Joyful Jubilant Learning

An argument for Escapism.

Oo dear! I'm in a weird place.

How? I find myself arguing AGAINST learning being the exclusive domain of non-fiction and books of an  apparently intellectual bent.

Here I am, in February, the month where we all prepare for next month's A Love Affair With Books, and I'm not reading anything that's theoretically intended to teach me things.

Oh the irony!  It seems SO incongruous that I, the voracious consumer of books, the person who's always got a book to recommend to her clients, and has a pile of half-read books by her bed, is without book learning for the month! 

I feel like the poor duped Emperor in his New Clothes in the old children's fairy story.  I'm embarrassed and awkward.  Shy of opening my mouth, and wondering why people are looking at me, bug-eyed with puzzlement!

Here I am on JJL, in the place for learning - especially the absorption of knowledge from books, arguing that we sometimes need to avoid book learning to learn our most important lessons! 

It's hard to imagine myself somehow on the same side as Kevin Eikenberry's derisive local farmers of his childhood.

But like it or lump it, THAT has been my learning over the last two months.

You see, yet again I wore out late last year.  The pattern repeated itself for about the fourth year in a row and STILL I haven't GOT the lesson well enough to take effective defensive/evasive action. So I took some time off! 

Poor Rosa, our gentle shepherd here at JJL, began to wonder if I'd dropped off the face of the earth. 

But all I'd done was stopped reading to learn.  That included emails, blogs, newsletters and especially books that focused on personal and professional self-development.  I wanted to STOP learning and soaking in endless information, however much it might improve me, and instead heal me by shedding as many expectations of myself as I could.

I've been trying to trust my INTUITION

I've been trying to BREAK THE HABIT of working till destructive oblivion, when faced with stress, profit/loss statements, or the phone going quiet!

I've been learning to TRUST that I will somehow KNOW when I am ready to pick up another little part of my life and slip on a newer more effective style of achieving what I need.

But that's not say that I haven't been reading...

In fact I've been using fiction to escape.  I've worn a track to my local library and "hoovered" up books like the vacuum cleaner sucks up dust! I've returned to my old childhood summer activity of lying inside a dimmed house, to keep the Aussie summer heat at bay, and immersing myself in another world.

But it's strange how the lessons happen anyway.

For a change from my crime fiction I picked up a recommended memoir by Australian journalist and publisher Susan Duncan.  It was relaxing tucking into a different taste, some easy-reading, and quite novel-like piece of non-fiction.  But, in Salvation Creek, I came up slap-bang against new knowledge.  I felt equally assaulted and relieved by words that summed up my current lethargy. 

"... the part of my nervous system that thrived on adrenaline has worn out..."

"... I fear being called on to give more than I'm capable of ..."

At the time, it felt like the sky thundered and the world shuddered as I read and re-read, and wrote and re-read those words.

What now?

When I read them out to Karen Wallace, she chuckled at my naivety.  Karen would have used different words but for her it was patently obvious that was what was happening to me! The question "Didn't you know?" hung on the phone line between us!

Well no!  I'd never thought of it that way but it sure as hell explained why I felt the need to heal and nurture myself, and may continue to do so for a while yet. 

When you've spent most hours of every day of your life running like a bull at a gate, and banging your head a lot, it takes more than a couple of months of slow activity to undo those old habits.

So despite avoiding all book-learning opportunities like the plague, the learning (like life) got under my guard.  Thank heavens it did!

Where to from here?  For once I'll plan that when the time is right.  And that isn't yet!

Based on the fact that I reckon there's stuff to be learned everywhere, I guess I'm called to ask some questions of all JJL readers. 

1. Why does fiction get put aside by many as a waste of good reading time? 
2. Has anyone else learned "stuff" from avoiding the intellectual books and immersing for a time in the reverie of escapism?

While knowing I'm not alone won't stop me from continuing my slow healing journey, it'd sure as hell help me feel less weird!

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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 blogs Take A Bite and Apple Tart.

Together with Karen Wallace she has also co-authored Save Our Xmas Sanity a pre-Christmas Must-Have for all frazzled women!

 

Packing For Two

I arrived at airport security with my carry-on bag in tow. I was excited to fly on this new airline, Express Jet. I had heard good things: they give you actual food, they provide complimentary XM radio, and it's a straight through flight!

I placed my bag on the conveyor belt and walked through the scanner (minus shoes, belt, and personal effects). When I got to the other side, a security agent was standing there with my bag in hand, asking if it would be okay to go through my stuff (is "no" an acceptable answer?!?).

When we got over to the table, he started rifling through my bag and then pulled out my toiletries case (is there a better word for this?). He started pulling out toothpaste, shaving cream, hair gel, shampoo, etc. All the liquids. He turned to me and said, "You can't bring this with you because it's not in a ziplock bag."

"But I don't have a ziplock bag?!?" I exclaimed.

"We have them available at the front of the security gate. We can escort you back there and get you one and then you can travel through security again." That did not sound like a good idea to me (although I did consider setting up a ziplock bag stand right behind airport security...at $1 a bag, I could make a small fortune).

Another security agent came up from behind and said, "Or you can mail these items to yourself." My initial thought...and that is helpful information in what way?

Fortunately, I was traveling with my friend, Carey. He had already made it through security and was laughing at me (he said he was just smiling...but there were definite guffaws). I called him over and told him what was going on. He asked me if I wanted a stamp to mail my stuff. Not funny.

Then he reached inside his carry on and pulled out a ziplock bag. "Would this be helpful?"

Now I was smiling. Carey had saved the day. We placed my items in the baggie and I was set free to scope out the nearest mocha latte in the airport.

From this episode, I've discovered that I don't always carry everything I need in my own bag. But there are often times where I do have something that someone else needs.

What I was lacking, Carey had extra.

I think the same can be said of our learning and growing together. As we're journeying together, we will encounter areas where we just don't have what we need in our bag. But someone else does. And if they're willing to share, we can move further down the road.

So when I pack my bag for this year, I want to consider the following:
1) Be willing to give what I have away.
2) Journey with others so that I can benefit with what they have to offer.
3) Move from ownership of ideas to stewardship of ideas.
4) Help others overcome obstacles and ask for help when I encounter them.
5) Carry more ziplock bags with me.
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Tim Milburn is now a big fan of Express Jet. He writes at a couple of different places on the blogosphere. Developing student leaders over at studentlinc and helping college students succeed at College Students Rule!. He is currently developing a 30 module student leadership curriculum for those who work with student leaders at schools, churches, and civic organizations.

Learning to Love a New Virtual Home: A 21st Century Adventure

It's very appropriate for me that our January theme for JJL is "Packing Our Bags for 2008".

I did a virtual bag pack over the Christmas holiday and did something that I had been contemplating for months - I changed blogging platforms, from Blogger to WordPress.

On Christmas day "Ramblings From a Glass Half Full" moved to Terrystarbucker.com.

If only it was as easy as that.......

I learned that a "virtual" move is very much like a real move  -

• There's a lot of planning necessary
• You have to do a lot of "packing"
• Moving day is pretty darn hectic 
• There's always something you forgot from the old place 
• Unpacking is no fun
• You are probably better off with an outside designer to rearrange the furniture
• Letting everyone know your new address takes time
• It takes a while before everything gets forwarded correctly

It does sound uncannily like a real-life move, doesn't it? To top it off, I was a HTML neophyte - getting a new site to look how I wanted it was going to be a real challenge.

Nevertheless,  I decided to press on, buoyed by my blogging friends urging that I really needed to "take the Blogger training wheels off". 

I hired a site designer, and that was a very good move. Jesse Petersen did a great job and I couldn't have gotten the site the way I wanted it without him.  So I also learned that in matters of "21st Century Technology", I'm not really up to speed.   I'm a product of the old 20th Century way of yellow and green pads, pencils and calculators. No computers.  Can you even imagine those days any more?

A quick side note - I vividly remember my first "laptop" computer in 1983 - it was the size of a big suitcase, weighed 50 pounds, and didn't even have a hard drive in it.  A "GUI" was still a figment of someones imagination.  And the spreadsheet software was something called "SuperCalc".

Needless to say, in 2008 I had to admit this old dog didn't have some of the new tricks. So I got help.

The move is now behind me, and the learning I got out of it was, in a word, staggering.   I feel MUCH more comfortable in the virtual world.

But I still hate moving, in any shape or form.

Some things will never change!

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Terry Starbucker is an operations executive for a service company who lives in Connecticut, loves business trips to the Rocky Mountain west, is a founder of SOBCon, and posts his musings and observations about "the optimistic side of the daily grind" in Ramblings from a Glass Half Full. 

 

Packed and ready

Packing my bags is the story of my life! It seems like no one but a fugitive has moved more than me. Until college days, I had lived in only two places. Over the last 30 years, seventeen different addresses (in four states in the USA and two countries) have been called home. Packing and moving have defined my life. When my wife, children and I moved to and from Taiwan we sold almost everything and started again. Perhaps these were the easiest moves. In fact, the transient lifestyle gave us an invalid but typical excuse for not fully connecting with others - soon, we would be gone again! Because of this history, I believe I can really connect January's focus, Packing our Bags.

I remember the process we used to determine what we would try to pack when moving overseas. We asked questions like:

• can we live without it?
• is it irreplaceable?
• how old is it?
• if we need to replace it, will it cost more than paying for it to be moved?

It's amazing the emotions one goes through when answering these questions. It's even more agonizing when someone walks away with your things they have just purchased. But, if the decisions have been made correctly, you are left with much less of a packing challenge.

When I think about packing my bags for a vacation, I have learned the art of packing a bag I can carry. My family and I have backpacked through Austria and Hungary, taken only carry-on sized luggage and have toted the large monsters which are overweight when empty! Practical packing is an art!

As a new year lies before me, I have looked at my "baggage" and concluded a "garage sale" is in order. I am still needing to "unlearn" things; this simplifying can be part of the packing process for me. I also realize that the decisions I pack require accompanying disciplines. It does not make sense to pack clothes for three days and not plan to do laundry!

So, with the January challenge before me, I have decided to simplify my packing to what is essential and what I can easily carry. No extra "stuff" or luxuries; no "weighty" things that require forklifts! I have found it so easy to pack the past, regrets, missed opportunities, etc. These take up room and weigh down the traveler.

Sensitive to the packing, this year I have chosen to walk a balanced journey of adventure, compassion and hospitality. I found this marvelous trio of words in a book I have ordered entitled Seven Secrets of the Celtic Spirit. One of my goals this year is to become more acquainted with my Irish roots.

Well, I think I am ready for the 2008 trip...my bags are packed and I'm ready to go!

Honk! Honk!

Honk_Honk_71215, originally uploaded by shersteve.

Last Saturday provided an opportunity that I could not pass up. A Vee of geese passed over the house and I had my camera handy.

This group is amazing. Each taking the lead in turn, just like the "Lessons of the Geese"

I wish you all a great holiday period!

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Steve Sherlock writes his 2 cent views on life from Franklin, MA. He explores the "good experience", "life long learning" and life in general, after handling the "before you blog" list his wonderful wife Dolores  provides him. Together they are enjoying the empty nest while their daughters are away at college. He has also resumed running and he podcasts tips and coaching advice at Passionate Runner.

Filling in the blanks

"I choose to _____ so that my life encourages a longing after _____ in other lives."

It's early Sunday morning and I have been struck with a fill-in-the-blanks exercise. It's your task to fill in the blanks. Our focus this month is learning to give and receive. So, one way to complete the sentence is by inserting the word "give" in the first blank and "gratitude" in the second. Or, "live" "the best" combination.

Christmastime tends to encourage a giving spirit; but, sadly, in some people it leads to a Scrooge-like attitude. This Christmas, I want my actions and attitudes to be a continuation of the journey I am traveling every day, not a roadside rest stop before continuing the journey. I want my life to encourage others to reach and long for their dreams and goals.

So, not to let you off the hook with this assignment, but to simply share one more example...

I choose to continually live a lifestyle of giving and receiving so that my life encourages a longing after a lifestyle of giving and receiving in other lives.

Now, it's your turn; what words would you put in the blanks?

May the Spirit of November Never End

This is always a slightly sad day for me: I am quite sure I have never had a November I was anxious to have reach an end. Yet I do say “slightly” for November is such a great teacher, and I know that not ending the spirit of November is completely up to me. November teaches us how to focus on appreciation, gratitude, and thankfulness so that we keep those blessings of a grateful heart in our lives the whole year through.

MAHALO NUI LOA: Thank you to our Contributing Authors this month:

• DAVID ZINGER taught us the Gratitude Dance (David, will we see you doing it soon on one of your new You tube videos?) and about Signature Stories: More than Once Upon A Time - a big hit both here and elsewhere throughout our community. Third, David brought us the story of the Marlboro Marine and the photographer who took his picture in Remembering.

• JOANNA YOUNG taught us about Guy Fawkes Night traditions. I so love what we learn about the big BIG world of our Ho‘ohana Community!

• STEVE SHERLOCK stretched our learning vocabulary with Heutagogy - Word for the day.

• DEAN BOYER found that November helped him remember when he lived in Taiwan, and he wrote about the Chinese characters for gratitude for us in Gratitude: an opening of the heart. Second, in setting a great example for us as he so often does, Dean checked back on his own Joyful Jubilant Learning journey here, speaking of his appreciation in I am thankful for April 8, 2007.

• ARIANE BENEFIT wrote a very personal story for us with Two Things It's NOT Easy to be Grateful For - But I have learned to be! and we are so honored that she chose JJL to share it.

• TERRY STARBUCKER gave us the privilege of celebrating his 17th wedding anniversary with him! His sharing of (An Appreciation of) The Wonder of Love and Learning was such a beautiful, loving tribute.

• TIM MILBURN was our host this month for Rapid Fire Learning, and he inspired Steve Sherlock, Joanna Young, David Zinger, Susan and I to jump in!

• MONIQUE HOWAT was a Guest Author for us, answering my shout-out for your Wild and Wacky Traditions by writing a story for us on how her daughter Shanna inspired the whole family (we are inspired too Shanna!) Get ready for December, with Christmas Olympics! Let the games begin!

• Several of our authors collaborated on our group posting for the American celebration of Thanksgiving, in Thankful for Learning; Thanksgiving 2007. Read what was shared there by Dwayne Melancon, Terry Starbucker, Chris Owen, David Zinger, Joanna Young, Jen Chan, April Groves, Phil Gerbyshak, John Richardson, Steve Sherlock, Tim Milburn, Dean Boyer, and me. 

See what I mean? We cannot let the spirit of November end when it fills our hearts with so much joy!

I would also like to send a special mahalo to PHIL GERBYSHAK, for sharing our November theme with the blogging community of 100 Bloggers ~ thank you Phil!

For more on how you can keep November with you, I invite you to visit me on Managing with Aloha Coaching today for Mahalo in a 5-Beat Rhythm. Then, check back here tomorrow for where we will aim our joyful writing targets in December.

~ Rosa Say, JJL Contributor, and author of Managing with Aloha Coaching.

(An Appreciation of) The Wonder of Love and Learning

Yesterday I celebrated my 17th wedding anniversary. Aside from the usual thinking of how time can pass by so quickly, I also took a bit of time to give thanks to the wonder of the love and learning that I had experienced for all those years. 

And since this is a month of thanks for me and my fellow JJLers, I wanted to put this appreciation on "virtual" paper.

I use the word "wonder" for a very good reason - I look at love with a sense of awe, because I see it as a precious gift that provides me with essential "fuel" for my "half-full" existence.

In other words, if it wasn't for the consistent, never wavering love of my wife, I really don't think I'd be quite the person I am today. To always know that you are loved is one of the strongest possible foundations for positivity and joyfulness.

This wonder extends to learning as well, in that my wife has taught me many valuable life lessons that I have drawn upon frequently over the years. Having a soul mate like her has given me a sounding board for all my (sometimes) crazy ideas and philosophies, and her honesty without judgment has been invaluable to me as I've progressed as a business person (and a human).

So as I sit here at my computer on this chilly Sunday in November, I sit in great appreciation of the wonder of love and learning, and the person who has embodied them fully in my eyes for 17 years - my wife, who I love so dearly.

Happy anniversary sweetheart, and much love and learning to all of you, fellow JJLers, readers, and bloggers!

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Terry Starbucker is an operations executive for a service company who lives in Connecticut, loves business trips to the Rocky Mountain west, and posts his musings and observations about "the optimistic side of the daily grind" in Ramblings from a Glass Half Full. 

Help! I Can't Learn Anything Because I'm Disinterested

Todd's a student. A college student.
Which means he chose to keep going to school.

I find him lying on one of the couches in the student center with a book over his face.
I can see that he's sleeping - a direct result of being tired and trying to read while laying down.
So I approach him quietly and suddenly blurt out, "WHAT'CHA READING TODD?!?"

Todd is visibly startled and pulls the book down from over his eyes. "It's, um, psychology of somethin'."

"Looks like you've been stuck on the same page for awhile."

Todd sits up and flips the book toward his backpack, trying to wipe the sleep from his eyes. "I've got to take this course. I don't know why..."

And then he says THE PHRASE...wait for it...here it comes...

"I'LL NEVER USE THIS STUFF ANYWAY."

There it is. Classes just started and Todd has already checked out. He doesn't connect what he's learning to what he thinks he needs to know. He's going through the motions and it's putting him to sleep.

I don't think a teacher, professor, or instructor sets out to bore students. In fact, I believe most people in the passing-on-of-knowledge-business actually feel like what they're doing is making a difference. But somewhere, somehow something gets lost in the translation.

I created a diagram that helps me understand the learning/teaching process a little better...at least from a certain angle. I found that in both teaching and learning, my enthusiasm for the material or the process has an impact on how I learn. And how I teach what I learn.

It's true that while we are learners, we are also teachers at some level. And in order to be effective teachers, we must remain constant learners.

Emotion plays a key role in my learning/teaching diagram. I don't believe learning (or teaching, perhaps, more so) can be distanced or separated from emotion. It connects knowledge to heart, mind, and soul.

On one axis, I show that a person is either moving toward passion or apathy. Passion is the emotion of feeling very strongly about a subject. Apathy means...well...who cares what apathy means.

On the other axis, I mark the ends of the continuum with learning and teaching. I realize that you can probably do both simultaneously. But I've distinguished them here based on roles more than processes.

In my experience, the type of learning/teaching that makes a difference has occurred when I'm passionate about something. It fuels my learning/teaching in a way nothing else can.

Basically, I've observed the following:

1. When a teacher lacks passion for the material, he or she creates disinterested learners. The teacher's passion is contagious in the learning process.

2. When the teacher has a high level of passion in the material, it will make the information come alive and stir the interest and motivate the student in learning. If the teacher can connect the material to something the student is passionate about, the teaching will become inspirational.

3. A student's outlook on learning effects the way he or she receives the information. A teacher may only appear to be boring on an emotional level because the student has a high level of apathy for either the material or the process in general. For example, two students can sit through the same lecture or demonstration. The one who is motivated will find the teacher inspiring, the one who is disinterested won't make the necessary connections needed to find the learning experience meaningful.

4. The student has a responsibility to be teachable - to have a learner's mind. Like the saying goes, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." When a student has a passion to learn, he or she will more readily recognize and listen to teaching.

5. The goal is to move from "disinterested" to "inspirational."

An interesting exercise from this chart is to put a name or face in each of the quadrants. I can name people who are disinterested, boring, motivated, and inspirational. Think about what makes each person appear so. What characteristics do you seek to emulate? Which ones are you quick to avoid?

Another exercise is to recognize those moments when you personally live in a particular quadrant. What factors move you from apathy to passion, or vice-versa?

Perhaps you have some other observations in regards to the diagram. Feel free to share them in the comments below.
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Tim Milburn is a student leadership consultant and speaker. He is committed to developing lifelong leaders one student at a time. His writing and downloadable resources can be found at www.studentlinc.net.

Roots...intense hurry...hammock...ah!

Have you ever had so much to do with demands coming from all directions that you just sat back in your chair and laughed? Whether you laugh, cry, shop, run...you understand what I am saying, don't you? I am in the midst of such a hurricane and it's named "Dean". No, not the one on the Weather Channel; the one which spins in my office and at home.

Today, I received a letter in which were the following phrases describing the author's vacation to Mexico and his thoughts on busyness:

• felt quite so free, so unencumbered, so completely removed from others’ expectations and my own responsibilities
• in our neurotic drive for more, more, more, we become all roots and no wings. We all need roots and wings. But most of us are long on the former and short on the latter
• intensity, that ugly yet persuasive twin of hurry

Having worked on and written about several decisions and disciplines this month, I find myself returning to simplifying, silence and solitude. It's not so much an escape for I am loving what I am doing. It's a drawing of the soul.

"...roots and no wings...intensity...hurry..." Do these connect with you today? May we decide to simplify our lives through the discipline of reordering our private worlds. May we decide to be still and enjoy the silence. May we decide to cultivate serenity by embracing times of solitude.

We're just four days away from sharing our learnings and unlearnings. It has been quite a journey, one that is not yet over. There is always another bend in the road, another decision requiring discipline. You are not on the road alone...wait, is that a...rest stop just ahead!? Just in time!

Learning about the power of attitude

I am learning more each day that o ur attitude makes all the difference; to say it another way, our attitude is where making a difference begins. It is natural to focus on what we cannot change and end up worrying and fretting. Trials will come; disappointments are inevitable. Plans will not always succeed. Rather than focus on the things we cannot change, let's focus on what we can influence, our attitude. Ponder each of these verses slowly and separately. Then let's decide to maintain an attitude of faith and joy and belief and compassion.

~ Dean

Unlearning: The Road

Dean Boyer leads us down the road of unlearning this month.  Sometimes we must dismount our coach and remove a fallen tree or hack down the tall grass as it fights to take back the road.  Clearly, our road yearns for wear.

Picture a view of the world's roads from outer space.  Now picture a neon light moving one-hundred miles an hour down all of the roads, crisscrossing the planet.  Now picture your own life melding with the neon lights.  Your life blurs.  Confusion sets in.  You are moving so fast that you can't get off of the road.  So you take another one.  But this one dead ends.  Now, you have forgotten how you got there.  You need to get somewhere, but you don't know where that is.  You don't know how to get there.

There isn't one critical statement that I can make about any essay written this month on unlearning.  I get, understand and embrace each one's basic premise...except for the unlearning part.  For twelve days I've been saying to myself, "David, it's just a difference in semantics."  But when I nod back to myself in acknowledgment, the little guy inside keeps poking me in the ribs.  "You know that isn't true David."  And maybe I do.

In order to delineate, I must borrow a line from my personal manifesto, which was written for me by Robert Frost:

Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back

I can't go back.  There isn't one molecule in my body that even thinks about it.  I am wired to move forward.  For me, unlearning means to undo, undo learning that perhaps isn't conducive to personal growth.  But I can't undo me.  I am me because my way led me to where and who I am. 

What I can do however, is to turn down the brightness button on the neon lights.  I can exit the freeway.  I can focus on the things that are important.  I can travel the road that will allow me to appreciate my family, to devalue material things, to appreciate flowers and children and big oak trees and fried chicken and older people and a community of folks who are passionate about learning.

Much to the little guy's dismay, this really might be about semantics.  I think it's just the word.  It is so alien to me, so nails driving south on the blackboard to me. 

I do believe if we travel this road, no matter what each of us calls it, we'll look back one day and realize that it did make all the difference.

~ Dave Rothacker

Rapid Fire Learning - Booster!

Can you believe we are already through the first half of our "award winning" month? If you are like me, you have encountered the fierceness of the battle to "unlearn". In fact, habits can be so ingrained in us that what we acknowledge and commit to unlearn exits our minds as soon as we enter our day. If this describes you, as it does me, let me encourage each other not to give up!

Between now and the end of the month, select at least one thing to unlearn and then focus on it. Put reminders around you with "trigger words".

During the Rapid Fire Learning process starting August 26th, be prepared to courageously share the five things you have learned this month and the one area you are "unlearning". I know your journey will help us with ours! Regardless of the size of step we take, it will be worth it!

~ Dean Boyer

Release your grip!

Today, I was confronted with truth that resonated in my heart; the truth is closely connected with our unlearning series this month. So, in raw form, as concise as I can make it, here it is:

I must release my grip on people, possessions and plans!

This does not mean that I don't enjoy these things; it's an issue of how they are held. Corrie ten Boom, a concentration camp survivor who traveled all over the world following her release shared a story about how to hold things. She took a thorn-stemmed rose and held it up to the audience. She taught that one could hold the rose a couple of ways. A first way was to hold it with a tight grip; immediately, the thorns would embed themselves and cause bleeding. If the rose was taken away, the process would leave deep, permanent scars. A second way to hold the rose was with an open hand; no scarring, bleeding - no less held.

The choice of how we hold on to people, possessions and plans makes all the difference. People will come and go. Possessions stop working. Plans need adjusting or discarding. Whether or not they injure is related to how they are held.

What must I unlearn? I must release my grip unlearning how to hold. I am tempted to write more, but as Mark Twain said, the good writer knows where to place the period.

~ Dean Boyer

UnLearning Hesitancy and Reticence

I am one of those people who must learn to come right out and ask for what she wants.

There it is; it reads like a confession at Shrinking Violets Anonymous.

My extreme hesitancy with asking has plagued me most of my life, and perhaps the ticking clock of my inevitable aging has something to do with this, but I am sick of being such a wimp.

I remember buying The Aladdin Factor by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen back in 1995 to help me with this. In the book’s introduction, Jack Canfield had written something that was all too familiar to me:

“Until I knew I could ask for what I wanted, I had lived my life in an unacknowledged state of resignation. I had silently agreed not to be a nuisance or a bother, to never intrude on anyone, to never take up anyone’s time and certainly not to be a pest! … I made less money than I was worth, laughed a jokes I didn’t understand and never raised my hand in class. I accepted too many things without questioning authority and I bit my tongue when I wanted to ask somebody out for a date. I stared longingly at all the things I wanted, but I rarely got them. That was my life—a life of settling for less than what I wanted, less than I deserved, less than the best, and less than what was possible.” —Jack Canfield

Oh yuck! When you first read that, you think “how sad!” and “how can we do that to ourselves?” however so many of us do! Take a look at the footer of this posting, and as I was, you’ll probably be amazed at how many categories learning to ask for what will improve your life actually falls into!

In The Aladdin Factor, Canfield and Hansen tried their best to coach me out of what they felt to be the “five barriers to asking; the main reasons we don’t ask for what we want:”

1. Ignorance— “most of us don’t know what to ask for”

2. Limiting and inaccurate beliefs— “limiting and negative beliefs get programmed into us by our parents, teachers, churches, peers and the media”

3. Fear— “only your mind can produce fear. When we become afraid of rejection, looking foolish, losing face, being vulnerable or hurt by others, we become passive”

4. Low self-esteem— “as a result, we don’t believe our needs are important and worthy of pursuing”

5. Pride— “we get stuck in our pride, becoming too arrogant to admit we need anyone or anything”

I did make some progress with my hesitancy with the Canfield and Hansen coaching, but not enough, and it didn’t last. Another book has helped me understand I keep regressing at times because I have never made asking for what I want my habit.

These days, Lisa Haneberg is my mentor-in-a-book and blog with my unlearning my habits of hesitancy and reticence (which can make it seem to others that you are uncommunicative— yikes! Don’t want that!) for Lisa includes “making unreasonable requests” as a breakthrough catalyst in her book, Two Weeks To a Breakthrough (Dwayne Melancon had reviewed Lisa’s book for us in ALAWB).

“Ask and ye shall receive, right? Making unreasonable requests is not as unreasonable as it may seem. I use the tern unreasonable here to mean big. Unreasonable requests are big requests that most of us are generally too chicken to make.” —Lisa Haneberg

Well, I’ve been too chicken with my requests of others whether they are small, medium, or large. Lisa coaches us that “outrageous requests make great things happen” and when I think back to those few times when I swallowed my hesitancy or outright fear about making them and took the plunge, I know Lisa to be right; I did get results. They may not always have added up to my wildest dreams for them, but they were always better results than I would’ve gotten without making the request to enroll someone else in my goals.

So JJL community, I am declaring my intentions with this unlearning of my inclination toward hesitancy and reticence in the most public way I can with all of you. I truly have very little fear in your warm readership, and I do think I have pretty well conquered those other barriers in The Aladdin Factor. I suspect that my learning will have to do with my focus on it, and with making room for new and unreasonable requests in my Strong Week Plan we learned about in Learning Project #2 here at JJL.

Yes, that would be a very good habit-creator for all of us, don’t you think?

Have you got a big request for us here at Joyful Jubilant Learning?
Make it!
~ Rosa Say

This wonderful quote and photo was sent to me by the extraordinarily talented Hawai‘i photographer Elan Sun Star. Mahalo Sun!

Postscript: This posting is one of taking up Dean's unlearning challenge for August: Have you read this yet, and made your unlearning list?

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Post author Rosa Say writes for Managing with Aloha Coaching, Value your Month, Value your Life. Visit her there, pick up a feed for your reader, and let her know what you think. Are you brave? Coach her to follow-up with this unlearning, and volunteer to be on the receiving end of her big requests to come!

Learn from the Master: Blog for 1 Person

The "Master" you learn from is you.
The "1 Person" you blog for is you.

If you are a blogger, a writer, (or want to be) or keep a journal (or have been wanting to), this post is for you.

The Blog as Journal

I've been keeping a personal journal using TypePad, and it's become a terrific multi-purpose tool for me. It's been working out so well, I felt I had to share it with you as a suggestion to try. In fact, I have had this draft sitting here since this past May because my results were almost immediate, but then I kept doing it instead of blogging about it, and the draft scrolled down my posting page until it totally disappeared from view --- I had forgotten it was here until I told Joanna Young about it today within a comment at Confident Writing.

Joanna had started the conversation while reflecting on her recent "blogging holiday;"

"One of the things that you can do while taking a blogging holiday is take stock of the way that you read, and write, and comment and engage in this activity we call 'blogging.'"

She talks about routine, addiction, time, writing, focus, and purpose; great thoughts you can reflect on with her too. To save you from re-reading my comment there...

Back in mid-May, I created a brand new blog and simply called it "bJournal." It is password protected and not public, and I initially started it because after a lifetime of paper and then Word doc journals, I wanted to tag my morning pages and other private journaling with categories and keywords so I could better find those flashes of inspiration that can come from stream of consciousness writing.

Well it has turned out to be one of the best writing ideas I have ever had. I now use it for all my blog writing: The "noise" and private stuff stays there, and what is worth sharing and I think worth the value of my readers' attention moves to one of my "real" blog draft fields to be slept on and then edited in a more online-worthy voice of the Mea Ho'okipa. Blogging is very addictive, and what bJournal has done is satisfy the fix, while serving its digital archiving purposes for me, with the cleaning up of my act a true bonus.

I have had a goal to be a better commenter within the blog community and not an "airy fairy" one, and I now find I am putting comment drafts in bJournal too if I want to curb my first impulse in its writing and return to the blog later.

Now I will be the first to admit that there are times I cannot resist sharing the noise. This is a work in progress!

There is another thought that comes to mind with this.

Who is the "Master" and just how many blogging tools do you need?

Web-based Writing as Top-Shelf Toolbox

My dad used to say that the best tool in his beloved Craftsman toolbox was the box itself. (He meant the portable one you carry around with you - not the mega he-man garage models.)

He felt that there must have been some divine intervention in the mind of the guy who took it from prototype to its red stainless steel goodness, for the space between the top shelf and the cover when it latched shut most effortlessly, perfectly defined which tools any respectable common sense handyman would use most often, readily accessible to him. Far as Dad could see,

To use more than that; irrelevant and uncertain tinkering.

To skip using what was there in nearly every job; you're rushing and may have missed something.

When it came time to allow my brothers the learning privilege of using his precious tools, he'd simply open the cover, wait for them to make their choice for the job at hand, and then teach them based on the tool they chose, grilling them on why they did so.

I have now been blogging for three years, and TypePad is my Craftsman. There are twelve blogs on my TypePad dashboard, some public, some private, some mine, some hosted for clients, some at the invitation of others to guest author. I don't really think of them as for blogging; they are for writing as my craft.

The lesson I've been thinking most about these days, is another one from my Dad, about how there were times he just knew that an older once-cherished tool had to slip a drawer down to make room for a newer one, or just maybe, it had to be left in the garage.

Related posts: From the JJL Archives

• We all have magical powers. We call those magical powers ‘writing.’ The magic is within the written word.
• A Guide to Writing Well; this is a must for your del.icio.us tagging with writing how-to.
• Write to Learn; Slow, Steady, Sure. We need to keep learning connections intact, no matter what wizardry technology cooks up next, if we are to continually mentor new generations of lifelong learners. 9 very thoughtful comments in this conversation.

Advice from Starbucker: I offer this advice to someone reading this who's thinking about blogging - go to one of those services like Blogger, register, sit in front of your computer, and start pouring some of your life experiences onto the screen.  At worst, it's therapy. At best, it's a whole new wonderful world.
Read the rest here: How Do I Blog Thee? Let Me Start at the Beginning

What I Have Learned From Travel; Blooming

July 10 UPDATE:
Robert has posted the full list of entries at Middle Zone Musings - a wonderful 18 entries in all! I have also listed them in the extended section of this posting. Fringe benefit alert: Visiting them is also a great way to pick up the site feeds of those who would likely proclaim that writing is their Ho‘ohana (fulfilling work) … Robert’s group writing projects are proving to have a magnetic attraction!

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Preface; This is an entry for Robert Hruzek’s group writing project at Middle Zone Musings. Robert asks what we have learned from travel.

What I Have Learned From Travel; Blooming

When I first tell you what I feel I have learned from travel, your reaction may be, “Well sure, of course you learned that. Every person who travels learns the same thing. In fact, they know it before their travel even begins!”

Still, I’ll take that risk because I don’t believe it’s all that obvious, and I wish there were some sure-fire way to give everyone this learning;

Our world is a very, very big place of unlimited possibility.

You see, that unlimited possibility means that whoever you are, and whatever seemingly silly, preposterously huge dream you have, you can’t ever give up on the desire for it, even when it feels like you are stuck someplace with it burning a hole in your gut. There is always another place where you can try to make it get it to come true.

It may be around the corner,
it may be in the next town,
it may be on another island or another continent, but it is there.

Travel helps you get brave enough to cross that street,
or that interstate,
or that ocean to reach for that place where,
you eventually can arrive.

Travel unplants you when for some reason, you cannot “bloom where you are planted” as Mary Engelbreit made a licensing fortune in proclaiming. The ground may be much more fertile someplace else, and you shouldn’t rob yourself of the chance to find out. The unlimited possibility is not an “IF” but a “WHERE.”

Your ‘unplanting’ can, and probably will happen in several different ways. Travel is sensory goodness.

I believe in the profound teaching of in-person, tactile, and of-the-land sensory learning. It speaks to the spirit within us in a way that electronic and virtual learning can never duplicate. Those things are wonderful (and as you know, I sing their praises often), but my wish is that everyone could have both the in-person experience of travel and the virtual one.

As much as we love our islands, in Hawai‘i we call it “Rock Fever” when a person has not ventured across the Pacific Ocean to see, hear, feel, smell and touch the rest of the world at least once. It’s the kind of fever that makes you feel apathetic, lethargic, and all the other junky feelings that make you feel sick. Feeling sick is feeling less than whole, and I believe that not having traveled outside that confirming circle of comfort people call home will always keep you feeling less whole.

The world was created big, and you were created mobile.

I put in a LOT of miles, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I understand what a privilege it is that I can do so.

I love my Hawai‘i, I truly and quite fervently do. But I am glad she understands that I must leave her every so often so that when I return, I can be a better person for her. The world has a lot to teach me, and I have to travel to best learn her lessons. My goodness, there are so many of them!

And another thing: You can bloom while planted in more than one place.

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Related articles;

• Places, Feelings and Learning. Learning Serenity. This was written about a place-connected experience I had in Prescott, Arizona.
• The wonder of human artistry. If I did not travel, and bring my children with me, they would never know the artistry of Cirque du Soleil.
• Get the Most Out of Travel. I wrote this from a business perspective, while a guest author for Lifehack.org.

Pictures! This is what you could see if you came to my Hawai‘i! I would love to show her to you :-)

• A photo album: Hiking in Haleakala Crater on Maui

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Another way of looking at this, found on Flickr;

Commuters (NYC, June 2007)

Four rush-hour subway commuters on the downtown "A Train."
Two are tourists and two are die-hard New Yorkers.
Can you pick out who is who? Of course you can.

Raganwald: Still failing, still learning

Context One: For everyone!

Click over to Raganwald for a story of personal learning that Reginald Braithwaite recently shared with his readers:

Still failing, still learning.

Heads up: I will caution you to save this click for a time you have the opportunity to Read Short and Deep, giving his article the attention it deserves. I have yet to click into Raganwald without getting totally lost in his archives, and discovering I'm still there nearly an hour later, a page of notes having been taken in another open window on my laptop.

Context Two: For JJL LP2; Read, Learn, Live

For those of you participating in our Learn to Lead with Your Strengths project, you will easily imagine how this statement within the article got me to sit back in my chair and take pause, especially after I had read the comment that David Zinger had left for me here.

Within Still failing, still learning, Reg had written:

“Project management is a social problem.”

“Project management is a social problem. It is 99.5% about getting everyone who knows something about the state of the project to share what they know with everyone else. Getting all the relevant information is 99.5% of the problem, analyzing the information is 0.5% of the problem.”
—Reg Braithwaite

Okay (gulp) full transparency: Within the context of our own project here, spanning the last nine weeks, my first silent thought to myself was, I want that too David, but can we really pull it off?

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Post Author Rosa Say has been leading our JJL Learning Project #2, Learn to lead with Your Strengths since its introduction to the JJL Community on April 7, 2007.

Liz has a Learning Plan- Do you?

I LOVE this post by Liz Strauss at Successful Blog.

Rise up to her challenge.

I am re-posting it here to celebrate every single word in it. Here is the link to Liz's place to give her the well-deserved credit due: On and On to Learn.

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I have a Plan

    

We learn every day. Big and small things that happen are enough to change us. Each bit of knowledge we helps us frame our world view. That’s an exciting and profound reality of being alive.

Yet most of that learning is passive, a form of response. It comes to us. We don’t seek it out. We might miss it completely as it sits waiting, if we don’t STOP to take notice. When we do, we often need to give it some thought to make what we’ve learned useful, to translate it into a thought that makes sense.

Learning is fundamental to growing.

Growing is fundamental to life.

Learning with intentionality, actually setting out with a purpose to learn, is the quest of a beginner’s mind. It stretches our thoughts, moves our hearts, and transcends our current existence. Walking into a sunrise with a thought of learning changes who we are by the time we walk out of the sunset that same day.

If I don’t plan my learning, it seems I keep learning the same things . . .

over and over, on and on . . .

on and on until I open my head and heart to learn.

If I don’t plan to learn, how can I grow deep enough to do my part?

What will you make it a point to learn today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

  .

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.

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Related posts: Log your learning with us here at JJL in Rapid Fire Learning.

Post author Rosa Say believes we can all change the world with learning as our way to backpack the journey. Learn more about her lesson plans at Managing with Aloha and at Talking Story.

Project #2 – Learn to Lead with Your Strengths

From the dust jacket of StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath:

“Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?”

How about if we learn how to seize that opportunity as our next Learning Project here on JJL? As he shared with us in ALAWB ’07, Blaine started to grab his opportunities, and that was pretty inspiring to me.

By the time I had read all the reviews in A Love Affair with Books I had purchased five books, took five I already had off my bookshelf to read again, and put another 12 on my wishlist at Amazon.com. Where to start?

Not that difficult a choice for me. Two books stayed on the top of my stack the whole time. I’ve been a proponent of what Marcus Buckingham calls the “strengths revolution” since I read First, Break All the Rules seven years ago, so much so that I wrote about it in the Recommended Reading section I added to my own book, Managing with Aloha:

Once in awhile, a book will come along that you sense was written just for you, it would be that important to you. This was that book for me.

However since then, I have largely noticed the same thing that Buckingham asserts, now nearly a decade later:

“When it comes to the strengths movement, we are stuck in the first stage. We know how to label. We don’t know how to move beyond a label and actually put our strengths to work.”

Well, I think our JJL Community of learners can lead the way.

Our JJL Learning Project: Read, Learn, Live

In Part 1 of this Learning Project, we’ll do a group read, learn and adopt of the “6 Powerful Steps to achieve outstanding performance” with our strengths that comprise the lesson plan taught by Marcus Buckingham in Go Put Your Strengths to Work.

In Part 2 we’ll do a group read of Tom Rath’s StrengthsFinder 2.0, and see what more we can learn, to further develop our strengths and apply our lessons-learned on the journey to our all-embracing objective of lifelong-learning within this, our JJL Ho‘ohana Community.

We will seek to lead.

What I Learned From Blogging This Year

Ben Yoskowitz at Instigator Blog has come up with a great blogging project, by posing the question "What Did You Learn in 2006?". Since learning is like breathing for me these days, I am more than happy to participate, both on this blog and on my own site, Ramblings From a Glass Half-Full.

Here's what I posted on RFGHF:

The one "Big Thing" I learned this year was the huge personal benefit of blogging itself - by committing to write something down 4 or 5 times a week I accelerated the learning process (by keeping my eyes open a little bit wider) and had a heck of a lot of fun in the process (a "twofer"!).

The 12 "Little Things" are the monthly tidbits of knowledge and realizations that I came to only because of this blog over the past year:

1. January - I learned that Southern Colorado is an undiscovered gem, and that I have at least a little bit of a photographer's eye.
2. February - I learned that renovating a house can easily spin out of control by an attack of the "might as wells".
3. March - I learned that I really like my name on a Starbucks cup (and the customer service that implies).
4. April - I learned that a Blackberry and Half-Fullism really can mix (really!).
5. May - I learned that a company can aspire to be "beautifully artistic" and profitable at the same time.
6. June - I learned that promoting a "collective consciousness" within a company can pay big dividends, especially if the team members are geographically dispersed.
7. July - I learned that a code writing donkey named Basil could help me with my creative writing AND create a virtual chain of new friends (Ben, where is Basil now anyway?).
8. August - I learned the 10 Secrets to My (and Your) Success .
9. September - I learned that Thomas F. Swift, one of the victims of 9/11, was a person I now miss quite a bit even though I never met him.
10. October - I learned that lurking behind and around me for some 42 years was a