Distinctions
The distinctions that crack a moment open.
A distinction is a conceptual tool. Name the right one in the middle of a hard moment and the whole situation rearranges. These are the load-bearing ideas of the tradition, in plain language.
Power
Context
The hidden lens that decides what you can even see, and what becomes possible.
Read the distinction →Victimhood & Responsibility
Responsibility is not blame. It is the willingness to respond, grounded in care.
Read the distinction →The FISP Model of Power
Real power has four dimensions: Financial, Intellectual, Social, and Personal.
Read the distinction →Disclosive Spaces
The worlds (a startup scene, a profession, a culture) that disclose their own concerns, moods, and moves.
Read the distinction →Language & action
The Primacy of Language
Language does not describe the world. It generates it.
Read the distinction →Speech Acts
Requests, promises, declarations, assessments, words that act on the world instead of just reporting it.
Read the distinction →Assessment vs Assertion
An assertion claims a fact. An assessment is a judgment, and it should be grounded.
Read the distinction →The Loop of Action
How anything real gets made: possibility → grounded assessment → commitment → action → breakdown → learning.
Read the distinction →Coordination Waste
The invisible, costly waste created when people cannot listen, coordinate, or repair broken promises.
Read the distinction →Relating
Trust
Not a feeling you wait for, but an assessment you can build: competence, sincerity, care.
Read the distinction →Care
The quiet ground of power and trust: showing up genuinely concerned for the other’s future.
Read the distinction →Be Direct, Be Kind
The two-move alternative to "being nice" (avoidance) and "being nasty" (aggression).
Read the distinction →Listening
Not hearing sound, an act of seeing that makes new possibilities available.
Read the distinction →Acknowledgement
Declaring the possibility you see in someone, and, by declaring it, making it real.
Read the distinction →Seeing & becoming
Breakdowns
Not failures to avoid, but openings for new action, at three levels.
Read the distinction →The Ontology of Blindness
To be human is to be blind, by design. The move is to investigate your blindness, not pretend it away.
Read the distinction →The New Beginner
The posture that suspends what you know so you can actually learn, at any age.
Read the distinction →Becoming
You are not a fixed self. You are an ongoing act of self-reinvention through practice.
Read the distinction →A word you can see with is worth more than a word you can define.
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