Writing about Work

Writing about our work and what we do can be a rage against the machine; a joy-filled instance of love and wonder at how fulfilling our mission in life has grown or a whinge and whine about how under-appreciated and unloved we are at home, at the workplace, in our lives.

When someone pays employees to do work is it just done and never talked about again? If they tell employees what to do and then employees make choices on how to the the work and get it done on time or ahead of time and on budget or under budget - is that not what any organization would want? Of course, preserving relationships is also something likely cherished by the organization - unless it's the underworld.

If the supervisor tells employees not only what to do but how they want it done and then manages the employees so closely that it is work overseen and micro-managed, then the supervisor is wholly responsible for the results, good, bad, ugly or indifferent which will result from this work. And most of the time those results will be indifferent, ugly and not effective. The sheer oppression of human energy by one supervisor of their "team" is tantamount to slavery. Employees are not horses bound under a harness and driven to plough a field. If that were the case, hire horses. Employees are creative, energetic, compassionate, willing, open-minded and passionate people who want to make a difference in the world and if offered the opportunity would do so. Leadership is needed in the workplace to create and stimulate such teams and to empower this kind of energetic contribution. Such leadership is not difficult to find. It is difficult to sustain in workplaces that operate like workhouses however. Such workplaces denigrate their workers at every turn, blame them for every failure, even budgetary overages and plans that were political rather than operational. Such workplaces cannot sustain leadership because those workplaces have employees who are old and wise, plus young and flexible. Why would either of these groups stay in a workplace such as I describe?

In a unionized workplace, workers and employers have rights and responsibilities. There is a contract. There are obligations to inform and respect each other. Each time the contract is re-negotiated those two principles remain intact - be informative and be respectful. When one party begins not to practice using the principles, i.e. not informing or not respecting the contract, the tensions between workers and employers grow in direct proportion to the kind of information perceived as withheld and to the level of disrespect practiced. Even as employees are continuing to produce excellent work, the union and the employer begin to build their "grudge match". That is unless people step up and begin a conversation - with courage, information, honesty and respect once again established - on both sides.

No employee working in a unionized workplace could write such postings as this, could they?
No employee working in a workhouse, under leadership that is more politically minded and bent to do their bidding, would write such a posting, would they?

I hope so.

Brilliant Author - Insufficiently Recognized

I'm reading Margaret Atwood's "Negotiating with the Dead - A Writer Writes About Writing". How is it that she has not yet won the Nobel Prize in Literature? Here is a woman who began as a poet, hauling her own work around on a sled, via buses up the Ottawa Valley in the winter, from community hall to hall, reading aloud to grateful groups, astonished that one so young and alone would sacrifice her life to the Muse as she so willing had done.

And then she moved to Prose, to non-fiction, to marriage and family and still managed to write, to find the edge nearly every time and leave critics gasping at the insights, critical and novel, wide ranging and un-nerving with each new work.

Margaret Atwood's even tempered enough to even laugh at herself when others make fun of her flat Ontario vocal presentation style. She ploughs right on, I think knowing its more important that she speak her words aloud than be put off by a teasing jokester who have nothing better to do but try to undermine style. The substance is so rich he cannot hope to undo it.

Atwood is on top of her power, and can do anything she wants with it. She chooses to weild her power for good, for PEN International, for Amnesty International, for certain political causes and to write future looking works. She is a soothsayer, truth teller.

A Nobel Prize ought to be in her future. How can we move the committee to make it happen? Any thoughts?

What's up with Afghanistan?

The taliban is killing women in power. Government is legislating so that women become chattel. Soldiers are dying to fight for freedom of the people of this country and to reduce the terrorist threat; to push back the Taliban; to provide contemporary education facilities for children; to provide timely health care facilities for people; to make their country safe.


Instead, improvised explosive devices set on roadsides and detonated by pressure or remote control are more frequently doing the cause of peace making damage. Canada has a second hand army and uses second hand Chinook helicopers, second hand light armoured vehicles, rebuilt, rearmoured. to try to overcome the challenge the IEDs pose.

First class soldiers, second class equipment, is Afghanistan a third class country? Raise the standards or get busy renegotiating the terms of Canada's participation or the expected outcomes to be achieved.

KNOWING

Here is a wise woman talking about an important idea - HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW?

WAYS OF KNOWING - by Tanis Helliwell

Knowing defined in the dictionary is:
to be able to discriminate between true and untrue.


The Two Major Kinds of Knowing

Throughout history there have been two major ways of knowing. The first system involves collection and synthesis of data and relies on past experience of either self or others to solve problems. This process is linear and cumulative. If someone wishes to access this type of knowing to solve a problem they go to the library of stored data and look up every piece of information on that topic. I call this system of knowing rational and it is based on individual and collective ways of knowing that are accepted within the present traditions of our western society.



The second system of knowing has no past. It leaps out of the void of not knowing and manifests. It is a spontaneous, intuitive flash that enters the consciousness of the knower fully formed. It may or may not contradict the traditional way of knowing but it usually expands on, or puts it in a larger context. This knowing transcends space and time and may not have an immediate relevance to the present. This type of knowing is unpredictable. Often it occurs when we have been attempting to solve a difficult problem without success. We go for a walk, take a bath, or enter sleep and " Eureka " the answer enters our consciousness. This system of knowing is intuitive.



Two Ways of Knowing



RATIONAL ............ INTUITIVE

scientific ............ experiential

logical ............ intuitive

linear ............ multidimensional

matter ............ spirit

concrete reality ............ other realities

left brain ............ mind

conscious ............ sub and super-conscious

bounded ............ expansive

short term ............ long term and/or timeless

doing ............ being

past-present ............ future-present

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To Improve Rational Thinking

Both ways of knowing are important if we are to be effective. Rational thinking is necessary in order to anchor our intuitive hunches in the real world. Without this we might have good ideas that we never manifest leading to frustration and non-accomplishment. If we are predisposed towards intuition there are techniques we can practice to anchor ourselves in third dimensional reality.


1. Don't be a spiritual snob. Because intuition has little or no respectable image within traditional society people, who have these gifts, often create a counter image of spiritual superiority. This must be eliminated. It perpetuates elitism.



2. Skip evangelism. We will convince people who are grounded in rational ways of knowing of the value of our way of thinking by practicing not preaching.



3. Decline to use jargon and hook words that will alienate rational listeners. ie. spirit guide, ascended masters.



4. Rational thinking improves when you create boundaries around a concept by thinking in terms of option A and option B or of numbering benefits of a plan by saying, 1… 2… and 3…..



5. Ground intuitive ideas by thinking of the exact steps you must take to realize your ideas and then decide to act on these ideas.



6. Associate with people who excel in rational ways of knowing and learn from them. A great mystic, Jesus the Christ, who was skilled in using both rational and intuitive ways of knowing once said. "Be in the world, but not of it."

---

To Improve Intuitional Thinking

Some people are naturally intuitive however this ability can also be developed. If we want to become good at tennis we need to practice and, as with tennis, practicing intuition increases our ability. Maybe we won't become a tennis pro but we can become competent at it. Here are some tips.

1. To develop intuition requires that we value it. Without this little improvement is made.



2. Practice intuition by listening to your gut hunch, to the small inner voice in your mind, and by visual images that flash into your awareness.



3. Do things differently and continually. Intuition works best when we are flexible and not attached to results.



4. Be prepared to give up all beliefs. The more do’s and don’ts we live by, the more we censure out anything that does not agree with our beliefs.

5. Develop friendships and work associations with people who are intuitive. Watch them. Try to think like them. Intuition is catchy and ours increases if we are in intuitive environments.



6. Do nothing. Intuition comes from the void. If we create peace and open time in our life it will enter.


Tanis Helliwell, the founder of the International Institute for Transformation, is the author of a new book of poems Embraced by Love. To order books visit her website at www.iitransform.com

Mental Health Week Oct 5-11

Support your local Crazy Person!

Support your regional Crazy People!

Support Crazy People generally.
Because as Einstein said...

If the idea is not absurd at the beginning, it has no hope of coming to any good use. And as we all know, the best absurd ideas are generated from crazy heads... creative minds, innovative, collaborative, wounded, loving, lovely people, who make crazy once in a while.

Love them.
They are us.

The Economy - How could you miss it?

Sub Prime lending? I mean if it's too good to be true - why would you believe it?
Who in their right mind could possibly think for a moment a house is possible? And what lending institution is granted a licence to "print money" and give it away to people without a job, or collateral, or something to show they can make regular payments?

Now private debt has become public debt. Everyone gets to share this pain in the US and across the world because so many many banks bought into this ridiculous scheme - how stupid are bankers anyway? And WHY are they getting tax dollars to rescue their stupid decisions - when many of those houses are junk houses, built by junk house builders (betcha!) who were unloading as fast as they could on unsuspecting fools (get those homes inspected before you purchase them for resale and make sure you check the land beneath and around the house as well because its likely built on junk land as well).

Stupid things just multiply don't they?

Another crisis where domestic terrorists - the bankers, realtors,credit users themselves - sabotaged their own countries for personal greed.
Sad days.
Sad Daze.

This Canadian Election - VOTE!

It costs $$300million dollars to hold an election. Canada's held three elections in the past 5 years (2004 - elected Paul Martin to minority Liberal Government with Harper in Opposition; 2006 - elected Harper to minority Conservative Government with Dion in Opposition; 2008 - here we go again) Do the math. Harper and Layton have been at the root of each one. Each for personal political gain.


This time around, Harper called this election because he accused the other parties of not being willing to work together with him in Parliament. Well sir, when Parliament is not in session, how do you know what will happen when everyone gets together? Your arrogance to break a law your party in this sitting created - calling an election at this time is costing Canada time and money it can ill afford and costing parliamentarians time away from Chambers where discussion and decisions should be taking place. And if your arguments are that there would have been NO decisions made, I challenge you to tell Canada how you managed to run the country with a successful minority for the past 32 months.

Instead let me suggest the reasons Steve Harper called an election at this point in the minority Conservative mandate:
-- The Julie Couillard - Maxime Bernier ( a cool burn ) report was due this fall in Parliament, unless an election was called;
-- The Mulroney - Heinz-Schreiber Affair was going to come up again in a report in Parliament this fall, unless an election was called;
-- Elections Canada was about to point fingers at dirty deeds done dirt cheap in the previous election by Conservative candidates who transferred funds in shady ways and were caught at it;
-- The economic disaster was looming in the US, and Steve wanted to get out in front of it with his re-election if he could;
-- Barack Obama, A left-leaning Democrat was headed for the White House, in November and such a swing would affect voting trends in Canada, again affecting Conservative voting.
--There are a host of other reasons - a veritable nest of vipers coming home to roost around the poxy place that was becoming PMO control central.

The trends were moving away from the Bush Conservative-Evangelical Right Wing Base which got Steve Harper started in the West, and toward a Green economy, where change is calling, where people with new ideas for the environment, for families, the economy and equity, for people all come together. And that is certainly NOT the Conservative Party.

It's time to move towards some kind of common sense again people, where integrity and smart thinking and real world solutions exist.

Experience, Environment, Economy, Equity. Who has been there before and done it before and can do it for Canada again?

I say, Vote Liberal.
Led with Integrity. Stephane Dion.
Supported with smart, experienced caucus members.

Whatever you do, whichever way you think or believe... VOTE on OCTOBER 14.