some things can not be locked away in a safe
It was there yesterday. Some thing.
It was safe.
Only two people have a key and you are one of them.
You know you did not take it. They say they did not take it.
But it looks like it is gone.
(Maybe it was lost)
You’d better not have.
I didn’t!
Well, neither did I.
(That is the point when some thing is lost)
Even if it turns out that it was there all along, that no thing was taken, it is gone.
You can not pick it up, dust it off and say …
It is OK, it is still here! Sorry to bother you… It was not important.
Some thing has changed.
(That is the point when you realise you really have lost some thing important)
It might be that you will be able to replace it with some thing similar but it will be different.
(It will never be the same and it will take a long time to replace it)
You see, we hold the key. But the truth is we are also the lock. We keep it safe by opening ourselves every minute of every day.
What we hold cannot be taken. Only given.
(I am not sure it can be received but I think it can be held)
Regardless, it is something that is easily lost.
Trust me.
***
Sorry for the break between posts. I was doing some work in China. I did manage to write a bit though so there will be regular weekly posts again now.
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process.
After you have subscribed, send this post on to your friends. Go on. You know at least one person who should read this post…
is the price of failure high enough?
Take a look at the object in the photo.
Have a guess what it is worth.
…
If you came up with a figure around ten times your weekly wage then you are in the ball park.
How does a stick, duct tape and a discarded piece of copper plumbing come to be worth that much?
Because that was the price of failure…
On the school holidays kids can (and should) get up to all sorts of mischief. At my house last week that meant locking both doors to a downstairs room. Two doors that we do not have keys to.
I got a phone call on the way home from seeing a client informing me of the situation and inviting me to consider how we might want to deal with it.
The answer? The girls can pay for the locksmith.
The response from my eldest? She disappeared to the workshop downstairs…
As I went out later that afternoon a prototype solution utilising rope was being tested on the deadbolt on the workshop door (The broom and rake having failed). The plan appeared to be to go in through the bars of a nearby window and lasso the catch. The trials looked promising but ultimately the rope project went the way of the broom and rake.
I returned home after dark to find every downstairs door thrown triumphantly open and my trainee burglar sporting a grin the Cheshire Cat himself would be proud of. When asked later my youngest daughter said she was not concerned because she knew the eldest would do anything to avoid the price of failure – having to pay for the locksmith.
The idea of setting the price of failure high enough to encourage innovation and learning is something I have been thinking about of late. There is a lot of discussion around whether games can be used to encourage learning – both in schools and in organisations. If the price of failure is essentially zero there is no motivation for anyone to learn. If it is too high then it prevents people from being able to take risks or trying something new. You have to find a balance.
For me the best example of this is the way ethics training is usually delivered. Participants sit in a classroom and are presented with situations that point towards an ethical problem. A number of possible responses are offered:
- deliberately break the law,
- pretend you didn’t see what happened,
- an ineffective response,
- the correct response.
Of course, apart from the odd joker, most people will say that if they were in that situation they would respond correctly to the situation. Yes even if it was a member of my team…
The problem with that approach is that in a classroom the price of failure is almost zero. You have attended and participated in discussion so you can’t fail, but have you really learnt anything?
Surely you want your people to be able to practice.
Nobody wants to fly on an airline who’s only training for their cabin crew is to read the manual and correctly answer 10 multiple choice questions on what to do when smoke fills the cabin!
You want them to have practiced – in a real cabin full of smoke. You want them to have made some mistakes and you want them to have had the chance to reflect on those mistakes and learn from them.
So why is it, when every organisation proclaims a set of Corporate Values, has a Code of Conduct and can point to an ‘Ethics and Compliance Manager’ that most are content to let their staff make their way through their day armed only with the answers to multiple choice questions?
Reporting a hypothetical team member for a major breach of the Code of Conduct is easy to do. Reporting a friend who you have worked with for many years for a minor breach (but a breach nonetheless) is a very different matter. The price of failure is much, much higher.
I am not interested in what you would do. I am only interested in talking about what you did do.
And if you didn’t report them then let’s talk about why. What influenced you to make that choice? Would you make the same choice again? Why? Why not?
The world has repeatedly seen what happens when organisations fail to instill in their staff a real sense, a practiced sense, of values and ethics. We cannot afford to let them continue to fail to learn.
It is time to get serious and let them play.
***
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process.
After you have subscribed, send this post on to your friends. Go on. You know at least one person who should read this post…
i have failed
Last night I watched Meet the Robinsons with my daughters (but that is not why…).
Twice Lewis tries to repair his automatic peanut butter and jelly sandwich machine.
Both times he fails.
The first time his failure is seen as something bad. His spirit is crushed.
The second time it is not.
Instead it is a chance to learn. An opportunity to understand the problem better. His failure is a reason to celebrate.
Hooray!! Congratulations! That is wonderful. His spirit soars and he is inspired by his failure to go on, to do more.
Tonight we watched Gaga by Gaultier (my God is she really only 25!) and the message seemed to be the same:
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – R.F. Kennedy
Maybe you never will become that something that you are not but that is no excuse for not trying. It is not even close.
Go on. Go out.
Now.
And dare to fail greatly at something.
Anything.
If you fail. Celebrate.
If you succeed. Celebrate.
And let your spirit soar.
when do I stop being something I was and start being something I am not?
Metamorphosis.
That is what we were hoping to see as we tried to cut open the chrysalis we had found on the ground. We find them occasionally when they lose their attachment to the tree. Once they fall their chances of completing their transformation is almost nil. This one looked brown and dry and presented an opportunity to take a peek at what goes on inside the protective shell – an impromptu lesson in biology.
My youngest daughter had run upstairs to get a sharp knife. “Cut it down the centre” I said, “you might be able to peel away the casing and see what was going on inside.”
“I can’t. It is slippery.”
So I had a turn. It was slippery.
As I cut into it it moved. The incompletely formed parts oozed out.
It was a short lesson in biology.
No longer what it was, and never going to be what it was trying to become, it became for me a lesson in own our vulnerability during times of change.
I was asked today if I would talk with someone who was considering going back to University to study law with the view to becoming a barrister (hoping to focus in the area of planning and environment law). That makes sense because if you read my bio it mentions in a roundabout way that I have been admitted to the Queensland Bar and have practiced as a barrister here in Queensland (hoping to focus in the area of planning and environment law).
I spent a lot of years and a lot of energy becoming a barrister so I suppose I am a good choice if you are looking for a perspective from someone who has made that journey.
And if you asked me what I was doing during those years I would say “I am in the process of becoming a barrister.”
I said that a lot.
No longer what I was but not yet what I planned to be.
Then, for a year I was.
Then, I realised that I wasn’t. Although the distinction wasn’t that clear. Like the chrysalis I spent much of that year being neither. A barrister wasn’t who I was meant to be.
I felt vulnerable and when others asked what I was doing I felt a lot like that chrysalis going under the knife. I wriggled when they probed and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop the incompletely formed parts of me being exposed. Like my daughter with our chrysalis, I always felt people left a little disappointed they didn’t see the butterfly that had been told would be inside.
Metamorphosis is defined as a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one. I looked at a couple of definitions and none of them said anything about how vulnerable the process can make you…
So the question is – what am I now?
I am still able to practice as a barrister. I suspect I will not so that isn’t me.
I am still able to practice as an engineer. Increasingly though that does not define what I do.
I am working on becoming a better speaker. The implication there is that I am one. I mean I have done it and will do it again this coming week- but does that make me one? Perhaps I am a writer? I write a lot. Or am I just a blogger? As marathon runner is to sprinter?
When do I stop being something I once was?
When do you stop seeing me as that something?
Will you ever stop?
When do I start being something I have never been before?
What if I lose my attachment and fall and get caught by a curious girl with a knife?
***
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process.
After you have subscribed, send this post on to your friends. Go on. You know at least one person who should read this post…
you can have your mandala and eat it too!
Can you keep a secret? With all the earthquakes and floods around the world at the moment I don’t want to cause widespread panic. If I tell you will you promise not to tell anyone else? I have seen Noah’s Ark being constructed. With my own eyes!
I heard the builder of that great vessel mutter “Forty cubits by forty cubits…” as they laboured late into the evening. I watched as the two giraffe were loaded on board.
I have also seen the fate that would befall them. I have seen the heads of the animals lying with bites taken from their necks. I was witness to the wreckage after the ravenous tide had receded.
The tide of small children … their mouths filled with chocolate cake. Their eyes filled with disappointment when they come to discover that while the boat itself is delicious, the giraffe were made from royal icing and they don’t taste that great.
It was my wife who laboured into the night constructing that Ark out of chocolate cake, rolling out rainbows of royal icing and carefully forming the heads and necks of the animals that would ride aboard. Not one – but two of each!
And I swear late in the evening she did intone the words “Forty cubits by forty cubits…”
She is quite simply amazing when it comes to cakes. Over the years she has produced a few and when she starts a cake like Noah’s Ark it becomes her singular focus. The board the cake will be presented on receives as much attention as the cake itself. And rather than being a chore it becomes, I suspect, a joyous meditation in the service of others.
The result is always magnificent.
And fleeting.
For almost as soon as it is completed it is destroyed. Completely. Consumed.
Just like the mandalas the Tibetan monks spend so long creating. Knowing that as soon as it it completed it will be destroyed.
My Noah isn’t the only person I know who makes these edible mandalas (If you are in Brisbane and need one you should check out the cakes and cards my friend Claire makes) and it makes me wonder if there are other things that we do that are similarly spiritual practices? Other ways to engage in contemplative practices that sit more comfortably in the 21st century but don’t immediately strike us as being so?
Ways that we can have our mandala … and eat it too?
***
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts (after you have shared them with your friends) you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process. Go on. You know at least one person who should read this post…
Samurai Game for Families
Did you grow up with your parents always telling you …
“It’s not whether you win or lose, it is how you play the game!”
Have those words come out of your mouth now that you are a parent?
This school holidays you have the opportunity to put that theory into practice and find out what it really feels like to play the game – the Samurai Game!
Not long after I started delivering the Samurai Game here in Brisbane I was asked by a mum if I would consider running a Samurai Game that allowed for parents and their kids to come along and experience it together.
Well it has taken me a while to organise but I am very pleased to let you know that we will be running a Samurai Game this coming school holidays and it has all the good stuff in it (but with a little less of the talking). As this is a family oriented Game I encourage you to bring either your parents, your children, your partner (or all three) along. The only requirement is that children between the ages of 12 and 18 be accompanied by an adult family member.
If you have participated before you should know this is the full two-day Samurai Game experience. On the Saturday – we will start at 9:30 and finish at around 4:45 so everybody can get home in time for dinner. On Sunday we will run from 9:30 until about 1:00 pm. More information on the Samurai Game itself can be found on my website.
We will be providing a simple morning tea on both days – fresh fruit and maybe some muffins, but we will ask you to bring your own lunch along. The cost will be $50 for individuals/ $100 per family for the two days – October 1st and 2nd. Numbers will be limited to 40 – which means 20 x 2 so reserve your space now by responding via the email link on this page with the names and ages of the people who would like to attend.
The only questions you have to answer now are …
- Are you prepared to be defeated by your 13 yr old daughter in the battle of White Crane?
- What will you 15 yr old son teach you when he defeats you in the battle of Falling Jo?
- What will you 65 yr old father be like as the team ninja?
Remember …
“It’s not whether you win or lose, it is how you play the game!”
shall I give you a white feather?
If I close my eyes I can still see the particular quality of light that was in the room that night. I can’t see her face but I remember the sound of her voice. She was screaming at me …
“You should be ashamed of yourself! How dare you even show your face here!”
I watched as she reached into her handbag and pulled it out, thrusting it into my hands as she sneered “Take it you … coward. Take it!“.
So I did. It was a white feather.
Even though that ‘exchange’ took place almost 20 years ago I still have a vivid picture of the scene in my mind. I cannot remember the woman’s name but I will always be grateful to her for the gift that she gave me that night.
We were participants in an acting workshop and I was having trouble with a monologue that I was trying to deliver. I had bought a white feather to use as a prop as I told my tale but it didn’t seem to be helping. It was clear to everyone there that I just wasn’t getting inside my character – a conscientious objector who had successfully avoided going to war. In the monologue he was sharing his experience – how he had once received a white feather (a symbol of cowardice) when he was confronted by the wives of men who had gone to war and perhaps would not come home.
He spoke of his frustration, of how he could not find the words to explain to the women left behind why, like their husbands and sons, he was prepared to die for what he believed in – just in a different way.I had never experienced anything like that so how could I understand how he felt?
The answer my tutor said, was to practice.
Now I should have known that, after all we have all heard the joke about the couple who are wandering around New York lost. They see an old man sitting on some steps so they go up to him and say:
”Excuse me, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?” the old man looks at them and says “Practice!”
George Leonard in his book Mastery – The keys to long-term success and fulfillment uses a version of that story to open the chapter on Practice – one of his five keys to attaining mastery. In it he makes the point that we all understand the use of the word practice as a verb. We practice playing the guitar, we practice football, we practice our writing…
To practice in this sense, he says, implies something separate from the rest of your life. You practice in order to learn something, to get better, to improve yourself. And that is clearly a very useful way to think about practice. But let me ask you a question, what if we were to think about practice as a noun? How does that change things?
George Leonard puts it this way:
“A practice (as a noun) can be anything you practice on a regular basis as an integral part of your life – not in order to gain something else, but for its own sake.”
It might be the piano, a martial art or yoga. When you have that sort of practice it is not about getting better. You do it because you love to do it – and because of that you get better.
Let me say that again – is not about getting better.
You do it because you love to do it – and because of that you get better.
Where that leads you to is to practice regularly. Over and over again even when you seem to be getting nowhere. That is the key to real mastery whatever your path in life.
My acting tutor knew that. He knew that the seeds of future progress were planted during those moments when it seemed you were getting nowhere. So he had us practice a scene. I played at walking down the street and some of the women in the class played at being wives – confronting me and then giving me the feather.
“Not good enough.” said the tutor, “Do it again.”
The women got serious and starting swapping loud insults and observations about me before they confronted me directly.
“Not good enough.” said the tutor, “Do it again. Do it like you mean it.”
The next time they started getting in my face. Kind of pushing me around a bit because they seemed to know that I won’t push back. It’s messy and the feather gets dropped before they move away. We really didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.
“Do it again.” said the tutor, “This time make it real!”
And that was when it happened.
I am standing on the side of the road waiting to cross. Suddenly I woman I don’t know is screaming at me. I can feel her contempt. She slaps me, but it is her words that sting the most and when she has finished my face is glowing red with shame as I stand there holding a white feather she has just given me. There are no words, nothing I can say to her as she walks away.
I sit on the floor in silence as the full measure of that experience hits me.
Then I hear the tutor’s voice:
“Now do the monologue.”
So I stand, but it is a man who has received a white feather who speaks. Now I understand why.
Because it is real.
I don’t think we get enough opportunities to practice the important things, the difficult things in our lives.
We need the opportunity to make it real, to try and to fail, to try again, to do it again and again and again until we develop, not just an understanding, but a kind of knowing of what it means to be in those situations and why it is we behave the way we do.
And because we cannot do life alone (there are always other players in the scene with us) I don’t think we can practice it alone either. We need to have others there who are prepared to practice with us, to share the experience and to be open to the possibility that we both may learn something while we are finding our own Way.
It has been a long journey since the night I received a white feather for my cowardice. It all took place in under ten minutes but it is an experience that has changed my life. It is now almost two decades on and I still have that same white feather – it was there on the bookshelf above me as I as put together the words that filled the minutes I am privileged to have shared with you today.
It is part of the reason why if you ask me what it is that I do as The Samurai Guy I reply:
“I give people the opportunity to practice dying for what they believe in.”
That is my practice. That is my way of trying to make it real. My way of trying to understand why.
But then maybe you already knew all of that. Maybe you practice on a regular basis? To get better, to improve yourself? I hope you are doing something you are passionate about.
My wish for you is that there comes a day when you come to know that you have a true practice – not something that is separate from the rest of your life, not just something you do …
but that you find something that is integral to your life.
Something that for you has become a way to be.
A practice.
***
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts (after you have shared them with your friends) you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process. Go on. You know at least one person who should read this post…
anaesthetic for your pain?
Now you don’t expect advice on how to live your life from a dentist. Especially not really good advice. But that is what I got a few days ago.
For some reason I have been thinking a lot about pain of late. Physical, emotional and existential pain. Pain of my own and of others.
My approach to pain might be considered a little strange in that I prefer to experience it. I don’t like taking pills for headaches. When I have had back problems in the past I rarely dulled the pain. When there were days when it all seems like too much and getting absolutely plastered seemed to be more than an attractive option to take away the pain I just couldn’t face the hangover that would inevitably come.
My eldest had her first experience with a local anaesthetic this week. It was a small filling. Probably didn’t need anaesthetic. But given that she had slapped the dentist during her last visit we thought it was best for all concerned.
The procedure itself went off without even so much as an “ouch”.
Afterwards, the dentist told her not to eat anything for at least three hours. Not because she might damage the filling but because of the damage she might do to her tongue or cheek. The danger, he said, is that you will hurt yourself in ways that you will not become aware of until after the anaesthetic wears off.
You know that the anaesthetic is there to take away the immediate pain but the result is a loss of sensation, a loss of the ability to feel in much broader and unexpected areas. That is how we can end up damaging ourselves further.
From a filing that damage is easy enough to avoid. From a sore back, a bruised ego or a broken heart it is much, much harder.
Might just be easier to avoid the anaesthetic in the first place?
***
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process.
i can see clearly now the pain has gone
Ever wondered why you put your underwear on the way you do?
It’s just like learning to ride a bicycle.
My daughters will tell you that I didn’t teach them to ride a bike. That is not what they were doing. (Though there was a bike, they were sitting on it and I was running along beside and behind them!) For the first few goes I had one hand on the handle-bars to help steer and one hand on the seat to help with their balance.
They got the hang of steering pretty quickly but I was still there with one hand on the seat to help with their balance. That took longer. They had to learn new habits – new ways of moving that would keep them safe when I wasn’t there.
If you have ever lived with chronic pain you will know the importance of habits – of new ways of moving that keep you safe.
Chronic pain changes you. It changes the way that you live your life. It changes the way you love. You have to find a new way to be that doesn’t hurt.
A new way to stand. A new way to sit. A new way to walk. It isn’t always easy.
So when you find a way to be that doesn’t hurt you stick with it. It becomes you. Anything to avoid the pain that you know will come if you don’t. You develop new habits, new ways of moving that keep you safe from the pain. You even develop new ways of putting on your underwear.
If you do the work (or if you are lucky) then just maybe one day you will wake to find that the pain has gone.
But the habits remain and after a while you have forgotten:
why you get dressed in the strange way that you do
why you get nervous on public transport
why you always check twice to make sure you locked the door
why you don’t like speaking in front of a group
why you can’t say no to just one more
why you don’t carry your kids on your shoulders
why you find it hard to trust
Every time you get dressed in the coming days take a minute to picture yourself as you do one thing you know are going to do that day (meet with a friend, boss or colleague, drive to work, go somewhere for lunch, take part in a meeting). See yourself doing it, imagine what it will sound like, close your eyes and let yourself feel the experience to come. Then ask yourself these two questions:
“How am I going to behave? What is causing me to behave that way?”
If the answer to the second question is “Nothing. That is how I always do it!” chances are you have become your habit.
Habits might have kept you safe in the past but chances are they are now keeping you from becoming all you can be. It just might be time to try to do things differently…
***
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process.
you are right I am wr… wr… wrong
It just wasn’t our year…
we are consolidating – developing some of the up and coming new talent so that the year after next will be our year …
the draw was against us … there were some questionable decisions…
Damn right there were.
Most likely by you and most likely right at the beginning.
If you are fighting to protect Queen or Country it can bring out the best in you. If you are fighting to protect your ego it can bring out the worst.
When you have invested a lot of your ego you have a lot of your ego to lose.
Something as simple as declaring your allegiance is where it all starts. You decide to follow a team (or adopt a position in an argument) and the longer (or more publicly) you do that the more likely you are to become a rabid fan – because only a fool would follow a team of losers right! Right?
And so the draw will be against you, the weather, the referees. (The modelling is wrong, the scientists biased.)
Unlucky injuries, accidental incidents that go before an unsympathetic judiciary. (Change is natural, influenced by many other factors)
Anything that justifies your loyalty to the team, your relationship with them and your investment of time and energy and money (and ego) in them. They are not losers (and neither am I!).
Except that some teams are never going to win (and some positions are wrong).
Once you have invested so much (and in some cases staked you career on it) it takes a lot to say “I was wrong.”
Sometimes too much.
All relationships are like that.
We invest in our employers:
“Your newspaper has done some pretty dodgy stuff. How can you work for an organisation that would allow that sort of thing to happen?” and we are reluctant to admit that we were fooled by their hype. “It is not like that! The paper I work for now is not the same paper that allowed that sort of behaviour to occur. We are doing some really good things. It is different now.”
We invest in our friends:
“What are you thinking hanging around with someone like that?” and we are reluctant to admit that our parents saw what we could not. “They just don’t understand that is how teenagers are these days. They are out of touch.”
We invest in our partners:
“Oh my God! I can’t believe that you are actually going to marry him?” and we are reluctant to admit that we should have listened to our friends. “You don’t see the side of him that I do when we are alone. You are jealous because we don’t get to spend so much time together any more.”
Even when people open your eyes to the fact that you have been deceived or provided with misinformation, your behaviour and responses will continue to be effected – even if it has been corrected numerous times.
But what is worse is when we are so heavily invested in our beliefs about ourselves – we are not successful, not capable, not good – that we will cling to those beliefs no matter what.
What are your most strongly held and strongly defended beliefs about yourself? What is it that you just can’t do?
Is there a chance that you might be wr… wr… wrong?
***
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process.
finding my own Way 