‘But the differences between directing a five-minute short and directing an 85-minutes feature are many.  Doing the former is merely a baby step on the road to the latter, not the intermediate step we thought it was’*

I was talking with someone yesterday about writing; they told me how writing a novel is very different to writing a short story.  This seems to be what Ed Catmull is saying about making Pixar’s animations, above.

My experience is that it’s very difficult to “write” a great short story, when this is about living out our purpose with a daily purpose, focus, and clarity.

These daily stories still need a “spine,” or narrative arc, but they’re rarely about making mighty leaps, offering the opportunity to make what Frans Johansson names purposeful small bets, chosen because of their affordable loss, rather than return on investment.**

These small “bets” aren’t going to ruin us but afford us the opportunity to try and fail and learn – another term for which is deep practice.

Then there’s passion.

Much of what I’m about is helping people to identify their talents, key experiences, and passion.  Passion is the all-important motivation which keeps us going through hundreds and hundreds of hours of practice.  All short stories need to be filled with passion.  Johansson encourages us to ‘use passion as fuel to get past the inevitable failures.’**

(*From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(**From Frans Johansson’s The Click Moment.)

‘As soon as you try something new, you’ll get resistance.’*

‘[L]iving for something can be mundane – and therefore far more sacrificial, because seldom does anyone else notice.  You just go on living, beating the drum for the thing you’ve chosen to value above all else.  Genuinely living for something, day after day, is much more valuable than looking for a blaze of glory at the end.’**

Chris Guillebeau writes about how, as a young person in church, he’d sit through some high-octane delivery finishing with some variant of the question, “What’s worth dying for?”  He’s come to the conclusion that a better question is, “What’s worth living for?’

This is a more difficult question.  When we’ve decided what we want to live for, we’ll need to make some changes, and change brings resistance, from without, and most of all, from within.

Walter Brueggemann claims there’s nothing more upsetting to a regime of order than passion.  What if the prime regime of order is our own life, towards which we’ve made a number of tradeoffs?

‘The gift of freedom was taken over by the yearning for order.  The human agenda of justice was utilised for security. … And in place of passion comes satisfaction.’^

Personal order, personal security, personal satisfaction, but we long for more.

When we begin to open ourselves to there being more, that there is something we want our lives to stand for, we meet the resistance.

First comes judgement: Who are you to think you can do that?  Isn’t that someone else’s responsibility?  You’ll never make it.

Then comes cynicism: Who cares?  The world won’t get any better?  Shouldn’t you think about yourself firstly and foremostly?

Finally comes fear: This could ruin me.  I’ll be the laughing stock.  What will happen to me.

We need to figure ways of taking on the resistance on an everyday basis, to grow the newly found passion before it evaporates.  Frans Johansson asks What is the smallest executable step?^^  Pixar’s Ed Catmull talks about short experiments.*^  These allow us to try, fail, and learn.  Invaluable.

When I look back on my own journey, I realise this is how I’ve made progress to be.  Not some seamless leap.  But many small steps, sometimes stumbling, sometimes progressing, but over a long period, a journey of possibility results.

Everyday provides us with many opportunities to try out our passion in small executable steps and short experiments.  We don’t know what might emerge from these, but something will, and everyone can do it.

‘Remember this the next time you moan about the hand your dealt.  No matter how limited your resources, they’re enough to get you started.’^*

(*From Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit.)
(**From Chris Guillebeau’s The Happiness of Pursuit.)
(^From Walter Brueggeman’s The Prophetic Imagination.)
(^^From Frans Johansson’s The Click Moment.)
(*^From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(^*From Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit.)

When the complexity of the whole is fully evidenced in the part.

Knowing this helps us to bring our art into the world.

Whether this is about an idea, relationship, artefact, or action, it can be imbued with the whole, no matter how small.

Even this blog post is smaller than intended because it completely vanished from my website.  Disappointing, but I guess that’s okay, because the big truth evidenced in the smaller blog, is that we don’t have to wait to be able to do something big to begin.  We only need do lots and lots of small things.

Press “Publish”

‘There is a concept in psychology called risk homeostasis.  It refers to the idea that humans have a degree of risk they find acceptable and strive to live their lives at that level.’*

‘Organisations around the world are recognising that either they can expand their thinking to match the real system they belong to or they can artificially shrink the system they are managing to match their thinking.’**

What if one way of defining happiness is being open to more, present to more, and realising more?

If you were then to identify your happiest time in life, would this be some point in the past?  Or right now?  And, depending on your answer, is the future positive or negative for you?

It has been said that we are not so much concerned with the meaning of life, but wanting to know if we’re alive.

In the West we’ve developed stable and less risky environments, but these appear to have come at some cost.  Stability becomes a disadvantage when leaves us wondering if we’re alive.

The first quote, above, is Frans Johansson’s auditing of the way people are willing to take more risks when the degree of safety goes up – like pushing cars harder when we know ABS is fitted.  There appears to be something about being human that needs to risk.

The second quote comes from Peter Senge, and makes a lot of sense for the individual as well as the organisation.  We’re asking questions about what is real, about the stories we tell ourselves, and are these the only way of understanding life in this world.

We’re reworking our imaginations, dreaming more, opening up possibilities, exploring reality, and risking from a strong place within – integrity leading to wholeness, wholeness leading to perseverance, perseverance leading to integrity – the cycle of the revolutionary life.

(*From Frans Johansson’s The Click Moment.)
(**From Peter Senge’s The Necessary Revolution.)

What is the song you sing deep within?

Where does the journey of the song take you?

What’s the refrain you repeat to ensure you never lose the purpose of your song?

How does it differ to the songs of others (twelve notes, yet so many possibilities)?

When and where does it complement the songs others around you sing?

Who are the people with whom you share “choir moments” and make something bigger happen?

‘Presence is about observation, presencing, and realising.’*

Notice it, feel it, sing it.

Once you begin singing, you never know where the song will lead you.

(*From Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski, Otto Scharmer, and Betty Sue Flowers’s Presence.)

‘Research trips challenge our preconceived notions, and keep cliches at bay.  They fuel inspiration.  They are what keeps us creating rather than copying.’*

There’s nothing new under the sun.  No-one has yet figure out how to do ex nihilo work; everything new begins with things that already exists.

And yet, we come up with some astonishingly amazing things, so much so that we properly wonder when we’ll reach the limits of human innovation and creativity.

When we’re prepared to leave behind the predictable and the familiar, the truth of this becomes more and more apparent.  The unpredictable is mind-blowing, but not impossible – new ideas, imaginative ways of relating and working with people, different ways of behaving.

Best of all, the things we need to guide us are already within us.

Our openness is critically important.  Staying open takes huge amounts of energy.  It’s why the easier option is to do what everyone else is doing, participate in the groups everyone else is in, and reiterate the predictable ideas.  What e’re about is bypassing the divergent, avoiding the emergent, and going straight to what we predict to be the convergent.

So, what do I love in all of this?  In my work with people exploring their passions, talents, and experiences, it’s coming upon their unpredictable paths.

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

‘In this special silence, you can hear or see, or get a strong sense of something that want to happen that you wouldn’t be aware of otherwise.’*

Who hear the cries of silence?

As we grow older we grow less curious.  It’s something we learn, and we can unlearn it, says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and offers the follow steps:

‘So the first step toward a more creative life is the cultivation of curiosity and interest, that is, the allocation of attention to things for their own sake. … Try to be surprised by something every day. …Try to surprise one person every day. … Write down each day what surprised you and how you surprised others. … When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it.’**

Curiosity is our guide out of the world of measurement and into the universe of possibility.^

We each have our own curiosity; I’m curious to know what yours is.^^

‘If you learnt to listen to your curiosity, you will find that you become curious about those things that are different and new.’*^

Walter Brueggemann makes a curious remark when he proffers, ‘Prophecy cannot be separated very long from doxology, or it will either wither or become ideology.’^*  Which I take to mean, those who hear the cries of silence must translate their openness and presence to what can be turned into a song they sing each day, ever new and ever alive, moving them deeper into the mystery.

(*From Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski, Otto Scharmer, and Betty Sue Flower’s Presence.)
(**See Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity.)
(^So would say Roz and Ben Zander in The Art of Possibility.)
(^^My curiosity is to know what yours is and to help you pursue it.)
(*^From Frans Johansson’s The Click Moment.)
(^*From Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination.)

Life on earth can be really difficult at times, which is when we most need the most imaginative ways to bring hope and possibility.

Human imagination is an amazing thing.  We’re able to bring together thinking and ideas from all kinds of places, people, and times, and makes something utterly different.

Frans Johansson writes about intersectional thinking, when we’re able to mix up ideas, visit different places, explore unfamiliar sources, meet new people who are different to us:

‘Can you make your environment more collision prone?’*

We see some practical examples of this in Theory U’s empathy walks (allowing us to step inside the experiences of another), stakeholder interviews (allowing people to more deeply explore the relationships they already have), and field trips (which allow people to visit a business, community, or some work of interest to them – ideally for at least a day).**

Collisions equal exposure to new thoughts and ideas.^  Off the peg just won’t make for a better future.

‘You’ll never stumble on the unexpected if you stick only to the familiar.’^^

Tribal Leadership authors Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright argue that tribes are how we live – societies being made up of many, many tribes.  Basically these exhibit five kinds of “tribeness.”

The first tribe claims “Life sucks” – they can’t see much good in life (these people are mostly in prisons and gangs).  Then there’re those who claim “My life sucks” – the corollary being that the lives of others don’t.  After this there are those who hold that “My life is great” – the following corollary then is, “But yours isn’t.”  In the fourth tribe people begin to say “We’re great” – though there’s still a corollary, now “The tribe over there isn’t great.”  The fifth tribe, though, have found a way of connecting both within and without their group to be able to say “Life is great” – they’re ready to tackle the big enemies facing the world: poverty, illiteracy, disease, environmental concerns.*^

New encounters and new experiences lead to new language which comes with: ‘the distinctive power, the capacity to speak in ways that evoke newness’^*  Language is important because its the vehicle by which we move relationships and ideas forward.

By this time, we’re becoming infinite players:

‘Every move an infinite player makes is toward the horizon.  Every move made by a finite player is within a boundary.’`*

I’ll never reach the horizon; it always is out there, calling me.  If I keep moving towards it, I’ll eventually return to where I began and know it differently – in a larger way.  Though the aim is not to return, but to keep journeying:  wherever I am, I can rotate 360 degrees and look upon a different horizon at any point.

“What people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question.”`^

Our curiosity leads us.  Questions provide us with purchase we need to push forward.  Questions that open our minds, open our hearts, and then open our wills. Big, open, beautiful questions.`*^

(*From Frans Johansson’s The Click Moment.  I use the acronym of TEESA to keep before me the need to read around technology, environment, entrepreneurship, society, and arts.)
(**See Otto Scharmer’s Theory U.)
(^Perhaps a different lens through which to reflect on the UK’s stay in or leave the European Union on grounds of migration?  Instead of seeing migration as being the problem, what if we could use migration to find the imaginative solutions to why people are dispersed around the world?)
(^^From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(*^See Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright’s Tribal Leadership.)
(^*From Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination.)
(`*From James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.)
(`^Jonas Salk, quoted in Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit.)
(`*^In her Udemy course, Krista Tippett claims that to ask a beautiful question elects a beautiful answer, a generous question elicits a generous answer.)

On a good day: When we’re inspired by someone else’s work to begin something new.*

On a bad day: When there’s been nothing original in the work we’ve been doing for way too long.

Like those flipping-frogs out of a Christmas cracker?  Every year they’re in the crackers, and every year they’re less recognisable than the year before – and they don’t even flip.

What if we could derive from the future instead of from the past.

With imaginations provoked by what might be, we’d be able to create the present from the artefacts we’ve received from the past in new ways, without repeating.

First of all, we need to get unfocused.

Becoming too focused on something means we can miss the signals from the future.  I’m grateful to Nassim Taleb who introduced me to the idea of the flaneur (female: flaneusse): literally an idler, and, more specifically, someone who has slowed down their life to be able to see more.**  Doodling does this for me: from dawdling. I am able to slow down and wander down unfamiliar paths my reading introduces me to.

Frans Johansson writes about the need to sometimes “take our eye off the ball” to be able to make more “click moments” happen – when new possibilities become visible to us:

‘Unfortunately, by rigidly pouring all of our effort into one approach we miss out on the unexpected paths to success.’^

You don’t have to doodle, you can take mindful walks, or try a different way to work – every day for a year, or one new recipe every week, or scan Twitter for fascinatingly different news-feeds for 15 minutes a day, or create some other Chris Guillebeau-like quest,^^ just to stir things up, to see things differently.*^

You can follow on from this by finding a group, or groups, of people who help you to see and experience things differently.  Other people help us to see the world differently.  To see something through the eyes of another may be one of the most transformative of human experiences available to us.^*

‘What do we mean by empathy in terms of creativity and innovation?  For us, it’s the ability to see an experience through another person’s eyes, to recognise why people do what they do.’`*

The future opens more when we get off track – there are more means than there are people, and we begin looking together – more dreamt than derived.

We see more clearly.

(*I’ve been inspired by and am grateful to Seth Godin for his blogging/writing, and Hugh Macleod for his cartooning.  Between them, they got me blogging every day as long as I could include a doodle.  I can’t write like Seth, though, nor doodle like Hugh, and I must develop my own style.)
(**See Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan.)
(^From Frans Johansson’s The Click Moment.)
(^^See Chris Guileebeau’s The Happiness of Pursuit.)
(*^To move beyond the derivative and predictable, Pixar encourages field trips for it’s people so they are able to get a better idea of how animals behave, or what a certain terrain can look and feel like, or how ratatouille is made in the kitchens of a Michelin rated restaurant – rather than sitting in a design studio assuming they know what’s needed to tell a story.  See Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(^* Yesterday, I heard a politician talking about how refugees must be stopped coming to Europe, and especially to the UK.  I wondered whether this person had met and listened to the story of a refugee.  This morning I listened to an interview from someone from a military background heading up a refugee charity, his heart breaking, telling the stories of refugee’s, speaking of how we’re all humans.
(`*From Bernadette Jiwa’s Difference.)

‘It was as if they had chosen a particular kind of life and then changed other circumstances to accommodate it.’*

“It all started with a dream, but then I followed that dream.  Following the dream made all the difference.”**

Sometimes I catch myself breathing tightly, usually because I’m concerned and anxious about something.  I need to relax my breathing, to be aware of it filling my whole body, my whole life: rigidity is my enemy.

Rigidity is not only about my breathing, but also the way I see and understand things.  What do I do when I become the obstacle to who I want to be and what I want to do?

”Rigidity – by which I mean the determination that one’s own view is the correct one – can be hard to recognise at first.’^

Rigidity makes me my own worst enemy.

When I relax, though, I hear the thin|silence, sometimes coming from without, sometimes from within – a greater reality, a more generous possibility.

‘The opposite of click moments are planned situations with expected outcomes.  On their own, these don’t generate the chaos and randomness needed to discover new, unique ideas.’^^

It is in the thin|silence – where I am most open-minded, open-hearted, and open-willed – that I find myself most hopeful.  When I am closed – another word for rigid? – the problem is yours, or the system’s, but not mine.  I am the system, though; I am the obstacle.

‘By reinforcing the separation of people from their problems, problem-solving often functions as a way of maintaining the status quo rather than enabling fundamental change … where problems often arise from unquestioned assumptions and deeply habitual ways of acting.’^^

When I deal with my rigidity, I find myself able to pursue my dream and do all that change stuff with my circumstances to accommodate it.

(*From Chris Guillebeau’s The Happiness of Pursuit.)
(**Musician Stephen Kellogg, quoted in Chris Guillebau’s The Happiness of Pursuit.)
(^From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(^^From Frans Johansson’s The Click Moment.)
(*^From Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski,, Otto Scharmer, and Betty Sue Flowers’s Presence.)