The capacity for real change is an art.  The extent to which we are conscious of our worth, our essence, and our skills is the extent to which we have power to change.  Real change asks much of us.  It requires willingness to “journey.”  “Who we are,” our personal level of authenticity, is integral to this process.  Recognition and awareness of this steadies us beyond our intellectual thinking, as we negotiate our way through individual & organizational life events, positive and negative, happy and devastating.

Our transitions unleash new breath.  Sometimes, we seek out these opportunities.  Sometimes, they appear before us, unwelcomed and disturbing.  Either way, “who we are” influences the outcomes we envision and the results we get.  What we imagine and how we feel leads to potential passage.  These “passages” build capacity for solution.  They develop “heart” for staying with the journey, however difficult, because discovering one’s unique exceptional way and how it can be employed is the only kind of change worth pursuing.  Accepting less than this depth of internal work and investigation is an acceptance of less than real success.

Both individuals and organizations possess internal environments.  Success lies in learning how to allow these to unfold.  When this “inside” emerges, we “live” our highest potential, with passion and purpose, at work and at play.  Then, and only then, does an individual realize health, peace of mind, performance.  Only then can an organization experience true creativity, productivity, and growth.  They are interdependent.  They generate success.

To support this approach to change, we must explore questions and feel what it’s like to generate solutions from within, and really “own” development and progress in all aspects of our lives.  We must recognize high performance as the sum total of many intangibles: building a relationship with the unknown, the ability to innovate, to respond versus react, to sustain steady growth, and to evolve to clarity with a willingness to journey through confusion.  We must consider the true meaning of high performance and why its cornerstones are new definitions of confidence, trust, and commitment:

Confidence defined by the capacity to face our fears and to proceed in spite of them to take the next indicated step as it appears;

Trust defined by an assurance that the structures and conditions emerged by each ‘next indicated step’ are precise in their alignment with the unfolding of potential and its particular need at this particular time;

Commitment defined by collaboration with the fulfillment that is each and every expression that shows itSelf as person, place or thing…. as condition, circumstance and event;

Finally, with recognition of these newly defined cornerstones, whether we understand them intimately or not, we are invited to come to that simplest of places….. to Presence…..Presence to the here and the now and the expectancy that comes with each pregnant moment….moment after moment.  It is a tiny task in its singularity and an enormous order in our human complexity.  It is a request and a requirement for expansion of our individual and collective capacity for ambiguity.