I had lunch yesterday with someone who would like to have something different happen in her life. As I was listening to her speak, I thought to myself, this is a perfect time to practice what I've been learning. So I asked her some questions she'd not been asked before, and meandered in her company as she explored her map in ways she had not explored it explored it before, and then asked The Question: "And what would you like to have happen?" And when she told me, I said, I can help you with that. She got this look on her face, and said, I can tell this is going to cost a lot of money. And I shrugged and said, the cost isn't relevant at this point. And for the first time, I believed that. It felt odd and good at the same time, and I just sat with it for a moment, savoring it. Meanwhile, she persisted. What will this cost? she asked.  For reasons I will explain in a later post, I could honestly tell her that I have no idea what it will cost. But even had I known, even had it been me deciding the cost, I could have - and would have - told her that the cost didn't matter at that point, that the only thing that mattered at that point was the fact that she could have a different experience of life, one that ever more closely matches who she truly is and desires to become in the world.  

I won't go into details because they are both confidential and irrelevant. What mattered was this: I have been holding the idea of sales as an act of service and contribution to others and the (far more suspect) idea of leveraging them beyond their limitations in my mind since the first telecast, checking them for ecology,  pondering them. But I hadn't held them in my body at all. I hadn't stepped into them or worn them around because I didn't trust the second one, the leveraging one. It sounded sneaky to me, to be honest. But when the opportunity opened, I saw so clearly how I could do this, and I stepped right into those two beliefs. I stepped all the way in. And when I did, something shifted in me, in her, and in the relationship between us. This is going to sound really weird, but somehow, from that place, I knew her heart. I knew what she wanted and could speak it back to her.  There came a moment when she took her business card out and pushed it across the table to me. By then, I had released my attachment to her decision and her outcome, and I'm not sure how I did that, either, except that it happened in the same way that knowing her heart happened, in the field created by both intentions: service and contribution and leveraging her beyond her limitations. And the key to the leveraging was not my beliefs or values, but hers. The reality is, I held the space for her, and she leveraged herself at least to the point of asking for more information, of opening to possibility.  

My purpose is to co-create new worlds. It sounds pretty big until one realizes how flexible it is. Every time a child learns to tie his shoelaces, he becomes more competent in the world, more powerful. His world changes, and so does mine. When this woman has made the shift within herself that she desires and is capable of, her world is going to change, and so will mine. New worlds are created mind by mind, heart by heart, life by life, relationship by relationship. I am awed by what happened yesterday. And my heart is at peace about the leveraging. Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world.”  I understand now that we are simply directing someone's attention to the solid ground of their own being and the length and strength of their own levers, and then bearing witness as they move their own world by their own power.

It's something to do with a life.