To be human is to be storied.We're always living out a story of one kind or another. And we mostly have no idea the extent to which we inherited the stories we're living from our culture and from our family.Our stories tell us who we are, and what's possible for us.Sometimes - often - the stories we're living are way out of date, or way too small for us. They fail to account for our lives. They hide possibilities to step forward and contribute. They mislead us. They're the stories others handed us, rather than those we could tell about ourselves.And here's the thing: whatever story you're used to living, there are almost certainly hundreds of other stories that could account for who you are and what you're up to more accurately and expansively. Stories that bring you to life. Stories that evoke courage and presence, kindness and discipline, compassion and wisdom.Can you tell what story you're living, and what size world it produces? Does it increase or reduce your suffering? The suffering of others? Does it have you hold back, or come forward with your most whole-hearted contribution?And are you willing to be a story-hunter, finding other ways of accounting for your life that would address these questions?
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That hollowness you feel.Are you sure that running from it - into work, busyness, emails, surfing the web, eating - is such a good idea?What you're experiencing is at the heart of the human condition. Not an error, but an understanding. An insight that there really is nothing to stand on.We're thrown, without our permission, into a world that is bigger, more complex, and more mysterious than we can understand. And we have to find a way to live, knowing that we know so little, and that everything is shifting all the time. That at any moment it call all be taken away from us.In that way hollowness is not a mistake, but is instead a sign of your deep sensing of the way of things. By fleeing from it again and again into shallow distractions, you're deepening your suffering. You're fleeing from life. And whole industries exist to help you to do this.Today, perhaps, it's time to turn fully, with courage and openness, into the hollow heart so it can give up its gifts.Let it become your home.Let it support you in standing, rather than fleeing, in the storms, uncertainty and huge possibility of a life that you did not ask for, but nevertheless have this one glorious opportunity to live.
The seventh post in a series exploring 
Blaming someone else or calling them names is simply a way of discharging feelings you don't want to experience: shame, resentment, anger, disgust, embarrassment, confusion.It's far more skilful, and more helpful to everyone, to be able to tell what you're feeling and then ask yourself:(1) what unmet need or unfulfilled longing is this feeling revealing to me?and(2) what's my own part in addressing it?Please, stop discharging by spraying accusations all over the place. And stop handing all the responsibility to someone else to sort it out for you.And, please, catch your urge to blame before it blossoms, and use its energy as an invitation to step in, for the sake of all of us.
The more I look, the more it seems to me that among the most personally damaging acts each of us can take is that of turning away from truth.I'm not talking grand universal truths here - the kind that people claim apply across time and space and across people. It's quite easy to see that establishing truth in this way is fraught with difficulty.No, I'm talking about something more basic and immediate: what's true about this moment, this experience, from the place in which you stand.If you pay attention, it's not so difficult to tell when you're turning away from truth in this way. The truth that you are sad, or joyful, or angry, or despondent, touched or numb, feeling whole or split apart. The truth that this is difficult or painful for you. Or the truth that this is bringing you to life.The truth that these thoughts you are thinking, whatever they are, are what you are thinking. The truth that what you're feeling in your body is what you're feeling. The truth that this place is where you are, and that what you are doing is what you are doing.When we deny these simple, basic truths to ourselves and others - when we speak of ourselves inwardly or publicly with deliberate inaccuracy - we assault our own integrity. And we cause ourselves tangible harm, in our minds and in our bodies, by putting ourselves at odds with ourselves, fuelling the inner battles that pull us apart.And then being whole again requires a kind of return, a turning back to the part of ourselves that understands how things really are. A turning back to something simple, and straightforward, the heart of which we've known all along.
"I once saw a cartoon," he told me. "It was about a huge tree, cut down, stripped of its leaves and branches, and then fed into a factory which whittles it down and down until, at the end, out pops a single toothpick.""And I am that toothpick" he said, with sadness. "Once, I had wide-ranging interests, a full and varied life, but I've allowed myself to become narrowed and withered by my single-minded pursuit of my career, and it's years since I've touched any of them. It's not how I intended to live."You can see some stills from the cartoon, produced in 1939 by Walter Lanz of roadrunner fame, 
A good friend told me a few days ago she'd noticed what a corrosive effect listening to the news at the start of each day was having on her. Because of course 'the news' is just somebody's interpretation of what is worth talking about. And the choices that draw in an audience, sell copy, and attract advertisers can quickly give us a distorted sense of the world because they leave so much out. The 'news' after all is not the world itself, but a predictably narrow slant on it. It may be worth listening to sometimes, but we harm ourselves and our sense of the world if we take it to be the whole story.Which I why I think 
The sixth post in a series exploring 
To those leaders in the corporate world who say you want your organisation to change, but then demand:a) to continue speaking and acting in exactly the way you're used to, andb) to avoid feeling discomfort, confusion, agitation, or anxietyHas it not become clear to you yet that the change you say you want isn't change of any kind at all?
Politeness.Highly rated in some circles. Especially if, like me, you live or grew up in England where it's the considered the stuff of civilised human interaction.And yet, the more I look, the more it seems that politeness and truth are very often at odds with one another, particularly when it comes to the ways we speak and work together in organisations.And while truth might at times be sharp, unsettling and surprising, I can't think of a more important principle around which to organise ourselves.Because it's not hard to figure out where the alternative - denial, or perhaps even lying - leads.