Step Away from Your Thinking

In a conversation yesterday about the decline of print newspapers, my husband asked a simple question . . .

My Husband: They report the news. It’s their business. Why didn’t they see it?

ME: Some did. But mainstream media kings believed in the power of the monarchy.

When kings reign over a silent audience, they might believe they have the only voice. The sound of other voices could become unconceivable. It’s easy to see how they might get stuck in their own story.

Another Kingdom that Wasn’t Listening

Two hundred years ago, a king thought he had the only voice that mattered . . .

In 1775 relations were souring between England and the American colonies. Colonists felt overtaxed and treated unfairly. Still looking to save the union, the colonists extended an Olive Branch Petition to King George III.

We your Majesty’s faithful subjects of the colonies of New-hampshire, Massachusetts-bay, . . . in behalf of ourselves and the inhabitants of these colonies, who have deputed us to represent them in general Congress, entreat your Majesty’s gracious attention to this our humble petition.

The union between our Mother Country and these colonies, and the energy of mild and just government, produced benefits so remarkably important, and afforded such an assurance of their permanency and increase, that the wonder and envy of other Nations were excited, while they beheld Great Britain riseing to a power the most extraordinary the world had ever known.

George III refused it. He issued a Proclamation of Rebellion. He called them traitors

Whereas many of our subjects in divers parts of our Colonies and Plantations in North America, misled by dangerous and ill designing men, and forgetting the allegiance which they owe to the power that has protected and supported them; after various disorderly acts committed in disturbance of the publick peace, to the obstruction of lawful commerce, and to the oppression of our loyal subjects carrying on the same; have at length proceeded to open and avowed rebellion, by arraying themselves in a hostile manner, to withstand the execution of the law, and traitorously preparing, ordering and levying war against us: . . .

A year later the colonies signed, The Declaration of Independence.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Each year on July 4, the United States of America celebrates the independence won in the war this document declared. Suppose George III had listened?

When Kings Get Stuck in Their Own Kingly Story

Kings, contrarians, politicians . . . celebrities, bloggers, CEOs . . . preachers, teachers, all of us . . . when we start believing our own kingly stories, we stop listening to the people around us.

We start sorting their voices as we would have them. We stop thinking. We stop remembering that we don’t get to pick how other folks will be.

When the MSM media might have listened, they were selling their own story. Citizen journalist became less than a compliment — it was term to spin their story. What if they’d put down their kingly story?

Now the MSM castle is undergoing expensive renovation.
No kingly group is immune from narrow vision.
Even the most wonderful story can’t control the conversation.

What sort of listening strategy will keep us from getting stuck in our own story?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!