It is that time of year again when we consider the whole question of Peace on Earth and what it takes to get there.  We are still a planet at war and with each passing year we move in and out of war and peace along a continuum that doesn't seem to have made much progress in the years that I have been here.. on the planet that is.  One step forward and two back might fit here.  I participated in Peace Week earlier this year by listening to a number of renowned speakers shared their thoughts on peace and what it takes.

I go back to what I learned years ago..."Think Globally and Act Locally." In order for the world to be more peaceful I must start with me.  How can I contribute to a world with less conflict and more peace and harmony?  Where are the struggles and conflicts in my life that need my immediate attention and how will those small steps impact a world at war???   It seems tiny... minute even ... but just as the flapping of a butterfuly's wings changes the weather miles away ... our small efforts to create peace in our corner of the world are felt far away.  Believe in the ripple effect of peaceful conversation and we can cocreate a peaceful world one conversation at a time... one conversation after another.

My invitation to you is to consider Gentle Honest Open Specific Talk with your friends and relatives this holiday seasons.  Speak so others can hear you and listen with HEART.  SEe how your world, your relationships can change just by raising these skills to a conscious level over the next few weeks and use that momentum to guide you inot a wonderully peaceful 2012.

What is normal? It is more and more difficult for me to define. Maybe because it has il used me for so long or maybe because it just doesn't live here anymore. Gone are the days of going to work on Monday morning and working a forty to sixty hour week and attending the regular meetings on the appointed days of the week. Now I never really know what's going to happen today or tomorrow. I used to enjoy the rock and roll life where I never knew what would happen next. But suddenly my perspective has shifted and I feel a real need for a routine I can count on ... A calendar I can trust to stay the same. I am tired of not knowing. Time for a change. Working for myself has benefits and responsibilities. The flexibility that I wished for has become the uncertainty I wish was gone. Be careful what you wish for. A plan for me has always been something to base change on. Now I long for one that sticks. The sands of my BEACH are shifting.

Lately I have been intrigued by the idea of trust.  Where does it come from?  How do we earn it and how to we gain it back?  Mediation participants are often suffering from a lack of trust for the other party and even for the proceedings.  I have become curious about what can be done to help people feel better about each other and the possible outcome closer tot he beginning of the process.  A friend of mine shared an article called "Leadership and the Structure of Trust" by Paul R. Lawrence and Robert Porter Lynch from www.eurpeanbusinessreview.com.  It is really thought provoking.  I was excited because of the word structure in the title because at PULSE we talk about structured conversations. The authors describe a Trust Ladder and a 4 drives of human nature compass and then overlay them.  The article includes great definitions for red zone activities and the green zone activities that we associate with the PULSE Frame.  I hope you have a chance to read it through.  Comments and questions??

For the last two days I have been helping my husband as he recovers from minor surgery. ( if there is such a thing). It is interesting how your instincts take over when you are asked to look after someone else. Your experience with related situations all comes back and you go into nurse mode. It is kind of like riding a bike. I found myself just KNOWING what to do.

I am no stranger to pain myself and know the worst thing that others do for me is try to help me move from one position to another. So I hover and wait to catch or assist but only when called upon. No one can know what the patient is experiencing until a request is made.

It is the same in conversations. Especially in mediation , people are in pain. it is so important to hover rather than to assist at first and then to assist only when the request is made. As mediators we often try to HEAL them rather than let them find the position that is most comfortable for them to rest while they heal themselves. You are there to set the structure and guide the process but any pushing or prodding is likely to inflict more pain than it relieves.

Each situation we encounter has a lesson.... learn it.

I have a real situation to deal with right now. A Couple of months ago we changed providers and lost our Microsoft exchange calendar sharing capability. I used to put something on my BB or on my laptop or on my home computer and it would show up everywhere else. That stopped when we made the change so I was inviting myself to things and accepting invitation s to keep the calendars consistent. Then I deleted the Microsoft exchange account and lost everything. My live disappeared. My history and my future gone. No calendar history and no email history. SCARY. Limbo.

Although it was scary it was also liberating for me. Not so for those who depend on me to be places at a certain time or want to make plans with me when I can’t tell them if or when I might be free. So at least six weeks of this “I don’t know for sure” “Let me get back to you” “ That SHOULD work” and a dependence on my 57-year-old memory brings me to a place where I need a resolution to this suspended life.

Since then I have not made any decisions about which is my REAL calendar. I have a paper one that is never where I am and rarely gets updated. I have a BB one that I don’t really use and computer calendars that are incomplete. I am LOST in time. I usually know where I am but not when I am. I have a vague recollection of something happening on the 12th of July but I can’t find anything anywhere to indicate what kind of appointment my have or what time. How did I let this happen? I am drifting through live from day-to-day. It is especially tricky when the calendar in my head is FULL. Stampede this week. Vancouver and Edmonton next week. New Orleans the week after that and then ten days in Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia before our Vancouver Conference in August and a trip to Washington after that.

I really need to pull it all together and find one place that works for me that is visible from what ever machine I am working on. Help!!!

Just got back from an exhausting and exhilarating jaunt to NYC. I love the big apple as do many others. There were hundreds of thousands of visitors in New York at the same time as I was. That is what makes it vibrant and that is also what makes it exhausting. Although you see lots of smiles on the street you also see lots of disconnects as people live separate lives together. New Yorkers rarely make eye contact. Visitors are so awestruck by the sites they don't even watch where they are going and there are line ups everywhere. It is apparent to me as I watch people in line ups that the human race has yet to develop a strategy for maintaining patience while in line. In the US they say 'on' line. That might be because it gets 'on' your nerves. To see the Statue of Liberty you stand in line for the tickets and then you stand in line for the boat. It is an all day affair and people choose to do it.

We choose not to stand on-line, looked at Lady Liberty from afar and moved on to other places of interest. For me the statue which was a gift from France is symbolic of the wonderful opportunities offered to immigrants to the US and for them it is a shrine. That is understandable. It also shows the connection between France and the US and I heard many people speaking Parisian French on the streets and in the parks of Manhattan. Their presence is felt as is the presence of the Italian immigrants. There are so many restaurants offering Italian and French cuisine. The four we tried were excellent. Good food, good wine and good friends - a vacation to remember. And an opportunity to study people in crowds and begin to understand how some people thrive in these settings where others cannot cope with the lack of both privacy and intimacy in the big city.

A crucible for conflict of many kinds, New York survives.

Do you have friends who feel it is their job to criticize and correct you at every turn? Do you have people in your life for whom nothing or no one is good enough? Do these people suck the positivity out of every conversation and out of you when you let them? And is not letting them get to you more work than you counted on?

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the energy it takes to manage relationships. I want to run away and hide. I am pretty skilled at talking to people and think I am open to the possibilities that people present but sometimes they lean on me too hard. I just want to shout out them "There are other was to deal with life besides burdening your self and others."

The "glass half empty" crowd can't see what is good in their life and don't seem to be able to take the time to count blessings or be grateful for what they have. they blame the world for their woes and expect others to rescue them from life itself. For them it is difficult to find the joy, the pleasure in getting up in the morning and letting the sunshine on them. "It is too hot." they complain.

The other crowd that irks me sometimes is the 'helpless' crowd. These people can do nothing for themselves and do not have enough confidence to even try to fix anything or any situation. They cry for help and sit back and watch as other people solve their problems for them and them complain because they are not smart or capable but do nothing to rectify the situation. Those people make me tired and I can only handle being around them for so long before I need to find the 'helpful and capable' and 'half full' crowds to replenish my energy.

I guard against becoming 'helpless' and 'half empty' by retreating to treat myself to some down time to rejuvenate and to pay attention to the syncronistic ways of the world. I am not sure if that is cowardly or not. I like to think of it as survival mode. What about you?

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills. Richard John Needham identified the seven ages some time after Will Shakespear wrote this :

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then, the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav’d, a world too wide,
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

We recently saw “As You Like It” performed in Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach Festival. It was a great reminder of how life moves quickly and changes without warning. We are all aware that we age each day but the reality hits from time to time when a change in stage becomes too evident to ignore. I ask myself where I am right now and how that influences my perception of things. And I ask what impact the stage have on a world view or the perspective that each of us takes on the world.

I admit to the Justice Stage. That leaves me on ly two more stages. Yikes! In my own way I have described the stages differently. I was a child, I raised children, I became political and entrepreneurial and now I am moving beyond that to look at different ways to give back to the world. I am comfortable in my role as grandmother and want to define that to have the maximum impact on that wonderful generation of human beings. I ask myself how best to serve them. I know how I felt about people my age when I was theirs. They seemed redundant and irrelevant for the most part. Now I know how much they knew and could have shared with me if I had only taken the time to ask.

This generational effect is reeking havoc in workplaces these days. The wisdom of the young is so different from the wisdom of the old. Both are indeed relevant and valuable and yet the divide keeps the one from asking the other about what they know. Finding away to do that might be my next project. What wisdom can we all take from the Bard himself as we consider generational differences.

Last week in Calgary a couple of wonderful things happened.  First of all AAMS – The Alberta Arbitration and Mediation Society –  announced that they will be partnering with us to sponsor the PULSE program for workplace mediation.  That is very exciting.  I am looking forward to the opportunities that this arrangement will afford us.

Secondly, we hosted two PULSE courses.  Marjorie facilitated PULSE mediation level 1 while I facilitated PULSE mediation level 2.  I had the opportunity to be a role player and to get into the persona of one of my former mediation clients to play an authentic role for the new mediators in my class.  It was enlightening to say the least.  The difference between level 1 where we don’t play stump the mediator and level 2 is that we try to make things more realistic in order to prepare people for what they will face in the mediation room.  The idea is to take competent PULSE Deltas who can facilitate mediation meetings and mold them into PULSE practitioners who are comfortable using the tools and structure in what ever situation they find themselves.

For me, as role player I experienced the PULSE Frame in a new way.  Although the mediators were interjecting to keep the conversation on track, I didn’t find it intrusive or demeaning.  I found it quite helpful to have someone remind us of the path toward resolution we were on.  My novice mediators were effective with the timing of their interventions and resourceful in the face of a difficult highly emotional situation.  They did an excellent job of bringing us to resolution.  What is ironic is that what was missing for me as participant was the empathy.  That is ironic because it is the one thing that I have to work extra hard to do in my own mediations.

I live on excitement BEACH most of the time which means I look for fun and avoid pain of any kind, so emotionality is rare for me and I really don’t know what to do with it when it shows up … at least it isn’t natural for me to empathize.  Even on my other BEACHS, Power and Detachment, there is a tendency to ignore or minimize the emotional aspect of things.  So there I was in someone elses shoes thinking,  “This hurts and no one has mentioned it.”  Huge lesson for me.  One I will not soon forget.

Don’t forget to tell all of your friends about the PULSE Conference in Vancouver in August.