Happy Holidays from Jason Stein and Family

Jason wanted to share his holiday with you. It’s sweet. And it’s rollicking. And it’s family. Meet his kids and partner. And it’s only 71 seconds.

Holidays on the Beach with Yollana Shore and Family

Christmas is, for many people, just another day on the beach. All of those people are in the southern hemisphere, including our star team member, Yollana Shore.

I love this peek into what holidays are like for our friends Down Under. It helps me to stretch into making the holidays really fit who we are, where we are, and what we need.

And, I think you’ll love seeing Yollana’s family. It’s a treat! And only 2 minutes and 47 seconds.

Mark’s Guitar Holiday Message

Okay, this is the last of our three holiday messages. There are three possible things to get out of it:

1. It’s okay to be vulnerable and new at something.
2. Having fun makes it easier.
3. Mark shouldn’t quit his day job.

Hope this video doesn’t ruin your day. .

Where ever you are in the world, I hope that you and your loved ones are enjoying the end of 2011. Here’s to an amazing, love-filled 2012.

With love,
Mark, Jason, Yollana and the rest of the Heart of Business team

When is revealing too much, though? There seems to be a delicate balance wherein you want to know the person on the other side of the business is a human being, is real, isn’t a polished veneer of pseudo-perfection.

And yet you want to trust that person. You don’t want to really know how often the ball almost gets dropped, or how they might look after a sleepless night, no shower, with a baseball cap jammed on their head to cover up the wild flora of their morning hair.

In my studies in child development and somatic-based therapy, and boy does that sound formal, I mean I’ve read a few books and know some experts I’ve talked to, we’re hard-wired to pay attention to danger. Hard-wired.

So, if you’ve ever wondered why every single rube needs to rubberneck past the accident, slowing down traffic for thousands of people, it’s because we’re genetically disposed to do so. If you wonder why it’s hard to pull your eyes away from action movies, it’s because it’s a survival trait.

It comes from our history as animals on this planet. Before manicured lawns and automatic weapons, human beings used to sometimes get eaten by other animals. We’re wanting to know how to survive that, so we watch.

Why get all grisly on a business blog? Because the same dynamic functions in the reveal/conceal cycle. People want to see the mess of you, they ask for it, they clamor for it, and yet while it might get their attention, it won’t necessarily build trust. The survival brain of the people watching your car accident will be saying to themselves, “Gee, how interesting! I wonder if I would survive that?”

So when and what do you reveal? Here’s how I do it.

• I don’t share messes when I feel completely forlorn or overwhelmed or stuck. I don’t show the gory details of the car wreck.
• I often share messes while I’m still feeling the pain of them, after most of the blood has been cleaned up.
• I do share messes once I’ve regained a sense of perspective on the situation, a sense of how to resolve/work through/be with it, and when I can present the situation in a way that serves others.

No, I don’t have to show up as perfect. But I want anything I share to be expressed consciously in service to others, and not as an emotional/situational vomiting up of a mess. You shouldn’t have to clean up after me, I have a support system who can help me with that. And then I can tell you how I got through the mess.

Exception: If the mess doesn’t have to do with my core competency, I’ll sometimes share more. For instance, when I changed out the kitchen sink a few months ago and included snippets of my experience, the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing, messed up the caulk job, and had to go back to the hardware store five times in the same afternoon is amusing, but doesn’t shake anyone’s confidence in my ability to deliver wisdom, insight and expertise in the realm of business-building.

Chris Brogan wrote about his flaws recently. Havi Brooks does it all the time. Best-selling author Jennifer Louden does, too. And notice how they reveal in a way that is educational, and maybe even inspirational.

Does this help? How do you do reveal/conceal in your own business?

The Short Story Version

Kate resigned. We went into emotional turmoil. Big insights and learnings. We’re reconfiguring Opening the Moneyflow slightly, including beefing up the DIY program. I’ve also pushed the early-bird deadline to next Monday to allow for the emotional reality of being feeling disoriented and emotionally “all circuits busy” for a full week.

And I’m asking for a do-over of the November 18 call on You’ve Got Six Months: Go! I was way gummed up emotionally, and it wasn’t my most inspired call. So I’m adding content and redoing it this Thursday.

What Really Happened

Monday, November 15 was one of Heart of Business’ quarterly full-day strategic review meetings, where we look at everything, question what we’re doing and connect in with guidance about moving forward.

One of the big realities we were facing is that despite our growth and development, Heart of Business isn’t large or complex enough to warrant a full-time operations person plus a part-time virtual assistant. Although for the past two years we’ve had record revenue and many big months in a row, we haven’t had record profitability. In fact, we’ve had some interesting cash flow situations because we did that thing growing companies do–grow our costs along with our revenue.

The operations position, a role Kate Williams has filled the last two and half years, has been an incredible boon on many levels, implementing systems and oversight and consciousness at levels of the business we hadn’t looked at before. It’s been amazing. And with her help we’ve broken through revenue ceilings, and implemented all kinds of things I never did on my own, such as adding practitioners, bringing in legal help to clarify our relationships with people, and many other critical things to running a more complex business.

And, with all of that in place, it was now time to shift our attention elsewhere. We asked Kate to shift half of her hours from operations to running a new project we want to dig into.

And she resigned.

Not Exactly Like That

It was a long meeting. We talked about many things. The resignation came late in the day in a surprise announcement. Even Kate was surprised, saying she did not come to the meeting with any intention of resigning. (Although my wife Holly admitted to a quiet intuition over the last two days, “Kate is leaving. Huh?”)

Her announcement came in a moment when Presence filled the room and she just felt she had to speak the truth as it came to her. As she said what she had to say, there was the shock of the announcement, coupled with a big exhaled breath from all of us as the truth was recognized.

It was a courageous thing for her to speak her truth, and courageous for us all to accept it.

It wasn’t totally out of the blue. There had been a thread over the last two years of Kate questioning whether this was really her work, as she had spent previous years in various positions supporting other people. She is such a tremendous facilitator, teacher, coach and councilor, that she really needs to be doing her work, and not just supporting someone else, like yours truly, in doing their work.

Also, I’ve had a steep learning curve as a team leader over the last three years, and I’ve made plenty of mistakes. I’ve noticed that my key weakness in leadership is my desire for harmony and to be liked over truth and productive conflict. So my desire to be liked by Kate, and others on the team, as well as my desire to have everyone “taken care of” had me miss several key decision points and instead just “going with the flow.”

Through my work in my masters program I’ve been reclaiming my sovereignty in this new environment, as has Kate in her own heart-work, and truth just becomes much easier to see when everyone is committed to seeing it.

Oh My God–The Emotional Storm

As you might imagine there has been a rollercoaster of different emotions for all of us. I’ll talk about mine, since that’s who I am.

I told Kate that the first feeling was one of relief, of a truth recognized. There was also the relief of recognizing all the ways I had given myself away, a feeling of freedom regained. It’s not an entirely fair way to describe it, because no one took my freedom away, but I had abandoned it in my desire to copy some unknown ideal of how I should be as a leader.

Then came the sadness and grief, of course. Kate and I have a daily relationship of working collaboration. That’s going to stop suddenly in about two weeks. It’s like a relationship break-up, especially since we continue to be on such good terms with each other. It’s not like anyone did anyone else wrong. Just the truth emerged, it’s time for her to go and it’s very sad.

Anger. You can’t have the grief process without anger, and it’s definitely my least favorite emotion to express. But, yes, anger. “You’re quitting at the end of the year, in the middle of enrolling our six-month course, and we have to spend all this time and energy on the transition? And you didn’t do it before now, so I could’ve reconfigured Opening the Moneyflow to account for the reality of our team now?” (I did make changes–I detail them below.)

Ahh… anger… By definition it’s not rational. Now was the perfect timing, and it’s what had to happen. And anger came up. It doesn’t stay for very long, but little bits of it waft around. Fun.

Withdrawal. Although it’s not an emotion, I notice that I’m preparing for the transition and have withdrawn some. I’ve been consulting with Kate much less about the business.

I’m withdrawing partly out of respect for her and not wanting to involve her with something she’s not going to be around for. It’s also partly for me an exercise in regaining my own sovereignty.

One thing that happens as a business gets more complex is that decisions become harder to make, because there is so much more information and so many more people to consider.

In my attempts to be a collaborative, open-door leader, I notice that there are many places where I’ve abdicated my responsibility to make decisions. I’m taking that back, and the result is spending less time in meetings and discussions.

Don’t get me wrong. I will continue to collaborate with Jason, Yollana, Susan and other team members of Heart of Business. I love the working relationship that Kate and I developed. And I notice the difference between that and just avoiding decisions.

The best way for me to do that right now is to reduce how many things I bring to consult with Kate or anyone else.

The Lightning of the Business

Another piece of relief was related to the lightness of the business. As I said, we’ve had ten straight years of growth, and we busted through some big revenue ceilings this year. But the business had come to feel heavy, and I believe it’s because we took on an infrastructure model for a business that is much larger than ours, and doesn’t fit what we’re doing.

We needed to focus on infrastructure and systems for a time, and Kate did an amazing job with it, but to create a permanent position focused entirely on that called “operations” means that we missed the timing to change focus to other strategic areas. A permanent titled operations position means I went on autopilot and stopped asking when the time was to shift.

My friend, the best-selling author of Predictable Success and consultant Les McKeown, who has personally been involved in 42 different startups, nailed it perfectly in the chapter on Whitewater. He specifically warns against creating an “operations” position separate from everything else at the stage of business growth we’re in. Although I had read the chapter, it didn’t sink in. I re-read that chapter last week, all the while slapping myself in the forehead repeatedly.

To be kind, Les did say that often businesses have to make that mistake for the founders/leaders to develop the muscle and skills to lead a more sustainable organization later. And that’s evidently what I did. Check out these bulging leadership muscles.

What Happens Now?

Kate is staying with us through the middle of December to support the current Opening the Moneyflow course with which she has been so intimately involved, as well as to help set up next year’s Moneyflow. And, of course, to help effectively transfer all of what she does.

Of course a tremendous boon is that Kate is superb at creating systems and training people on them, so we’re in a great position. Susan is going to easily and without any bumps pick up the majority of what Kate was doing, and I have just a few additional bits and bobs for other people to pick up, and even one or two that I really need to pick up myself.

We are not going to rehire for her position, so please don’t send us resumes. We have all the team members we need in place right now.

Do-Over? Changes to Opening the Moneyflow 2011

With Kate no longer with us for next year, I want to make some changes to the Moneyflow program starting in January. These are not major changes, except for the DIY program (which is getting beefed up), but have more to do with how to handle capacity so we can take care of everyone really well.

First, I want to re-do the You’ve Got Six Months: Go! call I held November 18. Although I covered the material I wanted to, it was one of my least inspired teaching moments in a long time. I held the class just a few days after Kate announced her resignation, and I was gummed up with all kinds of emotions. Because I wasn’t in the position to make a public announcement–all three of us were still reeling and trying to figure out the details of what it really meant–I couldn’t talk about it with you.

This meant I wasn’t really that was present. I got off the call and said to Holly, my wife, “Well, I botched that one.”

You deserve better than that. So I’m going to re-do the call, but change the content. Not entirely, but there are some teachings I want to share from my learnings these past three years that have to do with teams, leadership, and developing a truly sustainable business at a higher-level. By a higher level, I mean one that brings five figures a month in consistently for years on end.

Click here to join us for the call. If you registered for the previous call, you’re still registered. You probably already have the new call-in information, time and date to you in the “already registered” email.

Other Changes to Moneyflow

There will be no changes to the Core program with Jason and Yollana, since all the structures and support remain in place for them to hold the groups they have. Their groups continue to fill up.

The Premium program is changing simply in terms of numbers. I’m limiting the number of participants to an absolute maximum of five, and I might cut it off at four, rather than eight. Which means there’s really only one spot left (maybe two, if you really are the right person for it and I can’t say no.)

The DIY program has the most substantial changes to it. First of all, I want to acknowledge the term “Do It Yourself” can sound inspiring to some, and daunting to others. Because of that, we’re actually adding more support to the DIY level, without changing the price.

Three changes to the DIY:

1. We’re accepting no more than 20 people into the program, instead of thirty-six. I know the team we have can support that many people.
2. The DIY participants will have a chance to write a check-in each month, and get a written response from us here at Heart of Business. You will report on your progress with your personal business development plan, challenges you are facing, successes you’re having, things you want feedback on and other questions you have.While the program is such that we can’t give in-depth line-editing or feedback on writing, what we will be able to do is review things like websites and sales copy and give you our impressions of what’s working, and our top 1-3 recommendations of what you can do to improve it.
3. The check-ins will be scheduled to be due before the monthly DIY Q&A call. This is so you can write your check-in, get written feedback, and then ask follow-up questions on the call for clarity.

Because of all this, we’re pushing the early-bird deadline back. It was supposed to be today, but oh boy way too much was going on emotionally. So I’m pushing it back to December 6, a week from today.

Get your applications in, and we’ll get you moving in the new year.

What’s Next?

Through the grief of losing an amazing team member, I’m feeling re-inspired. I’m excited by all the possibilities that are coming up.

I do know some projects that I’m very inspired about: a year-long Remembrance Challenge, including virtual retreats. The Paradox class, that’s been itching to be born. A redesign of our look.

I’m also feeling vulnerable. I know there are a lot of learnings and realizations that will be bubbling up. I’m going to be showing you behind the curtain as much as possible.

So, you work hard and stay as present as possible, yet you take a misstep and get clobbered with the unexpected.

Your website goes down, mistakes with bookkeeping happen, or time lines that were underestimated leave you way, way behind.

And these unexpected turns have you questioning if you should even be in business.

Before you know it, you’re left frustrated and depleted, looking over your shoulder and wondering when your going to be blindsided into the next ditch.

Running with Bulls

In 1992, I attended the nine-day Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain and embarked on the crazy adventure of running with the bulls.

Along with my Dad, I showed up in the cobbled streets, where six huge bulls were about to begin running toward us through a blocked off maze of town streets that wound 826 meters to the main bullfight arena.

Packed like sardines, we were in a swarm of fear and excitement. I was taking deep breaths and trying to not freak out.

My dad, wiser than me, started asking the people around us one simple question, “Have you done this before?”

After asking about ten clueless people from various countries around the world, he found a Spaniard named Pedro.

Pedro explained to us that a very loud cannon would fire and startle the bulls, but also shock the people around us.

“It is not the bulls you need to worry about,” he said, “but the pushing, shoving, and terrified people who are trying to run on cobblestone ground. Put your hands in front of you and to brace yourself until the crowd thins out. You will avoid being trampled.”

And just as Pedro predicted, the cannon fired, the people panicked and with my hands braced outward and people stumbling down the road, my dad and I made it safely out of the pack and into the arena without injury.

Being in business can be like running with the bulls.  Your heart is pumping, your adrenaline is coursing, and you’re fully alive.

Asking for Help Is a Real Need in Business

It’s also true that without asking for help you may end up getting trampled in the business world.

When thinking about asking for help, many business owners come up against the taught belief that if you can’t do it on your own, then you shouldn’t do it at all.

Another one is that if you ask for help, you’ll owe the other guy if they say yes.

However, at the same time, the number one need that all human beings have is to be able to contribute their advice or wisdom to others when asked.

This means that by asking for help you are allowing others to make a difference in their lives as well as yours.

Keys to Being in Business without Getting Trampled

• You don’t have to do business alone. It may be helpful to participate in a MasterMind Team or consider joining a business community.

• Take some time sitting with the Divine and remember that many people would like to know how they can help you.

• Take a bold step and list out the people you admire in business. Give one of them a call and ask them to share big, unforeseen mistakes they see people making in business.

We flew to Ohio to visit their birth family. You see, our twin boys are adopted in an open adoption. It’s an extension of our traditional Thanksgiving trek to St. Louis, where my family congregates at my sister’s family home for the big turkey-fest.

Open adoptions are complicated relationships. At least this one is. At heart, there’s the uncomplicated fact that there are people who love these boys.

And if that’s so uncomplicated, tell me this: what is the etiquette when the adoptive parents and the birth parents are all in the room together with the boys? What’s appropriate? What isn’t? Have you ever been in that situation? I have… all of maybe a dozen times or so, all in the last year. And I’ve never watched anyone else do it.

Compare that to the billyons of times I’ve watched my parents, grandparents, friends’ parents and whoever else go through the dance of being family together. I’ve got a wide variety of role models to draw on.

This one, not so much. We’re flying by the seat of our pants, with some counseling support and a lot of prayer.

What Role Models Give Us

Choice. Human beings are really, really lousy at being innovative. It’s hard for us to think, it’s hard for us to create. Cognitively, thinking creatively and coming up with new solutions is one of the hardest jobs we do.

However, we’re really good at comparing, contrasting and choosing. When you see examples, you can choose between them. Even using my heart, multiple choice tests on what action to take are so much easier than cooking it up from scratch. If I have several choices in front of me, I can take a few moments to lean my heart into each and sense which one opens for me.

Without the choices to play with, it gets a lot messier, takes more time, and there’s more experimentation.

Luckily, Mess is Okay

With Sam and David’s birth parents, we’ve gotten through several messy situations okay, so I’m beginning to trust that mess is just okay. But, it still works my nerves like all git-out. The week leading up to this trip my productivity slowed to the pace of a tentative baby’s crawl as most of my available heart and brain space was processing the potential upcoming mess. Worst of all, the processing was unconcious, so it took a few days to figure out why I was so whacked out.

Bummer.

But, here we are, and so far, so good.

Now, About That Business of Yours

Unless you were raised in an entrepreneurial home, you might not have had any self-employed role-models growing up. But, you’ve probably acquired at least one by now. Conscious or unconscious, you may find yourself comparing your actions and choices to someone else. The trick is to pick people you actually like and admire, rather than just folks who happen to be making more money, or acquiring more clients, or getting more visibility than you. Robert, for instance, is one of mine.

And not just one, but several. Preferably folks that do things a little differently from one another. So, given any particular situation, you have a few different options to lean your heart into and see which one you can learn from. Having a few different role models helps to insure against becoming a Mini-Me.

Here are some of the people I’m currently in love with, watching, learning from, wondering about, helping to find some freedom/openness in my own actions.

Robert, Naomi, Jonathan, Chip, Pam, Sean, Michael, Molly, Jennifer, Eric, Dan and some others for sure, like the Prophet Muhammad, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr, and my spiritual teacher, Sidi al Jamal.

Growing into my own role as an adoptive parent, I’m realizing how fortunate I am to have so many folks to choose from in the world of business.

How do you pick role models? Who can you recommend and what in particular can you learn from them?

I’ve been sitting with this incident for two weeks now, reading insightful commentary from folks like Duff McDuffee and responses from the Native American community. Various Native Americans have spoken out against the way the sweat lodge was performed, calling it “dangerous” both in the construction and in not encouraging people to make their own decisions about when they might need to exit.

My heart goes out to the families and all those involved in such a tragically misguided incident. There’s a lot to be said here, but I want to focus on only one thing in this article, because it’s relevant for your business.

The “Next” Level?

One of the most frequently heard phrases in the small business development and coaching arena is “get to the next level.” It’s become fairly common to want to “push through limitations” and “break out of limited thinking.”

Some of this quite naturally comes as survival reaction: if your business isn’t making enough money, then you don’t eat. If you’re in survival mode, of course you want to get to a place of stability where you can be fairly certain of food, clothing and shelter.

I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about this urge to have breakthroughs. So let’s talk about what defines breakthrough?

Breakthrough or Spiritual Rebirth?

The Oxford American Dictionary defines “breakthrough” as “a significant and dramatic overcoming of a perceived obstacle, allowing the completion of a process.” It sounds fairly innocuous, and the example the dictionary uses doesn’t sound so bad: “The union’s agreement was the key breakthrough on pay and conditions.”

But that’s not what the self-improvement gurus are talking about. Using a word like “breakthrough” that is applicable in so many situations can be misleading. The “breakthroughs” being referred to by folks like James Ray and others are really processes of spiritual death and rebirth. The participants of Ray’s retreat paid a high price to learn about wealth and abundance, and they were told they needed to enter a new reality through extreme rituals to accomplish it

Spiritual paths the world over have a way of talking about these kinds of experiences. Often words like “death” and “annihilation” are included. When the union gets you a pay hike, you have more money in your pocket. When you have a spiritual or existential rebirth, reality shifts and you suddenly experience it differently. Things falls away, other things come in. Worlds blur.

Spiritual death. Rebirth. Change on a major scale. Not something to be dealt with lightly.

Rebirth Is Not An Escape

One of the key teachings in Sufism is about surrender and acceptance. One quote from the teachings of my lineage says, “If you don’t love all of My creation, then you don’t truly love Me.” Another teaching present in many spiritual paths forbids suicide, because it is an ultimate act of rejecting the Divine gift of life.

As a paramedic, I responded to an accident on a lonely, windy two-lane road where a pickup truck had rolled over and the cab had been sheared off at the level of the hood. As we rolled up, I said to a firefighter already on the scene, “Well, I guess this is another DOA (dead on arrival.)”

“Nah, there’s the driver over there. We can’t get him to put down his cell phone.” I was shocked; everyone in the pickup survived without a scratch. That contrasted in my mind with all the seemingly minor accidents where someone, through an unlucky twist of fate, wasn’t so lucky..

I use these extreme examples to illustrate a point: no matter what we do, we’re not really in control of life or death.

This also applies to things like businesses and projects, as well as spiritual states, each of which has a life and a presence of its own.

Your Reality Is Alive

Whatever reality you are experiencing right now, it is invested with the Divine quality of life. This is reflected in the language of different spiritual paths when they refer to “dying to this life” or being “reborn” or having a “spiritual birth day.”

Let me make this really clear: trying to force a breakthrough such as a spiritual death and rebirth is akin to suicide. Are you sure you’re right about how long that reality needs to live or when it’s time for it die?

You can do a lot of work with your beliefs and understandings, you can prepare yourself for change. But the change itself, the death of your current reality and the “breakthrough” into a new reality is not in your hands.

Our culture is addicted to breakthroughs, because we have done so little work on concepts like acceptance and surrender.

Here’s a question: If you never did any better than you have to this point, how would that feel? Can you still find love, acceptance and contentment with that reality?

Copping To My Own Push

We’re in the process of further developing Heart of Business’ capacity to serve. We’ve gone through some major growth, and it looks like more is in store over the next couple of years.

This has required me to face all kinds of limitations, beliefs and understandings within myself. I’ve been working hard to help it grow.

However, what I’ve returned to again and again every time I come up against a limitation is this: acceptance. Surrender. Be where I am. Find the love right *here,* not somewhere else.

I’ve come to understand that the process of spiritual death and rebirth is not about getting you where you choose to go. It tends to come instead after reaching a profound acceptance and surrender to where you are right now. And sometimes it doesn’t come then either. The point is, you aren’t choosing where you are going and you aren’t choosing when it happens. You aren’t in control. You don’t “stick it out a little longer” because you have the power to make something to “happen.”

Thankfully when you find that profound acceptance, you don’t care. That is perhaps a more profound breakthrough than making it to any “next level” as our desires for success might define it.

Preparing the way for a breakthrough can be a useful practice as long as you aren’t trying to make it happen. Here are some pointers I’ve gleaned over the years from both my tradition and other spiritual teachers I respect.

Keys to Breakthrough Preparation

• Love the Plateau

George Leonard, in his beautiful little book Mastery, talks about the plateau in reference to his martial arts training. He explains how television shows have accustomed us to expect high-drama events every five to ten minutes, with a resolution at the end of an hour.

Life is a lot less exciting. He tells us that often you just “keep showing up on the [martial arts] mat” for months, even years, without seeing a high-drama event or a breakthrough. I had the same experience when I fenced competitively. And as a business person.

Question: How can you cultivate appreciation, acceptance and enjoyment for where you are in your life and business right now?

• Let Go of More

There’s a story of a rich merchant who was also a zen master. He spent every night imagining all of his wealth and belongs burning up in a fire, leaving him with nothing.

Breakthroughs are often sought in order to have more, but going through a death is about having less. Having nothing, in fact.

Question: What would it be like if everything you have worked for were to disappear? Imagine that? Can you find love even there?

• Work Your Business

Helping your business work better doesn’t have to include spiritual enlightenment or some big psychological breakthrough. Simply the spiritual container of love and acceptance can deepen your presence in what you’re doing.

The life and reality you are living right now is fueled by the Love and Life pouring in from its source, the Divine. Your business challenges are not evidence of a need for a breakthrough.

They are evidence of a need for love, compassion and surrender. And maybe to take a look at what your business is truly needing.

From the tragic deaths at the James Arthur Ray retreat, to the horrible fear-provoked stumbling of our economic systems, to the various wars and violences we have imposed on our environment and each other, it is more than evident that many of us are full with craving to escape our situations.

Your business can thrive. I ask that we all join together in supporting a culture of surrender and acceptance, rather than a culture seeking escape. May our businesses thrive in love, generosity, and the grounded practical work that makes up the sweet routine of our daily lives.

My friend Amanda is a professor at Portland State University and teaches some amazing things about “enmification” — which is how we make enemies… and how not to do that.

She’s had a dream for years of participating in a compassionate listening reconciliation between Germans and Jews- like myself, she was raised Jewish.

She also had pretty strong heart-guidance that she wasn’t supposed to go into debt to finance the trip, which will cost at least a couple thousand dollars, including airfare and etc.

My Testimonial

Amanda and her whole family are close to our family- we’re “smooshta” family. My wife and I were at the birth of her son, and we live about 10 blocks from each other and frequently share meals and other family events. I say this to reveal that this is not an unbiased testimonial.

At the same time, Amanda is a powerhouse in her own right. She has been doing serious work in the field of community building, community organizating, conflict resolution, and what she calls “enmification.” She’s a professor, a spiritual teacher, a community organizer, and a musician.

And she has the opportunity to go to Germany very soon to participate in this reconcialiation program.

In Her Own Words

Dear Friends and Family:

As many of you know, I have been very interested in engaging in some kind of a reconciliation dialogue between Germany/Germans and Jews/Descendants of Holocaust Survivors for the past twelve years. In the last year I learned about a couple of different organizations that facilitate dialogue between Germans and Jews, and I have newly decided to travel to Germany this summer to participate in a process for Jews and Germans to transform our legacy of conflict.

I am sending this letter out for multiple purposes. First, I want everyone to know that I am doing this, and to also to let you know why I am doing this. The pain of the Holocaust has touched me deeply, and taking action toward healing is momentous for me. I hope to engender your support and prayers for my journey (physical, emotional and spiritual), and anticipate that I will take comfort in knowing you are sending encouragement in my direction.

Second, I am fundraising the expense of this adventure. When I first imagined engaging in a dialogue process a dozen years ago, I imagined that “Germany” would pay for this process as a form of restitution. While I am still receptive to that possibility, should it materialize, I have realized that by inviting my friends and family into that supportive role, I can find even more valuable support to go through this healing process with strength and certainty. I have set up a PayPal donation link on my website to simplify the process of contributing.

To donate financial support of any amount toward the cost of this adventure, please go to my website and click on the PayPal donate button at: http://web.pdx.edu/~abyron. Even a small donation has profound meaning to me.

The organization that I have decided to work with emphasizes the Jewish concept of Teshuvah, which speaks to the transformation that happens when we are able to “return,” or atone, in an effort to heal our wounding. The dialogue process creates a safe space for participants to tell their stories, to learn from one another, and to make amends for the tragedies of the Holocaust. More information about the process and the hosting organization is available at http://www.one-by-one.org/

In teaching about Conflict Resolution, I continue to tell the story of my mother’s exodus from Germany during World War II, and her family’s (successful) struggle to start over in a new land. The part of the story that has been most profound for me is the lack of justice available to them as Jews in Germany. This personal interest I have in issues of social justice has inspired a life-long professional emphasis on individual and collective responses to violence, with particular attention to responses that can address the direct and intergenerational trauma resulting from genocide. Dialogue is one of those responses.

I am not sure what all will come from this process, but I expect some creative expression to emerge during and after this experience. I intend to document the process through writing, art, music, and/or photography. And I look forward to sharing my experiences with you after I return. I will be available to share my stories, either informally or as part of a more structured presentation on reconciliation and healing.

Thank you all for considering my request!

The Donation Button

In case you missed it up above, here is a direct link to her PayPal donation button:

Donate to Reconciliation

(Some folks have told me they have trouble with this link. For an alternative, go directly to Amanda’s page, and look for the “Donate” link in the upper right.

Five bucks, ten bucks, twenty bucks, fifty bucks. If this speaks to you, and your heart says “yes” then please do give a little to her. It will mean she gets to do this really important work, and it won’t be a financial burden on her family. As you can imagine, university professors just don’t make that much money. Plus, it’s part of the healing to have her lifted there by many hands.

However, one frustration that has cropped up for me is that I do love connecting at a deeper level, if possible. And, when we’re talking about some of my favorite subjects, like marketing (crazy, isn’t it?), there is such richness, depth, joy and details in it, that I tend to want to dive in.

And yet, I’ve found that in commenting on other blogs, I can sometimes get myself in trouble. I’m just starting to see the limits of the blog comments box. Nearly every deeper conversation I’ve started online on a blog ends up being finished offline- in email, on the phone, in person.

This isn’t nearly as true in my online business community The Business Oasis. (Note: the Oasis ended in November 2010.) We have had many profound, intimate, in-depth conversations the really plumb the details of what’s involved with whatever subject we’re talking about, and bringing it through to implementation.

Blogging, and commenting, seems more like a cocktail party conversation. I don’t mean that in a demeaning sense- I think people are incredibly present and available on many levels- but I’m just getting the lightbulb that maybe a blog doesn’t have the container for the deeper conversations. Perhaps because it’s too public. Perhaps because there’s no defined boundary to the community- anyone can jump in.

This isn’t a bad thing- I love the relationships that have started online and deepened offline. But, it’s something to be aware of.

What do you think? What have you found about the limits of online conversation?

Is this a curse? Are you doomed? Is something wrong?

You have to start dealing with fear much differently. But how? If you ignore fear, it ambushes you at night. If you let the fear in, it’s easy to freeze and collapse.

There is another way to deal with fear, and get it off your back.

Read this article.

Listen to the podcast- just a about seven minutes.

How are you handling your fear? What are you hearing? I’d love to hear from you.