Masterminding – A Short Session – More on Context

Three of us met yesterday – as the holiday travel winnowed our group.  I’ve written elsewhere on its impact and I see I’m not complete with the topic.

The coaching given to me was essentially this:  Please be clear on what you’re up to; I hear your requests for coaching, but I’m not sure how to listen to you.  What are you up to?

Very provocative – “I don’t know how to listen to you”  I don’t think we think of that very often – that how we speak conditions how we’re heard.  So how can I speak in a way that creates the way I want to be heard?  This is particularly pertinent because I think my main issue is mastering the three kinds of attention:  getting attention, keeping it, having people act on it.  And I see that what comes first is communicating so that you’ll hear the way I want you to hear.

So before I say that, I need to create the context for my words.  Okay, I’ve told you my context, the ‘why’ I speak, the ‘background conversation.’  Is that enough?  Yes, it is – but will you remember it tomorrow?  How about tomorrow’s new listeners?  Do I have to continue to create context?  Yes!!

So – one of my initial projects for 2008 is to reinvent my signature line.  Here’s how I want to be listened to:  What I’m about is having a world of spiritual fulfillment, social justice in a sustainable environment.  And what I do is support people to achieve these things in their own lives and the lives of their communities.  So I ask you – how would you invent a signature that speaks that?

I Confess

I confess.  I gave up on politics.  It’s been happening for years – I was ‘normal’ – I voted for who I wanted to win, not who I believed in.  Year by year my cynicism grew… and when I saw The Secret and started to explore The Law of Attraction, I decided I was better off by not being so disappointed, so against.

But today I spent time with The Future of Politics— Annie Loyd (www.annieloyd.com)… Google for transpartisnship – as opposed to bipartisanship.  Like me, you are for the possibility of America.  We used to be the hope of the world, the symbol of what we all want – a fair chance, the ability to strive for equality, for a decent shot at creating our own future, for “The American Dream.”  I know you want that; we all do. 

And over the years I, at least, have given up on it.  I work for a sustainable future.  I work for social justice.  I work for spiritual fulfillment.  But it’s against a background of political cynicism and resignation.  I’m sorry.  I have been disloyal to myself — And politics is very much fundamental to all of this.

Annie has changed that for me.  She strives for a political future that goes past: “we can only hope for that if we make the other side wrong, defeated, losers.”  Annie says, “not so.”  Both ‘sides’ want the same things… And there are answers to our problems.  (I note that this is consistent with the Law of Attraction.) 

She speaks of Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest–– that more and more people feel like me about electoral poplitics, that there are many, many disconnected movements to the future we want…  And that we can bring this to the political scene.  There really are independents.  We want solutions not enemies.

Find out.  You owe it to yourself.  You owe it to our future.  Annie Loyd for Congress; the new transpartisanship.