#164: My Two CFC Goals + Coach Mayer
I have an annual practice of setting annual goals at the beginning of each new year and have come to learn over the years that I am much happier and more motivated when I can somehow see that I am making progress towards these goals. I imagine this is a pretty human thing. But this is much easier to do when my goals are, say, work towards a running PR or read more books, than goals such as ‘don’t immediately assume the worst in people.’ The two goals for the CFC below probably fall more into the second category, but I would argue that we have already seen great progress towards reaching them and I know we will continue to in 2020 – in little ways at gatherings and over virtual communications, it is pretty easy to see, as Kelly says ‘a glimpse at what is possible.’ Thank you, Pip, for all your thinking you have put into this – 2020 is going to be a great year for the CFC.
- Lauren
"MY TWO CFC GOALS + COACH MAYER"
I have two goals this next twelve months for the Community for Change.
I want to share them because I sense if I share them, the odds of them happening may go way up.
But before that…I spoke with my high school basketball coach, Joe Mayer, yesterday.
Why would anyone still stay connected to their high school basketball coach decades after high school ended?
Kelly helped me figure it out a bit this morning.
By the framework I now have for what being a student is, I was a terrible, uninspired student in high school. I manipulated the system to get good grades and successfully dodged academic challenge. I was not a student. My history teacher said I had the worst case of “senioritis” he had ever witnessed. I viewed this as an incredible compliment.
I went to what was considered a great public high school.
But inside those three years, only one person was able to simultaneously inspire me (that is, break through my deep resistance and defenses) and provide a mini “pure land” for excellence. I have thought of “pure lands” as spaces where certain attributes are far more resident in part because many other attributes are far less present. Behind my many fears, I so so so wanted to pursue excellence. Coach Mayer provided that space. Kelly suggested that he provided me a glimpse of what was possible at every moment as well as a specific place to experience and practice being in pursuit of excellence.
Now… not unrelated…
I have two goals for December 2020 for the Community for Change.
#1 5X INTERACTION INCREASE: I would like for the indirect -- informal -- interactions among the people in this community to go up 5X inside twelve months. I think this “endpoint” interaction is where the greatest magic happens. I think this 5X increase is fully possible because of the rich interlaced work of trust we have been all creating as well as a comprehension for how we interact with one another. The timing is perfect. Plenty of engineered serendipity we can generate!
#2 ESCAPING DEPENDENCY: By the end of 2020, I would like the Community for Change to be growingly more powerful and no longer need any energy input from me. None required. Will I likely still love offering energy and participating fully? I strongly suspect so!!! Like, why not?
But why?
Not so much “why” these two goals…but WHY the Community for Change at all???
At the end of a CFC gathering last August, a dear friend Laura Hickman suggested strongly that we all really need these spaces more often in our lives!!!
Maybe what we all have been collectively doing is creating a “mini-mini-pure land” that can be more student-minded, more trusting, less defending, more caring and compassionate.
A space where we are able to come from a space of contributing more than “getting” and where we have others rooting for us to wildly succeed. Where we enjoy amazing energy of a true community, not the drain of “professional networks.”
Where we can be curious and “not know” and be honored for that mindset. A place where we can be wrong. A space we listen so well to others just because…
A space where we don’t fear strangers, but rather, we recognize that absolutely every single relationship in our lives that has mattered to us started as “stranger.”
A space where we suspend any transactional expectations around giving and receiving. A space where we operate a bit more in gear with collective compassion.
And maybe if we each can add to the creation of such a “mini-mini-pure land” and experience even a dollop of such now and again, we will, to borrow again from Kelly, get a glimpse of what is always possible, experience and recognize the space and other spaces like it, and be able to port the whole of it more and more as we might wish wherever we might travel.
Coach Mayer’s Favorite Quote
Coach Mayer offered a new quote at the top of our practice plan each day. Yesterday I asked if he had a favorite among all of them. The one that came to his mind first:
“If you don’t have time to do it right, will you have time to do it over?”