So What is Wrong with “Transformation”?

Something is “wrong” when it isn’t accurate or reflective of “reality” (for practical purposes, reflective of how life works). 1+1=3 is wrong.

In much the same way, the reputation of “transformation”, “personal transformation”, “organizational transformation” is also wrong.  In part, the inaccuracy is that it is held in the wrong grammar — it isn’t a thing, a permanent state, an end state, or even necessarily a stable state. And in part, the inaccuracy about “transformation” comes from a hoped for permanent resolution. Ultimately, held in these ways, “transformation” becomes its own mode of being stuck — with a better story, a better “self-identity”, and a better gloss on the situation.

What the term “transformation” hides is its worst enemy. It hides that a “transformation of the kind of self a human being is” is called for many times in life. It hides that no one of them is a permanently fitting answer to life and living. Also hidden is that a “transformation” in the kind of self one considers oneself to be calls for an appropriate investment in ongoing development to mine the territory made available by the “transformation” and to move from unaware, to aware to competent to masterful of its powers. The conversation regarding “transformation” also hides that it has its limits, and that at some point it will call for its own transcendence –– another transformation — that resolves the crystallized limitations of the last one.

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Do You Reserve The Right to Be Offended?

If you do, it costs you. Big time.

Would you be willing to give up the right to be offended by others and life for six months on a trial basis?

That commitment transformed a senior management team at a Fortune 100 company within less than 6 months. It allowed them to address issues with each other without childish affronts running the show and blowing up the conversation about more substantive issues.

News: there is rarely a situation in which being offended helps. Possibly it might do so in an honor-based community in which the members have a prior commitment to deal with each other honorably. In that case, an offense to honor pointed out by acting out the charade of being offended, followed by a pointed naming of the offense and a request for a specific kind of correction might just do the trick.

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Who is a Grown Up?

Normal English would say, “What is a grown up?” “What” indicates a “person, place or thing”.

The more awake you are, the more you know that considering a person to be similar to a thing is a deep, deep problem. It is like throwing away the best aspects of being human and starting work with only what is left over.

So, “who” is a grown up if we have room to address the question as if you and others are not things but … and watch the forced grammar here… “something” else? Our everyday language is weak about “things” that aren’t “things”. Even what isn’t a thing is related to like “something else.”

Let us make a category for a “connected self” — more like a deep network than a historical, story-based person. Against that background, what would a grown up be? (and here I use the term “grown up” in a developmental sense of “adulthood” where the basic important capabilities are at play in a mature way).

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When You’re Small, You’re Small

It would be nice if that title said it all.

Assuming it doesn’t, let me say what I was thinking in writing it.

I have numerous examples of people feeling small, acting small, or over-reacting from being small that I have been bumping into lately.  Just yesterday, a young doctor over-reacted to a question that was clearly relevant and squarely within his declared area of specialty. His over-reaction took the form of an exaggeration of what was being asked (“10 hours of questions for his boss”) and directing me to seek a second opinion (elsewhere) if I wanted to. This response was more a measure of his insecurity regarding what he doesn’t already know than one of the lack of relevance of the question.

It would be nice if there were an app for one’s phone or watch that said how old you were in your response to your environment. Even a simple app would do. Adult or child.

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It’s Not an Elephant, it’s a Radiation Source!

The “Elephant in the Room” or “Rhino in the Room“, or “Bleeding Elephant Head” (or whichever version of the 1970’s metaphor regarding what is present and being avoided) has sunk to the level of “common sense” (evil) that believes that it obviously represents a breakthrough in locating what needs to be dealt with. It reeks with the feel of “now we have found what needs working on”, and “now we are really going to get somewhere”.

I heartily disagree.

Those areas being avoided that can readily be pointed out and recognized quickly are in all likelihood not the areas of real suppression or loss of power, nor does pointing it out  alter the kind of self that is being addressed. (It is instead addressed to the very same kind of self that was avoiding it in the first place.)

Real suppression, real loss of power, real undermining is more like an invisible source of radiation that steadily destroys people’s vitality and inspiration and power. A real transformation in the way someone addresses themselves, others, and life comes from making the invisible suppression visible, and altering the relation the person has with it to one of clearly recognizing its capacity to disable. In this metaphor of a radiation source, it takes a Geiger counter and not eyes to see.

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We Begin by Going Backwards

In the arena of human development and evolution (transformations followed by development until the next transformation is called for), I find that there is first “backwards” to go. Otherwise, everything that will be said, new notions and new arenas of power, will be sucked back into what fits and is congruent with what didn’t go to the new places in the first place.

If we are going to dig into fulfillment, development and communication, the best place to start is with a hearty “not that” about each.

Fulfillment isn’t happiness, nor is it what people think they would be if they were. It actually takes a different kind of a self to be fulfilled– one that already is and is engaged in unfolding that fulfillment by going where fulfillment goes.

The idea of happy being a mood or a feeling is common sense. As we will see, I find “common sense” to be evil — to be suppressive and misleading. If you want to live at a level that isn’t common, well then, common sense is a bad bet. There is no need to manipulate mood or try to maintain a particular one in living from and toward fulfillment. Moods turn out to be trivial as regards fulfillment. Fulfillment has a different timing, a different self, and a different mode of steering one’s life than goal seeking, mood management, or calm seeking.

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What is Contegrity?

I thought a good place to start today might be to make explicit the background behind the term “Contegrity“. I made that term up in 1992 to point at something specific and unnamed. The “Con” part is from the Latin for “with”, and the “tegrity” part underlies “integrity”. So, “integrity with“.

Integrity with what? My intent was to coin a term for “deep integrity“, when someone operates not only with integrity regarding themselves (doing what fits, what is honorable, what honors the special gifts you have been given), but also integrity between themselves and others (that honors what others provide and have to give and what they require for fulfillment.) Continue reading

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Welcome to a Conversation regarding Fulfillment, Development, and Communication

However you’ve found this, welcome.

I intend to offer insights and methods over time that speak to “How to Fulfill a Human Life.” That is the area of work I have taken on over the last 50 years or so, with many thousands of people. And through leaders I have trained, the number of people reached is in the millions — across continents and cultures.

So, what might make this relevant to you? Continue reading

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