Archive for the ‘Karen Muses’ Category

I’ve had enough experience collaborating with other people to know that if we’re not clear about the 100% responsible ‘rule’, we won’t achieve the kind of success I know I can create. I now call it the  ‘IAM 100% Responsible Touchstone‘ (it’s the 3rd touchstone) instead of calling it a ‘rule’. Rather than being rigid about it, I like to see it as something we pick up and look at over and over again.

The IAM 100% Responsible Touchstone sets up an understanding of shifting from reacting, to responding,  to creating every aspect of our experience. This expectation is essential to creating powerful, reciprocal, healthy, learning, growing, healing, and co-creative collaborations.

I also know that there is a continuum of understanding from ‘I am a victim’ reacting to my life …  to ‘I am the 100% creator’ of absolutely every aspect of everything I experience. There are usually catches  at certain points: I am 100% responsible – except I could never be responsible for this or that.

These ‘catch points’ are critical in the process of evolving and transforming consciousness because they are indicators of the edges of our awareness. Playing with a shift from saying ‘this happened to me’ to ‘I created xyz’ is great as a way of exploring awareness of the power we bring to every situation. Facing and shifting these catch points is critical when overcoming a victim pattern or lack of success or any limitation you experience.

What are your catch points?  For example, look at the following series of statements:

• I created this article.
• I created great results with this project.
• I created trust in this relationship.
• I created this rude encounter.
• I created that green light.
• I created the rain storm today.
• I created my experience of financial lack.
• I created that driver slamming into me.

Where are your catch points? And how might moving beyond a current catch point help you experience the next level of success you know is right there waiting to come to you?

A while ago, several of the Associates of Karen Tax & Associates had a conversation about this 100% responsible continuum. The following are some notes from that conversation (December 17, 2007)…

Every month we have a teleconference with our IAM Learning Community (premium) members to discuss how they can stay their course, connecting to what is essential about themselves, as they transform their work and life to be their best ongoing.

Last week we focused on the topic of making money doing what you love. With so much fear about work and jobs around, it felt important to address the practicalities of how “money = love” works.

Here’s a summary of the list we created together on the call. The call included both people who perceive themselves as accomplished at the money = love challenge, and people who are still figuring it out. Here’s what we came up with:

1. Challenge/mistake: Attempting to jump directly from work being struggle to work being joyful.

   Best practice: Establish a daily practice of experiencing joy in your work. Gradually build your experience and faith in work being joyful.

2. Challenge/mistake: Listening to nay-sayers.

   Best practice: Surround yourself with people who support you following your dreams. Limit time with people who detract.

3. Challenge/mistake: Listening to experts.

   Best practice: Remember that you are the best expert on what is right for you. Develop trust in yourself to know, to discern, to choose what is right for you. Then consider expert advice.

4. Challenge/mistake: Thinking success is going to just ‘happen’ or an event will make or break you.

   Best practice: Making money doing what you love is a faith journey. Any one event is merely a stepping stone along the way. Remember this type of success is about walking a path of love and joy – ongoing.

5. Challenge/mistake: Looking for physical evidence to ‘prove’ your success.

   Best practice: Feeling the flow of love and joy is a precursor to physical evidence. Focus on the joy and love first, and the evidence will come.

6. Challenge/mistake: Surrounding yourself with other successful people, but feeling ‘less than’ and riding on their coat tails.

   Best practice: Be the leader of yourself and know that you are the source of the joy and love that will determine your success – now.

7. Challenge/mistake: Thinking of success in limited ways, such as only considering $ indicators.

   Best practice: Think of success as an ‘abundance bucket’ that can show-up in an infinite variety of ways. Let go, be open to being surprised at the variety of ways wealth can show up!

8. Challenge/mistake: Expecting the path forward to be linear and logical.
   
   Best practice: Think of a windy path or 100 different tacks that you might take. Those who are wander are not lost. Nothing is ever wasted. Don’t try to make sense of the path and you’ll be fine.
9. Challenge/mistake: Finding security in a well thought-out plan.

   Best practice: In the path of joy, security comes from knowing that you don’t need to know, and trusting that all you do need to have is clarity about the next step you’ll take. Get good at sorting through the noise related to your next step – use your heart as the filter. When you know your next step, move with confidence.

What do you think? What has been key to you making money doing what you love? What challenges are you facing now?

Happy New Year everyone! I felt sluggish about starting back to work in 2010, and then I talked with Diane about our intentions for IAM and our work together for the new year and got all fired up! (This is how you know when you’re working with a great person!)

Here’s the intention statement that Diane and I drafted together:

We intend to create a healthy, creative, inspiring and evolving instance of conscious capitalism, where success is defined in broad and very personal ways … and we:

• re-energize old truths
• develop new ways and ideas of working and living
• work in harmony with the environment
• create wealth for and with many people
• experience abundance in everything we do

Our goals for 2010 include:

• 1000 paying members (10,000 is our BHAG goal!)
• IAM Career SMART! launched and actively being used
  • Less text and more video
  • More examples
  • More information about context/big picture
• IAM Coach community is well established
  • Support coaches moving into social media/marketing and online delivery
  • Make it simple to do what you love, and do it well
  • Combine our brilliance to create more than we could alone
  • E-course in place to bring on new coaches in place
  • Membership package for coaches in place
• Collaboration process well established
  • Tools, guidance and systems in place
  • Examples of successful collaboration with us (time management and organization, for example)
  • Examples of successful collaboration without us (members fly on their own)
  • E-course in place to bring on new collaborators
  • Membership package for collaborators in place
• 2-3 mutually beneficial partnerships in place
  • Conscious Capitalism Institute, for example
• Joint venture/affiliate program in place

Given what we accomplished in 2009, these goals feel very focused and quite doable. I’m thrilled with moving forward … I can’t wait to play!

I’ve been reading the poetry of Henry Walker for a while now, just waiting for the right poem to share with you. I saw it this morning. I thought it was perfect, especially since I’ve been noodling with a new level of understanding of this Winter/Christmas holiday season. Where I arrived: in giving gifts we are trying to remember that we ARE the gift.

Henry has been teaching for over 40 years at the Carolina Friends School where our sons attend school. He has been and continues to be a gift to so many people, including my precious family. Thank you Henry.

what is my gift?

what is my gift?
the light that is most mine to give,
that gift that can shine
while I use the tools I have within my kit?
my gift is my heart,
the caring within me
that wells up and overflows out of me,

that which powers me to see what I see in my photography,
the twinkle of the eye as the wonder within a person
gives me a flash of itself,
the angle, the moment, the possibility
that lets a waterfall, a sunset, a flower, a mountain
reveal its own heart,
and the possible becomes actual,

it is the caring that powers my teaching
so that I can touch a wholeness who can self-organize
if given space, foundation, encouragement, release,
while it needs so much to resist all
that pulls down at its reaching and that rewards the base,

for now words are my familiar, my agents,
the sous chefs who help me fathom the depths, encompass the breadth,
reach up and back to the source,

how relatively easy it is to know the “how” of action,
it’s the heart that gives the “why,” the “where,” the “when,”
and then the “how” knows what to do–

and there’s a picture, a learner,
and sometimes a poem.

by Henry Walker
December 14, ‘09

Thanks to Chris Scholle at Social SAM for making me aware of a new movement via Twitter:  Conscious Capitalism . The movement was launched with a conference on October 20-23 of this year. They say the reason they are launching this movement is:

What a thrill is was for me to read these words!

Our intention in developing the IAM movement is to transform the way we work and live so that everyone can be their best.  The basis of our work, the starting point of every product or service we offer, the point we revisit over and over again, is to bring people back to their “essential best.” We define “essential best” as the awake, infinite, abundant, expanding, conscious part of each of us.

The reason we landed with this approach for the IAM body of work can best be explained by the Einstein quote: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” I’ve also seen this quote where ‘thinking’ was replaced with ‘consciousness.’ Another way of looking at what Einstein was saying: there is nothing more important to address than the evolution or transformation of our consciousness if we are going to work and live in ways that move beyond the problems or struggles we experience (what we like to call drama!)

What I know is that Conscious Capitalism requires individuals that see the transformation of their individual awareness as the first priority of anything they do, whether in business or their family life. This very personal process of evolving awareness is necessary for Conscious Capitalism to be different than traditional capitalism, otherwise we will be recreating the same problems that currently exist, as Einstein so poignantly described.

Our contribution to Conscious Capitalism includes use of the IAM Maps: the Essence Map (a map of consciousness), the Energy Map (a guide to dynamic self knowledge and understanding energy flow) and the Navigational Compass (a way of navigating through personal development and business development – which links individual internal conscious to external practical realities).

Some of the key aspects of IAM movement that contribute to the Conscious Capitalism movement:

• Start with individual consciousness first: Group, societal and environmental factors are important and change begins within. As within, so without. Individual consciousness is needed to embody evolving conscious leadership.
• Anchor in abundance based thinking: Scarcity thinking is the root of all conflict. Teaching and practicing “both/and” thinking is required for foundational and incremental conscious action that will benefit the whole, rather than being reductionist and benefiting a few. Abundance based thinking is essential if we are to experience mutual exchange of value and mutual benefit.
• Develop awareness of self as energy: Without the ability to separate our awareness of self  from physical realities, shifting to awareness of ’self as energy’,  it is impossible to participate in the transformation of capitalism to conscious forms. Until we shift our focus from drama to our essential best (energy self), alignment of our efforts will only create more drama, recreating old patterns, instead of aligning our values, strengths and passions to create new realities.
• Connect personal and business: Business can not become conscious if people do not bring their whole, evolving, conscious selves to work. Personal growth is required for business growth, and we need language, concepts and maps for making these connections concrete and practical.
• Connect to nature: Being reductionist and overly profit driven has caused people and businesses to become disconnected from the natural rhythms of life, living and indeed the environment. Ways to connect to nature are critical in remembering our wholeness, in re-establishing a healthy relationship with our planet and in generating financial prosperity.
• Address defense mechanisms: Until we can consciously and actively participate as a collective in healing from defensive patterns, we will not be able to fully participate in the sharing of information and resources. Full transparency and openness in our processes requires the ability to ‘love our way through’ our patterns of separation.

There are many aspects of both IAM and Conscious Capitalism that we have yet to discover. Yet if you look at these aspects here, we have a solid foundation to start with! The IAM body of work quickly and easily helps people work with the capabilities I have described here.

There are more aspects of IAM that contribute to Conscious Capitalism, and I’ll continue to add to this list. For those of you who are familiar with IAM, help me draw the connection between the work we are doing and what you would like to see Conscious Capitalism be. Let’s participate NOW in carrying both of these movements forward!

I tend to attract clients who are ready, really ready, to change and influence how work gets done. They see how being unhappy in a job is detrimental to themselves and a business. They see how the surplus of chaos and stupidity in organizations has got to change. They are reluctant to participate in ‘business as usual.’

My clients include newly liberated free spirits (laid off people) who would do just about anything to not contribute to business as usual. Or people who are currently employed who have woken up to the reality that ‘business as usual’ is failing and they are proactively interviewing for new jobs or exploring startup options.

These folks are determined to contribute to a more evolved way of working and conducting business, for themselves and society. They are people who typically have the resources to take time to rethink how they’ve been working and are motivated to create better ways not just for themselves but also for generations to come. They are not going back to the way things have been!

Imagine these same folks interviewing for jobs with people who don’t get it, folks who are blindly ’sheep walking’  thinking the dinosaur they work for is still strong. I could focus on these businesses – how to attract top talent, how to survive in a radically changing economy, but I’ll leave that for another post!

Given how these interviews with sheep walkers are going, my enlightened clients are discouraged, wondering how to proceed, and asking ’should I look for a job or start a new business?’

My advice to these folks, initially, is to proceed as if the job or the business startup were one and the same. In both cases you start with the following questions:

• What is the work that will most fully leverage my essential best?
• What am I passionate about creating or contributing to in the world?

By flushing out the first question, you determine how you can best create value for others – eventually matching your gifts with a compelling need that people have.

By considering the second question, you determine the markets, areas of industry, and business you would target, either in a job search or business startup.

I have heard that outplacement firms are advising folks to consider what companies they want to work for. This is a nice idea, a start to considering what you want. But it doesn’t take things far enough for my clients. It leaves these questions hanging:

• How do I make sure that my next job or work is not business as usual?
• How can the next stage of my career contribute to creating more visionary, evolved, effective, dynamic ways of working?

These are practical questions that, when carefully considered, will put you at the leading edge of the job seeking, business creating crowd – moving toward work that will be viable and sustainable in the future. These questions help you bypass or pull yourself out of the dying cycle of ‘finding that job or startup that pays the bills but is in a dying dinosaur business that will just lead to another layoff or struggle in a short amount of time …’

These are not questions that should land you in a dark corner, meditating on your navel, afraid to venture out into a scary world where people are still in a stupor or where uncertainty creates confusion.

Instead, these questions lead to the adventure of  explorative conversations with people about the unknown, or the chaos of our times … from which you can see new needs that uniquely match your gifts, perspective and vision … or from which new opportunities or order emerges.

I recommend a tight cycle of personal reflection/journaling/learning and venturing out to talk with people about what’s needed, what’s possible, what’s inspiring. Back and forth between reflection and action, that eventually leads to finding jobs or creating business that often didn’t exist before.

Some examples, based on personal and client experience:

• coach and consultant with background in technology, business and organizational change leverages new developments in social media and networking to contribute to the evolution in consciousness and business (that’s me!)
• technology marketing specialist participates in a startup business bringing a new, locally sourced bio-fuel to market as an alternative to petroleum diesel
• ICU nurse with MBA creates new job/startup helping doctors evolve their businesses so they can bypass insurance companies
• artist, knowledge management expert, change leader combines radically diverse gifts to move work toward business startup using artistic talents to capture learning and tell stories of successful change efforts, that will be used to inspire and guide new change efforts

From these examples, you can see people uniquely combining their gifts and experiences to meet a current need while also participating in creating a world they want to see emerge. The way forward demands ‘business as un-usual!’ And your strategy could include a job or startup, depending on what you bring, the need you are meeting, and the future you want to create both for yourself and for the world.

So what’s the next step for you?

I recently talked with a member of our IAM Learning Community about what direction he might take his work. So many possibilities! So little experience discerning what he really wants! One of his biggest challenges is simply knowing where to focus.

If you think about it, ‘too many choices’ would be a common challenge when connecting to the abundant, infinite space of our essential selves – what we like to call our essential best. When you break free of external limitations, when you realize that anything really is possible, the buffet table of options can be vast.

Except that the choices that are right for us are not infinite. What was interesting in this conversation was hearing how this person, like so many of us, was looking for ‘opportunities to be creative’. This is also a marker of transforming your work and life so that you can be your best: creativity becomes key. In looking for ”opportunities to be creative’, my friend identified what I like to call ‘the delay factor’: when creativity and joy is a destination, not an integral part of our choice making, a tool we can use to narrow our focus and prioritize our options.

Creating work and life that reflects our best selves happens when we start from creativity and joy:

• What brings you joy right now in this very moment?
• If your creativity was an energetic fuel that wants to move through you, what’s first thing you would do now?

When we tune into our joy and creativity now, we hone our ability to know what we want and make the choices that will create the future we really want. The wrong job or the poor business deal didn’t happen when things went wrong; it happened back in the beginning when we were unclear about our joy and creativity.

A friend of mine says that we vote every day. How true this is! We don’t create the results we experience in a singular event like an election. We create results every step of the way – in ways we participate in every day life.

The dark side of the ‘delay factor’ is the source of this pattern of thinking. Where does it come from? Many religious traditions have misinterpreted sacred teaching to go something like this: “if you are good, then, and only then, you’ll go to heaven.” I’m not interested in whether this idea is right or wrong. I AM interested in what this thinking does to people: “if you are good” is typically determined by some rule or dogma we are supposed to follow.

The thing I have an issue with is how these religions ideas have permeated society and created generations of us who have given our power to others who determine ‘what is good for us’. Heaven later instead of heaven now in the form of joy and creativity is the source of the delay factor. It is also the source of most oppression and persecution in the world.

So snapping out of patterns of delay become critical in several ways:

• It’s key narrowing focus and choice that leads to the right work and life for us: real success
• It contributes to a societal shift away from oppression to empowerment

Are you ready for joy and creativity now? Are you ready for heaven on earth here and now? Does it sound crazy to think about joy and heaven right now, this very instant? What ‘yea buts’ come to mind?

Curious about what you think …

Last night I was re-reading Eckhart Tolle’s book “A New Earth”.  I read the following:

“As the new consciousness emerges, some people will feel called upon to form groups that reflect the enlightened consciousness. These groups will not be collective egos. The individuals who make up these groups will have no need to define their identity through them.

Even if the members that make up those groups are not totally free of ego yet, there will be enough awareness in them to recognize the ego in themselves or in others as soon as it appears. However, constant alertness is required since the ego will try to take over and reassert itself in any way it can.

Dissolving the human ego by bringing it into the light of awareness – this will be one of the main purposes of these groups, whether they be enlightened business, charitable organizations, schools, or communities of people living together.

Enlightened collectives will fulfill an important function in the arising of the new consciousness. Just as egoic collectives pull you into unconsciousness and suffering, the enlightened collective can be a vortex for the consciousness that will accelerate the planetary shift.” (A New Earth, page 126 – 127)

The IAM Learning Community is on a path of enlightened consciousness! We are an energetic vortex of pure, positive energy!

Tolle describes our intention almost perfectly:  we are here to transform the way we work (careers) and live so we can all be our best. This intention includes health, wellness, following our callings – in business and entrepreneurial endeavors.

Tolle’s use of the word ‘ego’ is confusing. We prefer to call what Tolle is talking about ‘drama‘ as way of bringing lightness and non-judgment to those parts of us that are trapped in scarcity and fear. I do believe that shining the light of awareness on drama is what allows enlightened consciousness to flourish… and this is also an intention of our community.

We like to say:

Drama Happens
Struggle is Optional
Let Your Brilliance Shine!

So be it!

I’ve had two compelling incidents in the last couple of months that got me seriously considering confidentiality. 1) I wanted to share a concern with a fellow consultant about a client organization we both work with – a concern that emerged from my coaching in the client organization. 2) A family member came to me for confidential help in their career search process.

Both situations left me feeling uncomfortable about agreements I made to ‘keep things quiet’ – agreements which I ultimately broke because they didn’t align with my values.

Some background. My education in Organization Development at American University strongly influenced how I feel about collusion. Studies in group dynamics designed to understand how the Holocaust happened have demonstrated that collective or mass behavior can be influenced by just one person speaking up and saying “I don’t agree with this.” By not colluding.

An example, look at how the Dutch versus the Danes handled the German persecution of Jews: The Dutch resisted covertly, by hiding and protecting Jews (sometimes) while they mostly avoided direct confrontation with the Germans. The Danes resisted overtly, led by the King of Denmark, by collectively putting on the ‘Star of David’ armband used to identify Jews. The Germans were stymied in Denmark by the bold action of the people of Denmark. The Danes refused to collude with the Germans in any way, and in so doing saved thousands of Jewish lives.

These are extreme examples, yet they are born out of everyday mundane thoughts and behaviors.  A pattern of thinking and behavior practiced by much of WWII era society was:  follow the rules, then we’ll all be safe and we’ll all get along. If I obey those in authority, whether in my family or otherwise, all will be well. To ‘make waves’ by speaking up was generally taboo.

Since my studies at American, I have been committed to open and transparent communication. I am delighted by the internet, technology and web 2.0 business practices (see the book “What Would Google Do”) that facilitate and value open dialogue.

With my coaching however, and assumed ‘confidentialities’ between coach and client, where details of a coaching conversation must be kept between coach and client, I’ve experienced some interesting challenges to my commitment to openness. I want to firmly state here that details of my coaching conversations remain confidential. Clients are responsible for revealing details of their lives with others as they are comfortable. (ADDED NOTE: My thinking on this has evolved – please see follow-on comments for details!)

At the same time, if I see a pattern of behavior emerging from my coaching conversations that is relevant to the overall health of a group, an organization, or society, I will speak up. This can be done without revealing details of client-coach conversations.

To create healthy dialaogue with successful outcomes, when people are being ‘open and transparent’, a common understanding of intention and process is needed. Otherwise open and transparent conversation can become mudslinging or gossiping, which can ultimately be just as destructive as quiet collusion.

The IAM Touchstones and the IAM Maps are what I have developed to create this common intention and process. And as a summary … the biggest obstacle I see to open and transparent communication is the need people have (including myself) to keep secret things about themselves they are uncomfortable with, or to protect or defend themselves from a perceived threat.

Examples: people would think I’m bad if they knew I had had an affair, or something bad might happen if people knew I was looking for a job. The assumption here is that somehow I’m bad or wrong:  our human faults are ‘bad’ and our desires for something better must be hidden. The core underlying beliefs: it is shameful to make a mistake and life does not support us in striving for what we want …

So, in the spirit of conversation as an opportunity to learn from our mistakes, to grow into our evolving potential and to heal from those places we cut ourselves off from our true nature which IS love … I will not agree to any confidential conversation outside the bounds of a client/coach conversation.

By speaking up I am thus taking a stand for the transformative power of conversation. I am honoring the gift our humanity is to each other. And I am directly challenging the common belief that people are fundamentally flawed.

So there! That felt so good to say. These ideas have been burbling and gurgling around inside of me for quite a while and sharing feels really, really good.

How about you? To what extent are you willing to be open and transparent in conversation? To be vulnerable when you feel a need to protect or defend yourself?

And the older generations might take a cue from younger folks and their seemingly brazen openness … what do you suppose is compelling young people to be so ‘out there’ and what can you learn from them?

Each of us is an artist with creative energies to gift the world. Let’s make our work and life our artistic palate and create the most wonderous masterpieces we can imagine.

Art IS everywhere!

My life is my greatest work of art!

How is your life a work of art?