Posts Tagged ‘japanese culture’

When Bob Dylan released his third studio album in 1964, The Times They Are a Changin’, the powerful message spoke to the times. But this message was hardly anything new. The ancient Greek Philosopher Heraclitus (535~475 BC) was a philosopher of change, famous for the saying that, “You never step into the same river twice.” And well before that the ancient Chinese compiled the I Ching, or Book of Changes, dating back to the 2nd and 3rd Millennium BC.

It is almost redundant to say that it is Time for a Change, except that this is a universal and timeless theme, always true, and always relevant to you. Nevertheless, the tools and means of change vary with the times. It is never too late to review who and where you are as the world changes.

Even change itself is changing, through the process of Accelerating Change. Futurologists from Buckminster Fuller (Geodesic Dome) to Alvin Tofler (Future Shock) and John Naisbitt (Megatrends) have delineated the process and the paradigm shifts in technology, social, and cultural change. Change is no longer in the domain of specialists, because we all experience it deeply in our own lives.

Ask yourself what you were doing 5 years ago, or 10 years ago, and chances are you have experienced major changes in your career or personal life, many of which you had no idea were coming. It is fair to predict that the same thing will be true 5 to 10 years hence. The purpose of this new column is to provide perspective on change, and introduce innovative ways in which we can navigate and benefit from it.

Following the structure of my previous column Flexible Focus, this weekly column will also cover topics in 8 major categories:

• Goals and Flexible Focus
• Problems in Goal Pursuit
• Creative Ideas and Focussed Action
• Presenting Goals to Others
• Secrets of Collaboration Success
• Templates for Problem Solving
• Goals in the 8 Fields of Life
• 8 Principles of Mandala Thinking

Many people think that they need to get ready for change, or even try to prevent it. Yet once you recognize that change is inevitable it makes sense to shift your thinking and find ways to be ready, to welcome and initiate change.

Think of it as a paradigm shift from being passive to staying proactive.

Our constant companion in this process is Time. We will look at ways in which to measure, manage, and manipulate time through your attitude and the use of powerful tools for Goal planning and implementation.

We do not travel alone. We will look at the importance of communication and partnership in achieving great things that you could not on your own.

Learning from experience is not always the best way to leverage your success. We will look at guiding principles, tools, and templates that can reduce the long journey of our predecessors to a shorter path for our ourselves that those who follow us.

While change can be wrenching and hard, it can also be invigorating and inspiring. So much depends on how we view and engage with it. Join us in this journey, and let us join you in yours.

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Tagged as: active garage, author, coach, creativity, emc quest, Entrepreneurship, Flexible Focus, japan, japanese culture, Leadership, life, mandala chart, meaning of life, Time for a change, william reed

Ritual Enhances Engagment

There is an energy crisis that rarely makes the front page, yet affects you each and every day. That is the internal energy crisis that comes from lack of full engagement in what you do.

Energy is a combination of spirit and vigor, which determines how much you enjoy your work, contributes to your staying power, and improves your performance. The crisis occurs when you do not have enough energy to meet and surpass expectations.

If your energy is not up to the task, then you are likely to perform poorly or put it off until later, neither way a productive strategy. Continuing to work like this will lead to burnout, or put you in the cue for the exit door.

If you feel out of synch like this, it is easy to blame the boss, complain about your colleagues, or decide that you deserve better. And perhaps you do. The problem is that entitlement has never been a ticket to empowerment.

The superior strategy is to navigate with full engagement, because its energy empowers you to enjoy and accomplish more, and actually increases your options on the path.

One of the most useful ways to generate energy is the power of ritual, developing a personal power routine. Institutionalized ritual is nothing new. It has been practiced for centuries as a means of cultivating energy in groups. It has also proved effective in enhancing performance in sports, and many top athletes stick to their rituals religiously.

In the martial arts and calligraphy, the power of ritual is self-evident. Training itself is a ritual, and the cumulative power of practice leads to improvement at all levels.

Part of the power of ritual is in repetition, where intentional effort gradually turns into automatic ability. The power of ritual is the power of habit. We are ruled by our habits, good and bad, as Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) said:

“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt, until they are too strong to be broken.”

There is a Japanese proverb which advises to sit 3 years on a stone (Ishi no ue ni mo san nen). The implication is that it takes 3 years of effort, engagement, or sometimes endurance for something to take effect. Although this seems counter-intuitive in a world brimming with promises of instant results, patience and perseverance were once considered to be the secret to success.

In fact, if you engage in a regular ritual, you can break bad habits and form good ones in a matter of weeks or months, not years. But you need to start, and you need to stay with it. A good place to start is with a morning power ritual, which you design yourself and make a personal priority to practice.

Have fun designing a ritual that works for you. Your rituals must have flexibility, or they will not last. My personal rituals are phrased in such a way that they are easy to practice and allow for variety. For example, to spend some time on my feet every day can be achieved by walking, running, Aikido, or dance. I commit to daily work on my Mandala Diary, Idea Marathon, and create at least one sketch-poem a day.

Food rituals are important too. You cannot deny the effect of food on your physical energy. Choose fresh ingredients, chew your food well, don’t overeat. Take responsibility in what you eat, so you don’t have to suffer for it later in life.

The coolest thing that I have discovered about ritual is that the more you engage with it, the more it transforms from a routine into a journey of discovery. The 30 to 90 minutes that you invest at the start of your day will set the tone for the entire day, help you stay focused and strong, and build momentum that makes you more productive.

Develop Your Talent

If you have an interest in improving your skills in any area, particularly performance, you owe it to yourself to read The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle.

Written by an award-winning sports journalist who turned his own talents toward investigating the process of talent itself, what it is, how it develops, what is universal. The subtitle offers the promise: unlocking the secret of skill in math, art, sport, and just about anything else.

He breaks the code into 3 essential parts: Deep Practice, Ignition (Passion), and Master Coaching, and ties it together with a biological key that could revolutionize the entire field of learning and teaching. In a word: Myelin, the insulating sheath of protein that forms protective layers around the axons of neurons.

The author’s metaphor for a well-formed myelin sheath is extra bandwidth, formed through repetition and particularly deep practice, which increases the speed, accuracy, and frequency of nerve impulses which result in the performance of a particular skill.

He traveled around the world to visit the “talent hotbeds,” places which produced an extraordinary number of world class performers in music or sports, and came back with some surprising findings. Regardless of how different the language, the culture, or the field of play, there were surprising consistencies which the author describes as the Talent Code. Slow, deliberate mindful practice over thousands of hours made all the difference.

This is actually the power of navigating your way steadily over a period of years to achieve outstanding results. Whether your goal is to boost your energy, achieve something you want, or develop your talent, you can only benefit by employing the power of ritual!

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Tagged as: active garage, engagement, Flexible Focus, japan, japanese culture, mandala charts, manga, Power of Ritual, william reed

In the last eight articles we have looked at themes related to significance and focus, finding what matters most. Revisiting these articles will help you re-explore the territories where we have been, and see also how they fit together. These selections also correspond to the primary eight categories covered in the series, so this review provides an overview of one trip around the wheel, and also reflects the amazing range of topics possible to address with the Mandala Chart.

The images are assembled in the Mandala shown here, referenced from the articles and downloads below. In the conventional Mandala fashion, they are marked A (bottom center), B (left center), C (top center), D (right center), E (bottom left), F (top left), G (top right), F (bottom right).

Here are a few notes to set your thoughts in motion. For easy reference, and to trigger new insights, download the Mandala Charts and review the original articles from each of the links below.

PRAY FOR JAPAN (From Flexible Focus #47: Clearing Your Clutter)

It is certainly a clarion call to get back to basics…to devote your time and energy to the things and people that matter most.

Many are saying that both conservation and cooperation were essential characteristics in Japanese culture to begin with, qualities which are now surfacing in this time of need. Crisis tends to bring out the best and the worst in people. In this case, it turns out that there was a lot of good in people just below the surface, which has come out for all the world to see. It has also brought forth a massive and profoundly moving show of support for Japan from around the world, as people offer their emotions, donations, and physical resources in the movement called Pray for Japan.

In addition to the cooperation of people to pull through this disaster, there has been a shift in consciousness. It is almost as if we have been granted a degree of clairvoyance, a new transparency in which people’s hearts and intentions are far more transparent than before. Perhaps it was the clutter, the non-essentials, the bill of goods that we had been sold over the years that prevented us from seeing this clearly until now.

BE PROACTIVE AT THE EDGE (From Flexible Focus #48: The Principle of Initiative)

“With a brain in my head, and feet in my shoes, I can steer myself any direction I choose.” ~Dr. Seuss

One of the central insights of the Mandala Chart is that the world we see is actually the world as we see it, not a fixed reality to which we must succumb. While we share the same space, we do not see or experience it in the same way. Things do not look, feel, or taste the same when you are in love, as they do when you are broken hearted, because your heart and your mind are the lens and filter through which you see the world. Reality is subjective, but pliable. What you see is what you get. We are all co-creators of our world.

Your disposition determines whether you see the world in a positive light or cast a pall of darkness. This creates the quality of your experience, and it influences the experience of others with whom you share that space. In this way, some people  have the power to brighten a room and make others feel good, while others can sap the energy from the place itself.

THE MANDALA MIRROR (From Flexible Focus #49: The 8 Frames of Life: Personal)

Real personal transformation and lasting change is far more likely to come through the disciplined application of the strategies revealed, rather than the emotional enthusiasm espoused by many motivational speakers in this field.

In the Mandala view, it is in the Personal frame of life that you meet yourself and address your personal issues. This is a space for reflection, but of a particular kind, and this is where the Mandala Chart provides a unique perspective. We spend a lot of time interacting with the things and people outside of us. We need to spend some time as well exploring the world within. Reflection is deep thinking. Looking deep into the reflection, rather than just at the surface of the mirror. This is a space for clarity and insight, not for melancholy or self-importance. You meet yourself in the mirror, the person that has been with you from the beginning and will be with you until the end.

You may think you know yourself pretty well by now, but ask yourself deeper questions concerning your mission and core message, and you will understand the need for deeper reflection to discover your living legacy. Your personal happiness is related in part to the time you spend in front of this Mandala Mirror, and what you do about it as a result.

The Mandala Mirror is quite different from the mirror of Narcissus, the proud and self-admiring hunter of Greek mythology, who died for being unable to leave his own reflection in the water. The Greek roots of the word Narcissus mean sleep or numbness, a far cry from the clarity of self-knowledge.

CAPTURE YOUR DREAMS (From Flexible Focus #50: The Art of Idea Capture)

Make a wish, and write it down.

The quest to capture ideas is ancient and universal to all cultures. It is part of our DNA. The Native American Dreamcatcher bears a synchronistic resemblance to the Mandala in this illustration even down to the 8 sections. In Asian cultures the Mandala is often rendered in circular form. It’s meaning and beauty are evident to us in the physical form, and in the name, Dreamcatcher. We may need to be reminded that to capture your ideas is also to capture your dreams.

Until you start capturing your ideas on paper, or rendering them in some physical form, you may never realize what an astonishing amount of your experience floats by and is lost in the disconnected drift of time.

We need to notice, and to help others become aware of the significance of our insights, because each of us can offer another perspective on life, another degree of flexible focus. Artists, writers, and teachers cultivate the sills to take the raw material of experience and shape it into forms which enchant, entertain, and enlighten the people who engage with their works.

THE PRINCIPLE OF NON-DISSENSION (From Flexible Focus #51: The Art of Winning without Fighting)

There is an inherent sense of the folly of fighting, and the wider perspective which seeks a way to win without fighting.

The 6^th Century BC Chinese General and military strategist Sun Tzu, best known today as the author and genius behind the classic text on strategy, The Art of War, penned a gem of a statement that has gained the status of proverbial wisdom.

“Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

This book held profound influence over Asian military thinking and the Way of the Samurai. It was translated into French as early as 1772. Ultimately the book had an influence on leaders and generals from Napoleon, to General Douglas MacArthur, to Mao Zedong. It is studied at West Point Military Academy, and has been applied metaphorically in business and management strategy. What is this powerful and apparently universal appeal behind Winning without Fighting, and more to the point, why is it that so few people throughout history have been able to master its lessons?

ADDITIONAL DEGREES OF FREEDOM (From Flexible Focus #52: A Sense of Significance)

Additional freedom brings with it greater appreciation for flow and serendipity, lesser need for control, and a higher tolerance for ambiguity.

We have already examined the limitations of the 2×2 Matrix in Flexible Focus #25: Assessing your situation with a Mandala SWOT analysis. A 2×2 Matrix can alert you to an insufficiency, cause you to reevaluate your priorities, or alert you to a missing element in your life. However, life is multi-dimensional, and most things in life do not easily fit into a 2×2 square.

What if you added even just one dimension, and looked at life as a 3×3 matrix, as a Mandala Chart? This alone gives you nine degrees of freedom instead of 4, and if you care to explore it further, the B-style Mandala Chart is 8×8, with 64 degrees of freedom. To anyone who values flexibility and freedom, by any measure 9 degrees of freedom is better than 4, and 64 degrees of freedom is better than 9, unless you prefer simple choices with everything fixed.

Additional freedom brings with it greater appreciation for flow and serendipity, lesser need for control, and a higher tolerance for ambiguity. The important thing is to determine what makes life better, more meaningful, and what serves to answer the bigger question of Why?

IN SEARCH OF A TOOLBOX (From Flexible Focus #54: Modeling Your Business)

To help others see the dimensions and qualities of our vision, indeed to be able to perceive these things ourselves, we need the help of tools which help us to make the invisible visible, and the impossible possible.

We have looked at the power of the 2×2 Matrix, as well as how to gain additional degrees of freedom with the 3×3 Matrix of the Mandala Chart. Any kind of Matrix can be useful, because it helps you compare variables that interact with each other, and it puts everything on a single screen. This gives you the vital element of perspective, something that is easy to lose when you are caught up in the fray. In business, this can spell the difference between success and failure.

Now there is another kind of Matrix which enables you to map out and test proven business model concepts, not only by seeing the parts in relation to the whole, but also with the ability to run interactive simulations and projections with numbers. Introducing The Business Model Toolbox for iPad.

Even if you don’t have an iPad, the Business Model Generation book can guide you through the process, with beautiful illustrations and real world examples of successful business models in action. This book is a remarkable innovation in itself, having been co-authored by 470 strategy practitioners from 45 countries. Ordinarily it would be nearly impossible to integrate that much diversity into a single package, but this book is held together by a highly integrated visual design, and the fact that the contributors speak from real world experience.

IMPROVISATION IN FLOW (From Flexible Focus #55: Make Music Find Flow)

Music is not a jealous mistress. It invites you to listen deeply, but releases your attention whenever you need to focus on something else.

We are blessed in this age to have access to most of the world’s music, to be able to carry it with us, and swim in its high fidelity flow almost whenever we like. This is a remarkable achievement, something akin to time travel. To take full advantage of this, and to use the power of music to experience flow, there are several things that we need to consider about music, and the way we currently experience it. What does music mean to you?

It might help to consider that question in the light of what music has meant to people over time. Leonardo da Vinci considered the painter to be the representer of visible things, and the musician the representer of invisible things. Leo Tolstoy called music the shorthand of emotion. The Chinese philosopher Mencius said, if the King loves music, it is well with the land. Reading quotes on music gives you a multi-faceted perspective on music, and what a powerful force it can be in our lives.

Can be, because for many it has degenerated into a mere distraction, auditory wallpaper. Music playing in the background is no guarantee that people will listen to or appreciate it. What’s worse is when the music is invasive, poor quality, or advertising masking as music. Lily Tomlin said, “I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.”

NOTE: The articles in the Flexible Focus series are updated with graphics, links, and attachments on the FLEXIBLE FOCUS Webbrain, a dynamic and navigable map of the entire series. It has a searchable visual index, and is updated each week as the series develops.

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Tagged as: active garage, Art of War, Flexible Focus, japanese culture, mandala charts, manga, Matrix, william reed

“With a brain in my head, and feet in my shoes, I can steer myself any direction I choose.” ~Dr. Seuss

What you see is what you get

One of the central insights of the Mandala Chart is that the world we see is actually the world as we see it, not a fixed reality to which we must succumb. While we share the same space, we do not see or experience it in the same way. Things do not look, feel, or taste the same when you are in love, as they do when you are broken hearted, because your heart and your mind are the lens and filter through which you see the world. Reality is subjective, but pliable. What you see is what you get. We are all co-creators of our world.

Your disposition determines whether you see the world in a positive light or cast a pall of darkness. This creates the quality of your experience, and it influences the experience of others with whom you share that space. In this way, some people  have the power to brighten a room and make others feel good, while others can sap the energy from the place itself.

That is why we choose the company of some people over others, choose to live in a certain city or work in a particular place. Sometimes the people we spend time with and the places we inhabit drain our energy instead. When that happens, we can succumb to it, get away from it, or choose to make a change from our own initiative.

Be proactive at the Edge

Interesting things happen at the edges. This is where we enter new territory, where you get the cross-fertilization of ideas, where cultures meet and discoveries happen. An edge is not just the outer limit of something; an edge is also an interface to something else.

The Mandala Chart also represents an edge, a bridge to a new way of seeing the world. That alone gives you an edge, compared to someone who is stuck in their perceptions. The word for edge in Japanese is 縁 (en), which is also used to mean connection, and in Buddhism it is the bridge between cause and effect.

When the West first encountered Eastern thinking in India, some people had the impression that the tone of the religion and culture was fatalistic, based on the misinterpretation of karma as some kind of predetermined destiny or fate. However, the word karma is better translated as work, or the action you take at the edge, which intervenes with and changes the direction of previous causes, leading to effects which are anything but predetermined.

A saying has it that there are three types of people, those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened? Think of this as people who live at the edge, people who live away from the edge, and people who have lost their edge.

The Mandala Chart Principle of Initiative is about being proactive at the edge, being a player rather than a spectator. How you experience the game depends a great deal on whether you are out on the soccer pitch or sitting in the spectator stands.

The more you see how much there is to be done, and how much you are able to do, the less sense it makes to worry or fret over circumstances. What sense does it make to wring your hands, when you can go to work on your plan?

Pygmalion Effect

Pygmalion was a sculptor from Cyprus in Greek mythology who fell in love with a female statue he had carved of ivory. In the story his love brings the statue to life. The Pygmalion Effect is the name given to a seminal study in the psychology of education, in which it was discovered that students frequently performed to the level of expectations of their teacher, regardless of their abilities. It is also known as the self-fulfilling prophecy.

To paraphrase Henry Ford, whether you think you can or cannot, you will prove yourself right. And many people in the world of Positive Psychology would agree. The challenge is that it isn’t always easy to believe that things will work out, when negative circumstances are staring you in the face. The key is, don’t stare back!

Realizing that the world is as we see it gives you a fundamental change in perspective. You can use the Mandala Chart as a lens to change your focus, see deeper or farther, and select that which you want to focus on, so that circumstances become your servant, rather than the other way around. You don’t want to end up a slave of circumstance.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Many cultures have stories involving the pursuit of happiness, often symbolized as the Bluebird of Happiness, for its bright and happy associations, and for its elusive flighty quality. These stories start with a search far and wide for the elusive bluebird, and end with the realization that happiness was within them right from the start.

Variations on this theme abound, from the story of the Prodigal Son to the Wizard of Oz, in which there is no place like home. These stories are parables, metaphors for our journey, not advice to stay put and bloom where you were planted. Regarding the pursuit of happiness, Abraham Lincoln said it best, “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” That was good enough for him, and it is good enough for you and me.

With the music in your heart, you have a good place to start.

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Tagged as: active garage, Bluebird of Happiness, Dharma, happiness, initiative, japan, japanese culture, karma, mandala charts, manga, school, teacher, william reed, WYSIWYG

Moving out of your Comfort Zone

Many people like the idea of flexibility more than the practice of it. This is understandable, for if the experience takes you out of your comfort zone, you may prefer the familiar to the flexible.

When your body is stiff, then physical stretching can feel more like pain than gain. A similar thing happens mentally when your values or beliefs are forcibly stretched beyond their limits. We make frequent reference in this series to flexible focus, and how this is a process of mental and physical engagement. But it is not meant to be painful or uncomfortable. I have written in my Creative Career Path Column about how the Mandala Chart can facilitate this process by Moving from Matrix to Mandala Chart.

The key to expanding your comfort zone is to have more degrees of freedom. A brittle stick has no degrees of freedom, so anything which bends it will break it. It is the fear of breaking which causes many people to retreat into their comfort zone when stretched, but rigidity is ultimately a zone of discomfort. When you have more degrees of freedom in your mind and movements, then you experience flexible focus in action!

Mind-Mandala-Body

The key to expanding your comfort zone is to understand the process of engagement, and learn how to consciously navigate your way through it. To help visualize this, I created a Matrix which you can download called, Mind-Mandala-Body.

The horizontal axis shows the degree of engagement, from Shallow to Deep. However, the nuances change considerably when you add a second dimension with the vertical axis from Mind to Body. The two cross in the middle at the Mandala.

As an example, think of how you engage with Music. When you listen to music, you are in a more or less passive mode, engaged at a relatively superficial level with your mind or senses, and the result is that you Enjoy the music. As you learn more about the music, the style, history, instruments, and musicians, you engage at a deeper level, but still mostly in the mental and sensory realm, which is where you Learn about the music. When your engagement involves the body, either through movement of your kinesthetic sense, at first your engagement is shallow while you Practice the music. As your engagement deepens, you engage both mind and body while you Perform the music.

To understand the role of the Mandala in this Matrix, you might substitute the words Method, Tool, or Technique. The Mandala is all of these. It is also a way to connect the four zones, as well as the two axes, with Mind and Body able to engage freely in various ways.

While the Mandala Chart may seem to be more of a mental concept, as your engagement deepens it shifts to an experience, a sort of Body Mandala through which you engage with your instrument and your environment.

The Body Mandala

The Body Mandala is not just a metaphor. It is actually a physical way of experiencing and engaging your body in movement, and the discipline for learning how to do this is called Nanba: the Art of Physical Finesse.

This might make more sense if you have actively engaged in a sport, played a musical instrument, or practiced a martial art. Then you know from experience that when you play well you get into Flow, and when you play badly, you get stress or injury. What makes the difference is your mastery of physical finesse, the ability to engage intensively without forcing, twisting, or disconnecting.

I have found that my own experience with this has heightened my appreciation for the imagery of Cubism. When I am engaged in practice or performance of Nanba movement, Aikido, or even Tap and Calligraphy, the mental-physical experience somehow makes me feel like a Cubist man. I have no idea if the artists of the Cubist movement felt this way, but their work is the best visual expression I have ever seen of the kinesthetic experience of the Body Mandala.

You can also see this by observing animals such as birds, insects, or fish in movement. They are masters of physical finesse, and can teach you a lot about flexibility without forcing.

Because all of this comes to life in experience and engagement, it makes sense to find something to which you can apply it to in practice. It can be something as simple as taking a walk, but instead of just your usual stroll around the block, head out in a new direction and walk for a couple of hours. You will be surprised to see how much it brings you to your senses.

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Tagged as: Aikido, body, Creative career path, Flexible Focus, japan, japanese culture, mandala charts, manga, Martial Arts, mental, nanba diary, william reed

Outside of the Box, or Inside the Square?

What you see in the illustration are two entirely different ways of approaching a square.

The problem of how to connect the nine dots with only four lines, without taking pen from the paper, can only be solved as shown here by going out of the square. The dots only appear to create a box, and if you see it that way, you cannot solve the problem.

The nine dots problem is commonly used to illustrate the process of lateral thinking, or thinking outside the box, and is a common approach to creativity. It involves changing your perspective and freeing yourself from self-imposed or apparent limitations. The problem is, once you know the solution to the problem, there is not much more that you can do with it. The nine dots problem has become a cliché of creativity.

By contrast, the Japanese art of paper folding, know as Origami, is the art of folding the square into an astonishing variety of distinct shapes, animals, geometric figures, and objects of all sorts. All done by folding and refolding a single square sheet of paper, without any scissor cuts. It is far more challenging than the nine dot problem, because it involves manual dexterity as well as visualization. On the other hand, although someone creates the original origami shapes, for the most part people practice the art by following instructions. What is remarkable is the degree of flexible focus that was needed to come up with idea of folding paper in this way in the first place.

The Art of Folding

The art of folding is deeply ingrained in Japanese culture, and is an essential aspect of the Japanese sense of creativity and aesthetics. Japanese have refined the art of folding not only paper and clothing, but furniture, bicycles, eyeglasses, even joints of the human body in the martial arts. You can see numerous examples of folding the square in Japanese culture in a video slide show I produced with Prezi software.

I recently made a blog post on my presentation in October for the international conference of the Japan Creativity Society, at which I presented a paper which you can download, Folding the Square: The Geometry of Japanese Creativity. To accompany this, you can also download a Mandala Chart called GEOMETRY OF JAPANESE CREATIVITY for taking notes on key words and ideas in the thesis.

Why is folding the square significant for creativity? The reason is that, not only does it result in a host of useful and practical solutions to problems and products, but it also illustrates how many possibilities open up when we work within a certain set of limitations. The discipline of working within a set of rules and restrictions can sometimes set you free to discover new levels of flexibility and finesse.

This is not always the case, or every person working in a cubicle would be flexible and creative. More often than not, restrictions can bind and tether your imagination, particularly when imposed from the outside. It is when you seek to work out solutions inside the square of your own initiative through self-discipline, that creativity comes into play.

The unity of discipline and spontaneity

The artist who casts all rules aside in search of freedom of expression may find that he is still trapped in the limited range of his own experience and habit. One of the things that is consistent and intriguing about the traditional Japanese arts is that they are exceedingly difficult in the beginning. The brush in calligraphy is soft and disobedient, defying your efforts to control it. In the beginning it is difficult to even produce a sound on the Shakuhachi, or bamboo flute. Aikido is challenging to the beginner, who finds finesse frustrating, and force useless.

Each of the traditional arts follows a process know as Shu-Ha-Ri (守破離), roughly translated as follow, breakaway, depart. It is this process which connects discipline and spontaneity. Students are expected to begin by repeating copying standard master patterns until they become second nature. These are difficult to master, and much of the discipline is in recovering a beginners mind which allows you to engage with the materials and artistic challenges in a fresh and curious manner.

However, simply making skillful copies is not considered to be anywhere near the level of mastery. This is why in the martial arts, the first level of black belt (shodan) is considered to be merely the first step. Real development in the art starts after you learn the basic vocabulary and steps.

First you learn to follow skillfully, then you learn to breakaway, that is deal with variations and adaptations of the basic forms. Eventually you depart from all forms and learn how to be spontaneous in your expression. Though this process is formalized in the Japanese approach, in fact it is how all artists and musicians progress. Picasso did not start out creating free and original shapes, but rather in making remarkably realistic drawings. Many art students want to skip this stage of disciplined learning, and become an overnight Picasso. It cannot be done.

The Mandala Chart can facilitate the process of connecting discipline and spontaneity through flexible focus. It takes you away from polarity thinking, and helps you see one in terms of the other. Study the Japanese approach to creativity in folding the square, and it will open new horizons for you in the creative process!

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Tagged as: active garage, Aikido, Black Belt, creativity, discipline, Flexible Focus, Folding the square, japanese creativity, japanese culture, mandala charts, manga, nine dots problem, origami, self-discipline, Shodan, Spontaniety, william reed

The current economy and business environment could be referred to as a SWOT Cloud, a shifting set of circumstances that conceals all manner of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The best approach to see your way, much less navigate your way through the cloud safely and successfully is to understand these four elements in relation to each other. In terms of the Mandala Chart, this means seeing the big picture, the small details, and the cross-connections all at the same time with flexible focus.

The SWOT Analysis model is originally attributed to Albert Humphrey from his work at Stanford University in the 1960s and 1970s. The purpose of a SWOT analysis is to give you more clarity in thinking about nebulous or complex business environments. It is typically done on a 4-square matrix, which often ends up as little more than a checklist in table form. Though it is still widely used today, SWOT Analysis has undergone some criticism, partly by those who want to add to it to promote their own new models, but also I believe because of the limitation of the 2-dimensional matrix.

The A-frame Mandala Chart starts with the 4 SWOT factors, but leaves the frames in between open to enable you to view the situation from 8 vantage points, each of which can be expanded by 8 if you want to expand to the B-frame Mandala Chart with 64 elements. Theoretically, you can expand even further by multiplying any frame by 8, but as a practical matter this is likely to get you lost in space. The downloadable A-frame Mandala SWOT Chart is a practical place to begin.

Issues with 2-dimensional thinking

The first thing to consider is why the traditional 4-frame SWOT Analysis Matrix tends to break down in the face of a true SWOT Cloud environment. The Matrix is useful when comparing two fixed sets of variables, hence 2 x 2 = 4 frames. You have an x-axis and a y-axis. Everything in that domain is framed 2-dimensionally above and below the horizontal axis, and the right or left of the vertical axis. This can be quite helpful when plotting the relationship of two fixed sets of variables, but does not allow for potentially significant influences in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, dimensions and beyond. Moreover, all comparisons happen with two variables as if they were separate entities, black and white. There is no convenient way to visualize such factors as changes over time, or what would happen if you introduced new variables that could influence, or even totally change the situation.

You might say that the 8-frame Mandala Chart is also 2-dimensional, but it only looks this way on paper. It looks very different as you gain experience in using the Mandala Chart to give you flexible focus for real situations. The 8-frame Mandala Chart gives you a sliding scale, a way to shift your perspective freely, and a means of encountering serendipitous solutions in the process. Serendipity is the process of making a valuable discovery in the process of looking for something else. It is the art of peripheral vision, of catching something important, that might otherwise be missed if you were too attached to one set of assumptions or a fixed point of view.

Beyond checklist thinking

We have been taught to make checklists from an early age. It is difficult to overcome the habit of thinking that if we just write down a list of things to do, of things to check, then everything will go smoothly. In your experience, how often has this been so?

A checklist might work well if you are planning a trip and want to be sure you pack everything you will need. It can certainly help you remember and organize a shopping list. It can also be useful as a cross-check of procedures for maintenance of a machine. However, when it comes to something more complicated, like planning a business strategy, making a difficult decision in complex circumstances, or dealing with almost anything that is hidden inside the SWOT Cloud, then the checklist can not only be useless but actually harmful, in that it limits your ability to keep an open mind with flexible focus.

What goes in the empty frames?

Unlike many Mandala Chart templates, the SWOT Mandala Chart only fills in the four corner frames, and starts with the frames in between being empty. Once the corner squares for STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES, and THREATS have been seeded, then you look at the chart with peripheral vision, inviting new insights and discoveries that are not likely to be found by further extending the list.

Another way of looking at the known elements is to consider them as a combination of internal and external, positive and negative factors. Strengths and Weaknesses are internal factors, whereas Opportunities and Threats are external factors. Recognizing the source or location of the factors can already assist in giving you a more flexible point of view than you would get from gazing at the shifting patterns in the SWOT Cloud.

Because SWOT is a tool of analysis, you start by listing and looking at the known elements in the corners. Then with peripheral vision you are more likely to encounter the insights of intuition, in the fields of serendipity.

Group Brainwriting SWOT Exercise

Brainwriting is a technique first introduced by the late Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner in Physics, and later developed by Horst Geschka and his associates at the Batelle Institute in Frankfurt, Germany.

In a nutshell, it involves writing an idea on a card, and then passing the cards around the table to repeat the process while adding ideas to a list that was started by someone else, and alternates to another person each time the cards are passed. This has two advantages. First, because it is done in silence and anonymously as writing, no one is able to dominate the group through authority or outspokenness. Second, because you are exposed to and stimulated by the ideas of others, you tend to develop by increments a more flexible point of view.

Once the cards are filled, or have made a complete round, the ideas are grouped and shared for further analysis. There are various ways of doing the Brainwriting technique, using cards or on a sheet of paper, but the end result is a large number of ideas produced in a small amount of time.

This can be applied to the SWOT Analysis as well, by using color coded cards for the for factors in SWOT. Once the best ideas have been sorted and selected, they can be added to the SWOT Mandala Chart and presented to the group on a single sheet of paper for discussion.

The advantage of this approach is that it gives you access to the wisdom of the group operating in flexible focus, where the sky is the limit. The best way to understand the SWOT Mandala Chart is to use it yourself, and experience how it helps clear away the SWOT Clouds.

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Tagged as: active garage, Flexible Focus, japanese culture, Manadala charts, manga, opportunities, strengths, SWOT Analysis, threats, weaknesses, william reed

Do you look at the sky?

This is a rhetorical question, intended to make you think, not to produce an answer. Simply answering yes or no kills the question, and ends the internal dialog it was intended to create.

In the Rinzai Zen tradition (see Flexible Focus #19: Path to the Eureka Moment), any answer to the question is likely to be rejected by the Zen Master, who looks into the heart and mind of the student for the flash of true understanding, and has no time for schoolboy cleverness.

In fact there is no answer to the question, only continuous engagement with the question itself, do you look at the sky?

In looking at the sky, what do you see? The easy answer is to list common objects you might see above you, clouds, birds, the sun, the moon, an occasional airplane.

Look further, think more deeply, and you might remember that at night you also see stars, and occasional heavenly phenomena such as a comet or aurora borealis, night lights. Perhaps a UFO?

Stay with the question and you may begin to see with the mind’s eye, through understanding, that in fact you see nothing, and at the same time you see everything. The sky contains it all. It is the canvas on which the entire universe is written.

The principle of 空 (kū)

One of the core concepts of Buddhism is the principle of 空 (kū), which is often translated as emptiness.

However, to anyone familiar with either Buddhism or Japanese culture, this word has far greater significance. The character also has the meaning of sky, space, and of emptiness in the sense of infinite potential. Hence 空 (kū) is used to refer to the universe itself, from which all things emerge and to which all things return.

In English the word emptiness has the meaning of nothingness, or a Void. Hence, in Western painting artists typically fill the entire canvas with color or objects, to fill up the empty space.

Not so in Chinese and Japanese art, where space is an integral part of the painting. The concept of space being real is central to oriental philosophy and aesthetics, and has also influenced Western artists and musicians from Cézanne to Miles Davis.

In fact, the concept of negative space is a core concept in Gestalt perception, and the ability to see space is used by photographers, designers, and artists alike.

I suspect that the first people in the West who encountered Buddhism and introduced it to the West were not only prejudiced by their own Euro-centric cultural viewpoint, but very likely had an agenda based on their belief in the cultural superiority of Christianity over Buddhism. It could be that the limited and negatively nuanced translation of such concepts was due to ignorance and limited knowledge. Don’t underestimate the power of a man on a mission.

空 (kū) and the Mandala Chart

The Mandala Chart in its most basic form is like a hybrid lens which can scan panoramically both as a telescope and as a microscope. The simpler way of saying this is the art of flexible focus.

Flexible Focus can be used to explore the universe and see patterns in space by imposing the framework of the 8 x 8 or 64 frames of the Mandala Chart. This is a technique used by artists and photographers alike, to frame space, capture interesting details, and highlight textures and relationships.

Moreover, by using Mandala Chart templates, we can achieve even sharper focus on a problem or topic, and this enables the process of engagement (see Flexible Focus #12: The 8 Frames of Life: Business, and the Mandala on Opportunities for Engagement).

The Mandala itself is like a canvas on which you can paint your own vision for engagement, or select the elements from infinite potential with which you wish to engage. Whether you select positive elements or negative elements, it will take you right there. This is why some people see enemies hiding around every corner, and others see the world as a series of synergistic opportunities.

Do you look at the sky? Of course you do. But what you see there, in effect 空 (kū) is up to you. We just need to become more skilled at the art of seeing.

The art of looking at space

Once you recognize that space is not empty, but a real entity that surrounds us like water surrounds fish, then we can begin to find ways to navigate it. The key is to develop an interest in space, to kindle your curiosity about it.

Here are some questions which can help you get started, which are framed on the downloadable PDF Mandala Chart LOOKING AT SPACE.

• How can we bring negative space into our lives in a positive way?
• Rather than focusing on hard and fixed objects, develop the ability to look at things on their soft edges.
• Appreciate art and music for how they give shape and substance to space.
• Become more aware of relationships and how things are joined together.
• Get off of your merry-go-round of activity and find some breathing space in your life.
• Occasionally look at the sky with the eyes of an artist, and notice how it constantly changes.
• Develop a Taoistic appreciation for space as infinite potential.
• Empty your cup, and approach things and people with a beginner’s mind.

Think about how your preconceptions and prejudices limit your mind and predetermine your possibilities.

Get to know the Mandala Chart not just as a concept, but as a tool to open the doors of perception and help you master the art of flexible focus in your daily life.

Take a second look. The sky is not empty.

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Tagged as: active garage, budhism, christianity, emptiness, empty space, Flexible Focus, japanese culture, mandala charts, negative space, nothingness, oriental culture, religions, taoism, The principle of ku, william reed

An intriguing way to experience flexible focus is through time travel, in whatever way you can. The cinema easily transports us to other places and times, and for an hour or so we are able to experience life from a completely different point of view. Whereas Science Fiction takes us into the future, and Fantasy takes us out of time altogether; Time Travel films have an interesting way of helping us visit the past. One of my favorites is Kate and Leopold (2001), starring Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman, in which a man living in the 1870s is transported through a time tunnel to modern day New York. The contrast in cultures shows what we have lost or forgotten over the last century in our rush to modernize everything.

This corresponds to just after the end of the Edo Period (1603~1868) in Japan, an extended period of seclusion from the outside world, in which many aspects of Japanese culture and manners were highly developed and became deeply rooted. Many of them persisted well into the 20th Century, and though they are but shadows of their original form, sometimes they live just beneath the surface, as if they had just grown dormant.

There is a quiet but vital movement today to bring Edo Manners back, as an indigenous way of repairing the damage that seems to be unraveling many fine features of Japanese culture.

Manners in Japan used to be the core of communication. Measured in body language, good manners revealed character. A person’s posture (shisei) was considered synonymous with his or her attitude and upbringing.

Today a more casual attitude prevails, and this has led to a deterioration of manners once taken for granted. Lack of consideration for others results in get out of my way behavior. In small ways it shows when young people sit in the Silver Seat while old people stand. In larger ways it manifests in the increase in corporate and political scandals, and in the rising rate of violent crime.

Koshikawa Reiko is the founder of the NPO Edo Shigusa (www.edoshigusa.org), and the author of many books, including a Manga version, Edo Shigusa Nyūmon (Manga-ban), published in 2007 by Sangokan. Her books and lectures contend that Edo manners are a fundamental but endangered aspect of Japanese social behavior, and show many examples contrasting traditional manners with modern behavior.

Eight of my favorite Edo Shigusa

Edo Shigusa goes far beyond etiquette. It shows how to live with respect, culture, and style. In Edo Shigusa, we find many words worth keeping.

Act now, think on your feet (Soku Jikkō)

Japanese have a traditional distaste for talk in the form of excuse making. People were told that in problem solving it was more important to be hands on than to talk on. This is basis of kaizen, or continuous improvement, in which you think as you work, and make improvements as you go.

Use your sixth sense (Kan)

Much effort was made to refine the senses and develop the ability to intuit what was going on, rather than waiting to be told. This led to exceptional development in many aspects of culture and craftsmanship.

Answer with one yes (‘‘Hai!’’ wa ichido kiri)

It was considered important to answer immediately, and with a single yes, to show that you were fully attentive and ready to act. To say yes twice was considered flippant and rude, as in ‘‘Yeah, yeah. What do you want?’’

Pretend not to notice (Toki ni wa, mite minai furi)

If it spared a person’s dignity or gave them a chance to avoid embarrassment, it was sometimes considered best to pretend you didn’t notice. Helping a person save face led to loyalty and trust.

View the positive side of things (Yō ni toraete)

In Edo culture complainers were thought to be energy drainers. It was not only more pleasant to be around people who were positive, it was more energizing and productive too.

Don’t cross your arms or legs (Udekumi Ashikumi shigusa)

Crossed arms were considered to be a sign of stubborness or a closed mind, while crossed legs showed a lack of respect. In both cases, crossing your limbs also made you less ready for action, and more vulnerable to injury or attack. In less casual times, bad posture showed bad attitude.

Don’t cut across in front of people (Yokogiri shigusa)

In pedestrian traffic it was considered rude to cut across in front of someone. Even today, many Japanese signal with their hand before crossing in front of you.

Be polite in momentary encounters (Sokunoma tsukiai)

Edo was crowded and busy. Daily life included many brief encounters with people characterized by greetings, which were the lubrication of communication. In brief encounters, a smile, a polite word, a gesture of kindness can go a long way.

To start integrating these Edo Manners in your life, you can download the EDO SHIGUSA MANDALA, and begin making notes on what it means to you, how people respond to you differently, and how the Edo Shigusa Way works as well for us today.

On Tuesday, August 4, 2009, Reiko Koshikawa did a presentation at the Hotel Kabuki, in San Francisco, sponsored by the Japan Society, Japanese Chamber of Commerce, Japan Airlines, and others. The pamphlet created for this presentation is a treasure, containing fascinating definitions of many Edo Shigusa terms, in categories including the Edo outlook on humanity, view of the world, thoughtfulness, manners, taboos, and the Edo outlook on work. Download the Edo Shigusa Piazza Pamphlet, and enjoy a view of world that has much to teach our own. You can select the most meaningful Edo Shigusa for you, and create your own Mandala chart as a reminder to work on practicing it in your life.

Edo Shigusa is about consideration for others, having a positive attitude, and showing respect in body language and behavior. Many of the lessons from Edo Shigusa make good sense to us today. We learn this behavior by watching others. But as Fred Astaire said, the hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.

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Tagged as: active garage, Edo Shigusa, Edo Shigusa Piazza Pamphlet, Excuse making, Flexible Focus, japanese culture, Japanese Mannerisms, japanology, Kate and Leopold, mandala charts, manga, notice, noticing, Sixth sense, william reed

Imagine if your view of the world was restricted to what you can see in front of your face. This was the case for much of human history. It is hard to fathom to what extent technology has changed our view of the world, giving us zoom access to the outer reaches of space, the microscopic world, cameras transcending time and space, and the web connecting our world.

What if there was a tool that acted as a zoom lens for your life? What if you could step away from the fray to see the big picture, zero in for analysis or action, without losing track of how everything is connected? The Mandala Chart is just such a tool, acting as a viewfinder with flexible focus. In all periods of history, the people with flexible focus have been able to dance circles around the rest.

The biggest room in the world…

My personal belief is that the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement. This is compatible with the philosophy of Active Garage to be always experimenting and implementing to improve. Increased access to ideas hidden in foreign languages and cultures offer opportunities for a new magnitude of improvement.

Until now, the vast majority of knowledge about the Mandala Chart and its development has been hidden from view behind the wall of the Japanese language. The purpose of this column will be to cross over that wall, and make this knowledge available for the first time in English. I have lived for much of the last 4 decades in Japan, working in my own business as an entrepreneur, in a career as an author, speaker, martial artist, and calligrapher, experiencing Japan from the inside.

We live in a fascinating reality, in which history repeats itself, and at the same time the future is unpredictable. Generations learn the same lessons under entirely different circumstances. We live in a world in which actions speak louder than words, and yet the pen is mightier than the sword. Proverbial wisdom comes in opposite pairs.

One reason for this is that the view changes depending on where you stand. Where we get into trouble is when we assume that our fixed view is absolutely right, and all other views are wrong. If wonder is the beginning of wisdom, then flexible focus is how you sustain it.

A tool for all times

The word Mandala comes from Sanskrit meaning essence of the universe. It is Hindu and Buddhist in origin, and for thousands of years has been used in Eastern religions as a means to enhance spiritual teaching and meditation. It was introduced to Japan with Esoteric Buddhism in the 8th Century by Kūkai, who studied the Mandala teaching in China, and it similarly spread to all of the cultures of East Asia.

Thanks to the work of Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875~1961), the mandala has come to be known as symmetrical charts or geometric patterns that represents both the human subconscious and a microcosm of the universe from our perspective. Jung found mandala patterns to be fairly universal, ranging from the rose windows of the Gothic Cathedrals in Northern France, to the Navajo sand paintings of the American Southwest.

Its origins in religion, applications in psychology, and appearance as cultural archetypes are widely known. But there is one less-known evolution of the mandala in Japan, the Mandala Chart, which over the last 30 years has developed into a powerful tool for life planning, idea generation, project management, and continuous improvement.

The Mandala Chart was developed by Matsumura Yasuo, founder of Clover Management Research and of the Mandala Chart Association, who describes it as the practical framework of wisdom, without the external aspects of religion. It has evolved into a marvelous tool for flexible focus, with a popular annual Mandala Business Diary, a series of books in Japanese on its applications for life planning, eMandala Chart software, and a Mandala Chart Association to spread knowledge of its personal and professional uses.

Mastering the matrix

The Mandala Chart works like a multi-layered matrix. The word matrix means the field from which something originates or develops, and derives from the Latin word for mother. It is also connected to the word master. The matrix is the key to mastery, because it allows us to flexibly frame and reframe our world. It has been used throughout history in many forms, from the artist’s grid viewfinder for making accurate drawings; to the Golden Ratio and Rule of Thirds in photography; to navigational grids and mapping.

The frames in the Mandala Chart matrix can contain text, images, or links, each of which forms a window on the world, empowering you with greater vision and mastery of your own space and time. The fun begins as you start working with the tools and templates, and the applications are abundant.

It is no surprise that the Mandala Chart developed in Japan, a culture which has mastered the process of kaizen, or continuous improvement, almost as a way of life. The Mandala Chart is a lens through which you can see the big picture, the small detail, and the connections all at once. In future articles I will show how this works, and ways you can use it to make continuous improvements in your personal and professional life.

The Mandala Chart is a tool for applying practical wisdom from Japanese and Asian culture to solving the problems of modern business and living. This series will run weekly, and in future installments we’ll explore:

• The Art of Flexible Focus―how to gain clarity and flexibility of mind
• The Framework of Wisdom―how to practice the principles of wisdom in daily life
• The 8 Frames of Life―how to gain comprehensive life/work balance
• Mandala Tools―how to give structure to your ideas and schedule your dreams
• Japanology―cool themes on ways of wisdom from Japanese culture
• Thinking Inside the Box―connecting your consciousness to the roots of creativity
• The Temple of Templates―cool templates to get you started and facilitate the process
• Art of Abundance―how to get in flow and leverage your value

For a visual preview of what is to come, download the PDF Mastering the Mandala Chart.

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Tagged as: active garage, buddhism, carl jung, clover management research, hinduism, japan, japanese culture, kaizen, kukai, mandala chart, matsumura yasuo, sanskrit, william reed