by tashmcgill | Nov 18, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Travel
You can learn a few things in Las Vegas. More than blackjack or how to play the house advantage. You can learn a lot about being tough, surviving and rebirthing yourself. After all, Las Vegas is a city in the desert, without a water source close-by. Lake Mead is some 45min away. None of the greenery here looks real, its irrigated golf courses and landscaped gardens a far cry from the stark desert ash everywhere else you look.
Amidst the lights and neon signs, the truth of Vegas is a testament to the best and worst of human experience. Here, each rebirth of Las Vegas can be seen etched into the landscape of architecture, signage, history museums and photographs. While new hotels and resort complexes rise up on the dust and ashes of previous monuments, others sit abandoned on the Strip, rusting slowly in the parching desert sun.
This is human. We live out of our history and everything we are becoming is from the context of who we’ve been. My mistakes and my triumphs exist side by side, the evidence of both scattered through stories, opportunities and lessons learned along the way.
The best of us learn how to drill down and find water in the desert. We learn to build our future stories out of and beside the rubble of our histories. We let our darkness live as shadow of the lights.
Sometimes we refurbish. We take the old structures and ways of being, strip them out to bare bones and begin again. New furniture and fixtures make a difference. We can change our habits through careful new architecture and design. Human beings are like houses – we build and design our lives carefully and those that dwell in them should be carefully thought through.
Sometimes we leave the rusting, decaying pieces just within view. Sometimes they are the challenge yet to come, a restoration so complex or unprecendented that we haven’t figured out just how to approach it yet.
Either way; this is a testament to human survival. When we triumph and when we fail – we go on. We begin again, we build more, we stretch more. If we fail but do not persevere, if we do not find another incarnation of ourselves, we do not survive.
Vegas knows this. Her rugged history of men and women escaping taxes and the law is written in the dust of this desert. No matter how many shows, new hotels and great restuarants pop up here – this is a place with a slightly dark underbelly, where people are often looking to lose themselves for a night or a weekend.
But that’s not all that Vegas wants to be – and why wouldn’t she want more? We, as people, are rarely satisfied with the status quo for long. So now, she reinvents herself as a city for the arts, a city for performers, for families, for luxurious and clean escapes.
In this city, rebirth and survival is found through reinvention. But it’s never reinvention from scratch. It’s actually evolution. Core ideas reshaped into new expressions. Take the circus. Once upon a time, circus trains travelled the deserts of the mid-West, slowly fading one by one from railway tracks and then from caravans until people began to say – the travelling circus is dead.
Not here in Vegas. Here, for more than 30 years, Cirque de Soleil has rebirthed traditional circus into a haven for the performing arts community. Gymnasts, dancers, contortionists, divers, fire-breathers – all have found a home in the new Circus that people travel all over the world too. That’s what Las Vegas has become for many – the home of Cirque.
Evolution through history. Future, present and past standing next to one another in a single view. Rebirth and survival.
Perhaps it’s best expressed like this: once, I knew how to live until it no longer made sense. The world around me changed enough I knew I must change too, in order to survive. So I reshaped how I lived in this new world, and found myself building new habits and ways of being. I am still present, still full of what has been but I am newer too. I am a survivor.
by tashmcgill | Nov 15, 2014 | Culture & Ideas
I’m sitting in the airport lounge, listening to a flurry of Mandarin to the left of me and a Southern drawl to the right of me. Their human commonality is they are all loud talkers. I’m a loud talker too, but I love little more than silence and quiet.
It’s one of many contradictions, that I love to make noise as much as I long for the quiet. I know a couple of people who are quiet talkers. It makes me lean in, not only to listen to what they say, but to pay closer attention to them. I like the difference between someone who makes you lean in versus one who makes you lean back.
I’m sitting in the airport lounge, drinking a long black espresso and beside it, a whisky and soda. One is deep, rich and will awaken my senses. The other is light, smoky and crisp but will eventually soothe me into easy sleep. I like to drink them at the same time just to experience the spectrum.
I celebrated my birthday with friends a week ago, because I love to throw parties. A dear friend said to the crowd, ‘Tash manages to be spiritual without being weird.’ Another contradiction.
I’m leaving for the other side of the world to see people I love in places I long for. I’m excited and nervous, hoping it will be all I’m wishing for – connection, richness of experience, deepness of love shared between kindred spirits. I’m hoping that each relationship I cherish will grow richer and stronger and more through the chance to be present with one another.
But I, as always, grieve quietly the absence from others that is required to make those connections possible. I’m full of joy and full of sorrow, albeit momentarily, because I cannot bear to be apart but I cannot bear to stay.
I, like always, am intoxicated a little by the mystery of travelling alone. Wondering who will cross your path, knowing the complete freedom to be and see and do whatever takes my fancy along the way. I am, increasingly, tired of travelling by myself. I find I no longer want to see new places without sharing the experience with another pair of eyes, another set of senses. I like to be alone; I am desperate not to be alone.
And here is the deepest contradiction of them all. I am strong. I have an emotional backbone made of steel. It might be best to say I am grounded; at peace with the vast array of emotion that strikes to the core of the human experience. I can grieve and laugh in the same day, I can (sometimes) stand calm in the face of chaos, I can navigate through the storm.
But oh, how I am soft. Tender and gentle, longing for peace. I have become strong in the face of the storm only because I have faced it for one hundred days. I can bear the stern light of the sun because I have lived in the desert. I can withstand what presses in from the outside because I have been born with steel inside me.
I am soft and I long to yield. I want not to withstand. I want to be comforted, I want to crumple. On the inside, my soft and gentle heart holds to the steel of my skeleton. My vulnerability has slowly been creeping out, slowly losing it’s hold on steel. I like it, I like that it means I need others in that state.
I am a woman of contradiction. Not complicated, just faceted. Never just one, I am one and other.
I am not strong. I’m vulnerable. More than I realise most of the time. I need others to hold me up and take of me more often than I know.
by tashmcgill | Nov 7, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Leadership, Strategy
“A leader is a dealer in hope.” Napoleon Bonaparte.
By all accounts, Bonaparte was such a contradictory character that it is hard to imagine he inspired much hope or empathy with those he led. Yet, he led hundreds of thousands with a vison of triumph. His words are still true today. Whether you promise or deliver a vision of an alternative future (which eventually you must, or perish as Bonaparte’s men did); you are dealing in hope.
(more…)
by tashmcgill | Oct 26, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Leadership, Mind, Strategy
It’s Friday night at 6.01pm. I’ve just clocked out 43 hours in a 4 day work week. I’m about to go to dinner to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I’ve managed to see friends a couple of times this week, smashed fewer than usual gym sessions but still lost weight. I’ve meditated, left room for spiritual things and even caught up on a favourite TV show. I’ve eaten right, but not too right. I’ve been well-behaved but not too well-behaved. I even managed to do an early morning daycare run for one of my best friends; playing aunty to their 2 year old girl. And I’m telling you honestly, if this is my life, this is not enough.
This is not about being too busy. This is not about being tired or trying to achieve higher heights at work. This is not about the tension between the corporate career life I’m in and the not-for-profit, youthwork and hospitality life I love. This is not to complain because I know I’m blessed. It’s not because I’m lonely or pining for what I don’t have. I am wringing the marrow out of life on a daily basis. But this is not enough.
I live between two conflicting philosophies; one that compels me to use whatever I’ve got in my hand to do whatever is in front of me and the other, calling my attention to the horizon and all the possibilities beyond it. One hand holds tight and says, ‘be good, be useful’. One hand reaches out towards what might be and says, ‘be more, do more’.
I have to get comfortable telling the truth, to myself as well as others.
No matter how hard I work at my job and how much better I can be, or how much I achieve,
(with strengths and weaknesses)
No matter how rich and deep the social circle,
(too good already)
No matter the gracious chance to love other people’s kids,
(I’m so grateful)
No matter how healthy or strong or skinny I might become,
(with all the trappings of vanity)
This is not enough.
I am a Futurist, as well as a few other things. I’m always looking to the future possibilities and trying to figure out how to get there. But that’s not why this is not enough. It’s not enough because these things are meaningful for other people, not for me.
I’ve come to know that I work better when I am part of a team, because I find meaning in the dependency that we have on one another. It propels me forward. It gives me a story to tell, a story that is ours. It’s not always easy to form a team or to form a team that has shared meaning and story but it’s even harder to be one person who’s lost the meaning of their own story.
I once had a singular focus and ambition and I’ve spent a few years now trying to find my meaning in other stories and in new places only to circle back around.
I can only imagine that this is close to what some mothers feel, when their careers and life paths change to centre around newborn babies and growing children. A re-orientation, losing a sense of self while becoming part of a new team. Sudden, the story of our kids tends to be centre stage.
So this, what defines my life right now – is not enough, simply because it’s not the story I want to tell at the end of my days. Or even today. The meaning I’m after (the ambition that has simply been buried and biding it’s time) is still the same. The values that drive me are still deep at the core of who I am and the story I want to tell.
I wrote a collection of these lines in 2008:
there are the dark days
that cloud the mind right from the start
there are the eulogies i compose
melodies i’ve learned to sing
by heart when i’m alone
afraid my life might be a song of sorrows
unless i find the meaning
there is a quietness that i have never shaken
a terrifying absence and conviction
that most of what i dream will never come to pass
i imagine life too big before i start
but my ambition is to make a difference
as large a one as i might ever conceive
if my name is never known
the ambition is the same
i’d make a difference in your heart
i’ve read ten thousand names
and whispered them aloud
i’ve spent long nights awake
perfecting every part
i’ve listened to the heartbeat
of a thousand lives
and heard the same refrain
and my ambition is to make a difference
collecting all the stories my life is made of
and if i could somehow remember all their names
my ambition was to make a difference
and their names would make the finest start
The truth is, I do want more. Maybe it’s because I want to have children of my own to invest in and it could be that’s selfish. But I also want to make a difference to the world at large. I don’t want or need fame, but I crave influence – to enable change for the many. I’m ambitious enough to believe I could do it. In fact, in my deepest secret self, I believe I’m meant to, somehow, be part of something bigger and more significant than my life alone.
At high school we completed the clichè ‘write your own eulogy’ assignment. I wrote simply, ‘She made us think differently.’
I still want that, and so this is not enough.
by tashmcgill | Oct 23, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Leadership, Strategy
“You just kind of run on instinct,” he said, “but that has to be validated. People can’t just take your word for it.”
It was a late afternoon conversation with a colleague and I was informing him of progress on a current project. I mentioned that I’d put that progress in a presentation deck ‘because I’ve been told people will take me more seriously that way’. He replied immediately, “Yes, it will help. You just kind of run on instinct, but that has to be validated. People can’t just take your word for it. Other people don’t just wing it like you do.”
While I’m almost certain it wasn’t his intention, I felt belittled. It’s frequently surprising to me, how one little paragraph can leave you feeling so … misunderstood. Instinct is not about gut feelings. Or even feelings at all. We might use that language to express ourselves, but Instinct is a science. Instinct alone is not a complete solution to understanding people or what must be done. It’s a tool that gives insight, but it must be applied alongside pragmatism, strategy and with a dose of compassion if Instinct is to get you anywhere at all.
The subtext of his statement was that instinct is somehow not an equal science (artform) to rationalization. A repeat of the centuries old tension between the Schools of Humanities and Sciences, despite both originating from the foundation. The rational view is that because Instinct is harder to define and quantify, it cannot be as reliable or as trustworthy as the other sciences. Instinct is something more primal than our civilised, evolved selves. This is far from the truth, however.
Instinct is as much as a science as mathematical theory. It is the collective noun we give to layers of distinct and meticulous habit, discipline and skill. It is a finely tuned practice of reading the visible and aural signals that human beings give one another. It is listening for the minutiae and tracing countless details about people, projects, relationships, influences, priorities.
Mostly, it is about understanding and knowing how to observe and engage with people, both as individuals and more challengingly in a room of people. It is about filtering important information from really important information and disregarding the trivial.
The trouble with Instinct, is that it is a science masquerading as a mystery. People with these skills can turn up into a room with little context or history and make enormous progress in single meetings, because they are tuned in to decipher what people want and what people have to give. What appears to be pulling something out of thin air, is actually closer to extracting what was sitting there all the time. Sometimes Instinct just helps you articulate it with people, or for people.
Why is it that salespeople sometimes have that ‘pull it out of thin air’ appearance? Why someone thinks I’m ‘winging it’ in a meeting room? Because the science of instinct is rarely a visible one. It’s mapping the details of what you see and hear at a million miles an hour, against what you already know and what you understand people want. It’s about seeing the connections, visible and invisible. It’s the observation that will tell you who the powerful people in a room are. Observing how they engage and interact will teach you how to approach, gauge and influence them. In the same way no-one is born with fully-formed speech, you cannot expect to have good Instinct, if you do not practice and craft the skills required to execute it. You cannot simply ‘turn up and perform’.
Most rational sciences you can teach to people with formulas and technical examples. But how do you teach someone to see or teach them to listen? Really, how do you? I have tried to explain how I am listening and observing in a room. It gets too complicated far too fast, but I understand that I must come to understand it, if I am to explain it.
How do we explain it?
There are all sorts of words for instinct. We call it intuition (I am highly intuitive on the Myers-Briggs scale), awareness, being tuned in. The more spiritual you are, the less rational and scientific your vocabulary for instinct is likely to be. Words like prophetic and healer appear. And while some people are wired with empathy, to read and respond to emotions and circumstances around them, the truth is sometimes the most emotionally disengaged have the best instincts around. Divulged of their own emotional entanglement to a situation, they can comprehend the information in front of them most appropriately.
When we make decisions because we ‘feel it was right’, often that means we have layered in our own conscience, our fears or agendas, our hopes or our risks. Instinct is collecting clues and paying close attention to where they map together and belong.
Spiritual abusers and manipulators are often masters of Instinct, seeing exactly where vulnerabilities exist to be taken advantage of. Many false spiritual leaders have enjoyed how instinct masquerades as mystery, in order to propagate their own mythology.
Instinct Is Fallible
Lastly, if anything solidifies instinct as a science, the sheer fallibility of it does. The finest instincts can be taken by surprise, miscalculate the signals and falter when it ought to stand firm.
So you train and develop your instincts in every setting, the same way you would to go to war. Work them, stretch them, test them. Recognize that you are a practitioner of a science and Instinct is something you should work hard for.
Then, one last thing. Respect those who have invested time and energy to fine tune their instincts. It’s not a strength that stands alone but when added to your talent pool, it can make a difference. When someone says, ‘that person has good instincts, let’s get them on the team,’ it’s because they know how to close a sale, how to progress a job, how to bring people together and how to listen well. They decipher the fantasy from the reality. You need them, even if it feels like their science is a mystery to you.
