Experiencing as…

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Last winter I started playing a little game. Call it “I am the universe experiencing itself as…___”

It began after having an awakening where I saw myself as one perspective that the universe has for seeing itself, and holding that as one among gazillions of others. Let us imagine the the universe, or god, or whatever greater consciousness may exist, is using everything created as a way to perceive everything else. Let us be in that perception from a state of non-judgment. No experience is more valuable than any other in this game with our imaginations.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/trodel/3598596315/

by http://www.flickr.com/photos/trodel/3598596315/

Imagine a rock. A common pebble you find in your walk. What does it experience? How was it formed? How did, over time, it transform into the current shape? What is the experience of time to the rock? A grain of sand. A drop of water? A tree? A piece of petrified forest? A star?

We begin. Number of players: 1 to ? Rules:

  • Begin each turn with “I am the universe experiencing itself as…_____”
  • Fill in the blank at the end.
  • When playing with others, try being radically different in scale or experience, place, or time. Alternately, try surprising your playmates with a completely different angle on the same body. Say, one person fills the blank with _body of a 5 year old boy in Africa_ then the next might say _the bacteria in the boys intestines_ or _his great-great grandmother_.
  • Be creative. You win when you are moved by it. To laughter, to tears, to ahas, or to sleep. 😉

Spots of interest. Note from the perspective of the universe that the experience of death is not a pain felt in the body as pain – it is an experience. There is a slight detachement to what that experience feels like because it is all taken in as information about the experience. Also, all experiences add to the knowledge of the universe, so the experience of being vomit is no less valuable than the experience of being the body of a superstar. This exercise can be (or has been for me) a great leveler. And yet, I don’t think of the world as all being equal. It is different. Apples to oranges. Usually when I describe this, I use the metaphor of my hands. Why would one hand be better than the other? They are different (one being right and one being left). Or the cells in my foot are no less valuable than the cells in my ear.

Try it. See what happens for you. And tell me how it goes for you.

Messes–there is no right answer

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I still find myself resisting my own crazy idealism. But life experience has brought me to understand something a wild teacher in high school said to us.

“There are no right answers, there is only more or less appropriate.”

Life is messy with little black and white and a whole lot of rainbowed spectrums. story of stuff

Work is complicated. There are always compromises. No worker or organization lives in some ideal world where they don’t compromise. What matters is the choices around when and where to compromise. And each of us are the only ones capable of making those choices and living with them.

What makes this all bearable? One, we have no choice. Bear it or do something else. Two, it is navigating this complexity which makes it interesting and each of us unique. Three, the spectrum brings color and light to life, embrace the intricacies as life flowing experience.

Language is not black and white either, though it might look it sitting on the page in colored ink and white space. It is a fluid breathing beast that roughly translates what we have inside us to others. Metaphors are never perfect. It is all messy. And therefore everything that we do through language is already and always to some degree imperfect and unpure. Scientists, theorists, and other black/white seekers might want rigorousness, but as long as they use language, there is always a resonance of poetry and multiple meanings and multiple interpretations. Multiple frames of understanding and relevance. There might be more and less appropriate, but there is little black and white, right or wrong.

Thus we have play…difference…complexity.

Collaboration and Complementarity

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Collaborate with others to build your visibility, their visibility, gain access to resources, share access, increase value. Complimentarity. And I mean something pretty simple with this–who compliments what you are doing? Who has a similar market to your which will allow you both to increase your visibility to your target? What products and services compliment what you are offering? How can you leverage that compliment to build your revenues?

It matters significantly less what your competition is doing (unless you want to stay in red oceans) and does significantly matter who you have explicit and implicit cooperation with.

See Blue Oceans.

San Francisco Sunshine

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Home again and settled in after many magical days in San Francisco. I had so many phenomenal conversation, and I simply must share a bit of it with you.

When you have an hour or so with someone you have been admiring for a long time, how do you make the time productive? I had lots of practice on this trip.

1. Gil Friend. As I walked up to the building we were to meet in, I saw a man just ahead of me. Dark hair streaked deeply with gray. Yep, it was Gil. And as he turned, he saw me. Thank goodness for profile pictures and avatars. He recognized me immediately. We sat down in the Natural Logic office space – a warm open area full of treasures, books, and yet a bit minimal too. He asked me for a story, and I gave him one. I spoke of years in the country, middle america, of gardens and composting, of care for community, of care for the land. I told him of the path that brought me to thrivability – via philanthropy, writing, and social change and online community, network weaving and the gifts of strangers. I showed him the thrivability cards and spoke of my vision for growing this work. He listened. He really listened. He smiled. There is something quite thrilling about having someone you admire hear your story. I mean really hear it. And I asked him for his story. And he told it. It is his to tell. I listened, as you know I do. Deeply, feeling the emotion behind the words and the passion fueling the effort to move along the path. If I admired him from afar before, I admire him even more on closer connection.

I look forward to reading his book, The Truth about Green Business. Gil has the experience to have watched the green movement evolve for nearly 40 years, and he has the rigor and presence to discern what works and when.

2. Bobby Fishkin of Reframeit, a firefox add-on that lets you mark up the margins of any webpage (and see what others have marked up too). I met Bobby, late, for crepes. (FYI – do not think that a stroll from the Embarcadero straight up California to Van Ness is easy or quick.) Bobby has a mind like a racecar and a tongue of a poet or playwright. Well, the later makes more sense as he has written plays. I met him originally at NetSquared in 08. And I delighted in seeing him at sxsw (we had dinner with Frank Hamilton and Evonne Heyning there). He is young, brilliant, creative, and delightful. I do not know what will will ever do together, but I am sure the path forward will be fun, interesting, and profound.

3. David Hodgson. Well the main purpose of the visit was to spend time with David hacking on thrivable and revenue streams. We spent much of Monday doing wall drawings and having conversations before heading out for Paul Romer’s talk at the Long Now Foundation.

Tuesday! Lovely Tuesday!
4. David Evan Harris of Global Lives and research guy at IFTF. I took the train down to Palo Alto for the Internet Identity Workshop, so I lined up all the visits in that area on Tuesday. I got off the CalTrain and switched to a local train. Only the ticket machine didn’t take credit, and I didn’t have enough cash! However, a lovely man had said hello to me. I asked him where a cash machine was, and he generously gave me a dollar so I could take the train immediately. Thank you Sam. So…on to David. He was recovering from a bit of surgery. We talked of this and many other things. And now I owe him a ton of emails for follow up. David is a wonderful and creative thinker with a heart of brilliant gold. We spoke about philanthropy and thrivability. He shared a bit about the Long Now Foundation and a few other orgs helping with Global Lives.

5. Kaliya Hamlin, Judi Clark, Guillaume LeBleu and a host of others at the Internet Identity Workshop. I made it in time to enjoy a few quick conversations with these friends before a session on Currency. Now you know I had to come for that, and Kaliya had tipped me off on the time to attend. Thanks Kaliya. I still need to send photos of the notes I took on the board during the session. Waves to Hannes, a new friend I met there.

6. Thomas Kriese. mmmmm Thomas, it appears, has left Omidyar Network. We had a terrific conversation over coffee discussing urban chickens, triathalon training, and thrivability. I always cherish time with Thomas, and I love how he pokes at my ideas to test them and me.

7. David’s Dinner: Lana Holmes, Ann Vowels, Carmen Mauk, and Mariah Howard plus David and I. MMMmmmm good food, fabulous wine, and amazing encouragement. I can’t even describe the energy in that room, and perhaps I should not try, for there was safety in that space that I would not want to break. However, I will say that I was inspired and well fed – body, heart, head, and spirit.

Ken-day
8. Ken Homer and his lovely and funny wife Diane Fischler. David and I drove out to Marin to see Ken and Diane. The two of them have a wonderful and playful dynamic between them. Warming to see. I have met Ken once before. He is a total twitter connection, just as David is. Ken really knows how to have productive conversations. And I don’t say that in any way flippantly. With years of doing world cafe, coaching, and facilitation, Ken is very clear on process and has some terrific webinars now on conversation art. He took David and I for a walk in Kentfield? We absorbed amazing views, many micro-climates, with a rich and diverse topic range as well. Ken took the lead and told us inspiring stories, guiding us through the rich topography of his knowledge and experience while we navigated the varied mountain terrain. It is beautiful to watch connection emerge as people move deeper into awareness of each other, and I was delighted to watch this process as Ken and David “grew on” each other.

9. Ken Lynch. I was serious about it being a Ken day. 🙂 David and I passed through the campus of Dominican where he earned his Green MBA (gorgeous space), and into an area in the East Bay to meet Ken Lynch for dinner. I met Ken through my dear pal, Jo Guldi, because Ken was working on carbon coins and very interested in currencies. He came through Chicago, and we talked briefly. I was here to get an update on the currency work he was doing. My takeaways from this meeting were less about specific outcomes and more about sensing that Ken is one wicked dude. And I don’t mean evil at all, I mean bright, pure hearted, very present, determined, curious, and open.

10. Jerry Michalski and April Rinne. Mmmmmm Jerry and April. While I stayed with them, I don’t feel like I got serious conversation time with either of them at any length. I reveled in the flowing love between them and the presence of great intellect and warm humor, play and reverence. To give you a sense of it, April and I had a brief but intense discussion about philanthropy. I think she got more out of me about my big beliefs in 5 minutes than most people ever get. And dynamically, at one moment I think Jerry had April in some wild circus-like position, and I thought, they have the cirque du soliel in their living room.

11. Charles dear Magowan. I met CM years ago on Onet. And he has made me laugh regularly ever since. I take deep delight in wandering with him anywhere, as he has this amazing encyclopedic knowledge of something within sight. (I sense this is especially true in San Francisco.) I learned about the changes in Cognitive psychology, the history of Crissy Field, the efficiency of the biz model for his upcoming wild business, and so much more. To understand my relationship with Charles, one must understand my appreciation of absurd humor, the male mind, professorial dynamics, and a love of being a bit awed.

12. Kevin Jones. Well, Charles took me for a bit too long of a walk, so I drove dear Ziggy (Jerry’s old BMW) across town as best I could. I was very late to meet Kevin, and he was very kind and gracious anyway. Like Gil, I have been watching Kevin for a long time. Admiring for years – xigi.net, good capital, socap… all good works. How do you connect in 20 minutes or so? We moved fast and talked faster. cards, games, thrivability. Boom. and off I went.

I also spent more time with David and had lunch with Chris Watkins (ChrisWaterGuy) of Appropedia. I missed his comrade Lonny. I stayed a couple nights with my dear cousin Kim too! I also missed Kara (someone I had met at Portland BarCamp a couple years ago). There are many friends I did not get to see nor have time to meet with. 🙁 Almost all of the conversations were too short. And I feel really touched by these connections and inspired on the path forward. Thank you. And thank you to David for making it all possible!

ps. On the way home, I got a fabulous education on Hinduism from an amazing man from Mumbai, Pradeep. What am amazing trip.

Twitter made me a better writer

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I have been writing professionally since college…over a decade ago. My best opportunities for honing my writing came from limiting word or character count – whether on grant applications, articles, or even forms. So it is not surprising to me that the character count on twitter helped improve my writing. If it hasn’t already done the same for you, here are some tips and tricks for getting your idea across in 140 characters or less.

1. Link out. Use blogs or other spaces where ideas and information are expressed fully. 🙂 When linking, provide enough keywords with the link that people know to follow the link and what they will get when there. Which keywords? Who, what, where, when, why – right? What audience(s) is it for? Is it location specific? Does it have a deadline? What folksonomy category is it in?

2. Get mathy. Use punctuation adjustments to trim down character counts. Works when you have a solid statement within 15 characters of 140. Turn and into + or & etc. Turn a series of item comma space item comma space and item comma space into item+item+item. Note, you can also quickly cut out articles: a, an, and the are often unnecessary.

3. Love action. As a poet, I was taught to put the power into verbs and nouns, not descriptors. Trim out superfluous words and put the energy and attention on the noun and verb. Who is it and what are they doing or being? What is the test for superfluous words? If you remove them, is it still clear what you mean? Can you combine or reword it more effectively? I often edit out the use of helper verbs. “I tried to tell Liz about shortening verb strings” can be more simply stated as “I told Liz about shortening verb strings.”

4. Crossword size. After a decade in academia, I tend to know more big words than small ones. It took me some time to figure out the short word equivalents. If you are good at crosswords, you have a strong short word vocabulary. Turn utilize back into use please. Shorten is better as trim, etc.

5. Abbreviate or contract. I hesitate to suggest it, as abbreviations can be misunderstood when speaking across different audiences. But IM and text messaging rang in the era of abbreviated dialog. If you find pronouns to be critical to include, shorten our to r and your to ur. Again, you can get mathy and say be4 or B4 instead of before. I suggest you look at the other options before falling back to abbreviation, but it really depends on your audience and their comfort with such practices. What are they doing?

Test to be sure, if read aloud, your tweet is understandable with the abbreviations.

What other methods do you use to trim your expressions into tweets?

Network Weaving: A Key to Creating Thrivability

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My roots are connected deep into the ground, engaged in a continuous interplay with the soil, bacteria, microorganisms, fungi, insects, and water, gathering nourishment to help me thrive.  My leaves and branches dance with the wind, the sun, with animals, birds, insects, microorganisms, bacteria, all in continual flow. My body returns to the soil and is soon transformed into new life. And so the cycle continues.

A thrivable entity is one that is richly and dynamically interconnected into its ecosystem, engaged in a process of continuous co-creation. The upward spiral.

So when looking to grow a thrivable venture, to nurture an upward spiral, one of the primary considerations is in connecting it into a rich dynamic network of resources, to help nourish its growth, in a way that brings value to all concerned. Networks are all about dynamic exchange.

So to be thrivable, you need to know all about Network weaving! (thanks June / Valdis / Jack)

Weaving the network of advisors.
Weaving the network of ideas.
Weaving the network of supporters.
Weaving the network of collaborators.
Weaving the network with society.
And weaving the network with nature.

A dynamic process, weaving consciously opens and holds the space for the ongoing communication and flow.

Gross International Happiness

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What does success look like in a thrivable system?

Perhaps success looks like happiness! Figuring out the characteristics of a thrivable system might be looking for systems where there is happiness.

And how do you know if there is happiness? Well as my friend Sian claims in his email sig. “If you can’t measure it you can’t improve it.” While that might not be fully true, the old saying goes, you get more of what you measure. So perhaps measuring happiness might be a better indicator than gross national product.

Maybe the key to thrivability can be found in the measurement of Gross International Happiness?

The Upward Spiral

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Thrivability is all about the intentful creation of upward spirals, positive feedback loops between elements that are generative of diverse, adaptive abundance. This is true both for the design of the ecological aspect of systems, as well as for the social aspect of systems.

Designing Thrivable Creation Spaces

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Thrivability, at its core, is all about creating environments that are generative of adaptive diverse abundance, both in the sense of nature, and in the sense of the potential for innovation present in an organization. If people come together with a sense of purposive play, then innovation emerges from the dynamic richness of the interactions.

It is all about fostering an environment in which upward spirals are most likely to emerge.

So it is great to see folks over at HBR talking about factors to take into account when intentionally designing creation spaces, such as the Hub coworking space for social entrepreneurs that will soon be opening in San Francisco.

Emergent behavior from participants is, of course, essential. But it rarely takes hold unless it’s organized and supported within carefully designed (and tended) “creation spaces.

As with gardens, it’s best to design creation spaces minimally at the outset and then let them create a life of their own, layering in additional design elements over time.


Carrot, Egg, or Coffee

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Reposted from email received. I did not write, but I do love it!coffee break by es

A Carrot, an Egg or a Cup of Coffee. Which are you? This was too good of a life lesson not to pass on! A carrot, an egg and a cup of coffee…. You will never look at a cup of coffee the same way again. A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose.

Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire.. Soon the pots came to boil. In the first she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil, without saying a word. In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners.

She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she asked, “Tell me, what do you see?” “Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” she replied. Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard boiled egg. Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma. The daughter then asked, “What does it mean, mother?” Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity … boiling water. Each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile.. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.

“Which are you?” she asked her daughter. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?” Think of this: Which am I? Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength? Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a break-up, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and hardened heart? Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you. When the hour is the darkest and trials are their greatest, do you elevate yourself to another level? How do you handle adversity? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?