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A CAREER CREATIVE CURRICULUM A curriculum in personal creativity, innovation and leadership
00 1 2 3 4 5 17 18 19 20 Copyright 2017 W Scott Downs III and Gerald P. Doyle Layout and format designed by Akram Maradni, Illinois Institute of Technology, College of Architecture
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Introductory material
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Introduction This curriculum is an offering. It seeks to share material that has come into our hands concerning a few intimately related topics: • discovering a sense of personal purpose and inspiration • bringing that purpose and inspiration to life • releasing creative and innovative potential • gaining access to a range of personal and organisational leadership frameworks. This material is based on publicly available sources, but we find these sources often appear dispersed. The material we have gathered is sometimes presented to senior executives or to business leaders who are usually in middle or late middle age, long after they have undertaken the bulk of their education and shaped their professional careers. That this material is not more widely shared seems to us a great shame, because, with early access, we believe this material can call us all forward - when we are young or when we reflect at different points in life - to live much more inspired, creative and abundant lives - for our own benefit and for the benefit of our communities, societies and ecosystems.
Introduction We find that the elements of this material are both simple and deep. We believe many people can benefit very quickly from exposure to the curriculum elements and can then deepen their practice with them to greater and greater effect over a lifetime. This curriculum is also a co-creative experiment. Far from wishing to dictate a narrow path, we as hosts seek to offer our best understandings today as clearly and authentically as we can - and to continually learn and develop the curriculum in partnership with all its participants. As you participate, we earnestly hope you will share your insights and your breakthroughs with all of us. As authors and stewards we commit to be listening, and to do our best to weave the community’s learning and insights into the curriculum as a living thing.
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Why this curriculum? We offer this curriculum because we want to help ourselves, and others young at heart, to discover what inspires us and to bring that inspiration creatively to life. We hope to invite and support our participants in leading abundant, rewarding and generous lives - according to their own personal understanding of those inspirations.
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We welcome you to the creative adventure.
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The curriculum’s Theme 1 themes The curriculum has nine major themes - each framed as a question. The curriculum’s learning objectives are to help participants understand and be able to use mental models and skills in each of the themed areas, and to weave the themes together. The overall learning objective of the curriculum is to allow participants to: • discover or refine a sense of personal inspiration • bring that inspiration to life in concrete ways in an abundant and rewarding life and career • release their creative and innovative potential
Woven elegantly together, our experience is that these elements create a powerful foundation for living and working. Each of the themes plays a key part, and each is in relationship with the others. The curriculum is not in any way intended to replace personal journeys of learning, caring for others, creativity or service - but rather to act as a contributory foundation for such journeys: for personal growth, for creative and fulfilling work, and for building relationships and communities - all in service of each participant’s understanding of his or her deepest truth.
Nine questions The curriculum’s nine questions are:
1 How can we discover a sense of inspiration - individual and/or collective - and bring it to life?
2 How can we call forward and hold spaces for relationship and
dialogue - for connection - one to one, in teams, in organisations and in ecosystems?
3 How can we hold and help others to hold journeys of inquiry? 4 How can we learn to step into a range of healthy and useful leadership stances, states and qualities of mind?
5 How can we make sense of journeys to greater maturity and awareness?
6 How can we learn to understand and work with a view of the world of complex, adaptive human systems?
7 How can we learn to understand and work with the full range of human, embodied capabilities?
8 How can we help to take in and share a design ethos, an invitation to be a maker?
9 How can we hold and encourage journeys of personal and systemic transformation?
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The pattern of work Each of the questions will be explored in turn - the order listed above has a certain resonance for us as catalysts and initiators, so we have chosen to follow it as a prototype for pursuing the work. Each thematic section, though, is intended to stand on its own; we encourage you to find your own rhythms and patterns in doing this work. Within each question’s section, you will find:
• Some written content to share key ideas that have touched and inspired us
• Video and/or audio content (in time) that may overlap with and/or extend written content
• Suggested readings from core original sources that amplify and expand thematic elements - for individual questions and the curriculum as a whole
• Suggestions for dialogue with catalysts, coaches, mentors, fellow participants, and significant others around the themes
• Exercises that may deepen experience within the theme
We hope and intend that this material be the foundation of active personal discussion and dialogue, one-to-one, in small groups, and among a wider community or communities inspired by this work.
Ground rules The curriculum intends
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To choose dialogue and collective exploration of the material as a principle for the use of our face-to-face time together, rather than various forms of monologue. Input material will as a principle be provided either as text or recorded as video and/or audio. All content to be available online Online discussion groups will be available and encouraged for use between sessions Participants are invited to engage actively in the curriculum, including scheduled meeting sessions, coaching and group dialogues, while respecting the rhythms and priorities of their own lives The curriculum leaders and catalysts to see themselves as MEFTs - more experienced fellow travellers - and not as experts. Course leaders hold space and do their best not to “take up” space
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Question 1: How can we discover a sense of inspiration - individual and/or collective - and bring it to life?
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Introduction Introduction Theme 1
Bringing inspiration to life
We all make decisions and choices all the time. How do we make therm? What are the foundations? Probably there are as many answers to this question as there are people … and … in our experience with a wide range of traditions and disciplines, and in many conversations and dialogues with individuals and groups, we experience again and again a transcendent hunger among people to ground our decisions in some fundamental foundations, both unique to the person and connecting to their sense of a transcendent deepest truth. We find that these foundations are often expressed in the idea of a sense of personal or collective inspiration, or personal or collective purpose. This first question of the curriculum will expose us to mental models and skills for discovering our sense of inspiration or purpose. The explorations will include delving into, revealing and exploring the interrelationships among
• Our own personal history • The way we are and what we stand for today • Inspiration itself • Our personal vision of the future • Our strategies and plans for bringing our visions to life
Introduction Bringing inspiration to life All these elements, in different ways, help us to create or discover our sense of inspiration and/or purpose. The are grounded in it, grow from it, feed and develop it. If any of this sounds daunting, or you sense you have little insight into these elements today, don’t worry. The approaches we will share allow us to start anywhere, and are designed to put us under no pressure. They can be used and played with over any period of time. There are no time limits and no requirements. You may discover one or two clear pathways you want to follow, or many different unrelated threads you want to pursue, threads that may weave together for you in time, or maintain their distinctions for years.
The approaches we will share allow us to start anywhere, and are designed to put us under no pressure. We do hope that you will find new perspectives in the pathways we offer you. We encourage you to think, feel, reflect and experience in ways that will be rewarding for you, and that will ultimately give you material for further creative exploration and satisfying study and work. As a matter of intention, for each of the mental models we offer, inspiration flows naturally out of history and points the way elegantly to future states among which we can choose. Let’s begin exploring the mental models, and see what learning and insights arise from the experience.
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Journaling Bringing inspiration to life We invite you to create a space for capturing and retaining your learnings and reflections on the journey of this curriculum. A time-tested way to do this is to make or acquire a physical notebook or journal in which to write your reflections. We’d emphasise that other media that work for you - electronic or physical - are also entirely welcome. As you will see, we will invite you to draw pictures or create images, and also to find or collect from outside sources images, audio, video, and/or objects whatever evokes your learning and your journey for you. We encourage you to keep these inspirational “records” safe and to treasure them … and ... at appropriate times, respecting your own privacy and when it seems right to you, to share parts of them with others of your choice to enrich your own journey and those of your collaborators. Journaling can be an important reflective exercise. When you give yourself time and permission to let thoughts, feelings, intuitions, and felt sense flow out of you, and caoture them, you will find over time that you are creating a deep resources of insight for yourself. Insight into your history, your current reality, the choices you have made, the choices you could make now. About who you are and what you want. About your deepest truth, your highest goal. About the world you want to create, and the choreography and the pathways by which you could bring it to life. About the resources you have or could discover to create the world you envision.
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Temenos 1 Theme
Bringing inspiration to life
Temenos is a very powerful mental model for understanding who we are and what we want, for sharing and co-creating those insights with others, and for building communities to foster growth and change. The name Temenos is from the Greek: it means sacred container. Working in a Temenos, we explore deeply and develop clarity about our own history, our current reality, our intentions, the choices we face and the choices we make. And we share that journey with others, so that we both benefit from collective intelligence and insight, and support each other on our individual journeys. Note: We are indebted to Siraj Sirajuddin for creating, and to Olaf Lewitz and Christine Neidhardt for developing and bringing to Europe, the Temenos mental model. The mental model is described in detail in the book, Showing Up, by Olaf and Christine (https://leanpub.com/ showingup)
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At its core, Temenos invites participants to work in three spaces, often sequentially:
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their past history, including the people, organisations and other forces that have shaped and influenced them
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one or more current situations or relationships, considered as “containers”, such as relationship to self, relationships to partners and family, relationships at work, in community and so on
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visions of the future.
In each case, participants are invited to: Reflect on the subject that attracts their interest
Visualise the subject by drawing a large map - drawing a picture or an illustration or illumination of the subject using shapes, colours, whatever occurs. This work creates representation using both “left brain” and “right brain” resources Share the insights with others, ideally in a circle of others convened as part of a shared journey of Temenos exploration.
Temenos Bringing inspiration to life
The Temenos Effect of reflecting, visualising and sharing has shown itself to be extremely powerful in crystallising our own experiences, and in benefiting from the co-creative engagement with others. This work is especially potent when a trusted group convenes to share these reflections: indeed creating this group and sharing the reflections is itself a powerful way to create trust. As a first exercise, on the next page we invite you to look at your history, make and share a map. We will continue the Temenos journey later in the curriculum. In the meantime, please be encouraged to read more about Temenos in: Showing Up, by Olaf Lewitz and Christine Neidhardt
(https://leanpub.com/showingup)
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Temenos map - history Temenos Theme 1Map
Bringing inspiration to life
Please be invited to reflect on your personal history. Give yourself some time, as you reflect, to journal (and/or collect meaningful objects and images) about where you have come from. What have been the main crucial events and main influences in your life? What did you learn at key moments? How were you then? How did you change? How are your now? We suggest giving yourself at least 30 minutes to journal about these questions. You may choose to leave that section of your journal for a time, leave some space, continue reflecting and come back to it. This exercise can be done at one sitting or over a period of time. Next, consider how might you present your life history to yourself or to a small group of trusted other people on a large map - perhaps on a sheet of A1 paper, like flip chart paper. You can use pictures, diagrams, shapes, colours, anything you want, to create a visual map. Please give yourself permission to be creative and expressive! You may want to consider your history generally, or focus particularly on your history viewed from a particular lens or vantage point, e.g. looking back as you start university or a training course, as you prepare to seek or start work, as you prepare to begin a new relationship or end an old one, as you face a particular decision, and so on.
Your Temenos map influence - history map. A first key skill: journaling Bringing inspiration to life Don’t worry if you don’t often draw pictures or if you don’t consider yourself good at drawing. This image need only be shown to yourself - and only if you actively choose this, to people you specifically invite or deeply trust to see it. It is impossible to do this wrong. The process of doing the image-creation is consistently and remarkably valuable, even for, indeed especially for, those who rarely do similar exercises. Give yourself time to create the map, perhaps 15 to 30 minutes. Present your map, at the very least to yourself. If there is a coach, catalyst or significant other who you deeply trust, we invite you to present it to them as well. In the ideal case, convene a group of trusted friends or colleagues to share maps together. It is wonderfully powerful, and strongly recommended, to invite everyone in the circle (even a circle of two) to present. Include any facilitators or coaches in the invitation, so that you can exchange maps and share them together. Give each person a good period, perhaps 20-40 minutes each, to present their map. If working with others, and also if working with yourself (as if you were an objective observer), listen deeply to what is said and pictured and the feelings, intuitions and embodied experiences behind the words. Share your insights and experience with other presenters, but resist trying to judge, evaluate, fix or advise what others are sharing. Hold each other gently, lovingly, appreciatively. What does this journey tell you about who you have been, and who you are now?
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Temenos Temenos map Theme 1Map- history
Bringing inspiration to life
The question “Who am I?” is a powerful one in Temenos work, as well as in many other wisdom traditions and personal development disciplines. After having done the exercise of reflecting, visualising, and presenting, and having listened and received feedback from yourself and others, and further reflected on all this, take some time to journal for yourself around the question “Who am I?” You will also likely see in the map the influences, the people, ideas, forces that have influenced or shaped you. And you will also very likely get important insights into what you have wanted at different times of your life, and whether and how you got what you wanted or needed. Capture key insights for yourself in your journal, in words or symbols or images. Save your map to go back to and reflect on later - at least save it as an image if it is not possible to preserve the physical map.
Temenos - Clean Slate Bringing inspiration to life Please be invited to reflect on a container or “Temenos� that is important to you right now. It could be a personal or a work relationship or situation or context. A context that involves at least you and one or more other people. Create a map on a large sheet of paper in a manner similar to the one you may have used for your personal history. Give yourself some time, as you reflect, to journal (and or collect meaningful objects and images) about this situation. We suggest giving yourself at least 30 minutes to journal about these questions. You may choose to leave that section of your journal for a time, leave some space, continue reflecting and come back to it. This exercise can be done at one sitting or over a period of time. How would you draw out graphically or pictorially where you are in the particular context or situation you want to focus on. Who or what are the other forces or influences in the picture? How do they relate to each other? What changes or movements are called for, are emerging for you as you consider the context? What do you need from the context? What does it need from you? How might you be failing the system? How might it be failing you?
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22 Helpful questions for clean slate: How are you currently showing up here? What is the current reality? As you focus and reflect, try to be honest with yourself about all the relevant influences, your own relevant behaviours and patterns - and those of others. How does the way you are showing up attune with your underlying intention? What choices are you currently making in this context? Are there choices you would like to make differently? Are there things you would like to communicate to others in the picture? Conversations or dialogues you feel called to have?
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Group Dialogue Dialogue -1 Temenos Theme
Bringing inspiration to life
Working with a catalyst, coach and a trusted team of people: •
Each person reflects on one of the following using the exercise patterns described above (perhaps 30 min) • • •
Their personal history A current context or situation (Clean Slate) Their vision of the future
Dialogue - Temenos Bringing inspiration to life •
Each person presents their map to the others (20-40 min each) Note
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Others listen carefully and share the insights and questions that come up for them. This is not a time for “fixing” the other person or for making judgements or giving advice, but rather for sharing impressions, sharing learning, supporting and appreciating the journey of the person presenting, and helping them crystallixe their own insights.
• Practice listening deeply, heightening your awareness of yourself, of others, and of the group as a collective system. • If it seems useful, you may refer to the section of the curriculum on dialogue (to come) for more extensive comments and suggestions about working in a dialogic circle
• What do you notice? • What did you learn? About yourself? About others? About the group as a whole? About the Temenos process? About dialogue?
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Purpose Quest Bringing inspiration to life
Traditional societies have well-practiced patterns for helping members of their communities tap into a sense of vision, inspiration or purpose -- especially at times of Bringing inspirationkey to life Although skilled transitions, for example from adolescence to facilitation is highly adulthood or from adulthood to elderhood. These rites of valuable, an outline passage are often experienced as quests, and they tend for a one-day Quest to involve a period of extended reflection and appears below for connection with nature. those who would like to work with it independently. As a result of engaging in such a quest, participants Note
regularly emerge with breakthrough clarity about what inspires them in life. This could be expressed overtly as a sense of purpose, or as themes and threads of inspiration, like images or metaphors or animal guides, or a sense of their “highest goal.”
Within this Curriculum, we would seek to offer and support participants to engage in quests on several levels: •
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Multi-day facilitated quests out in the natural world, generally involving substantial reflective time alone in the wilderness Weekend quests, using a similar format but over a shorter time scale Single-day quests
Purpose Quest Bringing inspiration to life The depth of insight experienced is likely to be correlated to the time and energy invested, and especially to the quality of the “container” we create, but we realise that both time and resource availability will vary for participants. All levels of quests will be valuable. All quests will benefit from being “held” by experienced and skilled catalysts, and by participants working in small groups to facilitate dialogue, mutual learning and the tapping of collective intelligence. According to ancient tradition, quests include three phases •
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Recapitulation: in which participants reflect on their experience in their lives up to the time of the quests Questing: a period of reflection on the current moment of passage, in connection with nature. This may be only an hour or a few days Illumination: being open and receptive to the new insight, vision, inspiration or sense of purpose that arises.
For more information about longer quests, please see, as examples: http://sacredpassage.com/
http://northerndrum.com/pages/shamanic-workshops/northern-drum-vision-quest/85
https://www.now-here.com/foundation “Helping young people find their purpose - the Inspiration programme”
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Exercise: A one-day Inspiration Quest: One-day Inspiration inspiration Quest quest Bringing inspiration to life If at all possible, share your quest with another person or a few others, perhaps including a coach or mentor. Encourage the others fully to participate in the quest with you. In preparation for the quest, over a period of a few days or a few weeks, reflect on the nature of the challenges you are facing: are you now or would you like to be at a point of some transition, say from living in your family home to living on your own, moving to a new level of education, moving from education into work, moving from being single to entering a partnership (or vice versa), becoming a parent, facing a child’s maturing and leaving home, changing jobs or careers, moving into eldership, moving into semi-retirement or retirement. Be invited to journal about your reflections. Consider if there is an insightful question (Nick Udall of the nowhere group calls these Breakthrough Questions) that you wish to hold during the quest. What question, if you knew the answer, would “make all the difference”? The question, if you choose to hold one, should be one to which you do not know the answer, that calls you to exploration of the unknown, one that daunts you at least a little. The question may relate to “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” or “What do I want?” Or it may be of the form “How can I ….” or “How can we ….(for example, how can we make a major change, create transformation, achieve an important goal?)” As recapitulation, you may wish to capture the history of your life up to the date of our your quest in a structured way, perhaps by writing a short structured autobiography (see exercise to come), or by completing a Temenos influence map as described above, or by making a personal shield (see exercise to come).
One-day inspriation quest Bringing inspiration to life Set aside a full day for the quest. Find a natural setting that appeals to you, where you will be able to spend some extended time in nature -- safely, but in as much isolation and in as beautiful a location as you can find. Find a place where you will also be able to take shelter for part of the time if needed for safety, and have access to food and sanitary facilities. You may wish to plan your day around the suggested schedule below, inserting breaks for meals, hydration, and toilet visits in a respectful and rhythmic way considering the time available, the space and facilities, and the requirements of travel. Arrive early in the morning for your day, and find a place to sit in a circle with all participants. Check in (see exercise to come) to share how you are, what you are bringing to the quest: your point of transition if relevant, and a brief introduction of how you have prepared. Leave time for everyone to do this check-in gracefully. After the check-in, invite each person to present their history to the others, in the form he or she has selected (Temenos map, biography, shield). If possible, if people can all use the same form, this may be ideal. If you are choosing to do Temenos maps, actually drawing them on the day together can be a powerful practice. The biographies may or may not be shared in complete form, you may choose only to discuss the important points. Give time for each person to share and for the group to respond, sharing their insights. This is not a time for critique or judgment or advice, but rather for sharing insights, encouraging others and drawing learning out through collective intelligence. Allow some silent time in the circle after all have shared their recapitulations.
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Exercise: A one-day Inspiration Inspiration Quest One-day purpose questQuest: Bringing inspiration to life When you are ready, go out individually into nature, ideally for at least a few hours. Find a place the speaks to you and attracts you, where you can be undisturbed, having prepared yourself with appropriate clothing, shelter, safety equipment, bathroom breaks, water, etc. During your questing time, hold your question reverently and lightly, but consciously. Be intensely aware of what you experience. Be as present as you can to the moment, and to the direct experience of your presence in nature. Avoid rehashing old issues or worrying about the future cognitively. Notice what you notice. Use all your senses, your felt sense in your body, your intuition -- feel your feelings. Allow what wants to come up to come up for you. Most traditional guidance suggests that it helps to stay largely in one physical place. Make sure your colleagues or any group leaders are aware of where you are for safety reasons, and that you are sure of your location and can find your way back. Be prepared to accept and welcome some challenging weather and other natural conditions, but maintain safety. Take your journal to record your observations, but do not let extensive journaling distract you from being present and observant, of your natural surroundings and of your inner journey, during your quest. At the conclusion of the appointed time, return to the circle quietly and reverently. Take some time together to sit in silence. Then share your experience and any insights that arise with others. In a similar way to the opening circle, allow good time for each person to share individually, perhaps 15-20 minutes. Then let the group share its own reflections and responses collectively, perhaps guided by a skilled catalyst if one is available. Again, this is not a time for critiques or advice, but for shared insight.
One-day purpose quest Bringing inspiration to life You may want to take some silent time for everyone to journal about your learnings. This work is more about deep learnings than about “next actions�, but if any commitments or future movements become obvious to you, record them. When all have shared, check out (see exercise). Do a closing round of final observations and learnings. Celebrate and honour each other and return respectfully and gently to the everyday world. In the days after the event, be aware of the learnings and insights that arise for you. Learnings and insights may take some time to mature and show themselves. Record them in your journal. You may also want to give them form in images or icons. Physical objects may take on special meaning. Share these inspirations in dialogue with a trusted friend coach, and catalyst. What answers have arisen for the crucial question you began the quest by holding? If this represents a form of breakthrough for you, be sure to capture it, treasure it and nourish it. What more do you know about who you are? Why you are here? What you want? What inspires you? Do you have new-found sense of purpose? Perhaps some new threads of inspiration? How you want to be or what you want to do in the world?
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Notes and examples
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Check-in Check-in Check-in 33 Exercise: Sense ofinspiration Inspirationto life Bringing In many forms of dialogue, participants do something called a “check-in”. Depending on the context, doing this formally may or may not seem appropriate. But as a context it is worth remembering and you may be able to use the structure informally. In a check-in, people sit in a circle, and each is in turn invited to say how they are in themselves and to say what they are looking for or anticipating in the meeting, dialogue or process you are entering. Sometimes there is a specific check-in question. Each person speaks in turn, often moving around clockwise. Everyone has an equal chance to speak. Participants agree to listen appreciatively and deeply to each other, without interruption. The practice has the core virtue of honouring all participants equally, allowing all participants to be authentic about their state of mind coming in to the meeting, and to be clear and open about intentions and expectations. It also permits a range of perspectives to be shared, fostering collaboration and a respect for diverse viewpoints. If checking in is new to you, choose a “safe” context or meeting and invite all participants to sit in a circle and check-in in turn, saying briefly how they are and what they want and expect from the meeting. Notice the effect on you, on other participants, and on the quality of the dialogue and collaboration that ensues.
Check-out Bringing inspiration to life Sense of Inspiration A check-out is a relative of a check-in. The process is much the same: participants sit in a circle and speak in turn, everyone speaking on an equal basis. Participants report on how they are in themselves after the meeting, what they are taking away, and what they intend to do do now as a result of the meeting. As with a check-in, all voices are heard and valued equally. And all participants are able to benefit and understand the learnings and personal reactions of the others. In an appropriate setting, invite all participants to sit in a circle and check-out in turn, saying briefly how they are at the close of the meeting, event or process, what they have learned and what they will do as a result of the meeting. Notice the effect on you, on other participants, and on the quality of the collaboration and cooperation that ensues following the meeting. You may also wish to observe how these practices affect people’s enthusiasm for meetings, for attendance, for participation, and for putting common decisions into practice.
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Five points of inspiration Bringing inspiration to life
A person’s deepest truth(s) Close personal relationships
Relationship with Self
Work - Creativity, Service, Practice Communities and ecosystems
Five points of inspiration Bringing inspiration to life
In our work with young people, one useful and simple mental model that emerged for exploring for and discovering inspiration is a five-pointed star, where the points of the star are as follows: • • • • •
A person’s deepest truth(s) Close personal relationships Communities and ecosystems Work - Creativity, Service, Practice Relationship with Self
Reflecting in creative ways on each of the five points can be a rich source of inspiration. Each of the points will be more important for some people than for others. Some people find inspiration in all five points, some only in one or two. The boundaries of the five directions illustrated by the star are not at all hard or rigid, but rather flowing and interconnected. Typically, different points of the star are connected to other points. For each person the whole picture will have coherence, even if tensions appear between the attractions of the different points.
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Deepest truth Bringing inspiration to life Most people we have encountered have some sense of what is deeply true for them. Your deepest truth includes what you understand to be the fundamental principles of how the world works and what are the guiding principles for nature, for the universe, for life, for people individually and in groups, and for yourself.
If you have a sense of faith or spirituality, your faith or your spiritual values are likely to be a major part of your deepest truth. If you have a personal philosophy, this is likely to be part of your deepest truth. If you see yourself as a rationalist, then your own rationality and your structured methods of inquiry could be the foundation of your deepest truth. If you are a humanist, your sense of what is needed for the future of humanity is probably part of your deepest truth.
People’s deepest truth often illuminates for them how they should act in their lives. Their deepest truth might call them to deeper exploration, practice or study. Or it could call them to action in the world.
Exploring deepest truth Bringing inspiration to life What do you believe is deeply true about the universe? About nature? About the ecology of the earth? About the human community? About an individual human being? About relationships? About yourself? Give yourself time to reflect on this. Take a walk, perhaps in a beautiful and peaceful natural or evocative setting. Write about what comes up for you in your journal as you go, from time to time, without unduly interrupting the flow of your reflection. What about this reflection inspires you? What part motivates you to act? What part motivates you to be in a certain way? Do you feel energy and strong motivation around this? Your inspirational motivation may arise from a positive energy - something you want to create, embrace or move towards, or it may originate in things you want to avoid, eliminate or reform (for example war or political or social injustice). In any case, we invite you to crystallise the inspiration, if one arises, in a positive form (“I want to create or call forward ….. inwardly or outwardly”). Consider holding the question, “How do I derive inspiration from my sense of my deepest truth?” Give yourself time for the question to mature and for the answer to unfold. Don’t be concerned if this point of the star does not ignite much energy for you. Each person is different, there are four other points of the star to consider, and the star is in itself only one possible mental model. Record your insights in your journal if this fits for you, or consider making a Temenos map to express it (see discussion of the Temenos Effect above) or finding evocative images or objects to capture your inspiration.
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Exercise: Exploring deepest truth Exploring deepest truth Close Personal Relationships Bringing inspiration to life Do you feel inspired by close personal relationships? By this we mean partner relationships, family ties, and close friendships. These are relationships that are most powerfully understood in the context of one-to-one connections, or possibly one-to-a-few, as opposed to larger groups (see the discussion of Communities and Ecosystems below). Are you inspired by the idea of being in a loving and creative partnership? Either because you are in such a relationship now or because you want to be in one? Are you inspired by close family ties, as a parent, or as a child, as a brother or sister, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, cousin. Are you inspired by close friendships, whether discovered in personal life, socially, in the community, or in work? Ask yourself what gets your energy or excitement flowing: rejoicing in (or reforming) the present state, or imagining and seeking to create an inspired future around the kind of relationships you want to create with the people closest to you. Once again, this realme may or may not be your most energised point of the star. Others may be more important. Allow your own truth to emerge.
Close Personal Relationships Bringing inspiration to life Reflect on your close personal relationships as they exist for you: with your parents, your siblings, your children if you have them, your spouse, partner or significant other in romantic relationship (if this is true for you). Your close friends and colleagues, people where you have a direct sense of connection, of knowing and being known, of caring for the other and being cared for. Perhaps in certain areas of your life such relationships are missing: possibly someone close to you has died or broken away. Perhaps you are seeking a kind of connection you have not yet found, romantically or in friendship. What inspires you about how such close relationships are now or could be in the future? Do your relationships, or your hopes for them, give meaning, quality or richness to your life or the lives of others in your circle of connection? Are there relationships you are still seeking to form? Are there parts of your relationship-life that are missing or that you would like to improve? Make notes about these reflections in your journal. Consider holding the question, “How can I find inspiration in my close personal relationships?� Allow yourself time and space to let the questions mature. Be on the lookout for breakthrough insights, possibly when you least expect them. As with other points of the star, record your insights in words in your journal, in maps, in objects or in images, in ways that are most meaningful to you.
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Exercise: Close Personal Relationships Close Personal Relationships Communities and ecosystems Bringing inspiration to life
Are you energised by being a member of or belonging to a group of some kind, a group that has a defined identity? Communities could be defined by your place or organisation of work, your school or university community, your ethnicity, your nationality, your gender, your sexual orientation, your neighborhood or sense of belonging to a place, your political, social, professional or avocational affiliations. Your sense of community could be defined around connection to nature and to the environment, on a large or narrower field. Companies, entrepreneurial ventures, non-profits and other work environments are an important and natural form of community. What sorts of communities have you loved and felt at home in? What sorts do you long for but have not yet found or created? What sorts have repelled you and called you to initiate change? What sorts of communities can you imagine that you want to found, lead, or call forward? You may also be focused on your participation - and that of others - in natural or social ecosystems. If you are inspired by protecting or celebrating the earth, thenatural environment, you may be seeing your membership in natural ecosystem as inspiring. Equally, you may be energised by the chance to be part of a larger social ecosystem, conceived of as being much larger than any social or organisational group, and perhaps including the interrelationships of many such groups.
Communities and ecosystems Bringing inspiration to life Reflect on the kinds of communities and ecosystems that inspire you - positively or negatively. What kinds do you want to found or contribute to? Call forward? Transform? Protect or foster? In what ways will these communities nurture you and call forward your creativity, your innovative spirit, your ability to serve others. How will they affect others? What kinds of relationships will they foster? Make notes about this in your journal. Consider holding the question, “How can I find inspiration in my communities or ecosystems?” Allow yourself time and space to let the question mature. Be on the lookout for breakthrough insights, possibly when you least expect them. Make notes about these reflections in your journal. Consider holding the question, “How can I find inspiration in the communities and ecosystems I can create, develop or join?” Allow yourself time and space to let the questions mature. Be on the lookout for breakthrough insights, possibly when you least expect them. As with other points of the star, record your insights in words in your journal, in maps, in objects or in images, in ways that are most meaningful to you.
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Exercise: Finding inspiration in Work. Work Bringing inspiration to life How does the potential of Work (we write it here with a capital W) inspire you. When we think of Work, we mean at its best a context in which your full creativity and your capacity for service and self-expression are called forward. Where you can serve others in a truly inspired way. Where you can practice and hone your “craft,” your “art” and your skills in a truly inspired way. What would be the ideal “job” for you to do - it might be more of an avocation than a way of earning a living, or it might be both? What skills do you have - or roles do you play - for which you are or might be paid and those you do or would do for love. Don’t limit yourself to just one path. What are the varied themes of Work in the world that inspire you. In what ways will these themes nurture you and call forward your true identity, your creativity, your innovative spirit, your ability to serve others. Make notes about this in your journal. Consider holding the question, “How can I find inspiration in my Work - broadly and creatively defined?” How can I tune my existing skills and the productive opportunities and skill-building opportunities I actually face to refining and bringing to life my inspiration around Work. Allow yourself time and space to let the questions mature. Be on the lookout for breakthrough insights, possibly when you least expect them. Make notes about these reflections in your journal. Allow yourself time and space to let the questions mature. Be on the lookout for breakthrough insights, possibly when you least expect them. As with other points of the star, record your insights in any ways that are most meaningful to you.
Finding inspiration in self Bringing inspiration to life Where and how do you see yourself now? Who are you? What do you want to learn? How do you want to grow? It could be through education, personal development, goal setting, spiritual development, physical development, health, wealth … Does growing or learning or developing as a person inspire you? Reflect on the kinds of personal evolution that inspire you - mental, spiritual, physical, material. Make notes about this in your journal. Consider holding the question, “How can I find inspiration in my relationship with myself, in my personal growth and development broadly and creatively defined?” Allow yourself time and space to let the question mature. Be on the lookout for breakthrough insights, possibly when you least expect them. As with other points of the star, record your insights in words in your journal, in maps, in objects or in images, in ways that are most meaningful to you.
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Backbone Bringing inspiration to life
We’ve been exploring ways to discover our personal sense of inspiration, and how these things can emerge from our history and current experience. We’ve also looked at some ways to crystallise our vision of the future. A natural question is how all these things can fit together. The leadership catalysts at the nowhere group have come up with a mental model we like a lot to connect these explorations together. They call it “The Backbone”: it is described on page 121 of both the “My” and the “Our” sections of their book, the Way of nowhere. Essentially, the approach calls for linking the elements we’ve been describing in a relationship that builds up from history, to what we stand for now, to our senses of purpose, values and inspiration. There is then a leap forward to a sense of vision, and then stepping backward to fill in the details of a strategy: how to get there. The diagram on the facing page is a simplified version of the way nowhere draws this framework. Respecting their copyright, we won’t reproduce their beautiful and elegant diagram here but we do hghly recommend checking it out in The Way of nowhere book.
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Linking history, present reality, purpose, values, inspiration to vision and strategy
Purpose, values, inspiration Note
What do I stand for now?
History
The various elements support each underpin one another, like the vertebrae in a backbone, hence the name. The beauty of this conception is that it can allow us to work from fundamental foundations to a sense of where we are going and to practical action steps to get there, all in a connected way, one we can visualise and occupy spatially.
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Exercise: Working with the backbone Working with the backbone Working with the backbone Bringing inspiration to life If you have done some work on some or all of your past, present, inspiration, and future vision, you may want to explore how these insights tie together - and how they can help you create an action plan to call forward the future you envision. If you have some of the building blocks but not all, don’t worry, this process can build on what you already have, and also steer you in filling in the gaps. You might want to create some floor cards or write on pieces of A4 paper the words on the next page. You can do this exercise on your own, or in partnership with a coach, mentor, catalyst or trusted friend or colleague. If you have done a Temenos process in a group, you might want to invite one or more of your Temenos collaborators to join you in this work. We’d invite you to adapt the “Purpose, values, inspiration” card to your personal situation. If you have a sense that you have a personal purpose, you might name the card to reflect that sense. If you feel you have a number of threads of inspiration working, rather than a singular sense of purpose, you might want to label the card simply “Inspiration” (or have several cards). If you feel mostly in touch with your personal values, label the card in that way. If there is a combination of these influences, use a mixture, or several cards. As you stand in the place of your History, what do you know? What do you experience? What do you notice? Notice your experience with all your “ways of knowing” emotional, intuitive, sensory, the “felt sense” within your body - as well as your thinking, cognitive mind.
Working with the backbone Bringing inspiration to life
Vision Strategy Purpose, values, inspiration
What do I stand for now?
History
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Exercise: Working with the backbone Working with the backbone Working with the backbone Bringing inspiration to life Please be invited to record any insights in your journal, and to share them with any partners you are working with. Give yourself time to notice and record any insights. Next, move on to the second card, moving up from the bottom. What do you stand for now? How has your experience in the past shaped where you are today? What strengths do you experience? What questions are you holding? You may want to recall or physically hold records or artefacts of prior work you have done around your present situation, including any Temenos Clean Slate Maps. You might want to start out facing your history, and then turn to face toward your future. Once again, please be invited to record any insights in your journal, and to share them with any partners you are working with. Give yourself time to notice and record any insights. Next, move to stand on the third card. Invoking, and possibly physically holding or touching the artefacts of any work you have done on inspiration, purpose, and/or values, what do you understand or sense as you stand in this place? As before, employ all your “ways of knowing.� You might begin by facing the past and the present, and then slowly turn to face the future. What do you notice. Once again, please be invited to record any insights in your journal, and to share them with any partners you are working with. Give yourself time to notice and record any insights.
Working with the backbone Bringing inspiration to life Next, perhaps counter-intuitively, leap ahead to the card that says Vision. We want vision to be out front as we face the future, and we need vision before we develop strategy. Using any vision work you have done, including a Temenos vision map, the results of an Inspiration Quest, and perhaps any stories you have created about your future, reflect on what you know about your vision of the future? As before use all your “ways of knowing.� What do you know, understand, and perceive about your vision for the future. Allow yourself to look out physically toward the future, even beyond your vision, as well as back toward your inspiration and your sense of where you have been and where you are. As with each of the other stages, please be invited to record any insights in your journal, and to share them with any partners you are working with. Give yourself time to notice and record any insights.
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Exercise: Working with the backbone Working Working with with thethe backbone backbone Bringing inspiration to life Finally, take a step back to stand on the card for your strategy. Touch in to any work you may have done on this topic, including creating Agile stories for implementation of your vision or any other planning techniques you have used (See section on Agile planning below). What do you understand from this place? Are there new insights about what’s needed in strategy and tactics to bring your vision to life? If your strategy has multiple streams, mentally “stand” on each stream and see what you notice. Do some parts feel exciting and motivating? Do some feel less in tune? What new insights are arising? As with each of the other stages, please be invited to record any insights in your journal, and to share them with any partners you are working with. Give yourself time to notice and record any insights. At any stage of this process, if you have not done work on the relevant area before, don’t worry. Go onto that space with an open mind, an open heart and an open will. Notice what insights arise - or what questions. The questions may be the most valuable gifts. Record what you are learning in your journal and/or share it with your partners in the exercise. You can also feel free to move back and forth across the cards. You can move in patterns that seem right to you and observe the learnings. We would suggest that you move slowly and mindfully, so you can pay attention to any changes that occur from one vantage point to another.
Working with the backbone Bringing inspiration to life As you do the exercise, notice the relationship between the perspectives. Do they support one another? Is there a natural build, sequence or journey as you move through time? Do you notice disconnects or dissonances? As ever, be invited to use all your ways of knowing. When you are finished with each of the positions, you may want to stand or sit in a place where you can see the whole, and reflect on the entire process. As ever, feel free to share insights and record them in your journal. This exercise can help you to construct a sense of how your history and your inspiration can shape your desired future, in both visionary and practical terms, in an integrated and attuned way. You can return to the exercise at any time, come back to it again and again, and enter it at any point. Doing so may help to create new insights about how the whole system works together - and to re-tune elements that seem to be out of tune. The view of the whole may also give you clarity about what’s needed within any of the parts. You may want to keep your journal notes and any relevant artefacts in safe, memorable and accessible places where you can access them as you need them.
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Exercise: Personal autobiography* Personal Personal autobiography Shield Bringing inspiration to life Write your personal autobiography, working in seven-year time bands. Seek to write each segment in no more than seventy words. If you are young enough to have only two or three segments, you can work with these, or use three-and-a-half year time bands instead. Focus on the most emotionally important events in each time-band. What gifts did other people give you that shaped who you are? What challenges did you face, and how did you respond? What moments seem to illustrate you at your best? What things you have done that made you most proud? Alternatively, if there have been moments of particular pain, what would you like to do to create a world where these things would not happen again, to you or to others? Write your autobiography and keep it in a place where you can refer to it from time to time. What does your autobiography tell you about the person you are? About your strengths and achievements? About the person you want to become?
* This exercise is inspired by the practice of the nowhere group, as described in their pulished works
Personal shield Bringing inspiration to life Working from your personal autobiography, make yourself a personal shield. You could use a round piece of cardboard or a round piece of wood as the background. Divide the circle into as many sections as there are time-band segments in your autobiography. If you are young enough to have only a few segments, you might chose to use three-and-a-half year segments in the same way as in the autobiography. Choose one or two evocative symbols that capture the energetic essence of each time band and draw them onto the shield. What does looking at this shield tell you about your history? About the things that have been most important to you? About your greatest successes, accomplishments? About the things you love? About what has shaped you and your ambitions for the future? Share and explain your shield with others. What does the telling of your story in this way contribute to your own understanding?
* This exercise is inspired by the practice of the nowhere group, as described in their pulished works
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Exercise: My heroes* MyMy heroes Heroes Bringing inspiration to life
Your heroes might be 1. Historical figures, long dead 2. Living persons 3. Famous people 4. Members of your family 5. Members of your communities 6. Your friends 7. Fictional or mythological characters 6. Characters from film, stage, television, plays, novels, poems, songs, or stories 7. Characters from your own imagination 8. Animals, plants or natural forms 9. Forces of nature
Who are your heroes? We invite you to open and hold this question for yourself. Sometimes when we ask people who their heroes are, the question comes as a surprise. We invite you to take it up as a question and carry it with you, without pressure for any kind of specific or limited answer, but as an ongoing and living investigation and resource for you in discovering your inspiration. You might want to keep a heroes list - perhaps on paper, in your journal, or electronically in a medium attractive to you. What is it in the story of each of your heroes that makes them heroes for you? What characteristics of your heroes do you most admire? Are those characteristics ones you aspire to for yourself? Ones you would wish to see included in your family, your team, your organisation, your community? How do you want to bring those wonderful qualities into your own story? Into the stories of the relationships, teams, communities and organisations your are creating? Is it possible for you or others to embody the qualities you admire? If not, what is standing in the way?
My heroes Bringing Inspiration to life You might want to consider collecting photos, images or symbols of your heroes in one place ‌ or drawing images or icons to represent them and help you remember them and to make them vivid or inspiring for you. You might also want to collect video and audio clips that evoke your heroes for you, and to keep those clips in a special and memorable place where it is easy and inviting for you to refer to them and to draw inspiration from them. You may want to collect physical objects - human-made or from nature - that evoke your heroes and their special qualities, and again, maintain a special place to hold these artefacts where you feel invited to draw inspiration from them. What metaphors give colour and shape to your heroes’ qualities? When your heroes are embodying their most inspiring or admirable qualities, they are like what? You might want to consider writing stories about your heroes, where perhaps you are also a character in the story. About your heroes: what they were like, what changed, what they are like now. Can you visualise these stories, bringing them to life in your imagination? You might want to consider making a drawing or an evocative map, Temenos-fashion, to illustrate the heroic quality of some or all of your heroes, individually or in groups.
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Exercise: My heroes* My Heroes My Heroes Bringing inspiration to life We have offered you here a range of suggestions for discovering and living with your heroes. Please be invited to take on for yourself any part of these suggestions that serves you, and leave the rest. What insights about your own inspiration does having a relationship with your heroes evoke for you? Please be invited to record any insights in your journal, in maps, or through signs, symbols and artefacts.
* This exercise is inspired by Fred Kofman
Covey’s funeral exercise Bringing inspiration to life In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey invites readers to carry out this mental exercise. Imagine you are able to attend your own funeral, some years in the future. If you are a young person, or find the funeral image too morbid, you can imagine a celebration in your honour several years from now. Considering the various streams of activity and inspiration that are important in your life, possibly animated by our five points of inspiration, consider who you would wish to be speaking at this celebration of your life, and what you would like them to say about you. For example, • What would you like to have someone say about your relationship to those closest to you: possibly your parents, your siblings, your partner or spouse, your children, your closest friends. What kind of a person did they see in you? What are their most touching and inspiring memories of you? • What would you like to have someone say about your involvement in communities and ecosystems? Perhaps a company or organisation you have created or led, your role in your work community, community groups, a faith-based group, a charity? Are you involved in environmental work or do you have a particular allegiance to protecting nature? Are you involved in social projects?
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Exercise: Stephen Covey’s funeral Covey’s funeral exercise Stephen Covey’s Funeral Bringing inspiration to life • What would you like people to say about your Work? What have you created? How are you of service to customers, clients, colleagues, co-workers, stakeholders? What kind of professional are you? What are your special skills? What is your “art”? • What would you like people to say about how you have developed yourself? Your education, your health, your fitness, your personal achievements? • What would you like people to say about your sense of your highest truth? Your faith, your spirituality, your personal philosophy or worldview? How have you developed these elements? How have you shared them? Imagine what it would be like to see, hear and feel an account of all the relevant points of this picture, by people you care about? Reflecting on these themes now, years before the point of future recollection you are now imagining, allows you time and space to consider what is really important to you. This is one way of gaining insight into what inspires you: what you think represents a good life for you, and what it would look like, sound like, feel like, to have that appreciated by others several years from now. What does doing this exercise tell you about where you would like to be investing your time today, so that when your life is celebrated years from now, the dimensions of your life that you are proud of have been realised? What would you like to create or call forward in the world? How would you like to serve? How would you like to be remembered? Allow yourself to imagine what’s possible.
Inspirations from Agile Bringing inspiration to life At some point we may have a sense of a vision of the future we want to create - in which case the next question can be: “how do I make this vision come alive.� The answer we are looking for might be some kind of strategy or plan (see the Backbone). If a vision is a long-range one, planning for it can seem daunting on one hand, and potentially time-consuming on the other. We might ask ourselves how to plot out a long-term future in great detail. One inspiration to help with this challenge, drawing on the Agile approach to software development (or to any other kind of creative development) is as follows. (See References for more information about Agile). Agile thinking’s precursors began recognising a few decades ago that planning large projects in excruciating detail for execution over several years was an ineffective way of working. Skilled practitioners in software development realised that, despite the hope of doing so, it is nearly impossible to forecast several years out what will actually be needed at that time in a dynamic strategic or operating environment. Equally, almost no one - not users, not designers - is very good at defining requirements for a major undertaking without seeing and working with the underlying product or output in practical use.
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Mental model: inspirations from Agile Inspirations Inspirations from from Agile Agile Bringing inspiration to life
Agile planning works by writing stories about the future, and then working in short bursts of activity iteratively to bring small, usable parts of that future to life so we can try them out in the real world. Each time part of the future is “made”, we have a chance to try it out and learn from our experience. As we learn, we create more and more of our future reality, but each time we move forward we incorporate our growing knowledge and wisdom gained from using our prototypes in practice including learning from mistakes and failures as well as successes. The planning and execution is dynamic and adaptive. Accordingly, one way to create strategies and plans on the basis of visions of the future is to write the vision as a story about the future, and then to create “slices” of that future vision - small bits of the story to bring to life early on, day by day, week by week, month by month. As you bring these parts of the future vision to life, you can use them in practice and see how they perform. And you can use your daily learning to make new decisions about how the story of the future evolves, and to make new decisions about which parts of the future vision to build next. If some ideas are failures, we learn this fast and welcome the learning. We fail fast, and inexpensively, in order to shape a more robust future.
Agile planning Bringing inspiration to life In your backbone exercise, Temenos, inspirational star, funeral exercise, or other inspirational or purpose work provides you with a glimpse, or more than a glimpse, of a vision of the future, write your vision as a story. As much as possible, write the story in the present tense, and from the point of view of customers, users or beneficiaries (which may include yourself ) of the work or creative effort you have in mind. The story may have parts and sub-parts, for example parts of a business plan or dimensions of the inspirational star. You may want to create “swim lanes” on a large piece of paper for each of the parts. You can hang the paper on the wall or lay it out on the floor. Write major elements of the story on large post-its or index cards and and place them (or stick them if on the wall) in the swim-lanes in their “right place”, reflecting what needs to be done chronologically, but also in the right spatial order to reflect importance. Notice any relationships that suggest themselves to you between key elements in the different swim-lanes. You may want to group activities in large buckets of time: this year, next year, or whatever is an appropriate scale for you. Don’t do this with a sense of rigid commitment, but rather in a spirit of play, experimentation and discovery.
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Exercise: Agile planning Agile Agile planning Planning Bringing inspiration to life We encourage you to keep the planning map you have created somewhere where you can go back to it, see it, develop it, play with it, change it. Don’t think of your future story as fixed: think of it as emerging and evolving, informed by what you are learning every day. For your near-term planning, choose some elements that of the story (including each of its parts as appropriate) that you think you can complete in a period of a few weeks, perhaps one week to one month, whatever seems like the right interval for you. The Agile world has developed a bias for shorter planning cycles, to facilitate rapid learning and adaptation. Break each story item down into actions or tasks you can do in less than a day, or ideally in one sitting. Create a small card or a sticky note for each story item you have created in this way. Focus on delivering small but internally complete and usable parts of your long-term plan, or prototypes that allow you test parts of it in action, in each shortterm planning period (sometimes called Sprints in the Agile world). Separately from your long-term planning document, make a large sheet with three columns: To do, in progress, done. Place your near-term planning cards all in the To Do column to start. As you work on items, move their cards to the In Progress column. Try to work on only one In-Progress item at a time. As your items are completed, move them into the Done column.
Agile planning Bringing inspiration to life At the end of your Sprint or personal iteration cycle, notice what you have accomplished, and what not. What was good about this cycle’s work? What stood in your way? What have you learned for the next cycle? What have you learned about your larger, longer-term plan? Go back to it and make changes as needed. This way of planning, working, delivering, learning and planning can be repeated over and over again indefinitely, and tends to make our long-term visions and plans living things, emerging daily, and continuously informed and improved by daily learning.
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Conclusion: the first question. We hope that this first theme of the Curriculum provides at least a few valuable stimuli and provocations for you as you seek to discover and bring to life your own sense of purpose or inspiration. Our intent is to provide you with a range and variety of resources, from which you can choose and adopt those that serve you, and leave the rest. Equally, if you are reading or working with this, we consider you part of our community, and we hope you will feel warmly invited to share feedback and creative suggestions for how the curriculum can be developed and improved. Far from becoming fixed in a static form, we want the curriculum to evolve, continually and elegantly, with regular new editions released, electronically and physically. Please help us shape and develop and grow this work. We particularly welcome a diversity of voices - culturally, geographically, politically, philosophically, economically and from every possible orientation - so the work can benefit from - and we can learn from and with - as wide and diverse an audience as possible. We invite you to share this work with friends, family, mentors, mentees, coaches, teachers, colleagues - whoever helps to shape your experience of inspiration and purpose, and whose experience of these things you help to shape. We have a profound respect - and a wondering and curious admiration - for the power of dialogue and collective intelligence in calling forward insight and breakthrough. We hope you will agree and that you will make use of those powers for your own learning and growth: to co-create, develop and then share the insights that arise for you. This edition, or release, of the curriculum includes only the first of our (currently intended) nine themes. We are at work already on the others ‌ and ‌ inspired by an Agile mindset, we want to offer you, our customers, colleagues and community members, early and regular opportunities to engage with the work, to use it in real life, and to help us, through feedback and collaboration, to make it ever better and better as we move forward together. Please enjoy the journey and please share your stories and insights with all of us.
Quotes, sources, readings
Note to participants about quotations: These quotations have been gathered, and continue to be gathered, by the founders and participants of this curriculum, as examples of ideas and expressions that have inspired people we know, or called them to a sense of personal purpose, or drawn them to bring their gifts of creativity and service to life in the world. They are from diverse sources and diverse perspectives. As you read them, some may resonate, some may not, some may repel. Some of the terminology may seem strange or foreign or wrong for you. Please feel free to take what fits for you -- possibly including what challenges you -- and leave the rest. Also feel free to explore within the community any ideas or terms that do not seem clear or about which you would like to learn more. And finally, this list as it now exists is only a beginning: please be in invited to contribute your own inspiring quotations to this list!
Quotations My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.
- Maya Angelou
You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.
-Maya Angelou
The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. They may not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.
- Maya Angelou
It Is a tragic fact that [our] present system of education fails to get across to our youth the simple, basic truth that each has within them the capacity for greatness, love and inner peace, and that this treasure can be claimed if self is made the servant of the Creative Spirit.
- Lou Austin
So many people say, ‘I wish I knew what I’m supposed to do in life.’ Well look for the clues. Source is leaving you breadcrumbs all along the path. If you but follow the breadcrumbs from one experience of Source to the next, you can lead your life as a never-ending flow of Source, following your soul’s design for your life rather than getting trapped by your conflicting ideations and confusing mind-talk. Your body is a barometer of the soul. If you want to know if you’re on track, check your body. If you are experiencing any of the qualities of Source, give yourself a big pat on the back - you’re in touch, you’re in flow. In this way, your soul can guide you from one experience of Source to the next. ... [In my workshops...] I ask everyone what are some of the qualities that seem to arise naturally out of Source. People call out the various qualities, and the words are all put up on a big whiteboard at the front of the room.... below is [the content of ] a typical whiteboard “freedom, boundlessness, joy, clarity, abundance, forgiveness, synchronicity, awareness, peace, humour, fluidity, grace, stillness, fearlessness, openness, silence, divinity, surrender, beingness, alacrity, spontaneity, lightness, wisdom, care, compassion, effortlessness, beauty, trust, inspiration, healing, vitality, fun, laughter, purity, playfulness, excitement, fulfilment, serendipity, oneness, humility, understanding, acceptance, delight, honouring, strength, courage, vastness, aliveness, vibrancy, passion, balance, timelessness, gentleness, curiosity, simplicity, pure energy, tenderness, wholeness, completeness, serenity, truth.”
- Brandon Bays, The Journey
[SD note: I like to ponder the quotation above, often substituting the word “Inspiration” for Brandon’s use of “Source”. Others might prefer to stick to her original word, or use mine, or invoke their own….] Pain pushes until vision pulls.
- Michael Beckwith
In order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.
- David Ben-Gurion
Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
- Warren Bennis
Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action. - Warren Bennis In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield. - Warren Buffett We have reversed the usual classical notion that the independent “elementary parts” of the world are the fundamental reality, and that the various systems are merely particular contingent forms and arrangements of these parts. Rather, we say that inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality, and that relatively independent behaving parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this whole.
- David Bohm
My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc. (Perhaps we could say that this is what is involved in harmony between the ‘left brain’ and the ‘right brain’). This kind of overall way of thinking is not only a fertile source of new theoretical ideas: it is needed for the human mind to function in a generally harmonious way, which could in turn help to make possible an orderly and stable society.
- David Bohm
There are four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.
- Lord Byron
The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there’s something lacking in the normal experiences available or permitted to the members of his society. This person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It’s usually a cycle, a going and a returning. But the structure and something of the spiritual sense of this adventure can be seen already anticipated in the puberty or initiation rituals of early tribal societies, through which a child is compelled to give up its childhood and become an adult -- to die, you might say to its infantile personality and psyche and come back as a responsible adult. This is a fundamental psychological transformation that everyone has to undergo. We are in childhood in a condition of dependency under someone’s protection and supervision for some 14 to 21 years ... you are in no way a responsible free agent, but an obedient dependent, expecting and receiving punishments and rewards. To evolve out of this position of psychological immaturity to the courage of self-responsibility and assurance requires a death and a resurrection. That’s the basic motif of the universal hero’s journey - leaving one’s condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition.
-Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers, in The Power of Myth
People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life... I think that what we’re really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive. But if a person has had the sense of the Call -- the feeling that there’s an adventure for her -- and if she doesn’t follow that, but remains in the society because it’s safe and secure, then life dries up. And then she comes to that condition in late middle age: she’s gotten to the top of the ladder, and found that it’s against the wrong wall. If you have the guts to follow the risk, however, life opens, opens, opens up all along the line. I’m not superstitious, but I do believe in spiritual magic, you might say. I feel that if one follows what I call one’s “bliss” -- the thing that really gets you deep in your gut and that you feel is your life -- doors will open up. They do! They have in my life and they have in many lives that I know of. And the other point is, if you follow your bliss, you’ll have your bliss, whether you have money or not. If you follow money, you may lose money, and then you don’t have even that. The secure way is really the insecure way and the way in which the richness of the quest accumulates is the right way.
- Joseph Campbell (pronouns adjusted by SD)
The empires of the future are empires of the mind.
- Winston Churchill
Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.
- Paulo Coelho
I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.
- Paulo Coelho
When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.
- Paulo Coelho
My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.
- Paulo Coelho
Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.
- Paulo Coelho
Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony.
- Paulo Coelho
I believe enlightenment or revelation comes in daily life. I look for joy, the peace of action. You need action. I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.
- Paulo Coelho
We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.
- Paulo Coelho
Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.
- Paulo Coelho
… I’ve come to believe that there are two approaches to life. The first, followed by most, is the “paint by number” approach to life. You do what other people say. You follow a well-travelled path. You stay within the lines. And you end up with a nice, pretty -- and unimaginative -- picture. The second, followed by few, is to start with a blank canvas and try to paint a masterpiece. It is a riskier path, a harder path, a path filled with ambiguity and creative choice. But it’s the only way to make your life itself a creative work of art. To paint a masterpiece requires a concept, a place to begin, a guiding context in the absence of the comforting numbers and lines in the premade kit. That guiding frame of reference is the highest goal…., and bringing it into your life with the help of Michael’s discoveries is what this book is all about.
-Jim Collins, in the foreword to Michael Ray’s The Highest Goal
Every human has four endowments- self-awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.
- Stephen Covey
In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.
- Stephen Covey
Most people struggle with life balance simply because they haven’t paid the price to decide what is really important to them.
- Stephen Covey
The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
- Stephen Covey
A leader will find it difficult to articulate a coherent vision unless it expresses his core values, his basic identity. One must first embark on the formidable journey of self-discovery in order to create a vision with authentic soul.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Management has a lot to do with answers. Leadership is a function of questions. And the first question for a leader always is: ‘Who do we intend to be?’ Not ‘What are we going to do?’ but ‘Who do we intend to be?’
- Max DePree If you can dream it, you can do it.
- Walt Disney
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans.
- Peter Drucker
If we did all the things we are capable of doing we would literally astound ourselves.
- Thomas Edison
Vision without execution is hallucination.
- Thomas Edison
The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge. - Albert Einstein People only see what they are prepared to see.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
No one’s going to care about our community as much as we do. So we are the ones who have to take ownership.
-Cecily Engelhardt, Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation
Create your future from your future, not your past.
- Werner Erhard
The best vision is insight.
- Malcolm Forbes
To accomplish great things we must dream as well as act.
- Anatole France
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the people who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. The way in which a person accepts her fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which she takes up her cross, gives her ample opportunity--even under the most difficult circumstances--to add a deeper meaning to her life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation she may forget her human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a person either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford her. And this decides whether she is worthy of her sufferings or not. We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation--just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer--we are challenged to change ourselves.
- Viktor Frankl (pronouns adjusted by S Downs)
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost
If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.
-Robert Fritz
I don’t know Who -- or what -- put the question. I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone -- or Something--and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.
- Dag Hammarskjold, in Markings, quoted by Gerald May
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
- Mahatma Gandhi
My life is my message.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Glory lies in the attempt to reach one’s goal and not in reaching it. -
Mahatma Gandhi
He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.
-Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
A leader’s role is to raise people’s aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try to get there.
- David Gergen
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and magic and power in it. Begin it now.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost … It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
- Martha Graham - dancer and choreographer
Silence is argument carried out by other means.
- Che Guevara
The only passion that guides me is for the truth... I look at everything from this point of view.
- Che Guevara
One particular line of questioning that I found most useful, and research suggests is very revealing as to what motivates and drives an individual to eventual success, is as follows: When you were young, who was the person that was most influential in teaching you valuable lessons about life? What were those lessons the person taught you? What are those tapes this person put into your head that are still there today and have emerged as guiding principles for you? Usually the person is a parent, an influential teacher, or some other authority figure. Often times, this person came into the individual’s life as early as grade school or high school. The lessons you are looking for are basic principles that suggest a high degree of self confidence, a sense of personal responsibility, a strong drive to achieve, and solid fundamental ethics. No hint of these kinds of traits should be a red flag. - Bob Herbold – former Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft Corporation, on the productive questions to ask in an interview. Quoted by Mike Figliuolo on his blog “Thought Leaders” The very essence of leadership is that you have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.
- Theodore Hesburgh
Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.
- Napoleon Hill
I facilitated a session called “What is Education?� Instead of telling the campers what education is, I asked them to reflect on their favorite learning moments from the camp, and together, we drew out lessons on what education meant to each one of them. Each item on the list, connected to a specific activity, day, or moment throughout the camp, was truly remarkable: education is fun, collaborative, personally transformative, equitable, aligning with personal passions, making us better people and friends, multiple ways of being smart, directly connected to our lives, looking inside and reflecting, connected to the community and environment, learning to be happy, and learning to love.
- Tim Huang, from an experimental education symposium in Bhutan 2014
The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
- William James
Vision without action is a daydream. Action with without vision is a nightmare.
-Japanese Proverb
The kind of power I am talking about is entirely different. In fact, it makes you feel less manipulative of those around you, and certainly more loving. I am talking about power within the self. This means power over your perceptions of the world, power over how you react to situations in your life, power to do what is necessary for your own self-growth, power to create joy and satisfaction in your life, power to act and power to love. -
Susan Jeffers, in Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart,..you’ll know when you find it.
- Steve Jobs
The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks her own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through her. As a human being she may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist she is “human” in a higher sense - she is “collective human,” a vehicle and moulder of the unconscious psychic life of humankind.
- C. G. Jung ‘Psychology and Literature’, 1930) (pronouns amended by SD)
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside awakens.
- Carl Jung
A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.
-Rosabeth Moss Kanter
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
-Alan Kay
A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.
- Soren Kierkegaard
You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.
- Ken Kesey
If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause and say, “Here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
- Lao Tzu
At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.
- Lao Tzu, quoted by Deborah Hartmann Preuss
When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.
- Lao Tzu
A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
- Lao Tzu
Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.
- Lao Tzu
The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.
- Lao Tzu
It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.
- Lao Tzu
The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.
- Lao Tzu
Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then we shall find the way.
- Abraham Lincoln
Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.
- George Lucas
The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.
- Michelangelo
This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art. -
Toni Morrison, quoted by Maria Popova
This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
-W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalaya Expedition 1951
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
- Isaac Newton
The best stories are lived (not written) -
Song title, The Ocean’s Eyes
Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction. -
Kenichi Ohmae
I did not think of language as the means to self-description. I thought of it as the door — a thousand opening doors! — past myself. I thought of it as the means to notice, to contemplate, to praise, and, thus, to come into power. ... I saw what skill was needed, and persistence — how one must bend one’s spine, like a hoop, over the page — the long labor. I saw the difference between doing nothing, or doing a little, and the redemptive act of true effort. Reading, then writing, then desiring to write well, shaped in me that most joyful of circumstances — a passion for work. I don’t mean it’s easy or assured; there are the stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet. But there is, also, the summoning world, the admirable energies of the world, better than anger, better than bitterness and, because more interesting, more alleviating. And there is the thing that one does, the needle one plies, the work, and within that work a chance to take thoughts that are hot and formless and to place them slowly and with meticulous effort into some shapely heat-retaining form, even as the gods, or nature, or the soundless wheels of time have made forms all across the soft, curved universe — that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life.
- Mary Oliver, quoted by Maria Popova in BrainPickings
The Invitation It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human. It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’ It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
-Oriah Mountain Dreamer
When you work only for yourself, or for your own personal gain, your mind will seldom rise above the limitations of an undeveloped personal life. But when you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break your bonds: your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
- Patanjali, founder of the Yoga sutras, 2nd century BC Quoted by Nick Williams, author of “The Work We Were Born to Do”
A few centuries of listening to the head and more or less ignoring the wisdom of the body have produced a world that makes sense to the head but bewilders the noble physical being that’s hiding beneath our business suits.
- David Pearl
Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it.
- Max Planck
In reality, we are servants of the Mystery. We were put here on earth to acts as agents of the Infinite, to bring into existence that which is not yet, but which will be, through us.
- Steven Pressfield, author The War of Art
You may think that you’ve lost your passion, or that you can’t identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true. Fear saps passion. When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.
- Steven Pressfield, Do the Work
A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate. Don’t think. Act.
- Steven Pressfield, Do the Work
The drawing is also a reminder that there’s an artist within each of us, and we must encourage that artist to do the work, to make something that matters, regardless of anything else that is going on.
- Steven Pressfield, Do the Work
The opposite of fear is love - love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.
- Steven Pressfield, Do the Work
The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes
- Marcel Proust
Where there is no vision the people perish. - Proverbs 29:18 The root word of education -- educare -- means to lead forth a hidden wholeness in another person. A genuine education fosters self-knowledge, self-trust, creativity and the full expression of one’s unique identity. It gives people the courage to be more.
- Rachel Naomi Remen
At the end of the Healer’s Art in all the 90 schools that presently teach it, the students stand in a large circle, silently review their memories of the course and identify the most important thing that they learned or remembered during the course. They then turn this insight into an affirmation: a little phrase which begins in one of three ways: I AM…. I CAN…. or I WILL. One at a time, the students go around the circle each saying their phrase out loud. This year will be the 24th year that I have taught the course at my medical school. The most common thing that students say in this sharing is a simple three-word phase: I AM ENOUGH. Year after year it is the same phrase I myself say as well. It is the beginning of everything.
-Rachel Naomi Remen, MD. Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of San Francisco and author of the curriculum called the Healer’s Art, now taught at over 90 medical schools around the world, including over half the medical schools in the US.
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heartwork on the images imprisoned within you.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the creator, there is no poverty.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
The only journey is the one within.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.�
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
A person isn’t who they are during the last conversation you had with them - they’re who they’ve been throughout your whole relationship.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. - Rainer Maria Rilke Start anywhere and follow it everywhere.
- Myron Rogers
Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground. -
Franklin D. Roosevelt
All work is an act of philosophy.
- Ayn Rand
It is not the critic who counts; not the one who points out how the strong one stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the one who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends herself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if she fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that her place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt (pronouns adjusted by SD)
Our nature as human beings is to exercise our enormous power in the service of life, to enrich life in ourselves and others.
- Marshall Rosenberg
Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.
- Jalaluddin Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. - Jalaluddin Rumi There is an invisible strength within us; when it recognizes two opposing objects of desire, it grows stronger.
- Jalaluddin Rumi
Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy.
- Jalaluddin Rumi
Rabbi Tarfon taught: “It is not your responsibility to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but you are not free to desist from it either.”
- Courtesy of John Rowe, in conversation with Jerry Doyle
In thinking about religion and society in the 21st century, we should broaden the conversation about faith from doctrinal debates to the larger question of how it might inspire us to strengthen the bonds of belonging that redeem us from our solitude, helping us to construct together a gracious and generous social order.
- Jonathan Sacks
Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.
- Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook
If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
To the person who does not know where he wants to go there is no favorable wind.
- Seneca
It’s not what the vision is, it’s what the vision does.
- Peter Senge
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations.
- George Bernard Shaw
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
- George Bernard Shaw
To be in hell is to drift. To be in heaven is to steer.
- George Bernard Shaw
You have to know what you want. And if it seems to take you off the track, don’t hold back, because perhaps that is instinctively where you want to be. And if you hold back and try to be always where you have been before, you will go dry.
- Gertrude Stein
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. - Jonathan Swift Most people lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
- Henry David Thoreau
It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?
- Henry David Thoreau
If one advances confidently in the direction of her dreams, and endeavors to live the life which she has imagined, she will meet with success unexpected in common hours. -
Henry David Thoreau (pronouns adjusted by SD)
Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life.
- Paul Tillich
You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.
- Alvin Toffler
Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
- Desmond Tutu
How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns?
- Desmond Tutu
If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
- Desmond Tutu
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.
-Desmond Tutu
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
- Mark Twain
Only when power is widely distributed, and only when people work together to create the world they want to live in -- only then can transformation be deep and holistic. While also being liberating, compassionate, and inclusive.
- Sarah van Gelder
Missing from the life of modern man is the deepest connection with the changes of the seasons, sunrise and sunset, the phases of the moon, the dark forest, the soul of brother animal and the soil. Man’s soul is starving from this separation, lack and poverty.
- Marie-Louise von Franz, quoted by Lewis Lafontaine
There is a world of difference between an inference and a feeling. You can reason that the universe is a unity without feeling it to be so. You can establish the theory that your body is a movement in an unbroken process which includes all suns and stars, and yet continue to feel separate and lonely. For the feeling will not correspond to the theory until you have also discovered the unity of inner experience. Despite all theories, you will feel that you are isolated from life so long as you are divided within. But you will cease to feel isolated when you recognize, for example, that you do not have a sensation of the sky: you are that sensation. For all purposes of feeling, your sensation of the sky is the sky, and there is no “you� apart from what you sense, feel, and know.
-Alan Watts, quoted by Maria Popova
We are living in a culture entirely hypnotised by the illusion of time, In which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realise that there never was, is, or will been any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described and measured with the world as it actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.
- Alan Watts, quoted by Johnny Tenn
Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.
- Jack Welch
Questions that have no right to go away are those that have to do with the person we are about to become; they are conversations that will happen with or without our conscious participation.
- David Whyte
The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering.
- David Whyte
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous. Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of the Universe. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the universal glory that is within us. It’s not just in some of us — it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others -
Marianne Williamson
If someone tells you that there is a rule, break it - that’s the only thing that moves things forward. -
Hans Zimmer, composer
Sources and readings
Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous Barry, Shadow Work http://www.shadowwork.com/ Beck et al, Manifesto for Agile Software Development, http://agilemanifesto.org/ Bohm, On Dialogue Brown, Change by Design Burnett and Evans, Designing Your Life: Build a Life That Works for You Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces Capra and Luisi, The Systems View of Life Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life? Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Godin, What To Do When It’s Your Turn Goleman, Emotional Intelligence Hill, Collective Genius Isaacs, Dialogue and The Art of Thinking Together Kegan and Lahey, Immunity to Change Kofman, Conscious Business Laloux, Reinventing Organizations Lewitz and Neidhardt, Showing Up Lipmanowicz and McCandless, The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures Martin, Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage Mayer, The Peoples’ Scrum McLaren, The Language of Emotions
Moore and Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover Peck, A Different Drum Pearl, Will There Be Donuts? Ray, The Highest Goal Roth, The Achievement Habit Senge, The Fifth Discipline Scharmer, Theory U Scharmer and Kaufer, Leading from the Emerging Future Schwaber and Sutherland, The Scrum Guide http://www.scrumguides.org/ Seelig, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 Sirajuddin and Willeke, Temenos, A Reliable Vehicle for Organizational Transformation Strozzi-Heckler, The Leadership Dojo Strozzi-Heckler, The Art of Somatic Coaching Turner and Udall, The Way of nowhere Torbert, Action Inquiry Udall, Riding the Creative Rollercoaster Vision quests: e.g. http://sacredpassage.com/, http://northerndrum.com/ Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations Williams, The Work You Were Born To Do