Start Right Now

I've spent this past week in Guerilla Business School – there’s a lot to write about – but I’m writing this before I go.

I think you’ve noticed how much faster life is – Well, that’s simple math. If you draw an exponential growth curve, you’ll see that it takes a long time to rise – it seems gentle. But when it rises, it is extremely steep – And it’s rising. In fact, we are in an exponential rise in our civilization – knowledge, crises, inventions, books, gadgets, toys, population, … almost anything we can measure – it’s not hard to keep up – it’s impossible. So prepare to be surprised – always… It will change. The impossible happens every day.

What can we do in the face of massive, continuous change? That’s this title. Don’t wait. As I’ve written before – adopt a policy based on confidence and support – you have or can develop confidence and you can certainly amass support. So-- – Ready, Fire, Aim. With confidence and support you can correct as conditions change. And they will change. Complacency leads to obsolescence.

But start what? I’m inclined to say, ‘whatever.’ A new business; a new project; acting on a dream that may vanish; saying ‘I love you’ before it’s too late; finishing something; communicating with someone; being generous; do something brand new – for the first time. We have to live longer because there’s so much - and so much more to do.

Here’s something new and worthwhile – important – and it’s four nights away:
Thursday evening, March 15th, from 7:30 – 8:30 is START night – living a sustainable life in a sustainable world.
The number is 1-218 936 6666 access: 998765#

If you want to use this article (or any of my articles) in your Ezine, newsletter or website, you can – as long as you include this bio with it:
Michael Lipp, MS, coach and author provides innovative and profitable strategies to entrepreneurs, seniors, and people committed to sustainability and/or creativity. My website is being redesigned – Write me at michaellipp@1stclasscoaching.com

Useful Quotes
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
Alan Cohen

In describing today's accelerating changes, the media fire blips of unrelated information at us. Experts bury us under mountains of narrowly specialized monographs. Popular forecasters present lists of unrelated trends, without any model to show us their interconnections or the forces likely to reverse them. As a result, change itself comes to be seen as anarchic, even lunatic.
Alvin Toffler

If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.
Charles Kettering

In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
G.K.Chesterton

The Creative Corner

Entropy and Growth

“Who is doing these awful things,” she shrieked, “to me?”
“It is I,” the Exponential Growth Rate,” the giant roared.
“Mercy!” she cried,
“Can no one save me fwom this fwightening fate?”
“No!” bellowed the giant, “No one!”
And he ate her.

“Why, that’s not so fwightening,” she murmured.

One of the most famous laws of physics is
the 2nd law of thermodynamics –
the law of entropy.
Entropy tells us that things change
all by themselves,
that things go from a state of order
to a state of disorder,
that the universe is running down.

We spend much of our lives in the futile effort to resist
or even reverse
entropy.
Too bad. Cobwebs do gather in corners.

What we don’t realize is that
the very effort to reverse entropy is entropy.
Technological growth demonstrates entropy.
The more things there are;
the more particulated the universe is,
the more disorder exists.
Complete heterogeneity is the same as complete chaos.
Every time we discover a new “fact”
the universe becomes more complicated and even further
fragmented,
further disordered.

And we are discovering new facts
at an alarming rate -and the rate is increasing -
and the rate of increase is increasing –

So many trees; so few forests.

When everything is on-line
and available at our fingertips, then everything
is well-hidden and nothing is known.

The more we discover, the easier it is to see
that we are each unique – and none different.
So Let the Good Times Roll

Perspectives March 5th 2007

Unabashed Coaching and Consulting

One of the things about coaching is that it’s the opposite of consulting. When you hire a consultant you hire an expert – you hire answers. But a coach is paid not to know. In fact, I used to have business cards that said, “I don’t know… I really don’t know.” I am hired to ask questions so that you discover that you know or that you can know. My internet coaching is, I confess, partially consulting, because I do know a lot of answers – and I’m still learning like crazy. But my coaching value lies in your knowledge – it’s mutual – we learn from each other.

One of the reasons this is my theme today is that I am really grappling to integrate this new view of the universe I have. Sometimes I pretend that I know. This is a common issue for me. What keeps me sane (that is - grappling) is that I occasionally listen to different media-heads whose job it is to adopt the pretense that they know – or that they are ‘above having to know--- they simply judge.’

Okay – what is this view? Where has it come from and where do I think it’s going? Let’s see if I can do some organizing:
*** I really didn’t grasp anything about my stewardship of Earth, of all of it. This began when I made a commitment to support creating the sustainable end of hunger. Still, I was mostly concerned with me and was willing to be part of that movement – even to own it. But I didn’t truly get it until I did the “Awakening the Dreamer” Symposium. When I saw “The Universe Story” (by Neil Rogin, from the writings of Thomas Merton and Brian Swimme) I began to really see our fundamental relatedness, our true interconnectivity.
*** Then I saw “What The Bleep” (do we know?) and “Mindwalk” which see the world through the lens of quantum mechanics and raise some fundamental questions.
*** And then I saw “The Secret,” which I’ve written a bit about. Simply stated, I can see the Law of Attraction as fundamental – and again, our relatedness and interconnectivity are clear.
I thought it was an enormous step to see myself not just as “myself,” but now… I’m grappling.
I got it. We’re fundamentally interconnected. So how does that affect how I live? I’ll keep writing about what I see, because it’s useful for me and will hopefully be valuable for you.

Thursday evening, March 15th, from 7:30 – 8:30 is START night –living a sustainable life in a sustainable world.
The number is 1-218 936 6666 access: 998765#

If you want to use this article (or any of my articles) in your Ezine, newsletter or website, you can – as long as you include this bio with it:
Michael Lipp, MS, coach and author provides innovative and profitable strategies to entrepreneurs, seniors, and people committed to sustainability and/or creativity. My website is being redesigned – Write me at michaellipp@1stclasscoaching.com

Useful Quotes
It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
Walt Disney

All human beings have this burden in life to constantly figure out what's true, what's authentic, what's meaningful, what's dross, what's a hallucination, what's a figment,
what's madness. We all need to figure out what is valuable, constantly.
Maxine Hong Kingston

When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few
people who are not afraid to be insecure.
Rudolf Bahro

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
Thich Nhat Hanh

Everyone's life is under someone's control - it might as well be under your own so that you can direct your destiny.
Harry Tucker ( Strategy Adviser – Microsoft)

With laissez-faire and price atomic,
Ecology's Uneconomic,
But with another kind of logic

Economy's Unecologic.
Kenneth E. Boulding (1910 – 1993)

The Creative Corner

A Whimsical Commercial

The I Ching is the Chinese poetry of the future –
Throw sticks or coins; they resonate with your soul
The Co ching is my prose

to invent your future
It resonates with your voice
And elicits your choice

I used to think I knew
Who knew I knew?
I could gather my forces
And quote my sources
‘Cause I was meant
To win my every argument
This was a bad beginning
It’s how to lose by winning

When it comes to having fun
Two heads are better than one
And itching is
Better than bitching
According to the I Ching