Constituting Yourself as a Locus for the Extraordinary and Magical | Part I
I propose we all inherited a world, or a conversational domain, that I have termed the “labor tradition,” i.e. a tradition where success is a function of hard work, determination, persistence, mimicking and copying what others have done before that made them successful, staying in a positive mindset, etc. In addition to this cultural tradition, we have our own family tradition and personal experience that contributes to this. If you are at all like me, you inherited the reality that hard work is the answer, “you get out of it what you put into it,” “results are a function of effort,” and “life is a do-it-yourself project” — where work ethic was everything. (Note: the long dash is by choice, this was not ChatGPT 🙂.)
While there are aspects and dimensions of the labor tradition and my family tradition of “hard work is the answer” that are effective and useful, however, living in the understanding that this is the only way that it is can result in a sharply limited set of available possibilities and opportunities for yourself and your business. I found living and working inside of the world, “hard work and determination is the answer,” left me limited to a linear and cause-and-effect way of thinking, leading, and planning.
I also found a lot of what’s been written and proposed claiming to be based in the Law of Attraction was either not demonstrated or tested in reality with real companies and real teams, or boiled down to a reliance on habitual optimism or positivity as a coping strategy (i.e. hoping), or lacked sufficient thinking to distinguish how to translate the possibility represented in the Law of Attraction to on-the-court, real world business and market challenges.
However, from my own experience working in transformational methodologies, I discovered that there was something significantly more possible than the limits of working and living from the labor tradition. As a result, I’ve been fascinated for a long time by what it would mean to create one’s self and one’s team or company as a place in which surprising, unpredictable, extraordinary results happened more often than not.
(The privilege and opportunity to work with hundreds of founders and business owners in The Autonomy Course and in BluPrint Workshops has been the laboratory in which the clarification and articulation of creating oneself as a Locus for The Extraordinary has happened. I have been consistently, deeply inspired and moved by the heart, courage, and intellectual engagement of these people as they’ve been on their own entrepreneurial journeys in building incredible companies.)
What follows is a proposal on how you and I can constitute ourselves as a place/location in which extraordinary results can happen on a regular basis for ourselves, and the people around us.
Constituting Yourself as a Clearing and a Locus for the Extraordinary (AKA Being a Clearing For the Magical, AKA Serendipitous Living and Working)
Definition of locus: a particular point, position or place.
Definition of magical: outside of the ordinary.
Definition of serendipity: the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable things not sought for.
Definition of extraordinary: very unusual or remarkable. Unusually great.
Note: We are using “clearing” in the meaning in which the philosopher Martin Heidegger first used it, which is: a space of openness where things can appear and reveal themselves.
For us, this locus or clearing is not fixed but is actively created by intention and reveals and illuminates new ways of being, new ways of thinking, and new possibilities.
Probably the most difficult dimension for me to wrap my brain around was the understanding that The Extraordinary isn’t linear. Ordinary, however, is linear. The Extraordinary a.k.a. The Magical, forces us to re-understand our view of reality. This is often why we resist, avoid, or even deny the possibility of The Extraordinary.
Being a Locus for The Extraordinary, AKA The Magical, is not the same at all as practicing “magical” thinking. This is the kind of thinking where we attempt to hope our way forward or attempt to manifest without action, or rely on a kind of habitual optimism as a way to avoid reality or compensate for our fear of uncertainty.
In our idea and proposal of how to constitute yourself as a Locus for The Extraordinary, it involves and provides a roadmap full of action required. To quote Mother Teresa, “Prayer without action is no prayer at all.”
Moreover, constituting yourself as a Clearing in which The Extraordinary happens with greater frequency will require that you interrupt your own cause-and-effect thinking system, which includes beliefs such as: “1+1 always and only ever equals 2,” “My logic and the way I see things is the truth because I’m logical,” “Effort in = output.” Sometimes we need 1+1 to equal banana! Sometimes I need to be able to meet with my team and have a persistent, stagnant situation show up as an incredible company-altering possibility.
I invite you to take a moment and slow down, pause, and reflect on the following two questions:
Where do you find yourself relying on “magical” thinking?
Where do you find yourself limiting yourself by linear and cause-and-effect thinking?
In our next blog post, we will outline what we propose are the fundamental distinctions to practice and master so as to reliably be a place, be a locus in which The Extraordinary can and does happen.