So, 8 months later, how did the grand mothering strategy play out?  I would say now that there was a larger cultural gap at play in the CSA program than the business vs counseling perspective, or the British vs American perspective; it turned out to be a gap between ICF and CCL beliefs, assumptions, and training.  It also became more apparent that I’m not your typical grandmother, either.

 The larger gap was largely between those with psychological background and training and those with coaching background and training coming into learning a process that had 3 legs on the stool of ‘supervision’: psychological mindedness, coaching (questioning) expertise, and systems and field awareness.  What took time to become aware of is that people who come out of  typical ‘coach training’ programs, be they ICF programs or others that are ICF approved, may have very different experiences of psychological self development in their past.  Some may have done quite a bit and others not much at all.  But there is also a tendency in common coach training to not put ‘self’ into the  conversation.  In fact, in the ICF basic programs, the instructions are specifically to avoid referring to yourself, your reactions to the coaching conversation, or your own experience.  In supervision, however, ‘you’ are a common and potentially powerful part of the process and you learn to use yourself wisely and well and specifically in illuminating parallel process.  The challenge for these colleagues was to 1) learn about yourself in new ways, and 2) be willing to share that with others, even though you are uncomfortable doing that.  That was a tall order for some people who tended to remain more introverted, emotionally contained, and focused on individual process during that 9 months.

The big challenge for those coming with a background of psychological training, group therapy, counseling, or leadership work (group orientation), was to stop talking so much, ask more questions when we did talk (which has a whole system and vocabulary attached which we hadn’t experienced), and stop looking to this ‘group’ for community, or group process learning, and just focus on our personal learning.  It may sound like a simple difference, but it was a Grand Canyon of world views!  Individual vs Group orientation and values, primarily, right down to; in supervision are we just focused on ‘you, as the coach, and your work with ‘your client’ as an individual?  Or are you and I, together, focused on what happens between you and your client and their impact on the team and organization?  In other words, do we learn through others or do we learn by asking ourselves questions about our own thinking, our own assumptions, our own blindspots?  I guess you could say, both.

All of this was not on my ‘grand mothering’ radar last October, and I didn’t really manage it well, along the way.  I found myself being more direct, expressive, extroverted, confrontational, and challenging than the group norm.  Usually it was a constant struggle for me with lack of feedback and personal sharing when we were all in the same room for those 8 days.  But the learning was huge for me!  In fairness, the larger process was spread out over different learning experiences; my supervisor was in London; my mentor in Ireland; my triad for practice between England, Peru, and the US; and our great book club from S. America to the U.S.  

At the end of the day, I hoped to be more serene and accepting regardless of what the experience was like.  Isn’t that what grandmothers are for?  To be full of love and understanding?  Well, maybe my next lifetime…. as the Buddhists say, you can’t stop the birds from flying around your head, but you can stop them from nesting in your hair.

 

 

 

 

Original post; Oct.15, 2013

As I began a new training for a diploma in coaching supervision by the British Coaching Supervision Academy, I was struggling with a clear culture gap  between helping profession world view and business world view as well as possibly British/American cultural differences but I knew that unraveling all of that would be a big distraction from where I really needed to focus — on learning a very different process for mentoring coaches.  One morning very early, the light flashed and I could see through different lenses to find my way, on my way.

As I began a new training for a diploma in coaching supervision by the British Coaching Supervision Academy, I was struggling with a clear culture gap  between helping profession world view and business world view as well as possibly British/American cultural differences but I knew that unraveling all of that would be a big distraction from where I really needed to focus — on learning a very different process for mentoring coaches.  One morning very early, the light flashed and I could see through different lenses to find my way, on my way.

A Transformation in My Thinking:

I can consider myself a novice in training with respected elders, medicine women, shaman, healers and grandmothers to join with the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers in healing the world as it is and helping lead others into our most positive emerging future.  As crones and respected kapuna in our tribes, we offer ourselves through ritual and mindfulness on the playing field of human experience to heal hearts and unleash courage as we transform ourselves and co-create our planet’s future.  I felt called to this path instantly and completely and I know not where it leads.

I can conceptualize the supervision sessions as offerings to the Great Spirit that open a sacred space, have a ritual of contracting and then offer a Pule of appreciation for this opportunity to learn together.  Our mindful conversation can be the opportunity for being prayerful, alert, shapeshifting, visioning, healing, support, and a conduit of hopefulness and humor.  Then comes wrapping up sessions gently to close down that space with another ritual Pule of thanks and agreement for the next encounter.

This perspective seems to be the way for me to see my aging feminine body as integral to my spiritual growth at this time and my own opportunity to Grandmother the World with myself as the offering.  Doing nothing different in behavior according to CSA protocol, the act of supervision itself, takes on new meaning and importance to me and I can leave behind the struggle of cultural gaps and expectations.   It has become irrelevant.  The calling is greater than that for me.

 

Continuing the journey,

 

Dede (aka Tutu)

 

Original post; Aug. 2, 2012

Every day I get to choose whether I want to be an adventurer, a student, a victim or a designer in my life.  There are basically 4 windows on reality and I can willfully choose to ‘look through’ any or all of those at any given moment.  Maybe this is truly the arena of free will!

 

1. 1) Life is random, I have no control and I have to react to survive and only the fittest and most aggressive make it…it is basically told as a tragedy and I am the victim.  It is a sad and potentially dangerous place.  I probably will need a gun!  No one is in charge.

 

2. 2) Life is a test and has right and wrong answers; I learn and get better and grow in wisdom and consciousness and probably if I don’t get it right, I’ll have to come back and live it again until I do or go to a penalty box or winner’s circle.  I am a student in God’s Universe and there are rules to follow.  It helps to have a textbook!  God is in charge.

 

3. 3) I am a participant in the adventure of life and can influence and create the life I am living by choosing my perspective and thoughts, managing my emotions, being surprised at the mystery and magic of daily living; choose the victim role or student role or participant role consciously.  Magical thinking becomes ‘think positive.‘  I am in charge of my life but not other’s lives.  

 

4. 4) I’m a designer in God’s MMOG.  (Massive Multiplayer Online Game)  I choose and design my life as writer, producer, director, star, talent scout all for the purpose of enlightenment and evolution.  Everyone else is a player and we co-create this ‘game’ in real time for the purpose of transformation.  It is a quantum reality of potential, choice and purpose.  Each day I bloom in the cosmos (the spiritual internet)…there are no ‘extras’ in God’s play or in my life and everybody is a star.

 

Sheldon Kopp has said that “Life isn’t about anything.”   Maybe it is just about choosing which starring role I am going to play today in my own movie…

 

Original post;  Dec. 17, 2012

At a talk last summer, Maya Angelou quoted a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) that speaks to me after this latest school massacre.  I’ve taken the liberty to change a couple of references just to bring it into the present:

 

 

I shall die, but that is all I shall do for Death.

 

I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter

    on the barn floor.

He is in haste; he has business in the Congo, business in 

    Afghanistan, many calls to make this morning.

But I will not hold the bridle while he cinches the girth.

And he may mount by himself: I will not give him a leg up.

 

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him

    which way the fox ran.

With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the 

    angry, lonely boy with guns hides in the cellar.

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death: I am not

    on his payroll.

 

I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends nor of my

    enemies either.

Though he promises me much, I will not map him the route 

    to any man’s door.

Am I a spy in the land of the living, that I should deliver men

    to Death?

Brother, the password and the plans of our city are safe with

    me; never through me

Shall you be overcome.           

 

* We miss you, Maya!

Original post; Fri. June 21, 2013

My Mother used to say that the biggest challenge as we age is staying clean and interesting. All too often, that Q-tip (grey hair and white tennis shoes) has food stains on his belly and no recent experience that we are inclined to be curious about. By the way, that belly I heard referred to yesterday by an Aussie as the ‘veranda over the toy store’ – although in this case it might be more like veranda over the cemetery! Frankly, at 71, I find it challenging to be either one– clean or interesting. You can’t see the crumbs, missing your mouth more often than you know, and you buy into a shrinking reality. (And by the way, I have to admit that there are occasions when I don’t find 30-somethings either clean or interesting.)

Life after 60 can begin to gradually feel like another Bridge to Nowhere, especially listening to the commercials after the evening news for fixing your sex life, energy level, breathing, pain, sleeping, etc. A marketing manager once told me that the beauty industry was selling hope. Well so is the pharmaceutical industry…and we boomers buy. Our physical capacity wanes: eyes see less (so get cataract surgery and throw the glasses away); ears hear less (get ‘audio boosters’ at the first family suggestion); stop adding more salt because you can’t taste as well either; and take up weight lifting at any age. But it isn’t just our diminishing physical capacity to interact in the world that weighs on us. The world itself seems to look into our eyes less often. I remember a ‘who dunnit’ years ago where a middle aged woman was the culprit who got away with murder because no one looked at her—they didn’t see her at all.

It is the ‘staying interesting’ part of my Mother’s challenge that I’d like to address specifically. (It was when stylishly-dressed and beautiful Nel began to not notice her appearance that we were tipped off to the advancing dementia. But she struggled to stay alert and engaged for several more years due to her intelligence and wit. My question to myself as I enter my 70’s is how can I continue to ‘expand’ when everything around me tells me to ‘contract?’ I want to expand my thinking, grow my experience, learn new ideas, make new friends, try new things, go new places, create new projects, and stay open. Most of all I want to stay curious (and stay hungry, as Steve Jobs says.)

One of our primary reasons for growing smaller with age is fear but my Mother had little patience with running away from anything much less her own fears . In her 70’s, she decided to confront her anxious fantasy of being helpless and sick so she went out and volunteered to become a Pink Lady in the local hospital. What she learned was that she actually was quite gifted at connecting with strangers, putting them at ease, getting them to laugh even when hospitalized and in pain and that took overcoming all of her introversion and shy nature. Yes, it takes courage to move through your fear to the gift on the other side.

I had a long conversation yesterday with a good friend who had recently lost her husband. Even in his 80’s and struggling with congestive heart failure, this former business executive continued to expand his world. He orchestrated selling their city apartment, moving to a new state, buying a home and inviting his wife’s daughter, her husband and toddler to live with them. Their young family helped update the house (to his specifications) before he and his wife moved in. As he became more limited in his own ability to travel, he continued to encourage his 16- year-younger wife to bike around Europe with friends; true generosity of spirit and a determination to grow and adventure vicariously. Just weeks before his life ended, he committed to playing “Words with Friends” with his ten-year-old granddaughter and he rejoiced in finding a TV series that he could sink his teeth into – “Breaking Bad.” Right to the end, my friend’s husband was taking life in, not giving it up.

My own option to take a road less traveled came recently. It came after a period of noticing a gradual lessoning of requests for work and contact with

colleagues, plus enforced isolation with knee surgery and flirting with depressive thoughts. A colleague called to say that there was a new certification program coming to the U.S. next fall in my field of coaching that would allow me to more formally mentor and support less experienced coaches. Suddenly I realized that I was in that place where two roads diverged in a wood and I intended to take the one less traveled, which might make all the difference.

Reason said ‘why?’ You can’t afford it, you’ll never recover the expense with future work, you have to go to Seattle three times, write a lot of papers and read a lot of academic articles and dry books. What are you thinking? But the words ‘first cohort,’ ‘we need experienced, creative people,’ and ‘we’ll have fun’ was like manna for the starving. Intuition, gut, and light are pulling once again down the road and around a bend. Dewitt Jones, National Geographic photographer, once advised to “change the lens you are using to look through, and put yourself in the place of greatest potential.” Seattle seems to point to true north. The retrofitting and repurposing of my life continues to be an ongoing process.

Ultimately, I’ve learned that if the gold ring comes around again, grab it! As my grandfather said, “Keep moving and don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” If you are alert, messages pop up everywhere when you are looking for direction. Last week, in the New York Times, there was a quote from Deeda Blair: “Study like you’ll live forever. Live like you’ll die tomorrow.” And always have plans and people and projects to talk about and look forward to. If you keep an open heart, open mind and bathe regularly, surely clean and interesting will follow!

 

Original post; May 14, 2012

Original post; Aug. 12, 2011

Quickie Happiness Workshop for Increasing Profits at Times of Seeming Peril: 

 

Think as much, if not more, about growing your income as you do of trimming your expenses. And for extra credit, focus on customers more than vendors; smiles more than frowns; possibilities more than risks; options more than commitments; vacations more than overtime; detours more than setbacks; opportunities more than obstacles; and Goldilocks more than the bears. 

 

End of Workshop – 

    The Universe

 

Thank you, tut.com !!!

relevant domains Esbrodapesvol

Original post; Mar. 31, 2011

The more we know about social intelligence the more we realize that there is more complexity, finer distinctions and more integration in analytical and emotional intelligence than we might ever have understood before.  Fairly recently I was comfortable comparing task and relationship (or thinking and relating) skills when talking about leadership.  But David Brooks, in a recent NYTimes article, lists 5 abilities that take us way beyond technical and relationship skills by diving into new mental functions which really require a skillful combination of both. 

1. •Attunement: the ability to enter other minds and learn what they have to offer.  (Putting your ego aside.)

2. •Equipoise: the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s own mind and correct for biases and shortcomings.  (Not getting hijacked or seduced emotionally.)

3. •Metis: the ability to see patterns in the world and derive a gist from complex situations.  (The ability to create meaning.)

4. •Sympathy: the ability to fall into a rhythm with those around you and thrive in groups.  (So that they feel understood by you.)

5. •Limerence: This isn’t a talent as much as a motivation. The conscious mind hungers for money and success, but the unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God. Some people seem to experience this drive more powerfully than others.  (Flow and inspiration.)

We again have to ask the question:  Can these abilities be learned?  What impact do people with these abilities have on others around them?  On the organization as a whole?  How can we grow in this direction on our own?   Sometimes we can understand the seduction of black and white thinking!  Just DO it!

Dargiastelmiapred .

Original post; May 6, 2012

Eleven Voluntary Initiatives from Ted Turner

http://www.visionsmc.com/2011/03/25/ted-turners-voluntary-initiatives/

 By Ted Turner

1. I promise to care for Planet Earth and all living things thereon, especially my fellow human beings.

2. I promise to treat all persons everywhere with dignity, respect, and friendliness.

3. I promise to have no more than one or two children.

4. I promise to use my best efforts to help save what is left of our natural world in its undisturbed state, and to restore degraded areas.

5. I promise to use as little of our nonrenewable resources as possible.

6. I promise to minimize my use of toxic chemicals, pesticides, and other poisons, and to encourage others to do the same.

7. I promise to contribute to those less fortunate, to help them become self-sufficient and enjoy the benefits of a decent life including clean air and water, adequate food,  health care, housing, education, and individual rights.

8. I reject the use of force, in particular military force, and I support the United Nations arbitration of international disputes.

9. I support the total elimination of all nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and ultimately the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction.

10. I support the United Nations and its efforts to improve the condition of the planet.

11. I support renewable energy and feel we should move rapidly to contain greenhouse gases.

ubuntu server . Roltofalcardla

Original post; July 30, 2012

Today, multiple realities, parallel universes and the complexities of living appear instantly at log-in.  I am fascinated, curious, and stuck in amazement and a shock of contrasts skimming the news which leaves me with the desire to reflect and make meaning for myself.  The still point between stimulus and action, the gap of conscious decision making, growing wide as the Amazon in a heart beat.  

 

First up, rebuilding Afghanistan: a reminder of the commitment to build schools and hospitals over the longer run and the time and resources required to do that.  Thomas Friedman reminded us yesterday that the real financial choice that we face very shortly is schools in Afghanistan or boomers with Alzheimer’s. And that might not be just a budgetary choice or patriotic choice.  It might be generational; investing in youth over long term nursing care of the aged.

 

Second, Uruguay’s entrepreneurial/innovative head of state has led his administration to explore building a bureaucracy to respond to the legalization of drugs; administration, warehousing, taxing, shipping, etc.  This would allow law enforcement to focus on traffickers rather than users.  As someone who has lived in ‘dry’ Kansas and whose parents used to date while bringing ‘booze’ over the bridge from Missouri to Kansas, I wonder why more of this creative thinking isn’t going on elsewhere.  Controlling is so much more effective than prohibiting anything!  Why Uruguay and not here??

 

Third, aerial snipers from drones who work from Virginia killing bad guys in Afghanistan need counselors and religious support in Virginia just as they needed it on the ground when they were hiding behind some sandy, hot wall.  But now the contrast between what they spend their days doing and the world of McDonalds and commuters that they pass on their way home (to play with their kids – which is what their targets were doing today) causes the same mind-numbing, PTSD-provoking stress.  It isn’t just the experience of a video game. [I wonder if they need to be concerned with the target becoming aware of being stared at like they do on the ground.]  Wait!  What are we doing to ourselves here??

 

And last up on my screen, The Daily Word.  Today it is Prosperity.  Focus on the world of abundance around me.  “I focus on abundant good. I think about the people I have loved, the kindnesses I have received, and the opportunities I have been given. The more I think about how prosperous I am, the more prosperous I feel. The more prosperous I feel, the more willing I am to claim the prosperity that is mine by divine birthright.”  Wait!  This is coming from another channel.  Stop.  Re-tune to thisresonance.

 

An hour later (spent crossing this Amazon) the moment of choice becomes the seduction of engaging in these different realities that pop up at a click, or focusing on my own reality of abundance and good.  It is quite comforting to remember that I can let the other bits of data, information and knowledge float in and right back out and that I don’t really need to shut the windows and doors and live in the dark.  Focus on the meaning before me.

 

Matthew Fox has a daily thought for a day in September that says that we can’t fix or even completely understand the state of the world around us and ‘besides, it is none of our business…the Captain is on the Bridge.’  So I detach myself long enough to write this and remind myself of what, and who, matters in my life, today.  But that other bubble is SO interesting….