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Do you compromise your ideals and standards?  If you live in our culture chances are you do.  Now this might seem like a harsh judgment, but it’s really not intended to be.  Most of us have learned that compromise is good and sometimes life just won’t meet our expectations.  One of my commitments in life is to put an end to that way of thinking.  Yes, I am committed to the end of compromise.  Be clear I’m not saying an end to collaboration.  I’m not suggesting an end to people helping one another.  I’m declaring an end to the compromise of our ideals and standards.

In my experience, people compromise for one fundamental reason – they’ve bought into the current reality.  They’ve forgotten that they have the power to create something else.  From a design perspective, the only purpose of current reality is to be used as a reference point for what you want.  As a reference point, the “job” of current reality to reveal what you don’t have that you want.  It’s also, of course, is going to be screaming really loudly that you cannot have it.  Why?  Because if the current reality supported you having what you wanted now, you’d either have it OR you’d believe that you could have it, and so not having it in this moment, wouldn’t occur as a problem to you.  It would just be something for you to handle.  Certainly, you wouldn’t feel the temptation to compromise your ideals and standards.

Wherever you are sitting right now, imagine some simple you’d like to have.  Imagine you want a glass of your favor wine or imagine you’d like a piece of chocolate cake.  Chances are you don’t have some melodramatic story for why you can’t have that simple thing.  Notice how clear you’re thinking is – there’s the current reality (no wine, no cake) and there’s the future, the reality you want to create (wine, cake).  If you held those two simple visions in your mind, the relationship of where you are to where you want to be, you would very naturally take action toward what you want to create.  You’d get up and uncork a bottle of wine, or go to the store and buy one.  You’d heat up the oven to bake that chocolate cake.

“C’mon Bill, life isn’t just about wine and cake.  It’s much more complex than that.”  The problem isn’t that your other goals are more difficult and complex that leads you to compromise, your fundamental problem is you don’t think of your other goals in this very simple way. We make it more complex and act like the fact that we think life is more complex means that life is, in fact, more complex.  Robert Fritz, author of The Path of Least Resistance, calls this force – the force that exists between where you are and where you want to be – structural tension.  Structural tension is healthy and when you clearly identify where you are relative to where you want to be, your mind starts to resolve the tension naturally by moving you forward toward your goal.  That is provided you don’t put anything in-between to muck up the works.

I’m not suggesting that because you want something guarantees you’ll get it.  The point is that whether you get it or not, the fact remains that you want it.  And so the reality is that either you’re moving toward it by creating or you’re living a life of compromise.

Maybe just maybe, the real juice of life comes from how you live it instead of whether you always win.  Notice I said whether you always win.  Getting what you want is a part of the creative process and so it’s both whether you win or lose and how you play the game that matters.

Have you ever noticed that there is always a tremendous amount of evidence for why things must stay the same and very little evidence for why they can change?  We throw phrases around like “In reality,” as if those words have somehow endowed us with the power to speak the ultimate truth.  What often goes unnoticed is that the only reason we can cast dispersions on the current reality is because we also have a concept about how life should look.  Without the picture of what you want, there would be nothing to compare the current reality to.

Having this picture of what we want is extremely powerful, but often we use it to make the current reality wrong.  “It shouldn’t be this way.”  “You shouldn’t be like this.”  We beat ourselves and others up for not living up to our pictures rather than using our pictures to create our future.  What if you started interacting with others from your vision of who you want them to be.  Doing this will likely not make them change overnight, but  stop and think about what it’s like to be around someone who only sees the best in you.  Doesn’t it feel great?   Doesn’t it make you want to grow, become more, become better?  There’s something truly magical about being seen this way.

What is that magic?  It’s space.  It’s space to be who we are now and more importantly, it’s the space to grow and become more.  You’re always going to have two pictures – the picture of how life is is AND the picture of how you want life to be.  Transformation begins when you stop using your picture of how you think things should be to make the current reality wrong, and start using that picture to create life how you want it to be.  Just because there’s little evidence to support your future doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.

That’s the mindset of a designer - being able to see past how things are to create what’s next.  This possibility, this magic is available to us at every moment in every situation.  Some might think that this point of view is naïve; that we can’t just deny the possibility that sometimes bad things happen.  A designer of life doesn’t deny anything.  A designer knows that bad things might happen.  A designer knows there are risks to creating.  A designer knows that failure is a possibility.  But what a designer of life also knows is that picture of what he or she wants isn’t going anywhere.  It’s here to stay.  It’s part of who they are.  It deserves to be honored and used in a way that will actually make a difference for people.  Either that picture will be used to crucify the current reality or it will be used as the source for making life better.

How are you going to use your picture of the future?

Last week, I wrote a post about the idea that life is not personal.  This week I want to delve more deeply into this idea and give you more power as a designer in your life.  So here’s the next piece of the puzzle: You are not the things you design.  I know on some level, this seems obvious.  I’d like you to consider that each of us personalizes some of the things that we have created and are creating in our lives.

Imagine a young man or woman who is looking to find love in their life.  They want to find a lover, a soul mate, a mate, etc.  This person might start to think something like, “How do I find someone?”  “How do I find someone who’ll like me?”  “I guess I’ll have to start asking people out?  I hate that.  It’s makes me feel so uncomfortable.”  “It’s so hard to meet people.  I go to work; I come home.  Where am I going to find this person?”  This individual has made finding that special someone all about them.  More importantly, they’ve made the “game” of finding a mate contingent on their limitations and worldview.  Predictably, this person will formulate strategies for finding someone that are not based on what works; instead they’ll be based on what the person does or doesn’t like to do, how comfortable they feel taking the actions, etc.

If we approach the “game” of finding a mate from the perspective of true design, we’d begin with questions like, “How does one find a mate?” or better yet, “What’s the nature of the game?”  The nature of finding someone essentially involves product development, communication, marketing and sales.  Now when I say product development, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be true to who they are.  This is not about being phony.  At the same time, the “game” of finding someone is to make yourself as attractive to the world as you possibly can.   So rather than judging and evaluating yourself, “I’ll never find someone to love me,” one could begin to seek out feedback from others on their personality and their physical presentation.  Again, this isn’t to make you into someone that you’re not, but these are legitimate non-personal questions that are relevant to the game of romance.  Imagine if Derek Jeter wasn’t open to feedback about his swing?  Or if Robert DeNiro wasn’t open to input from his director on how to deliver a line?  When you take on the mastery of something and can see it as separate and distinct from you, you naturally want to know all the different facets that would make you excellent, and you become open to feedback.

When you can see that finding a mate involves on some level marketing yourself, you can begin to think about how that can be done?  Who can you enlist to help you?  If you find that you’re awkward in conversation, you can create a training plan around this so you can develop yourself over time.  You may never have the true gift of gab, but finding someone doesn’t mean that you master all the elements of the game; it just means that you maintain a certain level of conscious proficiency about them.

The point here is whether we’re talking about love or golf or building a business or being a manager or any aspect of your life, the thing you are creating has it’s own nature and requirements.  Yes, there are a countless number of ways to build a business or find a mate.  Yes, there is much room for an individual to be innovative and creative in the pursuit of what they are designing.  In fact, you will be amazed at how free and creative your mind becomes when you stop resisting the nature of the things you want to create.  That’s what all the ruckus is about.  Your mind just wants to know that you are taking care of it, and doing the things required to move your life forward.  When you don’t honor that, your mind goes berserk and it can start to berate you, berate others, become very loud and unsettled.  As annoying as it can be, your mind knows when there are holes in your plan.  When you can let it know that you’ve thought it all through and are covering all the bases, it will let you be.  Even if you consciously decide to not take on an aspect of the “game,” it will know that you’ve made that decision and still have a plan to take care of it.

Designing your life doesn’t guarantee success.  It doesn’t mean that you will always win.  It does though put you in the driver seat.  The most important thing to remember is that it’s not you that you are designing; it’s your life.  You don’t confuse baking chocolate chips cookies for you.  You don’t mistake growing a garden for you. You don’t mistake building a house for you.  If you don’t personally know how to build a house, you don’t come up with some warped strategy of building a house that is limited by your knowledge and skill.  You go find someone who does know.  Your focus is on the outcome itself, not whether you can personally do it.  It’s not personal.

“C’mon Bill, building a house is not the same thing as finding true love.”

I know but … imagine if it was.

When you live as a designer of life, a funny thing happens.  Life suddenly is not personal.  What I mean is you’ve been living your life … well … your entire life.  It’s yours.  It’s personal or at least, it certainly seems personal.  People do things to you.  Bad things happen.  Good things happen. You win some.  You lose some.  And through it all, there’s a lot of emotion.  You’ve made decisions about yourself and who you are.

So how can I even remotely suggest that life is not personal?  Well, first of all, when I say life’s not personal, I’m not saying that you can’t or shouldn’t experience emotion.  I’m not suggesting that you won’t show your love (or anger) for people.  This is not about you living some stoic life experience devoid of the wide range of human emotions and experiences.

Instead, when I say that life is not personal, I’m pointing to all the drama and meaning that we add to life.  I’d like you for a moment to imagine life minus all the narration that is added to it by your inner voice.  You can even try an experiment.  For one day, try walking around turning the mute button on and off for your inner voice.  Really imagine you actually had a remote control that controlled your inner voice, and you could turn it off and on at will.  From time to time see if you can mute your inner dialogue about what’s happening out here.  I’m not saying think differently about it, or think positively about it.  Mute it!  All the concern, drama and story that you add to life gone.  “She’s so insensitive.”  “I’m never going to be able to pay these bills on time.”  “Where are we going to get the money to pay for Josh’s braces?” “I’m so happy they are coming for dinner on Sunday.”  “Why the hell is he so negative.”  “When am I ever going to find more time?”  Imagine all of this added commentary has vanished from your life.

And now imagine, if you weren’t spending the vast amount of your time stirring things up with the little drama in your head, what would you be spending your time doing?  Think about it.  If all the extra added reporting simply didn’t exist for you anymore, or at the very least, you could mute it, what would be left to think about?

Do you see it?

Yes!  What would be left is designing your life.  Instead of spending your time commenting on the life you have, you’d spend your time creating the life you want.  You’d spend your time like a designer asking questions like, “How do I design my relationship so it works?”  “How do I create my job so it’s rewarding for me?”  “How do I build a life that really fulfills me?”  A conversation for design is a conversation to build something.  It’s not about commentary, narration, opinion, or judgement.  Certainly, you can have an opinion about what you’re designing, but that is not a design conversation.  From the perspective of design, life is not personal.  You build things.  You create things.  You design your life.

This is not something new for you.  You’ve been designing pretty much your entire life.  Your life right now is a result of design.  The only thing that slows down the process is the vast amount of time spent on the commentary of what you’ve designed.  The time spent arguing for or against something.  The time spent wishing that what you designed wasn’t so.  The time spent pining for another life.  All of those things live in the realm of commentary and they make life seem very personal like “What’s wrong with me that I keep ending up with this result?”  We make the results we produce in life personal rather than just getting they are function of the conversation we are engaged in.

So you still might cringe at the suggestion that life is not personal.  Just remember, until you croak, you have no choice about whether you design your life.  Even if you say, “The hell with it, I’m not designing my life,” that’s an act of design.  You cannot escape it.  Perhaps arguably you cannot stop your mind from vomiting commentary and opinion about your life.  The one thing you do have choice about is where you put your focus.  Which conversation is going to win in your life?  Will it be design?  Or will it be commentary?

So if you still cringe, just remember, the concept, “Life is not personal,” is not true.

I designed it.

What if there were no wrong choices?  Okay sounds a little bit extreme.  I mean stepping off the curb into the pathway of an oncoming bus certainly seems like a wrong choice.  So yes, perhaps it can’t be as absolute as that.  Every choice has consequences, some that we won’t see until further down the road.  The thing is that not making a choice, or “choice paralysis” is still making a choice.  The power then in the idea that “There are no wrong choices in life” is not the truth of the statement.  If we were to examine the statement from the truth of the matter, it would only lead to endless debate.

Another way to relate to the statement there are no wrong choices is to think of it as a possible way to live.  If your life is about creating, then a wrong choice while not preferred did move you along the pathway.  As the creator of your life, it revealed to you something that you didn’t want.  It gave you critical information that you might never had discovered but for making what seems like a wrong choice.

And so, I think the real cause behind “choice paralysis” is we don’t view ourselves as powerful creators.  Any choice would only be perceived as wrong or scary if you were afraid that you would be stuck with what you created.  The real skill to master is being a powerful creator in your life.  In fact, you already are a powerful creator of your life so it might better be said that the skill to master is being an aware creator of your life.

Your life right now – the good, the great, the bad and the ugly – is a result of what you created for yourself.  And right now, you have your eyes set on a future relative to what you have.  One way to strengthen your ability as a creator in the future is to take stock of what you created, and then to own all of it as your creation.  And yes, I mean all of it.  Own every last nook and cranny as a result of your creating even if you’re sure it’s someone else’s fault.

If you cannot own where you are today, bad choices and all, then your mind knows that you will not own where you’ll be a year from or five years from now and that’s what prevents you from being a powerful creator in life.  You will hesitate.  Creating you life requires that you be daring.  And daring doesn’t just have to mean quitting your job (although it could mean that) or starting a totally new career (although it could mean that).  Being daring could just be telling your spouse how much you love them or telling your child how proud you are of them.  It could be thanking your parents for the job they did or it could be apologizing to someone for being a jerk (even if you’re sure it’s there fault).  It could be finally taking piano lessons or learning to speak Italian.  Being daring comes in all shapes, sizes and forms.

If you can learn to include as a result with all the other things you want in life, the result called “developing myself to be an aware powerful creator of life,” then it shifts everything about the way you live.  Your task is no longer just to get the prize (although it absolutely is to get the prize), your task is to develop yourself over time to be more and more powerful of a creator, which includes all facets of being one including making daring, decisive choices.  Every choice – right or wrong, daring or wimpy – gives you an opportunity to practice the art of creating your life.  And like any skill that you practice, you’ll get better at it and better at it and better at it over time.  Your life will become about creating what’s next knowing that if it’s not what you want, no problem.  All there is every to do in life is take stock of what you created and then ask the question, “Now, what do I want to create?”

Have you ever asked yourself the question, “Why am I thinking the thoughts that I’m thinking?”  You know by now that I am all about the thinking.  Our thinking is the source of our lives, and we don’t fully appreciate the value in finding what I’ve referred to as the “edges” of our thinking.   When you find an edge, it allows you to see that the way of thinking you’re engaged in is actually very dynamic and yes, complex; but it is also finite and more importantly, your thinking is not YOU.  It’s just one finite way of thinking.  Finite like a chair is finite or a car is finite.  Finite meaning once you can see the whole of it; you really can stop engaging in the thinking if it no longer serves you.  You begin to see that mostly you’re not really thinking, you’re regurgitating thoughts you’ve already had, and thoughts that others have had before you.

Currently, I’m in a 6-month self-development program working on various aspects of my life.  One of the tasks asked of us is to sift through our lives and find every wrong we’ve ever done, every lie we’ve ever told that we haven’t owned up to. Basically, we’re looking for every thing there is in our lives that we need to confess.  This, of course, is not a new concept.  You could get this same advice by attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting (which this is not) or sitting in a therapist’s chair (which this is not).  The point of the exercise is to go back and complete those things that have happened in the past so that you can truly own them and leave them where they happened - in the past.

So right now, as you read this, your mind is likely starting to pull out and dust off some of those wrongs you’ve committed in your life that you haven’t owned up to.  And so while it wasn’t articulated this way, your mind is responding to a question, something like, “What wrongs haven’t I made right in my life?”  Consider this, your mind is always responding to a question.  When you go into your closet in the morning to get dressed, your mind is answering the question, “What should I wear today?”  When you’re trudging into work, pissed off that you have to go, your mind is responding to the question, “Why do I have to go to work today?”  The edges of these “whole” ways of thinking are bound together by some fundamental question.

Mostly in life, we are more interested in answers than questions.  Problem is if you’re not interested in the questions, you might be dilly-dallying with answers that are making no real difference in your life.  So for instance, confessing can certainly be a powerful thing to do, but if the intention of the exercise is to confess so that the past is left in the past, doesn’t the asking of the question itself contradict the intent.  Before you read this post, you likely were not even thinking about your past wrongdoings.  Before I focused your mind on that question, your past wrongs likely weren’t on your mind.  Certainly, not all of them!  Absent my question, those misdeeds were residing exactly where they happened – in the past!!!

And so there is nothing inherently valuable in sifting through to find all of our past misdeeds just as there is nothing inherently valuable in struggling in life or inherently valuable in any of the thoughts you are having at any given moment.  There is only what you’re thinking and the impact that your thinking is having on your life.  So you might find yourself thinking about your relationship with your spouse and how upset they make you and what you’re going to do about it, and “Dammit, we must come to some resolution about this issue.”  Have you though ever questioned whether you need to spend your life engaging in that line of thinking at all?  Have you ever questioned whether the problem that you absolutely believe must get solved actually needs to get solved?  That it actually deserves your time?  Have you ever considered that what your spouse did wouldn’t be an issue in the first place until you thought it so?  Until you raised the question, “Why did he do this?”  In other words, we are really good at beating people (or life) up with our expectations and our questions, but we never stop to really consider that we are the one’s holding the expectation.  Without us, there would be no need for beating because there would be no one holding the expectation.  There would be no one asking the question.

My point is that mostly in life you have very little control.  You don’t have control of whether the sun shines.  You don’t have control of what the economy is doing.  You don’t have control of your boss’ personality, but the one thing you have absolute 100% control over is your thoughts.  And don’t interpret the above as some sort of strategy like “Oh, he’s saying confessing is bad, and we should never confess” or “He’s saying that you should never confront your spouse about something.”

No, he’s not saying that.  What he is saying is you have a finite number of heartbeats to have on this planet.  You have a finite number of moments to live and thus you have a finite number of moments to have thoughts.

You get to choose how you spend those moments.

You get to choose the thoughts you think.

We all get to choose the questions we ask.

It’s a new year.  It’s a time for reflection on what we’ve accomplished.  It’s a time for thinking about what’s to come, a time to think about what we are going to create.  We all know that predictably most resolutions will get broken.  And if that’s the case, then why do we do it at all?  Why do we take the time to imagine the possibility that the coming year can bring?  Is there something to be learned just from the act of making resolutions?  I believe that there is.

Imagining what we want to have happen this year gives us an opportunity to touch a space that unfortunately we only seem to allow ourselves to experience but once per year.  That space is the future.  Think about it.  You ponder where you want to be a year from now.  You imagine the possibility of your life.  You envision the possibility of a year.  You become inspired by thoughts of a slimmer body, more money, or a more loving relationship.  You find yourself filled with joy – the joy of creating something new, creating what you want.  Then when this part of the process is done (or at least that’s how we think about it), we set off to do the work of making our futures come true.  And for most of us, about two to four weeks later, not only is that experience of joy and wonder a distant memory; so too are our resolutions.

What’s happening here?

To fully appreciate this dynamic, I’d like you to imagine that you are sitting in a chair.  To the left of you is an apple tree and to the right of you is a yellow bicycle.  If I said to you, “Fulfilling your future requires one simple thing of you.  For the next year, for most of the time, you must keep your eye on the yellow bicycle.  Sometimes you can look at the apple tree, but for most of the time, you must maintain your focus on the bicycle.”  Putting the ridiculousness of this scenario aside, if that’s what it took to fulfill your future, the task would be clear and simple.

With respect to your future – your New Year’s resolutions – the water gets muddied.  You create your future (yellow bicycle) and then once that’s done, you spend most of your time with your attention focused on your past (the apple tree).  And the real kicker is you actually think that you’re spending most of your time with your focus on your future.  You think that you’re focus is on your future because you’re working so damn hard to make it happen.  You think you’re attention is on the yellow bicycle, but it’s not.  You’re engaged most of the time telling the old story about the old life that you’ve already created wondering why it’s so damn hard to have those things you wanted.  Wondering where the inspiration of your life has gone.

With regard to our resolutions, most of us spend some relatively small amount of time at the beginning of the year telling the new story of our lives.  “I want to have a strong healthy body and weigh 150 pounds” (yellow bicycle).  “I want to have a fantastic job that brings me alive everyday” (yellow bicycle).  “I want to have a loving intimate relationship” (yellow bicycle).  Then we spend the rest of the year telling the old story of our lives.  “It’s really hard to not eat pizza, but I guess I’ll have to suck it up” (apple tree).  “I just can’t find time to exercise and plus, I really hate it” (apple tree).  “There are no jobs out there for me.  Oh well, let me send out some resumes.  Not that it’s going to make any difference” (apple tree).  “Men/women suck.  There are no good ones out there.  I’m tired of dating” (apple tree).

So what can you do differently?  Simple.  “I want to have a strong healthy body and weigh 150 pounds.”  That’s the first line of your masterpiece.  Now write me the rest of the story.  Write me the story of how it’s going to go in January, February, March and so on right through the end of the year to 150 pounds.  But not the story of how it’s going to go based on your past.  Tell me the story of how it’s going to go based on your future.

“What?  How am I supposed to know how’s it going to go based on my future?”

Exactly.  You don’t, and that’s really the point.  We don’t know how the future is going to go, but we live like we do.  And since we live like we do know, if you don’t write another story; if you don’t write the story you want, then your past (the apple tree) will be the only one you’re left with.  It will, by default, become your focus and the only story you’ll be able to tell, and you pretty much know how that story is going to go.

So yes, make those resolutions, but this year, tell the whole story.  And not just once, tell the whole story again and again and again.  And keep telling it until the new story (just like the old story did) becomes your life.

All that’s missing in your resolution process is the rest of the story!

The conversation is growing.  What does that mean … really?  Have you ever noticed that certain things in your life happen pretty much naturally, and others don’t?  By naturally, I don’t mean they happen without effort, I mean you just do them without giving them much thought.  Walking is a natural action.  At some point, driving becomes a natural action.  And it’s not just about natural action, there are things that are just part of how we live.  In many parts of the world, there isn’t even a light switch or faucet to turn on, let alone the expectation that a light will go on or clean running water will flow.  You only notice the light when it doesn’t go on.

“The conversation is growing” is an acknowledgement of the full creative process of life.  Albeit not always this linear, the creative process flows generally from thinking to action to structure.  You have an idea.  You take action on that idea, and the action results in a structure or thing.  It’s not typically a step-by-step process, but generally when you look at everything in your life, it all on some level resulted from thought.

It all began as a conversation.

Our Primary Change Model

In our culture, our primary change model is that if something isn’t happening that we want to happen, then we must take action even if by force.  If there’s not peace somewhere, send in the troops.  If what’s showing up is a higher number on the scale than we want, then “Just do it!”  Get your ass to the gym.  Stop eating those nasty foods.  What’s grossly overlooked is the thinking that lies behind the result; the thinking that lies behind the action.  We put all of our attention on the result that’s showing up in our faces, but give little notice to the thinking that led to that result in the first place.

Growing a conversation is about going to the source of our creation – our thinking.  It’s about beginning to realize that if what we want is peace in the world and what keeps showing up is war, then the conversation for war is still stronger than the conversation for peace.  We need to grow the conversation for peace.  If what we want is abundance but what is showing up in the world is predominantly hunger and poverty, then the conversation for hunger and poverty is stronger than the conversation for abundance.  We need to grow the conversation for abundance.

In personal examples, if you weigh more than you desire, then the conversation for “fat” is stronger in your life than the conversation for “thin.”  You need to grow the conversation for “thin.”  If you’re looking for a job and not finding what you want, then the conversation for “there’s no jobs out there” is stronger in your life than the conversation for “gainful, satisfying employment.”  You must grow the conversation for “gainful, satisfying employment.”  If you are alone and want someone to share your life with, then the conversation for “alone” is stronger in your life than the conversation for “lover.”  You must grow the conversation, “lover.”

Another Perspective

Another way to think about this is to imagine a big circle drawn on a piece of paper.  Now imagine the circle is filled with the “contents” of your life, so the circle is filled with you car, your house, your job, your spouse, and your kids.  The circle is filled with the things you can do like walking, talking, listening, and swimming.  The circle is filled with the things you like to do and the things you don’t like to do.  Every bit of your life is in that circle.

Now, imagine that everything you want but don’t have exists outside the circle.  Our default change model tells us that if you want something that exists out the circle, you need to muster up enough force and energy to burst through the wall of the circle as if the circle itself is some static entity.  “No pain, no gain” has become our mantra, but this model doesn’t tell us the whole story.  Another possible model for change is rather than using force; instead use thought (the beginning of the creative process) to make yourself stronger and stronger and stronger so that the circle itself expands in such a way that what’s outside the circle becomes included in your life.

For example, a child doesn’t learn to walk by deciding one day to muster up enough force to burst through the circle.  At some point, a child develops the awareness of “walking” as a possibility and he keeps growing the circle until it’s big enough to include “walking” in reality.  What has the circle grow is the child’s thinking.  He keeps his focus on “walking.”  The child is studying “walking.”  The child is imagining “walking.”  The child is dreaming about “walking.”  The child does not sit around brooding over the fact that he can’t walk.  The child is not complaining to his parents or other baby friends,  “My life is so incomplete because I can’t walk.  Whoa is me.”  We don’t say to the child, “Suck it up.  No pain, no gain.”  No, the child is going through a very natural process of creativity.  I’m not suggesting there aren’t moments of angst for the child when he tries to stand up but just cannot do it.  Still, at some point, when he realizes that he can’t yet do it, he doesn’t internalize the failure and say to himself, “I’ll never walk.  I’m such a failure.”  No, he turns his attention to a toy to play with or his mother’s warm hug.  He turns his focus to things that bring him joy.  Things that make him feel good.  Things that make his feel stronger.  And then when he becomes aware again of “walking,” he watches and learns and imagines “walking.”  He continues to build the strength of that image, the strength of his desire until at last the day comes when he takes those first steps.

Contrast this to our everyday experience.  Think about the amount of time you spend looking at the contents of your circle, seeing the conditions you don’t want, and then focusing most of your attention on the fact that you don’t weigh the right amount, your boss sucks, you’re alone or there are no jobs out there.  Then, with all your focus and energy on how it is, you try to muster up enough energy and force to go racing from the center of the circle and burst through the edge.  Most of the time when you do this, you are sent reeling back to the center of the circle feeling more and more like the life you have is it.  You sigh, and think, “Perhaps it’s just the way it is for me.  Maybe this is as good as life is going to be for me.”

This default change model leaves out most of the data.  Our model of “No pain, no gain” or “Just do it” is based on the moment that the child struggles to take that first step and we say, “The child broke through the circle.”  And perhaps in that moment, the child did break through a little, but what we discount is all the learning, imagining and focus that made the circle big enough to be just on the edge of “walking.”

We discount that all along the way, a conversation was growing.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this?

Is the idea of “growing a conversation” some new age, philosophical tactic?  Is it some new technique for having what you want in life?  Does growing a conversation really matter, and does it matter to you?  These are all questions that I’ve found people I work with wonder about.  The answers to these questions are simple: No.  No.  No, and No.

“The Conversation is Growing” is not some new age technique.  Most everything that human beings have created on this planet that exists today was once a conversation.  The car, the skyscraper, the computer, romance, your spouse, your house – all of it – once existed only as a thought.  There was a time when all you could do was talk about your home because it didn’t exist in physical reality.  There was once a time that people could only talk about the idea “cell phone” because “cell phone” didn’t exist in physical reality.  The life you have today is a result of what you talked about “yesterday”.  The life you’ll have “tomorrow” will result from what you talk about today.  Of course, it’s not only what you talk about.  Certainly action is part of the creative process, but how can you take action if you don’t create the action itself first in language?  And what will be the nature of that action?  Will it flow from a conversation for having what you want or will it flow from a conversation of struggling to have what you want?  These are all answers that flow from the conversation you’re having, from the conversation you’re growing.

This is why the answer to the question, “Whether growing a conversations matters?” is no.  Whether you are growing one is not up for debate.  You are!!! You can decide that it matters whether you’re growing a conversation and that will be the conversation you’re growing.  You can decide it doesn’t matters whether you’re growing a conversation and that will be the conversation you’re growing.

Your life doesn’t result from what you’re not doing; it only results from what you are doing.  Creation is an affirmative act.   “Struggling to find love” is not the same conversation as “finding love.”  “Buying the home of your dreams” is not the same conversation as “Struggling to buy the home of your dreams.”  And “Creating a way of life where good things happen naturally for people” is not the same conversation as “Working hard to create a way of life where good things happen naturally for people.”

So before you run out there gung-ho to take action in your life, it would serve you to do a check and ask yourself, “What conversation am I growing … really?”

Now that question matters.