Saturday, February 6, 2010

Our Tribe


Our tribe members are those people who accept us as we are and gladly accompany us on our journeys of evolution.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Happy Groundhog Day


Groundhog Day
By Lynn Ungar

Celebrate this unlikely oracle,
this ball of fat and fur,
whom we so mysteriously endow
with the power to predict spring.
Let's hear it for the improbable heroes who,
frightened at their own shadows,
nonetheless unwittingly work miracles.
Why shouldn't we believe
this peculiar rodent holds power
over sun and seasons in his stubby paw?
Who says that God is all grandeur and glory?

Unnoticed in the earth, worms
are busily, brainlessly, tilling the soil.
Field mice, all unthinking, have scattered
seeds that will take root and grow.
Grape hyacinths, against all reason,
have been holding up green shoots beneath the snow.
How do you think spring arrives?
There is nothing quieter, nothing
more secret, miraculous, mundane.
Do you want to play your part
in bringing it to birth? Nothing simpler.
Find a spot not too far from the ground
and wait.

Organize For Who You Are Now


Tip of the Month: Organizing for the Real You

This is from the newsletter of one of my favorite organizers, Jeri Dansky. Visit her website, www.jdorganizer.com, for the original article.

How many of us keep things we think we "should" want or need - when the reality is we don't want those things and will never use them?

Here's Erin Doland of Unclutterer, writing in Real Simple in March 2009: "I liked to think of myself as someone who exercised every day by running on a giant motorized treadmill, read all the literary classics, and baked cookies for every special occasion. The reality? I am not a runner, I like to read pop fiction, and cookies aren't really my thing." So Erin got rid of a lot of stuff.

And here's Melissa Stanton, writing in the no-longer-published Organize magazine, about her Lenox dishes and crystal stemware: "When properly set, my dining room table could be dressed to impress. Problem was, in more than a decade of owning such finery, which I acquired as wedding gifts and by inheritance, I never set my dining room table as described. For most families, dining on fine china is a relic from a way of life we don't live."

Another aspect of organizing for reality is recognizing what activities we're never going to have time for. Fellow organizer Marcie Lovett just wrote about her own experience in this regard: "I finally realized that I will never have the time to do every craft that looks interesting, so I am going to concentrate on the few that I really enjoy: crochet, card making and sewing. That meant paring back the supplies that I am keeping and getting rid of everything else."

Then there's me. A while ago I realized that I simply don't iron anything and I gave away my ironing board. I've joined Erin in giving away highly-acclaimed books that I honestly don't want to read. And I got rid of the cups and saucers, since all I ever use for coffee and tea are my favorite mugs.

So if you're keeping items that don't fit your real life - or the life you are truly aspiring to and moving toward - then give yourself permission to let them go.

Monday, February 1, 2010

A Little About Theory U


The New Century Summit at the Berkeley UU Church this weekend used the principles of Theory U, which was refined by Otto Scharmer, a senior lecturer at MIT. He collaborated on a book about the process (with Peter Senge, Betty Sue Flowers and Joseph Jaworski) called Presence. It is a leadership model with a difference.

Scharmer has observed four different types of listening: downloading, factual listening, empathic listening and generative listening. You know you're downloading when you say, "Yeah, I know that already." With factual listening, you might say, "Ooh, look at that." You switch off your inner voice of judgment and focus on what is different from what you already know. Empathic listeners might say, "Oh, yes, I know exactly how you feel." It requires an open heart to really feel how another feels. We can begin to see the world through the other's eyes. And generative listening is listening from the emerging field of future possibility. "I can't express what I experience in words. Everything slows down. I am connected to something larger than myself."

Another way to say it is that to listen in this new way, we need to 1) observe, observe, observe; 2) retreat and reflect -- allow our inner knowing to emerge; and 3) act in an instant. (This means to prototype the new in order to explore the future by doing, to create a little landing strip of the future that allows for hands-on testing and experimentation.)

Scharmer says that connecting to one's best future possibility and creating powerful breakthrough ideas requires learning to access the intelligence of the heart and the hand -- not just the intelligence of the head.