The death of a culture, or society, is not a pleasant thought. Yet, looking at history, it can also be seen as an evolution of people. From world wars, civil wars, civil unrest, and demonstrations, we have been witness to major influences upon the course of history through cataclysmic events of varying degrees across various levels.

In our culture, of self-improvement, performance measurement, education, business, and politics, there has been a shifted focus from people to systems. With systems and improvements we strive to simplify and streamline life, and in doing so, put people into the boxes that make the streamlined system go. The round pegs are filling the square holes.

Getting people excited about change is difficult, and initially we have done well in our history. As we focus more marketing, motivation, mentorship, education, and relationships based upon fear, lack, and respect, we lose the value-add element of the creative human. Looking over the past decade or two, I can see the increasing levels of conflict in the human psyche. There is a cost to making people conform to a system.

The flaw is simple. Humans are evolutionary creatures. Creative by nature, creative by design, and creative via the creator, the human animal exercises its creative imagination to the process of survival, which has long-since included the discoveries of tools and systems that increase abilities and efficiencies.

Traditional thinking about business, management, and leadership, generally adhere to the premise of people aligning themselves along one path and towing the line indefinitely. The smartest and most successful leaders have learned something contrary to this long ago. People are what co-actively bring about change and make change easy or difficult. Knowing and understanding this makes a world of difference.

Rather than creating a system that forces adherence, create systems that can grow and evolve with people. The whole foundation of every organized system, whether an organization, technology, or process-flow, came about from the original desire in man to create something of value that makes life easier in Community.

Who is serving who?

Hudson Valley Art Incubator

Project by Kelly Demers

Arts Development and Mentor Centres are in rare supply. Kelly Demers fundraiser project for the Hudson Valley Art Incubator is to see the creation of a downtown Artists Community Hub where the artists receive access to an environment that is both supportive and inspirational.

The centre would provide the level of services that coach and mentor artists to become equipped with the skills and knowledge to conduct business successfully. In addition, tools and services that give access to creative outlets still left untapped will find new talent emerge in the community. This activity will offer positive results within the larger community’s socio-economic status.

As Kelly Demers writes in her Kickstarter campaign page:

We’ll provide the tools, business resources and equipment – AFFORDable shared studio facilities such as a print shop and photo lab as well as editing equipment for low/no budget filmmakers and computer workstations for writing, scanning, graphic design & desktop publishing. In addition we’ll give artists regular gallery exposure and opportunities for networking within the community and beyond. The goal of this project is to not only help artists support themselves, but also to directly support the creative economy by creating jobs and opportunities for artists and people within the creative cluster, and to actively engage and enrich several community networks through outreach efforts and regular exposure to the arts.

This modest, yet impactful project holds tremendous promise with the right level of support to ensure its successful launch. You are invited to visit and lend your support at any level you can. The trick with the Kickstarter fundraising is that it is an all-or-nothing gamble. Not reaching the goal, all monies donated are returned, and the challenge is to surpass that goal, which only you can make possible.

Participating can be both financial to reach the goal, or in sharing so the project fundraiser is seen by more people across the web, increasing its opportunity for reaching the right audience able to see this vision through to success. Make a difference, one man is inviting you to join Hudson Valley Art Incubator and support this vision’s goal.

How can we change the world?

This is such a big question upon so many people’s minds as they look around them to a world with so many issues that seem apparent to each particular individual. Note it is issues that seem apparent to each particular individual, as the experience of one reflects issues important to the individual. Each of us has a sense of heart-driven desire to see a positive outcome occur for our pet-world-issues, or causes. Does the enormity of the issues cause your heart to pause?

You can make a difference. We can all make a difference. It is so much easier when we can see where and how.

One Man Can, One Woman Can

Getting the changes we’d like to see happen in the world meet resistance as politics, cultures, and business appear to create blockades to creating change. When Princess Di passed, millions bought flowers, crowded streets, and lamented her loss and the lesser impact for change that represented.

And yet, were each of these millions to pick up one actionable item, to donate rather than buy flowers, the impact of these millions would have dramatically impacted the causes Princess Di pursued. The little things we can do, do make a difference.

How to Get Volunteers

Many organizations seeking to create positive change are often challenged to find the support in their communities. Getting volunteers out is a job that also requires financial and human resources, along with creative ideas to reach out and find the hearts that beat.

We the People create change, have power, as the old adage “United we stand, divided we fall” reminds us. Amassing ourselves to support our causes with real intent…. well, imagine the impact.

TimeRaiser: A Vision Whose Time has Come

First noted is the Vision of TimeRaiser:

Our vision for the Timeraiser is to make it the most memorable, engaging and impactful civic engagement program in the country.

Our hope is that, in a few years, thousands of Canadians will be able to trace their engagement in their community back to the Timeraiser. We want to plant the seeds of life-long civic involvement.

From 2008 through 2010, we will host 16 Timeraisers across the country, that generate 250,000 volunteer hours, engage 5,000 Canadians in the charitable sector, invest over $300,000 in the careers of emerging artists and enable the valuable work of hundreds of nonprofits.

The expansion to other Canadian cities does not come at the expense of going deep in the communities we are already in. The Timeraiser will play the role of catalyst, bringing the emerging concepts of community development to the audience of volunteers and agencies that participate. Our experience shows that when given the right opportunity, people who get involved, stay involved.

Finally, we will be developing really cool strategies to leverage the involvement of professionals in the fields of Human Resources, Accounting, Organizational Design and Information Technology to elevate and expand the Timeraiser programming.

Second, visit the TimeRaiser website to learn more, and Vancouverites, be ready for more.

Getting involved your community isn’t always easy. That’s why VOLUNTEER VANCOUVER and FRAMEWORK FOUNDATION are proud build on the successful 2008 program to co-host the 2nd Vancouver Timeraiser. The Timeraiser has made it simple for Canadians in their twenties and thirties to find meaningful opportunities to fit their busy lifestyles. After successfully launching campaigns in six Canadian cities, the 2nd Annual VANCOUVER TIMERAISER will be held on Thursday September 24th at the Roundhouse Community Centre in Yaletown.

What Others Say

Volunteer Vancouver’s Chair states:

No other Vancouver event impresses the depth of impact and richness of innovation. If the arts inspire your heart, community engagement uplifts your soul, and camaraderie nourishes your being, then Timeraiser is where you need to be” says Chilwin Cheng – host of the 2008 Vancouver Timeraiser, Chair of Volunteer Vancouver’s Board of Directors and Principle/founder of Legal Process Solutions

Download 2009 Vancouver Timeraiser Press Release of August 26th, 2009 for more details.

Love is the first item at the top of the list, as it always seems to be a central core to what gets discussed. However, this gets to it from a different angle. Your worth fighting for.

Love starts at home, we all know and understand this, even if we don’t all come from perfect homes. Heck, as adult parents, we judge ourselves pretty harshly too. In spite of all the failings and misery, we have it in us to overcome and still love them, accepting what is and that we will never change them.

Love starts at home wants you to look closer to home. If all the money in the world evaporated, the buildings, the cities, the conveniences, and all the things we identify ourselves with, what’s left? What home remains that you still occupy no matter what is happening, or where you are?

Love starts at home is starting with you. You are worth fighting for.

When things aren’t always going right, and you’ve become accustomed to bridging peace, or any other behavior that allows you to remain in a place that is unhealthy for your well-being, or your growth, you’ve got to start at home. The change happens, you reach in so you can reach out; in healthier ways.

Just a little random thinking tonight.

Fortunate to visit an inspiring blog post today, the video is an incredible inspiration for anyone who is hitting a rough patch, and anyone who has a heart for humanity. I encourage you to first watch the video, then visit the blog-post and website to read more. I’m certain some of you might be inspired to lend a hand and information is there to show you how. Visit Teachers are Everywhere to find out more.

Napoleon Hill audio shares the story of his first meeting with Andrew Carnegie and stories about his commission to write the Carnegie Success philosophy. During this time he interviewed a number of notable successful businessmen including Henry Ford. This video presentation shares some of the wisdom gained through his relationship with Andrew Carnegie and the writing of the Carnegie Success philosophy.

Deserted, alone, with nowhere to go, no place to call home because home is where the heart is, and even with the sea of people littering the cityscape, the silence of abandonment echoes deafeningly in me. Hunger for that connection starves rational thought, fed through years of abuse or neglect, and keeps the solution always just beyond the fingertips of my reality. I know it is there, if only I could reach out and grasp it.

Abandonment issues are troublesome haunts in people’s lives. How they are created is useful for each individual to understand; it helps move through the issues. Even without fully understanding their origins, it is still possible to move through abandonment issues. We often will never know what happened or why with some people in our history, and we need to satisfy ourselves in that knowledge.

Even by the measure of our own lives, we understand that people behave irrationally and very poorly at times. My life is rippled with choices, actions, and words said that defy explanation. Our goal, of course, is to improve upon ourselves each step of the way. Understanding that each generation has been influenced and socialized differently, we can accept their imperfections, and our own, as we all represent a rung in the ladder of progress for the human race, our family, and ourselves. Step-by-step.

Just because someone else failed, doesn’t make us the failure, or them a failure. The hardest thing in the world is to accept what is. Not trying to make it right, not becoming bitter just because we want to make it wrong. It just is what it is. People are people, I have my shortcomings, my family has shortcomings, and as far as I can tell, so do most people that I know. It doesn’t make any of us wrong. We’re doing life together, and in our insignificant ways, our individual journeys impacts the whole, and more-so when we’re connected.

Ongoing abandonment issues, from my studied perspective, resist change. At the very core comes a serious trust issue when confronted with letting-go and relating fully and completely with other people. The guard is up, the radar is (fine-tuned we think, but is) on maximum levels of sensitivity, and the archives are spewing all the old scenarios from the bad-memory-banks in order to prevent the same things from happening again. Nothing happens. Isolation continues. Abandonment is made more real.

God help me, I say in the face of such adversity. Existence requires purpose, purpose requires relationship, relationship inspires the best (and according to the level of relational health) in one another. Relationship can be friendships, spouse or partner, and others in communities we engage. Without any of these, walls cannot come down.

Bringing down the house means knowing these walls are there. It means recognizing them when they come up. It means finding the courage to open up and expose yourself and the fears to experience the event anyway, regardless of the feared outcome. Without DOING IT, the new experiences that will prove otherwise cannot happen. Positive experiences need to happen to restore balance, faith, and trust in self and others. Only you have the key.

Unlock the gate, and start letting that wounded heart beat openly. Hold in check the fears, feel the pain and do it anyway. Let your pain serve to feed your courage. It is simply there to remind you that you are alive, that you are courageous, and that you are on the verge of a major breakthrough experience. Keep letting them in, over and over again.

We all make mistakes, and we all have misunderstandings. Allow this knowledge to serve as a balance-point to create openess even in moments when perceived injustices are occurring. Quite often, the abandonment history has tales that distort the perception of reality. This often leads the mind to believe something is happening that is not. It also hears and understands things based upon experiences of the listener, rather than the intention of the speaker. So allow this openess to communicate, ask questions, give second chances, and give the process time.

Step-by-step, abandonment and trust issues can be overcome, and the peaceful knowledge and comfort that comes from nurturing a garden of friendships blossoming over a lifetime, with death both physical and metaphorical as people come and go, and time passes along with the rhythm of nature’s heartbeat. It is all transient, and we always remain connected on that heart level. Now trust, and let go.

I’m in Love in a very different way than I’ve ever experienced before. It is not a kind of love that feels all that comfortable to be with. I ache and have these very unusual bodily experiences… not quite muscle ache, but something creeping in the muscles. It’s a tension that comes with this Love. You may wonder what this different kind of love is.

Self Judgment and Criticism

People are often very good  at chastising their behaviour, their short-comings, their failures, and faults. The more times those bricks get heaped down upon you the load gets greater. I know that I used to be able to shrug them off a lot more easily when I was younger. Life hadn’t introduced me fully to itself yet.

Loving Others

Connecting with others to feel the warm energizing embrace of love fills a deep lacking void that has been empty for many years. For all those failures and shortcomings, the self-flagellation starves the individual from its very own personal source to Love. It’s stopped off, choked up, and with that starvation gasping for love, as soon as it encounters a warm sense of healing balm, it throws itself into a temporary fix that will soon implode upon itself.

Take  the Pain

The biggest reason this happens is due to how easy it is under some circumstances to simply slide into that deep pit and stay there without any ability to actually “SEE” the way clearly to getting out step-by-step. That’s really stuck! There’s lots to re-learn, and more to experience. The uncomfortable truth is the body does experience aches as the mind re-awakens fully with consciousness and awareness of the full reality. This is outside and beyond the self-pity-pit. It’s gonna hurt – Stay with it.

Consider this – the pain you feel is Love coming back.

Switching Gears

The pain in the body in part I’ve found to be related to the energy of a future that has not yet manifested. It is manifesting, and it begins through choice. As I said, it’s going to hurt when you encounter the fallout of the temporary fix. Don’t run from it, walk with it, stay with it. Things shift in what is observed in our thoughts, mind, choices, emotions, etc., and the new choices will be seen and felt strongly. It’s such a strong pull away from what was comfortable that it will create physical discomfort. Stick with the vision, you’ve felt the clutch engaging the new gears!

This Different Kind of Love

This different kind of love is focused on you now more fully. When you’re present with it and see, you notice it is standing tall and looking forward at an exciting and brilliant life that is being lived. This life glitters with gold in comparison to the old reality. This life is the life that was started way back. It’s back on track. This different kind of Love is definitely about you.

The Switch For Me

It’s been a tough road along some bumps. Being in the personal development field I was devastated to find myself broken. How could I be broken? I kept hearing the joke “those you can DO, those who can’t Teach.” This became an uncomfortable space that soon became comfortable. It was a catch-22 of self-analysis that created a vortex that sucked me in and kept me there. Little did I know, I was driving the boat.

Best Kind of Love

This space I started with describing and talking about in the post is a truly strong point of view. It is clearer than any perspective held in your life under any other circumstances. It yields tremendous strength and power that can sustain you in any circumstance. It will attract more of what you want than any Law of Attraction visualization can ever give you. This Love is that which acknowledges you, and ends all further belittling. It lifts you up. It holds you strong.

Know Your Self and Love Your Self

Value Your Self

“So, what are you going to do about it?” he asked again. Listening to his friend lamenting his pitiful circumstances, this was the only question that made any sense. Even so, instead of answering the question, the habit was to respond lamely yet again.

“My day started off badly, and three years ago that other big thing happened, and now this other thing is about to happen, and I just am in a bad space.”

“So, what are you going to do about it?”

This is Life:

The Positive View Experience: Change, Growth, Challenge, Opportunity, Excitement, Adventure, New Experiences, New Values, New Ideas

The Negative View Experience: Painful Change, Forced Growth through Destruction, Obstacles of Painful Victimization, Repetitive Problems, Fear and Anxiety, Routine Immobility, Stagnating Experiences

Must Overcome

Life is a Story, and your life is Your Story. Many people trap themselves with the chapters already written, and the beliefs they represent thinking this is it, their lot in their life story. And yet, the reality is that the page of tomorrow has not yet been written, let alone turned.

Before believing this lot in life is all that can be experienced, take note again of the Negative View and Positive View experiences shown above and decide which perspective would best engage each and every day. Be balanced and aware that there will be good days and bad days. Exerting this decision again and again and again, in the face of all adversity, the Positive View will gain strength until the experience is one that can be owned fully and consistently.

Story of Life

Life has been ongoing since long before the human beast inhabited this micro-cosmic corner of the Universe. Life continued to unfold, expand, and evolve until such time that humans occupied planet earth. All throughout time and history, of Existence and Mankind, evolution has been a process of destruction and rebirth (growth from death and decay in many respects) that has brought all that we currently know to this moment in time and space. Is it always easy?

Adversity

Difficult things occur consistently to challenge and create movement in life. A seed pushes against all that resists against it to gain a foothold in the soil and find a way to penetrate the surface and seek light. A young bird leaps from a next and falls to the ground in a stunned heap with its first attempt at flight. The salmon fight overwhelming odds so a few winners can plant their seed to continue the pattern of Life for their species. We could go on and on with examples of life being challenging that demonstrates the natural order of Life.

Is it really serving us as individuals to think human beings are above nature?  To think that things should never change, and that the old ways were best? Above the need to experience adversity? Above the cosmic dance that we don’t have to contribute and experience with the realities of living in the physical world of natural law? Cause and effect is rooted in physics, and so are all that exist in this temporal reality. Or is it already eternity?

Persevere

It can quickly be seen that there are many things to focus on through bad experiences that can bring a healthy perspective to the experience of life. With a healthier perspective, strength, courage, and conviction, there is a girding of effort to create action and movement that engages life, instead of being a victim to Life.

“So what are you going to do about it?”

When you’re stuck, try asking this question of yourself. Take note of perspective, attitude, roadblocks, and see where the opportunities lie. We each have tremendous opportunities for our own unique experiences in life. Get back onto the path and start walking again.

Mission Impossible:

Your assignment this week should you choose to accept it: Start noticing your thoughts, where they travel, and how repetitive they might become. Find the courage to insert your positive spin. Remember the more powerful moments of you in your life history. To start creating change, you only need do one thing as you take action each day.

Be The Change

A fog rolled in, quietly slithering in low to the ground, imperceptible at first until it was too late to escape the chill soup.

It’s not You, it’s the It!

What the…? Do you even know what you’re talking about?

It! It’s the It, man! You’ve got it, and typically, we’ve all got it in some way, shape, or form. The beautiful thing about it though, is that It isn’t You. It just is what it is.

You, on the other hand, are the pure seed of creation seeking out its fullest potential through growth. Trouble is, you spend so much time in an imperfect world taking the hits that life throws at you, that you don’t even realize that you’re experiencing wounds and stunted areas you perceive as your imperfections. People own it as a life sentence instead of seeing their opportunities!

——-

Tell a story, or just write? Stalled by what I thought might be a clever devil, rather than an authentic self, I questioned. This is a big deal, a big moment, a potential turning-point. Dare I be so bold as to flow with it?

When a bunch of heavy puzzle pieces fall into place, a wave of emotion rushes to every pore as tears of release threaten to flood. The realization of a source that is a cause to so much of life’s difficulties, as I experience it, is profound. Reeling, my brain suddenly feels emptied, and yet, a fog is preventing focus and memory to serve normally through my day. This is some big stuff I uncovered.

It’s interesting: To sit in this experience at this moment, it is simultaneously a pleasing and unpleasant experience. It is full of rich emotions, with below-the-surface remnants of sadness, anger, frustration, and confusion swimming around freely, while a stronger emotion of wonder accompanied by curiosity, has more conscious power, even though it sometimes sees fear. Ready for a big change?

Awareness, now sees the truth as it happens, recognizes the reactions, and the choice to change the old-patterns of reaction to a healthy response living authentically. The exercise of mind, to choose differently, to commit to the process, and to engage actively with that process, will prevail over old-patterns. It’s an interesting fight.

I can see the resistance too. There is a devil in the experience of change that wishes to stay within the security of even the most foul life experiences. It is more afraid of the unknown, than it is of the painful reality it has managed to find some solace within. Even though you and I can sit here and recognize this, we also feel that other sense screaming, “No, this is not the experience of life I signed up for! There is more! Much more!” Pay attention.

Knowing it is one thing. Acting upon it is quite another. Need it be so difficult? We’ll discover more on this as the story and research unfolds.