Connections

Dr. Success Challenge: Today when you encounter someone you know, think through thoroughly how you first became acquainted with them, what connections were made because they came into your life, and how many things in your life are now connected because of that one meeting.

I have always been intrigued with the concept of how we are connected – especially in ways that you find out about after you know someone for a while. Many years ago when I developed my tree logo as a symbol of how ServingSuccess is about the tree of life and how to grow people, I also used an exercise in business meetings that got people thinking about how they were connected to others in their business circle. I had found that over time we lost track of how and why people came into our business lives (or any part of lives) and in losing track we also lost a sense of the magic of relationships, connections, and appreciation.

Reading When God Winks caused me to resurrect that activity in my own life and work. Then I was involved in the book launch of Be The Hero by Noah Blumenthal and the mystery of how we are all connected became all to obvious yet again.

This is what my worksheet of some seemingly unconnected life events ended up being very, very connected over a 10 year period.

2000 Las Vegas. I met Mary Jane W. At the time she was a business associate of a client.

2001 Mary Jane’s husband is instrumental in the life-saving medical care my Dad received.

2003 Mary Jane attends one of my Positive Psychology Executive Women’s Groups.

2005 Mary Jane co-facilitates the next Executive Women’s Group with me. One of the members of that group, who Mary Jane attracted into the group, gives me a book, Shifting Sands, by Steve Donahue.

2008 I feature Shifting Sands on the second segment of Books that Matter on AM Arizona. The publisher of Shifting Sands calls to thank me. The publisher puts me in touch with their author’s coop and I telephonically meet Noah Blumenthal. Later that year Noah asks me to review a draft copy of his upcoming book, Be The Hero.

2009 August: I write a testimonial for Be The Hero. The book is published.

December: I give a copy of Be the Hero to Mary Jane as a Christmas gift.

Mary Jane calls to tell me that she was shocked to see my testimonial for the book right below the daughter of a nursing school friend from Canada, where Mary Jane lived for some period.

2010 Mary Jane meets Noah at an author's event in Las Vegas I organized. I have a telephonic meeting with Gwyn, the person who wrote that testimonial and who knew Noah and Mary Jane even though Noah and Mary Jane had never meet, were born in different countries, decades apart.

I find this really a fun exercise to play with. It helps me sit with the mystery of where does it all start and where is it all going.

Most of all I enjoy being reminded how, in some mysterious way, we are really all connected.

Happy Connecting,

Andrea T. Goeglein, Phd
Dr. Success™
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The Limits of Web Based Social Networks

Dr. Success Thanksgiving Challenge: During the week surrounding Thanksgiving, reach out and touch as many of the people in your life as you possibly can. I am not suggesting you email, text, or send some cyber hug or Facebook farm animal. What I am imploring you to do is physically reach out and touch as many of the people in your life as you possibly can. That included hugs, kisses, handshakes, and lingering embraces. Then compare that experience with the feeling you get when you receive an email, text, or cyber whatever from that same person. No judgment (yah, sure…and about that bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you) just do a comparison for yourself.

This challenge came from a recent review of the positive psychology research on why money does not really make you happy and an event my parents described on a recent visit.

The research was that of Ed Deiner. He termed the prosperity we seek as “psychosocial prosperity.” Psychosocial prosperity is based in things like social support, public trust, the ability to learn new things and feelings of competence when doing them, liking your job, continued good health, and social tolerance, among others.

My observation about web based social networks is that they allow for a lot of width, but very, very little depth. When it really counts, 10,000 friends or followers cannot have the impact on your heart and life that one person in the right place at the right time could potentially provide.

Now for the story from my parents. My parents live in a home they purchased over 60 years ago. Since their home is in New York it has sometimes felt like their little block had lived through every immigrant surge this country has allowed. There have been many alterations in the homes, and since they live in attached housing, your neighbors' business and tastes sometimes can be closer than you would prefer. One such home alteration occurred to one of the homes attached to my parent’s home. Over a year we watched (mostly in horror and with a lot of critical review) the construction of what appeared to be a glass enclosed porch. It was a story high, had windows that opened, permitting the owners to move a sofa and television on to what was once a backyard porch. Not exactly the home renovation any in our family would have hoped.

English is a second language for this neighbor, so communication takes the form of neighborly gestures. My Dad usually sweeps his neighbors' front sidewalk while he is doing his, or moves their trash pails back while they are off at work. Don’t get me wrong, they do speak to each other, but the reality of my Dad’s 88 year-old-ears hearing capacity and the accent laden speech of their neighbors truly limits the amount he can understand. To add salt to an open wound, my parent’s kitchen looks directly on to the neighbor’s glass porch. My Mom has a difficult time not being distracted by the neighbor’s outdoor living room as she sits having her morning coffee or afternoon tea.

Then there was a crisis for my parents. It started innocently enough with my Dad competing a chore and my Mom supervising his cleanup. On the particular day in question, my Dad had used a ladder, which then needed to be returned to the basement. As he traversed his porch staircase, he lost his balance and fell. Before my Mom could comprehended what had occurred, their neighbor had climbed through one of the small open windows in the much distained glass living room and ran down the stairs to help my Dad. Scared, shaken, but with an ego bruised more than his body, Dad and his neighbor hugged in a way they had never hugged before.

There is an irony to this story that cannot be overlooked considering my preoccupation with coincidence, serendipity and synchronicity. For my entire life my Mom used a saying when she wanted to teach you not to judge others or think you were better than someone who had made a mistake. The saying is “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”

Hummmm….Yes, Mom you were right and yes I have gotten the lesson.

May you use this Thanksgiving season to continue to do things for people who annoy you, and share human contact with love at every opportunity.

The Great Chain of Being

I have been intrigued with the concept of connectedness for most of 2009. I have always used models of development that have 1-2-3 steps, processes that appear to have a beginning and a logical end. I suggest books that offer such models all the time.

I do believe these models are useful to help organize the process of complex human change.

And I don’t believe it really works that way. What I do believe is that there is a mystery to human interconnectivity that we are never meant to understand, but instead live. One of the best ways I have read it described recently was offered by author Richard Rohr in a daily meditation he adapted from his own work, Hope Against Darkness (p. 135):

“I would like to reclaim an ancient, evolving and very Franciscan metaphor to rightly name the nature of the universe, and to direct our future thinking: the image of the “the Great Chain of Being.” It was a metaphor not of hierarchy but of connection thus the word “chain.” The essential and unbreakable links in the great chain include:

the Divine Creator,

the angels, saints, and ancestors,

the humans,

the animals,

the world of plants, trees, and vegetation,

the waters upon the earth,

the earth itself with its minerals and metals.”

For me, however, the universe outlined in Rohr’s “universe” is missing something. It appears to include all things relating to this earth, but not the infinite galaxies. I don't offer this as critisim. I am truely not that bold. It is more an open observation and question I have. Let me know your thinking.

For those of you lucky enough to live in Las Vegas, Richard Rohr will be holding a day-long event on Saturday, December 5. Call Stillpoint Center for Spiritual Development for more information 702 243 4040.