Resistance

I like it when things go well. There is such a sense of accomplishment when I sail through something that I have planned for, or through an unexpected event along the path to my dream. In that excitement it is easy to forget that we learn most when things are not going well, when we run into resistance. Resistance is a wonderful teacher if we will learn from it.  

Resistance at its simplest is something that pushes back at us. It slows us down and takes up energy. We are surrounded with examples where people are trying to eliminate resistance, like airplanes and Olympic swimmers. But we also encourage and even engage in resistance, like when we exercise or when we turn on an electric stove and get a glowing filament. So resistance can't be all bad. 

There will be resistance as you put the pieces of your dream together. You should expect that. What you and I do with it is the issue. Having spent a lot of time responding to resistance in a way that is not helpful, I am learning to ask two questions...

Everything that can be shaken, will be...eventually. Resistance causes the weak parts of our dream and character to be shaken and exposed - like selfish motives, desire for short cuts, and blame. It also exposes when we are more in love with the idea of our dream rather than the dream itself. While this is painful, it is also good because these things are unstable. They are not worth working towards. It is better that they be exposed so we can let them go.

After things have been shaken, after our dream and character have been sifted and sorted, what remains will align to our higher purpose. These are the things that are worth standing for, the non-negotiables. It is amazing how much unnecessary clutter we collect around our dreams and how freeing it is to finally let it go.  And after resistance exposes what needs to go, it then strengthens what remains. 

I have learned that the best way to learn from resistance is to walk straight into it with curiosity and see what is there. It is usually not pleasant at first but I have never failed to appreciate the results when I have embraced resistance as a strategy and a teacher. 

Understanding Patterns: Success to the Successful

Do you ever wonder why some things that you do succeed brilliantly, while other things fall short of your dreams? The 'success to the successful' pattern may have something to do with that. This pattern shows us that more resources tend to be given to those things which have succeeded, causing them to continue succeeding.  The counter-part is that resources tend to be withdrawn from those things that started out as less than a success, pretty much guaranteeing that they will never be a success.  

The Daniel Mosaic provides an interesting real-life example of the success to the successful pattern.  My blog posts have ranged between about five and 30 page views in the first week after posting.  Some of them continue to receive additional page views in the subsequent weeks. But now, after nine months, two early blogs have pulled way ahead of the rest in page views.  They have new page views every week, while other blogs receive none. It may have been that they were my best blogs, but I think that it has more to do with the success to the successful pattern.  Because they are my most read blogs, new visitors to the site tend to read those blogs, ensuring that they will remain my most read blogs. I have seen the same behaviour in myself when I am choosing YouTube or Ted Talks videos. 

So the question is, how else could this pattern be affecting you without you realizing it?

1) Relationships: The people you are most comfortable with, you will be most open with and these relationships will continue to grow. The people you have a hard time with, you will invest less of yourself in and these relationships will remain the same or you will drift farther apart.  

2) Personal growth: I am excellent at researching some things and tend to make good choices - like purchasing the best quality flat screen TV for the best possible price. I continue to get better in choices like this as I devote more time and creativity and reap the rewards. But it is a different story in other areas where I have felt criticized and therefore procrastinate looking into potential solutions. As a result, my actions fall short and next time I procrastinate more which ensures that I will not grow in the area. 

3) Team leadership: If you have team or family members that differ in their abilities or productivity, have you considered how much you might be contributing to this? Do you spend more time coaching the ones who are easier to teach or catch on faster? Do you compliment them more? Are you more open to their ideas? Of course people do have differences in attitude and ability, but the success to the successful pattern may also be at work. 

The answer to the success to the successful pattern is to look at your allocation of resources. You may need to take some resources away from something that is growing well to invest in an important area that is struggling. 

If some of you are wondering what my most popular blogs were, I am not going to tell you. That would just be drawing more attention to them. Instead, I would like to draw your attention to two blogs that I think are worth reading that never received much attention when they were first posted.  

Perspective
Polarity Thinking

You may need to do the same in an undeveloped area that you would like to grow...

Note: the 'shifting the burden' pattern is one of eight common systems archetypes in systems thinking. 

Visual Strategy: Wordles

One of the strengths of visual strategy is helping to see patterns where there is a lot of complexity. This week's blog uses a visual strategy called wordle to explore The Daniel Mosaic. Wordle is a tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

Wordles are easy to create. I will walk you through the basic steps that I used. After selecting my text (the combination of all the text from thirty blogs), I went to www.wordle.net and pasted it into the text box. I then pressed go and the website automatically created my wordle. Next, I kept pressing the randomize button until I found one in a format that I liked. Then I saved it. This is what it looks like. 

You can see the key words and phrases that emerged most often by the size of the text. If you are interested in reading more about any of them, you can click on the links below and they will take you to that post. 

It is amazing how a simple visual strategy can simplify and bring out patterns, something that is helpful in our increasingly complex world. I hope that it is something that you find useful as you put the pieces of your dream together. 

At Hand
Authenticity
Change
Core Values
Curiosity
Dreams
Escapes
Growth
Knower or Learner
Mentors
Personal Vision
Perspective
Planting & Harvesting
Reflection
Roots & Fruit
Story
Unlikely Calls
Words

Understanding Dreams

The last few weeks I have been reflecting on dreams. While I have written about strategies to put the pieces of our dreams together, I have not taken much time to explore the nature of dreams themselves - questions like, what are dreams? and where do they come from?

The very first blog on The Daniel Mosaic introduced the following conversation: "As I talk to people, I often hear stories about a compelling dream of where they feel called to be.  These stories are fresh, exciting and life giving.  They are about impacting their world in a positive way..."  (At Hand, May 27, 2014)

But there is much more to dreams than that. When I look at my story and talk to others, I have come to realize that, for other people, dreams are a confusing or painful topic. 

"In high school, I dreamed of becoming a medical doctor and then going to a third world country to practice community medicine. I studied hard in high school and was accepted into a top university. After completing the required pre-medicine studies in life sciences in two years I applied to medical school. The first time I applied I did not get in, so I continued in my degree in biology. After my third year of studies I applied again. Nothing. The next year as I finished my biology degree I applied again and did not get in. After a year of odd jobs and some additional study, I applied for a fourth time. This time I got an interview. But once again I was not accepted. 

I remember the day I realized that a dream that I had prepared for for many years was not going to come true. I remember the sense of loss. For the first time since I was a teenager, I was an unemployed dreamer, that is a dreamer with no dream. To this day I still question what happened..."

There are so many mixed messages around us about dreaming. We are told that we can be anything we want. Companies invite us to picture ourselves in a dream because they want to sell us something.  We are encouraged to have a 'bucket list' of what we want to accomplish before we die. These are not necessarily bad, but I do not think that our dreams at their core are something that we put on or buy or do, or even things that may bring us meaning or satisfaction. Instead I wonder if they are really gifts that are deposited inside of us that are core to who we are and part of our higher purpose. I am starting to think that we don't choose our dreams as much as we discover and steward them.

What about when our dreams fall apart along the way or when we don't even get an opportunity to get started. Our dreams often face fierce opposition. Sometimes those in opposition are ones who are close to us, people that we expected support from. It seems as though dreams can be blocked, they can be given up on and they can die. I don't understand why. It can reach a point where it is difficult or almost impossible to dream again. 

Some people I talk to have a different challenge - they don't have a dream. They may be searching but don't find anything that resonates with them. They may even try out dream after dream but nothing sticks. Others may dream but their dreams get smaller and smaller as life goes by. Or maybe their dream has changed.  It feels like they have outgrown their dream. 

"After my plan to enter medical school fell apart, I spent five years working in an environmental lab at a job that I could not see a future in.  During that time, my next dream emerged which was to become a biologist. I went back go to school to complete a master's degree and became a biologist, managing lakes, ponds, streams, forests, meadows and wetlands for a time in a progressive municipality north of Toronto (Ontario, Canada). This time, I walked into my dream. 

After five years, a series of unexpected events happened. A corporate reorganization saw me transferred to a portfolio that was less about biology and the natural environment and more about energy and technology and organizations. An opportunity came to move into overall corporate strategy and I took it thinking that I would move back when I had a chance. I applied several times but wasn't selected. As the years went by, the dream of being a biologist has all but faded, although I still enjoy being in nature. My dreams, if you can call them that, have slowly turned towards strategy and coming alongside others as they pursue their dreams, but I question whether they are as vibrant as before."

Just thinking about my story has got me thinking more deeply about dreams - and wondering about how to put my experience together into something that makes sense. Maybe dreams aren't about occupations, or job titles or accomplishments. Could it be that my dream is not really about me at all, but about something bigger, something bolder, something that has the potential to leave a lasting legacy. That seems to make more sense to me that what I believed before. It also challenges me to consider risking to dream again and take a chance that it is not too late.

Prayer of Sir Francis Drake

Disturb us, Lord, when

We are too well pleased with ourselves,

When our dreams have come true

Because we have dreamed too little,

When we arrived safely

Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when

With the abundance of things we possess

We have lost our thirst

For the waters of life;

Having fallen in love with life,

We have ceased to dream of eternity

And in our efforts to build a new earth,

We have allowed our vision

Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,

To venture on wider seas

Where storms will show your mastery;

Where losing sight of land,

We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back

The horizons of our hopes;

And to push into the future

In strength, courage, hope, and love.

Sir Francis Drake was an English sea captain who lived from 1540-1596. 

His exploits were legendary and he was only the second person 

to circumnavigate the world in a single expedition.