Fuck Your Principles?

So far, I love The Firestarter Sessions.

One of the things I really love about this ebook is that Danielle states right up front (in the prelude) you shouldn’t just agree with what she says–you should think about it and decide for yourself if you agree with her or not. To me, this is probably one of the best lines I have heard from a mentor trying to impart their knowledge.

What did I do with this?

I found something I disagree with.

From The FireStarter Sessions and at “best business advice i’ve ever received, part 1”

Fuck your so-called principles.
- Mr. A., lawyer

Some young TV producers and I were very tangled in a very good-for-them but bad-for-me contract. “It’s not about the money grab they’re going for,” I ranted to my lawyer. “I don’t care about the money. It’s about the principle of the matter. What they’re doing is so wrong and they bloody well know it.”

“So you want to drag this out for months because of your principles?” he said. “You want to sink a few more grand into this because of your principles? I’ve had a lot of clients over the years who have made themselves sick, wrecked their marriages, or drained their finances to protect their so-called principles.

Of course the Producer Girls are wrong. They’re greedy twits. You could countersue and probably crush them. But fuck your principles and get on with your life.”

And so I did.

The above case describes a power struggle between Danielle and the Producer Girls.

So, what Danielle is saying here is that, in this situation, she was never going to be able to teach the Producer Girls “they are so wrong.” In this case, throwing money at the situation wasn’t going to help.

But she could get out of the situation. Once the contract was up, she didn’t have to renew it. And now, out of the situation, she never has to do business with them again unless she chooses to. She can do business with other people–other people who aren’t going to treat her the way the Producer Girls treated her.

That’s still standing by your principles. She just made the decision that it wasn’t important enough–it didn’t benefit her enough–to teach the Girls they were wrong.

Unfortunately, there are LOTS of people who aren’t going to “get” what we believe in. There are lots of people like the Producer Girls who may try and take advantage of you.

Standing up for our principles doesn’t mean we have to teach them to everyone we come into contact with, no matter what. It means we choose how to live our own lives. We choose to do business with people who we want to do business with–and on what level we want to do business with them.

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From “principles: the perils and the ecstasy of clinging to your ideals”

Principles can wreak havoc in your life. When Galileo plea-bargained with the Catholics he let his values be publicly steamrolled. But secretly, he stayed anchored to his astronomical ideals (“Sure I’ll confess to heresy, just lock me up so I can get back to my white paper!”) He played the system back.

Then we have guys like The Crucible’s John Proctor who let those “weighted with authority” push him to the brink of extreme choice: yes to our truth, means no to yours. John was unwilling to play along and the pilgrims hanged him. He stood his moral ground and left his wife a widow and his kids fatherless.

One thing not taken into consideration here is why the two people in the above statements chose to do what they did.

Galileo’s choice was simple: 1) to stand up and say that he believed what he believed and be put to death for heresy or 2) to state publicly that he was wrong and to continue living under house arrest.

He chose to make the required public statement saying that he was wrong for saying what he did. In the latter years of his life, he worked on a book called “Two New Sciences” and this book is the reason he is called the “father of modern physics.”

What would he have gained from death at the hands of the Church?

I think Galileo’s death would have caused the truth to be hidden for much longer. Perhaps it would have showed the Church’s power to be much greater–and proponents of the heliocentric theory of the solar system would have trembled in fear as one of their greatest advocates was killed by an enemy more powerful than they.

Galileo’s death would not have benefited anyone.

On to John Proctor of Arthur Miller’s play, “The Crucible.”

According to the SparkNotes for “The Crucible”, one motif of the story is “accusation, confessions and legal proceedings.” During the Salem Witch Trials, the judges would accuse and accept nothing but guilty confessions therefore lending weight to the accusations.

Proctor attempts to break this cycle with a confession of his own, when he admits to the affair with Abigail, but this confession is trumped by the accusation of witchcraft against him, which in turn demands a confession. Proctor’s courageous decision, at the close of the play, to die rather than confess to a sin that he did not commit, finally breaks the cycle. The court collapses shortly afterward, undone by the refusal of its victims to propagate lies.

It is not only his principles that he is dying for. The benefit John received was the knowledge he ended that cycle and no one else would be put through it again. This means his wife, his children, the villagers… They were all safe now.

John’s “playing along” would have solved nothing except, perhaps, they might have left him alone. Instead, he is responsible for the end to the cycle of accusations and confessions.

It’s that “choice” thing again.

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But again, we shouldn’t blindly follow principles we don’t understand or haven’t fully thought through.

From “expand your life, take your dogma for a walk,”

But we need to return to continual questioning of our beliefs (and our faith) if we’re interested in expanding. And communing. And the thrill of certainty. Without certainty, you go mad. Without inquiry, you wither…

Fessing up to the follies of your dogma can burn a lot of energy — like rockets do before they take off.

In this article from White Hot Truth, Danielle talks about dogma and questioning what our beliefs (and principles) are. We want to expand ourselves, right? We want to grow as people, as human beings–that’s ultimately what we’re all here for, right?

You should know WHY you believe what you do. And, every now and then, refresh yourself on those reasons.

The problem comes when we get so stuck into our dogma and into our beliefs and principles that we have lost WHY we do these things in the first place. Then we become like the Church in the Galileo example–afraid and angry that our all-high beliefs have been challenged, because what if we’re wrong? What does it mean what we believe is proved to be wrong?

If we’re truly looking for truth, sometimes we might just BE wrong.

But that’s ok. Because we’re not perfect and, you know what? We have the ability to change.

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So what do you think?

(Blockquotes have the original emphasis.)

Keep Moving

I found this in my swipe folder, but don’t remember where I grabbed it. So, if you know who to credit, please let me know and I’ll provide a link asap.

The CEO & owner of the company I’m launching is in town, so I’ve been off the radar. He arrived last Monday and will be heading out this Thursday. I am really happy to report that I used Danielle’s Branding & Identity chapter to focus and frame our discussion of the brand we’re creating. I’m hoping that later this week I’ll be able to post a more detailed post on the resources I used, the questions that arose and how we tackled the task at hand.

Dan, the CEO, is based in Seattle. The administrative headquarters for our company is located in Siem Reap. Our field office is in Takeo, Cambodia. So, having him in town is an intense visit fueled by lots of strategic discussions, big ideas and practical concerns. Plus, we have to fit in trips to both the field office and administrative office. However, it’s these creative discussions and strategy sessions that keep me going!

Anyone else working on the branding module and worksheets?

If not, what chapters are you working on?

Kari’s Story–What’s Yours?

My passions are: writing, photography, neurology, creativity, politics, and, of course, spending time with my daughter.  I’m sure there are more, but I can’t think of them at the moment.

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For a while now (probably since the beginning of the year anyway), I’ve been searching for that perfect motivator, that piece of information that will bang open all the doors in my life and all I’ll have to do is to reach out and grab opportunities as they pass my fingertips.

It’s taken me a while–and lots of free ebooks–to realize it ain’t gonna happen like that.

And, you know what?  In the end, that’s probably a good thing.

But I looked for this during my college years.  I would wander around the halls, feeling like I was missing something that someone else could give me… A key to unlock all the boxes and then these problems would be so much easier to solve.  I felt like I was missing something.

That feeling killed my passion for the subject.

Seriously.  Try getting a Master’s degree when you feel as though you don’t have enough background information–or even the desire to DO the work to earn your degree.

It didn’t take me long to realize I was out of my element.

Accepting I was out of my element and acting on that knowledge took longer.

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Leaving school was huge for me.

By the time I left, I was ready–I’ve not missed it since. Even once.

The huge part was telling the world I had been wrong.  I actually didn’t want to do what I thought I did.

For four years, I had told everyone –THIS– was what I wanted to do with my life.  I was going to go to This School for my graduate degree and then get a post-graduate degree from This Other School.  Yeah, it was hard, but with enough drive, I knew that I could do it.

Somewhere along the line, it dawned on me that I wasn’t real good at this stuff.  Concepts weren’t nearly as easy as I had thought.  Problems became almost unsolveable–and dull.  Uninteresting.  Undesireable.

B. O. R. I. N. G.

So, I quit.  It took everything I had to convince myself that was what I wanted to do–once I had my husband’s permission (so to say), quitting my Master’s degree was the easiest thing I had ever done.

I knew that I was going to face a lot of people who I had told I was going to be an X.  Having my husband support me helped me have the strength to leave my unhappiness and my stress about “living up to expectations” behind.

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So here I am.  I found Danielle’s White Hot Truth and The Firestarter Sessions.

Now, to work on what starts my fire.  What I really want to do at the moment–I want to encourage others to start working towards their personal bit of happiness as well.  I hope my story and watching me as I progress will both encourage you–AND me

So, what’s your story?

What Lights My Fire

While I was laid up in the hospital with nothing but time on my hands, a friend asked if she could skype and run some ideas by me. Bored and thrilled to be of use, I said yes. So she called and we talked. She had written a letter to one of the Ministries here in Cambodia on behalf of her organization, one of the many hoops you have to jump through to become a registered NGO.

I noticed a disconnect between the passion she expressed verbally to me on the phone call and the clinical language of her letter. She kept talking about how she needed to make the Minister understand the drive of the organization. Their passion. My advice was that if she wanted to hook the Minister, to get her in the gut and make her care deeply about the mission of her organization, then she was going to have to ditch the “business-world” language and start writing from the gut. Value statements. Statements that start with the words, “We believe.”

I’m a firm believer that your writing should sound like your conversation. I write the way I speak. Good, bad or ugly, it’s authentically me. I used to believe that I should write in a professional manner – with big words & lots of therefore’s, and however’s and in additions. You know what happened? My writing was sterile. The people I wanted to attract to my cause couldn’t get through all the bullshit to actually get on board.

So, now I believe in simple and direct statements. Clarity. Passion. Feeling. Authenticity. And as I’ve made this transformation, I’ve realized I have a lot to offer. I am a dominatrix of editing. I have an innate ability to see where you’re going and help you boil it down to the basics.

I’m looking back and recognizing this pattern throughout my career. When I worked at a major handbag company, I was teamed up with a designer (who I adored). She was working on the largest collection and had the task of revamping a bunch of classic styles that needed a major functionality facelift. On top of that, she was asked to debut new styles. At one point we had 30 new styles to add to a range of 60 existing styles. Clearly, that’s too much too fast. In the beginning my task was to encourage creativity, but later it was to step in and edit. To ask probing questions: does this bag really offer something new? Is there another bag already in the collection that serves the same functionality? Do we absolutely have to debut this at this time? And through that process, we narrowed the offering down to what was essential. What made sense.

In a lot of ways editing (or weeding and pruning as my friend Deidre calls it), is a gift from my background as a theater director.

Luckily, I’m now seeing the myriad of ways that I can apply this skill to serve others. Editing design collections, editing thoughts or letters or even helping to edit an elevator pitch.

I really enjoy editing. It lights me up. It thrills me to help someone get closer to their own message. To help someone get out of the way and see that they already have the tools they need.

Surely, editing is a task that I want to keep doing.

What Brought Leigh To The FireSS

What brought you to The Fire Starter Sessions? Why did you decide to purchase the e-book?

I came to white hot truth, and ultimately The Fire Starter Sessions, on a quest to become a better version of me. A more authentic, loving and generous iteration of myself.

I have a lot of passion and a lot of things I want to accomplish. In my heart of hearts, I’ve always felt like I was put on this earth to be a theater director. That is, until the day when I realized I want so much more out of life. I want to create a vast network of creatives who can help each other. I want to volunteer or work in a place that needs human resources, that is human bodies and hands & hearts to help heal. I want to explore local markets and see young indie designers across the globe. I want to combine all of these loves so that I’m not only taking from the global community, but also giving back. And of course, I still have pangs where I desperately want to find my way back into the rehearsal room.  So the question I’ve been living is, how do I marry all of these seemingly different passions?

Last fall I asked myself, “If you could absolutely anything, what would you do?” Then I wrote down everything that came to mind: start a stationery line; design accessories; open up the shop my bestie Natasha and I have daydreamed about; attend every Li Edelkoort presentation ever; travel. travel. travel to Hawaii, London, Siem Reap, Tokyo, Agra Fort, Bombay, South Africa, Mexico, Paris & Morocco; go to SXSW every year, including the panels; scout, recruit, hire, help collaborate with and connect hip, indie, young, emerging &/or inspired designers; meet Gala Darling; live out loud, authentically, happily and beautifully.

In the seven months since I wrote that list, I’ve accomplished quite a bit. I’m living my life the most sincerely since, well, ever. I moved to Siem Reap to start a socially-based weaving business. I work with the most amazing artisans to create Cambodian ikats that will appeal to Western markets. I’m designing and developing a collection of fashion and home décor accessories.  I’m doing so many of the things I set out to do.

So, I came to the Fire Starter  Sessions with two goals:

First, I want to figure out what is it that I, Leigh, want out of life. How do I want to feel? How do I plan to meld all my interests together into a vocation that thrills me?

Secondly, how do I launch an authentic and successful brand? How do I give this project in Cambodia everything I have and then some? How do I insure success for a population that is striving towards financial freedom and independence? What can I do to make sure that the West gets the message?

For me, The Fire Starter Sessions is about both personal and professional development. It’s my way into the life I want to lead.

I’m dying to know, what brought you to The Fire Starter Sessions? What do you hope to discover?

Light A Fire, Spread the Burn

I am embarking on the magical journey that is Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter Sessions and don’t feel like going at it alone. I thrive on collaboration and community. I believe deeply that the creative process is shared. So, let’s band together and accomplish more than we ever thought was possible.

This blog is for: those of you living, breathing, working The Fire Starter Sessions.

Ways to Engage:

1. Share your journey. E-mail me (leigh @ constant-cravings . com) for authorization to post. Talk about what brought you here, what you’re struggling with, what you’re celebrating. This space is open for the pitfalls and eureka moments.
2. Read & Comment. I strongly discourage lurking. Your voice is valuable. Use it. Join the conversation.

The quest to create a small business or make the world better can be a solitary and daunting journey. Much like The Artist’s Way, those of us actively using the Fire Starter Sessions have the opportunity to craft a community of creatives who believe in authenticity, generosity and passion.