Human to Human

Bonus post day.

Such a sweet invitation. Thx Sadhguru. Thx Meg for sharing posts here and there with me.

I love the invitation to start inner.

“Trouble shooting.” It’s quite a phrase.

Troubles, sure. Things to be addressed. Problems to tend to, even solve. OK, good stuff and needed there, particularly with technical and mechanical circumstance.

And, one of the most delightful questions I’ve been including in my living and working repertoire the last few years comes from the Practice For Peace community — “What if we weren’t trying to solve problems, but rather, were trying to practice peace inner and outer, including 1 meter around us?”

Shooting, hmmm. It’s common parlance. But the slightly attentive anthropologist within me, that appreciates word and phrase origins, cringes a little. It’s such a masculine default term. Implies all kinds of “power over.” “Exploring” perhaps? “Experimenting” perhaps?

Well, not trying to be too nutty with it. But, I am the kind of person that likes to explore many things, including default uses of language (and the imposed meaning that can sometimes surround and occupy).

Back to the non-philosophical. If you’ve been following this blog, and in particular have signed on to get email notifications of new posts, some strange things have been happening over the last two months. You might have gotten a few random posts / tests from me and from some of the GoDaddy Tech support wizards. You might have gotten nothing.

In a gremlin-exploring way, turns out, fingers crossed, the trouble might be a simple plug-in that is outdated, or just not able to handle the complexity of all things digital.

Let’s hope. I count on WordPress, blogging, and GoDaddy hosting as an important channel for sharing and contributing.

Thanks for staying with. Greetings from a St. Patricks Day morning in Utah.

Hmmm…

Human Centered Design is a title that can mean a lot of things. It interests me. Always has. My desire in my field of work over decades now has clearly leaned in to the human aspects of people working and communing together more than it has leaned into the mechanical aspects. They all go together, yes. But it is the awakened energetic of connection and learning that has been my goto to create healthy and fulfilling systems.

My entry to this field of work began in earnest in the early 1990s. I was a grad student in an Organizational Behavior Program. It was a time of learning much about systems thinking, about connections, about complex systems. It was a time of learning much about expanding perception on what “value added” and “outcomes” could be.

I was lucky and grateful to continue in the field with some great mentorship. Initially that was Margaret Wheatley, teaching and guiding as she did about living systems and living systems in learning. That was Bob Stilger who taught and guided so much about kind-heartedness and open-mindedness. That was Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea teaching and guiding as they did with The Circle Way as both ways of doing and ways of being. That was Juanita Brown and David Isaacs with World Cafe, methodology for creating and growing the conversational learning. That was Toke Moeller and Monica Nissen developing and inviting evolution of The Art of Hosting body of practice. The was Harrison Owen bring Open Space Technology. I was lucky and grateful to continue with many good colleagues, we also adding to an evolving and important field — Chris Corrigan, Teresa Posakony, Caitlin Frost, Amanda Fenton, Sarah MacDougall, Kelly Foxcroft Poirier, Glen Brown, Erin Gilmore, Cameron Barr, Krista Betz, Kelly Ryan, Kevin Hiebert, Sara Rosenau, Jessica Riehl, Lawrence Kampf, Chris Chopyak, Quanita Roberson — and a bunch more!

Back in those days, the 90s, it occurs to me that a radical act in our field was to slow and deepen the connections. Rather than just racing along with production, which was such a norm — people in our field were learning to create added connection. We were learning to tend not just to doing but also to being so as to add outstanding and sustainable contributions.

People find what they want — I suppose this is true for paths of contribution. There can be difference and interesting nuance.

When I jump forward in the timeline, hundreds of events along the way with varied groups and group sizes, there is another radical act that feels poignant to me today. Not entirely new. But perhaps more centered. It comes from the reality that people in so many places — organizations, communities, families — struggle to talk to each other. Sad, right. True, though. I wonder, wonder, if we have just lost  a sense of belonging. Belonging to the conflicts. Belonging to the excitements. Belonging to the loves. Belonging to the fields of mystery. Belonging to the fields of learning. Belonging to the experiments.

It seems to me — and it interests me (teaching what we most need to learn) — that centering belonging is one of the key acts of our field in this continued effort to focus on humans living human lives, making choices, living into opportunities that live below the surface and that live expanded from superficial reductions.

Gosh!

I’m committed to such work. In me. With others. In pockets of 2-3 people. In bigger systems of departments and teams. Bit of a “can’t not” for me. And, bit of a “can’t not” for me to join with others in such adventure.

Humans being humans.

Lately I’ve been listening a lot to the poet David Whyte. He has a three-week series that he offers. The current one is called Clear Mind Wild Heart.

I sign on because I so much value a space created for poetic heart. I sign on because I both like and need my poetic instincts to be encouraged. I suppose that is all code for liking and needing heart to come alive into words.

In the most recent session, David shares the importance of “creating a space for the listening; listening to hear the music.”

As I hear him, David isn’t talking about always being quiet. In fact, he was encouraging in this recent session doing some things that are new — dance to bring happiness, presence, and joy. Those are paths to listening. Those are paths to the inherent wild that our bodies, our minds, and our bellies both need and wish.

As I hear him, David is talking about knowing the feeling of ideas and words and images that come from within, that source from within, from that deeper listening.

Sweet, right. The busied part of me appreciates this remembering. To dare to listen to what rises from my own belly. To dare to tune to what emanates from my own heart. To dare to focus on what wishes to arise from my brain. We humans, I don’t think we are meant to just collect what others say. We are also meant to trust and cultivate from within that which wishes to be born.

Well, that’s what I hear in some of my listening this morning. From my desk in my home. As I hear the rain trickling on a cloudy Wednesday morning. As I write a few more insights to guide today.