Joyful Jubilant Learning

7 Wonders of Joyful Jubilant Learning

Join us in our big, hairy, audacious goal to Saturday, 07-07-07 and

Listen, Laugh, Learn, Link, Love, Live, and Leap to Wonder

• Listen — welcome new ideas and every teacher, listening fully opened
• Laugh — with the positive and uplifting joy others are ready to give you
• Learn — with childlike curiosity and in a collaboratively jubilant way
• Link — use others’ lessons learned as a springboard for your own, sharing your knowledge freely
• Love — tap into your passion for learning, and be of loving heart in your new bonds with others
• Live — be a shining example of the Lifelong Learner; “Be the learner you want to see in the world”
• Leap — to a new experience, stretching past the familiar, accepting leaps of higher intuition.
  Allow learning to transform you, and to bring you to Wonder.

This is the BHAG we are leaping toward:

On 07-07-07 we are determined to collect at least 777 Learning Links, possibly more.

This is a shout-out to all Joyful and Jubilant Learners, readers and writers alike. Will you help us reach our goal?  This is what you do:

1. Between now and Saturday, July 07, 2007 take your personal leaps of wonder:

- Listen, Laugh, and Learn as much as you can from the collective wisdom online.
- Link to this post and spread the good word for us!
- If you blog, feel free to grab the smaller banners in our right sidebar to promote the event on your own site, and proclaim yourself as a JJL Contributor.

You will be Loving, Living, and Leaping to wonder as you take these first steps!

2. On (or before) Saturday, July 07, 2007 return here, and enter your favorite 7 Learning Links in the comments. They can be from your own site, or from others. Along with each link, designate which of our JJL Learning categories you feel they best fit into, for we will be compiling them on this master page by category:

Compilation: 7 Wonders of Joyful Jubilant Learning

Our only rule: Keep it positive and clean, in the spirit of our 7 Wonders of Learning, and the aloha spirit this site was founded on by the Ho‘ohana Community. This will be a Learning List for all ages.

We only need 111 comments to achieve our goal ... think we could push for 777 contributions? WOW! That would be 5,439 Learning Links; 5,439 leaps to wonder... Let’s go for it!

Cowboy learning

My son just finished an 8-day, 200 mile horse trek here in Oregon. He and a group of about 40 other people moved 50 horses from one Boy Scout camp to another so the horses can be used at summer camp (the camp is on Mt. Hood, so the horses winter down south).

I didn't go on the whole trek this year (I plan to next year) but I was able to join them for a good ol' cowboy campfire about halfway through the trek. After I arrived at the rendezvous point, we spent about an hour or so socializing, eating, and getting the horses settled for the night. Then it was time for the campfire.

During the campfire people shared songs, stories, and cowboy poetry. Everyone had a good time. The leader of the trek (who lives on the southern horse ranch) told us all kinds of things about cowboy life, the history of the area around us, and how important the horse was to the development of the U.S.A. Some of the boys chipped in and told their own stories (some they made up themselves, some memorized from a book, some they'd memorized through hearing and repetition).

This felt like a living example of "Talking Story" as related to me (and demonstrated) by Rosa Say. That campfire was just an awesome experience.

But what struck me even more was how much my son has learned about taking care of horses, working in a team, and taking care of himself. On that trek, he had to learn by doing and using the examples of the more experienced wranglers as his guide. At the end of the 8 days, he shared his own stories with the family. He is still telling us all kinds of interesting things he's learned, funny things that happened on the trek, and interesting people he'd met.

Sitting in an office (or on a plane) every day, I only catch a glimpse of this now and again, but I think there's something we can learn from the cowboy way. It sure seemed like a fun way to do hard work.

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Dwayne Melancon is the author of Genuine Curiosity, where he's always on the lookout for new things to learn.

Teamwork when Small is Essential

...and learning from the world of business.

I love reading about different business models, and when successful people thumb their nose at more "conventional wisdom," remaining confident that they can make their way work. They challenge me to think harder, as I consider, are they stubborn, or are they merely sure?

Time Magazine recently published a story about 37signals, the company that founded – and still operates – Basecamp. Pretty interesting, and thought you might like to read it. Their business may be quite different from yours, but chances are you need to get involved in project management or online collaboration in some way, the work processes that their tools were created for (Basecamp, Highrise, Ta-da Lists, Campfire and Backpack). If you are a Basecamp user (and in the spirit of full disclosure, I am and do recommend them), it’s good to know the philosophy of those who are the creators behind a tool you are using!

For instance, here is an excerpt:

Unconventional organization is proving to be one of 37signals’ biggest assets. The company creates programs that facilitate teamwork, and it ends up relying on the very same tools it builds. “We are growing in the same way a lot of our customers are, so we build products that we need to run our own business,” Fried says. “We just build stuff we want to use. If we need it, they need it.”

You can read the entire article here: Small is Essential.

How small? Just 8 employees, over a million customers and their project teams who "use our web-based applications to get things done the simple way." Pretty amazing. There is definitely more than stubborn going on here.

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Joyful Jubilant Archives:

Written by Tim Milburn, this is one of my past favorites on JJL about teaming:

Developing Powerful Partnerships.
Read the comments too!

Posting by Rosa Say

5 Alive in June 2007

Here are my 5 learnings for June 2007:

1. There is always something a little more we can do. I ran my second marathon on Father’s Day. I targeted 4:20 or less as my time. I managed to go under 4 hours (3:59:44) by sprinting the last 300 yards even though I felt drained. There is always something left when we tap into it. The biggest joy for me was not accomplishment but running with my 15 year old son!
2. Energy expenditure must be balanced by energy recovery. There may be something more there but recovery is vital to full expenditure. I am still in recovery mode.
3. We have barely scratched the surface of learning about, developing and leveraging our strengths. It is nice to see how much has been done in 2007 but we are merely touching and tweaking as opposed to the full experience and expression of strengths in our lives and workplace.
4. Those of us who teach, and I have been teaching for 25 years, get to learn so much from our students/participants. I am so indebted to all my participants who have shared parts of their lives and experiences.
5. Development is natural and essential - I learned that toddlers grow up as my oldest son graduates from high school this Thursday. I do hope I have given him solid roots and the wings to soar on his own while knowing regardless of where he is in the world he is never far from home.

JJL LP2 Post19: What were your Top 5?

Learn to Lead with Your Strengths is our current Learning Project here on Joyful Jubilant Learning. If you are here for the first time, you can easily catch up with us here!
[Post 18 can be found here.]

Part Two Continues with Tom Rath's StrengthsFinder 2.0

Week 2: Ending June 23. Get your own copy of StrengthsFinder 2.0. Read and annotate the first 31 pages. Page 31 will instruct you to log on to www.strengthsfinder.com and take your assessment. Thereafter, Week 3: Ending June 30. We’ll look at the second part of the book, where we work on applying our strengths.

Our Project Mantra: Read, Learn, Live

My Results ~~~~~~~~

Whoa! I did not expect this would happen at all, even though I had wished it would.

My results surprised me: 3 of my top 5 have changed.

They surprised me in that I have become a ‘gullible believer’ in all things Gallup – they say that your talents will largely remain stable and true, so it was somewhat of a jolt for me when they emerged differently. My first reaction was to sit back, stare at the results onscreen and think, I wonder if something went wrong.

Life Lessons in Rapid Fire Learning

I can't believe it's already the 25th of June. Life is sure moving fast forward for me. Lots of new stuff happened for me this, and lots of learning for me this month, with help from some super smart people.

Let's get to this month's Rapid Fire Learning!

1. Little things can create big results. Thanks for the reminder Lisa!
2. Winners quit. All the time. Don't believe me? Read about The Dip, and then buy yourself and your friends a copy of The Dip book, and start quitting today. Read the best review of the book, and decide for yourself whether or not this book is for you.
3. I need to work on keeping the main thing "the main thing."
4. I'm only a mid-level nerd. Not sure if I'm supposed to celebrate that or be sad. But I am.
5. Just finished my Strengthsfinder 2.0 assessment, and I found out my top 5 strengths are Woo, Communication, Maximizer, Positivity and Futuristic. Now to find out what to do with them...Do you know your strengths? Learn more about this book and about learning to lead at Learning Project #2.

What did you learn this month? Share your learnings with a trackback or a comment or just post away on your own site.

[Phil Gerbyshak is the author of 10 Ways to Make It Great!, and can be found changing the world most days over at Make It Great! Phil is one of the original contributors to JJLN, and a listing of the articles he's written on Joyful Jubilant Learning can be found here.]

Accelerate Learning: Read and Stimulate Your Reticular Activating System

In this article I cite Thomas Edision, Wikipedia, and Jim Newton (Edison's friend) to answer these questions, "How do we learn? What is learning?"

"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you'd understood all your life, but in a new way." - Doris Lessing - Author

We Have Been Given a Wonderful Gift

You may or may not know but we each have been given a Reticular Activating System (RAS). It acts as the brains control center, the  center of consciousness, attention and learning.

Your RAS is the key to “turning your brain 'on',” and seems to be the center of motivation and is essentially:

"your unconscious auto-pilot filter that constantly judges what’s important and what’s not about each and every bit of stimulus occurring physically around you and mentally inside of you. Or, to quote an expert:

“[It] alerts the brain to incoming information from the senses, and from the centers of thought, memory and feeling. More than that, it adjudicates the relative importance of that information. . . In a way the RAS is like a vigilant secretary, sorting out the trivia from the incoming messages.” - Ronald H Bailey, et al. The Role of the Brain, 1975

The amazing thing about the reticular filter is that you, through your own intentions and focus, can influence what it lets in and what it keeps out. If you have ever had the experience of buying a car and then noticed that all you see on the road around you are other cars just like yours, you’ve experienced the power of the reticular filter.

The trick is to consciously set up your reticular to look for input and ideas that will lead you toward SUCCESSFUL outcomes, not unsuccessful ones." Via David Allen Co.

We use our RAS each and everyday whether we realize it or not. The information and stimulus we gain in the process of learning is the seed of awareness that our RAS uses to draw our attention, to notice something we might have otherwise missed.

Example of Your RAC Working

Can you remember when you bought your first new car? What was the make, model, and color? Do you remember suddenly noticing many of the same cars with the color as yours?

Have YOU Learned How to be a Grown-Up Yet?

SweetP (love of my life, significant other, spouse, other 'alf, lover, old man, my husband) says he never wants to really grow up! 

That's a bit tricky to achieve when he looks at three very adult men - his kids, and his role as Father of The Groom in a couple of months!  Fortunately, for his sake, he hasn't had his nose rubbed into his real age by the presence of grandchildren yet, but we can only assume that's just a matter of time!

But what he's really talking about is that he never wants to lose the "kid inside him".  The kid still holds those delightful child-like qualities of wonder, imagination, curiosity and an endless capacity for fun.

The kid, alive and well inside SweetP, is part of the jumble that makes us who we are.  Some of us lose that kid forever, even before we lose the body of a kid.  Some of us don't even know what the "kid inside me" is like nor how to recognise it.

So having reached a certain chronological age (be it 15, 18, 21 or whatever) and being grown up are FAR from synonymous.

Recently I've been helping a client find his place as a grown man. This is especially difficult for this late-twenties bloke when he's the only child in a complex and dysfunctional family.   

His parents have been partnering in a destructive and toxic dance for a long time. With just three of them, they expect that he will always remain a part of their dance, as he has been through childhood. 

But he's sick of it!  He's sick of the fights, the tug-of-war to get him to take sides, the failure to take responsibility for individual choices and actions, and the emotional blackmail that has all been part of daily life for them.

For him, it's exceedingly difficult to detach and make choices that will allow him to be the grown-up he is by age.  When you're an only child, the sense of obligation is heavier and more onerous, even in the face of what seems to be the "bleeding obvious".

It's got me thinking.  Having to weather the storms of my own role in the sandwich generation, caught between parenting your parents and trying to stop parenting your kids, I'm left wondering how grown-up am I?

• So when are we REALLY grown-up?
• What are the signs that we've passed that milestone? 
• Is it something we should celebrate or mourn?
• Can we speed up or slow down the process at will?
• Are there others around us sabotaging us growing up, at age 20, 40, or even 70?
• What lessons do we need to learn before we ARE grown up?

You know what?  Despite the title Relationship Specialist, I don't know if there's one answer or a million.

So, what do you think?

_________________________________________________________________________________________
Chris Owen of Pink Apple is an Aussie-based Relationship Specialist and blogger who shares the secrets to successful relating.  Her humourous style brings many readers to her blog Take A Bite. 

Google Docs and Microsoft Word

The Office Watch curent issue has more details about using Google Docs for collaboration around a document and then finishing the document with formating and other things that Microsoft does well.

Several of the regular newsletters I subscribe to come from the folks behind the Office Watch. They keep current with what is happening in the land of Redmond, WA with a particular eye to the users of the Office products. They cut through the hype and vaporware to deliver the straight skinny as much as it is possible. In the years that I have subscribed, they are generally right on the money.

You can view the online version of the newsletter here.

From this website, you can also subscribe via RSS or email.

Office Watch tends to be a little technical.

Office for Mere Mortals delivers similar information in a manner that makes sense to most of us.

Email Essentials focuses on all things in the user arena for email not just Outlook.

All this information for FREE. Yes, free. Really. They do also raise money with some handy ebooks.

Oh, and you can also select to recieve a version of each newsletter to read on your PDA. They do practice what they talk about.

Do you have a technical newletter or information source to share? Please leave a comment with your recommendation.

Steve Sherlock is your collaboration teammate who believes commencement begins everyday

.......

This is a continuation of a posting originally made here

Learning to Play Tag

Okay, that may be a stretch, but the theme of JJL is all things learning, right?

Rich Griffith issued a challenge, and while it may take me a while to answer them at times, I’m not one to back down from blog challenges! From Rich’s place;

“Rosa Say over at Joyful Jubilant Learning has a meme-free zone I think, (and I agree with her about the widgetification of blogs adding to clutter and distracting from content) but I’m going to chance it because I find myself really curious about what song is a real ‘pick me-up’ for her. The aural cup-o-joe for the mood as it were.”

Rich’s challenge came within a game of blog tag started by JJLer Hilda Carroll (remember her community profile here?) called Songs that make your heart sing.

So hard to pick just one, and if I try I will never decide, so here is one I just listened to on my car’s CD player. One of those instances where you buy an album for one song, and then a track you’ve never heard before ends up to be your favorite one instead; it’s called My Front Porch Looking In, written by Don Pfrimmer, Frank J. Myers, and Richie McDonald and sung by Lonestar on their From there to here Greatest Hits album.

The only ground I ever owned was sticking to my shoes
Now I look out my front porch at this panoramic view
I can sit and watch the fields fill up with rays of golden sun
Or watch the moon lay on the fences like that's where it was hung
But my blessings are in front of me it's not about the land
I'll never beat the view of my front porch looking in
There's a carrot-top that can barely walk with a sippy cup of milk
A little blue-eyed blonde with her shoes on wrong that likes to dress herself
And the most beautiful girl holdin' both of them
Yeah the view I love the most is my front porch looking in

I like it because of the reminder that beauty is where we look for it, and we’re usually sure to find it in the people we care for most. There is an AOL Video which plays it here, and all the lyrics for the Lonestar greatest hits album it's on are here.

You found me out Rich; I’m a huge country music fan. Easy to sing along with, not afraid to be silly, loving and home-spun simple, meant to be for everyone and anyone.

By the way, we’re not really a meme-free zone! Don’t forget that we have one of our own called Rapid Fire Learning EVERY month, posted when we still have five full days left before a new month – a day each to conquer five new learnings for that month. Play learning tag with us next on Monday, June 25 when Phil Gerbyshak hosts Rapid Fire Learning for us for June.

What was Rich’s happy song? Click in here to find out. Great choice Rich!

I've traveled here and everywhere following my job
I've seen the paintings from the air brushed by the hand of God
The mountains and the canyons reach from sea to shining sea
But I can't wait to get back home to the one woman made for me
Cause everywhere I'll ever go and everywhere I've been
Nothing takes my breath away like my front porch looking in

Okay JJLers, ready to play Tag? If you have commented here recently (and offered us your site's link), your name should be on this list! The rules say three, however we go for the gusto in our learning and in everything else, palena 'ole; no limits!

• Andrew Hartley
• Herman Najoli
• Bob Glaza
• Nic Darling
• Jacob Share
• Robert Hruzek
• Rebecca Thomas
• Billy Smith
• Nick McCormick
• Debra Estep

All JJL contributing authors - you too!

You're it! What song makes your heart sing? Send a trackback to Rich and to Hilda, and here if you wish.