Offer your Self to your city

 

There is a battle underway between individuals and our institutions, but it isn’t us vs them. It is a battle embodied within each of us, between my self and my larger, highest potential Self. Our collective efforts are only as deep and good as we are, as instruments of the future.

Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer, in their book Leading from the Emerging Future, remark that the “world has enormous unexploited potential in the form of inspired, intentional, and collective entrepreneurship.” Its time for how we show up as collectives to evolve into something other than insensitive entities, but this will only happen if we choose to offer our Selves to make them better, rather than fight and scrap our way.

Here are Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer’s principles and practices to help advance your individual journey from self to Self, from me to We:

1. Practice, don’t preach
2. Observe, observe, observe – become a blackbelt observer and listener
3. Connect with your intention as an instrument
4. When the crack opens up, stay with it – connect and act from the now
5. Follow your heart – do what you love, love what you do
6. Always be in dialogue with the universe
7. Create a holding space of deep listening that supports your journey
8. Iterate, iterate, iterate
9. Notice the crack to the field of the future
10. Use different language with different stakeholders
11. If you want to change others (other stakeholders), you need to be open to changing yourself first
12. Never give up. Never give up. You are not alone

Offering your Self to your city is an essential contribution. It allows your City to serve citizens.

Some friends and I have started a book club to explore Leading from the Emerging Future, Otto Scharmer (Theory U) and Katrin Kaufer’s new book. This is another piece on Chapter 5. Here’s what came from earlier chapters:

• Chapter 1 – Life guard
• Chapter 2 – The antennae of possibility
• Chapter 3 – Prototype social habitats
• Chapter 4 – I’m not a salesperson
• Chapter 5 – Be a vehicle of the future

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This post begins a series of posts on Chapter 10 – The Emerging City, offering bits of the book I am working on. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities:

• My decision to share the book  while I am working on it
• The overall structure  of Nest City’s three parts
• A summary of Part 1 – City Patterns, Concluding City Patterns
• A summary of Part 2 – Organizing for Emergence, Focus, learn and Emerge
• The plot for Part 3 – City Nestworks