission to help and support another, every day being an opportunity to flex imagination: subversive alacrity.

(*From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)
(**From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(^From Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly.)
(^^From Martin Seligman’s Flourish.)

‘The motto of the alchemists was Solve et coagulate, which means “separate and bring together.”*

‘I believe, to my core, that everybody has the potential tone creative – whatever form that creativity takes – and that to encourage such development is a noble thing.  More interesting to me, are the blocks that get in the way, often without us noticing, and hinder the creativity within any thriving company.’**

When there’s difference without love, more often than not, one side demands that the other complies, or both sides accept less.

Either way, we lose greater creativity.

We each must know how we are different and learn how to bring this to the difference of others, if some magic is going to happen.

We can often find ourselves in a world where no one steps out in their creativity for fear of dominating or causing a ruckus.  We’ve become used to everything being “okay.”  Then someone dares to share their idea and spoils it because things often become worse.

What we can often be unaware of is how we are clumsily expressing their differences, and how, if we better understand ourselves and others better, we could move forward into something quite astonishing to behold – we don’t have to step back into everyone being blandly uncreative but getting on.

Catmull points to uncertainty, instability, lack of candour, and the things we can’t see as being the issues we must overcome.  This is the world we find ourselves inhabiting; we can’t see how there can be a better place.

To keep moving forward, we must daring to separate so we can see our remarkable differences, and then bring these together with the differences of others and work some real magic.

(*From Paulo Coelho’s Aleph.)
(**From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)

One way of approaching the new year is that we are each writing a story.

Within the greater story of the universe, we can pursue this as a tale of enlightenment – of knowing and being known.

There’ll be good things along the way, but we’re not pursuing good.  Good hides remarkable.  There are greater things we can shape and be engaged in.  And problems and obstacles will be the most important elements; here’s something to open this thought up from Pixar’s co-founder Ed Catmull:

‘What makes Pixar special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work hard to uncover these problems, even if doing so we make ourselves uncomfortable, and that we come across a problem, we marshal all our energies to solve it.’*

Over the five years of making the first all computer generated animation Toy Story, Disney offered good ideas for solving problems such as including songs – something that had worked for Disney.  But Pixar resisted the good, eventually triumphing with a throughly engaging story.

Ed Catmull and team appeared to have done “it,” but this didn’t satisfy Catmull.

The story for Catmull was not about creating story after story using the new technologies, but to build a sustainable creative culture.

Over the holidays, I’ve been communicating with someone who’s frustrated and wanting to make some changes; I think they’re beginning to write a story,  There’ll be temptations to settle for something good but less, but beyond these lies a world of deep imagination and creativity:

‘Longing is the deepest and most ancient voice in the human soul.  It is the secret source of all presence and the driving force of all creativity and imagination: longing keeps the door open and calls toward us the gifts and blessings of which our lives dream.’**

(*From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(**From John O’Donahue’s Eternal Echoes.)

“True wisdom consists in respecting the simple things we do, for they can take us where we need to go.”*

As I first write these words down, today, I am using a journal and fountain pen.  I relish the warmth of the room, the yellowness of the artificial light I read and write by, the way I’m seated, the movement of my pen, and the scratch of the nib on paper; I breathe deeply, and notice the fullness of this moment, feeling alive in it.

John O’Donohue reminds me, life is found in us noticing and accepting who we are.  Just as I noticed the moment of writing and finding it to be full and rich alive, so too noticing who I am and what I have and to know this is enough.  The same is true for you:

‘It is wonderful to behold a person who inhabits their own dignity.  The human body is its own language.’**

(*Paulo Coelho’s interpreter Yau, from Aleph.)
(**From John O’Donahue’s Eternal Echoes.)

It’s difficult to be present when we’re in a hurry.

There’s an acute state of hurry – when we choose to hurry – and there’s a chronic state – when we’re in a constant state of hurry, but don’t notice that we are.

There’s no time to stop and reflect in a state of chronic hurry, even when we’ve stopped.

In a this state of hurry, we feel we have to be somewhere else – maybe the past- we’re running late on things, maybe the future – we have too much to do and deal with – but it’s difficult to be here.

When we hurry, we miss things, or we miss things out, and something breaks.  It’s the reason why yoga and mindfulness are becoming so popular, because we’re realising we need to find some way of slowing ourselves down to be more present to our lives and those of others.

Presence isn’t the goal, though.

The goal is to be able to bring our greater contribution of art into the world, which presence makes more possible.

All of this reminded me of when I didn’t have time for any reflection, when I found myself in a time of confinement.  If we don’t choose it, life has a way of finding a way of forcing this upon us.  I was burned out, but, out of the confinement, I emerged with a new energy and purpose.  Ever since, I’ve been including a smaller time of confinement in every day.

A new year is offering itself to each of us, the opportunity for an adventure is within the grasp of each of us; you may already be experiencing the resistance you must overcome at the threshold.  I include a ten minute exercise, below, which isn’t about hurting reflection but about confinement.*

I began 2015 with the following words; they’re worth repeating because they’re exactly where we are:

‘The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky, yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades.’**

Imagine where 366 days will take you when engaged with energy and purpose.

(*If you can gift yourself ten minutes today, then here’s something you can try (the ten minutes aren’t about hurry but confinement).  Take a notebook and pen, set a timer to ten minutes, then just write in response to: “A day in my life looks like …” and just write out what your day involves; “But what I want to include in my life is …” and write down everything which comes to mind; “Some small things I can begin to do towards this might be …” and put down everything which presents itself.  When the timer goes off, stop.  Do the same tomorrow, mindful of how, if you include the small changes, the responses to each of the prompts, above, will be different.
(**From Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces.)

What if we could shape the new year so that it would be meaningful in new and imaginative ways?

‘In the beginning was the dream. … Before anything ever was it had to be dreamed.  Everything had its beginning in possibility.  Every single thing is somehow the expression and incarnation of a thought.  If a thing had never been thought it could never be.’*

Some of this has been created because of how you’ve lived through the last twelve months, but some of it has been suppressed.

Each of us has a generative heart, imaginative and innovative centres, the outer limits of which we don’t fully know yet – they could be inexhaustible.

When we open our minds to the possibilities, suspending our ways of seeing and understanding, we will see more, including more possibilities which we are uniquely talented to realise.

Opening our lives to more is not about us but others:

‘One of [Chip’s] extraordinary talents was seeing the best in people.  He spent his whole life calling out greatness in others and applauding it, even when he saw it expressed in the smallest of ways.’**

I met Chip almost eleven years ago and mentioned him in my post this day last year.  Chip was as Erwin McManus described him – I met him for only one day but Chip’s investment in me literally changed my life.

This is what I want to fill my new year with: I’ll follow in Chip’s footsteps.

(*From John O’Donahue’s Eternal Echoes.)
(**From Erwin McManus’s Soul Cravings.)