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August 22 - November 7, 2019
We perceive only the sensations we are programmed to receive, and our awareness is further restricted by the fact that we recognize only those for which we have mental maps or categories.
Every problem, every dilemma, every dead end we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view. Enlarge the box, or create another frame around the data, and problems vanish, while new opportunities appear.
What assumption am I making, That I’m not aware I’m making, That gives me what I see?
What might I now invent, That I haven’t yet invented, That would give me other choices?
The assumption is that life is about staying alive and making it through—surviving in a world of scarcity and peril.
On the whole, resources are likely to come to you in greater abundance when you are generous and inclusive and engage people in your passion for life. There
In the measurement world, you set a goal and strive for it. In the universe of possibility, you set the context and let life unfold.
How are my thoughts and actions, in this moment, reflections of the measurement world?
When you give an A, you find yourself speaking to people not from a place of measuring how they stack up against your standards, but from a place of respect that gives them room to realize themselves.
This A is not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live into.
I understand that trying and achieving are the same thing when you are your own master—and I am.
We support them to attend fine summer programs and travel abroad to gain firsthand experience of different cultures, and then, after all this, we throw them into a maelstrom of competition, survival, backbiting, subservience, and status seeking.
It is dangerous to have our musicians so obsessed with competition because they will find it difficult to take the necessary risks with themselves to be great performers.
This student, in a brilliant flash, had hit upon the “secret of life.” He had realized that the labels he had been taking so seriously are human inventions—it’s all a game. The Number 68 is invented and the A is invented, so we might as well choose to invent something that brightens our life and the lives of the people around us.
The practice of giving the A allows the teacher to line up with her students in their efforts to produce the outcome, rather than lining up with the standards against these students. In the first instance, the instructor and the student, or the manager and the employee, become a team for accomplishing the extraordinary; in the second, the disparity in power between them can become a distraction and an inhibitor, drawing energy away from productivity and development.
A cynic, after all, is a passionate person who does not want to be disappointed again.
I learned from Tanya that the secret is not to speak to a person’s cynicism, but to speak to her passion.
the first thing we would notice is how few meaningful roles are available for young people to fill. Then we might see how, in the absence of a purpose greater than themselves, adolescents retreat to the sidelines as though their existence were inconsequential.
That I did the best I could with what I had.”
The freely granted A lifts you off the success/failure ladder and spirits you away from the world of measurement into the universe of possibility.
Usually the impetus for transforming your own past will come from a feeling of hopelessness in the present, a sense that you have been through the same frustrating experience time and again.
It works that way. As soon as you have the grace to give people A’s, all sorts of things are revealed that were as though hidden behind a veil. Letters pop out, memories return. There are new openings. When the relationship itself is no longer in question, we can ask ourselves, what now do we want to create?
You may ask, “Who, actually, is doing the changing?” And the answer is the relationship. Because in the arena of possibility, everything occurs in that context.
We keep looking so hard in life for the “specific message,” and yet we are blinded to the fact that the message is all around us, and within us all the time. We just have to stop demanding that it be on OUR terms or conditions, and instead open ourselves to the possibility that what we seek may be in front of us all the time.
Life often looks like an obstacle course. In order to maximize success, we spend a good deal of time discussing what stands in the way of it.
Instead, life is revealed as a place to contribute and we as contributors. Not because we have done a measurable amount of good, but because that is the story we tell.
The drive to be successful and the fear of failure are, like the head and tail of a coin, inseparably linked.
I settled on a game called I am a contribution. Unlike success and failure, contribution has no other side.
All at once I found that the fearful question, “Is it enough?” and the even more fearful question, “Am I loved for who I am, or for what I have accomplished?” could both be replaced by the joyful question, “How will I be a contribution today?”
As a conductor, I often drove the players and the administrators to realize my ambition, and no matter how much support I received, I still found myself distrustful. The game I was in was a competitive one, and in this game you can make alliances with people who are on your side, whose objectives are the same as yours; but you cannot rely on anyone who is aiming toward anything else, lest it detract from what you want for yourself.
When I began playing the game of contribution, on the other hand, I found there was no better orchestra than the one I was conducting, no better person to be with than the one I was with; in fact, there was no “better.” In the game of contribution you wake up each day and bask in the notion that you are a gift to others.
Just look carefully at the cover of the box, and if the rules do not light up your life, put it away, take out another one you like better, and play the new game wholeheartedly. Remember, it’s all invented.
1. Declare yourself to be a contribution. 2. Throw yourself into life as someone who makes a difference, accepting that you may not understand how or why. The contribution game appears to have remarkable powers for transforming conflicts into rewarding experiences.
for years, until they discovered the
WHEN YOU PLAY the contribution game, it is never a single individual who is transformed. Transformation overrides the divisions of identity and possession that are the architecture of the measurement model, recasting the tight pattern of scarcity into a widespread array of abundance.
The assignment for the week after is to notice how they are a contribution as the week goes by—they are just to notice, not to do anything about it—and then come back and share what they saw with the class. The third assignment is to cast themselves as a contribution into the week ahead, like a pebble into a pond, and imagine that everything they do sends ripples out beyond the horizon.
He said, “I discovered a person cannot live a full life under the shadow of bitterness.”
A monumental question for leaders in any organization to consider is: How much greatness are we willing to grant people?
lighten up, which may well light up those around you.
No matter how confident or well-positioned this adult self appears, underneath the surface it is weak and sees itself as marginal, at risk for losing everything. The alertness to position that was adaptive at an earlier time in an individual’s life—and in the history of our species—is still conceptually operative in later years and keeps signaling to the self that it must try to climb higher, get more control, displace others, and find a way in. Fortunately, the perception of what “in” is, and where it is located, is likely to vary between individuals and groups. Long after any real vestiges
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What would have to change for me to be completely fulfilled?
“What would have to change for me to be completely fulfilled?” June recognized her own calculating self in action. She stopped taking herself and her story so seriously, and suddenly was able to distinguish her husband from the diagnosis she had given him.”
“Whenever somebody gives up their pride to reveal a truth to others,” I told him, “we find it incredibly moving; in fact, we are all so moved that even the cameraman is crying.”
WHEN ONE PERSON peels away layers of opinion, entitlement, pride, and inflated self-description, others instantly feel the connection.
If we were to design a new voyage to carry us from our endless childhood into the bright realm of possibility, we might want to steer away from a hierarchical environment and aim for the openness and reciprocity of a level playing field—away from a mind-set of scarcity and deficiency and toward an attitude of wholeness and sufficiency. We might even describe human development as the ongoing reconstruction of the calculating self toward the rich, free, compassionate, and expressive world of the central self.
It simply means, being present without resistance: being present to what is happening and present to your reactions, no matter how intense.
MISTAKES CAN BE like ice. If we resist them, we may keep on slipping into a posture of defeat. If we include mistakes in our definition of performance, we are likely to glide through them and appreciate the beauty of the longer run.
Downward spiral talk is based on the fear that we will be stopped in our tracks and fall short in the race, and it is wholly reactive to circumstances, circumstances that appear to be wrong, problematic, and in need of fixing.
The more attention you shine on a particular subject, the more evidence of it will grow. Attention is like light and air and water. Shine attention on obstacles and problems and they multiply lavishly.
“I am afraid I don’t know the right questions to ask, and it irritates me that he doesn’t come to me to talk,”
