Observations-Engagements

I reached a milestone today: I learned the 36th and last of the Qi Gong exercises I started learning back in September 2009, with Sifu Yamel Torres at the Chinese Martial Arts and Wellness Center.

As Sifu Torres explains it, “Qi gong literally means “breath exercises” and is an integral part of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chinese martial arts and spirituality. Its primary driving force was the search for health and longevity.”

In the style I learned–and I see from browsing around on the internet that there are a good number of styles–there are six sets of six exercises. Each set focuses on a different part of the body, the back, the knees, and so on. All are a triple combination of breathing, stretching, and balancing. Each set starts with fairly simple movements and progresses to increasingly more complex movements, many with subtle variations on the initial exercise’s theme.

I like the meditative aspect of the exercises, which require a combination of breathing and mental focus. Indeed, they are mental as well as physical exercises, for I found that it takes brain work to remember the moves and notice the subtleties of movement.

I am not the most coordinated person on the planet, and to remember movements with my arms and legs going in different and not especially common directions while focusing on my breath isn’t easy. But the pain in my lower back and stiffness and numbness in my leg is considerably less.

My desk was across the wall from Sifu Yamel’s studio, and I would hear him working the teacher he trains hard. I started working with him finally on the more gentle Qu Gong exercises to gain flexibility, reduce back pain and stress, and increase my level of energy. So far, so good.

The story of how Yamel met a Chinese martial arts master, became his student, and decided to carry on his legacy is both inspiring and moving. Ready Yamel’s discovery of the Seven Star Praying Mantis style of kung fu in tribute to Master Raymond Ly (Ming Loy) .

Tags: Qigong

Last week I started to use the Zemanta plug-in for Google Chrome as a tool to help in writing posts for the two WordPress-based blogs I write. I am impressed and will continue.

Zemanta uses the slogan “Blog Smarter” in its title bar and the line “Write your post . . . Enrich with Zemanta . . . Get more traffic.” I can’t say anything about the claim “get more traffic,” but I have found that the tool both make blogging easier (I’ll use that for smarter) and enriches posts.

Read more in “Extending Blog Posts with Zemanta” in my Canright Communications Onlines blog.

Tags: writing

More reports on the transformation of the economy through the convergence of social networking with media and the emergence of the mobile economy.

Towards a socialised state

The Economist does a special report on social media. “Online social networks are changing the way people communicate, work and play, and mostly for the better.”

Data Show That Self-Reference Does Not Get Followers

Simple lesson here for social media marketers: “Want more followers? Stop talking about yourself.”

Public relations in the recession: Good news

In another article, The Economist reports how public relations firms are weathering the recession. “After all, companies that fall foul of the rules will need the help of a PR firm.”

Apple’s iPad: Just Good Enough to Transform the Publishing/Media Industries

And perhaps the Apple economy will bring good news to media companies as well, Patricia Seybold suggests.

Mobile: It’s Here and It’s Real

Meanwhile, the emerging mobile economy reportedly is breathing new life into retail. Retailers should “like social and love mobile,” one industry analyst suggests.

Mobile Trends 2020

And here’s a look at the future of mobile media from m-trends.org.

Brainwashed: Seven Ways to Reinvent Yourself

Finally, who better to talk about reinventing yourself and career than Seth Godin. “As power shifts, so does opportunity,” he writes. “The economy just gave you leverage—the leverage to make a difference, the leverage to spread your ideas and the leverage to have an impact.” To tie this article with PR, see a video interview of Godin by the man who ties together social networking and PR, David Meerman Scott.

Tags: convergence, economics, mobile economy, social networking, Transformation

Revelating is the third stage in Dr. Judith Wright’s Evolating model for personal transformation. The model itself described how people change. Not just learning and growing, but “discontinuous change or transformation to a more advanced stage of being.”

My leadership colleagues and I have been working through the model this week at Men’s Leadership Development Week at the Wright Leadership Institute. My post yesterday on engagement covered the second stage in the Evolating model.

My experience with revelating was quite profound. In refining the definition this morning, I focused on a personal example to help refine an operational definition of revolating, which in essence is comprehending the psychological matrix in which one lives. It involves seeing how you work and understanding your operating system, but further seeing how your current way of being creates blocks that prevent growth, change, and transformation.

In my case, one of the blocks is self pity. I caught myself feeling very tired and discouraged as I replayed an email on an important sale I lost. That loss was headed toward defining the whole day as terrible. It was not by any means, and I noticed that tendency in my psychology.

Noticing that part of the matrix presents an opportunity for a shift. I decided I did not have any time to feel sorry for myself and did not. I’m still upset by the loss, but by not putting the energy into feeling sorry for myself or making an entire day a loss, I have been able to see how I can prevent that kind of loss in the future–by using as a model an excellent and highly engaged meeting with another client just before I received the email about the loss.

I had further extended my revelating experience by uncovering a long-standing and deeply held belief that I do not measure up, no matter how hard I try. I won’t go into the details on that one now, but it was a profound experience because it brought to my consciousness a belief that has formed my perception of myself and the world for many many years. Through that initial conscious, however, the hold of  the belief unlocks and change is possible.

Tags: Leadership, Transformation, Wright Leadership Institute

Today I considered engagement and what it means to live an engaged life. This is a way of living and being that I have explored for years, but today at the Men’s Leadership Development Week at the Wright Leadership Institute the deeper meaning of engagement as a way of being began to become more clear.

To say “way of being” is to use language with the tones of existential philosophy, but to use it in a practical, living sense, not solely an intellectual sense. Choice is one of the primary existential principles of living, and engagement is a choice.

In existential terms, it is a choice of being or nonbeing, a choice of living or not living, at least in the sense that to be alive is to be conscious and aware of oneself and one’s internal and external states and feelings. Engagement in this sense is to be or not to be.

In daily terms, being and nonbeing is not so lofty as it may sound. It’s picking up the phone to make a cold sales call–or not. It’s telling your spouse that you’re angry and why–or not. It’s correcting an employee–or not. It’s asking someone to lunch–or not.

In any of those acts, there is a risk–the risk of rejection, or nonbeing. And with risk there is fear.

So engagement becomes facing fear and having mastery over fear. Think of when you have faced a fear and how satisfying that feeling is. That is the satisfaction of engagement.

For there is also a yearning or desire to have something more that leads to the decision to engage–or not.

Engagement is a fuller expression of self, a choice to be oneself, as opposed to a simple act. We are aiming to be fully engaged.

I have missed a lot of the subtleties here and a broader context of leadership development. More on engagement to come.

Tags: existentialism, Wright Leadership Institute

Social media marketing takes the next step in 2010, from the next new thing to a powertool in the integrated marketer’s toolbox, for both business-to-business and consumer marketing, as reported last week in major marketing and technology media articles and blog posts.

Optimism, accountability, social media top trends

BtoB Magazine reports “cautious optimism,” especially over ad budget increases, and the “integration of social media as a marketing tool” as top trends in 2010.

Study Finds Marketers Embracing Social Media Marketing In A Big Way

TechCrunch reports on an Alterian study showing that “66 percent of respondents will be investing in social media marketing (SMM) in 2010.”

2010: Marketers Get Serious About Social Media

Forbes columnist Jeremiah Owyang opines that “senior marketers must have a plan for social marketing” as consumer adoption grows and CMOs get organized around social media–”get over the cool factor” and relate to customers.

The New Social Gurus

Adweek reports that “big brands are on the hunt for help in figuring out their approaches to connecting with consumers on Facebook, providing service on Twitter and instituting internal social media guidelines.” Are the new experts up to the task?

Spending on custom content expected to increase this year

BtoB Magazine reports on an Junta42 study showing that spending on “custom content,” the lifeblood of social media marketing, is set to increase in 2010, with marketers surveyed planning to allocate some 33% of their overall budget to custom content.

Tags: economics, marketing

It appears that Paul Volcker is back. With President Obama’s proposal last week for limits on banks, the former Federal Reserve Chairman and economic advisor to the president was back center stage. Obama calls the reforms the “Volcker Rule.”

Seeking Alpha, in a good round up, called it “a dramatic about face.” A friend in the financial industry tagged it  ”astonishing.” Zero Hedge wrote of the event as a “revolution” with Paul Volcker taking his “rightful place.”

The Zero Hedge article, “The Volcker Revolution – Providing Some Much Needed Answers” is an especially penetrating analysis of the banking situation and financial crisis and what we can expect from Volcker and the Obama administration, based on the writer’s reading of “Financial Reform – A Framework for Financial Stability,” a paper written under Volcker’s supervision.

Personally, I take this all as a good sign. Volcker is not optimistic and self satisfied about the economic recover, nor am I. As he said in a December interview with SPIEGEL, “America Must ‘Reassert Stability and Leadership’“:

The recovery is quite slow and I expect it to continue to be pretty slow and restrained for a variety of reasons and the possibility of a relapse can’t be entirely discounted. I’m not predicting it but I think we have to be careful.

We have not yet achieved self-reinforcing recovery. We are heavily dependent upon government support so far. We are on a government support system, both in the financial markets and in the economy.

I had very much wanted 2010 to be an easier year than 2009. I realized over the holiday break that it would not be. Cash is tight in our business and with many others I know. Credit remains tight and with banks hunkered down, it likely will remain so.

We are continuing to stay positive yet realistic and to focus on sales and service. We have a strong start to the year to show for it.

One last personal note:  I started this blog with Reganomics, a post on William Greider’s book, The Education of David Stockman and Other Americans. His next book featured Volcker, and as I read Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country when it ran in the New Yorker, I became a fan of Volcker as well as Greider.

Tomorrow kicks off the annual Men’s Leadership Week at the Wright Leadership Institute. Throughout the coming week, a highly committed group of leaders, including me, will meet to define their goals for the year and refine their visions for themselves, business, at home, and in their communities.

The primary tool we use is the Ideal State Action Planning (ISAP) process. Read about how it works in “Discovering Your Ideal through the ISAP” in the Canright Communications blog.

Tags: Wright Leadership Institute

How do you manage a website project when it’s your website? We struggled with that question for more than a year in redesigning www.canrightcommunications.com. In the end, we treated ourselves like we treat our clients. And refined the Canright Project Methodology in the process.

Read about it in “Anatomy of a Website Redesign.”

Tags: Canright Communications