Happy Soul Food Friday!
Heart and Soul:
Sometimes bringing heart & soul into a discussion makes people uncomfortable, in the same way that bringing the topic of love into the workplace freaks some people out…
After growing up with an English mother and an Indian dad, and spending 14 years in India (the East) and then moving to California (the West) it took me another 20 years to finally stop keeping these two worlds apart and distinct (spirit and material)- and in a moment of epiphany and self-trust, I smashed them together. 20 years later, I have thankfully never looked back!
Granted this makes me an outlier and an odd duck that doesn’t fit in the middle of the bell curve, but mercifully I over-rode my need to simply “fit in” (a core issue growing up in a bi-cultural context where the Indian kids could ostracize me as not being Indian, and the Western kids could do the same, and then getting another opportunity to practice this after coming to the States where I was once again “different”) and just strived to be the best I could be. Today, I am a passionate advocate for being yourself- which generally means being ok with being different, as long as you are not harming others…
Just like the rest of the 7 billion of us on the planet, I am shaped by 3 meta-filters that in turn shape our view of the world and of ourselves.
These are:
- The language (or languages) we speak
“What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages-trilingual, what about 2 languages –bilingual, what about 1 language- American”
(sorry couldn’t resist – although this is rapidly changing as by 2020 the Unites States will be a “majority of minorities”)
- The culture (or cultures) we are brought up in
Current emphasis on augmenting IQ (intelligence quotient) and EQ (emotional intelligence quotient) with CQ (cultural intelligence quotient) has some real promise, especially when you take this down to the organization level (people have personalities and companies have cultures– and culture eats strategy for breakfast!)
- Our personal experience
We are the sum total of our personal experience and not just what happened to us, but how we choose to interpret our history- which in turn creates the conditions for manifesting our destiny
(our envisioned future and unique gift to enrich our world)
Each of these are so powerful and so all encompassing, we don’t even know how these filters impact us and shape our beliefs (attentional and cultural blindness).
Through my lens- granted just one person’s experience- matters of the spirit (soul) are less about any particular ideology or religious orientation, where as far as I am concerned, everyone is free to believe whatever resonates for them. Soul/spirit is more about bringing about a fundamental deep and coherent connection with meaning and purpose to our lives.
It is the same with love which in this context is not about romantic love at all, but entirely about encouraging our heart, and bringing heartfelt emotional engagement to our work and play.
This is the spirit and intention behind Soul Food Fridays. That and a little respite from the 24/7 negative news cycles and pathogenic pommelling we get in our daily mediated dose of purported “reality”…
Apparently, I am not alone.
Increasing numbers of people all around the world and from each generation are finding newfound purpose and heart in their enhanced definitions of themselves and how they contribute to their workplaces, community and society.
Recently at the American Marketing Cause Conference here in San Diego, the largest conference of its kind on the West Coast that Mission Fed has been sponsoring for several years, the keynote speaker and thought leader in the space Carol Cone, of Cone Research fame and now with Edelman the world’s largest PR firm, spoke on The Power of Purpose in a Transparent World- Creating Pathways to Sustainable Value.
Today, a growing segment of worldwide businesses are actively focused on their organizations reason for being beyond profits. Non-profit and for-profit lines are blurring. We have the emergence of
B- Corps, a new class of business structure (Benefit corporations). We have the growth of Social Entrepreneurs, Encore Careers, the list goes on. People want to matter. They want their work to matter…
Purpose-driven organizations:
Create differentiation
Fuel growth and sales
Build and protect reputation
Engage and inspire customers AND employees
For those of you who “worship at the altar of data”, here is a compelling statistic:
87% of Consumers worldwide want business to place AT LEAST EQUAL WEIGHT on society’s interests as its business interests.
How is your business stacking up?
A Trust Barometer?
The cornerstone of any relationship is trust. Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose.
Check out the Edelman Trust Barometer- the largest exploration of trust to date, and the largest survey of its kind examining Trust around the World, Trust across Sectors, and How to Build Trust:
http://www.edelman.com/insights/intellectual-property/trust-2013/
Conscious Capitalism Down Under:
While immersed in this subject I get an invite to a spontaneous meeting from a friend- Cathy to meet a friend of hers- Amy from Australia, who is on the West coast to attend the Conscious Capitalism Conference in SF.
A stimulating evening with Amy uncovers what Australia is doing to model and mentor conscious capitalism instead of conspicuous consumption. Poke around this site for some inspiration:
http://www.consciouscapitalism.org.au/about-us/
The Power of One:
If you think you don’t count and one person can’t make a difference, check out this story about how one person’s intention and ignition can catalyze a global response to respecting our fellow women!
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/03/29/needed-response-steubenville
Lighter Fare: Brain Candy-Trivia
Time for a little fun!
Stewardesses” is the longest word typed with only the left hand
And “lollipop” is the longest word typed with your right hand.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or
purple.
“Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
The sentence: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” uses every letter of the alphabet.
The words ‘racecar,’ ‘kayak’ , and ‘level’ are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left
(palindromes).
There are only four words in the English language which end in “dous”:
tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous
There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels
In order: “abstemious” and “facetious.”
TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
A “jiffy” is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
A snail can sleep for three years.
Almonds are a member of the peach family.
An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain. (We all know some people like that too)
Babies are born without kneecaps. They don’t appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
If the population of China walked past you, 8 abreast, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite!
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.
The cruise liner, QE 2 moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.
There are more chickens than people in the world.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Bonus!! All the ants in Africa weigh more than ALL the Elephants!!
WILD Photos- Eye Candy:
A couple are a bit risqué’ but they are all thought provoking…
PRICELESS!!!
Now, asking questions during children’s sermons is crucial, but at the same time, asking children questions in front of a congregation can also be very dangerous.
Having asked the children if they knew the meaning of Resurrection, one little boy raised his hand……..
The pastor called on him and the little boy said, “I know that if you have a Resurrection that lasts more than four hours you are supposed to call the doctor.”
It took over ten minutes for the congregation to settle down enough for the service to continue……….
Thanks this week go to Cathy O., Amy P., Larry H., and all of you!
Stay light hearted, soul-filled and joyful!!
Love,
Neville
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
—Oscar Wilde
Happy Soul Food Friday! 