Tama J. Kieves, writing in the September 2007 Science of Mind magazine, completes her quote, “Peace is a better friend than excitement.”

As a younger person than I currently am, I lived for excitement. Life was either absolutely stupendous or absolutely the pits. In a way, I lived in fear of the grays. It was black or white for me all the way. The seasoning of time has grown different values in me, and I’m grateful for it.   Read more...

As I sorted my papers for my 2007 tax declaration, yesterday, I thought about writing this article to review the last year by looking at those little things each month that changed my world in 2007:

January
I read the bestseller “We call it work” (http://wirnennenesarbeit.de) about the digital Bohème in Berlin where I see a lot of similarities with the work style that I adapted after leaving Greenpeace International in October 2006. The authors organize a festival in Berlin later on in the summer that runs from 9pm to 5am (http://9to5.wirnennenesarbeit.de/?page_id=20).   Read more...

Joyce Lemke, a Positive Change Core member and a long time international consultant in Appreciative Inquiry sent out the following email announcement and a request:

"Sally Smith, a pioneer in strengths based learning for children, died early this month. Founder of the Lab School in Washington D.C. in 1967, Sally Smith developed curriculum which has had uncommon success with those who learn differently. Smith gave respect, hope and the tools to succeed to children beginning over 40 years ago. Smith asserted that " A child's failure to learn means that the teaching staff has not yet found a way to help him. It is up to the adults to seek out the routes by which each child learns, to discover his strengths and interests and to experiment until effective techniques are found."

Sally Smith created a learning environment that used the arts to shape the school, and believed that the arts could and should be used to teach all manner of things. I remember when I was doing my graduate thesis in the early 70's, looking for positive approaches to teaching and learning, how strikingly different Smith's pioneering approach seemed from other models at the time.

  Read more...

Mostly my venues are grocery stores. My target audiences are pre-verbal. I have more fun than they do. I am the world’s greatest peek-a-boo player.

It started almost twenty years ago when my own bundle of preverbal love decided to leave earth for greener pastures. To heal my broken mother heart, I began to connect with children sitting in grocery carts. I’d pick up whatever box or can was nearest and peek around it. They almost always respond, we have a little fun, and I go on my merry way.

I’ve formed a book policy for my life. Basically, I wait till a book is recommended to me three times before I check it out. Ask And It Is Given was recommended to me three times in one day! I visited the Amazonians and bought it. In it, Esther Hicks channels a group of nonphysical energies known as Abraham. Wisdom is wisdom say I.

The first half of the book is about who we are, why we’re here, and the laws that govern our reality. The second half is twenty-two exercises designed to deal with our reality when it doesn’t match what we want.   Read more...

I feel very fortunate to live where I do. Although it is London, which many consider cold and lonely and lacking 'community' despite the enormous numbers, I live in a beautiful Victorian block of flats/apartment block with some amazing people. This blog is about one of my neighbours, although it could be about many of them....

I went to deliver a card from an elderly neighbour to another neighbour in my block who also knows and helps her a great deal. When I got to this neighbour's door, there on the doormat was a bowl of sweets, a bowl of crisps/chips, a bowl of nuts and a glass of wine!   Read more...

I made one of the best decisions in my life when I enrolled in the MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice at the University of Bath. It was an enlightening 2 year programme with eight workshops covering areas ranging from economics, world trade, sustainable development, ecology and the environment, to self and the future of the world, much reading, discussions and consultation in between. Action research and inquiry based on how we learn, work, reflect, change and live was the basis for the programme. It was a way of consciously learning through mindfulness.   Read more...

In December 2006, I participated in an interesting workshop called “Beyond Schumacher: alternatives approaches to economics and sustainability perspectives for the 21st century” in Northeast of Thailand. This seminar was aimed at bringing together theories of sustainable development, and lessons learned from lived experiences in juggling social, environmental and economic priorities. It was organized by Ales Kauffman, a sustainable development practitioner and former graduate of the Bath School of Management, Responsibility and Business Practice MSc.

My friends and colleagues working together in training and human resources development in Sri Lanka, Ineke Pitts, Mihirini De Zoysa and Robert Vanderwall developed an interactive inquiry session based on World Café called How Much is Enough ?   Read more...

In the past thirteen years, I have been learning from bicultural students.  In Barcelona, students from Morocco taught me that our lives have a literary rhythm, a rhythm that guides our reading experiences.  Their gestures, energy, and musicality helped me to understand that when the written text is presented as a mere recollection of letters and words, we are losing its fundamental essence: communication of experiences.  Once I learned how to listen to the texts, my planning became enriched with their views, and gained perceptions in a cultural environment that despite its geographical closeness was located within an infinite distance from my cultural framework.  I am fortunate that they installed a new pair of lenses on my monochromatic eyes.    Read more...

I did a great course last weekend. My girlfriend’s uncle was the trainer. He is Dutch but is in Brazil for the holidays and offered us a free 2 day course. The course was built up mostly from the material of Tony Robbins (Awake the Giant Within) and Stephan Covey (The 7 Habits). It was a great course. It offered a lot of information that I already knew but now much completer, linked, and whole.

I found a lot of practical ideas to put into practice in daily life. One of the things I really liked was the explanation that we consciously register only 1% of the impulses that our body receives. There is just too much info for our brain to calculate. Our brain of course filters, distorts and denies a lot of important (probably the most important) information that we are receiving.   Read more...