Why the three month hiatus?

Greetings - It's now the end of February, and I am gradually working my way back into workshop mode. You'll notice on the dreamprocess web site I've announced the next DREAMS for the REAL WORLD workshop will take place Tuesday, April 7th, 7-9pm at Arlington High School near Boston. Please see www.dreamprocess.com for details and registration information.

With that promotional plug out of the way, I wanted to share a bit about what happened during my break (which still officially continues for another 6 weeks or so). First of all, I did 8 workshops since deciding to first do this during the second-half of 2008. Venues included a coastal retreat center in Maine, a Sunday School classroom, a very cool arts center in Concord (see www.emersonumbrella.org for details), a corporate offsite at the Harvard Club in Boston, and even one my son Chris asked to do for him and his friends (which took place in my "man cave" - a.k.a. basement at home).

The participant ages ranged from about 6 years old up to early 90's, with just about every age and personality type represented. What surprised me more than anything was how the dreamprocess simply "worked". When I led a workshop for the combined Sunday School classes at my church, I simplified the template a bit but found everyone there (aged 6 to 17) was able to participate and share what they learned quite well. I also noticed kids who were about 9,10 and older were very keen on doing the "grown up" elements of the process, including prioritization of goals. I kept thinking how much better off I would have been if someone had shown me how to help prioritize dreams and goals this early in life!

The workshops, and thus the dreamprocess, provide a great way to engage and refine dreams and goals that may have remained latent for a long time. I recall vividly how one participant realized he had a deep love for painting, and did not see a need to engage in this for twenty years -- until now. Others found it provided a framework to address key life concerns such as career, estate planning or simply changing to a more healthy lifestyle.

So why stop for several months? Yes I can attribute this to workload at my "day job", as I continue to travel extensively. But there is something more. I find at this point many of the goals on my own dreamboard had been achieved (including a trip to Thailand, buying the fun/high MPG car I always wanted, getting my weight down, etc.), but I sense a need to just step completely back and start this again from the beginning.

So I began to scale back on several commitments (including workshops, volunteering, certain work projects, etc.), while in turn opening up mental and emotional space to allow new ideas and activities to emerge. At this point I'm working on an updated version of my own dreamboard, and am finding the process as well as the results to be more clear, focused and adaptable than before.

I look forward hearing your perspectives, and sharing some more of my insights at the next workshop.

Yipeee! The National Museum of American History reopened today.

By now several of you know I do a *lot* of traveling as part of my day job in high tech. Last year I flew about 80,000 miles, and feel particularly horrible about this given my role at work includes driving the company's sustainability initiatives. And although I was able to bow out of a trip to Gothenburg, Sweden this week and instead participated in my meeting via videoconference here in Boston (boring, but cheap and low eco-impact), so far the technologies still have not yet replaced the power of face-to-face communications. I don't mean the actual meetings, of course, but rather all the dialogue that often takes place informally before and after.

So in that vein, this weekend I head to Washington DC to put to rest my sense of incompleteness at having not been able to visit my all-time favorite museum during a business trip I took there about three months ago. I'm referring to the American Museum of Natural History, which reopened today after a two-year renovation. This is the place known to many as the place where the original Star Spangled Banner upon which our national anthem is based currently resides, but it's also where you can find Abraham Lincoln's hand-written draft of the Gettysburg Address, Julia Child's kitchen, Dorothy's ruby-red shoes from the Wizard of Oz, and even some electronic marvels such as an electric marshmellow toaster!

It's one of the most eclectic hodgepodge places I've ever seen (and I say this having visited museums in pretty much all of the 45 countries I've visited in my lifetime), and based on reviews I read this week in the New York Times and elsewhere, the renovation has not done much to bring coherence and clarity to the overall structure (though I understand more renovations are coming). The articles do point out, however, that while the lack of cohesion has always been a problem during the museum's history - it doesn't help that we're talking about over 3 million items that encapsulate the good, bad and ugly of the American culture - it's the almost random encounter with incredibly symbolic, important artifacts which is what makes this one of the most extraordinary human-created places on earth.

So that's why rather than visit the National Air and Space Museum day 1 (which I'll do instead the next day, as I remain a techno/aero geek at heart), I plan to be smack in the middle of the 3-day festivities across the mall about noontime this Sunday. Does life get any better?

"... the world needs people who have come alive."

Greetings - Right upfront I'd like to share the entire quote by Dr. Howard Thurman (author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader), which for the past several years has either been taped up on the wall next to my desk or tucked away in the bible on my nightstand. Here it is: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

I think a lot about this as I feel more alive now than I have for several years. I'm not saying it's all fun, necessarily. And there's in fact been a lot of hardship coupled lockstep with the joy, but to feel alive is truly a gift to treasure. I've felt for a very long time that while our souls exist eternally (i.e., outside the constraints of space and time), we have the opportunity to live on this planet in part to experience a vast range of thoughts, emotions and actions that help us learn, evolve and contribute to something much greater than ourselves. There's nothing new to what I'm saying here, as you can pick most any spiritual or philosophical tradition and find references to this notion.

So coming back to the here and now, the point of this is that I'm briefly stepping off the mental treadmill this Friday for a few moments to note that while the press makes clear our global financial order is collapsing, the earth is about to burn up, and even Best Buy is on its way to a horrible quarterly revenue meltdown, I remain very optimistic and hopeful about where we are going as a society. Why is this?

I look at my recent experience in the realm of sustainability, for example. Today I oversee strategic marketing and sustainability initiatives at StreamServe, a software company that converts very high volumes of paper output (utility bills, financial statements, among other things) from paper to electronic, providing both financial and environmental efficiencies along the way. Three years ago it was hard to find people in the corporate mainstream who would listen this message, or who believed we collectively are really doing anything detrimental to our planet by the lifestyles we live. I think Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth in 2006 changed that, and today there's a tremendous groundswell of action across both the grassroots on up to the CEO-level of many global corporations. Please see my last blog post from the Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) Conference in New York where I elaborate on this.

Perhaps most important is I see an incredible mobilization among the Millenium Generation (mostly kids born roughly between 1978 and 1995, and by some definitions up to 2001), the oldest of whom are getting established in the workforce. This is the first generation whose majority grew up with the Internet, for example, and so the notion of us all being interconnected in one big, realtime matrix is something that is second nature to many people of this cohort. I see this attitude with my own kids who are 18 and 21, respectively, but also among many others I meet in the course of my day. What I find time and time again is these are people who are very aware, active and have "come alive.". The fact these kids are just beginning to hit their stride to me is our best hope for the future.

Hopeful signs from New York City

I'm here attending the Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) conference, in the context of my role managing my company's (StreamServe) sustainability initiatives. I'm very glad to be here, as the BSR conference is one of the primary forums in the U.S. focused on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). While I've read many definitions of the concept, for me CSR is a framework designed to encourage sustainable corporate behaviors both in terms the environment and the social systems these organizations are a part of.

While the lineup of presenters has been impressive, including the CEO's of Levi's, IKEA and GE, the standout conversation for me took place yesterday, and was completely unexpected.

I was tied up yesterday morning on a work-related call, so I arrived to the ballroom here at the Grand Hyatt New York about 20 minutes late for lunch. As I walked in I asked a woman on the hotel staff asked if I can still have lunch, and she said absolutely and mentioned that in fact she's responsible for serving at the table where I decided to sit. She also told me without my asking that I can have a vegetarian meal if I'd like (why, did I look like a vegetarian?).

So it turns out I'm what's known as a "flexitarian", which I understand is someone who doesn't eat meat when dining alone, but will go ahead and have this when dining with others and there are no vegetarian options presented. While I had just recently heard of the term, I found intuitively this approach let me practice what I believe (both for environmental and moral reasons) without making a big scene when I'm with others.

Then a few minutes later the server (whose name I regret I didn't note) came by telling me how wonderful it is to see a gathering such as BSR where top corporate and institutional leaders gather to share insights around something they strongly believe in -- and in turn are challenged to go further and be more transparent in their sustainable business practices. As yesterday was the morning after the historic election of Barack Obama as President-Elect of the United States, she mentioned how for the first time in many, many years there's a sense our society is moving in a direction that is bringing us all together. She said she was very proud to be an American that morning.

Indeed, I too am proud to be an American. As John Anderson (the Levi's CEO who spoke yesterday, and who happens to be Australian) pointed out, much of the world now is energized about this election because the United States is the one country that to much of the world represents dreams we can all aspire to living ourselves one day.

It's truly an extraordinary and wonderful time to be alive.

A letter from the future ...

200 years from now …

Dear Mike – We're still here.

Somehow, through all the turbulence, ignorance and near-misses, humankind made it this far. While our bodies look and smell the same as yours, we have become something very different inside. Our basic impulses have not gone away – we still love, hate, yell, do stupid things, forget what our partners tell us just two minutes before, and make funny, sometimes embarrassing noises in public. Yes, we're still alive.

But we also learned a few things over the past two-hundred years that enabled us to avoid extinction. We view these insights as so precious, we regard them as more valuable than any material possession. They are simply this:

* We are loved unconditionally and in turn our love flows through "all"
* We accept each other for who we are
* Anything we do to another we do to ourselves
* Creation proceeds from "thought, word and deed", so we place great emphasis on thoughts that nurture compassion
* We've forgotten how to hate

To get here we saw massive populations decimated by overproduction, consumerism and manipulation. A relentless focus on systemic growth led our civilization to behave like a cancer that almost destroyed the organism it is by non-regulated self-replication of destructive behaviors. We almost perished.

But didn't.

What happened?

It began as small pockets, much like seeing random fireflies on a warm summer night. A flicker here – then it was gone. But then another. And another. This went on for a long time. Then some of the flickers became sustained. Then another. Then some connected with others. The light became more brilliant and radiant. It began to look like a large ball of string made of light. Then an amazing thing happened – we saw that we were that light. And we all just knew what to do as we were already doing what was needed .

So here we are.

Just keep going …
Your friend from the future

(from a workshop exercise based on the book Coming Back to Life, by Joanna Macy)

Homeboy industries? Why the connection to the dreamprocess.

I wanted to briefly share what has so far been the highlight of the month of October for me (aside from having my daughter Nicole visit for the week on break from her freshman year in college).

We had our first dreamprocess workshop last week that was open to the public. Till now I've done workshops at my church (having been asked to do this, then agreeing to do so while dragged kicking and screaming!), but this was the first time I was out there on my own. It turns out it went great, as most of us there left that evening with a small sense of looking at the world differently than when we had arrived.

While I had a blast leading this, and seeing all the creative ways the participants were able able to "connect the dots" in new and exciting ways, the real highlight for me came two days later when I fulfilled the promise I make on my website to donate 10% of all proceeds to charity. In this case, we're talking about an organization in one of the rougher parts of east Los Angeles, which is called Homeboy Industries. Why on earth would I pick this, when there are so many organizations here in the Boston area?

Well, we need to go back about 38-40 years or so when I was a kid walking home from school in L.A. Though I was born here in the U.S., my parents were immigrants who believed totally that education was the ticket out of the 'hood, so to speak. It turns out the neighborhood I lived in till about age 13 was also one of the areas where one of the larger gangs in the city had set up a base. So at times I would walk home from the bus stop and be followed by a group of older kids who would start harassing me. In these settings I learned it was best to usually focus on the leader, and make it a one-on-one conversation. Most of the time they seemed to actually respect me for having the courage to look at them as equals rather than run away, and I usually walked away without incident. Usually this approach worked well, and only once did I have a close call (about age 9) where I had a knife pulled on me and rode my bike like hell to get away (which I did, thanks to the timely appearance of a grown-up who gave them an earful - at which point they moved on).

The point of all this is that often in these situations (though not always), I noticed the guy I was doing a stare-down with was not much different from me except for his skin color. He struck me even then as someone who was very bright and yet was trapped in the world of his gang. I now feel so fortunate that growing up I always was told that education mattered more than anything. Go see the world and you'll understand. And so I did. Since then I've lived in 5 countries, and this summer visited country number 45.

So Homeboy Industries to me is incredibly cool and powerful, because it provides a mechanism for those kids who don't want to spend their lives in gangs a way out through becoming productive, contributing members of the broader society. Homeboy Industries is a nonprofit that basically helps former gang members form and manage businesses that bring real value -- and ultimately provides an alternative, positive vision of the future.

By the way, my own long-term vision is to establish a dreamprocess foundation (or whatever name this experiment will be called by then), which will enable inner-city youth to do study-abroad programs. My timeframe is 10 years. And yes, I've got this listed on my own dreamboard!

Back to Berlin 18 years after Reunification

(NOTE: This entry was posted May 19, 2008 on a another site)

Hi - I'm in Berlin this evening (the other one that's not next to I-495), going through another burst of overseas travel. I was last here October, 1990, and as luck would have it this was coincident with the day the East and West Germany became a single country. I remember back then knowing what an extraordinary moment this was, as I got to see history being made all around me. I also have vivid memories of walking through East Berlin (incredibly sterile and run-down at the time), seeing a good portion of the wall still up (but with lots of pieces already taken away), and walking through the no man's land where the wall used to be. There were several informal memorials of flowers and/or small crosses placed much as what you see along highways in our country marking the places where people died. Only in this case, the people remembered here were shot trying to cross over into West Berlin -- some as recently as just the year before I walked by.

Fast forward to today (May, 2008) and East Berlin is now very modern and trendy. I passed a Ferrari dealership right on Unter der Linden, the main drag in East Berlin that leads up to the Brandenburg Gate, which has now been restored to look much as it did when this was considered the finest boulevard in the city. Where the wall stood, you can find some markers noting its location, but otherwise the integration between east and west is seamless. You'd never know how different the place looked 18 years ago.

Which brings me to the topic of this post ... things that didn't end up in our DreamGrids. I think a key part of the DreamProcess is to dream -- but also to allow space for things not dreamed about/wished for to simply emerge in the moment. Here's what got me thinking about this ....

While this business trip has been typical with most of the day spent in windowless meeting rooms, tonight I ate my first ever Jamaican meal (very good) at a hole-in-the-wall called "Soon Come" in a racially mixed neighborhood nearby. The other diners included a french family with a toddler (and another on the way), a young lesbian couple who spoke fluent English and German, and a guy from who knows where who got temporarily booted from his apartment as his roommate was recording a CD.

Just another day in Berlin, I guess.

So I asked the owner (Jeff) how did a Jamaican restaurant end up in Berlin, of all places? He said he came here about 12 years ago because there were construction jobs related to the post-reunification building boom. Those jobs eventually dried up, so Jeff moved to London, found he missed this place and came back. He had always dreamed of having his own restaurant, so with a friend he opened up the restaurant about 3 1/2 years ago, but the friend abandoned the business 3 weeks later. The rest, he noted, was history. Along the way he created a vibrant, fun place for a diverse community of people to come together.

Maybe Jeff had a DreamGrid or DreamBoard of some sort. I didn't remember to ask. But for me, neither tonight's experience nor the one I had 18 years ago were ever on the dream-focused radar, yet they both had a "wow" factor akin to dreams coming true. Just some fuel for thought ...