Let's talk about Twitter

What the world needs now is.....
well part of the answer to this phrase is deeper connections with other people (love sweet love).

I know that it is about a year old - but Twitter is really hitting fast in our part of the world. I have to say that there has not been a new tool that has caught my attention like Twitter. it gives me a buzz to know my friend with the pink hat is getting her computer fixed or working in her garden. It helps my connectedness to my work to know that a professor whose insights I value has a new slide show up on the web. It may even help the sale of my book if I get a video or pdcast done and then mention it in Twitter - who knows how fun and connections can spread.

What does this have to do with our reinventing life group? Why not consider all being on and following each other in Twitter - then setting the intention of Twittering regularly about how we are doing with our designs, our actions etc. Using the four PAR steps we would measure our success faster and find this as a tool to get our reflections started.

So for anyone who wants to drop in with a Tweet - I am alanajames on Twitter!

All the best,
Alana

PAR video: The steps explained

Hi everyone,

This video slide presentation is a mock up version for three sessions I am giving to Colorado Technical University in Colorado Springs on April 12th and 17th. While the video is not perfect (feet and bottom of slides cut off) it is a fairly decent first attempt and I think those of you interested in the idea of using this process on reinventing your life might find it interesting.

The process is the same whether it is for solving issues of poverty or deciding what you want to do next with your lives. It is helpful to have a map when we step out into the unknown - that is the reason PAR helps with transformation - it gives us the map.

Please post ideas, responses, and general impressions using the comment link below - I love knowing who this goes out to and what you think.

All the best,
Alana

PAR Presentation Attached

Hi everyone,

This video is a basic presentation that outlines the PAR steps for people who want to address complex adaptive (hard to solve) problems. While I made it as a building block for my talks to a university business and education crowd, the steps and the way we think about reinventing our personal life is much the same.

I confess that I put a lot of information in eight minutes, so I wouldn't be surprised to hear it was hard to catch the first time you watched it (lopsided grin).

Please comment below and let me know if it makes sense for anyone considering making changes in their personal lives.

All the best,
Alana

Infinite Field of Possibilities

Hi everyone,

I am reading, well actually listening to, the trilogy of which you may have seen the movie The Golden Compass. The hero is a little girl who has a fantastic ability to attract friends and together they become involved in the struggle between THE CHURCH (the bad guys) and her father (not so sure he is a good guy) who is trying to do away with religion once and for all and on all worlds.

Its this last that I am musing on today - that there are multiple universes - each which split off as we make a decision. This makes sense to me as I see that as long as we play in the world of 'what if' - we have infinite possibilities for our lives, but as soon as we pin ourselves down to a course of action the rest of the actions that we did not choose disappear somewhere. Occasionally we may get them back, but they won't be the same as if we took those actions in the first place.

OK - so now, at this moment I am seeing a world of infinite possibilities and I love thinking about: new websites, associations of my friends setting up shop to enhance multicultural ideas, mentoring doctoral students and playing with people who are at the leading edge of ideas about how education is changing. Yet I also feel tension - that as some of these ideas play out the field of possibility lessons - and as they become successful the likelihood of becoming stuck in them they way they are - where we work to keep them moving takes over. Plop, zip, gone are any pretense of infinite and we just fight to hold on to possibilities.

As I pursue some of these new ideas my goal, or idea is to stay close to the power of new ideas - to not let the day to day destroy that energy. AND/Both rather than EITHER one OR the other.

Looking forward to any comments you might have,
Alana

RL Retreat info and scrapbook

Make a slideshow - it's easy!

Hi Everyone, you will be able to move the scrapbook pages up close where you can see them by clicking on the up arrow in the middle - then move them at your own pace by using the right hand arrow. There are 10 scrapbook pages in all.

Please let me know what you think. If you have any friends who might be interested in retreating with us in May/June please pass on this link to them.

Alana

Being Happy

Hi everyone, I thought I would upload this article, written for The Immigrant Newspaper in Cork........

What does it take to make you happy? Picture a line and on one side of the line is absolute bliss (happiness beyond measure). On the other side of the line is sadness. Everyday run-of-the-mill happiness falls somewhere in the middle. Some people would say it is easy to be happy, others would say it is hard. The important message is that happiness does not come from the outside of us but the inside, and that makes all the difference.

Many people think that they will be happy, “if….” If they have a boyfriend, or girlfriend; if they get the next job; if they make more money, have a house, or drive a new car. The truth is that these things only bring fleeting pleasure. We can never get enough things outside of ourselves to make us happy. Happiness that lasts comes from connecting with the part of life spirit that is inside of us, the part that comes out when we sing, dance or create art. This is also the part that we feel when we see puppies or small children playing. These things make us happy because they remind us of our connection with life itself.

After you read this article, close your eyes for a minute. Sense that inner part of yourself that knows happiness – that is happiness. Does it feel warm? Does it have a color? Rest there for a few minutes until you feel yourself naturally smiling. Remember times when you felt like the world worked for you and you knew yourself to be secure and content. Feel your breath, feel the buzz of life in your hands and feet, and let yourself move in a way that makes you smile.

We can all make this a daily practice. If we remember to connect with our own inner happiness, then we can help our families, friends and co workers remember their “happiness place” as well. Perhaps we can all spread a little sunshine as we go. If this happens to you, I hope you email me at james.alana@gmail.com and tell me stories about how it worked for you.

Diagnose Alchemy Moves to Action - The beginning of a PAR cycle

Hi everyone,

As I mentioned in another blog, I recently was propelled through circumstance to investigate which archetypal pattern was currently playing in my life. The idea here is that we all are playing out a few roles that tie us to humanity through the ages - and the alchemist turned out to be me! In fact it fits my soul so perfectly that I find it thrilling to investigate – so investigate I did.

Before I forget it, you will find a few links at the bottom of this blog they are put there for fun and I highly recommend follow some of them. The first link I saved for the Lost Wonder Museum – and it truly is a wonder! I highly recommend it for anyone desiring to experience the buzz when your small human mind connects with the universe – FABULOUS. Also, wasn’t Nicholas Flamel a character in Harry Potter? Wasn’t he the man who had created the sorcerer’s stone? Evidently he also lived in our 3D world as I found drawings on the web from his notebooks! (See the 2^nd link).

I’ll use this space to highlight the basic learning from my search:

1. Most people think of alchemy as the search to turn iron to gold –or for the sorcerer’s stone and eternal life –evidently the life eternal that alchemists really seek is not the mundane but the enlightened idea of the blend of this life with the eternal oneness of the universe (a theme that runs throughout).

2. Alchemy was given a bad name by Freud, who commented that Leonardo Da Vinci (a known dabbler in the alchemical arts) was the equivalent of someone half crazy in the lingo of today, making Leonardo seem ridiculous.

3. Jung, on the other hand, developed the basic alchemical principal of the merging of opposites and the basic patterns of life force (air, water, earth and fire) into psychological principles (spirituality, physicality, emotionality and mentality).

4. Alchemy has seven steps – as you will see in the Museum of Lost Wonder.

The effect of my search on my creative mind has been enormous. The actions that follow include: a) using this as a teaching cycle for my other work (a retreat coming up by the way in Colorado in May or early June), b) I have started a small altered book “My book of Wonder” that uses the seven alchemical phases as a stepping off place, and c) I am adding the seven steps to my spiritual/psychological database of ideas to work out their correspondence with everything else that I have put together.

The bottom line for me is that a lot of energy came zooming into my life with one set of exploration – here’s hoping that whomever reads this finds the same zoom of wonder for themselves – It is really a lovely ride.

I’ll leave the discussion here for today so that my readers have time to play in the links below.

Love you lots,

Alana

www.lostwonder.org (tour the museum) This is really a can’t miss

http://www.alchemylab.com/flameldwgs.htm A whole page of Flamel links

And finally a link to cool pictures (like the one above) http://altreligion.about.com/library/graphics/magick/alchemy4.jpg