Another piece of the leadership puzzle: Turn {on}

It’s not whether you are playing a big game or a small game,

it’s being IN the game that counts. 

This was my closing statement from a post on Women’s Leadership where I painted a perspective across a large landscape of human existence, naming territories, life courses and generational groups.  For this post I am asking:

• What is a way to blaze a trail across a wide and deep ocean-like playing field,
• What might be true as a general indicator of what the game is, and
• How do I know if I, as a woman, am playing this game.

To answer these questions, I returned to my root understanding of human nature.  Humans are complex and adaptive organisms.  We are continually responding to the life conditions in which we find ourselves by evolving toward more complexity and adapting our biological, psychological and social structures to fit these life conditions.

I tend to throw the concept of life conditions around like it’s common knowledge.  And to some extent it is, and to a much larger extent our life conditions are as complex (especially today) as humans are- making the idea of life conditions very difficult to get my hands around.  For this reason I am using a general statement to represent our life conditions so I can elude to their extensive complexity in a simple way.  It is expressed thusly; all humans, in one way or another, are under pressure to adapt to the rate of change experienced in one lifetime.  It appears, to those tracking such activity, we are on a trajectory of exponential change dynamics, potentially toward a singularity.  Now conceptually, few even understand exponential change.  Experientially, none of us know what to expect. One thing seems certain though, everything is on the table.  Everything – potentially- will change.

If that is in fact that case, it seems logical to me, the best adaptive response is to learn to change and to change in a way that compliments, the rate of change in our life conditions. Sometime, perhaps often, this means moving in the opposite direction of what we’ve known. The ebb and the flow. Synchronized to ebb when it’s time to ebb, flow when it’s time to flow.

To be sure, changing, managing and investing in our own personal change is a very big game.  The forces moving in the direction of maintaining a status quo (conventional ideas of right and wrong), of running away and hiding, and of stiffening up and aging are extremely strong.  They are as strong the forces pulling us to flow when it’s time to ebb, pulling us to ebb when it’s time to flow.

Yes, it’s messy.  And if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

Nevertheless, changing ourselves is the injunction. Or rather, letting ourselves be changed, using the powers we have in a co-creative relationship with these forces is, from my own experience, an excellent strategy.

Having spent most of the past 15 years studying and experimenting with ideas and illuminations sourced from aggregations of the world’s wisdom, I have learned quite a bit about my own process of personal change. As I look around me, watching others as the pressure to not only change but evolve mounts, there are three primary insights I highlight.

•  It’s possible to change ourselves by deepening and expanding our understanding of ourselves, of seeing who we are more clearly, and embarking on a path (one step after the another step) of oneness.  Of becoming one within myself – tapping into a natural essence of being creative, resourceful and whole (The Coaches Training Institute.)  This is a process of integration, of connecting my extremely fragmented self to more of itself.   What I notice is the more I get connected to myself, the more aware I am that I and another are one. My awareness creates a desire to be connected to others.  Then creativity and resources, often in the form of natural intelligences fill in me.  And it’s these natural intelligences working within me and within you which source an appropriate response to our life conditions. It’s actually quite simple. Not easy, and simple.

The best part is, connection begins and sustains itself through a very pleasurable practice. Turn {on}  A practice, I notice, also creates health and wealth – a prime source of vitality.

• The first and hardest shift is finding the come from place in which to make any change.  My most common reaction is to try to change something on the outside, to blame others or to try to get others do what I want them to do in accordance with the way I see the world. When I come from this reactive posture, I suffer more and it makes my conditions worse.  When I want another to do or be something, that is my clue, its actually mine to do.  The next common reaction is to cling, attach and feed off of others, I have been shocked at the levels in which our vampirism occurs!  It’s really an unhealthy manifestation, due in large part to the extensive fragmentation in our psyche, of a deep desire to connect.  The optimal come from place for me has me standing as self authored, self directed and autonomous.

I am excited to embrace a language and context for naming such a come from place.  It’s called Turned {on}. 

• In any given moment, in any given situation in which I find myself, I have everything I need, always. Usually not what I have wanted, and definitely what I have needed. It’s a long term game of generative practices and competencies.  Not a quick fix. Over time it has asked me to give up, to let go of everything I have, know or want, while it gives me all I desire to live a life..that is, well…worth living.

From a place of being turned {on} more of what life truly has to offer becomes available. 

So…out of these highlights, in the context of one woman’s (mine) and in service of any other woman who wants to play into their leadership, I am answering my three questions for myself with one word.  Prime.

I use the word Prime specifically as it is defined by Izack Adizes.  Dr. Adizes has charted a map of corporate life cycles that applies to the human life cycle as well.  He identifies two poles every one of our lives moves within, flexibility and control.   We all come into the world through the first pole, a point of mostly flexibility and exit the world typically in mostly stability.  Obviously, babies can put their feet behind their head, and can’t stand up.  And at the end of our life we have so much stability we get stiff.  The apex of the life curve is named as status quo. Once our way of living, our way of operating, our way of moving through the world drops into the status quo, it’s all down hill from there.  Prime is located before we reach the apex- living at the edge, a zone where there is enough stability in our flexibility to be highly functionally, yet does not become statue quo.

Busting the status quo is a big part of keeping ourselves flexible in accelerating change. Where retreating from or going over the edge happens quickly, often without awareness or intention.

Busting the status quo is a big piece of the leadership puzzle.

Good news!  Women who are busting the status quo know what it takes. One of those women I have all ready written about.  She has articulated a manifesto and created a circle of 25 ways for status quo busting women to turn {on}.   And I love it.

The first step in busting the status quo is switching from -off-  to {on}. It’s that simple. Not too mention, being turned off is part of the status quo.  Big time.

I have spent enough time in the past couple weeks with the small network of women leading One Taste, a company filled with women (and men) committed to the purpose of the female orgasm, who are busting the status quo of all the stories, baggage and misinformation around women’s sexuality, to tell you that being the company of turned {on} women is juicy, powerful and energizing.  Even for someone like me who self identifies as turned {on}- I experience a surge in the company of these woman.  So much so, it fueled a deep desire in me to be a source of and have as a constant force in my life juicy, powerful and energizing connections.

The creative power inside a turned {on} woman is contagious.  It spreads, it includes, it will not be contained.  It flexes and it flows, it expands and contracts, it travels in waves,  dances with the light and captives the dark. It’s the very movement of Prime; a movement initiating 25 ways to turn {on}.  One of them is to get behind another woman’s turn {on}  and that is exactly what I am doing. I am getting behind the women connected to the Turned {on} Woman’s movement.

I am explicitly integrating  25 ways into my life, so if you are reading this post now, consider the idea you have been touched.  If being turned {on} appeals to you, please to “touch” back. I am interest to know who you are.