Constituting Yourself as a Locus for the Extraordinary and Magical | Part II
This is Part II of the proposal of what is involved and required to constitute yourself as a Locus for The Extraordinary.
You can read Part I here.
After several years of inquiry, exploration, and on-the-court experimentation with many founders, leaders and teams, I propose the following are some of the fundamental distinctions that one would practice consistently and diligently over time so as to constitute themselves as a clearing that allows for and even attracts extraordinary possibilities, opportunities, and outcomes:
Speaking As A Creative Act
I believe you’ll discover for yourself when you look, that your primary use of language is to describe the world, and then we human beings debate about who’s got the right description. This robs us of the incredible, astonishing power to create possibilities. Practice utilizing your speaking (i.e. your language) as an opportunity to speak and create futures into existence. You can read about this in more depth in an earlier blog post: How Your Relationship to the Future Profoundly Impacts Your Work and the Fulfillment of Your Intentions & Goals.
Declaration of Purpose
Without extraordinary commitment and diligence, our ambitions, goals, plans, and actions, will largely be pre-determined or limited by the already existing Forcefield of Business.
What is necessary to constitute yourself as a locus for The Extraordinary is to author, articulate, and craft your own Declaration of Purpose. Said declaration will connect you to something much bigger and more meaningful than making it, surviving, and being successful in The Forcefield. This will allow you to get your attention off of yourself, it pulls for the transcendence of your ego, it calls you to be of service, connects you with reciprocity and flow (giving and receiving), and can create a pathway for alignment with your divine source.
Mastering Moods
I think many of us relate to moods somewhat superficially. However, if you consider we are always in a mood and our moods are made up of our thoughts, body sensations, emotions, and our view of the future, then one begins to realize getting committed to doing the introspection, slowing down, and elevating your self-awareness so as to be a “master mood shifter” is fundamental to being a locus for The Extraordinary.
As practically all of us, as committed professionals and business people, have developed the ability to persist on top of negative moods, in the long run that’s a losing strategy. Moreover, few things are more disempowering to operating as a high-performing team than someone(s) on the team refusing to be responsible for their own negative moods. There are moods that are conducive to productivity, creativity, connection, and possibility, and there are moods that aren’t. I have found in my own self-inquiry and in the privilege of engaging with thousands of others regarding negative moods they sometimes get stuck in (Moods of resignation, despair, panic, or distrust) that what’s at the source of these persistent, stuck, moods are unresolved events or issues from our past.
Cultivating and Creating Authentic Trust In My Work and Life
I propose if you and I are going to create and build something meaningful and even extraordinary, it’s going to require partnership with others. It will require the kind of partnership with others that is conducive to real collaboration, support, honest feedback, encouragement, and the like. This all requires trust. My own epiphany in this arena began when I realized I had dedicated incredible amounts of effort and time over years to develop myself as someone who is trustworthy and I had put almost no time into developing myself as someone who could be trusting. I, like most people, was living and working from a view where people needed to earn trust before I would give trust. That left me with a lot of distrust and not much trust. And it’s led to very counterintuitive yet transformational discoveries regarding becoming someone who can cultivate, build, and engender authentic trust, especially in the face of incidents that produced distrust. (See earlier blog post on Authentic Trust here.)
Discovering Profound Gratitude
I spent several months in the inquiry of why we are awash in “gratitude practices.” Journals, the beginning of yoga class when the instructor asks you who you’re grateful for, and on and on. In the middle of this inquiry, I had a download from the universe one night, where I saw the face of the E.R. doctor who quite literally saved my life when I was 23 years old. I won’t go into the details of the illness— what was most relevant and potent in the dream was the realization that I’d never thanked him.
This realization answered my question of why we are so busy practicing gratitude is because we’re not… we’re not grateful. We’re fundamentally not living from a place of gratitude. This then led into another several month inquiry of who else has saved my life, and in this case it wasn’t necessarily biologically like the E.R. doctor did, but more they reached into my life and pulled me out of the sewage or reached into my soul and kept my heart beating. This inquiry was overwhelming in a sense: I found myself living in the presence of profound gratitude. I realized that I owed ost of my life to others. The noted Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman wrote very eloquently and powerfully about how one of human beings’ fundamental biases is we take credit for many things that were actually luck.
The extraordinary or the magical is not earned, or deserved or proven because you’re worthy. It’s a gift. And it’s a gift that’s most likely to fall into the lap of someone who is living in the presence of profound gratitude.
Being Connected and Sourced by Community
I find many of us are part of or involved with organizations or groups that are what I’ve termed a Network of Convenience. Distinct from this kind of transactional and obligatory community is one that is enormously impactful and empowering— what I’ve termed a Network of Contribution. These are few and far between because it takes real intention, investment of energy and time, and commitment to build and be a part of a Network of Contribution.
The five elements that comprise a Network of Contribution are:
Ego-transcendence
Mentorship / Guideship
Meaningful Purpose
Soul-Initiation
Real Camaraderie and Friendship
This doesn’t mean if you’re part of a group that’s missing all of these or four of these (i.e. my fantasy football league, a mastermind, project teams at work, book club, etc.) that you need to get out of them. However, I am proposing unless you invest the time, energy, and effort to be part of and to empower and build a sourceful community, A.K.A. A Network of Contribution, you will find that you’re spending large amounts of time with people engaging in conversations that will not create you as a clearing for the magical.
I’d love to hear any thoughts, introspections, or proposals you have as you ponder or look at:
What does it mean to be a Locus for the Extraordinary?