Over the past few weeks, we’ve been transitioning to a new phase of Treacy’s nation-building project. We’ve explored what this nation is founded on and we’ve agreed on how Treacy would like to lead and contribute. Now we’re placing my giant hat on her head. She’s using us as guinea pigs as she experiments with creating her flagship product. Simultaneously, we’re using the epiphanies she’s having to begin the design process and develop how we’re going to reach the people she wants to serve.
Last week, Treacy brought us all together to talk about her vision for relationships and what she believes needs to happen to change them. It’s a big task, and one of the major challenges is…can we do this? Can we actually change the way people relate to each other? Can we even change how we ourselves relate to the people in our families and our lives? That’s what we’re here to find out.
One of the main tools Treacy is experimenting with for creating this type of change is the concept of a Record of Right (which just happens to be the opposite of a Record of Wrong). It’s that internal dialogue we have with ourselves about the way things are, the way things have been, and the way things will be. That dialogue is especially loud when we’re talking about relationships.
Immediately, the objection I have (and one of my big jobs in all of this is to run my strategic bus-brain over all of our ideas) is that this sounds like so-much positive thinking. Think about the good things, not the bad. Choose to be happy. Choose how you want your relationships to be. But that’s not what this is.
As I’m learning in a study I’m doing on money, there is a rule at work here. What you appreciate appreciates. If you appreciate (focus on) the desirable pieces that are already there, however small they may be at the moment, then those pieces will grow bigger and more desirable. If you focus on what you perceive is lacking, then that lack will grow in proportion to your focus.
In other words, if I focus on the way my husband connects with my son, then that connection is going to grow stronger. If I focus on the way he doesn’t take out the trash when I want him to, then his inattention to my trash-removal needs will tend toward getting worse rather than better.
The trick is, we need a complete reframing of all of this. We don’t need another person telling us to look on the bright side. We need to believe that change is possible, and that we have the tools we need to make that change. If not directly in other people, then in ourselves. And through changing ourselves, we change the world around us.
Things I’m reminding myself as we move forward: don’t compromise on the beliefs that this is rooted in. You’ve already decided that this is the change you want to see happen. If it seems huge, then great. If it seems like the problem is as old as Methuselah, fantastic. Just because the problem is big doesn’t mean that it is unworthy or unsolvable. Just because the current solutions in the world feel trite and weak doesn’t mean that the solutions you discover will be trite and weak. Trust this process. Trust your own experience and intuition and the experience and intuition of the people who have committed their hearts, hands, and brains to this. It will be worth it.
“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.” – C.S. Lewis
