Nancy Love’s Weblog

Nietzsche said “You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.”  Doesn’t everyone have chaos in their soul? No really?  I need to know.  Is your soul not chaotic?

Mine is always dancing, whirling from peace to fear and back in a rhythm that almost seems predictable.  Not knowing the pattern leads to fear and the downward spin that is lifted to an upward spin by some seemingly random event that is coincidence or not, synchronistic or not.  Hard to tell where it will go next … chaos in the soul ….

What of this dancing star?  The writing is fun and at time I can see the birthing of ideas into words and sentences and paragraphs and chapters and books and I know the pain associated.  I also know the joy of completing a work that has sat on the end of my tongue for many years waiting for my life to find a room for the birthing process.

Our new book, “Princpals: Faces of Change” is out and we sent a press release about it to 30 or so radio and tv stations.  We also ran an ad in a Talk Show Host Magazine.  The interest has begun.  I had an interview this week and have another one scheduled for next week.

This whole education program “Race to the Top” that Obama is implementing is helping us because the book is about principals implementing mandated change in schools and increasing the results on standardized tests.  It is a good book about five different men who take five different approaches in five different settings and get similar results.  Conclusions:  There is more than one way to improve a school.

I love the way the book tells the stories through metaphor and how it emphasises the significant role educational leaders like principals play in the race for the top.  They lead from the hallway and their influence is felt in every classroom.  What they focus on gets done.  What they value gets valued.

It has been twelve years since I went back to school in September, but as schools get ready for the new term, I hope they have the leadership they need to create learning experiences for kids that will make a difference in the lives of the students and in the progress of the country.

Isn’t it interesting when things happen to you  and you don’t have an explanation until something else happens to you?  Ususally that something else is that other people have the same or related experience.  Both of you have meanings that you attach to the event until you talk about it together and then the meaning changes and people stop and consider  …. “Is this an intervention of the divine sort? or coincidence?”  As my friend Carol is wont to say …”Coincidence… I think not!!”

Things that are coincidental in their occurance gain meaning in their sharing. If we were all to share our coincidences what amazing things we could learn about the universe and how it works, about the strength and power of intention and the whole experiment that is the collective consciousness.

I am getting philosophical.  I think it comes from having watched most of season one of “The Big Band Theory” over the past week.  I love Sheldon and the way his mind works or at least the way minds of the writers on the show work. I am certain that the randomness and the synchronicity of coincidental events is potentially explainable.

Diamonds are a girls best friend.  They are valuable and symbolize love and devotion in some cultures.  They are hard and can cut glass.  There is so much about diamonds … their beauty and their strength … that is celebrated in our society.  When we use a diamond shape or a rhombus as it is known in mathematics to represent an idea it has both beauty and strength … cut and brilliance… wholeness.

Integration …. I think that is what I really want to write about here.  When something is integrated …. when it has taken the external pressures applied to it and become a stronger whole … hardened to a brilliance and sophistication to rival any diamond, that is when you know you really have something of value.

Recently my husband bought me a 3 Karate Diamond…. UNCUT.  It is beautiful but not recognizable as the diamonds that we know and tend to value.  A Diamond in the rough.  I was intrigued and pleased and immediately impressed with the metaphor we so often use for people who haven’t quite met their potential.  What potential are you hiding?  What about your neighbour?

Interesting theme that runs through the literature … brain research… psychology….physiology… almost every field of study known to man expresses this sentiment…

I had an interesting experience about 8 years ago when I went to Australia.  My cousin is into geneology and she insisted that I visit another cousin of ours while I was there.  So I looked him up.  He had left Canada for India many years before and had eventually moved to Australia and was living outside of Sydney.  I called and he met my husband and I at the train station.  We had a fabulous visit and near the end he mentioned that he had written a book.  I begged a copy. He only had a hundred or so left and they were tagged for practitioners of something called Colour Puncture.

It was a lucky string of events.  Jack’s book was informative about the rise of the practice of colour puncture which is a healing method using prism of light on acupuncture pressure points.  It was also an enlightening journey for me as I followed the story of his live and that of my family.  Jack’s mother was my grandfather’s sister and so was his stepmother because his dad married his wife’s sister when the wife died two months after giving birth to Jack.  I was fascinated by the book, be colour puncture and the history I found in it.

I could not find practitioners of colour puncture in Calgary which was disappointing.  The good news was that Jack, after our amazing visit, returned to Canada to visit other members of our family.  The bad news is that as he was on his way back to live in Canada, he took ill and died suddenly in Sydney.  He wrote his own eulogy.  I treasure the copy of that I received from his wife.

Further good news arrived recently announcing the publication of his book Osho, India and Me by Jack Allanch.  I have just started reading and I am so enthralled by the wisdom and the humour.  Jack was obviously a very speacial man and I am happy to have been related to him.  I am again learning about  him and myself at the same time.  I recommend the book for anyone who is looking to understand the theme above – We are all capable of much more than we think we are.

Thank you, Jack.

… and you should throw all the paint at it you can.  Danny Kaye said that.  He was a very creative person and so are you.  Throwing paint at this canvas of life can be  a simple as posting a blog, poking someone on Facebook or taking a walk.  Creativity is important and yet we don’t often apply it to our lives.  We get up, get ready, go to work, come home, have dinner, watch tv and go to bed.  Then the next day we do it all again.  What if we did it backwards or what if we didn’t do any of those things one day?  What if we did each of them in a different way each day? 

There are so many ways to live our lives.  Sad and lonely is one.  What about outrageous and happy?  How many other ways can you think of….

” Unless you walk out into the unknown, the odds of making a profound difference in your life are pretty low.”  Walking into the unknown for me is about sociological consideration of the Enneagram.  Going where no writer has gone before is exciting and lonely.  Time to work on the book is crucial for me now.  It is my creative outlet and it is presently trapped inside my head.  I have committed the writing of it to Vancouver.  I hope to have some time there next week to concentrate and to perhaps assign myself a piece of writing that I can accomplish between visits to my office there.

Walk into the unknown and learn from it.  Then it is no longer the unknown but the known and the familiar.  I had a beautiful drive from Edmonton to Calgary this week.  It was foggy.  a mist held over the fields of yellow canola flowers and the full moon lay just above the horizon, shining through the mist.  It was magical.  Later as the sun rose and the fog settled in the hollows around the trees the beauty defied description.  In that 3 hour trip I saw enough majestic and magnificent images to fill a number of coffee table photo books and create an awesome slide show.  I had no camera and so I have memories of beauty that will  stay with me.  Driving through the fog was driving in to the unknown for me.  My truck driver friends and I created a sort of rhythm that kept us on the road and safe in the tentative conditions but the journey revealed such wonderful images that I would have missed had I not driven with them into the foggy highway.

Imagine the beauty around us.  Step into the unknown that it at your finger tips.  Unknowns like the preferences of your mate or the thoughts of your children.  Make a profound difference in your life, one conversation at a time.

Yes…Helmuth Von Moltke had it right.  First ponder…. think about what you want to do.  Think… but not too long.  It is important to consider what you are about to do and the ramifications to be sure but if  you stay with it for too long your courage or your resolve may begin to fade.  Ponder, then dare…. Dare to do what needs to be done, the thing that no one but you can do.

Daring, Courage, Resolve these are interesting words.  Where do those characteristics come from?  How do we recognize when they are needed and, more importantly, how do we tap into the resource at the time that we need it?  People are funny.  They can be daring and courageous and resolute … or not.  What makes for the difference?

I dare to write.  It takes courage to put your ideas out there for people to consider.  What if they are not interested or reject the thought or worse still ignore it?  What is the worst thing that could happen? What if I don’t take the time to provoke a little thinking from time to time?  If only one person considers and is moved to action then this is time well spent.  I hope they will ponder and then dare just as I have.

First I ponder and then I dare.

The title is a quote from  Carrie Rainey.  It speaks to me.  I am alive and I can be creative here everyday.  Yesterday I turned 57.  I got an ipad that I am loving. It has forced me to look at my filing system for photos for example so that I can find the ones I want more easily and I have thousands of digital photos on it that chronicle my busy wonderful life over the past 10 years. 

Looking back is good.  I had a chance to do that last week with a friend in St. Albert.  I happened to run into her on a terrace at a coffee shop.  I’m guessing it has been 10 years since I saw her.  We worked in the same hallways teaching junior high and high school at two different schools for 12 years.  She was a part of my every day life then and now we have another chance to spend time together. It’s great to have those kind of opportunities.

Telling your story of 10 years in a 30 minute conversation is not easy.  What do you leave out?  Do you focus on Travel? on Accomplishments?  on children? on tragedies?  How can you summarize?  And what do you learn in the retelling?  What I learned is that my life might have been different had I stayed in St. Albert.  it is interesting to consider the path not taken.  It makes you critical and appreciative all at the same time.

Creativity is my motto for this my 58th year on the planet.  Daily exercises in writing which I hope to share with you.  I am in the only place I need to be to start….

Have you ever noticed that some days it is easy to jump out of bed and hit the ground running?  If you have had a good night’s sleep and if the day holds the promise of adventure and joy it is much easier to pull the covers back and let your feet hit the floor.  Some days I wonder what thought or idea will get me out of bed.  It is a game I play with myself to see what it will take to move me from the comfort and warmth of a cozy safe place.

I will hypothesize that there are roughly nine motivations that will get people out of bed in the morning.  For some it is the prospect of a perfect day or a chance to make the world a little more perfect by finding something that it wrong and fixing it.  If you are a Perfect, that is if you live life from or are just visiting the Perfection BEACH your motives will relate to that search for perfection.  Sometimes I find myself wanting to finish or organize or correct something first thing in the morning and I know that today will be a day when I live on the Perfection BEACH.  It is this need for rules and standards and ORGANIZATION that moves me to action and out and away from my coziness. A true Perfect will get up at the same time everyday to a predictable routine aimed at making the morning …. perfect.

For others, the thought of doing something wonderful for someone they care about will be the motivator.  The joy of giving and connecting works to motivate the Connectors.  They see the world from Connection BEACH where service to others and the sense of relationship serves to move them to action.  Appointments with people they love to be with, an opportunity to contribute to a team, an experience shared with good friends are important to the Connectors.

For others, the Success Seekers,from Success BEACH, the prospect of looking good, of completing a high-profile project or getting the job done and increasing productivity and recognition and status for themselves and others will be the thing that moves them to get out of bed if they ever got in.  These are the workaholics who can go all night and yet look like they just stepped out a magazine in the morning.  Looking your best and doing your best is important to them.  It moves them to action.

For the creatives among you, those who live on Differentiation BEACH, the melancholy of the morning may move you to such depths of emotion that you will be moved to get up and write or paint or dance or draw.  It is the promise of creative endeavors that excites the heart and then the body to action or on a bad day to inaction. Contributing to the beauty of the world is important to Creatives.  Opportunities to do that will make getting out of bad easier.

From Detachment BEACH the Thinkers are encouraged to get up so that they can have time to think about things.  Sleep can even be an interruption to the thought processes, the synthesizing and analyzing that continues in the mind of the Thinker.  The outer world often is experienced as an intrusion for Detachment BEACH people.  They are happier in their in world of ideas and concepts.  A theory or an idea that needs consideration would move a Thinker to put feet on the floor and get the day started, but not before considering a theory of what motivates people to get up in the morning…… hmmmm.

Security BEACH dwellers will need to get up and get the day started and be prepared for what ever the day may throw at them.  They will be going through their inner checklist to make sure that no detail or contingency has been missed.  Routine is their friend so they will want to get up at the same time everyday. Predictability is a motivator although the safety and security of a cozy bed will be something that the Secure will enjoy.

For the Excitement BEACH dwellers, the promise of a new day and a new adventure will motivate them to move from the comfort of the warm bed.  predictability equals boredom so the expectation of a “sameoldsameold” day will make getting up difficult.  If today is the day that ANYTHING exciting MIGHT happen then they will be moved to move.  What is important is that Excites not know exactly what will happen and that many and different things could.  Playing with ideas and creating adventures can also happen in bed so Excites may be a little slow to get started in the morning.

Power BEACH dwellers are motivated by the possibility of something or someone to conquer.  A take over or a coup d’etat will move Powers to get up and get at it.  A good cause will also get a Power out of bed.  What is important is that they can be in charge of the day and make things happen as only then can.  An opportunity to move their body and have their presence felt will make their day.

The Peace BEACH dwellers will be comfortable and will want to stay in bed just a little longer.  Rocking the boat or the bed are not what Peace’s want to do.  They like the warm, conflict free, sleepy, slow-moving environment of coziness.  What will move them to action will be a desire for peace so if staying in bed may cause anyone else grief and raise the possibility of an unstable or tense situation then they will be moved to move.  Otherwise a Bed In is a great activity for the Peace’s.

Each of us experiences mornings differently and some of it will depend on the day before and where we are when we wake up. Are we on the Perfection, Connection, Success, Differentiation, Detachment, Security, Excitement, Power or Peace BEACH????