Love is

A dream from the other night: *friend's cat butts head and affectionately rubs against my hand while sprawled out in front of me*

I'm curious about what prompted the sudden affection.

"Tell me the different words you know for love."-cat named Kitty Smalls looking intently with eyes wide open

*me, surprised the cat is literally talking to me--? But, try to be present and make the most of the occasion to engage*

"Well, huh there's amorous, romance, tüng in Vietnamese, gizaagin in Anishinaabemowen, and a bunch of words in Greek and latin that I can try to name off. Like philae, a love from hardship, solidarity and camaraderie; ludos, the playful kind of love like when kindly teasing or dancing and joking with someone. Eros which is a sort of physical/romantic love which I think can apply to platonic cases too. Pragma--practical love through actions; storge, familial love like when you appreciate a sibling or cousin; agape for humanity which I think is a bit like the African concept of Ubuntu in maybe Zulu. I think that's most of what I know… ?"

Kitty Smalls: looks with a pause, head angled staring at me, still mostly upside down before "speaking" with great confidence as it resumes writhing with contentment.

"Ah, you see--I don't know anything about those words. But not knowing them doesn't diminish the fact that I want to express something and that it all means the same thing to me. How would it be fair if I had to know any of them to love someone?"

…

I guess the set up to the dream was quietly about wanting to know why the cat wanted to give affection to me.

In waking life, we all kind of know about the idea that love is love etc. and depending on how I feel, I'd probably get a bit agitated that someone were telling me what I already know.

But no explanation is really needed for being present with kindness from anyone, even yourself. Ever. And that can be really challenging to trust and accept at times. Hope that helps for whoever needed to hear this.

 

Screening Your Resolution for Effective Outcomes

​Screening for Persuasive Resolutions

The most important thing for resolutions
to manifest is committed self-persuasion. [1]
But that doesn't mean a resolution must be achieved by yourself alone.

With a quiet turn of the New Year, and now being able to say with some degree of confidence that I survived three full decades on earth, I'm starting to realize celebrations (many of which I barely partook in) also exist as a form of persuasion. And celebrations can be significant even away from other people, though never far or completely independent from others.

Just as important, the way we form our resolutions--setting intentions can be done in a way to remind us why we're committed to taking action toward something we want rather than discourage us from not reaching our goals.

Effective resolutions come from one's capacity for effective self-persuasion. What if, instead of mandating a specific future and living under the tyranny that comes with limiting one future for yourself, that people entertained the opportunities of their lifetime with questions to keep them moving forward? Like how scientists might create a hypothesis before diving into experimentation.

I often champion the worth of thoughtful questions because they allow you (or organizations [2]) to find and create new answers in multiple situations, time and time again. From a scientific point of view, the value of a hypothesis is that it lets us move closer to the truth by discerning whether a specific influence will have an effect on an anticipated outcome--and just as important, we can potentially let others replicate the results too. And my friend Onyx is often quick to warn people that "committing to only *a* future can be a dangerous false choice."

Life is a creative endeavor, why must our aspirations terminate into a specific sentence or outcome like "losing weight" when you can commit to experimenting with specific and intentionally chosen actions that will always contribute to manifesting multiple goals?

"How might I consistently improve my health?" or better yet, "How might *we* improve our health?"

"How might I enjoy more activities that contributes to my physical fitness?"

"What does eating well look like?"

"What does taking care of myself, or loving myself look like?"

When we engage in long-term efforts to create systemic change that require more than what an individual or group can explicitly control, and it's the same kind of thinking that's probably necessary for people to make meaningful change as individuals who live in a world filled with plenty of people and experiences that go well beyond their own selves.

Does it change the fact that we still need goals and milestones? No, what matters is the *resolution* our goals are framed with--and yes, that's a play on words. Think about resolution in terms of digital screen definition -- how granular is your goal?
If it's too specific, it warps your reality in unfavorable ways--watching a youtube video in high definition on a clunky old computer sometimes brings the entire computer to a halt. Watching it at a 180pixel resolution might not overburden your graphics card, but it might not do service to the viewer in showing the details of an event or a picture of a map that might be important to remember in the near future. How can you take more effective steps toward making a good resolution? Look to the trajectory of your past experiences and the ingredients playing into their circumstances. If none of it has changed and you're setting sights on lofty goals for your New Year's (or any other time of year) resolution, you might need to create more persuasive ways to reach that goal.

If eating healthily isn't easy because healthy food is rarely if ever available, maybe it's to find ways to increase your chances with being in places that offer healthy food--deepen your friendship with a local gardener, work toward a new job or promotion that provides better mobility for taking care of your basic needs. These are roundabout but important steps to your bigger priorities, and it's important that you honor the challenges even when it didn't seem like part of the bigger picture you envisioned when looking from the cusp of a new year.

        .       .       .

One of the many gifts genuine interpersonal connection brings us is that a friend, a sincere coworker, or even kind strangers can help "screen" out unnecessary information and put part of the reality you live with in check -- though it goes without saying to engage wisely as some don't know where you want to go, and bad relationships can have powerful negative repercussions. So another person's agency and ability to check in on you can count as a system, just like making commitments to yourself for exercising with goals or milestones with your rest, eating, and emotional health habits too.

In other words, friends can boost your ability to achieve what you set out to do that becomes a form of persuasion that better futures are possible--and you can do the same for them too!

Last year international life coach Bere and I put together an event called "Party Like it's 2019!!!" [3], where the value of the activity comes from being able to experiment with iterations of who you are, and set up systems that help keep you on track with what you aspire to do along the way. One of Bere's biggest points of emphasis in her coaching came from being able to break down big endeavors with specific and achievable goals.

In the world of organizational and systemic change (complex systems) I studied and worked with during and after University, the same concept's about recognizing how the things you have direct control over plus tangible reminders can create structure to influence your paradigms about the world [4].

It's how gratitude exercises often succeed by letting people realize visceral past experiences and outcomes can present them with reasons to be happy (or satisfied, or hopeful) because they show us a different trajectory of choices available that we didn't see before.

That's the magic of empowerment too--that you can suddenly generate 300% more with 100% of the ingredients you already had with a simple shift in perspective.

Confidence at its essence is about trust--trust in oneself, trust in others, or trust in an endeavor--including the promises or resolutions we make. Often when we're overwhelmed, we lose track of what we've done before and what we remain capable of doing.

My friend Marnese Jackson and I would also check in with each other on a weekly basis as we worked through unstable housing, irregular transportation, living with kids, family challenges, and professional priorities that also extend into community and civic impacts. Sometimes the best thing that came from it was the ability to unpack our overwhelm and remember what we've done or sought out to do.

And as strategists, futurists, and science fiction writers might all agree: good strategy is the practice of good science fiction. When we create believable futures, they're often rooted with discernable, plausible, and replicable truths that allow us to leap beyond the ingredients we know into new places.

Since the future becomes the present with every moment, you'll have plenty of opportunities to find a persuasive resolution. Hopefully you're finding something for moving together forward now.

[1] https://lighttelecommunication.blogspot.com/2019/01/persuasive-resolutions.html

[2] http://ismotion.co/2013/12/purpose-in-questions/

[3] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/refreshing-your-vision-party-like-its-2019-tickets-43259414072# 

[4] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6ZWASyBqmHHcGFyVkxWNTEyYTA/view

https://www.inc.com/young-entrepreneur-council/how-turning-your-goals-into-systems-can-change-your-life.html

Possibly related and useful--for setting more feasible systemic goals; one of my biggest challenges was the feasibility side of goal setting, a lot of visioning processes and goal setting processes are admittedly very time and effort intensive to the point of feeling overwhelming--I have some ways for dealing with it but I'm certain there are better and curious to see how the following turns out:
https://www.inc.com/heather-wilde/3-simple-steps-for-setting-your-next-business-goals.html

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash
I don't know who this woman is but she's definitely looking at a screen and reaching
with what could be described as resolve. By the way, staring at
blue light from screens can degrade your eyes
so try to look out to the real world instead.

Expertise vs Curiosities in Experience

​Expertise, experience, and the depth it can bring to a situation are necessary for putting evrnts into proportion. Yet not at the expense of curiosity and not to the degree that it should altogether silence the validity of other people's experience.

21:21

Nov 27th?

Strategy beyond swords

A simple parallel between strategy for swordsmanship and strategy for most endeavors. In brief,  it roughly points out the need for vision and mission.

Distilled from early on in samurai and artist Miyamoto Musashi's book, go rin no sho (the Five Rings):

"It is not difficult to wield a sword in one hand; the Way to learn this is to train with two long swords, one in each hand. It will seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first. Bows are difficult to draw, halberds are difficult to wield; as you become accustomed to the bow so your pull will become stronger. When you become used to wielding the long sword, you will gain the power of the Way and wield the sword well.

...there is no fast way of wielding the long sword. The long sword should be wielded broadly, and the companion sword closely. This is the first thing to realize.

According to this Ichi school, you can win with a long weapon, and yet you can also win with a short weapon. In short, the Way of the Ichi school is the spirit of winning, whatever the weapon and whatever its size. 

It is better to use two swords rather than one when you are fighting a crowd, and especially if you want to take a prisoner." - Miyamoto Musashi, in go rin no sho (the Five Rings) on one school, two swords

It's the same for developing and championing one's vision in any endeavor.

We train and practice for the long-term.  Engaged with the rest of the world however, we're mindful that our reaching and immediate needs--the long and short--alike are instrumental to success only when clarity of intention and purpose remains central to your actions.

Carrying one's vision broadly for all to heed, and keeping tangible details close go hand in hand. We see this when making professional introductions and business pitches or making persuasive statements. What draws the attention of most people in any introduction comes from the bigger aspirations which take place in the initial introductions--that's the long sword to wield broadly. Skeptics are either repelled or drawn closer to you, for which you can share the details with greater detail.

Truths however, unlike swords, can be shared and work best when used without malice.

I've no parallel to the line about taking prisoners as of yet though... perhaps captivating hearts happens when people discover meaning through both?

For a translation of the text online:
http://www.uvm.edu/~asnider/IDAS_2011_CD/Teachers/Steve%20Llano's%20Materials/Strategy%20Books/Book%20of%20Five%20Rings%20-%20Musashi.pdf