How so absolutely real is that!  After visiting India and Nepal, 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 Ubuntu – 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 to register for this free event.

This was the most diverse AI conference to date: the location, Kathmandu, Nepal, the participant mix from 42 countries, and the range topics showing the many, many applications of AI in the world today in all sectors was a testament to the power of AI globally. It was a simultaneous online and in person conference.

I, together with Susanne Mueller, Barbara Christian and Timothy Germany,  will be sharing the high points of our experience.  Come hear our stories as we share examples of how AI as an instrument of change is impacting the lives of people in the poorest communities, in schools, in government, in industry, in hospitals, on topics of social justice, environmental responsibility, aging, leadership, families and so much more.

In addition, I will provide a quick overview of the contents and objectives of my  new book  “Appreciative Inquiry for Collaborative Solutions: 21 Strength-based Workshops”, published by Pfeiffer Imprint of Wiley, ISBN 978-0-470-48316-9 will be available. David Cooperrider  has described it as “a brilliantly applied book with over 21 workshops ready for prime time delivery – helping leaders tap the revolutionary power of appreciative inquiry…”

Date:  Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Time:  5:45 pm  – 8 pm
Location:   John Jay College, 899 Tenth Avenue @ 59th Street , Room 610 T
Registration Fee:  Free
Here is the closest Subway stop/lines   59th Street Columbus Circle/Broadway  – Subway A, B, C, D, 2, 1

Participants will need to pre-register in order to access the building.   (You may need to sign in to yahoo groups.)

The NYAISIG is a community of practice that is committed to the study, exploration and application of the Appreciative Inquiry Philosophical Approach along with other positive/collaborative approaches and practices around change and transformation.  It is our hope to create a supportive community of practitioners to bring more of these approaches into New York City and Area Organizations.   It is co-sponsored by Dispute Resolution Program at John Jay College.

All of the AI Principles are evident in her story.  She opens with examples of the Constructionist Principle: how words create worlds and the role we all play in co-creating our realities and defining each other.

She advocates the need to honor the wholeness, possibility and potency of ourselves and each other.  She asks us to open ourselves up to and embrace our adversities, rather than sweep them under the carpet.

She reminds us from her own story that we live up OR down to others’ image of us, and how positive imagery leads to positive outcomes.  She is such an example of nurturing the human spirit, keeping hope, seeing the beauty, valuing curiosity … and so much more.

I highly recommend this video.

I have been willing regime change for just about the whole 9 years I’ve lived here, so during that time, I have been, at times, quite “unappreciative” and a done my fair share of ” **** bashing” – another of our not so generous cultural constructs.

So now that has all passed, I’m seeing the best in America, which fills me up with energy and optimism and hope. I see such opportunities for us to co-construct. The shift in what we are now paying attention to leads to a whole new set of discoveries, dreams, designs and destiny.

So wondering what might be responses to the following questions:

• What are the best and highest qualities that represent America’s “positive core”?
• What areas offer America the greatest possibilities to bring about justice, equity and equality?
• And, in 10 years,  how do you want America to be in the world?

A workshop package is a complete stand-alone downloadable product that includes a Facilitator Guide in PDF format, reproducible Participant Worksheets and a PowerPoint Presentation.

Workshops are designed to energize participants by accessing positive emotional states from where they can broaden their repertoire to collectively build greater capacity.

• We have created this webinar to provide more information on the downloadable packages – what is offered, how to prepare, facilitate and debrief.

[form 2 "Downloadable Packages Webinar Registration"]

Two days ago I received a copy of Jenifer Fox’s brand new book, Your Child’s Strengths. I decided on this Sunday morning, I’d take a peek at it, having planned already to spend my day with Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. I had started Tolle’s book a few days earlier and was very much into it. Wow! I am awestruck and I thank my intuition!

Jenifer’s book is wonderful; clear and powerful. Her work and message is so significant for our global transformation. It is on target and right on! For us to create “A New Earth ” a la Tolle, we need to start with our children NOW by focussing on their strengths instead of their weaknesses. We need to help them discover their strengths, develop their strengths and use their strengths. When we consciously change how we relate to and teach children, we won’t have to worry about leaving a legacy; collectively we will be creating a living legacy; and, in my book, that is what sustainablilty is all about. Teach a child to fish…to paraphrase an analogy.

We live and work in an extremely fast-paced, increasingly complex and interdependent global economy, where the old forms and traditions are no longer serving. How much more crucial is it, then, to enable children to find their strengths and open them up to the fabulous possibilities such awareness brings, before institutionalized, emotional, physical and psychic constructs find them and shape them in ways that do them harm, and, as a result, harm our world.

The Oprah Show is offering an on-line program, starting March 3 where she and Eckhart Tolle will teach A New Earth, I will be recommending she consider a similar training with Jenifer Fox. Jenifer’s personal story touches the heart; her writing is entrancing. I am SO excited with this book. On a personal note, it has also inspired me with my work “Pathways to strength-based systems”. We are not alone!!

From , something from the field of Organisational Scholarship:

• Go to http://www.unc.edu/peplab/publications.html to pull up a .pdf of Chapter 11 in the book by Cameron, K., Dutton, J. & Quinn, R. (Eds. 2003) Positive Organizational Scholarship. This chapter speaks to how positive emotions lead to thought-action repertoire which her theory states overtime strengthens our resiliency and our positive disposition – a field of work I am very interested in. By the way, Barbara is doing the closing keynote at the AI Conference in Orlando, Florida in a couple of weeks http://www.2007aiconference.com/index.htm
• I am very excited about a meeting we have set up at the conference because I have a hunch that the Positive Matrix meetings (at the front of the manual you received during your training) serve to support her “broaden and build theory.” She is looking for tools that “…(encourage) organizational members to explore ways to cultivate meaningful positive emotions within their organizations”.
• My experience is that participants in Positive Matrix meetings, because of the deliberate structure, language and questioning sequences, based on AI, open up to “thought-action” tendencies which she describes as play, exploration, envisioning future possibilities and actions, enlarge the cognitive context, and in another paper she describes “greater feelings of self-other overlap and “oneness” and this broadened sense of self may predict a more complex understanding of others”.

John Findlay and I are presenting a session entitled “21st Century Wisdom Tools that Broaden and Build” on the last day of the conference, just before Barbara’s closing keynote. I’ll let you know what transpires.
Talking of 21st Wisdom tools here are two excellent slide shows on the topic of Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG) and happiness.

• Jane McGonigal, whom Juergen and I met at the AMP Innovation and Thought Leadership Conference – we attended her presentation and she ours – and we got very excited about where our interests overlap talking about the role of play, games and positive psychology and more. I encourage you to take a look at two slide presentations she has uploaded to http://www.slideshare.net/avantgame on a game designer’s perspective on the future of happiness.

David Cooperrider’s live Webcast on Becoming a Green Company for Profit and Value

• you can now download at http://weatherhead.case.edu/webinar/archive/

On the topic of “Greening”

• if you know the magazine EnlightenNext, http://www.enlightennext.org/ their next issue is on Greening and also features an article on Second Life – virtual reality that is about play and happiness from my perspective.

I would love to create a game that takes women on a quest to become fearless …… that draws on strengths and positive psychology.