Saw the girly electro punk band The RGB's last night at Bardens and they were pretty ace.

Here's a typically rubbish phone photo to whet your curiosity. If you look carefully you can see the frontwoman is wearing an ingenious LEOTARD.

We must ask ourselves what lessons can I learn from my relationship with my family members - may be I am impatient, or I don't know how to control my anger, or is it that I really don't know how to listen and understand others.

Learning these lessons prepares us to deal with people better in the workplace and every where else outside the family. Our communication skills improve, we become more pleasant to relate to, and we can become the center of attraction. We become the law of attraction and we can attract success beyond our imagination.

We can apply the same principles in business. Think of customers, employees, partners, vendors, management, and other stakeholders as family members. Imagine the success a business can have with this principle of loving everyone. Loving does not mean we do not deal with the problems or negative behaviors of people, on the contrary we carefront the people because we care about the people (instead of confrontation). We look at the business reasons to have certain workplace performance level and professional behaviors. We choose to create win-win agreements with each person because we care about them.

Reading: "Well excuse me for not examining the duality of human nature in just a few short pages of effortless prose."

Thinking: The women in my group of friends put mules to shame with our stubbornness.

Enjoying: 'Jesus loves the fundies almost as much as He loves you' ;-)

How to Annoy Me: Try to make me think at 1 in the morning. "Fire bad, tree pretty" is all you're gonna get.

How to Charm Me: "Make it easier when life gets hard."

Quote of the Day: There's a way to do it better - find it. - Thomas Edison

"Old habits die hard. While consumers are out there spending countless hours on social networks, file sharing applications, chat, community sites, buying stuff, selling stuff and using multiple devices, some of us tradigital old fogies are still reaching for our beloved toolbox of the past in the hopes of getting their attention...Little did we know that the real action happens in the comments. Have we thought about talking back to people or are we really just interested in telling our stories?" 

I think this is a great question  to ask -- and one that should be taken a step further.  Why are companies so much more interested in talking, rather than listening?  

There are myriad reasons, but I think many of them boil down to the same thing.  It's easier.  It's so much easier to just speak your mind, tell your story, and make your pitch than it is to listen critically and effortfully.  Because more often than not, good listening will force a business to additional action -- evaluate, respond, adapt, change -- and that means more work.  

So why listen and do the extra work?  I'll give you three good reasons.  One: Listening to your audience helps you to determine if your brand story resonates with them.  Listen closely enough and they'll tell you what triggers an emotional response and that will help you tighten (or even change) your message.  Two:  Listening to your audience provides avenues for meaningful actions.  Look at user-generated reviews, comments and threads.  Your customers are more than happy to tell you what works and doesn't work for them and in this competitive environment, that instant feedback is priceless.  Take it a step further, like Zappos.com, and you can turn customer service into a point of differentiation that earns you brand loyalty.  Three:  Listening is the only way you turn storytelling into a dialogue.  And being part of a genuine dialogue helps you develop authenticity with a savvy consumer population.  The digital economy is fluid.  A product that someone reads about on CNET, buys on Amazon, reviews on Epinions, posts on CraigsList and sells on eBay touches so many more people than just that one customer.  Your brand story travels with that.

Rather than having customers do the digital equivalent of talking about you behind your back, don't you want to be a part of the conversation?

Even though I am willing to bet I've experienced more in the 3 years of middle school than most people experience in a lifetime.

Just a thought I had.

I was extremely suicidal at one point in my life, enough to actually seek out the services of a counselor.

You wanna know what he told me?

He told me I seemed fine and that I was probably just bored from vacation.

In other words, "stop wasting my time and let me actually deal with the people who really need help."

That's right, because nothing I do and nothing I experience is real and everyone knows what it feels like to have my nerve endings better than I do. Even though I've had a front row seat for the past 24 years. Go ahead and tell me how rough you've had it in your life and how minuscule my own difficulties are.

Please go ahead and do that. I'm feeling the need to bruise my knuckles on somebody's face. Want to be that one?

Gotta love being the youngest in a family. Your experiences are worth shite.

I mean, what makes you real and me not?

People tell me, "never say that you can't do something." I don't have to. They have already said it for me. Thanks. One less thing to do today.

Ever wonder why people self-injure? There are many reasons. One is because they feel numb to all sensations, and they need that adrenaline kick that says "yes, you are real." You know why they need that? Because they've been told all their lives that what they feel isn't real and even if it was, it's certainly not important.

Do people overreact? Yes.

Should you make them feel like shite for it?

They say that people on the spectrum have ToM problems. Theory of Mind. Yes I linked Wikipedia. I also read it. I suggest that if you are unfamiliar with this concept, you should read it as well. I would particularly like to point out one particular phrase:

Being able to attribute mental states to others and understanding them as causes of behavior means, in part, that one must be able to conceive of the mind as a “generator of representations”[3][4] and

to understand that others’ mental representations of the world do not necessarily reflect reality and can be different from one’s own.

They say that people on the spectrum can't understand that other people don't think the same way that they do. I don't think that's a spectrum trait. I think it's a human trait.

I also think that we are often, in some ways, more aware of the mental states of NTs than they are of ours. They are just as guilty, if not moreso, for failing to employ this premise with their day to day interactions as we are.

The Golden Rule states "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Now, I believe in a form of universal consciousness. After all, why do people all decide to go to the gas station one time? I mean, I worked at a gas station for 6 months last year. You'd be on a shift that was going pretty slow, relatively speaking, and then without apparent cause or relationship, you'd be swamped.

That said, I don't believe that you should treat people exactly as you wish to be treated; rather I believe that "you should treat people as they wish to be treated." All I did was change one word. That's it. But no. Everyone thinks the same. Everyone experiences everything the same.

And if they did that when they were your age, and they survived? Then by god, it wasn't that bad. After all, nowadays people live indoors, wear shoes and have all of that technology crap.

And if you ever read this, Michael Savage, I want to let you know something. I was rather perturbed at your statements that you made on the air about your opinion on autism and me and mine.

Then I had a thought.

If you don't want to believe in me, then I don't have to believe in you. *shrugs*

There is no such thing as Michael Savage. Sure, he might be a person. But he's not real. I don't believe in him. Therefore, he doesn't exist. Neither do his opinions.

See how logical my argument is?

Reading: Still reading 'The Shack'. Absolutely heart-rending.

Thinking: Thank God for 3 day weekends.

Enjoying: The nagging wife :-D

How to Annoy Me: Get an attitude with me for absolutely no reason first thing in the morning.

How to Charm Me: Offer to stay on IM if I need someone safe to talk to.

Quote of the Day: Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation. - Oscar Wilde

In line with my interest in organizational culture and organizational understanding, I've taken on a contract to write an organizational history for Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB). We're looking forward to collecting so many of the stories that have made the history and culture of this organization what it is, and I'm heading up the work to compile all of this and more into book form. This week I'm loving the way this combines my skills in anthropology, background in psychology, and love for writing - I'm eager to sink my teeth into this for a few months to come.

Secondly, last weekend I took a phenomenal Coaches Training course. The model of Co-Active coaching taught at the Coaches Training Institute felt like home to me - assuming the coaching client is "creative, resourceful, and whole", the expert on their own life, with the coach available with tools and processes to help the client dig deeper in understanding what's meaningful to him/her and creating a life in line with that. It's familiar because it's how I approach facilitation - that the group is the expert, the group has the answers within it, and it's the facilitator's role to provide the process and space and support for the group to find their answers.

I've decided to take the leap: I will continue the coaching training and complete the four remaining training courses required in order to start the International Coaching Federation certification process. I'm looking forward to putting these new skills to work, starting by taking on clients at reduced rates in order to practice my developing skills. So far, the experiences have been good, and inspiring. Hearing people talk about what really matters to them is an utterly rewarding way to spend one's days.

The first time was on freereads. A voice speaks of the Beverley Hillbillies and television and raccoons. He queries his listeners to see what they know and how many unique visitors he has and how interested they are. The business about counting the unique visitors is amusing in light of blogging and getting all obsessed with statistics. Once the narrator works out when and where he is, he fights back in small ways and gets a small victory. I liked it.

The second time was when I read it out loud to my friends. As the story is all dialog, it's a lot of fun to read. I really liked it.

But the third time, with Readercon coming, I read it silently. Despite my anticipation, I found the narrator annoying and the jokes fell flat. Without the energy of a good reader, I didn't like it.

I heard it the fourth time when it was presented as a one-act play at Readercon. That was the best way to "read" it. It was the entire story spoken aloud, with a little bit of stage business to dramatize it. Being part of an audience laughing at the jokes was the best part. I loved it.

I am struck by how many different things come out of what seems a slender story. Or perhaps "flexible "would be a better word. You can see how the interaction between reader and story changes the experience each time. There's yet another version, a second reading with an audience, available on freereads. I wonde what that one's like...

1. Try to imagine how startled the other person might be when you respond. It's often easy to judge from the other conversations people are having, whether they are used to talking with strangers on the internet. Most people choose to be in denial about the open nature of the internet, so it helps your cause to not perturb their flimsy shells.
2. If responding makes sense, but you feel that the other person will be startled, use a long introduction describing what you do and why you do it. Something on the lines of "My name is XYZ and I work at BigCorp. I try to proactively help people who're having trouble with our services, so I run daily searches for anyone writing about our product on the internet. My searches brought your blog to my attention today..." would work nicely. The buffer of words helps soften the surprise. If you're surprised by what they've written, say so - mutual surprise often has a way of resolving in laughter.
3. Choose the medium you want to use carefully. Some people are pleasantly surprised when you respond to them with a personal email sent to an address they expose. Twitterers almost always appreciate replies, but don't want you to start following them just because they tweeted about your brand once (I learnt this one the hard way). Tracking back someone who doesn't even know they're using a "blog" is just nuts.
4. Never, ever use the words "monitor" or "overheard"

In the end, simply use your emotional & social intelligence. Try to put yourself in the context of where the other person is coming from. Not everyone thinks about the internet the way you do.

You can do the same thing for your parents, your sibling, or your romantic partner or your business partner.  Don't be surprised if your relationship with them keeps on improving.  You can change the environment in your workplace just by truly listening and paying attention to what your customers, associates, and vendors are saying.

Take the initiative today and be one of the first seven people who can share this experience with others soon.

Randy Pausch died this morning. Besides his inspiring lecture, the book and his wisdom, he left us with the spirit of 'going for it'. Leave your comfort zone to try for something you really want. You don't always have to change the world (Once in a while is perfectly fine). Take smaller risks each day and choose the big ones wisely.  And then give it all and even more, when you take that risk.

"The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They are there to stop the OTHER people!" - Randy Pausch

It's been an honor knowing you.

Today, one of the creative team leaders at our office referred to Pausch's speech today in his feature column, which was about how you should 'Go for it', meaning you must leave your comfort zone to try for something you desire. It doesn't have to be big and earth-shattering. Even smaller risks in life are healthy, and in many ways, no less important than bigger ones.

For SF, there's Escape Pod & Podcastle, Starship Sofa and they might have mentioned Beam Me Up. And of course, Jim Kelly has Free Reads and StoryPod, and Cory Doctorow has Craphound.

As Liz Gorinsky remarked, with the New Yorker Fiction, the cool part is that a writer gets to pick a story from their archives, read it, and discuss it. For instance, in a recent one, Jonathan Lethem reads and discusses "The Wood Duck" by James Thurber. Another good literary podcast is Selected Shorts, where actors read contemporary fiction. (I think that might be one that Jim Freund mentioned in his Reading Aloud workshop.)

ZBS has been creating wonderful stories that pick up where Fireside Theater left off, from "The Fourth Tower of Inverness" to "Ruby". You can get books at Librivox, podiobooks.com, and audible.com.

Interesting non-fiction podcasts include In Our Time and Material World from BBC 4, as well as Science Friday from NPR, and Quirks & Quarks from CBC. There are SF Interview podcasts, like If You're Just Joining Us and Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing.

And if you still can't find what you're looking for, the closest thing to a gateway to podcasts is SFFAudio.

If you want to start your own podcast, Mary Robinette Kowal has an excellent series on reading aloud. Jim Freund showed off his Zoom H4, a really nifty toy, and compared it to the Zoom H2s being used to record the panels. He also recommended Olympus digital recorders. Jim Kelly plugs a microphone into his laptop and records in a walk-in closet, where he reads his stories to his sweaters. For editing software, people recommended Audacity.

But more than the tools what really matters is where you record. You want a quiet space, with the A/C off, the fans off, the computer off. No traffic in the background either, or even bird noises. Just to make sure, you should wear headphones plugged into the mic, so you can hear what you're recording.

Hope to hear from you!

Addendum: Cat Rambo has issued a much more accurate listing of podcasts mentioned.

Principesa: "Hey, pick which hand it's in."

Viking: "That one."

Principesa: "No, you can't pick that one.""

Man, it's hard to play tricks on someone else when they have you all figured out.

* Maintain eye contact with the speaker. It shows you are listening and foces you to focus.

* Ask, do not retell. If you do not get a response you want, do not just repeat your questions. Ask questions to find out if the other person understood you.

* Wait for answers. If you do not get an immediate response, gie the speaker a few extra seconds to form a response.

Adapted from: "Communication Briefings"

1.      To understand someone.

2.      To enjoy someone.

3.      To learn something.

4.      To give help or solace.

Be very careful to pay close attention to what the person is telling you if you truly have even the slightest bit of interest in understanding the person. It is very detrimental that you understand what the other person is thinking or feeling, before you have your own question or situation that you need addressed.

Do you listen with what is termed Pseudo listening, or do you listen actively. Your very answer to the question will determine your listening ability. When you understand how you actually listen versus what you think is your level of skill in listening to people and being able to understand them you can begin to correct your listening weakness.

When you pretend to listen to someone you are doing them and yourself a great disservice. People and I included have adopted the act of appearing to be interested or actually listening so that we are being polite and so as to not hurt the persons feelings. Let me be the first to tell you that you don’t have to be what I like to call the listening slave.

You must learn to really listen and then determine how you can help the person who is so obviously asking for your help. You must learn that if you seek to be understood on whatever comment you are making or situation that you are facing, you must first seek to do that in which you would like done in the same respect.

Are you the chronic interrupter? Use this question as a gift and a blessing from me to you. The more you learn and seek to understand who you really are instead of just trying to conform to what people want you to be you develop a relationship with the popular quote (just me, myself, and I). It is of great love and understanding that you must understand or be willing to learn to understand yourself.

To learn more about yourself and Take control of your life join our live and interactive Advice or Bible study calls which will help you tremendously.

Join Here: http://www.cafemom.com/group/mentoring4advice

If you are trying to create additional income from home the download my FREE e-book which will change your life and give you the Power you need to Take control of your destiny.

Download Here: http://mayo08successin10steps.com

Wishing YOU All the Best

Sincerely,

Tabitha Variance
"Be A Mentor With A Servant's Heart"

1)  The groove you're playing is a new groove to you.  It's one that you just learned and you're excited to find an opportunity to use it.  The song you're playing feels like the right tempo for the groove, so you play it and it's tons of fun.  BUT... the cool new groove doesn't really fit the vibe of the song, and a more standard groove would have been a much better choice.  You, however, are not able to realize this because you're the person playing the groove and you're biased.

2)  The song you're playing is slow, maybe 72bpm quarter note.  The intensity builds as you move through the end of the verse and approach the chorus, and you start getting excited for what you know is coming next.  As a result, you start speeding up... and you don't know it.  The tempo increase feels natural to you in the moment of excitement, and you're unaware of this because you're the person playing the groove and you're biased.

3)  Same scenario as #2, but this time you're doing a great job of controlling your excitement and keeping a steady tempo.  Nice.  Now comes the fill that transitions into the awesome chorus that you're so excited about, and you dive into the fill with a descending 16th pattern that seems appropriate.  However, at 72 bpm, the 16ths feel very slow and exposed, so you switch to 32nd notes to fill up the space that you think needs to be filled up.  But the 16ths actually felt great in the moment, and the new 32nd pattern - as opposed to filling up space - instead feels busy and convoluted.  You are the only person in the room that doesn't know this, because you're the person playing the pattern and you're biased.

This perspective thing is a lesson that I've learned the hard way, as I've found myself in situations where I am afforded the bias-breaking luxury of listening back to a recording of myself.  A musical moment that felt great to me when I played it ends up feeling not so great as I listen.  When we are stripped of the warped perspective that we have as performers, the reality of how things actually sound becomes so much clearer.  As a result of hearing playbacks of myself, I've learned to create somewhat of a dual-existence while I play... or at least I try to do this.  The one side of me is playing musically as a performer in the moment, and the other side of me is trying as hard as possible to step out of the performer perspective and listen critically as an audience member.  I think it's helped a ton.

He spoke well, though not exceptionally, perhaps staying too close to a somewhat overwrought script. His previous speeches have ironically set an exceptionally high standard that's hard to meet, let alone exceed.

Still, there was lots to be encouraged by, not least his neatly condensed allusion to our shared responsibility for global warming - and its consequences:

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya..."

His challenge to Berliners, as representatives of the world, was also succinct yet embracing; ticking surely most boxes on a European liberal thinker's list:

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur?... Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law?"

Perhaps a wee bit too predictably, he riffed on the obvious Berlin metaphor, though the risk of repetition was borne out by a credible plea:

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

Watch the entire speech here.

In the beginnig I used to think that when you have conversation the aim of it was to just talk and avoid an awful silence. I never used to get why people made all sorts of stupid jokes, or why people lightly tease me.

The aim of it is to connect with someone, and in a way get a netter understanding of each others lives.

What has this to do with parenting?

Everything, The problem nowadays is that when parents do talk or play with kids in our hectic worlds they miss the connection part. They are either too busy, or trying to hard to be a diciplinarian.

So next time try the following

• Just have a conversation about what the other person likes, ask question and try to remember the stuff they say
• Try to talk with your attention fixed on the kids. No TV, cellphones or whatever
• Share yourself around. Your opinions your ideas and your insights

Are you going too fast and not listening to the silence? Do you appreciate the quiet? Are you looking for those still moments when the only thing you hear is the air breathing? Remember the saying, "Silence is Golden." How it truly is.

Ford's premise is the same as many: life is too hectic, I am missing something, I need to slow down and smell the proverbial flora. He mentions many recognizable people throughout the book: C.S. Lewis, Simone Weil, Kierkegaard, Mother Teresa...and, in illustrations, gives examples of how they were able to listen and be attentive to He Who Calms the Waters.

I have to admit to a tendency towards hearing deficiency in many areas of my life. One of the things I have to regularly do in my language classes is to slow down, listen to the student, and glean not only the words coming out of the speaking apparatus, but the meaning (and person) behind them. Not deciding immediately what I think the person's saying, but what they are actually saying.

This happens, as well, with my kids. "Enjoy them while you can, cause it goes *zip* like that!"- a lovely lady in my church always tells me. I get so busy doing things (an outward sign of my industry) that I forget about listening to things, noticing things. An attentiveness, not only to the physical world around me, but (as a person of faith) the spiritual world as well. Living like a haiku.

Now, I am about as far as a person can get from your average Psychic friend, but I do believe things are happening outside my awareness that I need to pay attention to. A friend of mine has a bumper sticker that reminds me of this..."Something wonderful is about to happen". She follows a different tradition, but the point's the same.

Ford proposes "observing the hours", a Benedictine practice that had monks praying every few hours, the first (yikes) at 3 a.m., called Vigils, and continuing throughout the day. He suggests that doing this can aid in becoming more aware of God's work in your life, and of the little things that we so often miss. I think I'm going to try this for a while...an experiment, if you will. I'm up at 3am sometimes with the Prophet anyway (less lately as he's been sleeping through the night), so it might "work". Although even whether it "works" or not isn't very concerning. Awareness is a process, I think.

I'm ready to listen.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

-T.S. Eliot

But when I began changing my self-image, visualizing and focusing on my new self - and most importantly listening to my body, I got rid of my addiction to peanut butter and haven't had any since. I did try a few tastes and found that it tasted rancid and I didn't want any - the real truth is that I was afraid to try it again because I thought I might want to eat it everyday again and again. Tonight I had my first peanut butter sandwich since the last time I really ate any - which was over a two years ago. I ate it, I enjoyed it, and I didn't want any more. Whoopie! I know, if I really wanted to I could get back to where I really liked peanut butter so much that I would want it more often, but I will not do that, simply because I am more disciplined now, but more importantly, I do not have the compulsion to go and have more and more and more, like I did before.I am so relieved. Now, I can enjoy a peanut butter sandwich once in a while without worrying. I am so thankful for that.

This journey that I have taken from being quite overweight to now being at my acceptable weight and having no problem staying at that weight has made me even more determined to tell everyone I can about how my program works. I have stayed at my weight for around two years, which is 18 months longer than I did at anytime before. I am so thankful and so happy. Be happy with me, and if you are interested in having the same experience, I would love for you to be on my e-mail list. I give out tips and suggestions on how to stay at your goal weight, as well as other information that you might find useful.  My e-mail address is: nre@takeweightoffyourmind.com.

ThinkThinThoughts!

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so...

i plan on opening my heart wider.

Earlier this week this post that included the quote above greatly encouraged me.  I have asked and planned for a lot of things in my life.  If my plan had gone accordingly, I would be honeymooning right now.  Instead, I got to go to an engaging discussion about prayer tonight.  I struggle with prayer.  I struggle with how to pray, when to pray, how to not "program" prayer.  I get nervous.  I don't speak because I'm afraid.  Yet, after I've spoken to the Lord, I come away with an overwhelming sense of relief and awe.  Not only do I get to speak to Him, but He listens!  Even to the minute, petty details of my life.  I want to be a prayer warrior and infuse my life with prayer that it bursts at the seams.  I want to ask and receive as well as rejoice when I see the amazing things that happen.  I can't wait to see the awesomely cool things that are going to come about due to the changes in my plans.  So here goes.

p.s. I won't be typical and ask everyone to comment with a prayer request, but if you would like to leave one, know that I will be praying for you!  If you have something you don't want to publicize (I definitely know how that goes!) feel free to e-mail me at kigkat@gmail.com