photo credit: wadem

As I travel to work my clients or research a subject for my next book, I am increasingly convinced that these three aspirations have a lot to say about what people hunger for in organizations and communities. This seems particularly true as we head deeper into a brave new economic world in which many of our assumptions and plans are being dashed. What will breakthrough from this time of breakdown? It remains to be seen how and when the proverbial phoenixes will rise from the ashes that are unfolding around us. However, the ancient practice of using stories to help people frame adversity as part of a larger Narrative are helpful here as a means to retain a sense of faith, hope, and love.

I begin here with Faith. Hope and Love will follow . . .

Faith

While known for his sage insights on marketing, Seth Godin offered this distinction in his book, Tribes: “Religion is the way things have always been done, whereas faith is the underlying commitment to ‘the big idea.’” Religion is about resurrecting the old General Motors; faith is about the commitment to rethinking transportation, communities and lifestyles. My work is about helping clients find the ‘big idea’, the core ‘story” at the heart of their work—and finding new ways to bring it to life. As institutions and certainties wobble, faith is the commitment to the big ideas that truly matter.

Faith is the balancing force to the fear that has crept into many our consciousness (and into our checkbooks) to varying degrees. Faith is not the same as blind trust; it is the return to what is essential and what needs to be done. Faith is not about a naive idealism or a narrow fundamentalism; it is an opportunity to ask the hard questions and make the hard choices in service to the ‘big ideas.’ Faith enables us to build bridges from the ‘religions’ of the old world to a new world based on a deeper understanding and courageous embodiment of our commitments to the human story.

Narrative work and coaching are powerful tools to help people and organizations to create and cross these bridges. As I recently shared with the top leaders in a large professional services firm, “there is no ‘normal’ to which to return.” They can either settle for sifting through the ashes or they can get to work on building the phoenix. My role is to coach them to fully rise to this occasion. All they need is a little faith. . .

What would you be doing if you had more faith?

photo credit: freeparking

Thanks to Jo Carson for reminding me of Gregg Braden’s story about the true nature of intentions: While traveling with a Native American rainmaker in a drought-stricken part of the desert of the American Southwest, he witnessed the rainmaker at work. Once he was done, Gregg asked the man if he had prayed for rain. To which the man said “No.” When asked why, the main responded, “You pray for rain, you don’t get anything. You have to feel the rain, and smell it, see what it does for the land. You have to be the rain. You have to pray rain.

Where is my faith?

It seems like a timely story as we wrestle in the U.S.—and now globally—with significant economic challenges. Why, you might ask?! Because in some ways it is a crisis of faith. Not just faith in our money and our banks and our leaders, but ultimately  faith in ourselves. While many of us have seen this coming, it has been unnerving to say the least as it has spiraled down so quickly. We doubt ourselves and worry for our future. Many people have been left gasping on the cusp of a momentous election, wondering when the rain will come to quench the fires of our anxieties. Enter the story . . .

The “bail-out” merely postpones the inevitable hard choices in front of us regarding reconstructing our lives and our identity to be more sustainable and equitable. As the man said, if you pray for rain—by standing outside the system and hoping to be rescued—you get nothing. It is like clients who want their lives to be different but they don’t want to change.

What is mine to do?

One thing I am taking from this time is to look at my own willingness to pray rain. I can’t wish it all away. How do I need to change my habits, my attachments, my willingness to sacrifice for my daughter and those who will come after me in order to create a healthier life? It is a time for courage, compassion and imagination in seizing this moment instead of being seized by fear.

The old stories about consumption as salvation, celebrities as heroes, greed as virtue, and war as a solution have run dry. It is time we create and live new stories with our lives. It is time to be the rain! And so, I will add my drops to help bring about that new story. . .

photo credit: Serendigity

I was struck by the closing lines of a TIME magazine article yesterday, “[Obama's] story of a boy whose father came from Kenya and mother from Kansas takes place in an America not yet mythologized, a country that is struggling to be born—a multiracial country whose greatest cultural and economic strength is its diversity. It is a country where our children already live and that our parents will never really know. . . But that vision is not really sellable right now to a critical mass of Americans. They live in a place. . . where myths are more potent than getting past the dour realities they face each day.”

What are the myths we need now?

It seems to me that one of the greatest gifts of narrative coaches is their ability to help people re-mythologize their lives in keeping with what is being asked of them. Sometimes it is about relinquishing stories that no longer serve them . . . sometimes it is about shifting stories that no longer match their current realities . . . and sometimes it is about birthing new stories that provide a better path to the future they want to create.

It is tempting in this ‘Alice-in-Wonderland’-like time around the U.S. presidential elections for people to accept the frames that are spun, become seduced by packaged ‘myths’, and fall into the polarities that are evangelised as gospel. However, the deeper and truer mythic function is that of reminding us of the broader principles of human relations. These myths tend to harden as nostalgia when we lack sufficient ability to situate and know ourselves in changing times. It is no surprise that when people are in these places, many are swayed by those who tap into the latent potency of such fantasies. As they say, energy follows attention.

Finding a sense of place

The U.S. is on the cusp of a significant juncture in its young history. It seems to me that the optimal choices involve helping Americans step into a deeper and richer mythology about what it means (and looks like) to be a great nation. Doing so will enable us to gracefully and fruitfully change our stories about dreams and empires. Part of this process will require us to join together in remythologizing what we mean by ‘family’ and ‘home.’ The power of this quest was brought home to me in reading J. Edward Chamberlin’s book, ‘If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?’ when he writes, ‘This is the home we all long for, the Jerusalem are not to forget. It may be the place we came from, five or fifty of five hundred years ago, or the place we are going to when our time is done. It is the place we still haven’t found but are looking for. The place that gives us a sense of self, and of others.‘

Welcome home.