When I travel, I often take my ipod and listen to The Charlie Rose Show episodes I have downloaded with a notebook and pen. I take copious notes so I can go back and understand them later. Every show I find several comments by his guests that I cannot let go of for days. Today, I listened to his show about the new movie "Doubt." The movie is based on the 2004 play by John Patrick Shanley. While the cast and conversation were interesting, I wanted to know more because so much of what I deal with in my work is the "feel" of doubt in people.
I googled the play and found that the opening line is "What do you do when you're not sure?"
My first thought was what a great question. The second thought was something physicist Richard Feynman said that science gives us the freedom to doubt...
The interview left me with so many other thoughts, about myself, about people close to me, and about our leaders...which it seems to me is exactly why Shanley wrote the play.
I would love to know how you answer that question. Please email me (dougnewburg @poweredbyfeel.com) if you're willing to share and let me know if I can use your answer in this blog.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
This is my first blog post. I'm not quite sure where this blog will lead, but my hope is all the little notes I'm constantly sending my friends and colleagues about how people around the world are powered by feel can find a larger audience here. I look forward to also learning with you about how you feel. If you're curious about me, you can learn more on my website www.poweredbyfeel.com and bit by bit here over the coming months.
So why feel? Because what I learned from hundreds of interviews with world class performers was that feel impacted their performances. They viewed feel as a skill, a skill they could improve. Haven't we always talked about the best of the best as having a feel or a touch? Once I started doing these interviews, I began hearing "feel" everywhere.
People used the word all the time -- unless you asked them to. Then somehow it became taboo or touchie-feelie. But given the freedom and safety to talk about what mattered to them, the conversation almost always included feel. Most of all what I realized was people who performed well often described how they "felt" doing something as their reason for doing what they did in the first place. And they performed well because of how it felt. I heard tough, hardened, high performing people actually use the word feel along with words like magic and beauty and wonder. They talked about their work, not their jobs. They were going somewhere... powered by feel.
They seemed to define work differently than most people did. They sought wellth, a personal combination of everything that was good for them, not wealth or material success that cost them their health. They created the things that made them wellthy, instead of spending their lives having then consuming. Twenty years later, this discussion still fascinates me. I find and hear new ways people describe feel and its connection to work and life. For years I have documented these quotes and interactions and experiences and sent them via email to my friends.
This blog is my attempt to "expand myself into the world" as musician James Taylor so aptly described his own musical journey. This blog is also my attempt to make the case for feel, to help remove the stigma of feel as a four letter word. I have come to believe that without a developed sense of feel, we struggle to find our work or to do it well leaving us to simply do jobs that as Studs Terkel once said are "too small for our spirits. "The journey, it seems for many people, begins in wonder. Their inner energy, energy we feel, seeking information in the form of a question. How? Why?
So I will end this entry at the beginning with a quote from astronaut Neil Armstrong. Enjoy.
So why feel? Because what I learned from hundreds of interviews with world class performers was that feel impacted their performances. They viewed feel as a skill, a skill they could improve. Haven't we always talked about the best of the best as having a feel or a touch? Once I started doing these interviews, I began hearing "feel" everywhere.
People used the word all the time -- unless you asked them to. Then somehow it became taboo or touchie-feelie. But given the freedom and safety to talk about what mattered to them, the conversation almost always included feel. Most of all what I realized was people who performed well often described how they "felt" doing something as their reason for doing what they did in the first place. And they performed well because of how it felt. I heard tough, hardened, high performing people actually use the word feel along with words like magic and beauty and wonder. They talked about their work, not their jobs. They were going somewhere... powered by feel.
They seemed to define work differently than most people did. They sought wellth, a personal combination of everything that was good for them, not wealth or material success that cost them their health. They created the things that made them wellthy, instead of spending their lives having then consuming. Twenty years later, this discussion still fascinates me. I find and hear new ways people describe feel and its connection to work and life. For years I have documented these quotes and interactions and experiences and sent them via email to my friends.
This blog is my attempt to "expand myself into the world" as musician James Taylor so aptly described his own musical journey. This blog is also my attempt to make the case for feel, to help remove the stigma of feel as a four letter word. I have come to believe that without a developed sense of feel, we struggle to find our work or to do it well leaving us to simply do jobs that as Studs Terkel once said are "too small for our spirits. "The journey, it seems for many people, begins in wonder. Their inner energy, energy we feel, seeking information in the form of a question. How? Why?
So I will end this entry at the beginning with a quote from astronaut Neil Armstrong. Enjoy.
Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
New Website Launched
It is the Fall of 2008 and Powered By Feel is pleased to have launched http://www.poweredbyfeel.com/ live. This site and its features are designed as a place for you to go to learn and share about feel with others who care about it. We are inviting you join the Powered By Feel community. Also, subscribe to this blog and get our reflections, news, observations about feel.
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