Why the Four Forces?
When I was four or five years old, I wished a burglar would break into the house. I was convinced that “bad people” had simply forgotten who they were. I was certain they simply needed reminding that they were good and loved, and that they would “wake up” and remember who they really are.
It didn’t take long to discover that my belief about burglars was different than everyone else’s.
This became a theme as I grew up and struggled to understand a world that didn’t seem to match my inner knowing and longing. I’m guessing that many of you may have had similar feelings.
My dad and I would talk about religion as he drove me to school. I loved our conversations, even though I often struggled to understand the idea that what religion you believed determined where you spent eternity. Many aspects of religion just didn’t make sense to me, even as I found myself afraid of displeasing God. I began the classic search for the “meaning of life.” What was the point of it all? Often adults teased me for being too old for my little body.
When I was six, my maternal grandmother committed suicide. Subsequently, my mother underwent 10 months of hospitalization with treatment for depression and her childhood of abuse. The events left me feeling that I needed to love more, try harder, and figure out how to help and stop the pain of others…too young to understand that it was also about trying to end my own pain and confusion.
My family decided to help girls who had been abused in childhood like my mother. A decision that I am proud of my parents for making. I was nine years old when we became a foster home for four to six girls at any one time, from the ages of twelve to seventeen. Their stories were beyond heartbreaking. One girl had been locked in a closet and fed dog food for months. Another had three abortions by the time she was fifteen, and the suspected father was her father. These kids didn’t know what it felt like to be loved and valued. Why did the world have to be so hard? Why was there so much suffering?
As I came into my sexuality and young womanhood another dramatic theme emerged. Relationships and sexuality became a powerful path of growth and paradox. Miraculous connections, love, and ecstatic experiences, were contrasted by dramatic events and a feeling that something was horribly wrong with me.
This theme showed up in multiple ways, more times that I can count. The most striking example is that five times, men have asked me to marry them and then disappeared in rather dramatic ways. I waited to be picked up for a date to meet my fiancé’s parents; he did not show up and completely cut off any communication without any explanation. Another asked to marry me before leaving for a six-month military tour, only to find out that three weeks later he married another woman. A third was a no-show at the airport, followed by a call from one of his friends saying he had committed suicide. He hadn’t. Did I say pretty dramatic?
Through the confusion and struggle, there were also profound experiences of the joy and pleasure of being human, and of our capacity for love, consciousness, and the ecstatic. I couldn’t let go of the in-your-bones-knowing that we were meant for more, and evidence existed proving more was possible. We didn’t have to suffer so much. There was an amazing world right there, if we could see it and work together. We just had to figure out how.
The parallel paths of trying to understand the human condition, our place in the cosmos, and how to embrace the power of love, relationships, and sexuality all continued to weave together through my adult life. It was my professional journey that sparked the question that would become the coalescing point of all these paths and the starting point of discovering and understanding the Four Forces and a path forward.
Better World Confusion
By the time I was in my early twenties, I was committed to creating a better world as my life’s work. After realizing that life in government service seemed to be more about politics than service, I decided that cross-cultural understanding and social entrepreneurship was the best path.
After college, I lived and worked overseas for two years. I saw the green movement blossoming in Europe and was hooked. While I returned home to start grad school, instead a car accident put me in bed for six months. Out of boredom I worked on a business plan for an idea that came to me while living in Ireland. My excitement grew, and I decided to delay grad school. With $100 to invest, I started my green business.
After two years of holding Planet parties (think eco-products instead of Tupperware), I opened an environmental store and within a couple of years was joined by my life partner as a co-owner. It was early in the green movement when compact fluorescent light bulbs cost $38, and the idea of recycled toilet paper brought a look of horror from my father.
I soon saw the movement as bigger than the environment; it was about how to live consciously. My store morphed naturally into what I called a holistic living store that also included holistic health, wellness, and consciousness related products.
It seemed like a very natural range of products and information. At the time, what fascinated and confused me was how each person coming into the store reacted differently. There were reaction themes.
The hardcore environmentalists complained that the products weren’t pure enough and demanded I remove the 50-percent recycled paper because it wasn’t 100 percent (which wasn’t available like it is now). Self-declared hippies were angry that I was a capitalist and thought I should sell the products at cost, or better yet, give them away because money was bad. The more spiritual people accused me of feeding fear and helping to cultivate negativity with the educational environmental products. More than once, I had someone from a large retail chain come in and demand I share my product sources in the name of a better world, and then got angry when I didn’t give them the information (this was before the Internet).
It became clear, once again, that how I saw the world was different. What seemed obvious to me, wasn’t so obvious. I started to make a big shift in how I held the idea of a better world.
8 Billion Better Worlds
What does a better world look like? Seems like that should be obvious, right? We all want equality and an end to poverty, war, and hunger. We all want freedom, happiness, and human rights for all. Access to health care and a healthy environment—of course, everyone must want these things!
Still, we find ourselves disagreeing about what constitutes human rights in the world—the United States has a very different view than China for example. Within the United States, we fight about the reality of climate change, what it means to have a healthy environment, and how to get there. Even those on the same side disagree about the funding and specific goals. Individual interests get mixed in and suddenly simple ideas turn into complex debates.
It’s not so obvious after all.
If you ask 100 people what a better world looks like, you’re going to get 100 different answers. While some will overlap, there is also a real chance that your idea of utopia is likely someone else’s nightmare. Now multiply that by nearly 8 billion people of different cultures, religions, values, ages, and so on. It is not surprising that we find ourselves having challenges at every level of society.
I realized that a better world doesn’t exist.
Instead there were 8 billion better worlds, all different. Without a shared vision of a better world how can we possibly work together?
Each unique version is based on getting what we want personally. How do we individually get what we want at the same time that everyone else gets what they want too?
Here we are at the critical point of deciding what the world’s future will be. This book shares an overview of what I learned in the quest to find answers. It has been the core of my personal and professional journey over the last 30 years. I also lay out what I believe to be a possible path forward through our current challenges to create an amazing world together.
It is a path that depends on you getting what you most deeply
desire while being willing to help others get what they want too.
A better world has no chance of happening if it means that we don’t get what we want. However, do we know what we want, what we most deeply desire?
What I Discovered
My quest started with the thought that maybe underneath all the differences, there are common desires, things that we all want. Perhaps finding these highest common desires, could be a starting place to build a vision for the future.
Surprisingly, I found that all desires could be distilled to four. At their most basic, the common desires are:
Connection. We want to love and be loved. We want to belong and be part of something greater than ourselves.
Expression. We want to be seen, heard, and recognized. We want freedom, choice, and the ability to get our desires met.
Purpose. We want to contribute. We want our lives to have meaning and impact. We want to feel there is a higher order to life and that we are a significant part of it.
Growth. We want to thrive and have tomorrow be better than today. We want progress, new experiences, and a feeling of creative, tangible mastery over our world.
Our individual and cultural worldviews are created by our beliefs, strategies, misunderstandings, and experiences around trying to get these four desires met. While it may seem a bold statement, I’ve found that every problem in our lives and in the world is caused by confusion and misunderstanding about how to get Connection, Expression, Purpose and Growth.
The Perfect Cliché
While it was surprising to see the simplicity of only four desires, they led me to a completely new way of experiencing the world that was life changing. The more I worked with them personally and with others, the more I realized that they are not only desires, they are forces that move us. Even more powerfully, they are a set of capacities and skills that offer us a way to consciously shift paradigms.
In many ways the word paradigm and the idea of paradigm shifting are over used and could be called cliché. Yet, I’ve not been able to find a more perfect concept for what happens when you work with the Four Forces, and what is happening in the world.
A paradigm shift changes our reality at a fundamental level, often in dramatic ways. Stephen Covey says it well, “If you want small changes in your life, work on your attitude. But if you want big and primary changes, work on your paradigm.” The definition of paradigm is a system of concepts, values, and practices that together form a way of viewing and experiencing reality.
Being able to consciously shift paradigms is more important than ever because what used to work, no longer works.
Paradigm Shifts Needed Everywhere
You are probably familiar with the challenges facing our neighborhoods, country, and the world. There are many indications that what we decide now will have dramatic consequences for the future of the human species…for good, bad, or perhaps even extinction.
This critical choice is often framed as a set of actions, policies, regulations, and values. But this leads us back to where we started. Whose version of the world do we chose? We end up in the same place…with 8 billion different versions of what we should do.
I believe that the growing problems we face are not being created by a lack of finding the right combination of rules, regulations, and agreement of values. I believe they are getting worse because the world has fundamentally changed—and we have not.
I would like to suggest a different kind of choice. The choice to consciously upgrade our core human operating system, our “humanware.” Different than past versions of personal growth, it requires a completely new way of engaging, it requires us to shift paradigms not only individually but collectively.
We are in the midst of profound changes that are affecting every aspect of life. We are interacting with an old operating system when the world around us has upgraded—without notifying us! Each of these changes is a huge exploration but let’s take a very brief look at five of the big shifts that are happening.
1. Change has changed.
Not only has the rate of change accelerated, it has shifted from linear to exponential. Here is how futurist Ray Kurzweil describes the difference: “Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality…is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.”
This exponential change is happening in all areas of our lives. In his book Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in an Age of Accelerations, Thomas Friedman quotes Astro Teller, CEO of X Development LLC (formerly Google X): “Our societal structures are failing to keep pace with the rate of change…. Everything feels like it’s in constant catch-up mode…The only adequate response…is that we try to increase our society’s ability to adapt…humanity has a new challenge: we must rewire our societal tools and institutions so that they will enable us to keep pace.”
2. We have taken a quantum leap.
In the last 100 years of discovery, quantum mechanics is in the process of changing fundamental ways we think about matter, reality, and even consciousness. It is generating mind-bending concepts such as: “Atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts,” according to Werner Heisenberg, pioneering scientist of the uncertainty principle and Nobel Prize in Physics recipient.
David Deutsch, quantum physicist and pioneer of the field of quantum computation describes the emerging field of quantum computers as “…nothing less than a distinctly new way of harnessing nature…. It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes, and then sharing the results.” Quantum physics, technology, and neurobiology are colliding not only in the creation of quantum computing but also in artificial intelligence and a host of emerging fields.
3. There is a revolution in consciousness.
There is a perfect storm happening that is creating the opportunity for dramatically fast shifts of consciousness.
The Internet has changed not only our access to knowledge but also has expanded way beyond the role of an encyclopedia or personal address book. As innovator Elon Musk describes, “…it’s like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a…collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system.”
Steven Kotler and Jaime Wheal in their book Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work document what they call “the biggest revolution you’ve never heard of, and it’s hiding in plain sight.” We are spending over $4 trillion a year on what they call the “Church of the Ecstatic.” Whether it is meditation, psychedelics and sacred medicines, neuro-tech or tantric sex, large numbers of us are persuing ways to expand our consciousness.
We are waking up, but “Now what?” What do we do with this new awareness?
4. Our role as humans has changed.
Up until recently, humans have evolved along with the rest of the planet. We have been passive recipients of Darwin’s evolution or God’s divine plan (depending on your cosmology). Now we are directly impacting our future at multiple levels. No longer are we at the mercy of linear evolution, we are being called to be agents of exponential creative, conscious evolution for ourselves and all of life on the planet.
Our choices individually and collectively are now determining everything from what species will survive, our genetics, superbugs, and climate, to the sci-fi implications of quantum computing and artificial intelligence. At every level we are impacting the planet and our evolution. The question is, are we going to consciously embrace our new power and the responsibility it brings? The gap between reality and our current way of thinking is only making the problem worse. In fact, a whole new category of problems has emerged.
5. Problems have become wicked.
Growing up in Western Massachusetts, wicked was an indication of something very cool. In this case, it’s not so cool. Wicked problems is a term created by Rittel and Webber in the 1970s in order to describe issues in urban planning. Since then, we now face these kinds of problems in almost every area of our society. In fact, there is a whole new category called “Super Wicked Problems” named in 2007.
Wicked problems cannot be fixed with a single solution, instead they are complex, multidimensional, with many stakeholders and rapidly changing factors. Climate change, homelessness, poverty, health care, epidemics, and famine are examples of wicked problems. Creating a better world that 8 billion people can agree on, is the perfect example of a wicked problem. Author and innovation expert Marty Neumeier sums it up beautifully: “The narrow-gauge mindset of the past is insufficient for today’s wicked problems. We can no longer play the music as written. Instead, we have to invent a whole new scale.”
I believe we are being called to a whole new way of playing music together. We are being called to become a different kind of participant.
Shifting from Orchestra Mode
I have to confess; my musical experience is limited to a flirtation with classical guitar that resulted in a terrified performance of “Dust in the Wind” for my eighth-grade talent show. Even though I am not a musician, I’ve found that one of the most helpful analogies to illustrate the shift we are being called to make is similar to having to change from playing in an orchestra to jazz improv.
Many of us have been taught that life is like an orchestra. There are two basic roles: You are either the conductor or one of the players. Everyone is expected to play the same song. We expect that life is predictable and as long as we are following the rules, life should be good.
There is one problem. In our analogy, everyone wants to pick the song.
When we are in this orchestra-style mode in our lives, it can feel we are at the mercy of others’ decisions or the external environment. We are either powerless to get what we want, or we have to fight to get our perspectives heard. As everyone tries to get their song played, all sorts of power dynamics, manipulations, politics, and general chaos emerge.
We try and solve the problem through compromise or consensus. But each of these have their own problems. Compromise often ends up with someone sacrificing or feeling resentful. And with consensus, we run into the problem of 8 billion better worlds—which version do you pick? While a great ideal, in my experience, even when we reach consensus, it often looks very uninspiring. The result often is the lowest common denominator, a palatable “baby food” version that everyone can swallow. And let’s face it, consensus still doesn’t remedy our deep desire to have our song played.
Finally, knowing what song you are playing, requires that you stay in known territory. Part of the crazy making in our current world is that this simply doesn’t work anymore. There are too many variables, and change is happening too fast to stay in the realm of comfortable and known.
Also, as you grow in your mastery of life, the known becomes boring. We long for something different. Something more…
Shifting to Jazz Improv Mode
In my experience, the paradigm shift we are being called to make is from this orchestra mindset to one like a jazz improv ensemble.
Performers have their unique instrument (Expression) and hold the intention to contribute (Purpose) and create together (Connection). Rather than a fixed song, the joy comes from what emerges as you play, experiment, and lean into “what wants to happen” (Growth). Each player offers their solos (Expression), and they naturally support the other players knowing every other solo is as important as their own (Connection). The music itself becomes a “player” (Connection) and what emerges (Growth) is greater than any one song that any player could have imagined. Every individual contribution (Expression) is vital, distinct, and unique at the same time…there is only one movement (Connection), the magic of the whole emerging (Growth) into something so much greater than its parts (Purpose).
Even if you don’t like jazz as a form of music, I believe the essence of this process is what many of us have been longing for…
In our lives.
In our relationships.
In our communities and organizations.
In the world.
…But there is a catch.
The jazz improv mode of life requires a completely different stance and approach. It also requires a different set of skills, perspectives, capacities, types of structure, and even an expansion of your senses. It requires a completely new operating system.
It requires you to show up fully, in deep Connection, Expression, Purpose, and Growth all at the same time.
It requires you to be all-in.
Life All-In
While this is simply an analogy, what if this could be how we felt moving through our day? In our experience of relationships? What if our work environments left us feeling this joy of being part of something greater than ourselves every day? What if collectively we could apply this approach to climate change? And wouldn’t it be amazing if instead of war we could create beautiful “music” together?
What would it look like to live “all-in”?
As I was contemplating this question, it struck me that we are constantly bombarded with headlines such as “Make Money” and “Get 10,000 Facebook Friends.” It inspired a poem that I offer as a possibility of what life could look like from the jazz improv mindset.
Life “All-In”
You don’t want to make money.
You want financial freedom and real wealth, doing the work you love, using your gifts and having a positive impact.
You don’t want a relationship.
You want a soul mate, not a romanticized cliché, but rather someone who challenges you to be a better version of yourself. A partner who is willing to open deeply, reveal him- or herself and really KNOW you. Someone who encourages your uniqueness and remembers who you really are even when you can’t.
You don’t want to get laid.
You want to have mind-blowing sex, be broken open, and stretched at the edge of your capacity for love, pleasure, and the divine.
You don’t want 10,000 Facebook friends.
You want a kickass army of allies who have your back, encourage you to live big, and are there to help you create, mastermind, and bring into the world what you know is possible. And of course, who know how to have fun in the process.
You don’t want to change your body.
You want to thrive, be filled with vitality, and love being alive. You want to be healthy and fully enjoy the pleasures of being in a body while remembering you are so much more than a body.
You don’t want to be enlightened.
You want to live fully in the world, awake, wide open, and on fire. You want to explore the edges of consciousness while celebrating your humanness and embracing the rich spectrum of emotion and experience.
You don’t want to get control of your life.
You want to feel the excitement and challenge of evolving…the satisfaction that comes from growing, expanding, and pushing yourself to new levels of mastery.
You don’t want to change people.
You want to enjoy their uniqueness and be seen in yours. You want to collaborate, cross-pollinate, and evolve together.
You don’t want to change the world.
You want your own personal utopia. Not one of those dull dystopian versions of sameness, but rather a utopia of utopias. A reality where your utopia enhances everyone else’s. A world filled with possibility, expressions of uniqueness, and deep collaboration with each other and with life.
And most important, you don’t want to pick one of these.
You want them all…
In This Book
The intention of this book is to give an overview of where we are and the path forward to creating an “all-in life” as well as an “all-in world” for everyone.
This book has five parts, each with three chapters.
Part 1 starts by sharing in this chapter, why the Four Forces are so important and the vision that I see is possible. Chapter 2 explores what the Four Forces are and how they are present at every level of our lives. Chapter 3 gives an overview of the Four Forces Framework and the path to using it to get what you want and what the world needs.
Part 2, we focus on exploring the first force, Connection. Chapter 4 explores the common ways we use Connection and some of the confusions and challenges that can come up. Chapter 5 dives into a new way to frame Connection and what it means to be in deep Connection. Chapter 6, offers practical ways to cultivate Connection in your life.
Part 3 explores Expression; Part 4, Purpose; and Part 5, Growth. The same way there are three chapters in Part 2, Connection, there are three chapters for each of the forces that cover 1) common uses and possible confusions for the force, 2) new ways to frame and understand the force, 3) practical ways to cultivate the force in your life.
In the final chapter, an afterword, we bring together all of the basic concepts readers learn about in the book and talk about next steps from the life perspectives of relationships, work, and politics.
What Languages Do You Speak?
The Four Forces Framework brings together many different aspects of life, perspectives, and worldviews, each a different lens that comes with its own set of beliefs, values, and language. It can be tricky, if not impossible, to find common language that resonates with everyone because of these differences. As we will explore throughout the book, one of the new paradigm skills is learning how to translate these different worldviews and languages. My intention is to use neutral language without watering down the information. With that in mind, I would like to address two languages that I have found vital and the most controversial: the languages of the nonphysical and quantum physics.
Too Woo-Woo
I often catch myself and hear others using the disclaimer “I know it sounds woo-woo but….” I also hear the term being used as a way to dismiss information that is too “out there” and deemed unscientific and fantasy based. “That’s too woo-woo for me.”
I remember having lunch with a very prestigious psychiatrist who was also dean at a college. At the time and before it was popular, I was owner and producer of an alternative health and spirituality event called the Whole Health Expo. He had quite a lot to say about it, all negative.
I remember him saying, “I think it’s dangerous; you are encouraging fantasy worlds that hurt people.” He accused me of taking advantage of people who didn’t know any better and weren’t very savvy.
In response, I said, “Yes, it’s true, there are some ‘out there’ ideas like animal communication” Before I could finish my sentence, he loudly interrupted:
“Now animal communication…that is real!” he exclaimed. “I talk to my dog all the time!”
He then spent the next 30 minutes filling me in on all the latest scientific data about telepathy with animals (there is a lot!). From that common ground, we were able to expand our conversation to other aspects of the nonphysical.
In my experience, we all have had some sort of experience that defies science, and yet, we cannot explain. Knowing what language to use when describing these experiences and concepts can be challenging. Talking about the nonphysical is difficult without engaging some of the language of the new age, Buddhism, religion, or other spiritual lenses. As we develop a more sophisticated, new paradigm approach to these ideas, a new language is emerging.
In the meantime, I pull from several lenses and sometimes let my woo-woo flag fly. My hope is that the ideas are compelling enough for you to try them yourself and see what happens.
Similarly, there is the language of science which is also evolving and stretching into new concepts and paradigms.
Excuse My Geek-ish
If I could have a parallel life, I would be a theoretical physicist in search of the illusive Theory of Everything (TOE). In a way, I’ve been in search of my own version of a TOE minus the math. In this life, at best I might call myself sort of geek-ish, on a good day. Though most of the geeks I associate with would call even that a stretch, I enjoy exploring the ideas and concepts of the evolving-edge sciences.
The risk of cliché comes up again when you combine quantum science with any kind of social change, consciousness, or especially spirituality. Quickly, the phrase pseudo-science appears. However, I have found it impossible to explore the ideas in this book without including these concepts.
The jazz improv mindset also includes being able to be more multidisciplinary in our approach to understanding the complexity of life. Over the years when researching an idea or insight I’ve had about the Four Forces, I’ve often discovered that the search results frequently include cutting-edge scientific thought.
I share my understanding of these connections throughout the book, from a layperson’s perspective, to pique your curiosity and invite you to research them for yourself as well as to open up a more inclusive conversation.
How Amazing Can We Make the World?
I believe we have an incredible opportunity to step out of black and white into the world of technicolor—for ourselves, our families, communities, and our future.
A better world is not enough.
I believe we are being called to create a world that is beyond anything we have yet to imagine. What started with the question, “How can we create a vision of a better world that we all can agree on?” requires a shift, to embrace a different question:
How amazing can we make the world?
We can no longer choose between a great life and a better world. We have to have both. An amazing world requires both.
I’ve found that the Four Forces Framework provides the perspectives and skills needed to become agents of creative, conscious evolution for ourselves and others. When we align with the new reality, upgrade our skills, and learn this new way of playing—change can happen fast.
Before we dive into each of these forces, let’s look at how I uncovered the Four Forces, what they are, and how they inspired a framework to help us upgrade our humanware.