Living a Life Full of Meaning

 Highlights from Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl

The way that Raj Sisodia spoke of Man’s Search for Meaning during a presentation for Conscious Capitalism spoke directly to my soul. I decided right then and there that I was going to read it. To this day, it is the most impactful book I've ever read.

Frankl was a neurologist who lived in Nazi internment camps for 3 years. He paints a picture of what it felt like to be separated from family, lose everything including freedom, and witness heartbreaking cruelty. He explored how different people reacted to the torture. 

Frankl found a high correlation between a person's level of hope and their health. Those who were hopeless had declined immunity levels and experienced rapid mental and physical decay.  Prisoners with hope had a fundamentally different attitude toward life, resulting in better health. 

Even in the states of extreme torture, some prisoners felt hopeful and that their life had meaning. It is the seeking of achieving a goal that creates purpose, not a tensionless state. Having this goal to achieve enables people to not only thrive, but also overcome extremely painful experiences.

Frankl found the ultimate meaning of life is to strive for a worthwhile personal goal. It is personally motivating potential. Frankl went on to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy, became a professor at Harvard, and developed logotherapy. 

Filling Your Cup

There are things you experience that make you feel excited and full of life.  Notice what they are and prioritize them regularly.  Fill your cup enough to share. 

Who Do You Surround Yourself With?

Each person that we come in contact with makes an impact on us.  The level of impact depends on how we feel about them and what they are representing to us.  We may feel a strong positive attraction, a strong negative rejection, or anything inbetween.  Either way, it's facinating to think about how a simple interaction has the opportunity to leave an impression on us that lasts a lifetime.  

The people we spend the most time with have a great deal of influence on us. We become like those we surround ourselves with.  Make a quick list of the five people you typically spend the most time with.  This can include podcasts, books, and TV shows that you frequently tune into.  What type of mindset do they have?  What are their most common attitudes?  Do they pull you up and inspire you to grow?  Do they bring you down and hold you back?  What feelings do they trigger in you?

Rather than hanging out with people who are nearby or you've known forever, think about consciously selecting your influences and what impact that may have on you.  If you aren't spending time with at least one person who serves as a role model for you and inspires you to grow, change that today.  Do some research, subscribe to a podcast, or read a book.  Bring more of that energy into your weekly schedule.  This small shift can change your life significantly.  

My 40's Wish List

When I turned 30, I spent that entire year in a deep analysis of my life.  I was excited about my age and determined to make the most of it.  I came up with a specific set of outcomes I wanted to achieve in that decade.  10 years later as I reflected back, I realized that I achieved every single one of them.  

Turning 40 didn't set me into such a deep state of analysis.  I was more at ease with it, yet not so excited.  Sitting here now turning 41 today, I feel that sense of excitement about the life I will create.  I'm having fun coming up with my next decade wish list.  

• Love - My husband and I get closer, our relationship even stronger, and we make each other feel adored daily.
• Parenthood - My children are empowered to reach for their dreams and feel supported in achieving them.  They are encouraged to soak up the goodness of life.
• Abundance - I continue to experience the absolute abundance I achieved in my 30's and expand even further.  This time, I feel freedom and empowered by it, rather than controlled and limited by it.  
• Wellbeing - I feel well, full of energy, and inspired daily.  If not, I get there first.
• Relationships - I build thoughtful, caring friendships with those around me.  I have dear, great friends who feel my thoughtfulness and support deeply.  
• Education - I finish my Bachelor's, or at least am well on my way to doing so.  I always continue learning and sharing what I learn.  
• Impact - I provide tools and services that empower others to make progress.  I share progress and inspiration with others.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned so far is that focusing on what I want (rather than constantly thinking about what I don't want) is not only a better experience, it's powerful.  Here's to my best decade yet!

Love, Dani

Metamorphosis of the Monarch

"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."- Richard Bach

One of my hobbies is to raise monarch caterpillars and protect them while they develop until they become butterflies.  The chances of a monarch caterpillar's survival is only 2% in nature.  One butterfly lies about 400 eggs and only 8 typically live to become adult butterflies.  In recent years the monarch population has drastically declined.  I enjoy helping to increase the chances of their survival.  This year I've had my largest "batch" ever with over 20 butterflies emerging during the month of June. 

The process is absolutely amazing.  Within a few weeks they grow over 2,000 times their original size and completely transform, changing to a distinctly separate organism entirely.

These caterpillars start as eggs, almost invisible to the naked eye.  I keep an eye out for any holes in the leaves of my milkweed plants.  Once I find a caterpillar, I move him into my mesh caterpillar habitat and place him on a milkweed plant that has a much greater chance of survival.  

As the caterpillars grow, they eat A LOT.  There have been many days where I had to make an emergency trip out to get more milkweed plants.  I have found that a cucumber is a good substitute for one day, in case of emergency.  They molt several times as they grow, splitting their old skin.  

Once the caterpillar is ready to form a chrysallis, they climb into a spot the believe will be the most safe and hang out there to make sure.  They then spin silk to attach and hang head-down in a "J" shape.  

About a day later, they straighten and start pulsating strongly.  They tear through their exoskeleton and expose the pupa.  It first appears as a light green milky substance.  Over the next few hours, the green darkens slightly and a beautiful gold trim appears.  You can immediately see the outline of the wings within the pupa.  

The Monarch chrysalis remains in this state for 1-2 weeks.  During this period, the entire internal contents of the caterpillar (including the muscles, digestive system, heart, and nervous system) are totally rebuilt.  They lose half of their weight due to the tremendous amount of energy it takes for this transformation.  The day before they emerge, you will notice that the color of the chrysalis darkens.  The following morning it will appear black.  It's actually clear - if you look within you can see the orange on the wings.  

That morning the Monarch will emerge.  The prior yellow, white, and black striped body has changed into a black body with white dots.  The atenna and legs are completely different as well.  The wings are folded at first.  The Monarch must hang upside down to allow fluids to surge to the end of the wings and dry.   It will take several hours for the butterfly to prepare for their first flight.  As they get ready to fly, they'll flap their wings, learning to use them.  I let them go that afternoon.  It's so beautiful to see them soar for the first time.

Monarch butterflies typically live two to six weeks.  During this time, I'll find many of them coming back to lie eggs on the same plants they were born on.  The process repeats.  The last generation of a season is born in September and October.  This generation migrates South to Mexico, where it will live for six to eight months until it's time to repeat the cycle. 

I love to see the process of change.  It's a great natural example of the change that we all go through and that is possible in each of us.  It's also amazing to see that with a little guidance and love, the chance of success is vastly higher. 

“If we could see the miracle in a single flower clearly, 
Our whole life would change.” ~Buddha

Unstoppable: Transforming your mindset to create change, accelerate results, and be the best at what you do

Highlights from the book by Dave Anderson

This book was a great, quick read that left me feeling amped up and empowered to create change.  Here are the key parts I want to remember. 

4 Types of Team Members

1.       Undertakers – Drain value.  Others need to carry their load, clean up their mess, and perform damage control in their wake. 

2.       Caretakers – Baseline participants.  Do just enough to get by, get paid, and go home.

3.       Playmakers – Occasionally create change.  They have more energy and drive but are inconsistent.   

4.       Game Changers – Unstoppable.  Consistently bring effort, energy, attitude, excellence, and passion to the job. 

Everyone can vary between these 4 mindsets, however one will primarily dominate a person’s time, and is therefore reflected in their performance.  Transforming one’s mindset upward is achievable and the main content of this book. 

9 Things it Takes to Become Unstoppable

1.       Decide to think differently.  Stop blaming or making excuses.  Change your behaviors, replace unproductive habits with healthy ones, and get focused on your dreams (and why you want them).

2.       Do the ordinary extraordinarily and consistently well.  Reap the predictable harvest from the consistent seeds of discipline, attention to detail, continual improvement, and extra work over time. 

3.       Add value to the culture.  Even if your level of skill, knowledge, talent, or experience may be less than others, incessantly apply what you do have.  Take relentless approach that is rooted in the right mindset.

4.       Be committed to self-improvement.  Be obsessed with becoming better than your former best.  Every day consider what you can do today knowing it will help you be better tomorrow. 

5.       Err on the side of being personally humble.  By continuing to grow and excel, and being a clutch member of the team, you can inspire and lift others to a higher level of intensity, desire, and performance.  Have a voracious ambition for the team to do well. 

6.       Focus on what you can control.  Have an outlook of never giving up and quitting is not an option.  Stop making excuses for why you don’t do it or complaining if you didn’t get it.  Earn it, deserve it, or go without it. 

7.       Embrace revolution.  Change and risk before you have to so that you can do so from a position of strength rather than having an impaired vision due to desperation.  Have the ability to be in a constant state of evolution and embrace revolution. 

8.       Seek to be coached.  Accept constructive criticism as a compliment.  Let every disappointment become a lesson. 

9.       Give everything you can.  Rather than focusing on quantity of work, do all that is possible to turn out the best work possible.  To aspire to excellence, never accept good enough. 

Becoming a game changer depends on you alone.  It’s a choice you make to focus on what you can control, be more humble, hungry, persistent and focused, and to grow. 

Game Changer Philosophy

Game changers are energized by their goals, the chance to make a difference, the chance to lift a teammate, the chance to move the team forward, and the chance to be better today than they were yesterday. 

·        Focus on choices that you have control over rather than conditions you don’t.  Be driven, hungry, resilient, and stay focused.  When you get off track, get back on ASAP.  Be internally motivated.  Be early and prepared.  Have a set routine.  Push others along rather than being pulled. Focus on behaviors rather than words.  Look within and take ownership.

·        Know your why.  Your WHY gives you purpose, builds resilience, and makes you unstoppable. 

·        Be in the Zone as much as possible.  There is a state of heightened focus that enables peak performance.  We are far more effective when we find it, stay in it, and return to it quickly if we depart.  Recognize your zone busters and shift them with your mindset or by taking action. 

·        Go A.P.E.  Attitude: settled way of thinking/behavior.  Passion: feeling of excitement about doing something. Enthusiasm: intense enjoyment or approval.  These characteristics that start from within are the greatest differentiator in results and speed. 

·        Be mentally tough.  Developing oneself to a game changer status requires persistence, tenacity, focus, resilience, diligence, and the right attitude.  Create your own unstoppable philosophy by setting a standard that you strive to and measure your growth against.

·        Develop a daily mindset discipline.  Process facilitates focus, discipline, and consistency.  Get motivated about what the process will do for you and follow it every time, over time.  Engage in a mindset routine in the morning that motivates you and aligns you with daily priorities. 

·        Set the example.  The power of your example is unfathomable.  Hold yourself to a higher standard of thinking and behaving that is in alignment with living at unstoppable game changer status. 

Commitment Continuum:  resistant, reluctant, existent, compliant, committed, compelled, obsessed

Passionate Performance

Highlights from the book by Lee J. Colan

Passionate performance is demonstrated by a strong, sustained intellectual and emotional attachment to one’s work.  It is made visible through enthusiasm and seeing results.  People choose to do more because they have fun.  This happens when a person’s intellectual and emotional needs are fulfilled.

Intellectual needs are fulfilled by engaging the mind and result in high performance.   There are 3 intellectual needs that need to be fulfilled.  When a person regularly experiences achievement, autonomy, and mastery, a self-reinforcing cycle of improvement, growth, and high performance is created.

1. Achievement – Outcome: eliminate barriers to achievement and define crystal clear goals
2. Autonomy – Process: improve the process and establish broad, yet clear boundaries
3. Mastery – Specialty: fit person to position for highest, best use and create a learning environment

Emotional needs are fulfilled by engaging the heart and result in passion.  There are 3 emotional needs that need to be fulfilled.  When a person regularly experiences purpose, intimacy, and appreciation, they form strong relationships that result in amazing results.

1. Purpose – Cause: create a compelling purpose and focus on activities that directly support it 
2. Intimacy – Connection: maintain small teams to build strong relations and create team rituals
3. Appreciation – Recognition: find opportunities to express contributions and to be sincerely interested in each person

Implementation Ideas:

• Look for opportunities for your team to master key skills
• Define goals for each person (eliminate the primary barrier to achievement)
• Find a reason every day to recognize someone on your team
• Implement a structured selection process to ensure a good fit between each person and position
• Ask team what changes they can make to be certain we stay focused on our purpose

Conscious Capitalism Conference 2018

Last week I attended the Conscious Capitalism Conference in Dallas, Texas.  It was bigger than ever with more than 800 attendees.  It's nice to see the movement growing.  This was my second time attending.  Its an enlivening event.  There are activities that engage you in learning and growing, a great group of people attending there alongside you, and a lot of inspiring content to take in.

I loved all of the presentations I saw.  There were some common themes with an overall essence that inspired/reminded me:

• Be present and show up in your daily actions.  Emotions are contagious.  Be aware of the climate you create in the room.  When your nervous system takes over, pause and reset.  Listen for possibility.  Resonance expands energy; dissonance reduces it.  Ride the wave of life force energy.  Spread beauty and grace.  
• What you pay attention to expands.  Quantum physics proves this at a molecular level.  Consciously focus your attention on strengths and solutions with questions and curiosity.  Let go of the minor things you find stealing your joy.  Pay attention to what you want more of.  Think of your attention like a ball of light.  
• Brilliant ideas come when you're relaxed.  Play is the highest form of research.  Capture your genius ideas down when they are incomplete.  If you can't think of a win/win/win, you haven't been creative enough.  Geniuses are just people who get better reception.
• Never give up.  Failure is commonly found on the path to greatness.  Learn, grow, and try again.  When you want something bad enough, the world conspires to give it to you.

A few presentations were truly unforgettable.  These speakers were charismatic and had a powerful story to share.

Shawn Achor opened with a bang.  He is a happiness researcher who is full of energy and zest.  He shared a ton of interesting content on happiness.  I highly recommend checking out a podcast.  Three key points were unforgettable:

• Happiness is the joy you feel when moving toward your potentional.  
• We all have mirror neurons that connect our brains wirelessly to each other.  We co-process the world and are interconnected.  When we are in sync with each other, our success rate rises dramatically.  We literally shine brigher as a connected community.  Positive patterns of gratitude deepen optimism and social connection.   
• When we run into challenges, we all feel that they are much easier to face when we don't feel that we have to face them alone.

Chad Houser told his story of opening up Cafe Momentum.  His restaurant is run by young men and women that are released from juvenile hall.  He runs a 12-month paid internship that teaches them all jobs in the kitchen and guides them through a process that sets them up to be hired after it's over.  He helps these kids empower themselves through hard work and determination to be able to lift themselves out of a vicious cycle.  I could literally hardly hold it together after he was done.  He's remarkable.  Check out this video:  The Cafe Momentum Story

Shawn Nelson is the creator of Lovesac.  He shared his idea of "Designed for Life" which is a framework meant to inspire innovation by challenging companies to create better so that consumers can buy less.  His sactionals are amazing.  Check out this video: Designed for Life: The Lovesac Vision.

The content that I connected with most was during the chapter leaders pre-event on Sunday.  Danny Friedland, MD went over the triune brain and how it impacts us every day.  He explained that there are three main parts to the brain and it's natural to oscillate between them throughout the day.  Everything that comes in is filtered through an automatic process that constantly seeks to confirm safety.  The opportunity/challenge we have is to notice when we're in the lower levels (fragmented and reactive) and lift ourselves up to a cycle of creativity by recognizing it and choosing to shift from safety or identity to solutions/action.  He encouraged us to be mindful and pay attention with a sense of openness, kindness, and curiosity for whatever is arising in the present moment.

I love being able to bring this back into my day to day and looking at everything from a renewed perspective.  Although I came back to a very full inbox and several things piled up to deal with, I felt 100% present in each of them and had expansive ways of looking at "processing" them.


This content is blended and inspired by the following people: Michelle Kinder, Shawn Achor, Danny Friedland, Michael Gelb, Deval Patrick, Chad Houser, Jeff Sinelli, David Emerald Womeldorff, Selim Bassoul, Suzy Batiz, Ed Freeman.

My Purpose Statement

I was just at the Conscious Capitalism Conference this week and realized I have never quite nailed down a personal purpose statement.  Here's my current draft:

I build systems that bring people together to create opportunities for growth, optimize experience, and drive progress.

Lean Startup

My favorite highlights from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Develop an innovative product that emphasizes fast iteration and customer insight, a huge vision, and great ambition all at the same time.   

1.     Vision – Build an ideal model of disruption based on customer archetypes

1.1.    Start - Enter the build phase as quickly as possible with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This approach minimizes effort and development time required.

1.2.    Define – Humanize the customer.  Develop a customer archetype that is used daily in prioritizing decisions to ensure they are aligned with customers’ needs.

1.3.    Learn - No matter how efficiently you build something no one really wants, you are going to fail.  Validated Learning is the only type of learning that is valuable in a startup.  Learn what customers want based on empirical data from real customers.  Productivity is measured in terms of how much validated learning we are getting for our efforts.

1.4.    Experiment – Build a sustainable business around teams that perform quick experiments to provide key learning and progress the vision. Explore the value hypothesis (does this product and/or service deliver value to customers) and growth hypothesis (how will customers discover it).  Setup culture and systems so that teams can innovate at the rate of the experimentation system. 

2.     Steer – Launch an MVP to establish a baseline

2.1.    Leap – Identify tremendous opportunity and plan a strategic approach based on a well-informed strategy.  Analyze products, techniques, and the right questions to ask. 

2.2.    Test – Test all assumptions as quickly as possible.  Engage early adopters to provide valuable feedback.  Conduct A/B tests to create true results rather than a need to sell what you have.  Any feature, process, or effort that does not contribute directly to learning should be removed from MVP.

2.3.    Measure – Rigorously measure each step of the way; quickly confront the hard truths that are revealed.  Utilize learning milestones to allow accurate and objective assessments (build model, launch MVP, iterate to get closer to ideal).  Focus on actionable and assessible measurements that are auditable.

2.4.    Pivot (or Persevere) – Getting to pivots faster is the goal during growth periods.  Having the tools and agility to find a better path is key.

3.     Accelerate – Tune the engine to get closer to the ideal

3.1.    Batch – Reduce work in progress by converting to pull methods and reducing batch size.  Figure out what needs to be learned, then work backwards to see what product will work as an experiment to get that learning.  Small batches are processed faster and ensure that issues are identified quickly. 

3.2.    Grow – New customers come from the actions of past customers.  Sources of sustainable growth power feedback loops that become engines of growth. 

3.3.    Adapt – Adaptive processes force you to slow down and invest in preventing the kinds of problems that are currently wasting time.  As these preventative efforts pay off, you naturally speed up again.

3.4.    Innovate – Create an innovation sandbox.  Nurture disruptive innovation by creating small cross-functional teams that can rapidly experiment without requiring a lot of approvals, innovate in the open, and have a personal stake in the outcome.   

Highlights: Organizational Physics

My favorite highlights from Organizational Physics by Lex Sisney.

An organization is a complex adaptive system with a finite amount of energy.  How an organization manages its available energy is what ultimately determines its failure or success. 

The laws of organizational physics show that success is a function of two things:  integration over entropy. 

·        Integration indicates the amount of new energy made available to the organization from the environment. 

·        Entropy indicates the amount of energy required to manage the “mass” (maintaining the organization, making decisions, and getting the work done).  Everything naturally falls apart over time.  Energy flows here first.  If too much energy is lost, the organization slows down and fails. 

Key Steps to System Energy Management:

1.       Build and manage powerhouse teams

2.       Choose the right strategy

3.       Execute fast

Leveraging Forces:

Every individual expresses their own unique combination of the four forces that operate within us: Producing, Stabilizing, Innovating, and Unifying.  Each of us has all four forces present in some form, but usually one or two come to us most naturally.  When one force is particularly strong, one or more of the other forces will be relatively weak.  When we operate from our genius zone, we experience high energy gains, feel deep engagement, high personal satisfaction, and elevated productivity.

Getting people in the right roles is key for the benefit of the individual as well as the organization.  Designing the overall structure in a system that leverages these natural forces to create overall balance maximizes the benefit to the whole. 

1.       There’s an inherent conflict between autonomy and the need for control.  Enable sales to sell without restriction (to speed growth) and centralize functions which control systemic risk (to protect the system). Make the most of these energies with a structure that harnesses both of them. 

2.       Functions focused on effectiveness should never report to functions based on efficiency.

3.       Functions focused on long-range developments should never report to those that drive daily results.

The 6 Laws of Organizational Physics

1.       An organization is a complex adaptive system.  It must be viewed as a complete system to gain insights into how it functions in its totality.

2.       An organization is subject to the first law of thermodynamics: there is a finite amount of energy.  If an organization has a high level of integration between its capabilities and the opportunities in the environment, the organization can receive an abundance of new energy and be successful.  If there’s no integration between them, then there’s no new energy created, and it will soon perish.

3.       An organization is subject to the conditions of its environment.  The driving principle of evolution shows that it’s not the strongest or most intelligent that survive, but those that are best adapted to their environment.  Because the environment is always changing, the organization must always be adapting.  Successful adaption requires constant realignment among the organizations capabilities to execute, its markets or customers, and its products.  This is the basis of its strategy. 

4.       An organization is subject to the laws of motion.  How an organization manages its mass determines the speed of its execution. 

5.       An organization must shape and respond to its environment and do so as a whole system, including its parts and sub-parts.  An organization has patterns or forces that exist all throughout it, from the smallest tasks and behaviors to the largest enterprise.  These forces can be mapped many ways.

6.       An organization is subject to the second law of thermodynamics.  Everything falls apart over time due to entropy (disorder or disintegration).  An organization’s available energy first flows to manage and counter the disintegrating force of entropy.  If entropy is high, then it costs the system a higher amount of its available energy to maintain itself and get work done.  If a business has a great market opportunity but suffers from high internal friction, politicking, and fighting, it takes a tremendous amount of energy to get any work done and the business can’t capture the external opportunity as a result.

Reference:

·        Organizational Physics book by Lex Sisney

·        http://organizationalphysics.com/2011/11/09/the-four-styles-of-management/

Be the Change you Want to See

Begin each day with gratitude and love.  Radiate positive vibes to those you encounter.  Lend a helping hand even if it slows you down a couple of minutes.  Listen intently when people speak.  Share your perspective with kindness.  Put in hard work toward making a difference.  Tease your brain and learn something new.  Lighten up.  Smile.  Prioritize playfulness and celebrate life.  Nourish your body and feed your soul.  Envision your best self.  Take a step forward daily.  Do something that fills your cup and re-energizes you.  Say 'I love you' often.

The 5 Components of Showing Up

1.       Intention – Own what you want and be clear about it.

2.       Energy – Take care of yourself and how you show up to the table.  Be a powerful instrument of change and possibility.

3.       Presence – Be present with people and be thoughtful about how they experience being with you (your body language, what you say and do, your tone of voice, etc.). 

4.       Action and Skills – Stay on top of things.  Move forward, increase your skills, and accomplish your goals.

5.       Impact – Make it happen.

How leaders “show up” and how they grow others are strong predictors of the quality of leadership as well as the quality of the culture that the leadership is creating.

Excerpt from Contagious Culture by Anese Cavanaugh

The Beauty in Diversity - Reflected through Spiral Dynamics

Spiral Dynamics is a framework that makes patterns visible.  It is an integral approach to thinking about the complexities of human existence by bringing order to the apparent chaos of human affairs.  It represents the emerging flow of human thinking and value systems that continuously change in the process of life.  It shows how people think about things, not what they think about.

This framework organizes information in a way that makes it easier to see the value of our differences. The spiral shows how waves of consciousness emerge and flow through individuals and groups.  Each level represents a system of core values or collective intelligences, applicable to both individuals and entire cultures.  They detail human development and growth in adaptation to challenges.  Each new level includes and transcends all previous ones.  No level is inherently better or worse than another.  They do become more expansive since each builds on all that came before it.  People are not locked into one single level.  Several can coexist, though one is usually dominant.

Each level has an important role in life and all are needed.  Each has a healthy and unhealthy expression...  The opportunity lies in moving people to the healthy expression in their role, not to become all the same. 

• Warm colors exhibit a focus on the external world and mastering it. 
• Cool colors focus on the inner world and coming to peace within it.  
• As individuals, most of us are mixtures of both as the spiral winds between the individual "I" and the collective "we".  

We are like pieces of a puzzle... each one equally as important and valuable. When we align with these factors, we leverage the value of our differences rather than fight against them.  We increase our ability to thoughfully design our efforts by engaging a person that perfectly fits a particular need and empowering them with the best tools and systems, setting them up for success and increasing our ability to impact the whole.

How to Build Writing Habits

Writing can be a pleasure but it can also be very difficult to commit to doing.  Writer's block is a real thing and is very tricky.  Over the last six months, I've found a little sweet spot with writing.

First, set yourself up with the right conditions for content to flow freely and to have fun with the process:

1. Carve out a regular window of time.  Have at least one dedicated writing session carved out every week. Pick a time that you are at peak performance.  I love weekend mornings. Most weekends I have at least one writing session during my son's nap time. I've got morning energy and creativity is high.  The limited amount of time I have helps to create a wonderful urgency that drives my creativity even more.
2. Create your canvas.  Figure out what communication method you want to have.  Do you want to use a blog, a notebook, a Word document, etc.  I use a blog so that I can collect all of my writing in one place, work on it when I want to, and be able to easily copy and paste later when I am ready to craft my blogs into a book.  Also I can consistently get some little bits of information out there while improving my writing.  Win, win, win!
3. Find your method.  Discover what steps you can take to get you in a mode where writing is easy and fun.  I always start a writing session by opening up a fresh browser screen and going to my blog to start playing.  

Then find the techniques that help get your creative juices flowing. I've got a few different modes that I switch between in each session:

• Creative Mode: For those times that I am at peak creativity, I don't edit my writing all.  I either jot down ideas on a piece of paper (my Daily Workbook) or create a new blog post.  The key is to let ideas pour out and get sloppy with them so that they just keep on coming.  I like to keep a collection of draft blog posts (I've got 34 right now!).  This helps me feel like I have a lot of options and reduces pressure on feeling forced to be creative  I always grab ideas that I have and save them as draft blog posts so I can easily play them later.
• Edit Mode:  I come back to my saved draft posts for a second review of the material on a different day.  I pick a post I feel drawn to and fill in what may have been left out and also clean up the overall message.  I then publish it on my blog ... The information being publicly available forces a different level of awareness and ownership.  That usually results in me finding new ways to improve the content. 
• Refine Mode:  Each writing session I review my most recent blog post and see if I can make any more improvements.  I always can.  I then share it on social media where it may be appropriate.  

Reading always sparks my desire to write.  Learning new things inspires me to share with others.  It creates a virtuous cycle of creativity, sharing, and fulfillment.

Conscious Capitalism Credo

I'm reading through the handbook and want to capture how awesome this is. :)

We believe that business is good because it creates value, it is ethical because it is based on voluntary exchange, it is noble because it can elevate our existence, and it is heroic because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity. Free enterprise capitalism is the most powerful system for social cooperation and human progress ever conceived. It is one of the most compelling ideas we humans have ever had. But we can aspire to even more.  

Conscious Capitalism is a way of thinking about capitalism and business that better reflects where we are in the human journey, the state of our world today, and the innate potential of business to make a positive impact on the world. Conscious businesses are galvanized by higher purposes that serve, align, and integrate the interests of all their major stakeholders. Their higher state of consciousness makes visible to them the interdependencies that exist across all stakeholders, allowing them to discover and harvest synergies from situations that otherwise seem replete with trade-­‐offs. They have conscious leaders who are driven by service to the company’s purpose, all the people the business touches, and the planet we all share together. Conscious businesses have trusting, authentic, innovative and caring cultures that make working there a source of both personal growth and professional fulfillment. They endeavor to create financial, intellectual, social, cultural, emotional, spiritual, physical and ecological wealth for all their stakeholders. 

Conscious businesses will help evolve our world so that billions of people can flourish, leading lives infused with passion, purpose, love and creativity; a world of freedom, harmony, prosperity, and compassion. 

From Conscious Capitalism

Increase Your Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Highlights from Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry & Gean Greaves

Emotional intelligence is the #1 predictor of professional success and personal excellence.  By learning to deal with emotions creatively, we leverage our intelligence in the most beneficial way.

• The daily challenge of dealing effectively with emotions is critical because our brains are hard-wired in a way that information passes through our emotions before it reaches our reason.  
• The communication between the emotional and rational centers of the brain is the source of  emotional intelligence (EQ).  We have control over the thoughts that follow an emotion and how we react to an emotion, as long as we are aware of it.    
• As EQ skills grow, we learn to spot our triggers and practice productive ways of responding that become habitual.
• 90% of high performers are also high in EQ.

As we build our EQ skills, our brain builds new connections for information to travel between the rational and emotional sections of our mind.  These pathways strenghten based on frequency of use, when we do something productive with our feelings.

The Four Emotional Intelligence Skills

• Self Awareness - 
• Self-awareness is the ability to accurately perceive our own emotions in the moment and understand our tendencies across situations.  It's important to understand why something gets a reaction out of us.  Emotions serve a purpose.
• People with high self-awareness are remarkably clear in their understanding of what they do well, what motivates and satisfies them, and which people and situations push their buttons.  The more we understand the beauty and blemishes, the better we are able to achieve our full potential. 

• Self Management - 
• Self-management is the ability to use the awareness of our emotions to stay flexible and direct our behavior positively.  
• Real results come from putting momentary needs on hold to pursue larger, more important goals.

• Social Awareness - 
• Social awareness is the ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on with them.  It requires an understanding of what others are feeling, even when we don't feel the same way, and even while we're in the middle of the interaction.
• Listening and observing are the most important elements.  

• Relationship Management - 
• Relationship management is the ability to use the awareness of our own emotions and those of others to manage interactions successfully.  It's expressed through the bond we build with others after time.
• It is a product of the quality, depth, and time we spend interacting with another person.

You can get a free EQ test when you purchase the book.  There is also a ton of details to walk you through any area that you might want to dig into as well as building an action plan.  I highly recommend it! :) 

Defining A Company's Culture

From Conscious Capitalism

Step 1 – Define Higher Purpose

A purpose is a simple definitive statement that refers to the difference we’re trying to make in the world.   It is the amniotic fluid that nourishes the life force of the organization.  It gives great energy and relevance to a company and its brand.  Great purposes are transcendent, energizing, and inspiring for all the interdependent stakeholders. 

Everyone craves meaning and purpose in life, but few people find such fulfillment at work.  To tap this deep wellspring of human motivation, companies need to shift their emphasis from profit maximization to purpose maximization.  People are most fulfilled and happiest when their work is aligned with their own inner passions. 

When an organization communicates its purpose clearly and consistently, the organization naturally attracts people who align with its purpose.      

Examples:

·       Disney:  To use our imaginations to bring happiness to millions.

·       Johnson & Johnson: To alleviate pain and suffering.

·       BMW:  To enable people to experience the joy of driving.

·       Container Store:  Help people get organized so they can be happier.

·       REI:  To reconnect people with nature.

·       Southwest Airlines:  To give people the freedom to fly.

·       Charles Schwab:  A relentless ally for the individual investor. 

·       American Red Cross:  Enabling Americans to perform extraordinary acts in the face of emergencies.

·       Ford:  Opening the highways to all mankind.

Action Steps:

·       Define our purpose statement and obtain buy in

Step 2 – Define Mission

A mission statement is the core strategy that must be undertaken to fulfill that purpose.

Step 3 – Define Vision

A vision statement is a vivid, imaginative conception or view of how the world will look once your purpose is largely realized.

·       Example:

o   Whole Foods - Whole Foods Market's vision of a sustainable future means our children and grandchildren will be living in a world that values human creativity, diversity, and individual choice. Businesses will harness human and material resources without devaluing the integrity of the individual or the planet's ecosystems. Companies, governments, and institutions will be held accountable for their actions. People will better understand that all actions have repercussions and that planning and foresight coupled with hard work and flexibility can overcome almost any problem encountered. It will be a world that values education and a free exchange of ideas by an informed citizenry; where people are encouraged to discover, nurture, and share their life's passions.

 

Core Values

 

·       Examples:

o   Zappos:

1.      Deliver WOW Through Service

2.     Embrace and Drive Change

3.     Create Fun and A Little Weirdness

4.     Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded

5.     Pursue Growth and Learning

6.     Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication

7.     Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit

8.     Do More With Less

9.     Be Passionate and Determined

10.  Be Humble

o   Whole Foods

1.     We Sell the Highest Quality Natural and Organic Products Available

2.     We Satisfy, Delight and Nourish Our Customers

3.     We Support Team Member Happiness and Excellence

4.     We Create Wealth Through Profits and Growth

5.     We Serve and Support Our Local and Global Communities

6.     We Practice and Advance Environmental Stewardship

7.     We Create Ongoing Win-Win Partnerships with Our Suppliers

8.     We Promote the Health of Our Stakeholders Through Healthy Eating Education