If I have no belief that my vision can become real, asks Margaret Wheatley, where will I find the strength to persevere? As the world grows ever darker, I've been forcing myself to think about hope. I watch as the world and the people near me experience increased grief and suffering, as aggression and violence move into all relationships, personal and global, and as [...]
Courage Starts With Uncertainty
To create enlightened society, we must recognize our interdependence. In this 1999 conversation from the Lion's Roar archive, Pema Chödrön and Margaret Wheatley discuss how individuals can open to one another. Margaret Wheatley:I see the essence of my work as becoming comfortable with uncertainty, which is actually a chapter title in my book, Leadership and the New [...]
Margaret Wheatley on her Buddhist path with Pema
Best-selling author Margaret Wheatley gives thanks to her friend and teacher, Pema Chödrön. If I’ve learned anything from Pema Chödrön, it’s not to create a storyline. Just let experiences and emotions come and go without developing a drama about them. But here I am, eager to tell a story about my beloved teacher and friend. Like many people, I came to Buddhism because of my [...]
The Place Beyond Fear and Hope
In difficult times it takes effort to stay grounded in the present, but it is only there, says Margaret Wheatley, that we will find a place unclouded by hope and fear. Hope and fear have been in the news—and in our experience—a great deal of late. We had watched for years as the future disappeared under disabling clouds of fear. Then suddenly, we again could see the sky, [...]
Where Are the Stars in This Dark Night?
We believe that growth can be endless, that consumption need have no limits, that meaning is found in things, that aggression brings peace. Margaret Wheatley wants to know: What happened to our ideals? My nation now knows more about waging war than it does about anything else. We know what can be done with different guns, missiles and fighter planes. We even know the nicknames [...]
Make “Simpler” Simpler, and Watch Things Get Things Done
Real change, says Margaret Wheatley, begins with the simple act of talking to one another about what we care about. We can’t seem to do anything simply anymore. In organizations, communities, and governments, making a decision, creating a plan, holding a meeting—all of these now involve complex and time-consuming processes. A once-simple process, like neighborly conversation, [...]
It’s Time to Listen
You are reading this in December, but I have written this just a few days after September 11. I am trying to imagine what the world feels like two months later-what else might have happened, what has changed, how each of us feels, whether we are more divided or more connected. In the absence of a crystal ball, I look to the things I believe to be true in all times and for [...]
Don’t Be So Sure
In a changing world, certainty doesn't give us stability; it just creates more chaos. "Now," says Margaret Wheatley, "is the time for far less certainty and far more curiousity." Most people I meet want to develop more harmonious and satisfying relationships. But we may not realize that this can only be achieved by partnering with two new and strange allies: uncertainty and [...]
Taking the Time
"If we feel we're changing in ways we don't like then we need time to think – about where we are now and how we might start to change things." As a species, we humans possess some unique capacities. We can stand apart from what's going on, think about it, question it, imagine things being different. We are also curious. We want to know "why?" We figure out "how?" We think [...]
Working with Human Goodness
What becomes available to us when we greet one another as fully human? This, says Margaret Wheatley, is an important question as we struggle through this dark time. We need to remember the fact of human goodness. Of course, human goodness seems like an outrageous "fact," since every day we are confronted by evidence of the great harm we so easily do to one another. We are [...]
