Dancing with Reality

I was encouraged to share this recent article I wrote in the newsletter for Envision Coaching Solutions, LLC.  With all of the hectic activity around the move this week, it seems like great timing for it.

 

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Sometimes I have been frustrated when plans go awry, especially when I have spent a great deal of time and energy formulating how things can ideally play out. Unexpected elements can emerge and change things suddenly and radically. There are times when it is tempting to delay action until all the unknown factors come to light. But even though chances for success may be greater with increased information, you might never have all of the information pertinent to a decision.

I wrote a few issues back about "paralysis by analysis". Now I am experiencing the other side of that conundrum, dancing with reality. Without knowing what the future would hold (and without expecting to be able to have such knowledge!), I created a plan for the next several months, and now I am faced with making some pretty big changes to that plan. The reasons for those changes is on the whole very positive: My wife is taking a job doing something at which she excels in a field she absolutely loves. There is some payoff for me in that as well. But it still means making changes to some pretty exciting plans.

Rather than see the situation as a loss, though, I am able to see how I can still be creatively engaging my passions for one simple reason. I knew from the start that there was more than one way to get the outcome I most want in my life. Had I believed that the first possibility I determined was the only way, this would be a very frustrating time indeed. Some people call that single-mindedness attachment to a particular result.

Attachment is not your friend. Determination is valuable to a point, and commitment and resolve and all of those admirable qualities that keep us focused on a goal. But danger arises when we focus on that goal to the exclusion of all other possibilities or when we ignore reality. Every plan of action is really just a proposal, a hypothesis to be tested. You test it by taking action, with full commitment and resolve and determination toward your goal. Then you get feedback, from other people, from circumstances, from your own gut.

The key is to take that feedback and adjust your plan accordingly. You can still focus on the same goal, but you may have to take a different route than you were expecting. It may even be a better route than you had considered. If you are unwilling to alter your plan, you are essentially saying that you know everything that you could possibly need to know to get where you want to go. No one can honestly say that. That is at the very heart of attachment. You must be willing to be wrong in order to create anything of value. That doesn't mean that you will be wrong, but a person who is willing to consider the possibility that he doesn't have every possible piece of useful information will be much more receptive to feedback than someone who can't bear to be wrong.

So, determine your goal, make your plan, take full throttle action on your plan, and then pay attention to what happens next. Whatever feedback you receive is incredibly valuable, and what you do with it is the key to having a plan that will truly carry you where you want to go.

In Sync with Me

Jung's concept of synchronicity is a featured concept in Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, which I have been working through with a few friends over the past several weeks.  Essentially, synchronicity is "the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner."  In other words, seemingly connected events that don't have a high probability of happening concurrently.  While I am much more prone to labeling such things as coincidences unless they are uncannily pertinent to what I'm doing personally, I have been trying to notice when events seem to be lining up in a significant way.  Perhaps this willingness and intentionality on my part has contributed to a feeling of being "in sync" with my life.

Most theories of personal growth and development postulate an even number of phases, cycling through focusing inward and focusing on something external.  The first phase is usually something akin to survival, concentrating all of one's energy toward getting the basic necessities.  A second phase (if one is able to trust that survival will happen) is often adopting an external set of rules or goals, whether they originate from a church, a political organization, or some other institution with established beliefs.  The next phase would be integrating the meaningful beliefs from outside oneself into a period of defining personal identity.  And once deeper self-actualization has taken place, the following phase would address how to engage with the broader society, or at least some portion of it.  I can see this pattern at work when I look backward at my journey, but I have often been wrestling with whatever phase I've been in.

When I was clearly (looking back) in phases of clarifying personal values, I was also often struggling to engage more purposefully with a larger group.  And sometimes when I have accepted a prominent role within a larger group, I have found myself confronted with challenges about what beliefs are most meaningful to me personally.  While the internal and external work can be in balance, I have frequently tried to force myself to focus in a particular direction when I wasn't actually in the "right" phase to do so.  I have wanted to guard against being focused too narrowly and missing some important piece of personal doctrine.  Certain beliefs about what life "ought" to be about have served better at some junctures than others.  To put it another way, I haven't always been willing to let myself grow because I was afraid of what beliefs I might grow out of.

Everyone has a doctrine—a system of beliefs they live by.  Some piece of a person's doctrine may be incorporated from external sources, and some may come from an internal sense of what's important or how things should be.  But at some point, the beliefs have to become personal if they are going to have deep value.  Living by a doctrine that someone else created for you doesn't reflect integrity.  That's just a sort of irresponsible obedience.  Integrity comes from taking a personal stand for one's own life, claiming a personal set of beliefs not to judge right and wrong in others but to identify what has true personal value.

At some points in my life, the beliefs that primarily informed my decisions were actually different from what I thought I should believe.  I was in conflict with my own doctrine, but I didn't realize it at the time.  Now, I have been taking time to really think about what beliefs are really potent for me.  I have been giving myself permission to be honest about what's most important to me, without worrying about what might get left behind if I focus in a direction that has personal importance.  Trusting myself, with some confidence in what I have been recognizing as valuable for me, I find a strange appropriate-ness in the opportunities I am creating and discovering.

While I may have told myself so in the past as a reassurance or believed it intellectually, I feel in a very deep way that I am in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment in my life.  It's not synchronicity, but I believe that noticing the "rightness" of my experience comes from being conscious of my personal doctrine and aware of how I am able to engage life in a meaningful way.  And when I know that what I believe makes sense, fear has a lot less of a foothold.

Crying Wolf

You know the story. The shepherd boy is bored and lonely, so he yells WOLF! and everybody comes running to help defend against the predator. While this is great fun for the shepherd boy, everybody else is understandably angry about the whole affair. But the boy gives it another go and winds up playing the card too many times. By the time an actual wolf arrives on the scene, everyone ignores the boy's cries, and the wolf eats him. A harsh lesson to be sure.

I believe that there is certainly a lesson in that tale for the "everybody else," but today I am wondering how much I am identified with the shepherd boy. Once upon a time, I kept my cards pretty close to my chest. I didn't share with many people that I was going to a particular college until I had the offer and had made a decision. Same thing for grad school. There have been some major projects in my life I didn't really tell anyone about until they were close to completion. But something shifted several years back.

I started to tell more people what I was up to, and I found that there was support and motivation in the telling. Once I told someone that I was working on a particular piece of music, they would often inquire about it, and I would have another person's energy contributed toward its creation. Plus, just saying the commitment out loud made it seem a bit more real. Over the past several years, more and more people have known about the commitments I'm making, and I gain insight, feedback, and support from an ever-growing array of individuals.

Something else shifted for me over the past year. I started setting my sights on goals that are a bit bigger... paths that I can't discern fully from just the first steps. Committing to those targets is important for me, because otherwise they could just be wishes or dreams that never get realized. But the journey also gives me new information. For instance, I sometimes learn that there are things I don't really like about a destination I had in mind -- things I didn't know when I first committed to it. And in that moment, I have the opportunity to make a choice.

I could continue down a path I don't really want to travel simply because I have committed to it. People are depending on me, expecting me to follow through. That seems like a frustrating and dissatisfying choice that (at best) lacks authenticity. Instead, I have been exploring what was most meaningful to me about a particular goal, and I've been looking for more desirable destinations that offer the same benefits. Which is not to say that I would start a journey over from Square One. Rather, I have gained some knowledge along the way that I didn't have before, and I can see things that weren't possible when I started in a particular direction.

I'm actually at peace with this process. My concern is other people's perception. Since I am advertising my goals more widely, there are more people to notice when my commitment shifts. How many times can I veer off onto another unexpected path and retain credibility? There are some commitments I've made that just don't fit as I learn more about them, and yet I wouldn't have learned that information if I had never made the commitment. But when I choose to continue growing from that point toward something else, does it look like growth to other people or does it look like giving up? When do my shifts in targets for my life look enough like "crying wolf" that no one believes me when I stake a claim on another goal?

There is a part of me that retorts, "It doesn't matter what other people think." But it does. Partnership and meaningful support is such an integral part of creating big dreams that I want at least a few others to get the difference between "going back on my word" and shifting targets to something better for me as I gain more information. The real question doesn't have anything to do with how "everyone" will see me. Life sometimes seems as cut-and-dried as the story: there is the shepherd boy, and there is everybody else. In reality, there are probably people who would come running every time, whether there was ever a wolf or not. And my goals aren't just made up for attention, so the connection between the story and my life is flimsy from the start.

So my answer (to whatever the question is) is to trust myself, and to trust that there will be enough support and partnership in each leg of the journey. I know that I have a purpose, and I know that I never have to defend myself. It ultimately boils down to my willingness to keep connecting with others about what I am creating and why that means something to me. Strange how so many questions seem to have the same answer.

Escaping the Failure Net

There are a lot of things that matter to me. My marriage, composing music, coaching others in unleashing their creativity and developing a purposeful vision, serving on the local steering committee for the More To Life organization, nurturing the meaningful connections I have with friends, and a handful of other things as well. I make commitments about those things on a regular basis, and I put those commitments in my calendar. I know when I intend to work on a piece, how much time I want to spend composing on any given day, when I’ll have a project completed, and when I’ll submit it to a performance opportunity. I chart those kinds of commitments for all of the things that are important to me. And sometimes it all runs like clockwork.

Sometimes, my commitments get in each other’s way. I have a flash of inspiration about something, but I’ve already committed all my time to other areas that week. Or I underestimate how long it will take to complete one step, so my entire time line winds up being adjusted into conflict with other commitments. Intellectually, I understand the need for flexibility. And in practice, I often do well with shifting the landscape of my personal commitments in a way that maintains my integrity and honors my deepest priorities. When I start second-guessing myself or inventing what other people might think, I get into trouble, though.

It goes something like this: If I don’t keep this commitment, then people will think less of me, and then they won’t respect me, and then they will not support what I am creating, and then I’ll be all alone in this, and then I will fail, and no one will really care except me. And then I’m caught with the decision to give up what I want in one area because I’m scared of what will happen. If I was honest about my actual priorities, the decision would be easy, and I could possibly come up with more creative solutions about how all of my commitments can play nice. But when I complicate it with my own predictions and inventions, I trap myself in the most uncreative space possible. I call it my Failure Net.

But the Failure Net is built on a cascade of fears. The truth is the best gift I can offer the world (and myself as it turns out) is my bold, honest, and authentic self, and I can do that in a way that welcomes feedback and insight from others. The only trick to doing that is simply to trust myself.

Evoking Passion

As I have been playing piano for a large number of high school musicians over the past week, it has struck me that so many of the beliefs and habits people carry around for the rest of their lives are already in place for these students. Many of them are talented, but the level of dedication and artistry displayed by a few of them is reflected in the music they play. They have tapped into a true passion for what they are doing... something not everyone discovers. A few students are on the other end of the spectrum as well. After every few measures, they take a pause to offer excuses and justifications for why they don't know a piece or aren't playing very well.

Of course, some of this latter group's behavior could be the result of nerves, but there is something more underneath. After accompanying so many other musicians over so many years, it's evident to me that some of them call forth a level of passion and intention that others never reach. And the same goes for other walks of life as well. There are some people who turn being laid off from a job into an opportunity to create something about which they are truly passionate. I have heard of people writing books, starting companies, or taking their lives in unexpected and satisfying directions, all because they "lost" a job. Others interpret the same circumstances as a sort of paid vacation, or use the situation as an excuse to indulge in self-defeating thoughts and behaviors. They don't tap into the same level of passion and purpose.

In my own life, I have taken the time created by stepping away from a predictable work schedule to compose music and seek more opportunities for my music to be heard. And I have been working to fit all of the things that ignite my passion into one big picture of my life. Seeing how excuses and assumptions work against other people, though, I have realized that I can be doing the things that are truly important to me, regardless of my circumstances. Many years ago, I was working full time as a courier and wrote a ten-minute wind ensemble piece over lunch breaks and in the evenings. And back then, the full score and all of the parts were written out by hand; I didn't have a computer program to assist with notating the music the way I do now. But it mattered to me, and so I made it happen.

Believing that I have to create a special set of circumstances in order to have what I want is a self-imposed limitation. It means that I have an excuse for not doing the things that matter to me, which could have the payoff of letting me play the martyr. In any case, recognizing that I have the freedom to do what what's important to me regardless of my circumstances is liberating. I am grateful that I know what I'm passionate about, and I strive to stay awake to how I can inspire others to discover what those things are in their own lives.

Leading from Within

In so many movies, there is a scene that I rarely see played out in real life: an individual spontaneously stands up in front of a group of people and delivers and impromptu rallying speech that inspires the crowd to significant, purposeful action. Whether they are going out and winning the competition or burning down the evil scientist's laboratory, their decisions are inspired by an individual voice. I'm sure that this kind of thing happens in reality in more subtle ways, whether for good or ill, but this kind of influence seems short-lived to me. It isn't what I think of as "leadership."

Even the word leadership has conjured for me certain mental images of a person who is at the front of a group of people. The leader marches purposefully forward, and the rest of the parade follows. The leader holds the torch high and people flock to him. Or even, the leader unveils the blueprint and a throng of people dash off to do their part. These are rather comical images to me right now, but they are caricatures of what I have been expecting of myself and others.

Various sources have been contributing to an evolving definition of leadership recently. What I have been reading and hearing from some other people reveals a definition of leadership that is slightly different from what mine had been. They suggest that a leader is the one who breaks from the crowd and heads off in a new direction with purpose, creating a path rather than traversing one that can be clearly seen. Sometimes, these definitions of a leader don't even make mention of who is following or where they come from, because ultimately it is about a path of personal meaning.

In many ways, I have gotten good at waiting. I have waited for the right opportunities, the right environment, the right number of supporters, or even the right quality of support. I have held back engaging 100% of my capability in the world, because I want to make sure that others are with me. I spend time and energy trying to figure out how to convince others about the value of what I am doing, when I could just be doing it. The waiting and holding back doesn't actually move me forward. And as valuable as it is to me to have other people's support, the primary motivation has to emerge from within my own being.

So I am looking at clear ways to redefine my sense of leadership in my decisions as I begin a new year. I am forging my own trail, and I'm trusting that the people who see value in what I am doing will be there with me. I want to engage others about what I am creating, and I want to connect with them about their journey as well. But I also acknowledge that doing it is more compelling than talking about it. And if I am committed to carrying out the personal journey that is most satisfying to me, I believe I already have all that I need to be on that path.

Brass Tacks

An acquaintance of mine used to cut off rambling descriptions and preambles by saying, "brass tacks, Randy," which meant, loosely paraphrased: My mind is starting to wander, so if you want me to know something specific, make your point soon! I used to think this was rather rude, being something of a storyteller, but I do see a certain value to cutting through all of the fluff, excuses, explanations, and doublespeak. The bottom line can can still be specific and detailed, and it requires a bit of discernment to know which things are truly important and which are just being included for effect. In other words, if I want to cut to the heart of my message, I have to put some thought into it.

This has come into play recently for me in visioning how I want to devote my time and effort. My idealized life is multifaceted, and I want to express what I'm creating succinctly to people, especially when I am conscious of the value of partnerships. If I ramble on about all the possibilities, I am not really making a commitment to creating anything. The fluffy, blurry form of my vision doesn't seem very likely to enroll others. I've also heard this called an elevator pitch: getting a point across convincingly in the span of an elevator ride.

Getting all of the fluff out of the way also lets me assess how true something is. When I succinctly express the heart of what I'm creating, I can look at how I have been spending my time and energy and know immediately whether the two are in harmony. I have known organizations and individuals that have catchy one-liner purpose or mission statements, and yet the results don't match up. Enough padding, excuses, and justification can hide the fact that some choices and actions don't really relate to the mission at all. Clearing aside fluff and filigree helps me keep on track with my own purpose.

The filigree can be attractive. The explanations can be helpful, and there may be a variety of possibilities for how a vision can play out. My intention, though, is to start from my essential purpose and build the details on that foundation. Even that personal purpose gets refined the more I express it, which can mean ever greater clarity about what really fits and what doesn't. So here are the brass tacks: I create music that contributes to a more harmonious world and I inspire others to create the lives they truly want.

The Upward Spiral

There are plenty of people who claim that history repeats itself, in the large scale of societies and in the small scale of individual lives. Of course there is Shaw's claim that "If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience." I'm thinking about this today because I am experiencing a bit of it. I make my commitments toward what I want to create in my life, and I somehow find myself facing in the opposite direction overcoming challenges that I thought I had already conquered.

I want to create. It is a passion of mine. Specifically, creating music is something for which I possess strong passion and capability. Creating music requires (among other things) time. It is not how I spend my time, however. I spend my time on the thing which currently brings me a paycheck. And yet, that "thing" is so nebulously defined in some ways that I have a great deal of flexibility in how my time is spent. So my commitment earlier this year was to shift away from spending my paycheck-related time on the mundane tasks that anyone can do and focus that time on the things for which I am more uniquely passionate and skilled.

And yet, those mundane tasks that anyone can conceivably do are still important. Not in an earth-shattering kind of important, but in a meeting basic week-to-week expectations kind of important. So, if I am spending less time on them, it means that someone else must be doing them. Obviously, for my commitment to line up with practical reality, my goals would be best served by finding other people to take on the more mundane but necessary tasks. A short-term expenditure of time to locate and train someone leading to a long-term benefit of gaining more time to create.

But somehow, there always seem to be mundane tasks that need doing. I find myself looking back at my week thinking, "How did I spend so much time and have so little satisfaction from it?" At first I thought, other people aren't willing to do the mundane but necessary tasks, so I'm stuck with them. That's not exactly true, though. I have found willing people, I just keep finding more things to do that don't engage my deepest passions. So I recommit to shifting how I allocate my time, only to find myself doing a different set of mundane (but necessary?) tasks.

Now, I am thinking, how frightened must I be of getting what I truly want? There will always be easy choices about spending my time on more-or-less insignificant tasks, but the most immediately obvious task isn't necessarily the one that will serve my long-range goals. In fact, the most obvious tasks are often the ones that will rob me of the opportunity to get a little closer to what I truly want.

The life I envision for myself is not to make the easiest choices, but to make the most fulfilling ones. I am now looking at this decision again from a slightly different angle. I'm faced with re-learning the lesson, but I have made progress. I recognize the challenge, but I am getting more masterful and more determined. My commitment matters a little more to me now than it did the first time I claimed it. So, here I go again.

Ultimate Mystery-Thriller

Well done "suspense" movies are favorites of mine. Sophisticated horror flicks that keep shifting my expectations, mysteries that don't give away the answer until the very end, movies that engage my mind and constantly introduce new twists and turns. One reason I enjoy these films is that I love to figure things out. I feel pretty satisfied with myself when I am able to solve the puzzle or answer the riddle, but what I really get excited about are the times when I don't. I view a well-told tale that has congruency and yet stumps me until the very end as a phenomenal gift.

But I haven't often lived like that. I haven't often been very satisfied with not knowing. Only recently have I really started to revel in surprises from life. It started with a willingness to step into a goal without knowing what it would look like several years into the future. Now I find myself becoming increasingly willing to commit to what I would truly like to create or be, even when I don't know what the next day of that commitment will look like. I feel a bit scared about it actually, and I feel incredibly confident at the same time.

It is as if I am walking into a fog which gets deeper and deeper, preventing me from seeing the horizon clearly, and yet with each step I gain greater clarity about where I am in that moment. The choices that I am making are becoming less about what job I want or where I want to live and more about who I want to be, which (strangely enough) lines up with who I am when all the masks and facades are down. And it occurs to me that I could never really see the horizon clearly. All I have ever been able to do is to take a step and see what happened. And that realization changes so much about how I take that step.

Wishin' and Hopin'

I have wished for many things at different points in my life. I have wished for jobs, to win the lottery, to get someplace on time, to have favorable weather, to remember a piece of music well for a performance, for other people to keep their word. As I consider my current and evolving vision for my life, I see a stark contrast between my wishes and my vision.

Most of the things I wish for are completely out of my control. Sure, I can create an impeccable resume and do well in an interview, but there are elements of applying for a job that I just can't control. I can prepare a piece of music to the best of my ability and still have a memory slip when something unexpected happens in my environment, like bright stage lights in my eyes or hearing an audience member have a coughing fit. Winning the lottery, how heavy traffic is, or what kind of weather I'll experience are even more out of my hands. The best I can hope for is to prepare well.

Vision works a little differently. It isn't just hoping for something to happen the way I want, or even having a conscious willingness to be successful in my goals. To have an intentional, purposeful vision means to be committed to taking the steps necessary to bring a result into reality. It means developing a keen awareness of what I can control and embracing a certain responsibility to myself to do what I can to the best of my ability to achieve what I want in life. And this means getting very specific about what I want and what I can do to make it happen.

Having a vision is a position of power in my life. Making wishes often just articulates the areas in which I am powerless. When I recognize the things in my life I can control and I focus my energy on a vision that is full of meaning and passion for me, I find that I don't do nearly as much wishing.

Just How I Am?

I awakened today with my own words in my head. I often remind others that we are all free to change our minds and choose something different than what we thought we wanted yesterday. There may be consequences, of course, but we never truly trapped by our decisions. So today, I am hearing my words back at me: I am not trapped by my choices or my circumstances.

It's tempting to fall back on statements like "That's just how I am," or "That's just the way I do things." But those little quips are really not accurate. My experience and my choices have all been up to this point, but I have the freedom to do things differently today if I want to. And tomorrow I'll get the same opportunity. To be honest, the choice is available to me many, many times a day.

So what do I want to change today? What do I want to do or be differently? What will get me even more on track with my goals and dreams? One thing is I'm going to speak up and make sure the people around me know what I want. How else can I really expect them to partner with me? I'm also going to be conscious about how I spend my time. I want to be awake and I want my choices to be purposeful. And I'm going to remember that I have the freedom to make any adjustments or course corrections I want along every step of the way.

Meaning My Commitment

Just as people can bolster me and support me in keeping my commitments, they can also provide excuses and justifications for lessening my commitments. Sometimes even the words of those who are poised to motivate and lead can ring hollow when they do not fully believe in what they are saying.

I had this experience recently. I sat in a room full of people who committed to a common goal with purpose and intention. Then, over the course of the following week, as I engaged in one-on-one conversations with several people who had been in that room, I heard an entirely different set of expectations. Some of the people who affirmed that common goal really didn't believe in it fully.

Part of the challenge is that believing in something, really taking a commitment seriously, might mean risking. A commitment brings with it responsibility; it isn't just a hope or a wish. It isn't just putting the right energy out into the universe and believing. A commitment means a willingness to act in a way that will contribute toward the desired outcome, to the best of one's ability.

So my dilemma was whether to follow what I saw as a growing crowd and reduce my commitment to a more "realistic" or "reasonable" goal, or whether to maintain my commitment in spite of some wavering voices. And more important than my decision regarding my commitment, how would I hold myself and others? Would I be a failure if I lowered my expectations? Had others betrayed me somehow? Were they failures? Was I being naive or belligerent by holding on to a goal in which others obviously did not believe?

Ultimately, I decided to hold fast to the commitment I made, to still believe in the possibility of our group attaining the goal we had set together. Some other people chose a different course. They are allowed to do that. They are human beings with unique perspectives and insights, and I believe that they are making the best decisions they can for themselves. Neither of us has to be wrong. My decision may cost me a little of my own money, but I'm alright with that. My integrity will benefit in my future commitments if I keep my word and maintain my vision, even if that vision seems at times to be just a bit out of reach. Otherwise, I take the meaning away from my word, and I could start making promises to myself I never intend to keep.