Seeing my name in the program with the other speakers and presenters was one thing, getting together for a bite to eat after the conference was quite another. It was a concentration of charged women dedicated to making a positive difference in their field of passion. No dilution or questioning of purpose here.

The keynotes were:
Kathy LeMay—Fantastic speaker. Oh my. Great storyteller, hooked the audience from word one. Favorite anecdote, “Be the kind of woman who, upon getting up in the morning, places her feet upon the ground and the Devil says, ‘Oh crap. She’s up.’”

Nina Simons of Bioneers—So inspiring. I love her conviction that we are redefining civilization. It’s nothing short of that.

Tiffany Dufu—Very articulate in challenging us to have a compelling and authentic reason for people to back us.

Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen—Advocate of UN sponsored 5th World Conference on Women. She wove an interesting weave illustrating the importance of bringing the feminine to the table.

A lot of the talk at the conference meandered the fields of encouragement. As if to say, “You’ve got a purpose. You’ve got passion. Sing it! Shout it! Take action!” For those who have lived their lives tainted with the Should Gremlin, this is critical. Giving ourselves permission to sing our song can be helped along by feeling permission from others first.

The women around the tables at the restaurant after the conference didn’t need any permission to do—they already are.

As an offering of gratitude for to the keynotes for coming to Grass Valley for this 2nd womens’ conference, I gave each a copy of the mini-book, How to Kick Ass without Kicking Your Own Ass, which appeared on my doorstep on Thursday!

It seems to me that we’ve collectively graduated to the next level of making-shit-happen-ness. Having the nerve to do our thing is pretty acceptable. Taking action toward our passion is happening.

The dialogue now, as I see it, is ready to move toward how to better support each other when the going gets rough. When nobody reads what you put out. When nobody responds to your passionate shouts. Dealing with that, for me, is more painful and difficult than having the balls to speak up in the first place.

So how can we support each other? I don’t want someone to just tell me “good job!” and “keep it up!” Instead, how can I be more effective? That’s a subject I’d like to see at a super interactive conference. Elisa invited me to converse with her and Jesse about leveraging all the goodness of the conference. Think I’ll bring up this idea. Who knows? It just might help another woman do her thing to reach more people.

XO

Kombucha is a beverage made from black tea and white sugar, and fermented through the use of a unique “mother” or
Symbiotic Colony Of Bacteria & Yeasts (SCOBY). 

Although the use of other sweeteners and other kinds of tea are possible, the most glucaronic acid is produced when white sugar and black tea are used.  The glucaronic acid is the most beneficial product of the kombucha fermentation – it acts to aid the liver in detoxifying the body of toxic material.

For a 3 quart batch,

• Heat about a quart of
  filtered water

  (no chlorine),

• Dissolve ~
  1 cup white sugar

  in the water,

• Make a tea with
  1 Tablespoon organic black tea

  —Steep for at least 20 minutes

• Remove the tea bag, and add more cool water to the tea to obtain a temperature between 68 – 86 degrees. 
• Add about
  1 cup of kombucha from a previous batch

  and then add a SCOBY to the jar. 

• Cover mouth of jar with a cloth held in place with a rubber band

Shan places hers on a heating pad to keep it at about 78-80 degrees. The kombucha should be ready in about 8-10 days at this temperature, a bit sooner if kept at 86 degrees. 

She starts tasting it each morning after a week of brewing using a wooden dipper. She’s looking for the tart flavor that she likes – not too sweet and not vinegary. 

NOTE:  no tea taste should remain, when the brewing is done.

(I don’t keep mine that warm. I just keep mine in a dark cupboard so it takes longer to do its thang.)

Some other notes:
SCOBYs do NOT like metal. Use glass jar, wooden spoons etc. Nor do they like sunlight, so keep it tucked away.

Enjoy!
 

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Photo credits:
Kombucha Day 1 by ~Twon~

Outstanding. That our greater Nevada City/Grass Valley area draws and supports such a spectacular array of fantastic women is somewhat mind-boggling.

I’m not the write-a-summary-review kind of girl. Hopefully, someone else will write something up. Hopefully, I’ll see it and will link to it here.

The talk in particular that lubricated my tear ducts, dug in to my psyche and brought me to the Land of the Gods was by Chameli Ardagh of Awakening Women.

She began by explaining that the Gods and Goddesses represent aspects of the human experience that we may have tucked away for whatever reason.

They represent the archetypal struggles that everyone who Seeks will encounter. There is no avoiding them. To be human is to challenge and overcome these energies in ourselves.

She brought forth the Hindu deities Kali and Shiva… and ahh, didn’t she bring a new perspective on my own struggle!

The short story is that Kali represents the fierce feminine. She conquers injustice, darkness, and ignorance–before breakfast. Well, any time of day–the point being, she’s relentless. She’s unstoppable.

The thing is, she needs her companion, Shiva, by her side or else she herself becomes destruction and blind with Rage. She gets to be the kind of diety who kills a mosquito with a bomb.

Shiva is Presence. With Shiva, Kali is a powerful crusader of Truth while (what I interpret as) holding awareness with Compassion.

Now I’ve certainly had my moments of rage and destruction over things as ridiculous as a disobedient printer. (Not one of my prouder moments.)

But I’ve also felt incredible outrage at the absurd violations of human dignity being foisted upon us by a fear-based paradigm. To wit, the new airport scanning methods that one must endure to get on an airplane.

Or intense anger at the mortgage industry that has left a glut of empty houses in the neighborhoods and homeless people on the street–the absurdity of this situation could only be the fallout of a mindless march of a bureaucratic nightmare. A beast so large that the individual organisms within it have zero control over it.

The List goes on. The List is the reason I rarely read the newspaper these days. Because I fill with anger at the ludicrous crack we have wedged ourselves into.

What Chameli so poetically illustrated last night was that the emotion that overtakes us, that we’ve been trained to contain and control, that we’ve learned to ignore and subdue in order to “play the game” and “run the race”–is to be welcomed. Perhaps “can” becomes “must” if we are going to make significant change in this world o’ ours, if we are to create a world where abuse in any form is unacceptable.

I’ve felt Kali’s energy coursing through me. It’s the energy that scorches away doubt. That leaves my conviction pure and clear. I Know why I’m a crusader for the Natural Professional.

Thank you, Chameli, for bringing forth and helping us give ourselves permission–nay, inviting the fierce feminine to come play in the field of our lives. For reminding us to remain sensitive to injustice and dedicated to truth. For encouraging us to stay present and aware of our emotions, that we may do our important work in the world with
Compassion,
Love, and
Understanding.

==
Image from Chameli’s website: Awakening Women
She can also be found on Twitter @awakeningwomen

If you haven’t seen it, check it out: SethGodin.com

It has personality, playfulness, professionalism, and purpose.

At Michelle Schubnel’s CG&R Live workshop this weekend, she had a guest speaker, Marisa Murgatroyd (of beseenboldly.com) talk about websites.

She said you should have an analytics tracker set up. I asked what should “we be tracking?” She replied, “at first, 1. how many people are coming to your website, and 2. how many of them sign up for your newsletter.”

I bring this up to say, that I signed up for Seth Godin’s newsletter in a flash, which means, successful site on top of it all.

If you’ve ever said, “I want to simplify my life”…

Imagine:
The noise of daily life is absent.

I’m not talking about the regular sounds of cars whizzing by, dump trucks doing their runs, or drivers honking.

I mean absence of the chatter in your head. The monologue that is constantly managing, tracking and troubleshooting the commitments in your life. It’s so familiar that you probably don’t notice how constant the prattling is.

What do you think would be left if you removed a majority of the stimulation in your life? Take away your work. Take away food planning and prep. Take away appointments, phone calls and email. Take away agendas to write, plants to water, bills to pay. Take away mail, magazines, TV, advertising, and (gasp!) Facebook.

What’s left? You. You and your relationship with the world.

Welcome to Burningman: the ultimate simplifying experience.

You said you wanted to simplify… turns out this is a great trial run to sample your life simplified–can you handle it?

Sounds easy enough. A week of fun, art, costumes, music, dancing, creativity, performances–what’s not to enjoy?

How about radical self-reliance and zero structure. Choices at every turn. Total freedom.

We spend so much of our time responding and reacting to our commitments, that when given the opportunity to be completely free of them, it’s easy to feel anxious.

Taking full responsibility for one’s experience is, believe it or not, a rather foreign occurrence.

During Q&A after a panel (where I talked about coming Home and quieting the mind) a woman spoke up. She said, “I don’t know that I want to quiet my mind. It’s uncomfortable. I feel pain there.” She voiced a fear felt, to some degree, by most of the people there.

Here’s what happens when I’m at Burningman: away from the noise of daily life, the stories I tell myself rattle tediously in my head, my values are challenged from all angles, and my insecurities smack me in the face with unnerving sharpness. Hmm. Fun?

It’s uncomfortable, to say the least. But, oh my. I said I wanted to simplify… there it was, in all its naked glory.

Now I’m back home. There are plants to water, a newsletter to produce, appointments to keep, and writing to do. And you know what? I’m in a good place with it all.

Simplifying isn’t just about getting rid of stuff (though if it drags you down, drop it!) It’s about letting go of your attachment to your stuff; letting go of expectation; letting go of what you think your life is supposed to be about.

It’s about being aware that what you have committed to is, in fact, contributing to creating the life you want to live.

“Simplify your life” is not for the faint of heart.

It challenges your perceptions, values, and habits. Are you ready to grab your life by the horns? It’s worth it. YOU are worth it.

Live strongly because you are sick and tired of fear. Live richly because wealth bubbles up inside of you. Live passionately to celebrate your humanness.

Live! That’s what we’re here to do.

In this case, the Camera Cinemas, offers a daytime showing dedicated to parents with babies. Kids up to 4 y.o. are welcome for no charge. (They also offer a Diaper Date Night for the whole fam.)

Everyone brings their baby and you just know that it might get a little, lets just say, wild in there.

They show a regular adult movie (we saw Get Low with Robert Duvall and Bill Murray)–the only difference is that they didn’t turn the lights totally out when the movie started and the sound might not have been as loud as they sometimes crank it.

What a brilliant idea. Wins all the way around.

• Mom/dad get to go to the movies.
• Babies get to hang with mom/dad.
• No one has to worry about fidgety babies disrupting other people’s experience,
• movie theater gets more people to a Wednesday-noon showing of flick.

Love it!

My sister said when she went last time, there was a huge line of strollers lined up in the hallway leading up to the theater. She, hubby, and baby were stuck in the 2nd row since they didn’t get there earlier for better seats.

A couple of people laid out a blanket in the aisle for their kids to play on, some had their kids sleeping in the portable car seat, some just held theirs. If someone started getting fidgety, the parent would get up and walk around.

It was surprisingly quiet, considering. I’d been thinking I’d probably go to the grown up showing with my S.O. to fill in the gaps but I hardly missed anything.

Every once in a while one of the babies would start a little cry thing that would travel across the theater like a wave and then it’d be quiet again.

There’s something about experiencing someone else’s world for a spell that’s, I don’t know, surreal I suppose. Not having kids, this movie thing never would have crossed my radar. And there I am, holding my sister’s friend’s baby so that she can eat her lunch in the movie theater.

Good times, I tell ya, good times. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. =)

: : : : : : : : : :

Photo credit (adapted from):
Changi T3 Movie theatre by kalleboo

That evolved into the niche of self-employed, home office folks and thus dealing mostly with information management. For many people, managing information is confusing and contributes to crazy amounts of feeling overwhelmed.

You’d think that helping people simplify this part of their lives would be enough–that by getting organized, they’d be able to proceed in their work and life with confidence and success.

Well, it’s not enough. The tools and strategies that have helped us to succeed in the past are inadequate for the world we long to create.

I’m framing this in terms of Old World and New World. A few words about these:

There are currently a large number of people who are intuitively gravitating toward the new world but inadvertently applying old world skills and values. The result: intense feelings of discontent, inadequacy, and being out of place.

Am I saying that we should just switch from one consciousness to the other? NO.

With awareness, we have choice. With awareness, we decide which is appropriate to apply and when.

We will still utilize schedules, Todo lists, email and filing strategies. The difference is that we will do so mindfully.

Our compasses will shift form being pointed toward “Success at any cost” (or for those of us who rejected that some time ago but then found ourselves struggling to survive) we will reconfigure our compass to guide us toward the lives we know we were born and meant to live.

You can see why the focus of Project Simplify’s work had to evolve. Yes, keep sharing the skills for information management. Add to this: skills for navigating a new world centered around personal and universal fulfillment.

• Clearing from your life whatever no longer serves you.

• Mastering the 21 C workflow, i.e. managing your work and life without getting consumed by it.

• Getting reacquainted with your essence and establishing this as your navigating compass.
• Engaging in the right responsibilities that support your development and facilitate your contribution to the world.

• Rediscovering your role of creation and doing it (even if you don’t know where it’s heading!)

It’s such an exciting time. . . One of the most awesome parts about it, in my opinion, is a much greater willingness to help and be helped by each other. It’s the ultimate group effort–and we’re going to rock!

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Photo credits:
Chain Bridge – Stádlec_1 by jyryk58

At the Wisdom 2.0 conference last weekend I met Tara Mohr, coach, creative, and compassionate warrior for all that’s good.

Jumping into a Natural Professional moment, I intercepted her on the way to lunch to ask what purpose, passion and peace meant to her.

Here’s what she said: (you might want to turn up the volume after my intro)

A pleasure to meet you, Tara!

And if you had these three all together, what kinds of conversations might ensue?

• “Post-Modern Practice: Awareness and Wisdom in the Age of Technology,” perhaps?
• or maybe “Conscious Business: Supporting Staff to Live Mindfully, Meaningfully, and Effectively?”
• might they have contemplations along the lines of “Considering the Aesthetics of Twitter Musings on the modes of attention & awareness whilst composing & consuming tweets“?

As unlikely as it all sounds, this is just the mix of people that will be having these conversations at this weekend’s Wisdom 2.0 Conference in the famous Silicon Valley of California.

From the about page:

The Wisdom 2.0 conference is a one-of-a-kind event that brings together people from a variety of disciplines, including technology leaders, Zen teachers, neuroscientists, and academics to explore how we can live with deeper meaning and wisdom in our technology-rich age.

What can I say but fascinating!! Isn’t this right up the alley of everything we explore here at Project Simplify? Simplifying isn’t about reverting back to the stone ages or selling everything to go live in a yurt (though it might for some).

Simplifying, instead, is about navigating an increasingly complex world and learning for ourselves what is meaningful. What do we have to say, how can we say it, and what is the best means for sharing those gifts?

It’s about doing what counts, nothing more, nothing less.

For most of us (online folks reading blogs), we like our tech toys. We appreciate the amazing and previously unimaginable ways in which we can connect with other like-minded folks.

At the same time, it’s easy to take on too much. How do we keep it inline with our heart’s purpose?

Can you tell I’m getting excited about this weekend?? I’m going! That’s right, I’m returning to the area of my roots (I grew up about 15 miles from the conference’s Mountain View site).

Among other speakers we’ll be hearing from (the folks mentioned above):

• Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
• Roshi Joan Halifax, Zen Abbot
• Kaitlin Quistgaard, Editor-in-Chief, Yoga Journal

What I’m just as excited about is meeting the sure-to-be-fascinating attendees who are as stoked as I am to get together around this subject.

Fun!

She had me on he March 22, 2010 show–one of three interviews. Here’s my segment talking about The Natural Professional: