THE LENSES WE WILL USE TO REORIENT
“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
​~Anais Nin

Our Orientation...

is that it is a time to change the way we grow ourselves. It is time to change the way we grow our leaders. Many of us grow older without ever growing up. Fire & Water is about growing up leaders and therefore changing the face of leadership as we know it. We do this by weaving together all we have learned about developing strong leadership and weaving it with ancient wisdom practices around the importance and process of initiation. 
 

Our orientations include:

• The Hero’s/Heroine's Journey & Initiation - Even though we will be walking together, we will be walking our own individual journeys of growth and development. Embracing the fact that we might at times be by ourselves but we are never alone. We will answer The Call and step into our own Departure from Norms, Face Our Own Ordeals surrendering to whatever life brings us, and Return with Recognized Gifts and new knowledge about our own unique genius in the world.

• Dagara Medicine Wheel - The wheel teaches that we all have a place in the world. It invites awareness of purpose, gift, and belonging. The Dagara Medicine was adapted for the west by Malidoma Some, based on the spirit medicine from the people of West Africa in Burkina Faso

• United Nations' Inner Development Goals - Which includes: "Being: Relationship to Self" which includes: Inner compass, integrity and authenticity, openness and learning mindset, self-awareness, and presence. "Thinking" which includes: Cognitive Skills, critical thinking, complexity awareness, perspective skills, sense-making, and long-term orientation and visioning.  "Relating: Caring for Others and the World" which includes: appreciation, connectedness, humility, empathy, and compassion. "Collaborating: Social Skills" which includes: communication skills, co-creation skills, inclusive mindset, and intercultural competence, trust, mobilization skills. And "Acting: Driving Change" which includes: courage, creativity, optimism, and perseverance.  

• Radical Presencing - The practice of presence is a most central core-competency for leaders in times such as these. It includes the surrender to working with what life wants -- found in stillness, courage, embodiment, and joy -- rather than expending all of our energy in trying to control people and things that aren't meant to be controlled.

• Living Systems, Emergence & Self-Organization - For several centuries, much of the scientific world has taught us to mechanize are orientation to working with people. It has taught us to dissect, command, and control. Humans are not machines. Humans are living systems. Living systems have capacity to self-organize, to evolve naturally to higher order and meaning. What if we learned more about how life organizes itself to impact the ways that we try to organize human endeavor?

• Grief Matters​ - We are a country that doesn’t know how to grieve. We think we can grieve alone but grief requires community. Because we think we will drown we will never go all the way to the bottom of our grief unless we have someone holding space for us. We tell the story that we all grieve differently, we don’t believe this is true, we believe that we all avoid grief differently and this story allows us to do that. The grieve is just the release, it’s the same for all of us. Until we release what no longer serves us there is no room for what does.