In this workshop, I’ll explain a simple process that can help you use what happened in 2011 as a foundation for getting the results you want in 2012–professionally, personally, or in any other area that matters to you.

Whether you love, hate, or are extremely bored by “personal development,” “goals,” and other standard ways of trying to change your life and get results, I think this will challenge what you’re used to, and help you make things work out better this year.

Update: it was a great event. Sign up for my newsletter to find out about upcoming events like this one.

One of the key points in the film is that the choices we make define our class. What choices are you making, and what cultural tribes are you trying to join, leave, or connect with? What do you gain and what do you sacrifice in your pursuit of belonging?

When I try to help people to achieve “success” or “change the world,” it’s important to get a handle on what sub-cultural assumptions about what achievement means.

Do you want upward mobility in terms of class (your financial position) or status (the respect you receive)?

Do you aspire to downward mobility or connecting with less-privileged classes, out of respect for them, trying to be edgy, seeking social justice, or something else?

What strategies will get you connected and help you to fit into a new tribe? What bigger purpose does your getting connected serve beyond proving your ability to get access?

This playlist has a series of segments from the documentary:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvibi2Cph-E

Today in DC, a bit of snow is giving a fresh new look to the landscape. I’m increasingly learning the value of new beginnings, and at the same time the value of getting perspective from the past. I’m currently putting together a seminar I’ll be giving sometime soon about how to get a clear perspective on your life last year that can be your foundation for having an even better year in 2012. Check back soon for the date and time.

It’s not just for personal growth geeks–in fact, I hope it will make some of those kinds of people uncomfortable by challenging their assumptions and crutches. If it succeeds at that, then it will also succeed in being useful to you if you hate goals, visions, new year’s resolutions, and all that kind of baggage that you may have tried before but you would rather forget. I want to help people get a fresh start this year, and that includes ditching whatever doesn’t work for you and finding fresh ways of getting where you want to be in life.

While the film gave me a fresh appreciation for the love and wonder expressed even in the midst of, and by means of, my culture’s very commercial and secular version of Christmas, it also pointed back to the history and legends surrounding the original “Santa Claus,” Saint Nicholas, the 4th Century Bishop of Myra, who is believed to have been orphaned but have inherited a large fortune which he liked to share anonymously with those in need.

The story of Saint Nicholas just wouldn’t work well as a children’s cartoon:

No one today is telling their kids, “Santa Claus is coming to town! Santa is magical, he throws gold through the window in the middle of the night to poor girls so they don’t have to become prostitutes!” That would be shocking, and probably not very age-appropriate.

But that is one of the most prominent stories about Saint Nicholas. He wasn’t some kind of Northern European parental watchdog waiting to reward good boys and girls with their chosen toys, and leave coal in the stockings of the bad ones (surprising, perhaps,  given he was a Church official). He instead was first remembered as someone who used the abundance he had (and reputedly his miraculous spiritual gifts) to give poor children joy, and to rescue girls from lives of prostitution or servitude, and to help famished communities survive, and (in a particularly grisly story) to bring butchered children back to life before they could be cannibalized by the hungry.

The original legends come from a time when matters of life and death, survival and starvation, were certainly more stark and obvious in the Western world than they are today. But the thing that stands out most is that Nicholas is remembered as using his wealth to bring justice and joy to those most in need, rather than just rewarding the “good” children with expensive toys.

I see the spirit of Santa in the hard-working, red-suited men for whom the film gave me fresh appreciation. But I see it even more so in those who help those who are starving, or in need, or enslaved. Perhaps most of all those who help those who aren’t  usually seen by society as “good boys and girls,” like the sex trafficking and bonded labor victims given new opportunities by my friends at places like the Protect Project,  IJM, and the Nomi Network, and the children and families given increased opportunities by organizations like World Vision, Global Humanitaria, and  Save the Children.

Becoming Santa

Since I first met Hoan when we were  students at Pepperdine, I have been impressed by the single-minded vision he has of helping and inspiring young people. He has a great self-awareness of what it means to grow up in an immigrant family, facing messages from two very different cultures about what success means, and not letting either culture get in the way of his calling.

His love for life, his family, fishing, and his old-fashioned Porche showed me something about how to be excited about life. His love of travel and of Latin America also helped set me (and more importantly at the time, my parents) on a path to see the world, and therefore was a major influence in making me the internationally-curious person I am today.

He will be missed. This is a funny and vivid remembrance of him by a good friend and colleague of his:

“A Red Bluff Legend Passes Away” at The Red Bluff Daily News

Right now in the keynote session by Vail Horton, CEO of Keen Mobility.

Last night, I finally figured out why, when I saw a presentation on strengths-based leadership and appreciative inquiry, given to my MBA consulting class by a partner at Innovation Partners International. He showed the power of focusing on the positive, excellent results a team wants, rather than entering a downward spiral of naming shortcomings. One of the key points was that you can’t tell someone to not think about something, as in, “Don’t think at all about a white, sandy beach, with a balmy 80 degree breeze.” Therefore, the worst way to overcome a problem is to focus on the problem.

And this led me to write a new list–focusing on the outcomes I want, and seeking an excellent way to fulfill the needs that the items on the “stop doing” list imperfectly address. So instead of focusing on “no TV,” I can focus on an idea like “enjoy excellent rest, relaxation, and entertainment.” This new list directs me toward good alternatives  (like reading a book or going for a run). But it also has value in going beyond rules and restrictions. If  I focus is on the results I want, then it matters less whether or not I enter territory that in the past endangered these results (like watching TV)–because even if I do,  I’ll be guided by a sense of how I’m living toward those results and how to moderate my actions to keep the results, rather than, for example, succumbing to the inertia of watching one more TV show.

This is not to say that the “stop doing” list is always bad–I think above all it’s a good counterbalance to excessive goal-setting and overextending oneself. As described in Good to Great, it’s an important reflection of how companies and individuals can identify unneeded busyness. But if you focus too much on the action of stopping what doesn’t work, rather than starting something that works, you’ll be defeating the purpose.

As I pointed out in the workshop, the original, most literal meaning of  the word “inspire” is to breathe into or to inhale. We often talk about inspiration as a one-time, isolated event–and certainly there are flashes of inspiration–pivotal, special experiences that change your life in an atypical way. But you can’t survive on one breath. So it’s critical to use those pivotal moments to help find what inspires you, and make it a stabilizing, sustaining anchor in your life.

The fact that all of this noise had been so invisible to me for so long made me realize that for all the complaints today about information overload, the fact is that we don’t suffer through that much of it consiously.  We humans can only take in so much at a time.  Conscious information overload, or excessive multitasking, are not stable states–they can only be endured for so long.  When the noise becomes excessive, we retreat, either by turning down the volume, or turning it up. 

We either choose to become quiet, or we add even more noise to our lives until we become numb.  One of these will give you the calm and focus to do a few things well, and one of these–if you keep feeding yourself enough noise–will drug you so that you don’t realize how much stress you’re putting on yourself.

I am so passionate about this right now because I had a remarkable experience today of finding peace, and productivity, on the quiet end of the spectrum instead of the numb end.   It all starts with doing less, and filling the space you create with quiet action instead of escalating  noise.   Look at where you keep seeking more and different information or busyness in your life, and figure out why.  Create the quiet space you need to be comfortable again working little by little on the real issues you might be trying to ignore.