Groupworks Card Deck

Last night at the Victorian Facilitators Network I was introduced to the Groupworks Deck of cards. Each card discusses a pattern that is often present in groups and gives a description of that pattern along with links to other related patterns.

Some of the 91 patterns include:

  • Moving toward alignment
  • Purpose
  • Letting Go
  • Embrace Dissonance
  • Aesthetics of Space
  • Taking Responsibility
  • All Grist for the Mill

They are grouped into 9 Pattern Categories:

  1. Intention
  2. Context
  3. Relationship
  4. Flow Creativity
  5. Perspective
  6. Modelling
  7. Inquiry & Synthesis
  8. Faith

They look like an interesting tool to help groups and facilitators to appreciate the richness of the spectrum of what can be going on in any group. The cards are available for sale at www.groupworksdeck.org or can be downloaded in pdf form.

Fun Swedish Pride campaign

I am loving how so many campaigns these days are using humour and simple, cool graphics to engage people. You may need to switch Google Translate on to read this one from Sweden.

It’s supporting the GLBT community. There’s no hint of being defensive or shy with this campaign, it cheekily aims to persuade you to try being bi!..
… “It’s actually wonderful to not be straight.”
Check it out here >

What the Bleak?

Loving the weather you’re with . . .

Contemplating a morning jog this morning was tough. I knew my body needed it, but the weather was so ominous – grey sky, fresh squally winds. . . . fortunately I made the call to go.

On this day I was in the zone and running well, feeling good in my body. But half way through my energy collapsed. I started feeling lonely and bleak. Lonely because there were few other joggers around on the usually busy Princes Park track. Bleak in that “winter bleak” depressive kind of way when you notice there are no leaves on the trees, the sky has lost it’s radiance and even the grass seems sparse and sad.

This bleak feeling is very familiar to me and I could see my mind wondering into my day ahead and adding a wash of ‘bleak-ness’ to everything. It’s a sad, defeated feeling like the day is ruined now because everything is bleak. Perhaps, like yesterday, I would need to relieve myself mid-afternoon with a thick Hedgehog slice from the local café and feel the rush of 15 minutes of sugar-high followed by 2 hours of sluggish afternoon.

Fortunately I caught myself on this occasion spiralling into this mindset and considered a different take on it. I was still running well, and when I consciously shifted my perspective I could easily find joy in the freshness of the air and gratitude in so many things around me: my healthy body, the ground I was running on, the trees, the vast sky, even that we have seasons at all!

I thought of the footballers who play-on despite the weather and how I could choose to run through the cold wintery conditions in a state of defeated resistance, or to cut through the air like a Gazelle on a hunt . . . ok I have a vivid imagination . . . but you get the point.

Doing a gratitude reflection while in active running mode gives a different quality to the more passive sitting meditative mode. I do enjoy mixing the energies of the penetrative running (masc) with the receptive appreciation (fem) for what is around me. I wonder if the footballers go there?

Anyway . . . on with my day and I will watch my slippery mind until I don’t, and I hopefully won’t find myself back at my local café for my chocolate rescue remedy – at least not two days in a row.

The evolution of cats

This is sure evidence that cats are evolving . . .

One theory on reincarnation is that before animal souls may become humans they must evolve to not fear humans. Consequently, most newly arrived human souls have recently been cats, dogs or horses – so the theory goes.

I think often about our “civilised” traits compared with our primal nature. I love civilisation and I also love my primal nature that wants to poo on the earth, among other things.

So my cat poos in the bathtub during the night when I have failed to read her earlier signs and let her outside. Is she consciously pleasing me by behaving to my civilised standards, or is she following some “100th monkey” instinct that we are breeding into domesticated cats to head for the porcelain?

A confronting take on sustainability thinking

Here’s a great article about the conundrum of reducing sustainability to thinking about “efficiency”. This is what happens when we separate a single aspect out and neglect to look at the whole.

The idea that improving efficiency makes sustainability problems worse seems counter-intuitive. But what if aiming to do more with less is actually doing the wrong thing right? If sustainability is our concern, this is almost always the case.  …more>

About this blog

This blog celebrates some of the inspiring and creative ways people are now engaging us in what really matters. Most posts are grouped under the following themes that fit with my work as a consultant, facilitator and comedian:

Thinking

I have always been intrigued by how our thinking effects our behaviour – along with a few million others – and what does it mean to really think fresh?
Some key modes of thinking I am interested in include:

    • Creative thinking
    • Body-centred thinking & Intuition
    • Natural Systems Thinking
    • Expansive-Inspirational-Possibility thinking that is grounded in reality (vs issues-based or cynical thinking).

In particular I love radical common sense. . . where you just know something makes sense (or not) and you don’t need to be a rocket-scientist to work it out. I am often bemused that common sense is not all that common.

Engagement

I am always on the hunt for new and interesting ways to engage people in what is meaningful – particularly in today’s over-stimulated world. My work is often based in the ‘live’, interactive domain where I like to use humour, inspiration and absurdity to enliven and empower people.

Facilitation

I believe good facilitation is one of the most underrated and most needed skills on the planet right now. ‘Collaboration’ and ‘co-creation’ are great buzz words, but they don’t just happen with good intention alone. This will be a place to muse on the tricks, tools and pitfalls of good and bad facilitation.

Comedy

Finally I have a place to post photos of my cat’s poo in the bath.

 

Hope you enjoy,

David.