Stories: The Unlikely Call

This week I am returning to the power of story. When our own stories don't make sense to us, it is difficult to move forward into our dreams. That is unfortunate for we have all been provided with the beginning chapter of an incredible story. 

So where do incredible stories start? They start with the ordinary world. My ordinary world has been decades in the making. Maybe yours has too. It consists of routines that run deep. It consists of conclusions that I drew a long time ago. Some of these routines and conclusions have served me well...others have limited my ability to move forward. 

Looking back and being honest, I have to conclude that my story so far has been more about pleasing others than taking a stand for what I knew to be true. The story that has been written so far is the result of my priorities and the choices that I have made. 

But my story, our stories, do not have to finish with the same ordinary world. There are opportunities along the way to step out of our ordinary world. One of the ways these opportunities show up is as an unlikely call. Unlikely calls present themselves as a unique problem, challenge, or adventure for us to rise to and overcome.

It is easier to recognize unlikely calls for others than it is to recognize our own.  Why not try putting yourself into one of the stories below and ask what you would have chosen to do.  Remember, the heroes and heroines did not know how the story would turn out...

Bilbo and the dwarves' quest to the lonely mountain - would you have set off on a risky venture with a colourful cast of characters that you had just met?

Cinderella and the prince's ball - would you have worn the clothes and ridden in the pumpkin coach knowing the truth about what they really were and knowing they were only going to last for a few hours?

Moses and the burning bush - would you have gone back and faced the situation you ran away from years ago? 

Neo and the matrix - would you be willing to accept that there was a higher story behind everything you thought you knew?

Unlikely calls are not uncommon. Many unlikely calls have come and gone for me but either I didn't recognize them or act on them. 

Here are some of the things that block our ability to recognize unlikely calls:

1) Unlikely calls are linked to higher purpose. When we build our story around self-centred themes like safety, success or money, we will miss these calls. Ironically, those who give up self-centredness for a higher purpose usually find what they were looking for. 

2) Unlikely calls often come from another person who knows and cares about us. Many of the unlikely calls that I have missed, and a few that I have taken came from dear friends who could see past my people pleasing. 

3) Unlikely calls are often hidden in plain sight. They my be disguised and difficult to recognize for what they are. They may seem too risky or just plain irrelevant to our dreams. We may be looking for something else, something easier. Or we may not be ready to stop blaming others and start taking responsibility for the opportunities that come our way.  

The ordinary world will continue as long as we choose to remain in it. Like my story,  the rest of your story is linked to what you do with the opportunities that come your way. 

Timelines

Walking into our dreams usually doesn't happen overnight.  It may take months or even years. While we are putting the pieces of our dream together it can be easy to lose sight of  key accomplishments and the progress that we have made over time.  One simple visual strategy I use to remind myself of how far I have progressed is a timeline.

Timelines are easy to draw.  There are a number of different types of timelines but they all start with a line across the bottom of a page covering the time period you are interested in.  Here are two that I have found useful:

An event timeline shows milestones, challenges and accomplishments over a time period. You can also add key influences and relationships if they are relevant.  This is a strategy to use when you want to reflect of how you got to where you are.  It is also good for uncovering themes in your story and patterns that tend to repeat themselves.  

A behaviour over time graph plots one or more measures that you are interested in tracking over a time period. The growth curve we looked at in Understanding Patterns: Growth is an example of a behaviour over time graph.  This is a strategy to use when you want to measure what has changed or how well you are doing (maybe against goals that you have set). You may also add key events to this graph to explore relationships between actions you have taken and the response of the measure.

The first use of a time series plot (as well as line, bar and pie charts) dates back to William Playfair (1759-1823),  a Scottish engineer and political economist.  The timeline below dates back to 1786.

Like your personal vision, it is good to reflect on your timelines from time to time and update them as you gain additional understanding. 

Creative Tension

These days most people try to avoid anything to do with tension.  But creative tension can be a good kind of tension to have.  

Creative tension comes out of the gap between your dream becoming reality and where you are right now. 

Imagine starting to stretch an elastic band between your two hands. One hand is your dream. The other hand is where you are currently. 

As you stretch the elastic band you feel a pull between your hands. That pull is acting in two directions.  It is acting to pull where you are right now towards your dream. That is a productive place to be. It is creative tension.

As you embrace being in that place, you will find creative solutions emerging in response to the tension, often in the form of 'aha' moments when you least expect them. People who practice creativity will frequently set 'stretch' goals to keep themselves engaged and productive. 

The tension is also acting to pull your dream towards where you are currently.  That tension is not productive. It will result in a dream that drifts lower and lower.  And as your dream drifts lower there is a tendency for where you are right now to also drift lower, even further away from your dream. 

You need to be careful because this drift may happen so gradually that you do not notice it. Regularly reflecting on your dream and the underlying personal vision and core values is one way to keep in a place of creative tension rather than drifting.

The good news is, the more tension there is between your dream and where you are right now, the more opportunity there is for creative strategies to emerge, as long as you resolve to not compromise on your dream...

Another way to create tension

Curiosity

Many people I talk to have an uneasy relationship with curiosity. I know that I do. We all start out our lives as naturally curious beings. That is the way we learn. At a young age, most of us asked questions about everything.

I remember as a parent being stumped by the number of times my children would ask me why about something.  

Daddy, why is a plant green? 

Because of the chlorophyll in the leaves. 

Daddy, why is chlorophyll green? 

Because at the centre of chlorophyll is a copper atom that reflects green when light hits it. 

Daddy, why does copper reflect green light and so on...

Somewhere along the way that changed for me. Maybe it did for you as well. Like the Lilliput people feeling threatened by the unfamiliar Gulliver, I chose to either avoid difficult questions completely or answer them in a way that minimized the underlying issue. I became a knower rather than a learner. 

In 2008 I attended a systems thinking conference in Boston and saw a cartoon that reflected my uneasy relationship with questions. The cartoon has stuck in my mind ever since and I decided to draw it for this post. 

Some thoughts on curiosity:

Curiosity allows us to reach a deeper level of understanding. Some questions are not meant to be answered too quickly. We need to let questions like this exist, without being fully answered, until a meaningful answer emerges. Reflection may take a while, depending upon the question. 

Interestingly, children's natural approach of repeated questioning is now being promoted as a business tool. The asking of 'why' several times in a row is called the 5 why's - an iterative question-asking technique designed to explore cause-and-effect relationships underlying a problem.  

Curiosity plays a key role in relationships. A genuine curiosity in another person and an openness to their perspective is a dimension of respect.  This reminds me of a friend of mine. When we get together for coffee, he always has a meaningful question to ask me. After he asks the question, he listens, and I feel honoured.  I have seen him have the same effect with meaningful questions in groups that he leads.

'Each question invites another and offers the opportunity of going deeper and discovering more. Each question hopes for understanding and is an offering of respect.'  (Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect)

Curiosity takes the time to ask the right question. Sometimes the right question is more important than the right answer.  Asking the wrong question may leave us in the same box that we have been in many times before, wondering why we can't move forward into our dreams.  In contrast, the right question has the potential to open doors that we did not know were there. In fact, it was an unexpected question that led to me starting The Daniel Mosaic. 

This week as you move forward into your dream, why not cultivate curiosity as a response to things you do not understand. Spend some time with some good questions and see what emerges...