Musings

Reflections on life lived by a coast

You are here: Home / Archives for Creativity

Virtual Valentine to Mom

•

Mom wearing a suit that she had made

Mom and Dad

This Valen­tine Day’s week­end was a time to remem­ber Mom. My mem­o­ries were trig­gered by the sound of sewing shears cut­ting through fab­ric on the din­ing room table. I was cut­ting out pieces for a med­i­ta­tion cush­ion, using a fab­ric rem­nant from cur­tains Mom made us years ago.

Remembering Mom’s Craft Skills

My mother was a remark­ably tal­ented seam­stress and tai­lor. She loved the chal­lenge of visu­al­iz­ing and then exe­cut­ing com­plex sewing pat­terns, such as the French cou­turier design­ers’ pat­terns that she would buy from Vogue. Her friends admired her fash­ion flair and skill at cre­at­ing multi piece out­fits, like the suit shown here.

Look­ing back, it’s hard to believe that she made me a Chris­t­ian Dior suit with a cape, as my back-to-school out­fit for sec­ond grade. Except for its yel­low satin lin­ing, the suit was very aus­tere — com­pletely inap­pro­pri­ate for school­yard play — and prob­a­bly too severe for a child to wear to church. I had no fash­ion sense, but learned to adore the way the cape could soar like a bird’s wing or Super­man’s cloak. I’d pump the swings as high as they could go, or jump down from tree branches, just to make the cape bil­low and flash its bright yel­low lin­ing.

Meditation cushion

Remem­ber­ing Mom while cut­ting fab­ric for a zab­u­ton

Unlike the other moms we knew, our mother sewed pro­fes­sion­ally while rais­ing six chil­dren. Peo­ple would come to our house so she could tai­lor their suits (she did­n’t have her own car). Shortly after giv­ing birth to her sev­enth child, Mom re-entered the work­force and became a bank­ing pro­fes­sional. From then on her sewing down­shifted to a seri­ous hobby, reserved for spe­cial occa­sion out­fits.

Our child­hood mem­o­ries are steeped in images of her sewing, the sounds of the machine and the shears slic­ing through lay­ers of fab­ric. She may not have inter­acted with us as much as we would have liked, but we under­stood how ded­i­cated she was to her craft. She was pas­sion­ate about sewing, even though she never said so explic­itly. (She was more likely to ratio­nal­ize it as a money-sav­ing endeavor…)

We trea­sure the mem­o­ries of her gifted hand­i­work: the Easter out­fits, the new clothes for school, gowns for proms or wed­dings, and later, chris­ten­ing gowns for her grand­chil­dren. Sadly, there are few pho­tos of the cloth­ing she made for the peo­ple she loved.

Learning from Mom

Mom taught me to knit and sew when I was six. No doubt it was a tac­tic to dis­tract me while she tended the younger chil­dren, or worked on dead­line for some­one’s promised out­fit. No mat­ter her moti­va­tion, I’ve always been grate­ful for her lessons. Given parental anx­i­eties today, it’s hard to believe that she encour­aged me to use her sewing machine when I was just 6 years old…

For the first 30 years of my life I sewed or knit­ted almost every­thing I wore, from blue jeans to dresses and out­er­wear. I also made my brides­maids’ dresses.

From our New Eng­land homes, I had easy access to woolen mills; could buy fab­rics and yarns at out­let prices directly from the pro­duc­ers. Mom loved going on those fab­ric shop­ping expe­di­tions, dri­ving across rural New Hamp­shire in search of woolen mills.

It’s been a long time since I went on a fab­ric or fiber shop­ping adven­ture… It’s been way too long since I did any sewing.

Dusting Off Those Crafting Skills

Last week I tried to mend a gar­ment and dis­cov­ered my Pfaff sewing machine was in dire need of a tune-up, after sit­ting idle for years while I focused on a West Coast career. Luck­ily I found a great repair ser­vice for this vin­tage machine, and it was all tuned up and back home within two days.

To relearn my sewing skills, I’ve begun work on a med­i­ta­tion cush­ion using mate­ri­als on hand. It’s been an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence, relearn­ing how to use this machine, how to rewind the bob­bin or select the right presser foot for the task, and how to exe­cute things I’ve long since for­got­ten, such as how to insert a zip­per for a pil­low cush­ion. It’s also caus­ing my fin­gers to move in unac­cus­tomed ways, to exe­cute pre­cise tasks like thread­ing a nee­dle — remind­ing me that my fin­gers aren’t as dex­ter­ous as they used to be.

Assembling a knitted sweater

Assem­bling a knit­ted sweater this week­end

I’ve noticed a change in the qual­ity of the writ­ten instruc­tions that accom­pany the sewing pat­terns. For exam­ple, my pat­tern says, “Insert the zip­per.” Pat­terns writ­ten years ago would have explained how… Luck­ily, I’ve got some old ref­er­ence guides that describe alter­na­tive meth­ods (e.g., for gar­ments ver­sus pil­lows), so I was able to insert the zip­per with­out hav­ing to rip it out and start over.

I’ve also resumed work on a knit­ting project I began a few months ago, com­mit­ted to fin­ish­ing it before win­ter’s end. As the photo shows, I’ve embarked on the trick­i­est part: seam­ing the pieces and attach­ing the sleeves to the body of the sweater. If all goes well, this project will be done this week.

Thanks, Mom, for shar­ing your love of sewing and knit­ting. They bring me joy — and remind me of you when­ever my hands are occu­pied with fiber crafts.

A Vintage Old Lady for Valentine’s Day

•

A vintage Pfaff 1171 sewing machine

A vin­tage Pfaff 1171 sewing machine

My 25-year-old Pfaff sewing machine is com­ing home from the tune-up shop this week­end. She needed repairs to her presser foot, and adjust­ments to ten­sion and stitch­ing pre­ci­sion. The repair­man also cleaned the mov­ing parts and removed the gunky oil and grease that had caused her to lock up.

These are the prob­lems that occur when a pre­ci­sion mechan­i­cal device is neglected for more than a decade. Now the repair­man says she’s run­ning “like brand new” [sic].

Mechanical versus Electronic?

I was lucky to buy this work­horse sewing machine, right at the tran­si­tion point when lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers were flirt­ing with early LCD screens and prim­i­tive soft­ware appli­ca­tions for high-end sewing machines.

Hav­ing spent my career in soft­ware and later at Apple, I was leery about the pit­falls of buy­ing an impor­tant house­hold appli­ance that was utterly depen­dent on early gen­er­a­tion soft­ware — and worse, soft­ware devel­oped by peo­ple who don’t under­stand what it takes to pro­duce (and main­tain) great soft­ware.

To put things in per­spec­tive: the Web had­n’t been invented, the Inter­net was used only by sci­en­tists and aca­d­e­mics, and few peo­ple had email addresses. The Mac had only been around for a few years, and Microsoft had not yet released Win­dows 3.o/3.1 — the ver­sions that cat­a­pulted them into the Big Time. Those were the early days of com­put­ers and soft­ware designed for ordi­nary peo­ple to use…

After exam­in­ing those early mod­els, I could see how poorly those indus­trial-era man­u­fac­tur­ers under­stood the require­ments of soft­ware capa­ble of delight­ing con­sumers for years to come. Unlike the 1990s prod­uct design­ers, my high tech career had taught me the impor­tance of:

  • A deep under­stand­ing of usabil­ity, and how must-haves ver­sus nice-to-haves will dif­fer across the var­i­ous seg­ments of peo­ple who use sewing machines
  • Use cases and require­ments rel­e­vant to spe­cific cat­e­gories of sewing: e.g., gar­ments ver­sus quilts ver­sus embroi­dery
  • Ease of soft­ware updates and bug fixes
  • Local­iza­tion of the user inter­face. As it is, the printed man­u­als are hard enough to use, because multi-lin­gual instruc­tions are inter­min­gled — rather than lan­guage-spe­cific sec­tions
  • Screen leg­i­bil­ity under the ambi­ent light­ing con­di­tions for home or pro­fes­sional sewing machine users

Despite my ini­tial inter­est in state-of-the-art elec­tronic machines, I opted for the tried-and-true mechan­i­cal approach, where the man­u­fac­tur­ers excelled. My 25-year-old machine relies on push but­ton con­trols, dials and levers to adjust set­tings. It has a “heavy duty build.” There’s no soft­ware to break, or con­troller boards to replace.

Buy­ing a mechan­i­cal sewing machine proves to have been a wise deci­sion for that time… When you scan Ebay, Craigslist or sewing enthu­si­ast blogs, you can see the lengths that some peo­ple go to in their quest to find a vin­tage mechan­i­cal sewing machine from Bern­ina or Pfaff… I feel lucky to have cho­sen as I did. I flinch at the prices charged for com­pa­ra­ble mod­els today.

While I’m attracted to some of the con­ve­nience fea­tures of today’s high end machines, it’s hard to ratio­nal­ize their high prices, just to match the func­tion­al­ity I have now… If I start sewing a lot, as I did in my teens and twen­ties, then a pre­mium sewing machine might make more sense. It’s hard to jus­tify now.

Thanks to an $89 tune-up, my Pfaff 1171 will run smoothly and sweetly once again. Bet­ter yet, I still have all the parts and acces­sories, all the nee­dles and bob­bins, plus a sewing cab­i­net with a (semi-func­tional) hydraulic lift. It’s a great set-up for my episodic use — peri­ods of intense projects fol­lowed by months (years?) of inac­tiv­ity. For what­ever rea­son, sewing is start­ing to appeal to me again.

New Projects

The green cover needs repair

The green cover needs repair

My hus­band hopes to repair the pro­tec­tive cov­ers for Frol­ic’s sails. It’s unlikely that this Pfaff has the horse­power for such a heavy-duty sewing project: sewing through mul­ti­ple lay­ers of can­vas. He focuses on how small the sail cov­ers are, and there­fore believes this project should be well within the capa­bil­i­ties of our vin­tage Pfaff. We’ll see what hap­pens.

But for now I can’t wait to start some eas­ier projects with Madame Pfaff, once that she’s back from her spa treat­ments tomor­row.

First up: a med­i­ta­tion cush­ion fea­tur­ing some vin­tage Thai silk, sewn from the rem­nants of fab­ric used for cur­tains in my hus­band’s child­hood home in Swarth­more.

Closing Thoughts

Happy Valen­tine’s Day to me, from Madame “Tip­per” Pfaff. A true old lady, with beauty and ele­gance that’s hard to match.

My sis­ter is lucky to have my moth­er’s Pfaff 1171. I just hope she knows where to get it tuned up when needed… (We live on oppo­site coasts.)

For Women Who Want to Reinvent Themselves

•

Not every­one is blessed with a tech-savvy father, as I am. In the past half hour he’s talked about his Face­book time­line, shar­ing pho­tos via Drop­box, and using social net­work­ing tech­nolo­gies as a means of help­ing oth­ers. The fact that my dad is over 85 makes his famil­iar­ity with these options even more impres­sive.

But what really struck me is his lov­ing con­cern for my sis­ter and her friends, and how they might go about rein­vent­ing them­selves pro­fes­sion­ally. He is con­cerned not just for my sister’s cir­cle of friends, but because he rec­og­nizes that their chal­lenges are shared by hun­dreds of thou­sands, if not mil­lions, of other Amer­i­can women.

These are women in the prime of their lives: expe­ri­enced, vibrant, ener­getic, full of ideas, with a pas­sion­ate desire to con­tribute to their fam­ily and com­mu­ni­ties — and woe­fully under- or unem­ployed. Where’s the JOBS Act for them?

They exited the work­force in order to spend the past 10 or 15 years rais­ing their fam­i­lies. Nowa­days their kids are increas­ingly inde­pen­dent (except for trans­port and access to cash or credit cards!) This cre­ates the pos­si­bil­ity for these stay-at-home moms to re-enter the work­force, to con­tribute their wis­dom and capa­bil­i­ties in exchange for some form of com­pen­sa­tion.

But there’s a big catch…

These women have time and energy to invest in the next chap­ter of their career, but they fail to con­nect with today’s employ­ers, so they can’t land jobs that stick. Sadly, their tech­ni­cal skills are years out of date… If they’re lucky enough to get a job inter­view, they may find them­selves 10–15 years older than the hir­ing man­agers, who prob­a­bly lack the will­ing­ness or time to invest in retrain­ing Boomer women for today’s require­ments.

Temp­ing is an option, albeit less than ideal, but they’re at a gen­er­a­tional dis­ad­van­tage com­pared to recent col­lege grad­u­ates and the “dig­i­tal natives” who pre­dom­i­nate in many temp agen­cies. They may not under­stand the rules of engage­ment when it comes to temp agen­cies and the con­tracts between agen­cies and their clients.

Seek­ing mean­ing and self-esteem (not to men­tion com­pan­ion­ship, a trim­mer fig­ure, or a daily dose of endor­phins), they flock to yoga, Pilates and Zumba classes…

My sis­ter tells sto­ries of how her friends try to help or advise each other, after class or in cof­fee shops. Dad won­ders if there’s an online com­mu­nity that would enable them to help each other more effec­tively. His take is that there’s lots of talk, but no fol­low-through (for lack of a pro­duc­tive struc­ture to their con­ver­sa­tions?)

When asked, I was­n’t able to name spe­cific online com­mu­ni­ties where women pro­vide con­struc­tive advice and men­tor­ing to those who want to re-enter the work­force after a multi-year absence… I also sus­pect, at least for this gen­er­a­tion of Boomer women, that social bonds and trust are crit­i­cal; few are likely to reach out to strangers for help when it comes to things that touch on self-esteem. For chal­lenges like this their rela­tion­ships would need to have a real-world ground­ing before being extended into a vir­tual com­mu­nity.

Women Helping Women, Like a Book Club

business-model-you-book

But I did have a prac­ti­cal idea that my sis­ter and her friends could do at very lit­tle cost. They could meet together once or twice a month, like a book club, and com­mit to work together on a jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery with the aid of a book called Busi­ness Model You.

At each meet­ing they would work together or sep­a­rately through a set of career “rein­ven­tion exer­cises,” help­ing each other as sound­ing boards and cheer­lead­ers. Each ses­sion would focus on one aspect of their per­sonal value can­vas, as shown below (thanks to www​.Busi​ness​Mod​e​lYou​.com). Ide­ally, some­one would facil­i­tate each ses­sion.

Business-Model-You-canvas-concept

They could use the rec­om­mended activ­i­ties and check­lists in the best-sell­ing book, Busi­ness Model You, as a per­sonal roadmap.

At the end of the process, they are likely to end up with at least one career con­cepts that they could val­i­date.

Peo­ple who are seri­ous about explor­ing new career vis­tas and are will­ing to be intro­spec­tive should def­i­nitely buy the book.

Ddis­clo­sure: I was a con­tribut­ing co-author, along with hun­dreds of other insight­ful and tal­ented peo­ple around the world.

Do you know any­one who has worked with women in this sit­u­a­tion? I’m not talk­ing about pro­fes­sional life coaches, but women help­ing women to rein­vent them­selves…

Cultivating Silence, For Better Writing

•

“Silence is golden.” Or so we’ve heard for cen­turies; a prover­bial say­ing that’s con­sis­tent across cul­tures.

The ques­tion is, in an amped-up, caf­feine-fueled, texting/tweeting world of con­stant dis­trac­tions, is there a place for silence in busi­ness? That is, can a more beau­ti­fully silent space lead to bet­ter writ­ing?

Or is this a ques­tion whose answer varies by age, with time for silence or con­tem­pla­tion a con­cept that appeals more pow­er­fully to peo­ple over 40?

Do peo­ple write bet­ter, think more clearly, if they have the lux­ury of doing so in an envi­ron­ment that screens out noise and dis­trac­tions? Does focus lead to bet­ter writ­ing, con­tent that’s more likely to res­onate with oth­ers? Can a blank can­vas invoke more cre­ativ­ity?

It’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion, one that I think is best answered on an indi­vid­ual basis. It’s also pos­si­ble that indi­vid­ual pref­er­ences are more sit­u­a­tional, linked to time and place, or what you’re think­ing or writ­ing about. Or: who’s pay­ing for your time and why…

A writer’s haven

If you’d like to expe­ri­ence the impact of dis­trac­tion-free silence while writ­ing, there’s a min­i­mal­ist tool for Mac, PC and iPad users called “OmmWriter Dana.” It’s kind of a zen-like, Steve Jobs-inspired approach to the act of writ­ing. Its Barcelona-based cre­ators call it “a writer’s haven.”

OmmWriter Dana

The min­i­mal­ist ver­sion can be down­loaded for free to your Mac; a paid-ver­sion offers a broader selec­tion of color schemes and audio themes designed to cul­ti­vate focus, con­tem­pla­tion and enhance cre­ativ­ity.

I’m using the basic ver­sion of OmmWriter to draft this blog post. OmmWriter enables me write the basic post, hid­ing the rest of my Mac­in­tosh envi­ron­ment (includ­ing turn­ing off my sec­ondary dis­play where I nor­mally scan incom­ing emails, tweets, etc.)

To turn this draft into a blog, I copy my draft, and then paste it into Word­Press where I’ll add the appro­pri­ate HTML tags, cat­e­gory tags and so on. This sep­a­rates the writ­ing process from the markup process.

Whether this two-step approach enhances cre­ativ­ity is too soon to say defin­i­tively. What I do know is that the actual expe­ri­ence of writ­ing with OmmWriter is more delight­ful than when writ­ing a blog inside Word­Press, LiveWriter, NotePad or any of the usual word pro­cess­ing tools.

Try it your­self, and see how it helps your writ­ing.

Tangled Up in Green

•

Over cof­fee last week I was rem­i­nisc­ing with a friend who’s pas­sion­ate about music, par­tic­u­larly Bob Dylan and other artists from the folk-rock era. While sip­ping lattes, Dave told the story of what inspired Dylan’s song, Tan­gled Up in Blue — a recent foray into paint­ing. Appar­ently Dylan adapted a remark from his art teacher: that begin­ners often get “tan­gled up in the blue” sec­tion of their palette.

Dave was enchanted by a recent biog­ra­phy of Dylan, writ­ten by a his­to­rian and Dylan fan, result­ing in a fas­ci­nat­ing explo­ration of the polit­i­cal, social and cul­tural milieu that informed Dylan’s art. Some­how we kept return­ing to the “tan­gled up” phrase dur­ing our con­ver­sa­tion.

Since then the phrase, snatches of the song and images of blue have been rever­ber­at­ing in my head. A pleas­ing form of blues obses­sion…

And now the con­cept has mor­phed into “tan­gled up in green,” sparked the visual explo­sion of spring green every­where I look here in the Pacific North­west.

Green-Leaves-of-Spring

After a long grey and insanely rainy win­ter, this ver­dant fire is a feast for warmth-starved eyes.

What Story Does Your Face Tell?

•

My brother is writ­ing a book with his step­daugh­ter about their scar­ily par­al­lel sto­ries as can­cer fight­ers and sur­vivors. At the moment, they’re work­ing on author pho­tos for the book cover. This process has made me think about the sto­ries that faces tell, or hint at; the mes­sages that can be per­ceived sub­lim­i­nally when your photo appears in dif­fer­ent con­texts — like a book jacket, a Face­book page, etc. [Read more…]

Color Your World

•

Interview view of Seattle Yoga Arts' new studio

Col­orists, inte­rior design­ers and other experts know how to influ­ence moods and atti­tu­di­nal state by the col­ors that sur­round peo­ple at work, at home or at play. I was reminded of the power of color at yesterday’s Anusara yoga class.

Before class, we were all buzzing about the energy we feel in Seat­tle Yoga Arts’ new venue (shown above).

The stu­dio is vibrant, alive with heart-warm­ing hues: reds, oranges, pinks, mus­tard yel­lows, and pur­ple accents. The play­ful inte­rior offers a huge (and wel­come) con­trast to the orig­i­nal stu­dio a few blocks north. While this ener­giz­ing palette may not be opti­mal for inspir­ing med­i­ta­tion or con­tem­pla­tion, it fires our asanas. An appro­pri­ate choice for Anusara’s heart-cen­tered phi­los­o­phy.

As one color expert writes,

…Red sug­gests the very ebb and flow of life. It is the most vis­cer­ally alive hue, the sym­bolic color of the heart, strong-willed and express­ing strong emo­tions. It may com­mand us to stop but at the same time encour­ages move­ment. Phys­i­o­log­i­cally, red is a call to the adren­a­line glands to get the body and senses acti­vated.

—Leatrice Eise­man, Color: Mes­sages and Mean­ings

Dri­ving home, still pon­der­ing the impact of color, I recalled two starkly dif­fer­ent office envi­ron­ments from ear­lier in my career, back in my Sil­i­con Val­ley days.

Apple’s col­or­ful, care­fully designed office envi­ron­ments were a play­ful but ener­giz­ing con­trast to HP’s drab office spaces and linoleum floors. HP’s office always made me think of a house that was func­tional, but unloved. Although sep­a­rated by only 2 miles, they were oceans apart in terms of cor­po­rate cul­ture and design sen­si­bil­i­ties. Apple’s envi­ron­ment stim­u­lated my brain and inspired me to do my best; HP’s depressed me into a low-energy, dull and plod­ding state — one I couldn’t wait to leave.

The Sound of Her Voice

•

If you’re a yoga stu­dent who lives in an area blessed with lots of stu­dios and tal­ented teach­ers, you can be more dis­crim­i­nat­ing when choos­ing where to take classes or which teach­ers to fol­low. Now that I’m no longer a rank begin­ner, I’ve started to pay closer atten­tion to the fac­tors that cause me to pre­fer some teach­ers over oth­ers. And one of those fac­tors is, I con­fess, the sound of her voice.

yoga-class

Why the Voice Matters in Yoga

The sound of a teacher’s voice is an impor­tant aspect of a class: what she says and how she says it. It’s a mat­ter of per­sonal taste, but some voices are — to my ear at least— more pleas­ing than oth­ers. In any given class I spend a lot of time lis­ten­ing with either eyes closed or atten­tion focused else­where (the drishti gaze). When I’m not actively watch­ing the teacher, the sound of her voice helps me focus my prac­tice or iden­tify where a micro-adjust­ment might be required. What she says and how she says it can make all the dif­fer­ence between yoga-as-gym-activ­ity and yoga as some­thing more mean­ing­ful or uplift­ing.

Does the teacher’s voice direct your atten­tion to the key focal point(s) for your pose? Does it help you crys­tal­lize your inten­tion or improve your abil­ity to shift into your med­i­ta­tion space?

Yes, of course, the con­tent of what the teacher says and how she deliv­ers her instruc­tions are hugely impor­tant. That’s the start­ing point, the sine qua non. If the teacher’s instruc­tional style or her abil­ity to guide you is out of whack with your needs and capa­bil­i­ties, noth­ing else mat­ters: you need to find a teacher bet­ter suited to what you need to learn, or unlearn. Solve that prob­lem first.

Once you’ve found a set of tal­ented teach­ers whose instruc­tion style and yoga tra­di­tion match your pref­er­ences, then you can start to pay atten­tion to other fac­tors, like class size, the nature of the invo­ca­tions or read­ings, etc. The spir­i­tual con­tent (or lack thereof). The smell of the stu­dio. Its décor. The props on offer.

Ide­ally, I pre­fer classes that are small enough to offer semi-indi­vid­u­al­ized atten­tion on how to improve your pose, align­ment, action, drishti focal point — what­ever. But it’s rare to find a high qual­ity, uncrowded class. In this par­tic­u­lar urban area crowded classes are the norm, unless you’ve found a new teacher, a new stu­dio just devel­op­ing its fol­low­ing, or can take classes at unpop­u­lar hours.

In large or crowded classes, it can be dif­fi­cult to see the teacher when your mat is not up in the front, except for those moments when she stops the class to demon­strate a new or chal­leng­ing pose. In classes like this the voice mat­ters more than ever. It’s the car­rier for good instruc­tion.

Implications for Teachers

If you’re try­ing to attract more stu­dents, think about ways to offer a trial expe­ri­ence of your voice, the qual­ity of your instruc­tion. What about offer­ing some sam­ple pod­casts or an online video clip to show­case how you teach and inter­act with stu­dents? Pick a pose or two, find a will­ing stu­dent or two, and get someone’s help to record/video the instruc­tional moment.

Then look for appro­pri­ate places online where you can pub­lish or offer your sam­ple of how you teach your stu­dents. Face­book, YouTube, your studio’s web­site, iTunes, online yoga com­mu­ni­ties — you now have lots of rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive oppor­tu­ni­ties to show­case what makes you such an inspir­ing teacher. And if this is all tech­ni­cally beyond your skillset, per­haps you can barter some free classes in exchange for tech­ni­cal or pro­fes­sional help with your pod­cast or sam­ple video.

If you con­tribute to a blog, think about ways to offer a brief pod­cast or audio clip in which you share your voice, your val­ues, or what you’re all about as a teacher and yoga prac­ti­tioner.

Share your voice.

What Matters Now

•

Every now and then you come across a gem to share broadly with oth­ers: What Mat­ters Now, a com­pi­la­tion of great ideas by bril­liant thinkers and change agents. Agent provo­ca­teur Seth Godin has pro­duced this com­pi­la­tion and offers it as a free down­load­able ebook from his blog. He encour­ages like-minded folk who are sick and tired of the sta­tus quo to do like­wise.

Each of these big thinkers has offered up pearls of wis­dom from their life’s expe­ri­ence or their pro­fes­sional adven­tures — and some of their notions will res­onate for days after in your mind. It’s easy to con­sume: one big idea per page.

big-thinkers

For exam­ple, con­sider this gem [Read more…]

Following Through on New Year’s Resolutions

•

It’s that time of year again, time to review what worked (and what didn’t) in 2009, imag­ine new pos­si­bil­i­ties, dream, and set inten­tions for the com­ing year. I’ve been enjoy­ing the process of set­ting some action­able goals for 2010, while iden­ti­fy­ing some larger aspi­ra­tions that I’d like to trans­late into action.

To pre­pare my plan for 2010 I’ve been read­ing a bunch of books, mag­a­zines and online resources.

The chal­lenge, of course, is how to make sure you fol­low through on the New Year’s res­o­lu­tions, once past the early enthu­si­asm and first few weeks of good inten­tions… [Read more…]