“What are you excited about?”

I love the question.  In my practice of Appreciative Inquiry, we say  it’s the question that starts the change process.  If Justin had asked, not “What are you excited about” , but instead, “What are you depressed about?” a totally depressing story would have been told.  But he asked a powerfully affirmative question that inspires me to think about the successes and strengths I already know about and can celebrate.  Moreover, the question leads me to focus on what I want more of.

It was no effort to list what I am excited about.

I am excited that the conversation is widening and we are becoming more conscious of what is importance to us and what we value – more people becoming engaged and more voices are being heard.

I am excited that we are changing policies and introducing reforms to bring greater equity and justice into the world, especially in the financial sector.

I am excited we are taking actions , globally, around all the factors pertaining  to ecological sustainability – energy, transportation, earth.

I am excited when I hear leadership speak from the heart, ethically, and listens loudly.

I am excited that social media is increasing our participation and collaboration across the world and is a force of natural democratization in the world.

I am excited that we now, in America, will be able to care for the sick, children and elderly who are most vulnerable in our world.

I am excited the natural disasters that have occurred are showing us we how inter-connected we are and we cannot not think systemically.

I am excited that Americans are increasingly learning there is a world outside the US and it’s a beautiful world to be celebrated and shared.

I am excited that Americans are learning more about good health and there is conversation and action about eating natural, unprocessed, wholesome food with less sugar and less salt.

I am excited that there is continued conversation about the inhumanity of cruelty to animals.

I am excited that as a human species,  we are evolving rapidly and exponentially to live our lives with heightened and enlightened levels of consciousness.

I am excited we are thinking holistically, and seeing the world through multiple lenses, and listening to the myriad of diverse stories, and integrating the physical with the virtual

I am excited to be alive in 2010 and have this opportunity to tell my story.

I am excited to know if you, too, are moved to answer this question: “What are you excited about?”

How so absolutely real is that!  Coming back from India and Nepal recently, and being immersed in the experience of other cultures brought “the experience of being alive” up front and personal. I saw and felt both the rawness of poverty co-exist alongside the comfort of wealth, and latest mobile technologies being used along side women filling vessels from community water pumps.   It’s those in-your-face contrasts that jolt us into the fullness of being alive.

If we don’t experience the fullness of life personally, we can vicariously.  We see more and more reality TV shows in the US which expose us to aspects of life that maybe outside our own experiences.  For example, where bosses are going undercover into the trenches to experience what it’s like to work in their own companies outside their board rooms; where couples race around the world and experience many difference cultures and environments;  where cooks initiative food revolutions to expose school kids to food that is different from their regular, routine food in the hope to introduce healthier diets that will create greater awareness of what it takes to live a healthier life style, free from fatal diseases associated with obesity.  And there are so many others that open us up to the fullness of being alive.

Awareness is the first step in any change.  If we can suspend judgment and see others as they are, it opens us up to seeing the wholeness of life with an appreciation of difference and what it could be like to be in someone else’s  shoes.  With such awareness, we begin to expand our own perspectives and the experience of being alive, and with that, comes the principle of Umbunto – I am because you are.

My dream for a more equitable, loving world, where communities can sustain themselves, women increasingly take public leadership roles, in the home, in business and governments, children are literate, and wealth is more evenly distributed is being realized bit-by-bit.  This bit-by-bit phenomenon is growing.  Social entrepreneurs, who believe in patient capital, participatory leadership and mindsets, and social media that instantly spread messages, are powerful facilitators of this positive, equitable trend.

If you too embrace the “fullness of being alive”, with optimism, hope and possibility, how is it showing up for you?

How important?

To be doing something you are good at and having fun and involving others in co-creating fun.  That’s participation, collaboration and engagement and playing to one’s strengths!   The New York Times is talking about Matt Harding who seems to have fun doing what he’s really good at.  The article brings attention to a number of the positive attributes that living in 2010 is all about: having the internet to share one’s own creativity; involving our global village life-centric ways that unite us through music, laughter, activity, play.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

“However you interpret it, you can’t watch “Dancing” for very long without feeling a little happier. The music (by Gary Schyman, a friend of Mr. Harding’s, and set to a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, sung in Bengali by Palbasha Siddique, a 17-year-old native of Bangladesh now living in Minneapolis) is both catchy and haunting. The backgrounds are often quite beautiful. And there is something sweetly touching and uplifting about the spectacle of all these different nationalities, people of almost every age and color, dancing along with an uninhibited doofus.

Children, not surprisingly, turn out to be the best at picking up on Mr. Harding’s infectious vibe. There’s frequently a grown-up, on the other hand — especially one in the front row of a crowd — who tends to ham it up and make a fool of himself.

The other remarkable thing about the “Dancing” phenomenon is that it is, to a very considerable extent, a creation of the Internet. It doesn’t just live, so to speak, on the Web; it was the Web that, more or less accidentally, brought it into being.”

The decade beginning 2000 was a good decade for me.  I married a wonderful human being in 2000; we have enjoyed great fun and a wide range of intensely pleasurable physical experiences; we have grown together and independently through many stimulating, engaging intellectual learnings;  and we have both experienced deeply meaningful emotional times.  We have traveled a lot and created a home we love. I am blessed in my relationship.

So, in this last decade, I have continued to change, as has the world around me.  A dominant and exciting force that is enabling this rapid growth rate of change is social media. We have new and additional ways in which we communicate and connect with people and we have many more topics and stories to share.  My sensitivity has been even more heightened as to how alike we really are across the globe.  How vulnerable we all are, and how much more we can become together.  I have been moved by so many stories shared in private and in public places – face-to-face, virtually, in books, on TV, in film.  All my senses have been sharpened.  For example, in Italy, I savored during and for months afterwards the landscape and the smells and sounds; the sensations and the tastes:  I admired the art work and architecture and imagined what it was like when armies of ancient Rome traversed the land battled against the Carthaginians and the Gauls;  I imagined the beauty of the Etruscans, even before the Romans, and then I imagined what life may have been like during the Renaissance when art and commerce flourished.  History and culture revealing how peoples continue to shape the future and leave their legacies.

I experienced similar emotions and wonderings while traveling in India and visiting Kathmandu Valley in Nepal.  My curiosity and interest is always aroused to learn how people get to where they are and what has shaped their current situation.   What are their stories?  My own birthplace, Australia, has untold stories that the land longs to share.  The more stories we can hear of all peoples on this planet, the richer we all will be.

I love to find the themes and connect dots.  What keeps coming up for me?  My filtering system is constructed to find the beauty, the goodness and what truths endure across time and space.  Horror and evil also endure across time and space. They co-exist.  History and the arts are full of co-existence. The victories of love overcoming fear, and good overcoming evil and beauty overcoming horror is the human story.

I learned at Christmas time, a dear colleague, whom I haven’t communicated with since 2002 has Stage 4 cancer in her brain and has very little time left in her present form.   Going about my business (busy-ness), I thought about her a lot, but didn’t call.   After Christmas, I learnt her condition had worsened.  I felt remorseful that I had not acted on my best intuition to call her when I wanted to.  I actually feared I had missed my opportunity to let her know I cared for her.  I had weak excuses, like a 14 hours time difference, Christmas was an awkward time, etc. etc.  Finally, I did call and our conversation was truly meaningful.  I also send the flowers I had been thinking about sending for four days.  I decided that moving beyond thought to action would be my commitment to myself in 2010.  To move beyond dreaming and thinking into action – action that serves others, and in doing so, serves me.

All plans can change.  So when the world changes around you, what constants provide you with a sense of safety or equanimity that enables you to go on?  The tiniest belief in oneself helps; some hope for a future; the support of others.  I have been in that state, when I had no self-confidence, despaired of any future and indifferent to the support and love of others.  How I’ve pulled myself out of such low points is my story and some parts of the dark story I am not proud of and some parts I am.  I realize the parts I am proud of are when I found the inner strength to shift my perspective enough to make a different choice.  Through the tears and the pain (both physical and emotional) I could sense a faint awareness that I wanted to feel/do something different.  In such times, I open up enough find an inner resource that offers a glimmer of hope and possibility that I am willing to admit there is a different way and I will do something about it.  I also believe that having experienced the intense discomfort of chemotherapy and radiation, that in the future, and if in a conscious state, when faced with death I can have the same experience.  I will find an inner resource that offers a glimmer of hope and possibility that I am willing to admit there is a different way and I can find it.  I know I will seek peace and love over fear.

What is your story?  What victories, celebrations and joys have you experienced in the past decade?  In telling your story, what have been highpoints of your first ten years in the 21^st century?  What will you remember with a smile on your face, a warmth in your gut, a tenderness in your heart?  What are you most grateful for or even a little bit grateful for – personally and professionally?  Who have you met in the past 10 years that has influenced your life in a good way?  What have you done for others that you know has been of service to them?  What thoughts may inspire you for action in 2010?

In the city of Kolkata, an anti-noise campaign has started and Sunday has been declared a no honking day.  To quote the police commissioner of Kolkata, Guatam Mohan Chakrabarti, “...city police are embarking on a major campaign against noise pollution in general and bursting of high decibel firecrackers in particular.”

“After some progress in the campaign, we want to observe Sundays as no honking days. Motorists in the city often honk without reason.  Most of the time this is a manifestation of their impatience.  Sundays being no hurry days, drivers can desist from honking.  This would substantially reduce noise levels in the city.  Over time, the city has got noisier and at some busy crossings, it is completely maddening.”

What is also relevant in networked India is that this campaign has begun on a virtual plane on the blog kolkatacops.com.  The Police Commissioner continues, “enforcement alone cannot make the difference.  Only awareness can bring down the overall noise levels.  Since we already have a blog, we cannot have a better vehicle for such a campaign.

“We are inviting environmentalists and doctors to air their views on the ill effects of high-decibel fireworks on health and the environment.”  In addition, he wants to invite historians “to tell how and when the noise level increased to such a level”.  Furthermore, “sociologists should speak  on what social implications this sudden spurt of noise pollution may have on our social life.  We would like to have the views of economists if they can quantify the environmental damage and the financial loss incurred by this noise spurt.”

The Police Commissioner has not forgotten the common person.  He does not want the blog to be “an airtight zone for expression on one-way views.”  He is hoping for a range of views from regular citizens as well.  “We expect that eventually science, logic and enormous goodwill would prevail.”

Among already eminent citizens who have blogged, here are two comments:
“It is surely a good move, but I doubt if drivers will follow it.  In civilized countries, drivers do not honk unnecessarily, but here this is a custom.  Drivers should be trained properly.” Dr. Dulal Bose, Ent specialist and former sheriff of Kolkata.

“It has become a habit here to blow the horn unnecessarily.  If drivers stop doing this, noise pollution levels will come done.  For this, we need a mass awareness campaign and this is a good initiative to start with.” Devang Gandhi, cricketer.

Enthusiasm and passion can be transferred virtually, so here’s to the Kolkata cops.

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I have reason to be excited.   Our workshop “Flourishing Destinies: sustaining continuity for positive change” received media attention and was the lead story yesterday in  Axiomnews , based in Ontaria Canada and whose mission is “to publish news, on behalf of organizations, that catalyzes meaningful contribution.“

The New News Media such as Axiom News are helping to shift cultures to cultures of responsibility and positive, sustainable actions. Axiom News has “A Passion for Organizations that Make a Difference“.  From their website:

“We believe the organizations we all work for, and access goods and services through, are the best vehicle for influencing social change and for finding fulfilling, meaningful work. We are committed to our mission of helping organizations make the greatest contribution they possibly can to society, and the self-actualization of their team members.

We know that high functioning, open and dynamic social ecologies are the best environments for making this happen. As practitioners of the journalistic arts we are passionate about our Constructive Stakeholder Journalism approach as a high-yield catalyst for such environments, social contribution and the creation of meaning in work.”

With news networks like that, we will focus on growing that which we want.

The overall theme of the Global Forum is “Manage in an era of massive innovation” and our workshop’s purpose is to prototype a container for massive innovation. Our container is made up of a process with web-based technologies.  Our process is Appreciative Inquiry and our web-based technologies are Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter and a collaborative platform iCohere.

So through the Appreciative Inquiry process we seek to discover high peak stories of when the energy, innovation and  commitment generated in the planning process of a workshop or conference have not withered on the vine, but  continued to build after the event, spiraling into greater levels of achievement.  Through all of our shared stories and experiences of successful sustained implementation and our dreams for what such implementation could look like, we will develop a deeper understanding of how the energy and innovation created in the planning process can build after the event and spiral into ever greater levels of achievement that lead to flourishing destinies.  We will co-create insights and understanding that we can take away to apply within our own organizations and projects in order to create sustained continuity for positive change and innovation at the scale of the whole.

You are welcome to participate free by going to our site www.flourishingdestiny.org and follow the prompts.   To join the Twitter discussion, use @BAWBGlobalForum;  Facebook; LinkeIn

Is Democracy emerging naturally?

Mainstream anything is old paradigm.  Mainstream media is struggling, similarly mainstream politics, mainstream economics, entertainment, education and corporations – innovation is happening at the edges and the new connections are strengthening and making a difference – both positive and negative.

Tools help Us Evolve to Another Level

Through our increased use of digital tools, as with any other tool, we are evolving to another level.  We’ve come from rubbing stones together to settling in communities and tilling the soil, to building machines that both enhance and damage our existence, to designing computers that automate most manual processes leaving us now ready to move to the next stage of evolution and apply all our prior knowledge  – in the words of Ken Wilber,  we “transcend and include” as we evolve to new stages of development.  We are waking up to what can and cannot sustain life as we know it on this planet.   We can pass on this knowledge and at the same time co-create new hypotheses about what it is we can become.  We are entering an era of massive innovation that has the potential for us to actively participate and collaborate in ways of unknowable scale – and if we are truly wise – it could be at the scale of the whole.

How Can We Apply these Tools Wisely?

Digital, social media tools will facilitate such a reality, that’s what tools do, but will we apply them wisely?   What are the mindsets and cultures that will turn these tools into “wisdom” tools?   It takes participatory, collaborative mindsets and cultures to apply our tools wisely so we make meaning and sense of complex and rapidly changing situations.  It’s the software between our ears, the pulsating life force under our rib cage and our evolving consciousness that determine our destinies.  Technologies are mere enablers.

Wise application is knowing how to use digital media in a way that serves humanity.  As human beings, it is in our DNA  to communicate, to participate, to contribute, to inquire, to learn, to grow.   Digital tools are enabling such experiences at unprecedented rates, unconstrained by politics, ideologies, geography, ethnicity, income, gender, age or any of the traditional barriers to entry.

The values of openness, trust, transparency, integrity and authenticity that we experience as active participants using technology enabled social media in our personal and private interactions during our play time is infiltrating our work time.   These same values are prerequistes for the successful and wise application of digtial tools in our workplaces.  We have the tools, let’s focus on strengthening and valuing participatory, collaborative mindsets and cultures.

What participatory values and behaviors are you seeing in the application of these tools, socially or at work?

The citizens of this planet reached a tipping point in just about every domain, resulting in more people speaking up for greater compassion and understanding across cultures;  workers and shareholders alike calling for greater transparency and integrity in financial markets;  consumers are seeking products and services that conserve our natural resources and health.

Alongside these positive seismic systemic shifts our communication channels and flows have become easier, faster, more far-reaching, collaborative and compassionate.

Out of curiosity, and in many cases, necessity to make sense of our world, more and more of us are connecting to people of other cultures in far lands.  We find these connections as sources of great innovation and inspiration which in turn reconnect us with our own creativity and imaginations.  Social media, including networks, wikis, blogs, podcasts, video and Twitter bring us together as one world.

We self-select into on-line communities where we are finding mutual interests, shared passions, connection points and a sense of belonging.  Our films and entertainments have become increasingly multi-and cross-cultural.  We laugh and cry together.  We celebrate our global humanity.

What are you hearing, seeing, feeling, thinking that gives you excitement and hope that we are becoming more conscious of world that can flourish for all?

I declare my biases up front:   I’m one of those who look for meaning in everything.  I’m curious and I will look for the best in a situation.

How is Twitter making our world better?  Well, it is not only Twitter – it is the entire social media phenomenon.   And it’s not the tools that are making our world beter – they are tools, enablers.  It’s humankind’s choices about how these tools are used is what makes the world better.

Somewhere else, I described Twitter as an emergent self-organizing system.  In the Twitterverse, it seems very quickly and without much effort we self-select into interest groups, drop into others for a visit, contribute, stay or move on.  It is the true Open Space Technology.  We begin to chose our networks and have our voice.  If we are neither contributing nor learning in one relationship, we use the law of the delete key.  What’s the point hanging out where there isn’t a mutuality of purpose or reciprocity?

Twitter has awakened me to knowing there is no void between us – the morphic energy fields – our collective consciousness is palpable.  I feel extraordinarily connected with so many more people through social media in an important way.  I honor their ideas and knowledge and experiences.  I feel a sense of responsbility of supporting them in their endeavors.  I am filled with hope and possibility.  How we can use these tools wisely to improve the conditions of  the sick, the hungry and those in despair in countries without such access is one big thinking exercise right now.

What’s your highest vision for social media tools?

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