When we claim ownership over our strengths and develop them and create access to them, our weaknesses remain.

A weakness is a capacity for action and inaction that gets in our way toward fulfillment. As I suggested in “Appreciative Leadership“, many weaknesses are simply poorly timed strengths. Throwing things is skillful when it involves projectiles on fields; unskillful when it involves projectiles in meetings.

We may very well always retain the capacities to forget important things, make poor choices, and be tempted by things not good for us. If we find ourselves acting more skillfully today, it’s simply because we’ve developed and engaged the strengths for doing so.

This is liberating news indeed for those of us who have squandered years trying to better ourselves by getting rid of weaknesses. It is living by addition rather than subtraction.

This week here in Cleveland, people are talking about a child’s violence in a school of shining stars. A child self-described as isolated and marginalized, a state that always gives way to violence.

Schools need to redefine themselves. Away from places designed to remind children that they are problems to be fixed to places designed to remind children that they are gifts to be engaged.

The mistake is to think that violence has anything to do with security or the lack of security. It is a lack of engagement. When we understand engagement, safety will be remembered as a conversation of generations passed.

So a self-described homeless guy approaches me yesterday, tentative in his ask while I am obviously deep in laptop work cafe side. I immediately flash back to hearing John McKnight’s case for the exchange of gifts, including our stories, instead of the clientization of the so-called marginalized.

He’s slightly taken aback with full eye contact request for his name and story, which he unravels like threads off his worn coat. I thank him for his story and give him some money, which he returns full eye contact thanks, and as he turns to walk on, he turns back and with a taciturn pause, says in a most sincere tone, “You know, I really hate doing this, asking for money. What I really want is work.” The sidewalk turns into a brief brainstorm session, and he makes his way into the neighborhood.

Interesting what authentic engagement evokes.

One of the corollaries to the Law of Possibility, that “Everything in life happens the moment it becomes fully possible”, is the observation that people always do what they’re ready to do. If we do not do something, we are clearly not ready to do it. We can wield all kinds of compelling and entertaining excuses. We can lie to ourselves, saying that we’re ready but for some reason we didn’t do it.

But the reality is, we didn’t do it. And we didn’t because we weren’t ready. When we’re actually ready to do something, we do it. No stories, no excuses, no lies.

This applies equally to things we wish we hadn’t done, each of which we did for one reason: we were ready to do it. Nothing more complicated than that. To support our doing something next, we will do something next by getting ourselves ready to do it. So one of the more empowering questions: What can I do right now to get myself ready to do that?

As some of us might remember, music legend Janis Joplin was the cover story on the October 29th, 1970 issue of “Rolling Stone” magazine. A friend gifted me yesterday with a vintage original copy of that issue. It took me back to radical days of my youth when radical was the mantra of emerging consciousness of transformation.

The good news is that radical lives today. It has become just as important to pursue radical views. Radical comes from “root.” Reminders of our deep essence. Invitation to embrace our nature as one expression of the seamless and infinite field of energy that this universe is.

Radical is the transition from old conversations to new ones. It is leaving nests of old assumptions to dive deep into the space of liberation.

Inner listening (intuition) and outer listening become powerful together when there is dialogue between them. Without this dialogue, inner listening becomes inaccurate and outer listening becoming irrelevant.

We need to get over the idea that large scale, fast acts build community. A community is a network of relationships built on trust. Trust cannot happen on command, doesn’t follow timelines, and is not a function of capital investments. Built environments can design out physical isolation, but cannot build trust. Conversations and small acts build trust, and communities can only grow at the speed of the millions of small conversations and acts that result in a community of trust.

I’m starting to entertain the notion that life might work from a Law of Receptivity. It’s the idea that as we live from our joy body, we become more receptive to that which nourishes joy body. Our energy field becomes a receptive vortex of possibilities. The more receptivity we have, the more able we are to notice that which nourishes joy body - that we would clearly not notice from pain body.

The mountain is big,
but my heart is bigger.

Breakfast conversation today with two amazing women who are innovating in building and connecting intentional communities in Africa and here in the states. I’m helping them use social network science to do this work. We were talking about their experience of being outcasts as leaders in traditional religious communities when male hierarchies dominate.

It raises the question of when are we going to start realizing the legitimacy of women as leaders? When will be start to understand that authentic leadership is the fusion of divine feminine and divine masculine energies? When we become conscious about leadership, we will no longer make gender generalizations about leadership. On that day, women will be embraced for their creativity and men for their sensitivity. On that day, we will finally understand that leadership is a relationship, not a role.