Integrate!

I've been at the beach. As you can see, it's not a metaphorical beach. This picture was taken in the national park on the north shore of Prince Edward Island. The bird in the foreground is a real seagull. This beach is a metaphor. It tells me exactly what I want in my experience as I encounter the clouds and the sunshine, the wind and the sand and the waves of life. It speaks to a paradoxical balance of elements, a balance of focus and soft edges, a balance of ground and flight. If you asked me to describe what I want REALLY, I would stumble and hesitate. I would contradict myself and backtrack. I would have commitment issues. If you asked me to tell you about this beach, you would know exactly what I choose as my experience and who I am choosing to be as I move forward. This is my desired future. But my desired future is not to stay on vacation - it's to bring this paradox into the clutter and contradiction and productivity that is my work and my life and my...

How do you know what your purpose is? That's a big question. The answer begins with an equally big gateway. You begin by knowing how you know anything. How does your brain work with your mind to produce that mental sensation of knowing something? You might never have thought about it. I know is both a concept and a feeling. You know you have the right answer when you get the desired result and, often before that, when you have a feeling that the answer is right. Knowing is more than thinking: it is thinking with your whole self - brain and body and mind. This is how you know your purpose. It's not a matter of putting it into a slogan or motto. Those have their uses, but they are never a complete statement of what you want to be and to do. Purpose is the big container that lets you know whether a goal is right for you or just a distraction. Purpose is the path you are walking, even when it takes strange turns and you're not sure where it is leading. Purpose is the feelin...

The best collaboration gets almost magical results.  Working together, people produce ideas that no one would have generated working alone and everyone discovers that their skills are a fit for one another and for the task. Yet we all have experiences of collaboration that are much less than the sum of the parts, times when we have worked with others and been less inspired and less effective than we would have been on our own.  An NLP approach to the problem is to ask: what's the difference? What makes collaboration work? It may be that focus is the difference that makes the difference. Groups that focus on developing a shared outcome and a shared state might be more effective than groups that focus on the problem they are solving or the task they want to complete. One of the things we know for sure is that states are easily transferred from one group member to another and that the strongest state in the group is the one that is likely to dominate. Groups that focus on w...

You probably find it irritating. Someone close you to you - a friend, family, a work person - is clearly trying to find something. You want to help (or to stop the restlessness) so you ask helpfully "What are you looking for?" and the response is some variation on "I'll know it when I see it." How can you look for something if you don't even know what you're looking for.  You can't.  That's why you can't help your "I'll know it when I see it" friend.  You can, however, look to find correspondence between a feeling you have and something outside yourself.  In fact, that unspecified drive can be particularly powerful. There are two huge benefits to "I'll know it when I see it." The first is that you filter out much less information than usual. When you know what you want, everything is either "something like what I want" and "not what I want."  This isn't possible when you don't know w...

Some people have a routine for getting up in the morning that includes some time to prepare mentally for the day ahead. They pray or meditate or workout because they find that starting that way often leads to a better day.  You might think about that and instantly feel even more stressed because you cannot imagine how to fit yet another half-hour into a day that is already much too full. Even people who prepare for the day need to refocus during the day. Their concentrated practice does set them up for success, but it is not enough to carry them through a day of encountering other people and difficult ideas. Even people who start the day right need to be able to refocus more or less on the fly. I'm going to suggest you test just two things today. You don't have to believe they will work, but they will take only a moment and (if you remember to check in after) you will be able to tell within a day whether they are making an impact.  Deal? The first thing is to take three ...

I'm going to suggest that there are four things that everyone wants, and that you can chart them on a quadrant.  The first axis has autonomy (control over one's own life) at one extreme and relationship (connections with other people) at the other.  The second axis has living comfortably with one's body at one extreme and escaping the confines of one's body at the other.  Everything that people want falls into one or more of the quadrants. It seems that anything we want serves one quadrant at the expense of the others. If we want autonomy for our bodies (perhaps the ability to support ourselves financially), that comes at the expense of escaping the body through connection with others (perhaps through reading fiction). If we want to be physically connected (to hang out with people we like), that comes at the expense of setting our thoughts free.  It's obvious that we cannot simultaneous move to both ends of the axis. It's obvious, but it is not always true. ...

It's crazy hard to know exactly what you want. That may be part of the reason that the people who take the time to figure it out have so much power.  In a room where most people are a little fuzzy about what they want, the person who really knows is much more likely to move effectively. Have you ever wished for more patience? The true answer is no. People don't want patience: they want results. Patience is a sort of consolation prize at best.  When someone says they want patience, what they really mean is they want something they can't see unless they open their eyes to a bigger picture. What they want is most likely a combination of certainty within themselves and a positive relationship with someone around them. Patience indicates that the frame is too tight for them to see a possibility of moving forward together. That tight frame makes patience much less likely. That tight frame makes it hard to see beyond a moment of irritability or conflict. That tight frame mea...

Of all the training available, there's a tremendous interest in buying training on influence and leadership.  This means two things. The first is that our conventional education system doesn't cover influence and leadership effectively.  The second is that both individuals and corporations recognize that the ability to influence effectively needs to be developed. It's not just an inborn talent available to a lucky few. It's a skillset that requires the same ongoing development as technical skills. The problem is finding a model that works.  Sales training is well-developed and widespread. It teaches people to have more predictable influence in predictable situations. It works well when people can know their products and their markets. It works less well when markets and products are in transition. Leadership training is supposed to train people to exert influence in situations where both outcomes and contexts are less predictable.  Our education system is designe...

It is the way our brains are made. We fixate on problems and danger and obstacles. Ask anyone about their pet peeves and you will unleash a flood of words. Ask someone what they want, and you are liable to hear about all the reasons that what they want doesn't matter. It is easy for a conversation to grind to a halt when it is carrying the weight of so much that is wrong. If you want to move forward, you need the word instead. Repeat some of the troubles you hear (to show that you are listening) and then ask: what would you like instead? Instead means in the place now occupied by the trouble. To answer the question, the speaker has to imagine a world where the trouble no longer exists. It has been replaced by something else. The something else may, of course, be accompanied by new troubles.  Once again, repeat what you are hearing and then ask: what would you like instead? After two or three repetitions, the speaker will pick up the pattern and begin to automatically replace ...

When I was in high school, there was no girls soccer program. While women's soccer was growing rapidly in the club system, it had yet to find its way into the high schools. By the time I was in grade 12, I was playing and coaching soccer all summer. I wanted to play at school, too. I decided it was time to launch a school tournament. I was 17, and I was playing and coaching rep soccer. I was in charge of publicity for our local club and I was a qualified referee. I had passed the first level of the national coaching program (at the time, that involved a written test, a practical test, and a referee's test). Running a tournament was in reach. All I needed was a staff sponsor. A friendly history teacher agreed to become our "coach." We began a round of communication with the local club and with other schools. I don't remember how many teams entered, or who won the tournament. I remember standing on the back line of one field, playing defence. I was also coa...