Blog post
0

Hello from Canmore

I am happy to be in Canmore.  The new slogan, coined by Carol, is “Write more in Canmore”.  I am anticipating a great swell in my activity as a writer. I am aware again of the responsibility that the lable ‘writer’ or ‘author’ carries with it and often times I avoid the lable for fear that peole will think that I can actually write.  It seems arrogant to me to assume that putting words on paper is writing.  There is so much more to it and any one who has done it knows how exacting and unforgiving a process it is.  This week I met two authors at different venues and we shared our stories.  I couldn’t help but feel as if I were an imposter … and yet …. maybe I am becoming a writer.

I am in the Prepare stage.  I am preparing to write.  My purpose is clear… Three smallish books and 8 or 10 articles in the next 12 months.  The subject matter will be PULSE related afer all this is the PULSE Institute where we study People Using Language Skills Effectively.  My list includes applications for PULSE, arguments for the use of PULSE and something more about how the PULSE BEACHs, although informed by the study of the Enneagram, are different from the Enneagram.  Articles that will become chapters on topics like strategic planning and PULSE as a tool for learning English as a Second Language.

My process is to Prepare for the writing by setting up my place in Canmore with everything I need to work undisturbed; to Uncover what is known about each of my topics; to Learn why they are significant to me and to you the reader and to Search possibilities for their application or audience and then to write and write and write as I cycle throught he PULSE Frame over and over as each article and chapter emerges from this internal PULSE conversation.

My protocol will be to remain gentle with myself and others through out the process, to be honest and self critical when I need to be, to be open to the suggestions and thoughts that occur or are shared with my by others, to be specific and use examples for clarity and to keep on talking (writing) until an agreeable, sustainable product has emerged.

I will set up a calendar so that I can have periods of confidential time, where there will only be me and my thoughts. I base my ‘author’ity on this last year of working with PULSE Conversations for Change and seeing how there is so much more to say then I was able to cram into that little volume and on the fact of the postive reviews of that first attempt. My role is to stay focused on the product and the process, learning from last time how and what to do.  Over the next fifteen months my first PULSE priority will be the generation of new products, the promotion of new products and the care and feeding of clients from previous years, practitioners and professionals.

Your role will be to enage with other PULSE professionals to learn the basics and keep you skills honed, to contribute to this endeavor with your thoughts and comments and to stay tuned for the exciting new books and articles that will emerge.  Thanks for your support.

 

nancy

Read More
Blog post
0

A themeless day!!!

Fun with words … themeless like seamless only different!!!

Today I attended another milestone birthday party.  My friend turned 60.  She is wonderful and bright and enthusiastic and talented and intelligent and fearless and I could go on and on.  I am honoured to know her.  There are many women in my life like her and I am grateful for that.  I know she enjoyed today’s festivities and I was able to connect with people I didn’t know that she knew.  It was a great party dedicated to celebrating a birthday with friends and yet themeless.

 am reading a book called Dropped Threads that Marjorie loaned me.  It is edited by Carol Shields and Marjorie Anderson .. no coincidence that the two women who are supporting me and my work right now are a Marjorie and a Carol …  I love this book.  The sub title is  “What we aren’t told” and is a collection of lessons – untold lessons – where the authors, some of whom I have had the good fortune to meet, reveal the secrets of aging as a women that they felt no one had shared with them.  “Nothing prepared me for this” is the theme and yet it is themeless.

I am doing a little volunteer work for my Federal Liberal Candidate, Jennifer Pollock.  She is a good candidate and I enjoy the supportive role that she is allowing me to play.  She is putting together a luncheon on Tuesday for all female candidates in the City of Calgary at a nice restuarant.  Janine Kreiber will be there.  She is a fantastic person and it was her idea to invite a non-partisan or cross partisan group of women to join for lunch to show the public how things might be different if more women were elected.  A great idea … a themeless lunch, an invitation to open dialogue and see what is possible.

Three ideas emerged in this entry, seemingly themeless until the theme emerges.  Women, celebrating their connection to each other.  The strength and power of the sisterhood, changing the world, one converstion at a time.

Read More
Blog post
0

Post-it-notes and Bandaids

Marjorie and I are sitting in the office chatting as she edits the PULSE Advanced program which she will present in Kansas next week. Post-it-notes … I forgot to pack them for her.  She will pick some up.  We use post-its for the parking lot items in class.  Participants post their unanswered questions so that we can deal with them after breaks.  It is interesting that few participants take advantage of the opportunity.  That may be because we encourage dialogue in the learning conversation…..

We were also talking about bandaids because Marjorie has mine in her kit for next week.  We print the skills for changing cycles on bandaids, defining a bandaid as something that covers a wound so it can heal from the inside out.  The Bandaid or skill represents the solution that is needed to allow for the healing.  We do an exercise where people decide what skill to apply, and how.  Scenarios are described and bandaids applied.  First Aid for conversations, you might say.  It is a great exercise that provokes a lot of discussion.

“Sometimes it doesn’t fully load” is what Marjorie just said about the footers that for some reason begin on page 39?? in version 2 of the Advanced course.  We spend a lot of time figuring out the program language so that we can have the computer do what we expect.  Computers and people need clear instructions and expectations.  Computers are less forgiving and will not do something you haven’t asked them to do in a way that they understand.  People will pretend to know or think they can figure it out and then get it wrong, not out of bad intention but out of a desire to please and to appear knowledgeable. 

There is this wonderful creative energy that is only resident in people.  People will try to use Bandaids as Post-it-notes and vice versa.  Computers would never think of doing that.  Would you?

Read More
Blog post
0

Friends

It is weird how computers seem to change their minds about how or what they will do for you on a given day.  They can be like people that way and like people you need to spend time with them… be patient and try to figure out exactly what position you need to take in order for things to go the way you had hoped or expected.  It is part of redefining the BEACH.  I Belief, Expect, Assume that my computer will accept the commands I have always used to perform certain tasks.  I am concerned when it doesn’t and hope, upon hopes that if I change slightly my approach … it will return to the original expectations.

Friends and colleagues can also be like that.  Something changes while you are not watching and the old behaviours that used to create connections, now have a distancing effect.  Things that make you go HMMMMM.

I have been sooo lucky in this life to have GREAT friends who have stuck by me, who have never changed their default settings, who are predictable, reliable and always there when you need them or just want to spend time with them.  Thanks to those friends who continue to follow the blog and notice when I have something interesting to say.  I am so appreciative.  Your support means alot.

I have decided to travel less and write more in 2009.  That will likely help me keep my commitment to continue with the blog as a daily ritual that will help me sort my thoughts as I endeavour to capture them in some sort of order that will make sense to the world.  Your input and your encouragement will come in handy.  Keep in touch…  that is the key to communication and to conversation and relationship.  Notice how when you keep in touch, keeping in touch is easier, no surprises, no unexpected responses.  Even a little time away makes the next encounter less certain.

It is interesting how friends and computers respond to communications and patterns of communication in conversations.  Let’s keep in touch for years and years to come.

Read More
Blog post
0

Discipline comes in waves

While I was at the IEA Conference in Atlanta I purchased a DVD called “Is Enneybody Home”.  It is a great DVD that shows one actress acting out all of the types.  It is especially powerful because it is one actress acting out all of the types…  It is easier to experience the enneagram stances as BEACHes or Perspectives on the world rather than as a stereotypical typing tool.  It is great and we have incorporated it into the new level 2 or advanced practitioner training.

BEACHes – sets of Beliefs, Expectations, Assumptions, Concerns and Hopes – are what we stand on that determines our perspective and BEACHes shift.  Evidence of that was clear a couple of weeks ago when Carol and I were in the Virgin Islands, working with people from the University and the Government of the BVI.  The tail end of Hanna swung through one day bringing wind and rain and a storm surge that raised the water level about a meter and a half.  Where the Beach once was there was ocean and lots of if.  A Day later the water subsided and the Beach returned.  It was not the same BEACH.  It had been reformed by the wind and water and we knew it would be some time before it was the same BEACH we had enjoed days before.

BEACHes change.  What does your BEACH look like today?  What have the elements and the environment done to reshape your BEACH.  So many questions fit the metaphor.  and so the title of this entry.  For me, the discipline to write the blog comes in waves.  Like the calm BEACH that we played on, I can come back to this place and write and play … except when the storms of my live surge to a level where I am unable to find the BEACH.  The wind and the waves of training and travel take away the calm space to write and to think.  It is interesting that while I was on holiday in Italy I still had the space to complete the blog.  Travelling and working fill my head, like the storm surge so that I am unable to find the discipline.

Like the BEACH – I am back – for a while – until the next storm.

Read More
Blog post
0

Back to the World

August 5th was the last entry here.  Hard to believe that a month has past since I last sat down to consider things from this electronic format.  Since then I have been in Hawaii and Washington DC and St. Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands.  I have many adventures and misadventures, sailed on Chesapeake Bay, and sat on the beach in two beautiful places thousands of miles apart.  the idea of PULSE BEACHes was never far from my mind.

Since August 5th, the US has had their political conventions gearing up to and this morning the writ was dropped here in Canada for an October 14th election.  Most of you know my political stance.  I was most impressed this morning by the Green Party and their leaders plea with people to vote, to give up apathy and learn the issues and be aware of what their choices at the polls will mean for the future of the country and the planet.

It is true.  People need to take politics seriously in this day and age, to get involved enough to understand the ramifications of choosing more of the same and the opportunity that these elections give us to change the world if we choose to.  Beyond the rhetoric and the mud slinging there is a real choice to make.

Choices are the gift of PULSE.  We ask people to consider their options and choose the ones that create a better future for them.  At no point do we involve ourselves in that decision.  We are impartial with respect of the outcome because we believe that people know what has to happen and when all of the information is on the table, the future becomes obvious.  So it will be with these elections.  The people will decide.  PULSE practitioners and professionals will hold voters capable of making a decision that will work for them and the future of our countries and our planet.

Our role in mediation and in election readiness is to make sure that people are informed, that they know the  process or Prepare for the Conversation; that they understand what is at stake or Uncover the Circumstance; that they understand why it is important to them locally and globally or Learn the Significance; that they consider options or Search Possibilities; and the VOTE or Explain in writing their plan of action, their commitment to the future.

It is good to be back in Canada and in Calgary.  I look forward to blogging more regularly and to being settled and centred for a while.  The good people of the US Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands and the District of Colombia are perhaps better prepared to deal with their own working realities after their PULSE practitioner training and I am holding them capable to do what needs to be done to change their corner of the world, one conversation at a time, to step back and value the choices of others while teaching them how to hold themselves and others to account for a more positive and appreciative future.

Read More
PULSE Enneagram
0

Life with a View

It all seems so simple when you gain perspective. Life and the geography and weather patterns as seen from a plane are just so much easier to see at a distance. People need that distance from their own situations from time to time. We call it needing space. The gift of space CAN become provide the distance and the change in perspective to find your way out. What is clear from here is that the distance needs to be UP. You can gain distance and not perspective if you stay in the same swamp. Up and away is clearly the answer.

 

So here I am up and away from the experience at the Enneagram conference and still trying to make sense of it.  How did I miss the spiritual connection and uses of the Enneagram?  It has always been a personality assessment to me. It is a useful tool for helping people reach their potential. So in search of potential is the same as in search of higher selve and therefore GOD. If GOD refers to Good Orderly Decision making, I am in. The mind body spirit stuff is something I have always strived for and I am no stranger to spiritual journeys. So why was I so surprised and dissapppointed in Atlanta? I think it was the ritualistic mature of what I saw as much as anything.

 

I resist others prescribing how I will connect with GOD. What works for them works for them and I am free of judgment around that. I myself prefer to have others do what is necessary for them to experience enlightenment And allow me to my own devices. I would never presume to expext others to follow my path and I found what I saw to be arrogant in presumptions that they were not only on the RIGHT path but in front of me and everyone else.

 

I feel strongly that connecting with GOD is a personal thing. Do what it takes for you to be a better you and find your own way. I guess the sixties had an influence on me. I am listening to my Flower Power music while I type this on my blackberry and the message in the music is clearer to me from this distance and perspective, the distance and perspective of age. PEACE and LOVE for everyone.

 

I think I am still missing the basic connection Enneagram and Spirituality. What is it?????

Read More
Blog post
0

Holidays

Tomorrow morning I leave for a week in Hawaii on the big Island.  I am taking my computer to do my blog and my golf clubs and I plan to spend a lot of time doing very little.  I might read a book of sit by the pool or go for a ride in a helicopter.  It will be fun.  I have been searching lately for a definition of fun.  Other people I know have hobbies and pass times that excite them.  I am not sure what mine is.  I travel.  I golf.  I write.  I entertain.  Are those my FUN??

What do you do for fun?  to relax??  I am not sure I even know how to turn it off and just have fun.  We’ll see.  We’ll call this research into the experience of fun.  Hmmm  that may make it work and not play or fun.  I will let you know.  Aloha.

Read More
PULSE Enneagram
0

Here’s to you

The title for this post has not appeared yet.  What I am thinking about is a little scattered but it definitely has to do with the DVD’s I watched on the plane home yesterday.  It was, gratefully, a rather uneventful return to Canada and Calgary.  The DVD’s were interviews with come of the people from the conference talking about how they type people and their were some interesting observations.  I was still left with the question “Why type at all?”  I remain of the firm conviction that you only need to know what BEACH they are on at the moment to effectively work with them so that they can manage their situation.  The rest is up to them.

Before I left the conference I attended a morning session which was based on improvisational theatre.  It was fun.  It reminded me that life and especially conversation is improv.  You respond to what is being said.  Your role is some what defined by your default Enneagram setting and Enneagram practitioners can see your type and your centre quickly with their observer eye.

I also chatted with some people who had attended my session on conversations who asked about why I had done things the way I did.  I explained the purpose of the one exercise was to show people, when they are present to the listening, they can quickly arrive at the essence, the BEACH of another person … in a two minute story. She related it to Blink, a book by Malcolm Gladwell and I said “Yes- the Theory of Thin Slices”.  Until then I hadn’t realized to what extent that is part of the PULSE practice.

During the session others had asked about the structure of the Frame.  I have been thinking alot about the PULSE Prism and so I began to explain my thinking aroung the four sides as Green Content or Thinking, Yellow Process or Doing and Red Response or feeling and that the base was the Blue of Insight.  That feels like the right names for the dimensions.  I also found myself talking about Appreciative Inquiry as the quide for the Green dimension, Brief Solution Focused Therapy – holding people capable as the quide to the Red dimension and the Zones of Perception which is based on Dan Dana’s retailiatory and conciliatory cycles and forces toward harmony as the quide for what to do in the Yellow dimension.  The base or Blue Zone of insight is quided by the knowledge of the Enneagram.  Understanding people and quiding them to their next level of potential is the goal and, more than a base, it is florescent bulb that runs up from bottom and lights  the whole prism, from the inside.  People come into the conversation as white light and are refracted to the many colours of the rainbow.  They see themselves and others differently on the other side.

Really this whole series of entries about the Enneagram and the illusions is that Blue Zone where we work to understand people and enlighten them as to thier own capabilities and potentials.   It is about myth and Illusion busting, about managing perceptions and reframing with the PULSE Frame the way people see and act, feel and think in the world.  And it happens in a 90 minute conversation.  Each time someone experiences the conversation they experience the path from stress to healthy to growth points on the Enneagram.  The conversation represents a microcosm of what they will experience through out their lives. The lessons will be repeated …  until they aren’t … until the illusion is finally understood as an illusion and the lesson about ‘self’ is learned.

All we can do for others is show them a path to that possibility.  We are guides, conversation guides, Delta’s… the Agents of Change.  Here’s to you PULSE professionals and practitioners.  Your work is important and you are changing the world and the people in it – one conversation at a time.

Read More
PULSE Enneagram
0

The 9 Mediator – Illusion of Disunity

Wow.. This is a myth buster.  I have had disunity plague me for a week now.  Nothing has been easy or peaceful.  Life has thrown me challenge after challenge. So what is missing?  UNITY  pulling it all together and the higher quality of Self-Remembering.  Remember that intention is at the root.  The speaker this morning talked about that – Quantum Thinking and just putting out the intention creates the energy for things to change.  So what role did my uncertainty about being here play in the experience I had here?  hmmmmm?  I am not sure but it was less than satisfying and I accept that I likely have only myself to blame.

Everyone here seems to know each other, long lost friends who haven’t seen each other since last conference.  That’s okay.  I expected that and the people I have met are lovely and warm and welcoming.  I also expected that speakers and participants would be talking about the nine points of personality represented on the Enneagram.  Surprise!!  I haven’t heard anyone except Ginger talk in terms of Enneatypes.  And it is all about integrating and spirituality.  Yoga, breathing, somatic stuff around the body paths to enlightenment.  The practical side … the application of the Enneagram must have been presented while I was presenting.  I just haven’t seen it.  I bought some videos and some audio stuff so I can hear and see the Enneagram rather than just listen to it and maybe I will find something in there that will enlighten me, says the eternal optimist 7.

Today they described people like me who read books and study Enneagram on their own as weekend warriors, instant experts.  They were describing a certification or accreditation program the Association is working on.  It sounded much like the kind of thing the Mediator Societies are struggling with.  The goal is public awareness and the issue is quality control.  It was an interesting dialogue and I came away from it wondering who would have to stamp me on the head to say YES she knows it. 

The people in my session were either impressed or very polite.  Either way, I enjoyed our conversation together.  I think most of them got it.  They understood the application of the types in conversation and the paths and the BEACHes metaphor.  Some interesting and complimentary comments.  I can however see and feel the energy drain that the astrologer predicted because of today’s eclipse.

I am going to bed early and have actually changed my flight home to tomorrow through Toronto.  I really enjoyed the conference so far and staying I think, no I belief would be a mistake. So I am flying through Toronto … not my favourite point of entry … just to get home sooner.  I would be resentful of the time being here when I could be home.  And I can’t seem to shake the feeling of not quite fitting in.  Time well spent is important to me and so far I am not convinced that I need to be here beyond presenting my thoughts for consideration.

So rather than fight I am switching like a 9 does.  9’s don’t rock boats.  They seek harmony and peace even when it costs them personally.  The illusion of disunity reigns and so they work to unify themselves and relationships around them.  9’s will even tell you what you want to hear rather than risk conflict. (7’s on the other hand might risk the conflict if the situation is NOT exciting enough).   Once 9’s have satisfied their stressed 6 where they are unsure and afraid of everything, they can then move to be the healthy 9 and generate criteria for resolving differences in a meaningful way.  Once satisfied they move to the performer growth point of the 3 where they work hard and accept the recognition due them for their accomplishments.

Anyway, Atlanta isn’t fun for me anymore so as the predictable 7 that you have come to know I am  bailing and going home.  Thanks IEA.  It has been interesting … a real learning experience.  Note to self .. write a blurb suggesting a meeting of new attendees at the next conference in Las Vegas on the evalutaion forms.

Read More
1 34 35 36 37 38 40