No More Time Out

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iStock_000045645158_XXXLargeI’m thinking about the coming year. It’s the 9th day of 2016. It can’t be helped, whichever way you look at it – it is a new year. And just over one week in, it is a transition time from a holiday into this ‘brand new’ year. I feel like I am emerging from the twilight of a whole lot of ‘time off’, or ‘time out’, over the Christmas and New Year break.

People are trickling back to work. Each day there are a few more cars on the road. Some people look like stunned mullets, adjusting their brains to a different pace, different clothes, different environment. Back to work!  Moving from the glowing twilight post-holiday into the full sunlight! In the glaze of the sun a few things happen. It nurtures and brings life, it warms mind and body, and sustains us. But too much and it will burn and destroy.

Getting the balance right with the powerful elements of nature is the same as getting the balance right with our professional and personal lives. The seasons and the weather are in constant change. And changing too are all the man-made structures that impact our lives. Our time and our days can fill up very, very quickly. We run out of time more than ever, with instant media and communication at our fingertips. There are a myriad of things to pay attention to. Technology has definitely NOT been a time-saving innovation for most of us.

As 2016 starts to settle in, and I get into a work mode, I’m asking:  What do I want more of than I had last year? What do I want less of than I had last year?

Then I get to thinking about the whole measurement of time – be it a year, a month, a day, a moment. And about how much time can expand and contract. How it seems like time can run out, or can go on endlessly. Somewhere I know it is all relative – my relationship to time is all completely made up, by me!

So I have arrived at an idea about Time Off and Time Out. I am eradicating them.

I am having a year of Time On and Time In.

I am going to a place where I will seek more natural rhythms in my energy flows, and seek to not judge when I have more or less energy, to not compare or judge one place or another.

I will move away from segmenting my life into Down Time, Time Off, Time Out, and integrate more balance and flow.

I will get more interested in the cycles of the seasons, of the sun of the moon, and become attuned with them.

I will seek a greater understanding of ebb and flow, in myself and the planet around me.

I will seek balance.

It is my heartfelt belief that when I am in tune with my vision and purpose, when I have it showing up in all my waking and even sleeping moments, I do not need Time Out and Time Off. Time will flow with greater ease. I will rise to the occasions of deadlines and commitments,  because they will be built on the foundation of my vision and my purpose.

Do you know what your vision is? Does it sustain you?

 

Stop Thinking; Connect

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I’m hard wired for connection.
All human beings are.
There are invisible threads that link us all.
You can call it energy, in either the scientific or spiritual sense if you choose.
It is elusive sometimes, because it is not always visible to our immediate senses.

But human connection is an energy, and it is a key to our survival.
The crazy thing is we have set up many structures in our world that break that connection.
I blame our big brains. We think too much. We think in the wrong way too much.
We think too much about disconnections;  what ifs, pros and cons, pluses and minuses, right and wrong, etc etc.
We have adversarial debate, politics, legal systems, and hierarchies; a whole raft of structures dedicated to disconnection.
Wrong thinking.
I’ve just started a large new contract and my role is engagement.  Interesting that such a role even needs to exist. How come we all don’t do that naturally in our course of work?
Once upon a time work was all about connection and engagement.
But our big brains got in the way. And we separated ourselves out from others, and got very busy with our thinking, and our modern ways of industry and commerce.
It is just not that hard to find common ground. The trick is to stay there, before wandering off into our disconnected world.
The key to maintaining common ground is vision, a shared vision that is greater than oneself. A living vision is embedded, it resonates without intellectual separation, division or analysis.
It simply is. It is based on the energy of connection, of humanity as a collective whole, inter-dependent, and focused solely on survival as a connection organism, living interconnected to the living organism that is this planet.
Every culture in the world has a story about this planet and our connection to it as one giant whole.
We have the science, we have the spirit, and we have the evidence on every level of our being.
Our problem is our harnessing our big brains for connection, not separation.
This is the challenge of the human condition.

Commit random acts of connection!

Learning to Sip

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My biggest and my only New Year’s resolution is to Learn to Sip.
Yep, to sip every thing. Less gulping. Less gulping of food, drinks, life.
To Learn to Sip will put me living in the moment.
I miss a lot of moments because I am gulping through life.
That concept of ‘being present’ will happen when I Learn to Sip.
I will savour. I will relish. I will breathe into sipping.
I will taste more, food, drink and life.
I will observe more when I sip.
It’s going to be bloody hard.
I love to gulp.  Gulp, gulp gulp, and its all gone and I am not satisfied. Food, drinks, and maybe life.
I don’t want to gulp through 2014. 
Ok, I think I am being a bit hard on myself. Gulping is fun when I am really hungry, really thirsty, and in a hurry to devour life.
It’s ok really. But a bit more sipping would be really great.
Rolling the taste of things around my mouth. And even engaging all my senses in sipping.
Looking and sniffing and touching before I sip. Tasting through the sip, listening to the sound of the sip, and there I’ve done the full sensory experience.
Sipping more and gulping less also means chilling out more. Less is more, yep, yep, yep.
Learning to Sip will get me reflecting and pausing more. Sipping is a meditation.
Maybe it is about a ratio of sipping to gulping, it feels a bit hard to give up gulping completely.
And that is what is wrong with resolutions. They demand you to be resolute. And sometimes we just plain don’t want to be resolute about every damn thing. It’s too hard.
Life is too short. But it will feel not so short if I sip and gulp. In balance. Sipping and gulping.
ore chewing would be good.
Sipping is to pause more. To drink in the world around me. To stop. To siesta.
And to be more productive as a result of sipping.

Immortalising Mandela is the Wrong Thing To Do

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Right now it seems to me that all sorts of people are getting the wrong end of the stick about Nelson Mandela’s legacy.

It’s crazy how we either want to immortalize a leader and have them be our saviour. And it’s equally nuts to critique and analyse, putting him on a pedestal and then pulling him off.
I just finished reading a wonderful and also haunting book about Afghanistan, The Storyteller’s Daughter by Sairah Shah.
She quotes this old story from Rumi, that to me sums up how much we are ‘barking up the wrong tree’ (pardon the pun that will unravel) about wanting complete magic and perfection in a leader.
Once upon a time there was a powerful king, who had a beautiful wife, a peaceful kingdom and riches beyond compare. He thought he had everything, until he heard that in faraway India there was a tree of such wonderful virtue that anyone who ate of its fruit would live for ever. The king became obsessed with this fruit. He sent his most trusted courtier on a quest to find it.
This faithful servant searched high and low for the magical fruit. Some people said they had never heard of it, others mocked him, yet others sent him in the wrong direction.
After twenty years, the man no longer believed that there was any such tree. He decided it was his duty to go and tell this to the king and face his wrath. Before he returned home, he visited an ancient sage, to ask for a blessing.
When the old man heard the courtier’s story, he began to laugh. He laughed, and he laughed and he laughed, until tears streamed down his wrinkled cheeks. When he could speak he said: ‘ Oh, my poor friend ! You will never find the fruit of a literal tree. What you seek is sometimes called a tree, sometimes a sun, sometimes a lake and sometimes a cloud. It is one- although it has thousands of forms. Pass over form and look for qualities. The tree you have been seeking is the tree of knowledge, its fruit is wisdom- and the least of its forms is eternal life.
Of this story, Saira Shah’s father said:  “Stories are like a tree growing on the horizon. March towards the tree, and it will keep you in a straight line. But the tree itself is not the goal. When you reach it, you have to let it go, and pick up another point further on.

Learn Important Stuff By Heart, Google The Rest

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Big data can mean a big headache. It is wonderful what we can do with data in an instant, but how much of all this stuff do we need to keep in our heads?

To learn something ‘off by heart’ means to know something so well you don’t need to refer to a text, notes or any other prompt.
But why do we use the word ‘heart’?

Researchers on Yahoo Answers suggest that:  

The expressions “know by heart” or “learn by heart” stem from the ancient Greek belief that the heart was the seat of intelligence and memory, as well as emotion…and that the expression “learn by heart” was first recorded in 1374 by Chaucer.’

They also suggest that: The heart beats within a person without the person having to think about it. It’s a completely natural occurrence. So to learn something that good is be as fluent as a natural ability.  
I believe knowing something ‘by heart’ refers to the fact we have engaged our limbic brain to learn something, and our knowledge of it becomes something natural.

We have learnt something from a place where heart and mind connects.
We have learnt something in this way permanently.
To embed a vision, a strategy or a goal is to learn it by heart.
We can use metaphor and story, or mnemonics.
But we have learnt it because our heart, our limbic brain is engaged.
It is critical for us to be clear about vision, purpose and associated strategies and goals in order to embed them, so they can be executed by heart.
There are four keys to achieve this:

·      The vision must inherently be about people and the difference we will make for them.
·      The vision must have verbs; people doing things, enacting, enabling, and embedding.
·      The vision must work as a metaphor for all to tell stories about it.
·      Falling in love with repetition. Rather than reinvent, and change, deepen and find      meaning and layers in a vision and its application.

    To be productive and engaged, people must know by heart the vision of an organisation, so it is lived. As for the detail and data,  just Google It !

    Putting the “Pie in the Sky” in Your Mouth

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    Every day we use turns of phrase without a clue about their origin, or what they really mean.
    ‘Pie in the Sky’ has to me always meant something unrealistic, a dream unconnected to reality, unobtainable, and usually plain silly.
    But how did I know that? The image of a pie in the sky doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

    It turns out the origin is in a song written by a man called Joe Hill, a Swedish immigrant in the US in the early 20th century who was union man. 

    He got really upset with the Salvation Army for telling poor and starving workers to have faith in God and Heaven and donate money to the church and not worry about the practicality of getting food.
    This angered Hill, and he wrote this song, The Preacher and the Slave:
    Long-haired preachers come out every night,
    Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right;
    But when asked how ’bout something to eat
    They will answer with voices so sweet:
    You will eat, bye and bye,
    In that glorious land above the sky;
    Work and pray, live on hay,
    You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
    Now I am not sure whether the Salvation Army heeded his song, but today they do amazing work to feed, clothe and house the poor.
    The lesson to me is stark. If you have a lofty vision, a vision that can seem beyond reach, there must be ways that people can see it being a reality, and it must have some relevance to them. It needs practical application here and now and to meet people’s needs. Bob Norton has devised a Vision Pie about the 11 required elements of a successful vision. 
    In my upcoming book, Love Your Brother from Another Mother, I cover how and why we must show the pathway from Pie in the Sky to Pie in Your Mouth.

    Our Time

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    Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times
    One of our greatest fears is time.
    Not enough, or too much.
    It comes up every day for people in their work and leadership. Most often it is problem number one.
    People are always busy and if they are not, they worry about what they should be doing.
    Time stops being a problem when people are engaged in a vision far greater than themselves.
    Think of a time when you have completely lost track of time. Chances are you were engrossed in some element of your vision, for yourself or for the world. You were fully engaged.
    Time stops being a problem when we embed those memories of those moments when we were so engaged we became lost in time.
    The bigger the game we play, the less stressed we are about time.

    Our vision enables us to navigate time powerfully.

    Worry about time is replaced by clarity.
    We devote time to what will further the game.
    Time is not wasted. We get efficient and focused.
    “ Do not be concerned with the fruit of your action, just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord.” Eckhart Tolle.
    When we are in touch with our vision, it becomes watermarked in every action we take each day; awake and asleep. We live and breathe it.
    Fulfilling a vision with purpose spells an end to Downtime, and being Time Poor.
    Your time becomes your Own Time and that becomes Our Time.
    Our Time is to live and act now with a vision for others; to give and to receive.
    This is Our Time.

    Get Out of Control to Be Inspirational

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    The more we control and plan our thoughts and actions the less inspirational we become.
    Control is today an addiction, one of endless ‘to do’ lists, daily planners, heftily edited and careful language.
    The rise and rise of the bullet point, has been the death of a flowing and compelling narrative.
    It does not serve us. It convinces no one.
    The compelling connections by word of mouth, or on the page come when we drop our guard, and trust.

    The trick is that the uncontrolled must come from a place of heart, love and service.
    Otherwise it will be shapeless drivel.
    I know many people fear a lack of control in their communication will be a mess and ramble, disconnected.
    But trust me, the most inspirational words I have ever heard were born in moments where there was no control, where the unconscious was unguarded, not stilted, planned or contrived.
    The most viral You Tube clips are those moments, when human nature prevailed, and people let themselves get out of control.

    Google any inspirational quote and you can be assured they came from an uncontrolled moment. 

    Watch and Listen. Capture those moments of inspiration. They are the window to your soul, and will always powerfully connect with others.

    The Story of the Science of Remembering

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    There’s a classic Greek Tragedy behind the history of mnemonics, the method for setting up patterns to remember things.

    The story goes that  around 500BC a Greek poet, Simonides was celebrating a victory with a renowned nobleman. He had just stepped out of the building where the celebrations were being held when it collapsed killing many of the revelers.
    Simonides was able to recall the position of each person who had been in the building so they could be identified for burial. His system to use the location of each person as a memory aid founded the system of mnemonics.
    Today, the world’s great memory experts still use this system, now known as a Memory Palace, to build a pattern based on locations and images, to remember sequences of facts, figures or any piece of information.  The memoriser simply  ‘walks’ through these loci and commits an item to each one by forming an image between the item and any distinguishing feature of that locus.
    This system is also called the Method of Loci or the Journey Method. It is so effective as it lights up a number of areas of the brain that enable us to remember.

    Stories do the same thing. In fact, you could say that great stories are simply different forms of a memory palace, where a pattern is set up for a series of happenings from our life and experiences.
    There is both an art and a science both to memorizing things and using stories to convey information.

    In today’s media and information saturated world, embedding and remembering what we need to know to navigate our work, our goals and our lives is the key to success.

    Hope Must Always Be Backed By Endeavour

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    Communication that sticks is what we all want.  

    What creates a stand out piece of communication? We all hope to be heard, but do we put in an effort to connect?
    For me it always starts with the spoken word.
    I was listening to a BBC radio broadcast this week at the World Economic Forum with the renowned Nobel Peace Prize winner,  Aung San Suu Kyi among the speakers.  
    She spoke with immense wisdom, but also with clear confident statements that came from her mind, her heart and her soul combined. Well that was sure how it sounded. She said things like “We should not fear transparency, we should face it.” Referring to the modern media and social media world.  
    She pulled up a journalist who asked her about levels of trust and ‘dark elements’ in Burma.  She said she was interested in trust, but found talk of ‘dark elements’ melodramatic.  There was a powerful intent in the way she spoke. She was highly present to language, its impact and its framing. Every word was well chosen, yet occurred as spontaneous, and human.  I was moved by her powerful, practical leadership: clear, compassionate, and compelling.
    She was embedding her messages deeply.  So much so that I easily recall them from memory three days later.  She left a lasting impression with me.
    She spoke of her willingness to become the President of Burma, but said it must change its constitution to allow her to do this. She said:

     “ I have always said that hope must be backed up by endeavour.”

    This wisdom goes for life in general,  wishful thinking can only become wish fulfillment with action.