#69 - Out Of The Extra-Ordinary

Today in Cambridge, my neighbourhood is at its most beautiful. Covered in powdery snow, the landscape exudes a regal calm. I've been out for several walks and whoops, the cold air waking me up to the magnificence of being alive. I've chatted with neighbours I've never seen before and laughed with kids throwing snow-balls. There's a real feeling of community here as the extra-ordinariness of today takes us out of our houses and jobs and into our streets. We've been given the chance to see the familiar anew.

For some, weather like this is inconvenient at best, dangerous at worst. I'm under no illusions that snow is pure magic. If you're dependent on help arriving at your door or need to get somewhere urgently, this is no fun and my heart goes out to you. For many of us, though, we can seize today as a chance to get off the treadmill, postpone till tomorrow, grab our friends, family, partner and colleagues and reconnect, rest, energise and reflect. We can take time out of the ordinary to enjoy the full potential of the extra-ordinary.

At its very least, this weather reminds us of how beholden we are to nature, to our climate. We are not in control, no matter how much we pretend to be. The huge snowflakes blowing in my face this morning said loud and clear: Sometimes you have to receive and adapt. We must be open to negotiating new ways of living. When the bus doesn't run, the car's snowed under or the school's shut down, we create new options - for one day, maybe for more. When we allow ourselves to detach from business as usual, we find different - sometimes preferable - ways of living in these times.

Sometimes our world does things differently - and we just get to follow...

Do Things Differently
1) Inquiry: How do I respond when the extra-ordinary happens, when 'business as usual' is not possible?
2) Inquiry: Where in my life am I trying to fight to re-establish business as usual when I could let go and trust that another way is possible? Which of life's circumstances could I receive and adapt to?
3) For goodness sake, get out there! In the UK as in other parts of the world, this snow is so rare and so precious. Let's get wet, get dirty, take the risk of saying hello to people, swing out.
4) Please feel free to comment on this post, letting us know about your laughter and learnings on this snow day.

(c) Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

** Does fear of failing keep you plodding on with business as usual, even though you're longing for the extra-ordinary? **
My Fail Is Not A Four Letter Word workshop this Saturday only has ONE place left and I may have a taker so instead of promoting that, I'm including a link to an 'expression of interest' form. This means you'll be first to hear about future workshops, 1-1 coaching & e-products to support you with breaking free from this discomfort.
Click here to let me know you'd like to be free from fear of failure sometime soon!

#58 - Connect, Collaborate, Commit

This is Global Entrepreneurship Week and to mark its start, I volunteered at the first day of Chain Reaction, an event which saw 700 people gather to explore how entrepreneurship can be a source of social good.

There was a variety of inspirational speakers including Tim Smit of the Eden Project, Sophi Tranchell of Divine Chocolate, and Eugenie Harvey of We Are What We Do. My greatest surprise of the day was the closing remarks made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. His focus was on the economy but not the all-too-familiar message of "this is just a downturn, we'll be back to big, strong, lean and mean again soon" of which many politicians and business people are trying to persuade us. Instead, he acknowledged the economic crisis as one and the same as our resource crisis, emphasised the 'climate change imperative' and urged the importance of investing in renewable energy and agriculture. He described these times as experiencing the birth pangs intrinsic to us becoming a global community and as such that they alert us to the need for transition phases.

In many ways, the general thrust of the day was similar to the approach taken by Rob Hopkins, instigator of the Transition Movement - that we are entering transition years and that the innovation, ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit which got us in to this situation can now be re-harnessed and directed towards finding solutions to the world's needs.

As I left the conference and spotted in the newspaper that more City jobs are being cut, I had a vision of those thousands of people moving not from employment to unemployment, but to enterprise. A move away from complacent expectation that someone else will employ us as a cog in some wheel.... to a belief that we can have great ideas, gather with others to turn them into reality, and effect social change through doing so.

It feels like time to get excited. There's the sense of a new model of business emerging. It's not the old way where business is set up purely for the sake of profit with the directors perhaps developing a conscience later in life, creating philanthropic foundations to offset the damage their enterprise has done. The new model is that enterprise itself is a vehicle for answering society's needs.

The win-win-win nature of this transaction continually inspires me. I spoke to two women at the conference who were feeling increasingly frustrated as the day went on. They were hearing about all these inspirational projects yet feeling that their own gifts were being wasted, their potential not fulfilled. I hear this so frequently when interviewing women for my Inspirational 100 project - the pain of that gap between what you could be doing, and what you are doing. One of the women started crying as she told me that in her previous decade of working life she felt that she had added no value. She knew that she could give, and that she WAS, more than that. It reiterated to me this great human need for personal fulfilment through fulfilling our own potential - and that one way of doing this is by fulfilling a need in the world through enterprise.

Do Things Differently
1) Inquiry: What is the most entrepreneurial thing I have ever done? What was it like to match my strengths/interests with a need in the world?
2) Inquiry: If starting a business were the only way to effect social change, what need would I want to meet and how could a business model serve that need?
3) If there were no time to waste and you were really needed right now, what would be your next action step? Get whatever support you need to make it. * *

(c) Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2008

NEW!! - A Business Called You. Workshop - 29th November 2008, Cambridgeshire. This is the very exciting launch of a new workshop designed for anyone who is considering starting their own entrepreneurial venture. Devised and facilitated by me and hosted by Swavesey Village College at Community Education rates, this is a FANTASTIC opportunity to attend a super-affordable, high-impact workshop and get you moving on that entrepreneurial path. For more information, visit my website and then leave your details so I can forward them to the college's booking office. * *

#41 - Making A Pledge

Getting married has you think a lot. There are lots of the details of the wedding to arrange - the marquees, food, dresses, music etc - and underneath all of that is, of course, the core of the occasion:the vows. What is is that we're wanting to promise each other? What are our commitments? And why??

Pledging also came up for me when choosing our honeymoon. We spent days and days trawling through 'eco tourism' and 'responsible travel' websites, trying to find the 'perfect location'. We were giddy from spinning all around the world and getting nowhere. All along, my conscience was feeling travel sick, its quiet voice reminding me that aviation is the single biggest contributor to climate change. Flying to Australia to see the Great Barrier Reef - whose very ecosystem is threatened by climate change - felt too ironic. How could I fly, knowing that it damages the environment and people's lives, when I don't need to?

It's one thing to say something, it's another to pledge it. I guess that's a key reason why we get married - to publicly pledge what we've been saying all along. And so I typed in 'flight pledge' and came across http://lowflyzone.org/ where you can commit to being free from flying, or flying less, for a year. It's inspiring to read the database of names of those who've pledged and their reasons for doing so, and I felt proud to sign up as #620 in a long list of committed people. There is something hugely validating about promising something and being witnessed by others.

I'm learning how much an outer pledge can support our inner commitment and strengthen it. Travel-wise, I feel the world has opened up since making that pledge, because I have smaller areas of the world to focus on and so can explore more deeply. Likewise with our relationship, it feels liberating to know that I will be loving and sharing with this one person for life; it excites my curiosity - given that we've promised to stay together through challenging times, as well as easy times, how will we do it? Who will we become, what inner resources will we discover?

I often see people not achieving anything significant because they are concerned that saying "no" to certain paths and committing to others would restrict them, or 'burn their bridges'. Yet pledges really are about saying "no" to make room for a more meaningful "yes". By saying "no" to this, what "yes" does this open up for me? As any fan of de-cluttering knows, having less options can bring more space and more simplicity.

Oh - and in case you were curious about our honeymoon "yes" - we're going to a turf-roofed eco-cottage in the Outer Hebrides. Doing Things Differently indeed....

Action: Scan your life for an area where you feel stuck, half-hearted, where you are going back and forth. Decide whether you are ready to make a pledge - whether a "no" could open up a more appealing "yes", or what a "yes" could liberate you from - and then make it. Tell someone, maybe even pledge on-line, and notice what it's like to be witnessed in your commitment, to have that accountability.

Inquiry: What does committing to this open up for me?