The Fight

Transformation is not fixing oneself or changing habits, rather it is the discovery of the whole in the vast realization of truth in oneself. These occur during rare times and they alter our very essence of being and how we see the world. It is more than just a change. Our relationships transform with and without others at the same time. Our responses and actions are altered from what we have become accustomed. Yet at the same time we are transforming, we are visibly rising above the watershed. Our conscious is anew. Those around us can have their own transformations along with us but the struggles are uniquely our own. Time is irrelevant to transformation and our growth cannot be reversed. The community that forms comes from the capacity to learn and be together. The capacity to live congruently exists in this truth.

The creative process of any person is not limited to what or how they communicate; rather it is about the space that is left open for transformation to occur. Transformation is the canvas that allows us to all to be somewhat of an artist.

People find each other along the journey. Transformation doesn’t ask why.

Jim Traficant – America’s Last Outlaw

In 1993 Johnny Cash met a young producer who knew if he had the chance he could renew the purpose of country music’s greatest outlaw. It was seven years after Johnny lost his record contract. Johnny was playing small empty clubs. He treated these shows with the same energy and reverence that he had during the height of his career. The young producer knew if he brought Johnny ideas that he would adapt the music and record it his way. The limits would be pushed by the methods used to communicate Johnny’s voice and art. This was an experiment founded in a belief in the man and gut feeling that the audience still needed his passion. Some of the experiments failed, but many succeeded. From 1993-2002 Johnny Cash communicated his pain. His audience needed the man, the voice, and the legacy.

Jim Traficant shares the same fate. The opportunity exists for Jim’s voice and passion to be shared to an audience starving for direction. But like Johnny, he needs people who believe in him and to coach him in the new media. People he can trust to help him communicate his passions.

Jim is unique and extreme. He is a true outlaw who is without a peer, still capable of delivering a relevant message. He may be lost politically but it is not his low moment. Jim shares a powerful connection with those who remember him but his legacy will be written by those who have yet to be exposed to his words. They don’t know it but they share Jim’s feelings and are comfortable with his faults. Like Jim, they can’t be changed only transformed.

Jim is a mythological man defined not by actions or by words, but by pain and human flaws. Passion consumes him; the quest for honesty in government transformed him. He’s always let the political fads pass him. He trusted his gut. It wasn’t personal vendetta against anyone; rather it was a fight against a system that allowed the corruption. In response to confronting it, the system strung him up and let him go. But outlaws don’t die; their passion is renewed in the promise of cause.

It is that outlaw side of Jim that first attracted America to Jim. It is that same outlaw that will help define his legacy.

The current movement of political outlaws lacks personal involvement. Jim may not be called to lead this movement but he is the godfather. The goal is to give Jim the tools to communicate his passion and views.

To do this will not require Jim to change; it will only ask him share his journey by reframing the methods used. It will cement his legacy by pushing the limits of the story that can be told. This experiment will be done by Jim alone. It will require barriers to be broken down, new political habits to grow, and coaching Jim to embrace doing something new.

This must start with Jim. The space Jim will fill is the void left in the wake of a country defined by color, race, and gender. It will require Jim to tap into the same energy he’s always had just using a different outlet.

America took his freedom but not his ability to live congruently.

Jim we need you.

A Simple Lesson in Being

For the last three months Jason and I have kicked around the idea of writing a blog.  Our mission and focus have changed along with regular life friction.  Initially, we looked too far ahead and considered legal implications of blogging. What if we write something benign that’s viewed as libel?  What if we succeed and the posts become a book?  Who gets what profits?  Who is responsible for expenses?  Do we need an LLC?  Should we blog or spend money creating a full blown website?  We tried to control the uncontrollable.  And what was lost? The actual writing and community building we use for fuel when our lives get too confusing.

We reevaluated our goals and learned a cheap yet extremely valuable lesson.  The funny thing is this: our friend (and wonderful illustrator / techie) George Coghill emphatically told us weeks ago to write and write and write and worry about the rest later.  We didn’t listen.  Our lives were full of too much noise.  I was trying to teach 5 freshman composition classes at two colleges, train for a marathon relay, satisfy my need for social interaction, write for the blog, look for a new apartment and job, and decide if I should move ten minutes away to Cleveland’s Cedar Fairmount district, forty minutes to Kent, 8 hours west to Chicago, south to New Orleans, or across the country to San Francisco.

I couldn’t be my best self and say what I knew to be true.  One by one the noise started to fade away.  My classes started to slow into a natural cadence; I exceeded my expectations at the marathon relay and took a few weeks off from training; I continued a heavy social schedule, understanding my own pattern of retreat once the October chill arrives; the apartment search ended, for now, and I focused on making professional connections based on Jason’s advice.  We quit pricing server space and worrying we were incapable of maintaining the website we envisioned.  It was clear we couldn’t do it.

We dropped the reins and could finally see how we worked best.  Jason’s training in Myers-Briggs gave him the ability to identify, based on my profile, I was trying to answer too many questions at once.  I’d forgotten to live.  This is an all too common case for me.  LIke a brother, he caught me before I fell into inertia and pushed me to take the trip to Detroit I’d started to rationalize wasn’t a real priority.  We got back to basics with a simple plan.  He’d send me brief sections of his graduate work to proof–I’d then take key ideas, add descriptive examples, reorganize the argument a little, clean up the language and post to the blog without his editorial OK.  I’d begin with his sketches and finish the painting.

We started to trust each other and understand independence works.  We didn’t need to be in the same room writing, that conversation alone cost us weeks too.  I didn’t need to clear every word with him before posting.  I didn’t need to worry about taking his triggers the wrong way.  Our friendship has proven the most challenging and random of my life.  I’m sure he has changed the course of my life because his rhetoric is not rhetoric.  He lives it, which is why I imagine he won’t be pissed only one sentence of his appears in this post.  I’ve got plans for the rest, and he knows I’ll use it all.  Space and silence have helped us use cut down redundancy and get cracking–and joke about being the Lennon / McCartney of blogging, a duo that feeds off one upping each other and competing.

Weeks ago Jason said a funny thing to me.  He said since we didn’t talk for over 10 years he could trust me.  I didn’t really get it until he sent me this yesterday:

Without the openness created by the silence of space we risk missing opportunities that surround us.  We have less ability to to have foresight, become more focused on tasks rather than people, and ultimately become victims of our past.

I can tell Jason lives by an optimistic credo–he thinks as Rilke suggests in “Archaic Torso of Apollo” that “you must change your life” by acting in the now.  But the problem with words is they have no relation to action, to the hard work it takes to live congruently with our wants and needs.

Anxieties are often repeated louder than inspiration.  Or worse, inspiration becomes a crutch, a hedge against taking risk.  We all know the people who, as Matthew 6:1 states “[practice their] righteousness before men to be noticed by them” (New American Bible) or “put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting” (Matthew 6:16).  I don’t know how to reconcile my own fear and anxiety with the wonderful light poetry, music, literature, and friends give me.  I know, for me, nothing lights the little lamp inside my soul more than accepting the mysteries I’ll never solve, by looking all around for the answers.

So I write this today and hope someone reads.  I hope it motivates you to act on your dreams, to continue the conversation with someone you trust, to swipe the gloom from your face and remember “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear your whole body will be full of light” (Matthew 6:22) and use your body to noticeably blaze.

Transformation: Today

Transformation has always meant the open development of heart, mind, and soul. I’ll always believe this can occur in any capacity at any time.   As the mind supports the heart, the soul supports the mind and so on. Transformational leadership can be the most powerful skill any of us can possess.  Yet most of us do not contribute.  A leader is always present and aware.  The marriage of awareness and action is the main distinction between one whose energy transforms others, who performs the impossible: to instill passion and motivate a group to achieve.

By no means is this easy. It can only be achieved in being true to yourself, listening to that inner voice, and using the talents you’ve been given.  I’ve got my own train to run; you have yours; my employer has theirs.  We can be at cross purposes and a collective by doing one simple task: not accepting cynicism.  For example, I am passionate about the transformation of the human soul–and baseball.  My job is to help employees find synergy between their true self and their talents.  In the evening I enjoy watching a sport that is not resistant to change, characters, and independence.  I’ve always been baffled at the “baseball man”–the grizzled executive who can intuit a player’s greatness, who has disdain for advanced statistics, and technology.  The best in baseball use their given talent to act congruently.  Torii Hunter is a character of irreversible momentum.  I became a winner watching him round the bases after crushing a Jon Lester fastball into the left-field rock wall.  The smile on his face; the enjoyment he obviously had in helping his team; a creative boy playing a man’s game.  Sure, he did not literally strike out Kevin Youkillis and David Ortiz and prevent the Red Sox from scoring, but his lively attitude certainly didn’t hurt the Angels cause.  An old school baseball man may scoff at Torii Hunter, god forbid, enjoying the game, and latently helping his teammates perform their best.  In life, like baseball, when the chips are down and the situation looks worthless, humor and trust will defeat old thinking.  Employees must delight in the process of performing their work so they can win, be empathetic to others, ask open ended questions, and actively listen.

We are really good at smelling insincerity, though.  In almost every workplace I’ve seen cynicism.  It’s a common human emotion, one we all need to own.  In A Hidden Wholeness Palmer discusses the ability to ask open questions, be present not in a response to one’s own desire or curiosity but a desire to support the inner journey (Palmer, 2004, p. 137). Say that aloud, “be present not in a response…but a desire to support the inner journey.” Now say the last six words, “desire to support the inner journey.” One of the most important lessons of being transformational in your life is the “desire to support the inner journey”.  The contradictions are obvious.  In any workplace how can a company support numerous inner journeys and still maintain core competencies?

Leaders who adapt traits as a way to promote others and themselves often fail. The failure of teams and often pick on a leader who is divided in thoughts and actions.  I’ve been just as guilty of non-action, merely reading books and taking courses that encourage active listening. Trying to infuse that into leadership in the hopes it would transform the organization. In my earlier days I often wondered why these methods seemed to work in books but not in practice.  I soon discovered that it was not the content, or the message, rather it was the person who delivered the message, namely me.  I was at odds with my own style, my own truths, and my own self that others just didn’t believe or were inspired.

It is still a struggle. We all need to admit that. Only true cowards will tell you it is not. So, part of my space here and my story is to share my struggles and strengths.  We will do this together. It will be important to ask questions, show examples of transformation around us, and finally to support the inner journey.

Baseball teams start the year with warm wet dew on the shoes. They prepare in the heart of swamp land in spring, the suffocating heat of the desert.  They train all year long just to feel that same dew in cold, raw fall classic. It requires the ability to struggle through ups and downs, streaks and boos. It requires the ability to be human. This is transformational leadership. It is the ability to live in the moment, to learn, to share, and to live. It is the ability to treat every opportunity, every set back, as a new morning.  Win or lose, a ballplayer has to hit the reset button every morning.  He must understand past success (or failure) is not predictive of today’s outcome.  The outcome is his own.  Transformation cannot work in a vacuum.  It’s possibility is your own, my own, ours–through our failures, successes, and metaphors.

Making Yourself Employable–and Whole

Transformation is not fixing oneself or changing habits, rather it is the discovery of truth. The discovery of the congruent self. The whole person is realized during rare, unfortunate times: break-ups, firings, death of loved ones, packing a home.  These moments alter our very essence.

We now live in a context where a person must be able to foresee transformations, accept their inevitability, and by extension live his / her own truth. The important question to ask yourself is this: what are the personal and professional consequences of choosing not to adapt?  The question is not an comfortable nor easy one.  The simplest answer is a refusal to adapt may leave you unemployed.  A blanket answer for all is unrealistic, but the larger issue is this: are you self-assured and forward thinking enough to accept control over your own life, outside a corporation?

You communicate who are by how you tell your story.  This site is designed as a network for all–the novice, the professional, the CFO, the code writer, the musician– looking to maintain professional and personal happiness by helping others answer the question: What do I want from my career?

The job market is ultra-competitive, and the prospect of any one employee becoming suddenly unemployed is palpable.  Instead of succumbing to competition, the employed and unemployed must be willing to match preference with action.  The place to start is to begin a conversation here and ask:–what do I want from my career? What is my story?  What do I want my story to be?

Today ; Now?

Jason and I will be writing profiles of independent success stories–and writing about our own personal and professional dramas–in a context more analytical than a tweet or FB update.  Think Marc Freedman’s Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life but written for all trying to outrun the real-time economy.

Mission Statement

Mission Statement: Collective Congruent is a blog for young, creative professionals looking to proactively reach a sustainable independence–but are unsure of where to begin.

This site is a conduit to personal success, a place for individuals to express their veracity for art, technology, and congruent living by furiously accepting risk, opportunity, and creativity as life-bread, not fear.

Universities trains us to apply skills under the framework of a larger corporation, not to live congruently.  We believe you were born to use your strengths to be creative, successful, and fulfilled.

Understand there are others like you, that have rejected convention and guilt regardless of the source.  You can self-discover latent applications for your training, improve your visceral feelings of the enjoyable world and transfer it to all your relationships.

This site attempts to change you–to challenge your conventions.

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