Meandering Mind - Eva Dillner [9]
As this was a volunteer organization, it was important to tap the enthusiasm of the members. In a corporation you can to a certain extent impose your will on the drones, but it's simply not possible when you are dealing with volunteers.
There were a number of willing contributors, with lots of ideas on how to revive the Club. It was obvious to me that the end vision varied immensely between the participants. One person would describe images of a very upscale club attracting the well to do. Another talked in terms of IKEA furnishings. A third would talk about family activities. A fourth would push large scale fund raising as the road to salvation. Yet another would have ideas for low cost activities to bring people into the club. No wonder they seemed to be pulling in different directions - they were.
Be true to yourself
In a moment we'll explore how a group can create a common vision that includes the potential and passion of the individuals. But first I want to share a few more examples of uncommon end goals and the problems they create.
I need go no further than my crashed marriage. Sure we had a lot of other problems, but the underlying source of tension was that we wanted different things out of life.
When I met my ex, I was in graduate school heading for a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering. I wanted to travel, see the world and make good money. He was six years older than I, smart, very intelligent, he loved the outdoors and he'd chosen to work in the woods. His ambition in life? Hard to say, he kept talking about moving out into a cabin in the woods. He wanted to write and kept prodding me to quit my job. I think he would have been happy with a hippie lifestyle. We made the mistake so many people do, we fell into the trap of what it's supposed to look like when you are in love. We got married, bought a house and life went from bad to worse. Neither one of us was true to ourselves.
Had I been true to myself, I would have taken the best job, not the one that kept me in Seattle. See, he didn't want to move. I was in love and didn't want to leave him. Same old story, give up your true desires and you lose yourself. He didn't want to settle down and make money and be responsible. He wanted to play and drink and get by. He had no desire to travel. Had we been able to talk about values and expectations and had the inner freedom to be true to ourselves, we could have had a totally different outcome. There is no guarantee the relationship would have been any better, but we wouldn't have sacrificed ourselves, and for what? The financial responsibilities drove him nuts, he didn't want to be responsible. I was frustrated because I wasn't living the independent life I wanted. Truth is I was scared to be alone. Not a good basis for getting married.
In hindsight - it's always 20/20 isn't it? - I should have taken my fearful self off into the world, and let go of him. Who knows, we may have continued a long distance romance that may have been something really special. We'll never know.
We both bought into the idea of owning property but neither one of us was interested in all that goes with it. You know, maintaining a yard, fixing leaky faucets or spending your weekends doing home improvement projects. We would have been much better off as renters, free to pursue other interests. He was an excellent cook. We shared a love of music and reading. He could have lived in the woods and I could have taken off on my international jaunts. Point is, we didn't try to find the intersection of our lives, and neither one of us was true to our real desires. We didn't have the same values and goals for our lives.
The Headline Game
So how do you discover if you have a future in common? There is an exercise called the headline game that