Let Go of Control

“Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.”
– Robert Heinlein


Exploring is hard work. Sometimes, it can put you in a funk.

For instance, I lost all of my physical energy yesterday afternoon. I mean all. Pretending it was a cold, I hied myself to bed and slept 12 hours of bad-dream-induced sleep. Woke up wondering why. Why was I doing all this change on purpose and to myself? Where was I going? What was I doing? What was the point?

What do I want now?

Peace. An easier life. Less mental struggle. More creativity.

I started with all of my own “saws” to keep me going: The path is in the doing. The path is in the experience, in the intent of the action. The path is in how you seek, not what you seek.

The path is in love of self – compassion for self.

So I gave myself a little compassion.

And I wondered: When you give yourself compassion, who is it that gives? Who is it that receives? Isn’t it all the same old you?

Here’s what I saw: The giver is the One, the greater self within yourself. The receiver is the Other. That's you, too.

The path, I saw, is with the giver. The path is the creative force. The path is not the result: the clean house, the new career, the healthy family.

The path is the One who seeks to give peace to the Other.

Here’s the challenge in our (Western) world: we are taught to identify with the Other in ourselves. The accomplishment (grades, job, house). The power (parent, owner, manager). The rewards (prizes, acknowledgment, love).

When you are Re-versioning, the path of exploring is with the source of all that. The One within you who, today, now, says Yes. The inside-of-you One who has compassion for your Other, for your foibles, fears, losses, all of the (negative) Other who thinks it is in control.

But what if our Others are not in control? We have to be. Otherwise, the world will crush us like bugs, no?

No.


I’ve ridden horses for over 40 years. That is, a 70-150 pound Lesser Being perches on top of a 900-1,200 pound Big Being and says, Let’s go over there.

And the Big Being usually does just that.

“What’s it like to control a horse?” ask my non-equestrian friends.

I reply: You are never in control. The horse is always in control. The horse is, physically, ten times your size and strength and could kill you with one well-placed hoof so fast you wouldn’t have the wherewithal to say Hey.

Control is not the issue. If you’re thinking in terms of control, you’ve already lost.

Here’s the truth with Big Beings like horses: You are never in control of the horse. You are either in agreement with the horse, or in disagreement.

If you agree, the horse carries you where you want the two of you to go and how you want the two of you to go down the path you think you want to go.

If you’re in disagreement, the horse makes all of those decisions. You, the lesser of two beings, have two choices:

Talk to the horse about doing something else. Or just agree with the horse already and go along for the ride.


The first time a horse ran away with me I was 11 years old. He was heading home, fast, through a grove of trees, assisted by my violent screams and my pulling on the reins with all of my 11-year-old strength, which he thought was just a dandy way of saying Go Boy!

He was way in control – as usual. And we were way in disagreement because a paved road was coming up too fast and all I could envision was him hitting the pavement at 30 MPH and his shod hooves sliding out from under him and him falling on my lesser, small, screaming, panicked self.

I realized there was nothing I could do. He was in control. My panic died. I took stock of the situation at 30 MPH.

I was on the horse. He was running, yes. But he wasn’t going to fall. He would stop, eventually. He wasn’t stupid: he knew the road was there. He had been on this trail with me a hundred times. He would no more slide out on that road than he would run off of a cliff.

So I hung on and went with the ride and began to talk to him quietly, with my voice and my weight and my legs, and pretty soon he slowed to a cantering 20 MPH, and then a 12-MPH trot, then a walk. And we walked quietly home on the paved road.

We were back in agreement. Although I’m still not sure exactly whose idea it was.

Here’s the thing, though: when I realized the horse was in control and I let go of my being in control and the very idea of control, I got home really fast. The horse took care of me.


When you’re exploring and Re-versioning, think of the path as the horse. Let the path be in control. Try to be in agreement with the path, but if you don’t understand where the path is leading, where the horse is going, don’t panic and saw on the reins. That just gives more control to the horse.

Just agree with the path. See where it goes. Hang on for the ride. Wherever you’re going, you’ll get there a lot faster than if you try to get back in control. Which you never were. And never will be. And it’s all right. That is the thrill of exploring. That’s the thrill of being alive.

Time to Explore

No doubt your Board of Directors loved all of the hard work you did to prepare – the favorite things, the skills and interests, what you are not – and had a lot of great ideas and comments and insights into who you are and how you can be in the world.

And they all talked like mad people and you took notes and when it was over, they all thanked you and clapped their (virtual) hands on your shoulders and said keep in touch and hung up the phones/left the bar/went home to their Happy Versions O’ Them, and there you were with a scribble of words on a yellow pad and no earthly idea what to do next.

You don’t even know if it was helpful, do you? Not yet. It will be.

Welcome to exploring, the second phase of Re-versioning.


Explore without goals

Exploring always seems like the most “fun” phase of Re-versioning. But in fact, it’s difficult. And it’s not always a good time.

True exploration shows us places we’ve never seen, plays sounds we’ve never heard, prompts emotions we’ve never felt.

When we’re in it, it seems like it has absolutely no shape or form, no rhyme or reason, and yet here we are trying to make something new of ourselves and not even sure if it will work, much less if it will result in something wonderful.

But we have to be lost to explore, don’t we?

Yes and no.

When we’re lost, we have no idea where we are and we want to be Somewhere Else and we can’t figure out a) where Somewhere Else could possibly be, and b) how to get there.

When we explore, we have no idea where we are either. But we don’t care. Because it’s pretty danged interesting right here and now. And the point is to follow our noses/stick to the hunches/trust in our instincts (read “interests,” “skills,” “abilities”), and See What Happens.

Fruitful explorations, in Re-versioning, come when we explore without goals. It’s not exploration if we know where we’re going. That’s called a vacation.

Exploring doesn’t always mean experiencing new things. It means seeing familiar things with unbiased, unassuming eyes. It means really looking. Really listening. Really experiencing.

We explore when we let our natural curiosity, passions, and interests sway our actions and draw us to experience things in a new way. When we don’t expect anything out of the experience.

There’s only one rule in exploring.

We have to show up.

We have to be there. We have to pay attention to our ideas, thoughts, emotions, to the world Out There and the world In Here. So we can answer the one, truly, bottom-line, important question to this whole process:


What is the world asking of me?


Believe me, the world is asking. There’s so much we all need to do, and we can’t get it done without every one of us sticking our talents and skills and loves and passions into the mix and helping out.

That doesn’t mean you follow someone else’s exploration into the latest Most Important thing, whether it’s global warming or poverty or education or (or.. or.. or). Not that those things aren’t important. They are. But the real question is, what is the world asking of each of us, specifically, given what we each know and love and believe in?


Ask the right questions

I believe there are ways to ask the world this question and get an answer that makes sense. In fact, asking the right question is important, because if we ask (and then answer) the wrong question, we may end up rejecting a part of ourselves that the world really, really needs to have.

My Board Member Jim Kenefick introduced me to www.asmallgroup.net. It’s a group of people in Cincinnati, including the urban poor, who are committed to restoring and reconciling Cincinnati. Their number includes Peter Block, a biz guru who is also a citizen of Cincinnati and, in an interview on the web site, said a couple of key “grown up” thoughts (I paraphrase):

- We are inclusive, and put people in charge of their own futures.

- We declare that we are responsible for this world, and we will stop being victims.

- We are the cause as well as the effect. There is no one to blame.


I took that to heart in Re-versioning. And after a little thought, I asked myself three questions that seemed to be the right ones:

- What makes me feel most whole? Most purposeful?

- What have I done that I do well, better than anyone else?

- What does the world need from me today?


I think of these questions as a set of interlocking rings, one for each question, like this:



The intersection in the middle, the place where all three of the answers converge, is what You 2.0 will be.

The “next” won’t end up being specific, like “Get a doctorate in physics from Yale University.” (Although that would have been a fun “next,” I think!)

The intersection can provide a bit of guidance about what “next” might entail. At the risk of sounding uppity, here’s what I found in the intersection of my three circles/three questions – what I needed to do next:


Guidance. Wisdom. Kindness. Compassion. Strength. Direction. Ideas. Beauty. Laughter. Confidence. See, look, feel. Observe. Experience.


It sounded pretty pretentious, when I first wrote it down – it still does, if I think of each of those things as the Be All And Do All For The World.

But when I think of those things in terms of who I am, of what I can do, I know there’s a little of each of those things in me, in little areas, in what I can offer.

Of course, “next” needs a structure. I had no idea how that would happen. Or when that would happen. But in the spirit of exploration, I decided to just sit with it for a while. And let all those “next” things talk to one another and work things our before they turned to me to say, “Hey.”

Keeping the Faith

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi


Keeping the faith

Chaos theory was all the rage a few years ago.

The (lay) physics world was fascinated by it. Fractal geometry. Initial conditions. Small changes, small actions making all the difference in the world. The butterfly effect.

Movies emerged. Books appeared. The secular world, floundering for something “real” to believe in, finally found something that kind of made sense of God.

It was all faith, really.

Not to say the mathematics of chaos theory aren’t interesting – damned amazing, actually. Branches of trees follow the same geometry as branches of our veins as branches of our rivers. Come to think of it – and I did think about it, a lot – damned weird.

But what did the mathematics mean? What did it refer to? Did it reflect the thing out there scientists wonder about and we interact with and call “reality”? Did anything reflect that?

No one could say.

It was all faith, really.

Same goes for the actions we take to re-version ourselves. Or to save the world. Or not.

We each believe in our personal heroes – Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, Jr., or Muhammad Ali, or any of them – the ones who represent for us the things we want to be – the version we want to become – and we can point to actions they took that changed the world and say, see, it can be done. But you have to be someone great to do it.

(Subtext: And I’m not.)

(Sub-subtext: So it doesn’t matter what I do.)

But what did our heroes’ actions change? What effect did they have?

They changed us. And millions of people like us. One person at a time. And all because our heroes had faith in their actions, and in themselves.



Re-versioning takes a lot of faith. Especially when you’ve questioned all of the things you’ve done in the past and the dreams you’ve won and lost and the people who’ve come and gone and the ideas that you believe might maybe be the ones that, this time, will take you out of yourself and into the world and become real enough that you believe, that you have faith, that will result in actions that matter to more than your mother and your cat.

It's all faith, really.

Sometimes, when we’re re-versioning, things get dark. It’s difficult to reinvent. It’s difficult to honestly, lovingly say: ok, where are the holes in me? Where are the bugs in this version that are stopping the flow of information/action/effectiveness/love/faith? And, instead of going deep into therapy – which, sometimes, some of us have to do anyway – re-versioning says, forget how the bugs got there. Just fix ‘em.

And in our darkest re-versioning hours, we ask: But what difference will it make? What if this version has as many (but different) bugs as the last one? (It will.) What if I have to create version 2.99999? (You will.) What’s the point of that, anyway?

The point is the path. The point is what happens while we build version 2.99999.

Once you get older, with enough time under your belt to actually have friends for decades, a funny thing happens. People – sometimes people you’ve known lightly – will say, “I remember when we did X, you said…” And they go on to describe some experience you had together and some words you (evidently) blurted out and how much it meant to them and thanks and for the life of you, you won’t be able to remember even knowing them that long, much less anything of the experience or the so-called “wisdom” that popped out of your mouth.

You never know when what you do will change the world.

It’s not the Big Things that do it – the achievements and the wins and the stuff (house/boat/car) and the times your mother says I’m so proud of you – although those things, too, affect the world a little.

It’s the small stuff. Both good and bad.

And you have to have faith that, if you move and think and love and act and talk from that honest, open, exploring, believing, trusting part of your soul – the one that says, yes, you are here, yes, you are part of this, yes, you are integrated, somehow, someway, into the human race, and yes, what you do every moment does matter – if you act from there, the world sighs and gathers you in its arms and passes on the word and someone somewhere listens from their trusting part of their soul and acts accordingly. And you’ve changed the world.

But you never know it.

That’s the part that requires faith. That’s where chaos theory comes in – where we have to believe that the smallest breath of air, the smallest words we utter, the tiny, effervescent touch of kindness we offer to a bird, a child, a person in pain, ourselves – goes out and says, hey. There is kindness in the world. There is honesty. There is the way to be the change you want to see.

I could do the math for you, if I had a PhD in calculus. But we don’t need the math. Besides, even the mathematicians and the physicists and the chaos theorists aren’t sure if the math reflects anything that’s out there “really.”

All we need is faith. Because the world really needs a kind word from your heart.




Thanks, Anthony DiMaio

*****

Who are some of my heroes? Gandhi, because he believed non-violence and love could conquer violence and hate (and it did – his beliefs freed India from one of the world’s strongest governments); Martin Luther King, Jr., because he believed in a dream that would happen whether he lived or died (and it did and is still growing); Muhammad Ali, the world’s biggest, strongest, toughest boxer, because he defied his war-mongering government and followed his Muslim beliefs and refused to kill another human being, going to prison instead of war – even though it cost him the Big Thing: the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship (and it did – but he showed them and got it back later).

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Who Am I? #5: The fun begins

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
-- Confucius


In the beginning of re-versioning, I suggested you create a Board of Directors, and gave some ideas of how to select people who could help develop You 2.0. Since then, we’ve been answering a lot of questions related to “Who am I?” -- favorite things, skills and interests, the things we do well and always wanted to do, even who we are not. If you’ve done all this, you’re ready to meet with your board.

Meeting with your cool Board is easy. Here’s some tips.

• It’s Re-Day! Set a date and time when everyone – or most everyone – can play. You may have to set up more than one meeting if your board is bigger than three or four people. That’s ok.

• Confirm, confirm, confirm. Call or email after the meeting is set up, and remind everyone the day before, with purpose, time, length, and place. (If you’re meeting virtually, check out the affordable services at SaveOnConferences.com.)

• Write an agenda. Start by restating your purpose, and how long the meeting will take. As efficiently as you can, without seeming to rush, get the general scope of your “Who am I?” answers on the table. Then ask your board for their ideas, and end by restating any conclusions and things they can expect next.

• Prep information and/or visuals. This can be PowerPoint stuff – keep it simple and visual please, not a million lines o’ text – or handouts, photos, pictures – whatever you want. Have some fun – your Board will appreciate that you took the energy to make it fun for them, too.

• Test your equipment or conference call service. Ask someone to be on the phone for 2 minutes if you need to ensure everything is working.

• The day before the meeting: confirm, confirm, confirm!

• Run the meeting. Stick to the agenda and the length you promised. Listen! Take notes. Thank everyone and go home.


You’ve just run your first Board of Directors meeting. Take a bow.


But what do we talk about?

Your Board will be so excited to help you through this process that you’ll wonder why you even thought of this question. But you can guide your discussion a little anyway.

I asked my board for straightforward answers to a couple of questions.

• What did I do well that I hadn’t identified for them already?

• What did I not do well that I should avoid?

• What other ideas did they have for exploring?

• Who did they think I should talk to/check their blog/write/email/experience?


I was amazed at two things from my board: how open and stimulating they were, and how excited they were for me to be going through this process. They all wanted to know where it would end up. They all had ideas for how to move forward. They all had opinions on all of the questions I asked.

And, happily, you’ll discover that people who like you, also like to talk about you – with you in the room. They like to imagine things for you. They like being part of your process. They’re excited to see how baby-seed ideas will grow. It’s fun, it’s exciting, and it’s something you will not only never forget – you’ll never know exactly how to thank them enough.

Here’s a hint: keep them in the loop.

As you make progress after your board meeting, keep emailing successes to your board. Let them know what’s happening. Don’t be shy about asking for more advice. Lean on them a little. They know you’re beginning a scary exploration, and that no one knows what will happen.

Let them help you. It’s allowed. It’s a great gift – one we often forget to give.