What’s the smallest change now that can make a sustainable impact?

This powerful question invites us to be in the moment, real and responsible.

We use it successfully in Appreciative Inquiry workshops after the dream / imagining step. (See 4-D graphic below.)

Why is this important? Asking what can you start right now after collectively dreaming about a shared, preferred future brings the energy back to the present - the here and now.

Remember,

• We open an appreciative inquiry with discovering best stories from our own past.
  

• Next, we project our collective strengths and successes - our positive core - into the future as we dream what’s possible together.
  

  Example: Say, we’re inquiring into the topic of “protecting and valuing our environment for future generations”.

  • The smallest change I can do right now is to stop using plastic bags. I will now take my own reusable shopping bags to the stores.
    
  • Similarly, in the office I can stop using plastic or styrene cups by using my own glass and mug.

  The act of asking the individual what small thing he or she can do right now that will impact the future serves as a great transition to the third and forth steps in the full appreciative inquiry process: Design and Destiny.

  When we recognize it’s within our own power to start with a seemingly small action step, it opens us up to begin the co-creative process of designing a future we care about, and, with our own actions can be sustained.

• Then before moving to the next steps we ask, what is the smallest change you can do right now, in the present that will have an impact going forward?

Your Child's Strengths for A New Earth

I have chosen to spend my day with Jenifer Fox ...over Eckhart Tolle !!

Two days ago I received a copy of Jenifer Fox's brand new book, Your Child's Strengths. I decided on this Sunday morning, I'd take a peek at it, having planned already to spend my day with Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. I had started Tolle's book a few days earlier and was very much into it. Wow! I am awestruck and I thank my intuition!

Jenifer's book is wonderful; clear and powerful. Her work and message is so significant for our global transformation. It is on target and right on! For us to create "A New Earth " a la Tolle, we need to start with our children NOW by focussing on their strengths instead of their weaknesses. We need to help them discover their strengths, develop their strengths and use their strengths. When we consciously change how we relate to and teach children, we won't have to worry about leaving a legacy; collectively we will be creating a living legacy; and, in my book, that is what sustainablilty is all about. Teach a child to fish...to paraphrase an analogy.

We live and work in an extremely fast-paced, increasingly complex and interdependent global economy, where the old forms and traditions are no longer serving. How much more crucial is it, then, to enable children to find their strengths and open them up to the fabulous possibilities such awareness brings, before institutionalized, emotional, physical and psychic constructs find them and shape them in ways that do them harm, and, as a result, harm our world.

The Oprah Show is offering an on-line program, starting March 3 where she and Eckhart Tolle will teach A New Earth, I will be recommending she consider a similar training with Jenifer Fox. Jenifer's personal story touches the heart; her writing is entrancing. I am SO excited with this book. On a personal note, it has also inspired me with my work "Pathways to strength-based systems". We are not alone!!

Posted on the Appreciative Inquiry Listserv this week was this quotation by Howard Zinn. It comes from his article, "The Optimism of Uncertainty". If you do a search on this article, you'll find it referenced in a number of places. EG The Nation on September 2, 2004 and CommonDream.org November 8, 2004

"We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope. An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time.To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. Continued...

"21st Century Widsom Tools that Broaden and Build"
was the title of our 90 minute breakout session at the International Appreciative Inquiry conference,“The Power of Positive Change Conference” in Orlando Florida, September 16-19, 2007.

We used our collaborative software Positive Matrix on the Zing platform to test out our assumption that this tool facilitates our ability to use our collective knowledge wisely, and, by virtue of this process, we are more likely to experience more rapidly the effect of the “broaden and build” theory of positive emotions as outlined by Barbara Fredrickson. Continued...

Highlight #1 is the creativity that flowed from a joyful, interested state.

After a series of playful warm-ups, inlcuding introducing the word EUNOIA, the shortest word in the English language containing all five vowels and which means BEAUTIFUL THINKING, we asked each table group to:

Describe the ocean without using the letter "e".

It is a cool body of liquid that flows and is soothing, and has a fabulous sound. Many humans want to play in this amazing big bath.   Surf and sun, rolling foam and coastal swimming and sailing, kids laughing and running across sands, sunburnt arms and happy dogs barking.   I swam through a vista of warm, wavy liquid and it was salty without stinging. I was happy to swim fast and playfully again and again amongst fish plants and rocks.   I saw sand and coral with tiny barbs. I saw swimming schools of fish and dolphins and octopus and a squid jump in, and join us now.   I can float on H2O, got sand on my body, wind in my hair, salt on my lips, gulls calling, soars my soul.   I can swim on constant highs and lows all day if I wish. Foamy swim in foamy light cozy bouncing liquid. Dolphins jump high towards sky. Whales roll and sing. Shrimp slink across a murky bottom.   Today I saw a big soft salty fluid opportunity for joy with sand, sun and fun, and fish, wind, surf and play turns into a good day for all, Too much sun, not much fun though!   Bill was surfing on a balmy day, slipping through glassy liquid, sun on his back, wind driving him on. Shark says 'tasty!"