Blue Sky Thinkers Part 1: Richard Branson

by bluesky on October 3, 2011

So, what is Blue Sky Thinking?  In fact, more to the point, what is a Blue Sky Thinker?

The metaphor of the Blue Sky of Happiness, in the book The All Seeing Boy and the Blue Sky of Happiness, provides us with a simple idea for visualising our True Nature.

We are not, as some people and schools of psychology would have us believe, like the grey clouds of our sadness or despair, intrinsically broken, waiting to be fixed, but instead as expansive, bright and as awe inspiring as a blue sky on a cloudless summer day.  In other words we have a choice how we choose to see Human potential.  Humanity’s power and glory, or separation and despair.  This is blue sky thinking.

To become a Blue Sky Thinker, however, we must be willing to put this metaphor into practice in service of awakening the same Blue Sky expansiveness in others.

So why does Richard Branson qualify?

While attending a Business Personal Development expo on behalf of one of my clients, I had the opportunity to listen to him be interviewed, by one of the UK’s leading news reporters.  Richard Branson was the headline act, the business success proof in the pudding, who followed a roster of about 30 other speakers, all of whom, with few exceptions delivered very strong personal empowerment messages.  We were, they had told us, capable of anything.  And, if we were just willing to stay focused long enough; get fired up enough; re-calibrate our mistakes enough; pump enough personal development iron; we could be like them.

So it was with great surprise that Richard Branson, when responding to the question – ‘Whats the single most important strategy you have applied, to build your empire?’ – offered a quite unexpected response.  See the best in your employees.  People respond to praise, if you encourage them, they will strive to do more.

What made this response curious was the response of both the audience and the interviewee.

The audience, perhaps tired by the task of having self scrutinized for so long, and ready for a new perspective, burst into spontaneous applause.  The relief in the arena was palpable.

The interviewer however, seemed taken aback that such a simple idea could have built one of the most successful businesses of the late 20th early 21st centuries. Surely, there was something else he suggested: ‘Well it’s all very well being nice to people.’  He responded.

Richard Branson, without missing a beat, replied once more: You asked me ‘what was the most important thing?’, above all others.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t other things that also have value.

It’s simply a lesson he had learned as a child, he related, from parents who wanted him to understand the value of placing Others over self, and had not seen any reason not to apply it from the earliest days of building the Virgin empire.

Yes, to become a Blue Sky Thinker we have to be willing to overcome the cynicism of people who would otherwise accuse us of Pollyannaism.  Seeing the best in others, seeing their full potential, is not a weakness, or mutually exclusive with having the common sense required to build one of the most enduring business brands of the last 30 years.

What would your employees or colleagues being doing under the blue sky of happiness?

The Blue Sky of Happiness and the Art of Radical Inclusivity.

by bluesky on September 12, 2011

This year, the Burning Man festival celebrated it’s 25th year, in Black Rock Desert Nevada, with it’s annual celebration of the arts, wild self expression and in it’s own unique way of how to live together in community.

Amongst their often paradoxical and yet complimentary, ten principles for creating community there are many that are worthy of mention.  Unconditional Gifting for example, where the gift given doesn’t contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.  Radical Self-reliance to encourage the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.  Then there’s ‘Leaving no trace’ – impelling us to take responsibility for the impact we have on the earth, and clear up our mess!

Yet, amongst these principles, there is no more radical than the first of the ten: Radical Inclusivity.  “We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.”  Radical statements to make about how we create community, however, neither part bears resemblance to how we create it today.  We create groups based on class, wealth (or both), sexuality, gender, creed or culture and thanks to the myriad definitions of the word (sociologists had coined over 80 by the 1950s), we get to call it community.

Community today is all too often about defending the requisites for entry to the group, and blocking entry to anyone who might resemble a stranger, i.e who doesn’t have the requisites for membership. The exact opposite of the Burning Man’s radical inclusivity.

I suspect that the Burning Man festival is reaching for an altogether more Aquarian, inclusive interpretation of community, one which reaches for a higher ideal which potentially embraces all of humanity.  One, which like the Blue Sky of Happiness, only requires your willingness to participate, which is ironically, principle nine of Burning Man’s ten principles.  As they say in their manifesto: ‘We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.’

The same is true with the Blue Sky of Happiness.  The Blue Sky exists as a metaphor, to remind us that behind the grey clouds of our separative thinking, that we are in fact united, like the vast blue expanse of the heavens, all equal and entitled to the same opportunity to grow and flourish.

And yet conversely, we claim these rights for ourselves, by evoking this motif for others.  This is how we participate in growing community.

It could be no other way.  The only way to live the Blue Sky of Happiness, is through the principles of radical inclusivity, and a willingness to participate in sharing the principle of a collective mind and global heart.

Who will you remember the Blue Sky of Happiness for?

A Greater Kindness?

by bluesky on July 20, 2011

Kindness as a word has such a wide range of meanings it’s very easy to think that our acts of kindness towards others, is the same as Loving Kindness.

This is not to say that any charitable act, or loving thought for another human being, or indeed creature, or the Earth, does not have merit.  It does.  Especially, when someone acts towards some one in need, not for the advantage of themself, but solely for that of the person helped.

However, charitable acts of kindness or care for another, often miss a greater opportunity to demonstrate perhaps a greater kindness.  A greater kindness which the Buddhist tradition of Metta Bhavana directly implies.

The opportunity to demonstrate our kindness by also seeing another person as they truly are.  By seeing their true Nature.  Not as broken, or to be pitied, or helpless, but in the words of the Co-active Coaching model full of potential, naturally whole, and infinitely creative.  And they need us to see them this way because any other way potentially leaves them separate from or of a lesser status than us.

Of course, it’s natural, when someone is hurt, to show sympathy and seek to salve the immediate pain.  Cuts and bruises need elastoplasts and oinments.  However, to recover fully, people need also our affirmation of their natural healing ability.

It’s natural too, when someone has caused harm to others or the planet either out of ignorance, or willfully, to want to blame and condemn them for their actions.  However, to redress their misdemeanours people need to not just be held accountable, but they also need our affirmation, they will have the courage to seek redress for the consequences of their actions.

So, how might we apply the principle of Loving Kindness to, say Rupert Murdoch, owner of the world’s largest media organisation for example? What would he be doing under the Blue Sky of Happiness?

If we are to believe Rolling Stone magazine, as they reported earlier this year, the person who is, through their various news organisations, the most to blame for  spreading dangerous disinformation about global warming than any other person on the planet.

So, perhaps under the Blue Sky of Happiness, we might see him as being applauded for being the head of a media organisation celebrated for being a courageous force for equality and due impartiality in the world?

Given Mr Murdoch’s recent appearance at the House of Commons Select Committee in London, to answer questions about his news organisations ethical conduct, at which he claimed he was not ultimately responsible for the invasion of privacy through phone hacking of victims of crime, you might be cynical that such a transformation is possible.

I know, this may sound like a stretch.  As a former journalist, it’s not easy for me, to even write this.  But it’s meant to be a stretch, and represents the ultimate implication of the idea of Loving Kindness.

Loving Kindness in it’s truest sense has no time for such cynicism.  The Blue Sky of Happiness as a metaphor for the collective human mind, upholds the possibility – in fact the necessity – that such transformation can happen for everyone, because ultimately we all share the same True Nature.  Just like the Blue Sky expansive enough to include us all.

In fact, another person’s transformation often happens only when we are willing to see it’s possible.  In other words, our willingness to shift our perspective, opens the possibility they will too.

How would you picture someone you have judged, beneath the Blue Sky of Happiness?

Changing the weather in our collective mind..

by bluesky on June 29, 2011

In the All-Seeing Boy and the Blue Sky of Happiness, the idea of a pristine, blue sky free from clouds is introduced to a young boy as a metaphor for the true nature of his Mind.

In fact as his relationship with the mysterious Jason Carper Esq., unfolds further, he also learns that it’s a metaphor for everyone’s mind.  That in fact we all share the same true nature, and that we forget this true nature when we choose to focus on the grey clouds of our sadness and negative thoughts, that cover its intrinsic beauty.

The idea of a permanent blue sky behind the clouds, of course, is a scientific fact.  The blue sky never disapears, it just gets temporarily masked by the prevalent weather conditions of the day or season.  As a scientific fact the idea is easy to grasp, but as a metaphor for our own state of mind?

However, just for this moment, take a leap of faith with me here and consider what we might learn about the state of humanity’s collective mental health, if we recognised that our planet’s atomosphere is a perfect mirror for the collective state of the human mind – that our deep interconnected relationship with the Earth as one living entity is far more profound than we might possibly have imagined.

What would we learn, I believe, is that our mental suffering is a lot worse than a few sad grey clouds blocking us from knowing and experiencing our true nature.

We’d discover that millions of tons of fossil fuel emissions are currently trapped in the atomosphere, which in turn is heating up the planet – just as we pollute our minds and over heat our desire with millions of distracting advertising images created to sell unsustainable goods we don’t need.

If we looked closer at the atomosphere, we’d also find it was full of holes; just like our lack of joined up thinking on climate change.  That the inonosphere open to electro-magnectic manipulation, supposedly in the name of science;  just as our ability to reason, and or, follow our intuition is impacted by the thought pollution and electro magnetic environment we live in.

Put simply our collective mind is a very muddled place; our collective mental health badly out of shape.  Just check the daily news if you’re still not sure this is so.

Fortunately, the solution to improving our collective mental health is easy.

We need not focus on the symptom of our malaise – either simple grey clouds representing our sadness, or the more severe image of global warming as a metaphor for an altogether different level of madness  – we need simply remember the True nature that has been, is, and always will be present, in spite of our errant ability to focus elsewhere.

This is the first and primary message of the Blue Sky of Happiness.  Remember your/our true nature.  Your, our, true nature is like the Blue Sky on a cloudless sunny day – unbroken, pristine, and high and wide enough to shelter us all.  It is always there in spite of your, and our best efforts to taint, or ignore it.

If we practiced remembering It en-mass, might our atomosphere begin to reflect our new found clarity of mind?

In Praise of Blue Sky Thinking..

by bluesky on May 5, 2011

Once derided in the business world as synonomous with unrealistic or overly idealistic ideas, I like to invite you to consider a new take on Blue Sky Thinking.

In my parable for children of all ages (8-80), The All Seeing Boy and the Blue Sky of Happiness, a young boy learns how to use the idea of a pristine blue sky free from clouds, as a metaphor for transforming the well-being of others, simply by changing the way he sees and thinks about them.

Both those he cares for, as well as those he doesn’t know.

In this blog over coming weeks and months I will be writing about how to put this unique expression of Blue Sky Thinking in service of creating world peace.

I’ll write about how blue sky thinking relates to the ancient wisdom and practice of loving kindness; your ability to create inner sunshine for yourself; and inevitably how its magic makes a positive impact in the world.

I hope you’ll join me..

 

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