Photo Credit: Astrid Jirka
Back To The Bubbles — Time To Get Your GLEE Glasses Back On!
SPARKOLOGY
Creating A Culture Of Connection — The Sparking Approach To Moving Forward From Here
Photo credit: Astrid Jirka
THIS is a big, juicy post!
Within twenty four hours of the election I had heard from hundreds of people asking me to share my thoughts about how best to move forward. I drafted a long audio response and sent it to some of my closest friends and favorite Sparkers, including Democrats, independents, Republicans, Greens and Libertarians. I was amazed that I heard back in one day from all but four of the people I sent this to. Quite a few people asked me to please put this up on the blog. My apprehension to do has been due primarily to the length of the posts. I have also been concerned that people new to the site might not have as much context for these comments as I would want them to have. Having heard more people today, however, still announcing that they are “too upset to engage,” I decided I should put this up.
I heard from one Sparker that she listened to the two parts of this post while pulling tomatoes from her garden. 🙂 Maybe you can listen while you are driving, prepping dinner etc. I would be very interested to hear your substantive responses AND your sense of how it was for you to listen to a post this long!
I am also going to post a response that just came in from Super Sparker Adam Kane, a leader I have had the honor of coaching who serves as the Executor Director of the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium, one of the treasures in the wonderful community of St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
Spark On!
Jeff
The Top Five Uses for your “These Are A Few Of My Favorite INGs list
Photo Credit: Astrid Jirka
One of you wrote in today and asked “can you tell me all the ways that I can make use of my ‘These Are A Few Of My Favorite INGs’ list?”
Here are the Top Five:
- To help you lift your spark number every time you note it has dropped below an 8. Sometimes when our spark drops we cannot even remember what can lift us again. Do you recognize that? Remember: you are trying to become consistent about “Reaching for next highest (available) ING” whenever your spark number drops below an 8.
You should print out two or three different copies of your list of your favorite INGs, and put them somewhere you will be able to find them easily when you need them the most. Then you should actually read right down your INGs list and see which of them would truly be “reaching for the most easily available high ING for quick Sparklift.”
- To manage your energy at your current work through Sudoku Scheduling (see related post) even before you are able to make any big changes
- To help you re-write your current job description
- To help you decide if you should change your work or quit your current job. If you cannot get to the level of 50% of your work hours being spent on 8’s, 9’s and 10’s within six months of trying with our approach you should start looking for new work!
- To help you think through what job to look for and/or what to ask for with a prospective new employer.
The Seven-Step Process For Making Good Decisions
Photo credit: Astrid Jirka
Remember the sequence for making good decisions:
- Learn your own signs to tell when you are about to make a decision. This might be as simple as “when someone is standing in front of me asking me a question,” “when I feel my neck tightening,” “when I feel my face getting flushed.” Those are some recent examples people have offered. Becoming aware that you are about to make a decision before you make it – and this includes the decision to part your lips and allow air to pass through them in the form of speech to another person – is absolutely foundational to effective decision-making.
- Any time you become aware that you are being called (externally or internally) to make a decision, PAUSE. That means shut your mouth if you have the option to say nothing, or if someone else is asking you something, say something like “I really appreciate your asking me that, will it work for me to respond later today?”
- Quickly assess if the decision at hand might well be a “decision of consequence.” That is, if it might well have consequence for your life for more than a week. If you can quickly conclude that it would not, just make the decision quickly! Any way you want; do not squander the energy agonizing over it.
- If you think this might be a Decision of Consequence, check your spark number.
- If your spark number is below an 8, reach for the next highest available ING.*
- When your spark number is back up to an eight, (hopefully) within one hour once you practice the sparking approach, Clarify The Question.*
- When you are clear about what question you need to attend to next and your spark number is still (or again back) at an eight or higher, you are NOW ready for “The Big Give” to yourself by running your Four Frames decision-making process.* The “Big Give” is the mnemonic BGIV for Best Self, Good Life Index, INGs and Vision. Each of these is explained elsewhere.
Enjoy AND Improve the World
Spark On!
Art credit: Alice Muhlback http://www.spiritandkitsch.com/
We’d love to hear a story from YOU – no matter how small — of some moment in your day today when you simultaneously fed your own spark while making more possible for someone else
Welcome to Feed Your Spark
Tammyanka Francis Feeling The Glow
Most of us know the experience of being pulled in so many directions that it is hard to figure out how to even make the time and find the energy to figure out how to better manage (or really steward) your time and your energy — let alone how to learn to make decisions to live an amazing life. That is a life with great clarity and ease, with the sense that you are On Track and enough — full of joy, meaning, gratitude, connection, beauty, play –while succeeding in your work, realizing your BEST vision for yourself and making a positive difference in the world.
So I have taken the most important insights from what I have learned through thirty years of research on peak performance and burnout prevention and from coaching a whole bunch of amazing people from Kilimanjaro to Kalamazoo, and I have created a series of posts in bite size, (gluten-free) nuggets. Each one is 1:59 seconds or less –and they lay out The Nine Keys To Feeding Your Spark which is basically everything I have learned about how to not just survive but be Really Alive. How to thrive in your life, succeed in your work and change the world. A person I have recently worked with said to me “in under thirty days I learned from you and have put into action a practical path to peak performance, wellness, happiness and service.”
In my private conversations, I call the collection of these posts “Sparky U.” While this content will hopefully help you learn and put into practice much more than most online courses, I don’t want any of this to feel like “work” or “school.” I always say to the people I coach that if they tell me they are “working on something” that I have talked to them about, I want them to stop and just “play with it” instead. You can listen to these posts in the bathroom, while cooking or driving somewhere. One person who has listened to these gave me the great present of saying “it was like I was getting these awesome insights about specific things I can do to make my own life better and to make more possible for others and I didn’t really have to spend even five extra minutes to learn it all because I just listened to them when I was on the toilet anyway.”
The first ten posts are each accompanied by a piece of SparkArt, that I commissioned from the amazing Alice Muhlback, an inspiring, whimsical artist who has been dreaming up this collaboration with me for ten and half years.
Later posts will come with some fantastic photographs taken by Astrid Jirka, as well as other visual artists and musicians.
I invite you to listen to as few or as many as float your boat. Better still, join the SOW What Club – ALSO free!—and join in the conversation about what works for you to Feed Your Spark and live the gratitude attitude.
Please send me comments and questions that will make my bday even better.
Spark On!
Jeff
