Posts by Paul Costello1
1-Never underestimate the transformative power of individual relationships. (1999 Cathy Hurst Belfast quoting the USA Ambassador to UK)
2-You are either part of the problem or part of the solution- You cannot be neutral and every excuse is a choice. (2000-07 Belfast Orientation Weekend)
3-The listening contract means People will listen to you to the extent that they feel you have listened to them.( Presidential Plot 2008)
4. Don’t act into the story your opponent is acting out of. (The secret of Non Violence- Presidential Plot)
5. We need to find the story that changes the story.
6. Don’t come critical, come curious.
if you can’t come curious, be curious about why so critical.
If you can’t be curious about being critical,
be critical about why you are so critical.
If you can’t be critical about why you are so critical,
best not come at all- stay home. ( inspired by Peter Maurin-Easy Essays) For nsl teams
7. Stories turn walls into windows
(Wall of Stories)
8. If you come with expectations, best be disappointed early so you can replace it with anticipation (work placements) Stories work best when they are full of surprises. ( Team nsl 2010)
9. It’s not what you say that matters, it’s what gets heard
10 Our job is to listen in such a way that we can invite people to tell us the stories that they most need to tell. And to tell our stories in ways that invite the most engaged listeners.
11.Our job is to tell the stories that compel our listeners to get beyond their defenses and be open to change. Real stories of witness do not provoke argument but engagement.
12 Calm your biology, claim your biography, commit your soul (Mary Fowler)
13 The distance between a reaction and a response is about 10 seconds in real time- but in history, it can take up to 100 years. ( inspired by Victor Frankl)
14 A reaction to a reaction makes for a reactionary world-
A response to a response makes for a responsible world.
15 What we give meaning to, we give power to.
16 Things will be OK in the end- if they are not OK now, it’s because it is not the end. (John Lennon possibly?)
17 The story of power boils down to the power of a story
18 Don’t talk about us without us (NSL mantra)
19 NARRATIVE ETHICS
Everyone has a story
Everyone has a right to tell it, in their own time and in their own way.
Everyone has that right over anyone else’s right to tell it for them.
We have got to stop stealing other people’s stories.
20 Be a voice not an echo- Tell the story that only you can tell, before you repeat the scripts others have written for you
21 Transforming Conflicts requires we turn a generation obsessed with “If Only” to becoming a generation ready to relentlessly ask “What if?”
22 Leadership needs to shift from looking back in fear crying “Never Again” to looking forward in hope to dream about “Never Before.”
23 The start of any revolution is when people decide to grab back their own story (Barbara Meyerhof-Michael White definitional ceremony)
24 Meaning shifts through time, so do not ask Why or What or Who, ask “Where,” where have we shifted- we need a new geography of meaning (practice of narrative maps)
25 THE ANALYSIS- Those who want change don’t have power and those who have power don’t want change
26 Old story leaders see the present as the past just repeating itself over and over. New story leaders see the present as the future rehearsing, getting ready for a maiden performance
27 Let your attention always serve your intention. Beware that stories have the power to hijack your attention to betray your intentions.
28 It is easier to act into a new way of thinking than it is to think into a new way of acting (praxis, habit)
29 It is not the stories we tell that matter in the end- but the stories we create that others will tell
30 You have a right to speak but you do not have a right to be heard- you have to earn that.
31 A story with inspiration but no invitation is like hearing about the amazing party and not being invited. (JFK Ask not”)
32 You can either understand or you can judge but you can’t do both. If you judge, then you will struggle to see beyond your own “righteousness.” If you strive to understand, you will find that there was nothing to judge in the first place.
33 Certainty comes easiest to those who understand everything or those who understand nothing (the Knowledge illusion)
34 Stories take us there. They can travel such that no wall can shut them out and no checkpoint can lock them in. Stories don’t need a passport or a visa.
35 You will hear bold assertions “The facts of the matter,” the reality is,” “it is obvious that…” but refuse to allow another’s opinion to define your reality. Every utterance is situated in its time and place. We must challenge the false certainty that feeds the egos of war.
36 Appreciation is the soul force of peace – those who take and take and take soon bankrupt the economy of grace
37 “You are all terrorists” he screamed- Was it a threat, an insult, or the cry of pain of someone who realizes that the world he has been defending is falling apart and that his story no longer adds up. Rage is is not a tactic-but the last attempt to salvage a fallen world. (about NSL memeber)
38 The act of war begins in the imagination. So too the acts of peace (James Hillman)
39 “The greatest weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” (Steve Biko)
40 “There is nothing we can do” is exactly what the powerful want the oppressed to believe. “We can’t do everything but we can do something” is where all revolutions begin and where the powerful know their days are numbered. (Projects for Change)
41 In the end, it is not the results but the memories- did this experience help fund the well of meaning from which you create and give enduring value to your life. In the endless flow of time, will you tell it as “Once upon a time?”
42 Under stress, remember the three S’s are Soft, Slow, and Simple- conflict feeds on hard, fast, and complicated. (Ron Redmond)
43 Energy is a condition of position- and position shapes the horizon of possibility.
Beginnings We Create,
Middles are complicated so we correct, clarify and recommit,
Endings we Complete
44 Post It Diplomacy- write a note that Recognizes to Appreciate to Invite and to Apologize – a different kind of RAP sheet.
45 Stories are never innocent and the most dangerous are those that pretend they are.
46 The four Windows of Change-
Change challenges the old story of the old story,
to offer a new story of the old story,
to become the new story of the new story,
that even if it is made at the end to sound like the same old story,
no matter- change has changed things such that we no longer notice the change- that is the most profound kind of change
47 Stories run on the engine of human desire and are fueled by memory and dream.
48 We refuse to accept that the conflict has to be the defining story of our young people’s identity project.
49 The three shifts, from problem to possibility, from victim to agent, from excuses to responsibility.
50 We refuse to live inside a problem saturated story ( Michael White)
51. What matters is not the story you listen to, but the story you listen through.
52. We must turn our anger into rage and then, connecting our anger to our core, turn our rage into courage. (Cou-rage)
53. The world is always in flux such that either you are doing change, or change is doing you.
54. God hears all the stories and that is why the great religions all define God as a God of mercy above anything else. To judge simply means you don’t have all the stories.
55.Tell a story once, you are telling it
Tell a story twice, the story is telling you
Tell a story thrice, the story is you.
Tell it twice more, the story is us.
56. If you want to be serious about change- you have to be serious about power.
If you want to be serious about power, you have to get serious about organizing. ( Alinsky) CPO
57. Those who have power don’t want change.
Those who want change don’t have power.
58. If there is a future worth living into, there is a present worth learning in, and a past worth learning from.
59. The story that captures your keenest interest might not be a story that is acting in your best interests.
60 I refuse your invitation to be complicit in your acts of self-diminishment
61. A story without an audience is a bird without wings and a fish without water. You are the audience so realize your power to feed or starve a story.
62. I want to evolve the audience, oops, I mean involve the audience. Actually, no, I want to evolve them too(Kit Turen)
63. Despair means that we have reached those furtherest limits of life where our knowledge and our experience no longer feed our hope. That does not mean the end, but rather the start of a quest to build our hope not based on what we know or feel but on what lies beyond, in what we have yet to know. ( meeting with Seth and Kelly)
64. A normal reaction to a normal situation is normal as is an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal, but a normal reaction to an abnormal situation is not normal, and an abnormal rection to a normal situation is also abnormal.
65. “We must connect our rage to our heart, to the core of our conscience to so we access more than just our fury, that we see what it is lighting it up, and what in our heart of hearts we know is wrong, what needs to stop, what is intolerable, and when we have done that, connect rage to heart, to what in French we call “Cors” we create Cor and Rage, or COURAGE.” paul costello 2018
66. “The Future can only happen when the present lets go of its past. The Past can only be itself when the present lets go of its future. The Present can only appear when the future beats back the past and its claim to colonize the space of possibility.” P Andrew Costello with F Scott Fitzgerald
67- If you want to talk about change, you have to talk about power and if you want to talk about power, you have to talk about organizing, and if you want to talk about organizing, you have to eventually stop talking about it and doing it. Praxis, says Marx.
68. You can only act into the future, but people keep trying to act into the past and confuse the domains of change. Agency is about space to act into, and the only space wide enough is tomorrow. Keep ever widening tomorrow.
69. Start with Where because who you are is where you are. Don’t start with Why, and even if you do, you are at the start which is where. It is the where of the why that makes the why matter. A why 30 years ago might not matter much now, but there is a why pressing in on you now, where you are showing up.
70. Act and the world has to react. Without action, the world can stay the same as it ever was and doesn’t much care ( inspired by Tommy Shortall omi)
71. “It’s all a matter of growth” ( T.Shortall omi at SMS)
72.”The past was once the future that has come and gone.
The present is the future that came and is going.
The future is the future that still lies ahead and is as yet, still to come. No matter how you look at it, they are all futures.
There is no ghost in the machine.
Or if there is, it’s the ghost of tomorrow wanting a say in today,
Feeling so aggrieved that it wasn’t heard enough in yesterday.”
” P- Costello from the future
73. The Middle is going to be Complicated- expect that. Don’t complicate it more than you have to, but it’s meant to be complicated to keep it interesting.
But don’t complicate the beginning, when you are supposed to create,
And don’t complicate the ending, when you are supposed to complete.
Complicate means you have to clarify before you recommit. It’s all good. But don’t stay there. It’s meant to be on the way, not get in the way.
74. I can understand what past you are acting out of, but what matters more is What future are you acting into?
75. The question to ask is not “What are the facts?” but “What is the future?”
76. Memory seems to be about the past, but no, it is how we give the past a future. And how we give the future a past.
77. They tell us we need to live for Now, but Now last a second, and it cannot sustain itself. What we need to be building in the present is a history of the future that we most want to live into. That is the kind of Now worth paying attention to.
