You, the Inspired Thought Leader

You, the Inspired Thought Leader Part One: Introduction

I learned that when we choose to go through changes,we get more than what we asked for. A visualization I had of myself was similar to a character in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, being run through an old-fashioned washing machine with the roller. Just when I felt I was at a plateau through it all, more cranking of that roller, and more of me being pressed and wrung dry. I told many that at the end it was the hardest – mostly because it is hard to get a nose the size of mine through that roller!

Today I am feeling more secure and integrated.

One of my close friends observed that for the first time she could see me “wearing the clothes” of who I am versus carrying them in a suitcase for when I needed to put the right outfit on. Interesting observation and choice of metaphor.

In celebration, I am rediscovering the heros of my days of growing up. Two of them are experiencing a reenergizing as I experienced. Today is the release of the DVD set of television episodes of the Ellery Queen series on tv from the ’70s. I read every single Ellery Queen book available over and over again as a teen. I also worshiped the recordings of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sir Georg Solti. I am now thrilled with the electric excite net my city of Chicago has for the new era with Ricardo Muti at the helm.

It was through Ellery Queen that I learned that I love problem solving. Give me a puzzle or a situation that needs resolving, and I will work on it until I figure it out. The elegance of the novels enthralled me, and the inevitable challenge to the reader at the end, where the detective challenges the reader to have a solution ready before the denouement was always a surprise for me.

I am loving the energy surrounding the arrival of Ricardo Muti to Chicago. I love the CSO. Their performances are thrilling and awe inspiring for me. To see and hear that 25,000 people attended Muti’s first performance of his tenure as Music Director is amazing.

I am relishing this feeling of excitement, and will hold on to it as I begin to blog again.

I can tell you, having studied with really great teachers, the art of playing “pah pahs” is not taught. We hornists and sometimes violists are left to ourselves to learn this art. The knowledge of when to play is communicated, but not overtly. When it is done well and correctly, the audience and orchestra know.

The waltz has a magical affect on the environment wherever it is played. Transformation just happens – people are happier, uplifted, healthier, and the spirit becomes celebratory, cheery, and vibrant.

While listening to the concert, I had a flashback.

Many years ago I took it upon myself to take a rowing class. Not the kind with a canoe and paddle, but team rowing like you see in the Olympics. I found myself in a six week class. I was one of the oldest in the class of about twenty and the tallest. On the fifth week, I was beginning to wonder why this sport held the mystique I had for it. Since I was a least six inches taller than the next highest student, I was in constant pain. We as a team had to carry the boat from the boat house to the pier on our shoulders. Well, my shoulder was a good foot higher than the average, so I had to carry it in my hand propped with my elbow on my side. By the time we got the boat into the water, my arm was half spent carrying the load that way.

We had several rowing routines we practiced every week. The important thing with rowing in teams is the rhythm. If everyone is in sync, and following the technique accurately, the boat will balance itself and “fly” on top of the water. Well, the boat this particular was not flying. Rowing that day was like pulling through molasses. Our boat kept tipping to the side so instead of my oar side in the water, I was rowing in air! Occasionally we would get the technique right, but something would go amiss and we would be staggering in the water. Then there was a change.

The instructor told us she was going to do something different, and that we were to trust all the we learned the previous weeks. We started with the usual routine and she would yell “Stroke! … Stroke!” This time she got faster, and we pulled harder. As the commanding rhythm to “Stroke” got faster, she got … softer. Instead of hearing a command to do, I found myself hearing a rhythm in my head. My musical mind turned it into a Strauss walt (no kidding!). Miraculously, I noticed that my body was not in pain, nor was it struggling to keep pace. I was no longer pulling through molasses, but my oar, as well as my teams’ (!), began to cut into the water effortlessly. Magically, our oars were perfectly connecting with the water. We were flying! Pure joy flowed through me. All of us felt it. We were in perfect sync with each other, with the lake, and with the whole world. This was the closest I felt to playing a Strauss waltz in a symphony orchestra!

Tonight, as the program is ending, I am reminded of playing in a symphony orchestra and the rowing experiences. I would like to offer that these moments – these moments of perfect synchronization – where knowledge is transferred to a group seemingly invisibly, are the result of shifting focus. Information is transferred, perhaps allowed to be transferred, and awareness is heightened. The whole environment is transformed. Performance is instantly brought to higher high levels of output. All of the participants are aware of the change.

Soon, I will post some application of how these shifts can be used to bring change to an organization.

“Excuse me?” I turned to ask the woman behind me. I was getting my things together to leave a meeting at my church. The meeting was one on prosperity, and this woman came up to me, surprising me again with:

“I said, you are a thought leader for thought leaders!”

In that moment I was inspired. A new process for my consultancy was born in that short sentence. At the beginning of the meeting we each were asked to introduce ourselves and state in a few sentences what we did and what we want to create for ourselves. In my case, I was thinking ahead of a session with a firm in Chicago that asked me to help them create a blog. I positioned the session with the firm as a means of demonstrating globally that the firm was a thought leader in its field. So in my introduction I said the usual, that I take the vision and strategy of an organization or individual and lead processes for discovery of hidden opportunities for that vision and strategy to be implemented or take form. This time I added that I want to take this further and assist people in their becoming thought leaders in their field.

I instantly saw the process in my head. It was magical for me. A perfect demonstration to me how inspired knowledge is triggered by unexpected events in our lives. It is my task, and I propose all of us have this duty, to be open to everything that is happening around us to receive inspiration. This is awareness!

I went to the firm to teach “blogging” and began with the exercise I am going to briefly describe to you. The head of the firm was pleasantly surprised throughout the process and later exclaimed, “This is wonderful!”

You, too, are a thought leader! Let me prove it to you. What follows is a brief step by step process that will lead you to the same place of inspiration that I and the firm in Chicago experienced.

• Step 1. Go to a place where you can be undisturbed for an hour. Take with you paper, pen (not pencil!) and a stack of Post-It notes. Be sure you are at a desk or large table with a lot of clear space.
• Step 2. Clear your mind and focus. Take a few deep breaths. Now, on one sheet of blank paper, write this across the top, “What activities do I enjoy the most?”
• Step 3. Begin to freely write down everything you love to do, putting only one item on a single Post-It note. Do not edit anything, and do not censor anything. Write everything down regardless of your hesitation to write it. Put each Post-It note on the table so that you can see each item clearly. For example, I might list Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts, read Think and Grow Rich, listen to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, brainstorm for people, conduct choirs, conduct orchestras, listen to Michael Hoppe’s “Majestic Land,” go to coffee shops and write articles, etc. It is good to list individual book titles or magazine titles as well as “read books.” Do not hold back on anything that comes to mind.
• Step 4. Take a moment to pause and reflect. See if anything else comes to mind. Look around the room and see if anything catches your attention for any reason. If it does, then begin Step 3 again and list what comes to mind as a result. When you reach a point of no more free responses, you are complete. If you listed specific book titles, you might create a Post-It note for what the book represents to you. The point is to expand your list to more choices for Step 6.
• Step 5. Categorize/sort your items. (If you have fewer than ten activities, skip this step) Take your Post-It notes and group them if possible. Physically collect similar notes and group them in a way so that the table becomes a categorized view of your activites. Create a new Post-It note for each grouping and give that group a new label representing that group. For example, I listed “conduct choirs” and “conduct orchestras” so I would group them and label the group “conduct.”
• Step 6. Select only 5 Post-It notes. You must only choose five activities. All others will be set aside. If you have fewer than five, you must reduce your list to three. I know this is difficult but you must force yourself.
• Step 7. Set the discarded activities aside. Take your five and put them across the top of the table, but give yourself room for another exercise. List all of the things that come to your mind that these items remaining have in common for you. This is another free listing. No censoring. If it comes to mind, list it.
• Step 8. When you are complete, again group the responses if you can. Review the list, and for one final review, group them again.
• Step 9. Force yourself to choose ONE response from Step 8. JUST ONE!
• Step 10. Add the result from Step 9 to the responses from Step 6. Review your results. Reduce all of the remaining notes into one final Post-It note. I know this is difficult, but this is a time to face your passion – your leadership – and own it!
• Final Step. Take the result and fill in the blank with that result: “I AM a thought leader in _________ !”

What was your result? Were you surprised?

How do you feel at this point? Write it down!

I personally have shared this exercise with several people at this point, and the results are always unexpected. My preferred word for this is INSPIRED.

YOU ARE AN INSPIRED THOUGHT LEADER!

In the past two years, I found myself in situations that allowed me to face directly challenges where I had to make choices. Many of the choices were painful and emotionally draining. I cannot tell you how many times I felt more like screaming and running away rather than facing these challenges. Today, I see how these situations were the greatest gifts I could have ever been given.

Today as I revel in this beautiful energy, I can tell you that there is nothing more painful than not honoring and participating – feeding – one’s passions. So much of the difficulty and conflicting experiences I have had were directly the result, in my judgment, of not allowing myself to express what matters to me most. It took a huge wakeup call for me to realize the truth of what was happening. And I created it!

I received a wake up call! It is not important to this story what that call was. What is important is that I was able to work through that experience by following my own intuition and inner wisdom. I had all of the answers within. I had the ability to work through a process that totally transformed my experience with almost instantaneous results.

You, my readers, will begin to see the results of this experience in the next several weeks.

My passion is music and knowledge. I love creativity and expressing my creativity. I love teaching – teaching people how to tap into their own creativity and inner genius and expressing it.

In the next several weeks you will see on this blog and my web site interviews with those people I am honored to have in my life that I view as masters at creating a passion filled life. These people have integrated who they are as individuals into their professional lives in such a way as to inspire me and others.

I will also begin to publish eBooks with the processes I referred to that will help you tap into your own passion. These processes allowed me to discover for myself what I have successfully done for others and organizations. These processes will allow you to discover:

1. What your passion is
2. What is missing from your life that is causing pain, depression or perhaps conflict
3. What inherent or innate skills and knowledge do you have that can be integrated with all aspects of your life
4. How you can integrate your passion into all aspects of your life
5. How you can take this discovery and transmute the low times of your day into the high points of your life

This is a form of personal knowledge management. We all have a vast library of information stored deep within our minds, our life’s experiences, and background. It is my wish to lead you along the path that I have followed over the past several years – one that can be truly rewarding, life changing, and transformative.

Liz and I will combine our professional experience and training to present this overview of two major approaches and tools that assist individuals and organizations in transition. The attendees will be introduced to two models: Barry Johnson’s Polarity Managementâ„¢ model and the Osborn-Parnes model for Creative Problem Solving. With Polarity Managementâ„¢, one looks at situations through the lens of interdependent factors or values that work together, e.g., change and stability. The Creative Problem Solving method is centered around divergent and convergent thinking (another polarity) as the key elements of deliberate creativity. These two models combined can help one think and act in ways that use one’s existing thinking skills and suggest some ways to enhance those skills as one faces ransitions in life. This keynote presentation will serve as an introduction to a week-long workshop coming in the early months of 2008.

For more information, see the web site for the DuPage Executive Network (DEN).

Orchestra of Life Nite Flight presentation:
1. Prelude to an Afternoon of a Faun by Claude Debussy. Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, Conductor.
2. This Majestic Mountain by Michael Hoppe from the album, “Solace.”

Springboard Class “C:”
1. Homeland Theme from the album, “Homeland,” by Michael Hoppe.
2. This Majestic Mountain from the album, “Solace,” by Michael Hoppe.
3. Circles from the album, “My Romance, an Evening with Jim Brickman,” by Jim Brickman.
4. Dear Father from “Jonathan Living Seagull,” from the album, “The Nature of America, A Musical Impression.” Cincinatti Pops, Erich Kunzel, conductor.
5. Canon in D Major, by Johann Pachelbel.
6. Shenandoah from the album, “The Nature of America, A Musical Impression.” Cincinatti Pops, Erich Kunzel, conductor.
7. Theme from “Dances with Wolves,” from the album, “The Nature of America, A Musical Impression.” Cincinatti Pops, Erich Kunzel, conductor.
8. Theme from “Lonesome Dove,” from the album, “The Nature of America, A Musical Impression.” Cincinatti Pops, Erich Kunzel, conductor.
9. Feather Theme from “Forrest Gump,” from the album, “The Nature of America, A Musical Impression.” Cincinatti Pops, Erich Kunzel, conductor.
10. The Magnificent Seven, from the album, “Round Up.” Cincinatti Pops, Erich Kunzel, conductor.

It has been my experience that a direct relationship between orchestral music and the human body exists. Stephen Halpern has been the vanguard researcher in this area. He has shown that a relationship does exist between music and the body. I choose orchestral music because I know it so well. However, I am quite aware that many many other types of music can be just as effective.

I look at the choice of instrumentation and the harmonic processes a composer uses. Through the workshops I led in St. Louis, I found a consistent response to my theories within the attendees, and now I would like to formalize some of the research and its application. I also teach the principles I use to choose music, and students become more aware of what they are listening to in their immediate environment.

As an example, I am offering my readers this suggestion. Go to iTunes or your favorite music store and get a recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2. Another choice would be any of the J. S. Bach Concerti for Four Harpshichords. Play the recording while doing your work today – these should be excellent choices for heavy thinking. Would like to hear/read your comments on this!

There still may be more changes coming, but for now, this feels like a good fit for me.

I will let the people at Ning give the best description of what they are: “Ning is the only online service where you can create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds.” It is like MySpace and Google or Yahoo Groups and You Tube all rolled into one.

“Ning is a platform for creating your own social networks. Our passion is putting new social networks in the hands of anyone with a good idea. With Ning, your social network can be anything and for anyone.

You start by choosing a combination of features (videos, blogs, photos, forums, etc.) from an ever-growing list of options. Then customize how it looks, decide if it’s public or private, add your brand logo if you have one, and enable the people on your network to create their own custom personal profile pages.”

Ning is truly innovative, which is why I love it. I have not explored it yet – I just saw it today – and intend to use it. What the people at Ning have done is create what they call a platform, or collection of technologies that keeps expanding and is unlimited to its members. I and other members can create what I define as a social network as I perceive and desire it.

I am excited about this opportunity. They do provide businesses the opportunity to create a branding of a social network. It will be interesting to see how this develops.