Ideals in Motion

Connecting with Purpose

When I listen to my heart, what does it say? What is the message? What am I destined to do while I live, breathe, play and work and love others on this planet? What is my contribution? What is my legacy? What are my gifts and how do I take those gifts out into the world? Without identifying my purpose, my calling, the reason that gets me out of bed in the morning, I will wander aimlessly through life, without direction. Without a defined purpose, I may make choices in the moment without thinking about their long-term impact, or choices that keep my life small.

Choices made without a connection to purpose are not the kinds of choices that build a lasting legacy or provide a foundation for my gifts to make their way effectively into the world. As a result I may experience choices that are not strategic, not connected to something larger than myself, and not intentional. For these reasons, it is critical that time is spent on this question: What is my purpose?   - From the book Women Connected by Pam Bartlett -

Ideals and babies...

Metaphorically, a baby is a latent ideal. The potential represented by this latent ideal is of his/her offer of being. When that offer is made into an environment able and willing to respond to it what is created is a response of love, care and unconditional support from the people in his/her world. Indeed, babies are so difficult to ignore, and tap responses from the most hardened and cynical, just because they represent the latent ideal in all of us.

How does the child learn to express its latent ideal? I ask the question in this form because a baby is just doing it. As we become older and more sensitive to our particular environments we learn how to most safely navigate and participate in them. The key word in this is “safely”. While a baby isn’t cognitively concerned with safety relative to its ego (it doesn’t yet have one) this quickly begins to change as the baby matures. By definition, ego is separate from self. Ego doesn’t experience unity. At a fundamental level, its core purpose is survival. It learns to be safe. And, in this learning, the individual’s latent ideal becomes constrained in its expression; more calculated as it seeks confirmation and validation of worth.

If one were to think of an individual's behavior as the expressed and visible answer to an internal question, the core question being answered changes from the baby’s non-verbal of “I’m OK – can you deal with me on my terms”? The new question being asked becomes simply “Am I OK”? This not so subtle shift has enormous implication on the life of the individual and of the experience they have of life. When I question whether I’m OK my ideals are no where to be seen.

"All [wo]men dream, but not all equally.  Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake to find it was all vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous, for they may act their dreams with open arms and make things happen."

- T. E. Lawrence (a.k.a. 'Lawrence  of  Arabia) -

Why have something inspiring to work towards?

The question may seem self evident but it’s amazing how often we become captive to the tasks of our work and the daily tasks of our lives – captive in a way that produces neither joy nor feelings of accomplishment. When a greater and inspirational “for the sake of what” is missing it becomes far too easy to fall into an unrewarding downward spiral of judgment that gives voice to internal monologues such as you didn’t do it right; it’s not good enough; it wasn’t on time; or this doesn’t matter – it’s just a job. The critique will almost always be referencing the delivered result and will be edited by missing condition of satisfaction that weren’t clarified or specified when the task was first agreed to. In other words, the critique is objectively about the delivered end result but is subjectively about the often unstated conditions of satisfaction. And it is the conditions of satisfaction that have the potential to make the result and the work process meaningful.

Absent a compelling “for the sake of what” (an ideal) which informs and defines the conditions of satisfaction the results we produce at work are often markedly absent of inspirational meaning. In this scenario the work process is doomed to be an experience that – at best – is one of going through the motions and – at worst – will never measure up to a missing ideal. The assessment of completion will almost always orient around what’s missing because, for the human spirits involved, there is an enormous gap. There is no ideal to work towards, no ideal to keep in motion, no thing produced that is personally meaningful.

Pricked by a blackberry thorn...

There was a moment when I imagined being pricked by a blackberry thorn. I felt a reactive contraction in my arm at the imagined prick and “felt” the point of entry on my finger. A great demonstration of the power of a vivid imagining – and confirmation of the notion that the mind/body duality doesn’t distinguish between a “real” event and a vividly imagined one. Which brings up the interesting question of what is reality?

According to my understanding of a basic Buddhist tenet, every “thing” is empty until I fill it. Meaning that, because all is empty, the fullness of any event in life is determined by what I bring to it. The piercing of skin by a blackberry thorn is an empty event until I bring my content to it. That content can be pain, contraction, tentativeness, anger and, perhaps, even fear. If I bring other content there is an alternative experience available. An ascetic or, pathologically a masochist, by bringing different content may even find the piercing fulfilling or enjoyable.

Where this takes me is towards examining the impact of my ideals in motion on my experience of reality – the piercing of reality by my ideals. This ultimately leads to questions of how to generate the capacity to sustainably create a life of meaning; a life that is experienced as being the consequence of mindful choice versus one that is experienced as being subject to the whim and/or the existence of random events.

I bring me and my ideals to everything. My life has meaning because of what I bring to it. In a very fundamental way, what I experience in my life is my sense of me. Each event provides me an opportunity to look at “me” and choose whether the me I am is the me I want to be. I will always be in the process of becoming my ideals – either consciously or unconsciously. As a catalyst for growth and learning, my ideals become something to live into and not something to live up to. What an incredibly exciting prospect!

Filling the room with dance...

What an interesting way to describe putting my ideals into motion. It’s the consequence of moving into the room (a metaphor for my life) with intention. My presence can’t not be noticed and felt. I am here; I am a player; I am a “cost” because engaging with me requires an expenditure of energy. This is how to lead. This is the platform from which to cause movement. The question of how this is done is the net of a question about the nature of elegance.

I see elegance as the stimulation of a system that is done in such a manner as to cause precisely the appropriate movement, response or reaction required to produce the intended result. There are not unintended consequences with an elegant interaction. The movement that is caused is precisely the movement required to achieve what is desired. It requires an awareness of both the desired result and the system out of which the result is going to be produced. It is ideals put into motion ideally!

I am continuously causing motion towards or away from some ideal outcome. In the best of worlds the outcome will be generative and inclusive. It will compel others to want to join with me and to do so joyously and passionately because – with no unintended consequences – they are benefiting also. It’s an elegant symbiosis that fills the room with a glorious dance of different, unique and aligned ideals. All in motion as we move in concert to outcomes that leave each participant larger and more complete. And, ready for another dance!

The Success Trap...

“Despite the cult of success, people are most deeply moved not by reaching the goal, but by the grandness of the effort required to get there.”  – Max Leaner

Let’s begin by defining some terms. First of all what is success? For most of us, it is simply the measure we take about whether we attained a goal we set for ourselves (although we will often pursue goals somebody else has established for us). If the goal is attained, success is claimed or ordained. Many of our goals are defined by the cultures in which we live. This suggests that there is a culturally specific "world view" of what a successful person is and it is often a function of what he or she has attained. In most Western cultures (and increasingly more Eastern cultures) this translates into "success" for an individual being generally a measure of the amount of money and property as well as social and professional status one has accumulated. For organizations, the counterparts are often shareholder value, product "sexiness", and favorable publicity. Indeed, the indicators of success are often so clearly defined by a culture that most of the culture’s members have no doubt about what is required of them if they are to be considered a successful member of that culture – and therein lies a problem.

After careers spanning sometimes decades of climbing and attaining one peak after another "successful" people are more and more often looking up and beginning to question. Why does the attainment of the latest goal not bring with it the internal experience that was imagined would be there? What was the real prize supposed to be in attaining the latest goal? Why does setting out on another quest feel so uninspiring? Who am I doing this for anyway? The pursuit of success is really about the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of happiness is a fool’s journey. These questions lead inexorably in another direction. They lead in the direction of fulfillment.

What is fulfillment? The thesaurus provides a number of synonyms – satisfied, contented, success, happiness, joy, pleasure and gratification. Simply stated, fulfillment is the experience of being used up as I contribute to the realization of something that is personally meaningful. It is not about happiness, not about attainment, and not about acclaim, although happiness, attainment, and acclaim can most assuredly be consequences of the contribution. Fulfillment is not about anything other than me feeling that the expenditure of my life’s energy is a meaningful contribution. At some level all of us know that we have a finite number of years available to us. For the young this knowledge is all but invisible. As the years pass, however, the question of how I’m being used and how I am using me becomes more pressing. Answering these questions is what the possibility of fulfillment is about. When my eyes close for the last time, the real question I will ponder is not whether I have regrets about not attaining all my goals. The real question is whether the life I just used was used in a worthy way – did it make a difference, did it contribute to something I felt was meaningful, is my legacy something of which I am proud, was it an honorable use of a sacred energy.

Pursuing fulfillment may not make one happy. But experience indicates that happiness is, at best situational and ultimately transitory. The pursuit of fulfillment carries with it the promise of sustainability and meaning – and that is a difference worth dedicating a life towards.