The Power of Ted

by David Emerald

  “The second difference is your Intention. In the Victim Orientation your intention is to get rid of, or away from, your problems. In the Creator Orientation your intention is to bring into being, or manifest, the outcomes you envision.

  “The third big difference is the Results you produce. The results of the Victim Orientation are temporary and reactive. With the Creator Orientation, though, you’re much more likely to produce satisfying, sustainable results over time. With each Baby Step you take from the Creator stance, you come closer to—or get clearer about—your heart’s desires.”

  Sophia chimed in, “Don’t think that Ted’s saying the Creator Orientation is all sweetness and light, or that there’s no such thing as a problem. I can tell you from experience that living from the Creator Orientation is actually more challenging. In the Victim Orientation, I didn’t have to exercise conscious choice: I just reacted to my circumstances. The Creator Orientation requires considering and choosing my response to everything that happens; taking many, many Baby Steps that eventually lead to manifesting my envisioned outcome. And in the process, problems certainly do come up.”

  Ted continued, “In the Creator Orientation, however, you cultivate the capacity to choose which problems get your attention. You select problems that will best serve your outcomes—and those are the only problems you actively work to solve.

  “It’s important to know that even when you adopt the Creator Orientation you’ll still experience anxiety at times. As Sophia said so well, the Creator Orientation is not all sweetness and light. Anxiety and fear are a natural and normal part of our experience. Creators, however, learn how to move forward in their lives with courage in the face of fear and anxiety. And there are no guarantees. Often you won’t know whether your heart’s desires are attainable until after you’ve put in a great deal of time, effort, and experimentation to make your envisioned outcome a reality.”

  Sophia added, “After Dan and I had been apart for awhile, I eventually chose to be open to another intimate relationship. As I began dating, exploring what I wanted in a relationship, I came up against a lot of fear and anxiety. Sometimes I thought the conscious, co-creative bond I was hoping for was just a romantic fantasy. I dated a number of men before I met Jake. Each person I met, and each experience I had while I was dating, helped me get clearer about the kind of relationship I wanted.”

  A flock of pelicans flew along the shoreline just a few feet above the surf. As I followed their flight, I wondered how long it would be before I was willing and ready to be open to a new relationship. I shuddered at the thought. I also felt a twinge of sadness as I realized I was much more certain about what I didn’t want in my life than I was about what I wanted to create. Where to begin? My mind was abuzz with questions. I buried my hands in my pockets and tried to make sense of it all.

  “I think I understand the idea of Baby Steps: taking the creating process one step at a time,” I said. “But how do you figure out which steps to take? How do you know where to start? Where do I place my focus?”

  Sophia gave my arm a gentle squeeze. “I remember so well what a jumble of questions came up when I saw how different it might be to take the Creator approach to my life. About that time I came across a wonderful passage from a letter that the great poet Rilke wrote to a younger poet he had taken under his wing.”

  Sophia reached into her beach bag and pulled out a journal, which appeared to be well worn. She opened the journal and looked for a particular page. “This is what Rilke said.

  “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

  A small sailboat bobbed out on the waves, its bright sails billowing with the sea breeze, drifting gently, serenely on the water.

  “Give yourself plenty of time in coming to the answers for yourself,” Sophia said warmly. “It takes time, and a lot of introspection and soul-searching, to get clear about what you really want to manifest in your life. People will begin to show up who will help you focus and sharpen your envisioned outcomes. In fact, Ted invited me to meet you so I could offer my support as you learn to live in the Creator Orientation. Others helped me to learn, and I’d be glad to help you, if you want my support.”

  As I took in Sophia’s kind offer, I looked out at the ocean to mark the sailboat’s progress. The wind was up, and the boat’s sails were stretched tight and full. I wondered if such a small craft could sustain the pressure of so much force and speed. The crew scrambled about on deck, adjusting the rigging. I just hoped they knew what they were doing.

  CHAPTER 7

  Dynamic Tension

  “David, there’s another aspect of the Creator life stance that I know Ted will want to tell you about,” Sophia remarked. “It’s the key to creating the outcomes you’ll be envisioning. Since I learned about this tool, I use it to approach almost everything in my life.”

  “There’s a very simple way to understand and harness the process of creating,” said Ted. “The tool Sophia’s talking about is Dynamic Tension. The way you create any outcome in your life is to hold the vision of your deepest desires. At the same time, though, you must honestly and accurately assess your current situation and how it relates to your greater vision. By doing this, you engage a tension between what is and what can be. This tension is the primary creative force behind the manifestation of any outcome. It’s as natural and powerful as the force of gravity.”

  Sophia removed the band from her wrist and handed it to Ted with a smile. Ted turned and gave it to me. He said, “This will help you get a grip on the principle I’m talking about. Take the band and loop it around the index and middle fingers on each hand. Now stretch the band. Your right hand represents your vision and your left hand your current situation. How does that feel, David?”

  “It’s tight,” I reported. “I can feel the tension between my hands.”

  “That’s right. You’ve engaged the tension between your vision in your right hand, and your current situation in your left. Now, if that band could speak, what do you think it would it say it wants to do right now?”

  “It wants to relax. It wants the tension to go away.”

  “Right! So, here’s the principle: All tension seeks to be resolved. It’s not only a physical reality, as you can feel as you stretch the band, it’s also a psychological principle. Human beings seek to resolve such tension all the time. If I say, “Knock, knock!” what do you want to say in response?”

  “Who’s there?” We all laughed.

  “That’s an example of resolving the tension,” said Ted. “Someone says, ‘Knock, knock!’ and there’s a tension, an expectation. You know to resolve that tension by responding, ‘Who’s there?’ It may be a silly example, but the fact that people dislike tension and will take action to resolve it—whether consciously or unconsciously—is a powerful principle once you understand it and put it to use.

  “In the case of Dynamic Tension, you can resolve the tension in either direction. You can let go of your vision (your right hand) and snap back toward your current reality, or you can move from your current situation (your left hand) toward your vision. Creators resolve the tension by taking Baby Steps to move from current reality toward their vision. When you do this, you tap into a fundamental and powerful creative principle that’s hard-wired into the universe.”

  “This one simple idea has had a tremendous impact on the way I approach every part of my life,” Sophia added. “When I decide what I want to create, it’s absolutely necessary to give myself permission to dream big—not to limit my vision to what I think or know to be possible.”

  “But wait a minute,” I said. “What if what I want to create or manifest in my lif
e is, in fact, impossible? Don’t you need to be realistic in choosing what you want to create?”

  Sophia was silent for a moment. We watched as a crab burrowed into the sand a little way up the beach.

  “That’s an important question, one that must be considered carefully. To limit yourself to only what you know or think is possible can greatly reduce your creativity. Allow yourself to dream, David. For instance, right now, ask yourself what you would do if you knew you couldn’t fail? What would you want, have, do, or become if absolutely anything were possible?”

  I thought for a minute and decided to play with Sophia a bit. “I’d love to be a seven-foot center playing professional basketball,” I exclaimed. “But that’s not likely, given the fact that I’m a middle-aged guy well short of six feet tall.”

  Sophia chuckled and took the bait. “Okay, let’s stay with that, David. If that’s really what you want, the key is not to let go of the vision. Instead, ask yourself how you can get to the closest expression of that vision, given the reality that you will never be a seven-foot basketball player.

  “So, what could you do given an accurate assessment of your current reality?” she asked. “You might join a men’s basketball league and play with that vision in your mind as a fantasy expression of your desire. Maybe you could volunteer to coach kids who have the potential of growing to a greater height and to develop the agility and skill necessary to play basketball professionally. Then, who knows, fifteen years down the road you might be sitting on a Sunday afternoon at a pro basketball game watching a seven-foot center out on the floor who used to be one of the kids you coached in the Parks and Recreation League. In that case, you could say that there was a part of you that did, in fact, become a seven-foot center.”

  Sophia went on, “Each of the Baby Steps you take to move in the direction of your dream helps you get clearer about the form that dream may take. While the reality is that you will never be seven feet tall or play professional basketball, by holding your vision and paying attention to current reality, you can create a way to express that vision in a different form.”

  Sophia had made her point. All I could do was smile and nod. “Got it!”

  Dealing with Anxiety

  “Sophia gave a great example of how Dynamic Tension works—or can work,” said Ted. “There’s another aspect of Dynamic Tension, though. Being aware of it will allow you to consciously and effectively draw on Dynamic Tension to create your desired outcomes. Remember what we said a few minutes ago, about how the Creator Orientation is not all sweetness and light?”

  “Right,” I said. “It also takes a lot of hard work.”

  Ted nodded, “It’s important to remember that anxiety and even fear are part of the human experience, and that these unpleasant emotional states very often raise their heads when we begin working creatively with Dynamic Tension. It helps to be aware that anxiety is part of the experience of manifesting. Anxiety has positive aspects, such as excitement and exhilaration, but it can also arise in ways that limit your effectiveness. In other words, you can have your anxiety but don’t let your anxiety have you!”

  “It took me a while to really understand the distinction between my own feelings of anxiety and the sense of Dynamic Tension—the creative force in the Creator Orientation,” Sophia added. “I have a friend who really helped me understand the difference. He used to teach skydiving in the Air Force. One evening I was sharing the principle of Dynamic Tension with him, and he pointed out that the exhilaration he felt jumping out of a plane was certainly not the same thing as gravity, the force that pulled him toward the earth as he fell. The force of gravity, he told me, contributed to his feeling of exhilaration, but exhilaration and gravity are not the same. Likewise, the force of Dynamic Tension is not the same as the feeling of anxiety that often comes up when we tap into it.”

  I pondered that for a moment. I understood the distinction, but it wasn’t clear to me why it was so important.

  “Living and working in the Creator Orientation is a conscious process. Anxiety is like a mischievous monkey chattering its way into your thoughts. If you don’t stay aware of its antics, it can quite easily propel you into the Victim Orientation,” Ted said.

  “How?” I asked.

  “Do you remember the Inner State of the Victim Orientation that I drew in the sand yesterday?”

  “It was anxiety,” I recalled.

  “Yes,” said Ted. “And if you allow anxiety to pull you in to reacting, you’ll limit the effectiveness that Dynamic Tension offers you as you attempt to create an outcome. So, David, create the tension between your two hands with the band again. Now, if you confuse anxiety with the tension between your vision, your right hand, and your current reality, your left hand, you’ll tend to react in order to release the tension, hoping it will get rid of the anxiety. Doing this may make you feel better but it will not help you create the results you want. So what is one thing you could do right now to release the tension?”

  “Hmm.” I looked at my hands. “Probably the easiest thing to do would be to let go of my vision.” I moved my right hand toward my left.

  “Absolutely! The easiest thing would be to compromise your vision. You could let go of or reduce your vision. You might convince yourself that what you want to create is unrealistic or impossible, or that you’re not worthy of such a lofty dream. Then you would settle for something less than your heart’s true desires. The reality, though, is that you can’t invest your soul in a compromise.”

  Seeing my wrinkled brow, Sophia added, “Let me give you an example. About a year ago, I decided to change jobs, to move into a profession in which I could use Ted’s principles in my work. I was working as a manager in the loan processing department of a bank, and I had really come to dread going to work, not to mention dealing with my difficult boss. I longed for a more fulfilling job but couldn’t afford to leave without having a new job to take its place, so I took the first offer that came along. I went to work as a trainer for another company. I thought that compromise was as close as I was going to be able to get to what I really wanted. It ended up being the wrong move. Now I realize that I settled for something much less than my envisioned outcome.”

  “So, what did you do?” I asked.

  “Well, I’m still working on resolving it. I’m still in that job and giving it my best effort. At the same time, I’m working with a coach to clarify my vision of what I want my work to be. I’m giving myself the time to get really clear before I make any more changes.”

  Ted nodded. “So you could compromise your vision to resolve the tension and get rid of the anxiety you might feel; it’s the easiest, most immediate, and most common reaction. The other way is actually much more subtle; it has to do with how you assess your current reality. It’s all too easy not to tell the truth about your current reality—to deny, minimize, or rationalize it away. There are many ways to shade the truth or put a certain spin on the current situation by telling yourself it’s not as bad or as good as it seems.”

  Sophia chuckled softly. “My current job is actually the result of both those ways of reacting. Not only did I settle for something less than what I wanted, but when I was interviewed for the training position, I told myself I could probably create a coaching program once I got into the organization. I even dismissed the recruiter’s comment that they considered coaching to be a function of the employee relations department rather than the training group.”

  “One of the keys to tapping the power of Dynamic Tension is to tell yourself the truth about your current reality,” said Ted. “This is often the most challenging aspect of the process of manifesting an outcome, because people tend to see reality as either rosier or gloomier than it actually is. Telling the truth in this sense means being objective and detached enough to see reality as it is without labeling it as either good or bad.”

  “It’s not as easy as it sounds,” Sophia added. “I have a quote on my bulletin board at work to remind me of this principle. I look a
t it every day. The friend who gave it to me said it was from a former corporate executive. It says: ‘What determines your destiny is not the hand you are dealt but how you play the hand. And the way to play the hand is to see reality for what it is and to act accordingly.’ That is the challenge—to see reality for what it is.”

  Ted said, “Paying attention to what is true at every point along the way while you continue to hold your vision lets you make realistic decisions about which Baby Steps you will take to move yourself closer to your goal. As you move forward, you may resolve the tension by changing your situation, by modifying your vision as you get clearer about its final form, or by finding an entirely new path that will lead to your destination.

  “At the same time, David, it’s important to be realistic about what forward progress looks like. The way of creating is not a smooth and continuous upward curve of achievement. Some of the steps you take may end up being detours or out-and-out mistakes. By staying focused on your vision, though, you’ll find even those steps useful in the creating process. There’s no such thing as a wasted Baby Step. Every step will either take you closer to or further away from what you intend to create. And that process will give you priceless information to spur you onward. If you continue applying these principles, I guarantee that you will achieve remarkable and often unpredictable results throughout your life.”

  “Ted is right. The Creator way of being can be quite magical,” Sophia mused. “Baby Steps help us move in time from our current reality toward a vision. Many times a Baby Step is just that: an incremental act that serves your vision. But there are other times . . .” Her voice trailed off, and I noticed her eyes were moist.

  “Other times,” she continued, “the most amazing things happen. I call them the twin sisters: Synchronicity and Serendipity. It’s when unpredictable, spontaneously helpful events appear to just happen. Something I need shows up right when I need it. I open a magazine or a book to just the right page that answers a burning question or that inspires me to take a more effective approach. Or the right person comes into my life at just the right time.”