Because lines are important to Humans.  We intuitively look for the edges and seek out patterns.  One organisation found that even a vertical line protruding from a wall by a few inches helped its teams to focus on the task better.

Even if we’re given a blank sheet of paper to fill, the paper has edges – do we go landscape or portrait, do we write on it or sculpt it?  Even if we talk about thinking “outside the box”, the box is the reference point.

I’m going to be speaking at an event next month: for how long, who’ll be there, is there a basic shape?

We can still be free to do that thing we do, even with limitations and constraints, because we’re thinking about how to work freely around those lines we wouldn’t necessarily have chosen for ourselves.  If you want to make your art without any deference to the lines, you’re free to do this, but probably no one will want it.

The key is the way we think about these.  We had nothing to do with the time or geography of our birth, or the technology and ways of thinking which come with these, but these are we accept and live and work with and seek to be creative with.  Lines are just the starting point.  It’s up to you and the thing you do to be creative hereon in.  It’s the way you see things and think about things that determine where your greatest freedoms are to be found.  And when you do this, you’ll possibly find yourself pointing out how the real constraints and limitations aren’t the ones everyone else sees.

The last freedom which can be taken from us, according to Nazi concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl, is the freedom  ‘to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.’

When we understand this, limitations and constraints become the very things by which we flourish.  We are able to take what the past has given to us, and we do something astonishingly different with it.

What do you want to change?

Where will this change come from?

Some believe change has to come from outside , or even has to be imposed, because people aren’t strong enough to bring about change themselves.  The problem is, external or imposed change runs the high risk of bringing about conformity – which wipes out creativity – or it produces resistance or defiance.

For five years, I had a role with the mandate to come alongside organisations wanting to do things differently.  I found that whilst they often wanted to be told what to do, they then, unconsciously, took a position of resistance to any suggestion.

So maybe change begins with curiosity and questioning – beginning with our inner worlds?  Where does the anxiety we feel come from?  Wherefore the itch to do something different?  Why our reaction to “that kind of person”?  Until we understand these things, we cannot be free – the thing we’re trying to move into (autonomy).

Part of this inner journey towards change will bring us face-to-face with our limitations … so we might accept and even embrace them.  It might sound like the thing you want to avoid but this makes for significant change and freedom to do the thing we love to do.  If I look more closely at the roles I’d been trying to fulfil – and am now am very happy to admit I failed in – I realise they required skills I had not developed, but,more, I wasn’t really interested in developing these skills.  Once I saw this, I could better see the skills I do have and, developing these, I’m more fulfilled and satisfied in my work than I can ever remember.

Lots of words begin to line up when we go to our inner world, embrace our limitations (stopping doing the things which de-energise us so we can do the things which do energise us): freedom, flow, wellbeing.

Another way of saying it is, listen to what your life is saying to you.

A big word used by clinical psychologist Suzanne Segerstrom, meaning Human flourishing, or ‘being your very best self.’

But not the word I want to focus on today (I’ve scribbled it into my notebook of words I’ve not come across before and probably won’t use, entitled “Mind Your Language”).

Segerstrom identifies how wellbeing is as much a state of doing as a state of being: ‘doing things well, realising your potential, good relationships, and personal growth.’

It may sound counterintuitive, but we are most whole when we’re most giving of ourselves.  We count sacrifice for others as the greatest form of love.  The strange thing is, the giver hasn’t less love  as a result, but more.  Funny, we are more when we are least concerned for ourselves.

Perhaps three words to use as keys or ways to the emerging Human future to play with each day: doing … love … more.

A couple of things.

I hold a hopeful view of the world.

I enjoy exploring words as keys or paths to this hopeful world – especially words we don’t expect.

Words make it possible to see, to explore, to comprehend, to move.

I confess now that I’m no therapist or counsellor – they do amazing things with people I never could.

I coach some, I mentor some, but most of all I dreamwhisper – a new word, but one which sums up listening for the whispers from people’s lives, and whispering them back, focusing on the positive things in their lives and enable them to do more of the thing they do (which sometimes they don’t even know they do).  

The word I want to use, though, is wholeness.  It’s a very practical word – beyond-robust.  Wholeness is knowing we’ll never be perfect or complete, but that’s okay.  Wholeness is about knowing we have more than enough, right now, to be creative, to give, to act.  Every day becomes a quest in nurturing wholeness.

I wonder how many think they need something more, even counselling or therapy, when they need to focus on the positive in their lives and do more of this.

Which leads me to a question …

We often think of giving in some big way.  Some great task to perform.  Give everything we have away.  Be used as an emotional doormat.  But what would life be like, in the hundreds and hundreds of interactions and actions which fill our days …

What would life on earth be like if everyone gave a little more than they take?

There’s a kind of magic that happens when we add our willingness to give to our resources.  We discover we are generators – generative beings.

Through curiosity and ideas and mixing things up and playfulness and love, we’re able to make more.

But we face resistance …

When we don’t think we have enough or don’t think we’re ready enough to give.

When we think we see the other person, or environment or context, as not ready to receive, and we feat what we give will be rejected.  

But more magic happens when we do the thing we love to do – when we give, things happen – not always – but more often than we expect.

Permission and choice.  Two words which are both beautiful and practical.

What if life becomes richer when we make possibilities available to others through permission and choice?

Permission, because we all need help from outside.  Choice, because the best permission gives people the opportunity to choose the way they really want to go but didn’t think they could.

Some of the most important people in my life are those who have given me permission to move from old thinking new, old doings to new.

Each day provides us with opportunity to provide permission so others may have choose.

What You See Is All There Is.

Really?

Some say. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Reality is more weighted towards you seeing something when you believe it.

Check out Carol Dweck’s Mindset and you’ll find four sets of portrait drawings.  You could be forgiven for thinking four had been drawn by children and the other four by adults.  In fact they’re by four people on a five day art course: four before-and-after sets of drawing.  The course was really about helping people to see, the art improvement simply followed.  How much more are we missing because we can’t see very well?

Our worldviews, paradigms, philosophies and prejudices filter what we see. And these are the things we’re most aware of.  Beneath these are the ways Humans prefer to make judgements quickly – we’re told this dates back to when our ancestors had to decide quickly whether to run or fight the eponymous sabre-tooth tiger.  But the world is bigger and decisions more complex today than back then.*

Seth Godin recommends a course on seeing as being one of the most important ones we’ll ever take, enabling to see what others cannot.

It begins with seeing yourself; there’s more to you than meets the eye.  When you see this, you also realise there’s more than meets the eye to every person you meet.  And there’s more to the world in which we live than meets the eye, opened to us by others.

But don’t take my word for it; go see for yourself.**

(* It takes a lot of energy to be what Nassim Taleb names a sceptical empiricist, suspending judgement of people, things, and phenomena for as long as possible.)

(**I had an eye-opening experience several years ago which I’ve referred to in earlier posts; that was just the beginning, each day bringing new things to see.  I’ve just got to keep my eyes open – which isn’t easy.)

Or resource-full?

You already have what you need to move forward.

I’ve mentioned, I think gratitude leads to freedom, autonomy, you choose.

This appreciative awareness allows you to see all you have as resources for moving forward.  You are able to see what many others – who may have more but cannot see this.  Gratitude gives you the edge, makes you more resourceful, and able to act more quickly.

It’s like reverse seeing, like when I reversed the 10k route I ran earlier in the week.  I saw the town and the countryside in a very different way – same scenery but a totally different view.

The problems you and I face are firstly in our heads (in this case, an inability to appreciate what we have) rather than being out there (look at what others have and we don’t), affecting what we think may or may not be possible.  But gratitude connects us to our resources, fuel for movement.

Have you noticed how the future is coming towards us ever faster?

My father was born in 1909, his father was born in 1872.  Back then, steam transport was just approaching the golden days of steam, altering people’s lives dramatically.  My father died the year before the world wide web became a reality.  It was also the year we got our first computer – an Amstrad with 256kb memory – no hard drive, black-and-white screen – £1,000 please.    1990: Smith Corona portable typewriter. 1991: welcome to the future.*

I didn’t foresee what this was going to change, but others were shaping the future.

Which gets me to thinking, we can all be shapers of the future.

It begins with noticing the thing our lives keep whispering to us about, and to allow our hearts to be shaped by this.  When we are changed by these whispers, then we have set our feet upon the path of shaping the future.  Carlos Castaneda was right to suggest we need to find a path with a heart.

(*Only twenty-three years later, 3D printers offer new foods (insects to order), jewellery-printing in gold (my daughter-in-law has access to this technology), and the first building to be printed.   Then check out Ramez Naam’s and other futurists imagining of what the future might be because of what is happening now with genetics, drugs, and technology.)

Here’s a paradox.  If we’re to become more who we can be, and do more of what we can do, we must live with courage, and to live with courage is not living without fear and anxiousness, but living with an absence of self.

Part of what it means to be Human is our desire to conform – to look after our selves within the collective.  Another aspect of being Human is the desire to journey beyond our places of safety – for this we need courage.  Without courage we will conform more and more.  Not only do we lose sight of the technicolour life but so does the collective, becoming more and more inward looking.

Without courage there is no future, and without future there can be no better now.

Some see the future as being more days like today, some brighter, some not so bright.  Others believe the future is not set but is open to our shaping.

With all the experiences and skills and curiosity and energies in your life, there are many possible futures.  From these, you can identify which are more probable to follow with your heart.   Which of these do you prefer?  Which will you pour your energy into?

Step 1: see your many futures;
Step 2: focus in on those which excite and you need to look at more closely;
Step 3: choose a path with a heart and give your energy to it.