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Social Engineering, Human economics - both topics of research on our family jaunt to the Sunshine Coast. A holiday is always a journey. Gigantean leaps in awareness and evolution of life skills that take some assimilation when re-entering the mainstream. Today's blog topic is "Betterness". A new wave of business thinking? Or a habit for a life line? Hitting the Arrow, 500 emails, a snag with the GST return, and missing the school bus yesterday was as brisk a wake up call as diving into the river literally. I sat in the rainbow lit spa, Rainbow beach on Monday night attempting to commit to cell memory what HOT felt like. Two weeks of sunshine, bikinis, beaches, tropical fruit and relaxation hopefully imprinting the DNA before the 18 hour trek home to a -7 degree frost and the cold metallic barrel of a long hard winter where making swede a delicacy lies before me. Your soaking in it - mantra. The urge to push myself under, to stay longer, to avoid coming back was tantalising close. The Plantation Resort had apartments for sale - A dual lifestyle beckoned. If animals had passports we could be there now. Cultural flexibility skills kicked in and we made ourselves taste everything about that option, exploring all we could of our surroundings to make sure the Disneyland effect could fade and we could see without our rainbow coloured glasses on. They slid to the end of our noses. BFO's for me always come from what we souvenir when away from the norm. A multitude of tips from holiday reading - Betterness: Economics for Humans by Umair Haque, will mix it up with dreams from Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern and a more fragrant home thanks to buddha bum frangipani and lemon grass scented candles, gifts from my kids. For them the priority carry on luggage included a sand dollar, four clip on koalas, super hero outfits, new swimmers and thongs demonstrating belief in the future, whimsy and wonder not that different to my own take home items. In a workshop I developed back in 1900 & 90 something - "small world" we explore the topic of culture shock and how to deal with it. I'm always fascinated when you arrive at a new place how the colours are bright, the smells and sounds enticing and all the fashion in the shops has an AMAZING MUST HAVE NOW kind of influencer. By the time you immerse in it all, roll around a bit and suck on the juicy bits you realise that you are so over things with studs on them you can manage to not own any except for those already in your snow tires. Fascinare - means to cast a spell. To take the essence of what you are looking at and immerse in it. To look and learn, to become engaged with things again. How long has it been since you have changed your environment? Immersed in a new world and got over excited about things from another perspective. Dived into the void and swum in things unfamiliar. Stepped out of your comfort zone and looked at what you would like to DO better or instead of what you are DO-ing now ? When was the last time you sucked on something new? Smelt it, dealt it kind of living. It would appear that those in the land of OZ are so much better at things than us Kiwis. Across the ditch they dress smart, smile, welcome you, joke with you, enjoy and cater for children and respect the flags - they genuinely seem to like their jobs and going to work each day. My "oh I know so much better than you" persona has decided that Australia may be yet to experience it's GFC. Things seem over geared and a little fragile. Retail down, cash rates changing, resorts in receivership proving tempting to buy though development may never ever ever get it back together. There is a smell like a dead rat in the rafter, like something has crept inside to hide from the winter and eaten up large on handouts. You can't quite place where the smell is coming from; it's almost sickly sweet... but you know somehow in your gut it has potential to get a lot worse before it gets better. How DO we make things better? Umair Haque has inspired me to toss out the mission and vision statements, objectives and strategies of doing business and to get jiggy with ambition, intention, constraints and imperatives. Good thing my business isn't called "objectives unlimited" anymore because that is so last century. The Night Circus has challenged my perspective on black and white, its entered my dream state and cast a spell. The DO party animal in me craves a Night Circus event. Contact me if you have an ambition for one too. I intend to find more ways to weave magic in daily life to invest in human potential and to correct the effects of old school ways of doing business - no pursuits that lead to diminishing the common wealth: widening economic inequality, the depletion of the natural world, and more. To get out of this trap, we need to rethink the future of human exchange, we can be inspired by our values and intentions and impose on ourselves limits of what we will DO and not DO. We can become more aware of the mechanics holding the game together and D.A.R.E to DO things another way. Engaging all our senses and sensibilities. Reaching inwards to find the human potential and immersing in things that delight our senses. We can become more child like on our journey. Trust that the future will be warm and welcoming, that treasure can be found where ever you go and that first step to being a superhero is to look the part. There is definite climate change amongst us. The world is experiencing rising anxiety. It may be as easy as tapping it out with Brad Yates on you tube. It may be as simple as taking a break to get better. Winter learning workshops with me supporting you with what to DO next will certainly engage the senses and warm up human potential - I'm back at the desk and charging ahead with gay abandon. Come join my circus and play.
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You've partied long and hard in the Queenstown good bars, schmoozing with hotties, spending your last $ at 5am on that cockadoodle-oink from Fergburger, thinking it would do you the next two meals and it did. Then the perfect winter storm disrupts ALL flights AND road access out of here and you are over that fine line between chaos and disorder. What would you do with zero cash and no way home for a day or two? In HongKong you'd sleep in the airport, but you won't be doing any of that in ZQN - our terminal wisely shuts shop between the last and first flights of the day. We locals need a break from the drama at some point and there is no alternative refuge. No half way house, no warm bus stops. Dollar chewing alternatives are every where you turn. This is an all too common scenario for some of the international revellers that frequent here. A gap between cashflow and serve-us's that seems like a glacial crevasse. Perhaps you are like my friend the wwoofer trading hours of work for bed and food so you can ride extreme bike trails on Skyline. Only to crush your kidney by trying to bungy over your handle bars. You've just found out the long-ride way that our closest base hospital is two bumpy hours south. You know no one in vegas and you didn't have your phone charger tucked into your lycra with which to call your mum. Prior to social networking these people would have been very unhappy campers indeed. Social media can be the collection point for soul-saving-support when life throws you a gap and you have no idea of how you are going to fill it. Messages of... I need a lift or a bed, has anyone seen this shop lifter? Or I have a few bulbs to give away or jokes to tell are building communities faster and in more user friendly ways than a chat to your neighbour over the fence could ever have imagineered. Having a digital presence is making us all into kinder more caring human beings. Each status update or tweet is a call to Act-i-on. Do I like this, how can I be involved, does it make me want to smile and pass it on? It's like learning to play nicely and share your toys all over again. It's a moment by moment challenge to live in integrity. To be certain that what you say, think and DO line up and are the same.There is a lot of crap-chat about fake profiles and watching how you put on your facebook face. Yet I choose to believe that what you do on line makes you so visable that your real world responds to it immediately, dynamically. If what you think you are like and what you are like fail to add up, real people quickly let you know. Those that haven't embraced their digital presence are becoming conspicuous by their absence. What to selfish to share? I love the speed at which solutions are created through digital platforming. A horse float found, a criminal arrested, a million likes to stop someone smoking. If you need an answer just ask Gog. If you need a job link up and hook in. For those who tell you to stop wasting time on line. Think how many hours there are between that airport reopening, or minutes lying flat on your back in hospital with no one to talk to and nothing to read. Care to connect and fill the gaps. Build bridges and get in underneath people, places and projects. Scroll rather than troll through your news feed and connections to make the world a closer and more caring place faster. Build a bridge and get over it. When we give we are all the more richer for being. |
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