Knowledge is NOT Power

We've all heard the expression: Knowledge is Power

But that is false. Knowledge is NOT Power.

There are many thousands of people who have knowldege, lots of it, on a subject. They might even be considered experts if we knew how much knowledge they had. They also do not have power.

They do not add value to their company or community because they do not speak up. They do not get involved. They do not engage. They do not take any risks no matter how small. They do not take action.

They may know vast amounts about their subject but do not want to run the risk that perhaps they are mistaken about something. That someone just might know more than they. They don't want to appear outspoken or make waves. They hold their knowledge like a miser holds his money.

Knowledge, by itself, is not power. Knowledge, IN ACTION, is Power.

Power comes from Action guided by Knowledge and Values. That's what I think. What do you think?

Making the "Slight Edge" Work

My Dad used to tell me to let the "slight edge" work for me and I would be successful.

The "slight edge" is easy to see in sports. For example, the difference between a consistent 200 hitter and a 300 hitter is only 1 more hit out of 10 at bats but it is worth millions of dollars. One more hit. Instead of hitting the ball twice, hit it 3 times. Just 1.

To make it work for me he would say "do just one more"....

- study 1 more hour
- exercise for 1 more set or segment
- do 1 more good deed
- laugh 1 more time
- make 1 more sales call
- sing 1 more song
- run or walk for 1 more block (or eventually, mile)
- dance 1 more dance
- read 1 more book
- learn 1 new thing abut your specialty

"Get in the habit of doing a little more each day and in no time at all this action will amount to the 'slight edge' that will make you successful and happy."

I just remembered that great advice from my Dad. I am starting now. I am passing it on to you and hoping it is 1 of my good deeds today.
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Keep the Fires Burning: Campfire of Compatriots

Have you ever built or seen a campfire? Pieces of wood arranged in a certain way providing light and warmth. Even a small fire does so.

What happens if you separate those pieces of wood?

If you move them apart just far enough you can put out the fire or at leaset diminish it to the point that it provides no light or heat.

Do you want to make something happen in your life? with your Life?

It matters not how big or small that something is.

What matters is: don't be separate. Don't be isolated.

Don't be like those individual logs. Gather supportive people around you just like logs on a fire. It's not about one person; you or me. It is about all of us. Share dreams, share plans, share action. A fire is not passive. It is Active.

Keep the Fires Burning!

Resourceful to Resilient

How we tap into and especially add to our Resilience is an important topic to me.

Sometimes our resilience is eroded away day by day living if we are not adding to the resilience account on a frequent basis.

My memory, which used to be one of the skills I counted on, was proud of...and took for granted, has been fading. And sometimes it seems to have taken a good long walk...to where I have no idea.

So when I get a great idea, I don't want it to fade away or get lost.

Yesterday, I was driving in my car and had some good ideas that I didn't want to forget. I had a tape recorder with me. Really smart! It was in the back seat. Not so smart!

What to do?

My wonderful, wonderful brain suggested that I call my voice mail (I was wearing my headset and I have voice dial, cool) and speak the ideas that I could not write down and couldn't record any other way. I thanked my brilliant mind for being so creative.
And did just that.

In relating this story to my friend, Rachel, who is a Professional Nagger (pronagger.com), she asked what the ideas were.

And....I could not remember! ARGH! But not to worry, they are safely recorded on my voice mail. And I don't have to worry about not remembering anymore and feeling that my resilience, along with my memory, is ebbing away.

My resourcefulness (leaving a message on my voice mail) is actually enhancing my resilience. Way to go, brain! Another addition to the resilience account.

Now where did I leave that cell phone?

Is It Recession or Depression

That depends on whether your income is 'down', which equals Recession, or 'gone' which equals Depression.

A friend, who is going through a particularly tough time right now on many fronts, recently asked:

"How does a person put one foot in front of the other when hope is lost?"

Her question reminded me of a book I read several years ago by Laurence Gonzales entitled "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why".

This is a book that should be in your library and is worthy of a re-read every now and then, especially when the going gets tough. In the book he tells the stories of real people who survived when all hope literally was lost....and how they did it. Not just physically but mentally, emotionally and the transformation that took place in the process.

I think you will find some interesting things in this book that are useful for all of us today trying to survive our national and personal economic crisis.

And you will see your Spirit reflected in the lives of ordinary people with a desire for Deep Survival. His website is www.deepsurvival.com

Next Time: Gonzales's 12 Rules for Survival

The Tribe; Cooperation or Coercion

In Human-Kinds early history the Tribe was the group you were born into. You had a kinship with the Tribe through physical DNA as well as customs that included rules, traditions, myths and superstitions.

The Tribe survived, and therefore the individuals who were a part of it, based on the cooperation and sometimes coercion of its members. If you were expelled from the Tribe it frequently meant certain death.

The concept of survival and growth through cooperative efforts rather than coercion is an interesting one to me. Do we still need coercion to protect today's Tribe? And if we do, how do we balance the two?

Watch any parent in a public setting long enough and you will see 21st Century style cooperation and coercion in action. I don't see coercion going away any time soon. In some restaurants I have been in, 'experiencing' parents with their children I would have a big vote for coercion.

The challenge is that much of growth comes from cooperative efforts, so how do enhance those while minimizing coercion?

And it raises other questions:
How do we be a good cooperative member of our tribe and be independent as well?
When does the tribe perceive the line is crossed between independence and conformity to tribal rules and what will it do about it?
How does the tribe support growth and independence of its members?

Today we have the luxury of belonging to many, many tribes. There is our family tribe, our friend tribe(s), our work tribe, our hobby and special interest tribe(s), the tribes of each our kids, our religious/spiritual tribe, and now even Internet tribes spread far and wide!

The great thing about this is that we can get the support from one group that we don't feel we are getting from another. And if we have a falling out with one tribe there are others to take its place, if we make it so. In other words much is in our control. A falling out (or pushing out) does not mean death. It may be uncomfortable. It might even make us sad or angry, but it is not the death notice it was in ancient times.

And yet, we frequently live our lives as though it is. We worry so about what others think about us that we become inhibited, we hold back. Sometimes that is the right behavior but many times it is not. We have to consciously choose.

Have you ever wanted to tell a friend how important they are to you but decided against it?

Have you ever wanted to sincerely tell a co-worker what a great job they do but were afraid you would look like a 'brown-noser'?

Have you ever wanted to tell a parent that you love them but felt awkward?

Have you ever had the chance to call out an answer to a question but didn't because you thought, 'what if I'm wrong...' only to find out you were right?

We had a choice in each of those situations and our inhibitions coerced us into non-action. Talk about Coercion!!! We need to take back control from these coercive, inhibiting feelings.

So for today, when a situation presents itself, let's ask ourselves this question:

"How would I like to respond to this if my inhibitions stopped coercing me?"

And when we have that answer, let's make a conscious choice to act in spite of our inhibitions...and see what wonderful things happen.

Let me know how you feel about these ideas. I would love to hear your thoughts.

The Mother of All Fears

Fears can ruin our lives because they prevent us from being ourselves and living happy fulfilled lives; they keep us closed up, bottled up, inhibited.

We could list all kinds of Fears but underlying most of them is.....

Fear of rejection. That is the big one

If you think of all the things that make you anxious, fearful, nervous and drill down you will are likely to see fear of rejection is an underlying factor.

Ok, so what is Fear of Rejection?

I think it is a natural human reaction built into us at the same time as the Fight or Flight impulse and it is part of our mission to understand it and learn to overcome it in order to have a happier, freer, more successful life.

When Fear of Rejection gets out of hand it is similar to when the body creates an 'auto-immune disease'. The body does not realize that it is fighting against its own healthy cells and a dangerous, even life threatening disease can be created.

So what does that have to do with Fear of Rejection? When it is not managed well, it can create an unhappy, unhealthy life. It destroys good things about us just as an auto-immune disease destroys cells.

If that is so, how can it be a natural part of our makeup?

Long before we lived in cities, towns and nations our ancestors gathered in tribes and moved from place to place in search of food. They survived as members of the tribe which provided safety, community and sustenance. If someone was forced out of the tribe, no matter what the reason, their chances of survival greatly lessened and in many cases, certain death; unless they could find another tribe to join. There was (and is) safety in the tribe that didn't exist alone. There were also restrictions, the rules of the tribe. You had to be pretty fear-less or fed up to take on the tribal leaders.

It is interesting that we are seeing this in Iran today. The dissatisfaction is so great that it overcomes (not eliminates) the fear.

In our own country, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was an example of enough is enough overcoming fear. Does it mean that people had no fear? of course they were afraid, but they acted anyway. But I must point out that in both of these cases there was a grass roots ground swell. The initial person who may have acted did not have to act alone for long. If they did not get a ground swell, they would have been jailed...ousted from the tribe so to speak.

So a "tipping point" had been reached. The anger and frustration, the sense that success might be a possibility, that action had to be taken...allowed people to hold their fear in check. Inspiration and the excitement of possibility helped to supplant the feelings of fear. But they did this in the context of a new "tribe" so that when fear arose, they could support one another in maintaining their inspiration and enthusiasm in creating the new order and the new 'tribe'.

This weekend was 4th of July, the celebration of our independence and the founding of the United States of America. In watching many of the great educational programs on over the weekend, I began to realize in a whole new way the deeply personal and life threatening choices the colonists had to face. How much they had to lose. The signers of the Declaration of Independence would be hung and probably their families as well. The were wealthy men with much to lose. The average citizens would have to leave farms and shops and with little food, training or ammunition take on the greatest army in the world!

The British Army was vicious in its response to the uprising in an attempt to create fear and terror in the colonists so that they would give up, surrender. And the people were afraid, but they did not give up. they may even have wanted to but they did not give up. Miraculously, some might say, the persevered and created a new "tribe".

Fear of Rejection is deep within our makeup. It is there to keep us safe; to keep us within the "tribe". But it does not fit in many, perhaps most, situations. It is about 'prevention' not creation.

Ok, so what do we do about that? Stay tuned for the next post!

"When things are at their worst, you are at your best"

Starman

I really love movies especially those with memorable, quotable lines. Do you remember Starman with Jeff Bridges? At the end of the movie he tells the Karen Allen and Charles Martin Smith characters something I never forgot.

It had to do with human beings and what is good about us...."when things are at their worst, you are at your best".

After 9/11 the country was cohesive and ready to be mobilized to take on whatever challenges were to follow. We were afraid and we were pissed. We waited for the government to do something to use this huge potential energy. And what did we get? Nothing.

Oh, we got war, we got the patriot act, we got hours waiting in lines at airports....but no direction from Washington about how to use this enormous energy to make our country better and safer. And so it dissipated virtually untapped.

The same thing may be happening now. Every newscaster in this country and abroad is talking about the crisis and coming calamity. So is the President.

One of the purposes of fear is to move us to action. Except we don't have a sense of direction...where to go, what to do. Lots of fear, lots of potential energy, no direction for its positive use. Not a recipe for a successful outcome.

Y2K (oh no!)
Let me take you back a very short time to the late 1990's when everyone was concerned about Y2K. There was considerable concern and even fear in many quarters. And those feelings were held by credible people who created the programs.

What was done with that fear and all that potential energy? It was turned into action.

Companies formed teams to understand and remediate the problems and build contingency plans. So did organizations of every kind including towns and cities. Local groups sprang up all over the country to consider the impact on their local communities and to set up contingency and continuity plans including how to help senior citizens or the disabled if electricity was lost, how to get food for everyone and how to keep order, etc. etc.

The point is: No one sat back and waited the Federal Government to direct them. People actually thought about how to build resilient organizations and communities. Most of these were grass roots efforts and partnering between local businesses and the communities.

Useful lessons were learned. Including that many disparate groups could come together for the common good without having to have a program from Washington.

Today, there are ideas for solutions coming from lots of places. I consider ideas from non-legislators or govt. officials to be grass roots. For example, check out Jim Cramer's ideas for solving the mortgage crisis on CNBC or his website www.thestreet.com. I am not espousing his solution only providing this as an example of ideas coming from 'grassroots'.

And we are waiting for....
After 9/11 we waited for the government. And now we are waiting again. Wrong decisions.

Just as with Y2K, we have to come up with our own 'local' solutions. There is a role for government just as there is a need at times for antibiotics. But government is neither the savior nor the solution...we are. So we need to stop looking exclusively to them and start looking closer to home.

"When things are at their worst, we are at our best."

What can we do, individually, collectively to help ourselves and others in this situation?

A Few Ways to Deal with the Fear's Discomfort

Fear, real or imagined, can cause us to become inhibited. Think of it like the "flight or fight response" that is a natural part of our instinctive behavior.But there is an additional response....do nothing. An inhibition causes us to be constrained, blocked, held back, in other words, similar to the deer in the headlights...stand still, don't move, play dead....

We all have a smorgasbord of inhibitions and fears that are so much a part of our lives that we don't even consciously pay attention to them, except when we want or have to do something that bumps against them. For example, we go along on our merry way each day until lay offs begin...and we begin to fear losing our job, and we fear looking for another one, we don't want to do the search, or the interviews or have to get to know new routines and people. And what might we be feeling? We feel like running. We feel like hiding. We might even feel like taking a swing at someone. But we don't do any of those things. We "stand still". We have 'inhibited' certain behavior but all of the physical reactions are still churning in our body and because they have not been released they continue to churn. At this point we really don't know if we will lose our job. Our thoughts are creating the fear and these physical reactions.

We have all seen on PBS the scene of an animal who escapes death. What you may not have noticed is the "shake off" when the animal is safe. It is literally shaking its whole body. It is dispelling some of that 'flight or fight' energy.

We have to do something like that too or the anxiety builds and continues to build over time. It is there in every muscle and organ of our body.And it affects, to one degree or another, all the areas of our life.

3 techniques to deal with the discomfort related to fear?

Many if not most of these inhibitions and fears are learned over time. We need to use our marvelous brains to unlearn the old 'mistaken programming'.

Techniques for Dealing with the discomfort--
1. warm-ups...singers do this all the time before a performance; so do musicians, athletes and others; What kind of 'warm-up' would help to calm you down while at the same time pump you up?

2. exercise...anxiety causes lots of 'energy' and it helps to dissipate the anxiety energy by exercising... What kinds of exercises would you like to do that would help to transform this energy?

3. practice/practice/practice...depending on what the fear/inhibition is, e.g., if a person has to give a presentation and they are fearful, practicing the presentation many times, with huge gusto, way 'over-correcting', being excessive in expression, will not only dissipate the anxiety energy but turn it into performance energy (notice that I avoided the use of negative and positive energy...) and will increase confidence related to this activity.