Archive: August, 2007

Young Man’s Tatoo

August 29th, 2007         |     Add your comment »

He smiled at me with gentleness and warmth and we shared a few pleasantries about why we ended up on the airporter shuttle.  I was coming home from a Writing for Change conference in San Francisco.  He was coming to town to attend a conference about selling medical insurance. 

We had the most wonderful conversation about shifting paradigms and how the world really works…and our topics went deep fast.  He was insightful, intelligent, articulate, kind, and strong.  A great listener, a great talker.  We talked about how we can change our minds about things.  How this changes our experience.   We talked about how our bodies work, how our illusions are not reality, how we can change our destiny in the real world.

He lit up when he talked about how much he loved being a teacher. I was thrilled to hear this, because I thought…what a terrific teacher he would be!  I would have loved to have had him as a teacher for my boys. 

And then his eyes darkened and saddened when he said that he’d had to leave the teaching field to go into sales.  The reason?  Pay.  He couldn’t make a good living as a teacher.  He’d had to choose against his desire. 

And my heart broke. 

It broke for our society, for our children.  “Why?  Why do we not treasure our teachers and make it so that people of this caliber can teach our children?  Wow…what a resource lost because of our economic model.  How can it be different?  I wonder….”  I don’t know the answers yet,

What you Say Matters

August 20th, 2007         |     Add your comment »

Isn’t it amazing how we say stuff…and we do not recognize the truth and power of what we are saying? Sometimes we don’t think things through.

Years ago, I had an argument in high school with a teacher over this very thing.  He was teaching a class called “I’m O.K., You are O.K.”  It helps to really get the context here.  He was talking to a class of teenagers, who are famous for saying hurtful things because they don’t understand their power and the power of words.  What he says is going to affect them one way or another, and the effect will compound.

So he had said something like, “Your individual words don’t matter.  There isn’t any power in words.  And, in fact, any single thing you do really doesn’t make a difference. Everything is o.k.  Don’t worry, because it will all work out in the end. Over time is when it matters.”

Well, this is one of those sometimes true, sometimes not true conversations.  Maybe he wanted people to get over their lack of confidence, or to make people feel better, but who was he kidding?

Win3Partners.com

August 18th, 2007         |     Add your comment »

Ever wanted to find resources and link up to people who could help you figure out how to do something that has never been done before? Ever wished you could find a dreammaker who could dream your dreams, think your dreams and help you achieve your dreams? Ever wished there was a business …

The World of Now

August 17th, 2007         |     Add your comment »

I have been watching the world change around me, and it is speeding up.  The rate of change is accelerating.  Don’t you agree?  Gosh, in my lifetime I have gone from old windup phonographs that ran at variable speeds,  to electrical record players, to 8 track tapes, then cassette tapes, video tapes, …

Win3Networking.com

August 16th, 2007         |     Add your comment »

Now to our next blog, www.win-win-win-networking. Here we want to help you promote yourself if you are a life-enhancing business or have resources that can help businesses become more life-enhancing. In our world today, there are thousands and thousands of choices. How do we help filter out the stuff that doesn’t …

What about people who don’t like your vision?

August 14th, 2007         |     Add your comment »

Good question.  There are a couple things here.  It depends on who it is.  Is your vision big enough?  Are you impacting others?  Are you trying to control someone else? Are you including them in your vision? Is the listening going both ways?

Again, it is not about the immediate situation…it is always a bigger question, the greater purpose.  For example, in the Fairhaven experience I’ve already talked about, there was a key thing that we had to do as a team, as a community.

1)  We had to stop trying to stop the other guy from having opinions, and instead listen to their issue and try to include it and include them in the process. 

When faced with resistance, ask, “If there was another answer, what answer is there that includes us all?” Open your heart and your ears to what the underlying issue is in their resistance, in their argument, and see if you can find a new solution no one has ever thought of before?

2)  We also had to recognize that some people had the power to make ultimate choices because they had the most invested, and we had to respect that.  

I do not mean passively kowtow to them, but to actually respect that they cared enough to put massive money, time and thought into creating

Win3Resources.com

August 12th, 2007         |     Add your comment »

The first spin off blog from Soapbox Commons, is the blog for other entrepreneurs to help us gather resources about what is the most life-enhancing, leading edge material, trainings, tools and things that people can use to help them build themselves, their businesses and their families?

You know how fast things are changing in the global …

Why was Fairhaven stuck? What did you do?

August 11th, 2007         |     Add your comment »

Someone asked me, “Why was Fairhaven stalled?  What did you do to change that?” 

You know it was rather funny, because the talent and resources were all there to do whatever people wanted all along.  It took a simple shift in beliefs, attitude and vision.  And it wasn’t about me, except that I was the impetuous that asked the right question.  It was them all along.

Many of the leaders and the people in the area had gotten into a habit of argument that actually was part of a carryover from the old “hippie” or habit of protest period.  Some was a reflection of the battles between corporate-business and planning locking horns, and then it was social inertia and fear of change.  

In the meantime buildings were disintegrating, and the flavor of Fairhaven was dying with each business that closed. Groups of people were estranged, some people had quit the battles in boredom, others were “just waiting” for something to happen, they said. 

Well, something happened.  I went to the Old Fairhaven Association (OFA) and got their approval to form a task force composed of significant “movers and shakers” and “opinion leaders” in the area.  They said that if I could get these

Launching SoapboxCommons.com

August 10th, 2007         |     Add your comment »

Soapbox Commons is a project that has taken some time to figure out. How can we be most useful to the planet, succeed ourselves, build community and have fun to boot? Good Question. So we divided the site into three spin off sites. The main site will deal with the bigger picture …

How can I help?

August 9th, 2007         |     Add your comment »

One of my biggest questions was, “How can I help?  How can we humans be more in alignment with, rather than fight against nature and natural processes…and still live into and achieve our fullest personal potential?” 

Today I have answers that I feel good about, and solutions to offer.  This blog is one step towards sharing my …