Blog Update

Hi all,

I haven’t left this blog for dead but I am currently working on a side project called “My Name is Courage.” I am attempting to face fear a day and blog about conquering fears. Check it out at http://www.mynameiscourage.com

Also I am preparing to release my first ebook in three parts. I really appreciate you’re support and conversation.

Cheers,
Justin

An Experiment with Sound

It has been a long time since my fingers have touched the keys to write a blog, strangely though life hasn’t slowed down. But some things have changed and one of those things is that we got a Mac Book as very generous gift from Lacey’s former boss (for the record he said he believed Lacey job was under payed so he said he was making up for it. Just want to keep it accurate for Paul.)

Since owning the Mac I have been experimenting with Garage Band quite a lot (in fact the first night we got it I was up late). The spoken word mix is result of that. Its bit out there and as always it isn’t done but I wanted to release it. I will write a full blog later its just time I release it to the wild to see if it can survive the wilderness.

I am radio from Justin Blass on Vimeo.

Words are the links between us.

The mind can move in strange ways. Exhaustion to energy, static to inspired, and then as strangely as it comes it goes and tiredness returns. I have had a few days that have spilled into each other, yesterdays thoughts still reaching for today’s headline. Sharing my thoughts with you is therapy, a moment I give name to the ideas connecting inside.

A few months ago my friend Benn and I were having a conversation about the power of words. We were both testing our thoughts out on each other, ideas still forming, blunt objects we wielded with caution. We were wrestling with the power of written word and the spoken word. It would seem at least upon first glance that the written word rules our day. Its a timeless, “eternal” offering, that allows the person to move from body to page and for a moment inhabit these small black shapes.



I am challenged by the fact that I can still remember that conversation. I remember how it felt sitting on the couches drinking beer after a hard days work. I remember how it felt sharing our honest, naked thoughts. Disregarded the need to dress up ideas to make them presentable. The conversation hangs with me, the memory now a friend itself, in a way that a book cannot.

This is not to say books are not powerful and that writing does not have the possibility of beauty (I am typing away after all). Words have power whether written or spoken. But I think I far underestimate the power of conversation.

An author I am reading currently says it like this, “Words link spirits.  Reduced to writing and left there, words no longer do what they are designed to do – create and maintain personal relationships of intelligence and love. When a word is spoken and heard, it joins the speaker and hearer into a whole relationship; when it is written and read, it is separated into grammatical fragments  and has to be reconstituted by the imagination in order to accomplish its original work.” (Eugene Peterson)

I am challenged to live both on the page and in the spoken reality. I have tended to find comfort between the lines, encouraged by the page’s patient listening. Perhaps I have missed out on the beauty that gets breathed into each of our words.

When was your last meaningful conversation?

What if you had unlimited vacation days?

After I posted the link to a TED talk from Daniel Pink, my friend Benn posted a very interesting link to presentation from Netflix. Netflix for those who don’t know started as a DVD rental company that posted DVD’s to your home, similar to Fatso in NZ. They have evolved from simple mail forms to various other ways of easily renting movies. But Netflix apparently has been getting some attention in the States. And it’s not for their methods of renting movies but for not having a set amount of vacation days.

It’s funny what draws our attention? Their “policy”, if you could call it that, of course stands out in the normal two-week model that I believe most people working in the US experience.

I have the feeling a lot of people put their hands up to work at Netflix after hearing this and that alone should say something. If you’re a manager perhaps you just scoffed and shook your head.

Having no set amount of vacation days in the current mode of understanding organisations is very, very scary. Most would believe this would be a fatal decision for a company or organization. And it most likely would be if they would be using one of the popular models.

The problem is once you watch the presentation you realise that their model is step in a whole different direction or maybe better understood as built from a whole different set of assumptions.  They appear to fit more in line with the intrinsic model presented in Drive.  And to be honest a lot us that put our hands up at the beginning might now be ducking in the corner.

Check out the presentation here. See what you think for yourself. Thanks Benn for this link.

Did anyone feel the fear creep in?

I know I did. All the sudden the insecurities can surface. Questions start bubbling to the surface: Would I make it in this model? Do I have anything to offer?

Perhaps even more troubling is the people who are highly motivated are people who care deeply about something. This question is one I haven’t been able to shake: What do I care about?

There is something dangerous about this intrinsic motivation idea, something that cuts behind the cheap vinyl veneer I often hide behind: the world of status quo effort.

That’s when it hit me, I believe: Caring = resistance.

Caring changes things and maybe we have been aware of this and it is why so many of us have stopped caring. It pulls us into action. It often calls us into the unknown, beyond our abilities. It takes us away from the norm into spaces rarely travelled. It argues back against all the voices inside of us that tell us that change is impossible or just too hard.

Unfortunately, from a motivator’s view I don’t know if you can tell people what to care about. It seems to be something we all have to choose. If you’re like me you feel the weight of this day-to-day, where you are repeatedly doing things you don’t care about.  It becomes harder to swim upstream against the river of apathy.

Take an honest moment. Let your inner critic and filter have the next few minutes off. And ask with me, what do you really care about?

What do you do with guilt?

Some conversations are too good to keep to yourself. Almost a week ago some of my friends gathered in a home to chew on some life changing ideas. The beauty of being in a community like Mosaic is that every conversation is full of potential to change how you see the world.  We were addressing the conversation of “Guilt and Shame.” After my last post I was intrigued to say the least to continue the conversation about the place of guilt in our lives and continue to wrestle with the idea of using guilt as the stick of motivation.

For most of us guilt and shame are up there in our top feelings to avoid. I generally run from them with great haste. When you are ashamed of something you’ve done or been caught with your hand in the cookie jar it seems that the sky itself is falling. Do you know the feeling? We lose our ability to accurately perceive the severity of events and we can either turn ant hills into mountains or try to convince ourselves the icebergs are just cubes. Either refusing to address the action that triggered the feeling or making the implications more than we can handle. Anyone with me?

Some of us have been feeling guilty our whole lives and we don’t really know why.

A much wiser friend said that if you are going to grow into a healthy person you must learn to “make guilt and shame your friend.” I am not a fan of this language. It was used by previous generations per say, I don’t really want to go out have a beer and play some pool with my guilt, the idea doesn’t work for me. But once I got past my friend’s language I was stuck. His challenge was this:

What if guilt and shame are not something that is working against you but something that is simply sending you a signal; like a nerve?

I was intrigued. Okay I thought? That doesn’t really change too much I guess. I still don’t like the signal and what really is it signalling?

He continued, “Guilt and shame are the nervous system of our conscience.” Alright so what does this mean? Again seems pretty straight forward.

As I was chewing on it something inside of me started to click:

What if your guilt and shame are simply signals to you that you are not being true to yourself?

What if guilt and shame are the way to keep you on a story arch that is developing you into the character you want to be?

This may not be that ground breaking for you, but I was in the right space for this message. The issue doesn’t lie with guilt and shame even though they may have been our scapegoat for many years now. The problem lies in the fact that many of us don’t know what to do with these signals. We don’t know what were about. We are character without stories.

As a kid we may absorb the collective conscience or story of our family and our culture. But we don’t stay in that world forever. You visit a friend’s family. Go to a different culture. And you start to wonder what do I believe about the world and about myself?

These questions are not easy to wrestle through. It’s like trying to put together Inception after just one watch, there are so many pieces to makes sense of.  Perhaps the reason we run away from guilt and shame is that we have never been able to figure out what we care about. Not what we have been told to care about, but we care about. We will run to avoid the awareness the we in fact don’t really know what were about. We hide in different groups who simply let us be until something triggers this response and then we move on. Or at least I have and continue to.

I am attempting to come to terms with guilt and shame as triggers and develop my conscience built after what I believe. The challenge lies understanding the story I want to live out.

So what about you? Who do you want to be? What story do you want to live out of?

Motivating tribes

Breathing. Every day is filled with it except today I can feel every breath. The tightness is my chest brings the awareness of effort, that some days things just don’t come easy. So how do we push through the pain to pursue life and things we desire? What motivates such determination?

I  was hanging out with a friend not to long ago, who has an iPad for “work.” I was messing around with this giant toy and ended up reading the e-version of Wired Magazine. They had an article from a guy called Dan Pink who had written a recent book called Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. A flag went off in my mind and I thought the iPad may have some use outside giant Angry Birds.

I had recently sat with a group of friends discussing the movement of our tribe. We were sharing stories and casting vision for the future. At some point somebody offered some thoughts in an attempt to direct our thinking that made me wince a bit. The words touched a sore spot from the past, a bruise. I have since forgotten what they actually said but I know the result was a feeling of guilt. In their words I felt the cold snap of the guilt stick used to get me back on page. It is unlikely the person intended to inflict such a feeling of guilt but it got me thinking; is guilt the only way faith communities can motivate? Is this the only way we as individuals can motivate?

And so after reading a bit of the article I decided to pick up the audio book of Drive  and had a listen. After reading a book you realize the the tough work is still ahead of you and my mind is still trying to bring the idea home. But I would love more in the conversation. Check out the TED talk from Dan Pink.

Post thoughts and questions: It has often been said that faith communities tend to mirror the business world and when you chew on the motivation tactics used by many faith communities there is striking similarity. Although it may not be financial gain, carrots and sticks are still the tools of choice for primary motivators.  To some degree I think there are layers (motivation for change and motivation to sustain for ongoing change). Often sticks are used to wake people up from the slumber. Dan in fact is speaking in a way that seeks to inform change by saying one way isn’t actually working. We as people often learn through conflict.  So there is much to land in the art of motivation both in terms of self and communities. So what do you think?

Let me know how you think an intrinsically motivated community might look. How do autonomy and community work together? How does the implication of carrots and sticks change the goals we set and the way we pursue them? Does the role of autonomy, mastery, and purpose change the very language we use when encouraging one another?

Bottle rocket dreams

The key’s stand firm against the push of my fingers, they staunchly protest assisting my muddled thoughts spilling onto the internet. Shouting at all my thoughts to get in a single filed line and move quickly to the conclusion. But my mind is everywhere and no where, a hall way full of students before the morning bell. I try to lasso a thought from the herd but the words bump in kick in a stampede. After minutes of trying to get my thoughts to march out in line I feel exhausted and I move to walk away from the mocking keys ashamed. Then my index finger finds its strength and now were moving….slowly.

My friends and I have been on a journey looking into the practices or disciplines that lead people to experience a more “full” life. Whether it is possible to fill the glass of life to overflow is another conversation. The whole conversation has got me thinking: Have you ever stopped and wondered if you think growth or learning or development is possible? Can you really change or grow into something more than you currently know?

Most of my experiments with goal setting and adding new disciplines in my life ends soon after it begins. The bottle rocket life of goal setting. You get a spark of inspiration and you start letting your dreams fly and take off into them only to see the dream burst into pieces soon after. Leaving you thinking that you are just stuck floating through life without much say in the process. But what if this is the necessary step in pursuing any change in life?

My challenge tonight is to push myself beyond the ashes of bottle rocket dreams. What would it take to pick up the pieces and begin again?