I have started this blog to share my personal and professional journey. Personally, I am learning what it means to be a husband, a friend, a male and a leader. Professionally, I am shifting from business consulting and executive coaching to authoring and training leaders on an intensely practical process to take their leadership and results to the next level.
As I take this journey, I'd like for you to be at my shoulder, telling me about your experience, sharing your perspective, challenging me on my perspectives and perhaps in so doing, take away something for your self.
I am on this journey for two overarching reasons. First, personally, what I see is a world where people--including me--have failed to accept personal responsibility for our role, our divine purpose, in life. Second, professionally, I see a world where the current form of leadership is no longer sufficient. It has outlived its purpose. And it has become destructive.
Why do I say this?
Look around you. Virtually every system around us is teetering on the edge of collapse. As I write the US financial system is near collapse. Pollution worsens daily. Water is becoming scarce. We are nearing the day that every day thereafter less oil can be extracted from the ground. Weather patterns are unpredictable. Religions are dying forms. Within 35 years there will be no more arctic ice cap. Everywhere you look, things are out of balance. And within 40 years, we will have another 6.5 billion people vying for the fewer available resources. India and China will surpass the US economically within he next 30 years. Russia has awakened.
The result? The earth is running a fever, and we are causing it. Nature is reaching a level of intolerance, a point at which to continue to support the imbalance is to support us in our ignorance. It cannot--perhaps will not--absorb much more imbalance. To me, it is time to confront the brutal facts--we either will proactively deal with this, or this will proactively deal with us.
And the problem isn't "out there." It isn't some group that did it. Individual actions of billions of people did it. And the individual actions of those same people can restore balance. As Voltaire said, "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible." Yet I am responsible. And you are responsible. And that is our only real hope. No one else can bail us out.
So that is where I am at. I am one person in 6.5 billion. I see a world in one whale of a difficult situation. I see the sum total of the individual actions of 6.5 billion people creating imbalance that is pushing the limit of nature, government and other systems to absorb it. I see leaders among those 6.5 billion people influencing the direction of the other 6.5 billion people. And if you judge leaders by their results, the results of the current form of leadership have us in a precarious situation that is summarily unsustainable. We know it. And we are sticking our head in the sand.
I am out to do something about that. Personally, it is about becoming impeccable myself. Professionally, it is about sharing what I've learned about where I think leadership is headed, providing a practical path to get there, and hopefully encouraging and supporting other leaders in proactively making the shift before it is too late, before it is forced. And both personally and professionally, I want to "see the unseen so I can do the impossible." And that involves learning to work with the forces of life, of nature, that I cannot see.
Tall order? Perhaps. But honestly, is there any other option but to do all that we can, individually; to start leading ourselves and others in the right direction; and to learn about balance from the only expert there is? That expert? Nature. Humans have a predilection towards evolution. Nature, towards balance.
I think it is time to form an alliance between those two dynamics. Evolution without balance is destruction. Balance without evolution is entropy. I want to live and lead in the way between the two. A way where I can become a means through which both can find a worthy vessel through which to work. I don't know that way. I am looking for it. I am committed to finding it. And I believe when I do it may be called love-in-action. (And I am not talking the touchy-feely-blissed-out luv.)
I believe that path between those two dynamics, the path that taps both in equal proportion, leads to a way of being--of awakening--that makes the words of Christ where He says 'all that I have done you can do and more' actually understandable. (John 14:12)
Given where we are, that is our best hope. We need a miracle. And that miracle is available to me, to you, through me, through you. That is my journey. That is why I am here. And that is why I am now a blogger. And I hold out incredible hope for humanity and for the planet. But hope without action is simply wishful thinking.
Act. It is up to me. It is up to you. And there is a lot riding on this.
Otis
P.S. Thank you, Brooke, for your trusted encouragement to get on with a blog before I actually understand what one is. :) Thank you, Sara, for helping me see with fresh eyes and for inspiring me to give my all to what I believe in. The fusion of both are reflected here, in this first post, and I cannot thank you enough.
