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July 30, 2006

Re-entry

I am just settling back into my regular life after 6 profound days of learning at USM. I'm happy to say I've completed the first year of my Masters, including the year-end lab. For me the lab was an incredible experience. I got to witness how far my classmates and I have come in terms of our counseling skills. It's becoming much more natural to sit back as the counselor, trusting that the client has all the resources necessary to shift into greater awareness and more effective ways of relating to themselves and the world. Because of this increasing trust and the remarkable skills they teach at USM, it's now a complete pleasure to watch my entire class unfolding as we move through diverse journeys. I have had such wonderful opportunities to see our faculty in action; its such an inspiration to see great counselors at work and absorb their techniques. After experiencing such a nurturing and educational environment, it's a transition to be back at home.

I had no idea going into this program that my class as a whole would reach this depth of learning and loving. I feel such an incredible support coming from my class and the University as a whole, it really seems to be a forum for individuals to sky-rocket into their dreams. Every month we hear more and more success stories from people who are "going for it" out there in the world. The remarkable thing is that we now have this incredible platform of trust and a whole skill set as we enter the second year of the program, which I hear is wonderful and also very intense. After a lab like that, I couldn't wait to sign up for more. More thoughts to come as I go through this program.

Posted by Lisa at 06:19 PM | Comments (1)

July 19, 2006

Creative Seeds & Zaadz

Here's a site well worth mentioning and browsing if you have some time: Zaadz. Very different from MySpace or Facebook or other networking sites, Zaadz is a community for like-minded people who want to affect positive change in the world. Joining the site means an application process to make sure that only committed and compassionate people take part- quite a departure from other sites that have been built on giving something away to any consumer. The people at Zaadz seem to walk their talk as far as I can tell, and the whole process shines with integrity and an attitude of service.

I'm happy just knowing that the internet is being used in this way, and I can't wait to delve in and connect with some of these fantastically motivated people.

The name of the site, Zaadz, really strikes my fancy. The name translates to "seeds". I once took a course on The Psychology of Creativity in which there was a lot of talk about "seeds of creativity" and how to cultivate them. Between that course and what I've learned about GTD over the last 6 or 7 years, I've taken up collecting seeds as one of my favorite activites. Most often these little gems are ideas, or fragments of ideas. Sometimes they are sketches of pottery that I see in my dreams, or a quotation from a friend that caught my ear, or pieces of emails that stirred my mind. All of these little seeds germinate over time, and I trust that I am making a good investment by staying open to inspiration from the world. And I have to credit David Allen for teaching me a system that gives me the freedom to cultivate seeds. Instead of feeling like my brain is maxed out, I know that my system can store as much as I will allow it to; that attitude alone creates space for seeds.

Does anyone have similar experiences with collecting seeds that mature later on? One of the greatest things I learned at UC Santa Cruz was the value of listening to subjective human experiences and counting them as real and valid evidence in the game of psychology. It's with the attitude that anyone can be an expert on his own inner reality that I'm making myself available to talk about creative seeds. I would love to hear about how you experience your own creativity working, in any form that it appears in. If you collect seeds, how do you do it? And when do you see your seeds start to become something bigger than you?

Posted by Lisa at 10:13 PM | Comments (1)