Until I am face to face with how awesome it all is. I wrote about that when I visited the Mars lander project, and saw the immensity of what they were accomplishing. It blew me away. It inspired me to push harder and farther. It was, in the literal meaning of the word, awesome.

So this past weekend, I clicked on the link someone shared to the video below – a montage created by NPR about the early exhuberant days of the Space Shuttle.

And I wept.

I wasn’t weeping for the shuttle program or for space exploration. I was weeping to think that we have left behind the age of exploring for the sake of exploring. We have left behind the age of visionary possibility.

And we have entered the age of fixing / curing / ending / preventing as “high aspiration.”

We have entered an age of focusing squarely on our problems. We have convinced ourselves that ending something negative is the same as creating something affirmative. And that prevention is as lofty a goal as creation.

The future does not have to be an extension of the past. We can create the future we want. We do it every single day.

What it takes is aiming higher.

Aiming for the moon and beyond. Aiming at the world we DO want. Aiming beyond what the logic of our past tells us is “reasonable.” Reaching as high as we can, and then reaching higher again.

What it takes is then tethering our plans to that dream

Asking, “What favorable conditions would make that dream simply inevitable?” Asking, “What are all the cause-and-effect variables it will take to create the future we want?” (instead of tethering our plans to today, asking, “How far do we think we can reasonably go?”)

What it takes is aligning our day-to-day actions with our dreams for what is possible, and being that right now.

Instead of wishing others would be more cooperative, being more cooperative ourselves – right here now. Instead of wishing others would be more transparent, being that ourselves – right here now. Walking the talk, right here now.

We have convinced ourselves that creating the future we want is impossible. And we have convinced ourselves that if it is not impossible, then it surely will be hard.

What if it’s not? And what if the only thing standing between us and the world we want is the fact that we think it’s hard – or not possible at all?

Imagine what would have happened if 50 years ago, someone had said, “We’re going to send a man to the moon and back. And we’re going to do that in less than 10 years.”

Oh yeah. We did say that. And it happened.

Photo credit: NASA

For over a year, changemakers have been invited to engage in a conversation around  just one question: “When you see significant community change going on, what factors are creating that change?” Their answers have often surprised us!

Every week this summer, we will be sharing  those interviews with you, right here. Whether you are heading out on vacation or working through the summer, these conversations will re-energize you!  Each guest speaks about real changes they have seen happen in real communities – the results  we all sense are possible.

And so, without further ado…

Making Change

We thought we’d kick off this Summer of Change with the 1-Year Anniversary Special Edition of the program. For that celebration, I invited 3 of my prior guests to join me for a free-wheeling conversation about creating the future we all want for our world.  True confession: We had a blast!

Robert Egger
Robert has worn many hats in his decades at the forefront of this sector’s work. He is founder of the DC Central Kitchen, where they use food “as a tool to strengthen bodies, empower minds and build communities.” Robert’s book, Begging for Change, won the Alliance for Nonprofit Management’s Terry McAdam Book Award in 2005. His latest effort is the V3 campaign, inspiring the sector to grab hold of its power to create change.

Kathleen Enright
Kathleen is the CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO). Understanding that grantmakers are successful only to the extent that their grantees achieve meaningful results, GEO (and Kathleen as its CEO) is a strong advocate for making funders as effective as possible in creating the ultimate change they strive to create.

Margaret Martin
Margaret is the founder of Harmony Project, an organization that promotes the healthy growth and development of children through the study, practice and performance of orchestral music. Harmony Project currently works in the gang reduction zones of Los Angeles, and is in the initial stages of expanding into a national program.

This 1-hour discussion is wide-ranging, and I know you’ll be jotting down notes and sparking ideas as you listen to these brilliant minds consider all angles of the question, “What creates social change?” Enjoy!

You can listen by clicking the player below or by following this link to iTunes, where you can download all the Making Change interviews to your MP3 player.

We hope you get as much out of listening to this conversation as we got out of being part of it!

Photo Credit: “Schnäggli” per Wikimedia Commons

“What’s Your Calling?” explores notions of “calling” from both religious and secular perspectives. “What’s Your Calling?” pushes the notion of “calling” to explore all of the stuff that makes us human: our values, our passions, our doubts and hopes. Profiling individuals from diverse backgrounds – “What’s Your Calling?” shares what people have been called to do with their lives and how they hope to change the world.

I confess that I never really entertained the notion that I might have a calling. From the time I left high school, I bounced around – attending seven schools before finally piecing together a degree; working as the legislative aide to a progressive city council member in a growing southwest city; selling and leasing commercial real estate; owning and operating a desert plant nursery; and a lot more this and that. I had no thought to what my life held for me, until…

…until my baby was born.

No, this isn’t going to be a post about the joys of motherhood. It is instead about what I learned from the practice of being a mom.

Here’s what changed when I became Lizzie’s mom: My job became creating the conditions to help my talented girl reach for her own potential.

I used to say that I saw my job not as raising an 8 year old or an 11 year old, but as raising a 35 year old and a 50 year old, because in truth she would only be 8 for a moment, but she would be an adult forever. Not realizing at the time that this was what I was doing, I was, in fact, creating the conditions that would create Lizzie’s future.

Lizzie’s passion is virtually anything related to movies. In 3rd grade, her biography report became her on-screen video debut, talking about the movies of the Marx Brothers. By age 9, she was watching sub-titled foreign films. By middle school, our standing Monday after-school date was an afternoon at the movies – an effort that turned into Lizzie becoming a “youth movie reviewer” for our local paper.

By high school, Lizzie was – no surprise – winning visual arts awards.

So what does Lizzie’s obvious calling have to do with my own? I realize in looking back that my sense of what it meant to be her mom was all about creating the adult she was destined to become – and doing the same for her friends. When she was in preschool, I taught gardening in her class. When she was in grade school, I taught creative writing and Spanish. I aimed my daughter and her classmates at what they had the potential to be.

It was about this time I began helping community benefit organizations identify and reach for their own highest potential – not the potential to build a strong organization, but the higher potential – building strong communities. As it had been with Lizzie, I didn’t see immediate strength as the target, but as one stepping stone towards the long-term goal of building thriving communities.

And that work grew into what is now Creating the Future, a movement to guide social change work to achieve its own highest potential – creating the future we all want for our world.

So what have I learned about having a calling? I’ve learned that for some people, like Lizzie, they know they have a calling from the time they emerge from the womb. For the rest of us, though, it takes a bit more time and experimenting. More than our searching for that calling, it requires that the calling find us – a chance encounter we never expect, becoming a passion we never knew we had.

I’ve learned from my own experience that even when the calling comes knocking, that we don’t see it as “a calling.” We see it as something we are trying, experimenting with, doing because it feels right. We don’t do it as a project with a ton of research and development; instead we just dive in and give it a try.

Starting a program to connect restaurants and food pantries, because we can’t believe how much food is thrown away.

Gathering friends to buy an old movie theater because you love movies and want to try your hand at creating an art cinema theater.

Being a mom.

We think we might be able to do it, so we try it, having no idea what is about to happen to our lives…

The more we do the work, though, the more we find we are no longer trying it – we are doing it. From there, the more that work becomes our everyday, we are no longer doing it – we are being it. It isn’t what we do; it is who we are. It is has become our identity.

And then something almost mystical happens: We find we are no longer content to just do and be that work; we want to help others do and be it. We want to teach it, bring others along, share with them what we have found.

THAT is when we realize that what we have isn’t a job or a career; it is a calling. We are doing the work because we have no choice. We are doing the work because we must. We are doing the work because we feel some force is working through us. We are doing the work because that is what we are in our bones.

And when that happens, look out!!! When it feels like the forces of the universe are aligning at your back to show you the path; when you feel like every part of you is being fulfilled, for the first time in your life; when you are tired of people telling you to take “me” time because every moment you are at “work” it is “me” time; and when your greatest joy is helping others to feel that passion and joy as well – that is when you realize the power of having a calling. And that is when the impact of your work in your community becomes infused with the most potent rocket fuel imaginable.

It’s not about some higher power. It’s not about your own ego. It’s simply about accomplishing the highest potential of the work you are doing, whatever that work may be.

Naming that alignment, claiming it, harnessing its power – that is what catalysts and champions do every day. They see the power of their calling, and they use it to fuel their work.

And what power that is! For those who step into that passion and align their work and their lives around the vision and values that have called them to that passion, the only word for what they can accomplish is “unstoppable.”

Looking back from where I stand now, I see the path I have walked to bring me to my calling. But I am not sure I would have ever used the word “calling” for what we are doing, if not for the pastor of a spiritual group with whom we were working just two years ago. At the end of the workday, the pastor closed with the following words as part of her prayer:

“And thank you, God, for bringing us Hildy and Dimitri, who have a true calling, whether they know it or not.”

There, at that moment, I saw it, named it, embraced the path to which I suddenly realized we had been called. We rejoiced in helping other change-makers find that path. And in the two years since that day, we have worked without a break to help this sector reach its very highest potential, to make visionary community improvement this sector’s norm, rather than the exception.

I do have a calling. I never would have thought it possible, until a little baby girl who grew into an amazing woman showed me my own path of unleashing the potential in the people around me.

And that girl? These days she is living in Hollywood, working on TV and movie crews by day, directing her own short films by night.

Her calling is blossoming into what she has the power and potential to create. And those of us who are following our own callings – creating an amazing future for our world – know exactly how she feels.

I am honored to have been asked to share this post as part of the “What’s Your Calling?” blog tour. You can follow the blog tour on the What’s Your Calling? Facebook Page. Subscribe here for a chance to win prizes that will help you pursue your own calling.

And so I am hoping you will indulge me with this special Rock Out, a tribute to the home I adopted 31 years ago this month.

People who are not from Tucson have told me they think the media image of our town has been pretty positive this past 2 weeks. Perhaps that’s because Tucson has an immense sense of civic pride. You heard that pride if you watched the tribute presided over by President Obama. It was that pride that folks across the country chided us for, saying it sounded more like a pep rally than a tribute. In truth, though, that’s part of what it is to live in this big small town – it’s the thing that allows “unfathomably horrible” to see glimmers of normal. Because in Tucson it is absolutely normal for life to feel like one big ongoing U of A pep rally.

Of course the rest of the state shakes its head for other reasons when Tucson is mentioned, the most notable being a characteristic of which we Tucsonans are perhaps the most proud (and yes, BTW, it is Tucsonan – not Tucsonian.) And that’s the fact that Tucson is a solidly progressive bastion in a state that has mostly made the news for things like huge intolerance for immigrants (in Tucson we call it racism) balanced only by its equally huge tolerance for weapons, concealed or otherwise.

Most recently in the “intolerance for anything remotely Latino” category, Arizona’s outgoing State Superintendent of Education (and new Attorney General) told reporters that his biggest accomplishment was eliminating the ethnic studies program in a particular public school district. And where was that rogue district? You guessed it. Tucson’s school district not only didn’t shut down that program – they have openly challenged the absurdly intolerant decree, continuing to teach about the people who were here first and whose nation is only an hour down the road.

So yes, we are getting our share of the news focus these days. But long before this, in a time called the 1970′s, Tucson was famous among people all over the world. It was during that time long ago that people longed to visit Tucson simply because this was the home of JoJo.

If you are reading this in an email reader and cannot see the video, click here to see it.

I confess my soft spot for this song is not because of my adopted home, but instead because of a friend from what was still at that time Yugoslavia. I had met Carmen in the traveling days of my youth, and was instantly smitten. How could you not love someone whose itinerary of U.S. must-see sights was simply a list of places she had heard of in songs?

Carmen and I had traveled together to Cripple Creek, Colorado, with Carmen singing The Band’s song the whole way up and back (never mind it is a different Cripple Creek – Carmen wasn’t in this for accuracy.) When she heard I had settled in Tucson, I could hear her enthusiasm jump off the page of her letter. “Oh oh oh! Tucson! That’s where JoJo lives!”

This particular video makes me smile for another reason, though – a reason that is connected not to the Tucson I moved to back in 1980, but the Tucson of today. And that’s because this particular performance is the 70′s equivalent of today’s flash mobs – that spontaneous outpouring of emotion of the people in the streets and windows, the joy, the pointing, the wanting to be part of something.

That’s what we’re feeling these days here in Tucson. When Gabby left the hospital to head to Texas for rehab last week, people lined the streets, waving and throwing kisses and saluting. They linked arms and wept.

At University Medical Center, the spontaneous outpouring of support and love, of tenderness and the overwhelming desire for peace – it is almost indescribable to be in the middle of the shrine that was, until recently, the hospital’s front lawn. People of all faiths have come together to pray in their own way, to encourage, to be together.

Because when times are hard, people need each other. I hope you will remember that as you head into your week. We need each other and we are at our best when we are linking arms with others.

Which is another Tucson thing – something folks around the state say about our home. Here in Tucson, we work together.

It is one of the first things Dimitri and I found when we began talking with people up the road in Phoenix, helping them build their community’s Diaper Bank. During that time, we were repeatedly told, “That sort of collaborative effort won’t work here. We’re not like you in Tucson. You guys all work together…” While Tucsonans wish we would work together even more closely, having worked all over the world, we are consistently impressed with the level of cooperation in our hometown.

So maybe if the rest of the world takes nothing else from this nightmare but that, we can make something positive out of this horrific tragedy.

Imagine what might be the result if community benefit organizations around the world picked up the phone right now and asked their “competition” this question:

“What can we accomplish together that neither of us can accomplish on our own?”

Have a great Monday, and a great week, all.

If you want updates about Gabby’s condition, follow her husband @ShuttleCDRKelly on Twitter

A month ago, I posted about the solace and meaning we can find in each other – not just in those with whom we agree, but in all of us, living and being on this planet together.

Today those thoughts feel even more pertinent than they felt a month ago.

And so, begging your indulgence, I am re-posting those thoughts here, but adding a gift at the end – a video that I hope will help you find connection in this election week, when the media is doing its best to convince us that connection is rare.  Because it is not rare. It is, in fact, all around us.

October 1, 2010

Summer is lingering far too long here in the Arizona desert.  So every day, I check the newspaper forecast to see when we will finally see autumn.

Today’s paper told me that in several days, there is a 5% chance of rain.  And I found myself throwing down the paper in total exasperation.  ”Really?” I said aloud to the dog, “A 5% chance it will rain?”

Translated to a more useful forecast, there is a 95% chance things will be sunny and clear. Yet as they do every day, the weather prognosticators focused their limited newspaper ink not on what was likely, but on what was unlikely.

What does that have to do with building a world where we naturally and reflexively treat all beings with kindness?  Everything.

Kindness is the norm. Kindness surrounds us everywhere and all the time.

UNkindness is the exception.  Despite what we see on the news, people are not overwhelmingly horrible to each other. If they were, life would be unlivable.  (And in fact, in those rare places where UNkindness is the norm, life is, in fact, unlivable.)

And yet we believe that exception is the norm.

That belief no doubt stems from our fears of how horrible that exception can be and often is.  But that doesn’t make it true.

Our deeply held belief that unkindness is the norm influences everything about the lives we lead, the work we do, the laws we pass.  Our assumptions guide our actions.

Studies may find that we are, at our core, empathic beings.  Given our deeply held beliefs that that is not true, we choose to ignore those studies. We look instead for signs that reinforce our beliefs that deep down we are all greedy, fear-driven, ego-centric beings who will, left to our own devices, act badly.

“We are what we think,” said the Buddha. “All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we create the world.”

There is a 95% chance it will be sunny today. There is a better-than-even chance that you will find kindness all around you today.

What would it make possible – in our work, in our nations, in our politics, in our lives – if that kindness was what we conditioned ourselves to expect?

As you go about your work and your life this week, what would it make possible if you faced the people around you with humility, with grace? If you smiled as you let them go ahead of you, literally and figuratively?

“You go, then I’ll go.” I am awed by the possibility that simple act can bring.

Have a great Monday, and a great week, all!

The video at the original post from October 1 includes a talk by Jeremy Rifkin, sharing studies to back up the observation that we are, in fact, empathic beings. You can see that here.

It has been years since we last joined with others for the sheer purpose of learning and meeting people – so long ago that many of the conferences we  now want to attend didn’t even exist then.  And that leaves us in a bit of a quandary.

First, which conferences to choose?  Second, how to get there?  (Our conditional tax-exemption as we file for official status is not appealing to funders who, as we all know, prefer certainty. Which makes creativity in funding things like conference attendance a must during this phase!)

So we thought we would come to you for both those questions.  Which conferences should we consider attending this year? And what creative ways have you seen organizations fund their own learning and intellectual growth?

So Many Conferences, So Little Time…
As we consider which conferences to attend, here are some of the criteria we’re factoring in:

• Stimulating theme, with stimulating presenters – folks from whom we would want to absorb everything they know and simply be in their presence.

• Not an overwhelming number of attendees.  I’m not sure how much we could get to know folks if a conference has 5,000 or more attendees.  (If your experience has been different, please let us know – this may just be our own bias…)

• The crowd will be creative thinkers, intellectually curious.  We want to learn as much from the participants as the presenters.

•  The fewer “panel discussions” the better.  I cannot recall the last time a panel discussion was worth the time it took up – even ones I have participated in.  The only way I can see a panel discussion being a brilliant use of time would be to introduce various approaches to a  topic, where we could then learn more in depth from each of the presenters in individual workshops.  A panel as an invitation to learn more that very day would be great (Can’t recall that I’ve ever seen that happen, but I’m putting it out to the conference-planners’ universe…)

• While some unstructured unconference time is great, we want more time in brilliant workshop settings, learning from people with immense knowledge about intriguing, mind-bending subjects.  Between our office and our online discussions, our own immersion courses and the facilitations we do with groups, we get more than our share of time to explore in completely unstructured settings. What we are seeking from a conference is exposure to new ideas and ways of thinking from people who are brilliant in their field.

• We’re not looking for lots of how-to tips.  If a workshop leader tells me, “If all you take from this session is 2 or 3 things you can put into practice, I’ll have done my job…” then that’s not the session for us.  We want our heads to be exploding with new ideas, new ways of seeing things, new connections (both interpersonal and intellectual connections).

Yeah, I know – we’re setting the bar high.  As my friend Ray Nichols reminds me, we do that a lot around here…

Given these criteria, what conferences would you suggest?  Some have suggested Independent Sector’s conference. Some have suggested the ARNOVA conference. Some have suggested Bioneers.  And of course if we had the funds, TED…

Wisdom 2.0
One conference has been calling to us since we heard of it last year.  And that is the Wisdom 2.0 Conference in February.  (We even re-scheduled our February immersion course to be able to attend!)

The Wisdom 2.0 Conference brings together people from a variety of disciplines – technology leaders, Zen teachers, neuroscientists, academics and others – to explore how we can live with deeper meaning and wisdom in our technology-rich age.

Following two days of standard break-out format, there is a day of unconference. Given what we will be learning and exploring and absorbing during the conference itself, this is an  unstructured environment that we will relish (everything I said above not withstanding…)

What Else?
This leaves us with the 2 questions we noted above.

1) What other conferences should we be thinking about attending in the next 12 months?

2) What creative ways have you found to fund attending conferences / educational forums like these?

Looking forward to your favorites and your ideas!!

]]> http://hildygottlieb.com/2010/10/24/which-conferences-and-how/feed/ 9 http://hildygottlieb.com/2010/10/10/monday-morning-rock-out-59/ http://hildygottlieb.com/2010/10/10/monday-morning-rock-out-59/#comments Mon, 11 Oct 2010 01:25:55 +0000 Hildy http://hildygottlieb.com/?p=3421 Happy Magical Monday, everyone!

And it is indeed magical. After last week, I cannot help but see magic in everything around me!

Last week, in a small room papered with wisdom and passion, six of us shared our dreams for the future we want to create. We laughed and we cried and we learned. In between, as those who have taken our class know, we ate and ate some more, nourishing our bodies as we nourished our spirits.

One cannot experience our immersion course without realizing in your bones that every one of our dreams for the future of this planet is realistic, practical, doable. As I closed my eyes to sleep this weekend, I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve; the power we have to turn our dreams into reality overtook me at every turn, making me want to dance, to play, to dream…

If you are reading this in an email reader and the video does not appear, click here to see it.

Every one of these classes feels like it is a dream. For five days, we explore what it takes to create an environment where changemakers can reach for their highest potential.

Governance consultants and program evaluators, fundraising consultants and strategists – they transform before their own eyes (and ours), finding gifts that have been there all along, waiting quietly to spring into action to create the world we all want.

We do our best to model the fact that creating visionary community change is practical and doable.

That working from humility – knowing the wisdom is in the room, and learning how to listen for that wisdom – is practical and doable.

That learning to replace judgment with compassion (and learning the extent to which we do, in fact, judge) is practical and doable.

That kindness can rule not only our work, but our lives.

And that if we consultants can learn what it takes to catalyze change, our clients can learn it, and their communities can learn it – the true meaning of all of us modeling the change we want to see.

“My dreams are bursting at the seams,” says the song. Today, still high from a week where we watched “consultants” grow into their role as “visionary changemakers,” my dreams are indeed bursting at the seams.

And everywhere I look, I see ten million fireflies lighting up the world.

Have a great “lit up” Monday and a great week, all!

With love and admiration to Kim, Tesse, Debbie, Kesha and Dimitri.

For a beautiful a capella version of this song, click here.

After hitting send, it occurred to me that that was the first I had informed myself of this plan. But there it was, in text on my screen, so it must be true!

I accomplished a lot in what turned out to be six weeks of exploration and reflection (with the exception of journaling and poetry (some of which I shared on Posterous here), very little writing occurred during this “writing time”). Given my early summer posts on taking time to just “be,” I thought I would take a moment to share what I learned from that six weeks – and to begin to introduce the results of that thinking-and-exploring time.

You Can’t Plan a Sabbatical in 2 Weeks
I kept laughing at the fact that I was calling this time a “sabbatical.” During that six weeks, we had our colleague, Christine Egger, fly in from Detroit to brainstorm together for three days. Lizzie came home for 4 days during which we celebrated my birthday and continued the seemingly endless effort to clear boxes out of her childhood room. I got our corporate taxes done and began work with our former Office Manager, Erin Tierney, who has come back to assist Dimitri and me as a virtual assistant (and very real friend).

I had both foot surgery and oral surgery. We created a new video for our home page – the one featured in this week’s Rock Out.  I planned and prepared for two workshops, a salon, and several other functions that became the jam-packed week we spent in Los Angeles just 6 days after my “sabbatical” ended. And I am sure there is more that I am forgetting, that would look to a normal outsider simply like “work.”

When I sarcastically shared with my friend and colleague RuthAnn Harnisch – who has been blogging her own year-long sabbatical – that I learned one cannot plan a sabbatical in two weeks, she chuckled. “You can’t plan it in a year, either,” she told me. “And no matter how long the sabbatical lasts, everyone I talk to tells me that when their sabbatical is over, they felt as if they are just getting going.”

As my 25 year-old daughter would say, true dat.

You CAN Plan a Sabbatical in 2 Weeks
Yes, I was busy with a lot of “regular work.” But I also hung an out-of-office message on my email and my voice mail. I gave myself permission to ignore the world. I put “responding” on hold.

And I learned what a gift that is.

On the days when I didn’t have other obligations, no one expected anything of me, including me. That took some doing, I won’t lie. During that six weeks, I smiled at how good I was at chastising myself for what I was not accomplishing in that time, rather than celebrating that I had given myself permission to take that time at all.

I read. I sat in meditation. I filled 4 sections of a notebook with notes about the work we are doing at Creating the Future. I explored – got piles of books from the library, returned them, got more piles. Then I read some more, sat again in meditation, and scribbled more madly about what I was finding.

Through all that, I sculpted the shape of the programs Creating the Future will offer in the next 5 years. I came to realization after realization about how this movement will indeed change how work is done across this whole sector, around the world. I plastered that thinking across a wall-sized spreadsheet made of post-it notes attached to the sliding glass doors to the back yard, until my living room resembled a scene from A Beautiful Mind.  

The Plan
Because people have been asking, I will share briefly here that the result will be programs aimed at everyone working in this sector, however loosely one defines that work OR the sector. Those programs will be crafted to meet people wherever they are in their thinking about our mutual ability to build a more humane world, and to move each and every one of us towards our potential for creating that world.

Skeptics and bodhisattvas and everyone in between; board members and funders and social entrepreneurs and college professors… each and every one of us has two things in common:
1) We all want life to be more humane on this planet, for all beings.
2) We all have the potential to make that a reality.

Our work will be to tap the potential in each and every one of us, in a way that makes that visionary change a reality. And the entirety of that program, across all players in the sector, across all degrees from “I don’t need this” to “I want to teach this” and everything in between – all that was carved during this time away.

What Else
Over the past several months, I’ve been blogging a lot about the fact that we simply do not take time to be and think. I am just as much a victim of that as anyone else. And so, without practice in “being” and a personality prone to do-do-do and then do some more, what exactly does one “do” when given time to just “be?”

I am fortunate that I have a history of escaping to write at a friend’s condo in Southern California – the place where I finished the final draft of FriendRaising and both the very first and very last drafts of The Pollyanna Principles. I’ve never taken longer than 2 weeks there, but at least I know a bit about what to expect – how long it takes me to even begin to decompress, as well as some activities that help me speed up that decompression process, to get the most out of that time on the beach.

This mini-sabbatical gave me 3 times that timeframe – six whole weeks. And unlike those trips to California, I had no real goal – no single book that needed to be worked on. What freedom!

Without those parameters, however, I found I chastised myself often, wondering what I should be doing. It took perhaps four of those weeks to realize I was doing precisely what I needed to be doing – that I had already generated some amazing thinking, and that really, Hildy, could you stop “shoulding” on yourself for just a moment?

In the last 2 weeks, I was finally able to let go. I gardened. I painted on the walls. I read and cooked and spent hours every day moving from deep meditation to intentionally letting my mind wander wherever it wanted to go.

As I re-entered the real world, I left projects to be completed – some to be painted, some to be written, some to be dug into the soil. Six days later, I was in Los Angeles, creating even more new thinking, more projects to complete.

Over the next few weeks, I will share all of it – including the reading list that helped expand my mind in more directions than I thought possible.

For now, though, I am chuckling. What started as an email suggesting I was taking time off to write resulted in everything but writing. It may take me as much as two years (or more) to produce everything I conceived of during that time of being, exploring, reflecting.

And the guest blog for my colleague – the one that started this whole thing? It’s coming, Pamela. I promise.

During his August 12 broadcast, Rush Limbaugh said that nonprofit employees are “lazy idiots” and “rapists in terms of finance and the economy.”

I have been waiting for a rebuttal, knowing I could count on one from my friend and colleague, Robert Egger – founder of the DC Central Kitchen and in-your-face advocate for the work this sector does.

Robert did not disappoint. If you are looking for someone to help cheer you on as you do your work today, I promise Robert will get your blood pumping. (Update: Video has been updated from the one originally posted. See the comments for details.)

I am now even more proud that I asked Robert to be the first guest for my podcast at the Chronicle. To listen to his views on the power this sector has to change the world, you can grab that here at iTunes. (Click on the entry called “Making a Difference” from 5/5/10.)

Thank you, Robert – for your enthusiastic advocacy for every single person working to build a better world!

First, this week is the mid-point of my semi-sabbatical. I wish I could say I’ve holed up doing nothing but writing and exploring. But having decided to do this only 2 weeks prior to doing it, I couldn’t magically make all my work vanish.

So yes, I am spending hours every day writing & reading & thinking & exploring.

I am also tying up loose ends for our corporate taxes. And working on a project for a coaching client. And planning a new consultants workshop we’ll be doing in Los Angeles next month.

So that’s the first special thing this week – seeing that I can incorporate into my worklife huge swaths of time for writing and thinking and being. That all it takes is my intending to do so – holding myself accountable.

WOW! Suddenly it is the first day of my sabbatical all over again, because every day can be the first day of my sabbatical! Every day I can get my “real work” done while giving myself loads more time to do the REAL “real work.”

I feel empowered. I feel energized. All while preparing our taxes. Wow. This is the first day of my life.

If you are viewing this in your email or a reader that doesn’t show video, this link will take you to the website where you can watch the video. Link to site here.

The other reason this week’s Rock Out is special is this: This week is my birthday.

In my early twenties, I realized I could make my birthday last a full week simply by adding these words to everything I wanted to do: “You have to – it’s my birthday.”

Ice cream sodas for lunch, afternoons at Larchmont Park, evenings at Rye Playland, nights in a divey local bar. My friends indulged a full week of playtime, birthed by the words. “You have to – it’s my birthday.”

It’s been 30 years since I’ve felt my birthday in every cell of my being. Suddenly, though, at age 53, every day feels like the first day of my life.

So let’s celebrate!

First, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you to celebrate by helping us build Creating the Future. Whether it’s 53¢ or $53 or $53,000 (a girl can dream…) – please click on the button in the right-hand column, to help support this movement for being the change we want to see.

But that doesn’t hold a (birthday) candle to what I really want.

What I really want is that you consider the things you wish you had time to do. And right now, hold yourself accountable for doing them – starting today. Because this is the first day of your life, too.

So do it now. You have to – it’s my birthday.

Have a great Monday, and a great week, all!

Photo: Me & my Aunt Gul