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Every Friday is Gratitude Friday here at Monk at Work — a chance for me to express my gratitude to sources of richness I’m experiencing, with the intention of sharing the wealth.

Changing the World

This was a real eye-opening week for me, when it comes to ideas. I followed a recommendation on Netflix and watched “The Future We Will Create: Inside the World of TED”, TED being the “Technology Entertainment Design” conference held every year in Monterey, California.

But don’t let the strange title confuse you; this was a great documentary about a fantastic group of visionaries who come together every year to share ideas, join resources, and make amazing things happen for the betterment of the world. It was pretty darn inspiring.

The talks of all the speakers are up at ted.com, and here’s one that really got my juices flowing, by Alex Steffen of worldchanging.com:

One of my favorite moments comes near the end, when Alex says, “The tools we use to change the world ought to be beautiful in themselves.”

(If you’re on Facebook (I am), there’s even a TED group to check out…)

Free Music!

And speaking of expanding your horizons, I found a very interesting music site, called eMusic. I found some great world music, some real off-the-beaten-path kinda stuff, that I haven’t seen anywhere else before (they’ve got all genres, not just international…) And check this out: “Any new customer has up to 14 days to download 25 MP3s, absolutely free of charge.” Cool, huh? Go check them out and get your 25 free songs, it’s pretty cool. (Normally, their songs are about $0.33 each, so they’re a great find.)

Great people, great sites, great causes

Continuing my trip around the virtual world, I got introduced to some great bloggers and sites this week, which is always one of the greatest things about what I do.

Rosa Say of Managing with Aloha
Anna Talerico of No More Landing Pages and Ion Interactive
Siona at Zaadz (And if you’re into Zaadz and Facebook, there’s a Zaadz Facebook group, too)
Valeria Maltoni of Conversation Agent
ZeroFootprint (and their Facebook group)

Images by me, TED, and emusic.

And thanks to all those who commented on the previous post so far: Dailytri, Jean Browman, Stuart Baker

Two complimentary ideas:

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown. — Carl Jung
The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. — Albert Einstein

Go beyond thinking of those ideas as just applying to societal conditions, and apply them to yourself.

And when you hit a stuck point today, or have a problem to solve in your work, reflect on these two statements… and now, where should you put your focus?

Images from Encarta and Dorfun.

And thanks to all those who commented on the previous post so far: Slade, Stuart Baker, Jean Browman, Tshombe

When your optimism clouds your ability to clearly see what’s happening, that’s called “wearing rose-colored glasses.” You know what wearing those glasses is going to do to you… the beliefs you bring to any situation are going to affect the way you show up, and cause you to see things differently from how they really are.

Rose-colored glasses are one thing. But what about when your glasses are a different color? Say, “sludge brown”, or “rotten-egg yellow”, or “toxic-waste green”?

Is that going to mess with your clarity? You betcha.

So there you are, hard at work, minding your own business, and frustration/procrastination/lack of motivation comes along. And once you realize that this feeling isn’t just going to blow over, you do your best to deal with it, whether you take a break, repeat affirmations, or do something to shift your state of being away from the negative and back towards the positive.

Self-healing techniques (for lack of a better term) are great for dealing with the immediate moment. And over time, they can change the way you live and work tremendously.

But this just wipes away a proverbial speck on your glasses, by handling the acute scenario. Important, yes, but different from addressing the chronic situation.

Cleaning the specks off of your glasses isn’t the same thing as taking the glasses off.

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Every Friday is Gratitude Friday here at Monk at Work — a chance for me to express my gratitude to sources of richness I’m experiencing, with the intention of sharing the wealth.

Well, I’m still reading Dan Pink’s and Tim Ferriss’ books, and loving them. I’ll have to do fuller reviews when I’m done, because there are amazing points in each one that really warrant more attention. For now, I’ll just say that I’m getting great inspiration from each one, and I highly recommend them:

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, by Dan Pink

Four Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferriss

Also, I’m a big fan of clarity (in case you couldn’t tell), and that includes using tools like dictionaries and thesauri when I write. I’ve gotten in the habit of using dictionary.com and thesaurus.com, but every time I want to search for something, I have to go into my browser, start typing the URL until the auto-complete pops up, erase the search term, and hit enter. Long process, but worth it.

However, I just found out that Clever Keys has built very cool tools that let you search words on them very, very easily, by installing an option in your contextual menu that lets you access them with one-click (check out the screenshot, on the right). (it sounds technical, but it’s really one of those one-click installs, I promise)

They’re free, and they have Mac and Windows versions. Thanks guys!

And like I mentioned in the last Gratitude Friday, we got hooked up with highspeed internet once again, and it’s wonderful (I feel like Rip Van Winkle, waking up from a two-year sleep). Cool thing: I’m now using Skype for my phone service — and saving almost 90% off my previous phone bill. Amazing, huh?

So, my phone number has changed (it’s on the contact page), and you’re welcome to Skype me as well. Hooray for technology!

Have a great weekend, and, what are you grateful for this week?

Well, the Learning Edge meme has been traveling far and wide, much to my surprise, amazement, and delight!

I’ve compiled the list I have of all the Learning Edge posts that folks have made so far; if you’ve written one, but don’t see it here, leave me a comment with a link to it, and I’ll add it to the list. There are also a half-dozen or so people who left comments on the original post, sharing all the Edges they’re up to… be sure to check it out.

And if you haven’t written one, and would like to, check out the original post for directions, and join in the fun! In addition to growing your own horizons, you’ll also get a few links out of it, which never hurts, right?

Colleen Wainwright of Communicatrix wrote What’s your Learning Edge? (The hypnotherapy project)
Evelyn Rodriquez of Crossroads Dispatches wrote Learning Edge, or you can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf
Dailytri of DailyTri wrote My Learning Edge
Eve of Sparkle Life wrote Try and Catch Me
Sue Melone of Ignite What Matters wrote an untitled Learning Edge post
Siona at Zaadz wrote What’s My Learning Edge?
Ben Yoskowitz of Instigator Blog wrote Starting a Business is One Massive Learning Experience
Jean Browman of Stress to Power wrote Lifelong Learning
Edward Mills of Evolving Times wrote What Is Your Learning Edge?
Dawud Miracle of dmiracle.com wrote How Do You Use Social Media To Grow Your Business?
David Thomas of Glittering Muse wrote What’s Your Learning Edge?
William Harryman of Integral Options Cafe wrote What is Your Learning Edge?
Peter Clothier of The Buddha Diaries wrote What’s Your Learning Edge? And, “Come Hell and High Water”
Apollo Lemmon of Frozen Truth wrote Learning Edge + 7
Stuart Baker of Conscious Cooperation wrote My Learning Edge
Pamm of My Secret Spiritual Dance wrote Edges Meme
Kent Blumberg of KentBlumberg wrote The Learning Edge
Jeremy Cherfas of Another Blasted Weblog wrote Lifelong Learning
John of Technology For Living wrote Where My “Edge” Lies Now
Isabella Mori of Change Therapy wrote What’s Your Learning Edge?

That’s quite a list, eh? It reminds me of a quote I read once, about how birds fly, fish swim, and people learn. It’s just what we do.

Thanks, everyone, for sharing… and we’ll see what happens next!

Image by me, under a Creative Commons license.

And thanks to all those who commented on the previous post so far: Jean Browman, Edward Mills, Mary Schmidt

If I asked you, “How do you spend your days?”, you could probably tell me about your appointments, your to-do’s, and your mounting list of priority tasks that need to be accomplished.

But I’d also be willing to bet that if you honestly looked at how you spend your time, you could find quite a few instances where you either fritter away your time doing meaningless tasks, or tackle what seems urgent, but really isn’t important. (yes, there’s a reason that “Twitter” rhymes with “fritter“…)

Hey, it’s nothing personal. Everyone I know does it. The point is, though, what is it costing you? And, ultimately, what can you do about it?

When you’re not spending your time engaged in what really matters to you, it usually comes down to either:

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Every Friday is Gratitude Friday here at Monk at Work — a chance for me to express my gratitude all the sources of richness I’m experiencing, with the intention of sharing the wealth.

First off, you’ll notice that there aren’t too many posts between the last Gratitude Friday and this one… and for good reason. It’s been a bit all-over-the-place for me this week, although in all good ways (and I’m grateful for that!).

After being marooned on the desert island of dial-up since leaving Florida and moving to this hamlet in West Virginia, we got highspeed hooked up on Wednesday. I’m all grins… and, watching a bit more YouTube than I probably should. (And for the 3.55% of you who are still on dialup, I’ll never forget you!)

I’ve also been blessed with the opportunity to work with Liz Strauss, of Successful Blog, to hone Monk at Work’s message, and I’m immensely grateful (it’s a strange thing; to have something that you do for others, but can’t do for yourself no matter how hard you try.) And because of that, I’ve been a bit internal, trying to let the clarity integrate and settle. (more about this soon, I promise…)

I would like to thank all my email newsletter subscribers who replied to my question about the format change… so far, the poll is tied, so if you’ve got an opinion, please weigh in!

Other spots of gratitude:

• Tim Ferriss’ blog, for new ways of looking at life
• Dan Pink, same reason
• Ankesh Kothari at BlogClout, because I’m now using two WordPress plugins of his
• and for all the people writing “Learning Edge” posts (I’ll be doing a follow-up on it next week)

What are you grateful for this week?

Images by me and Twentieth Century Fox.

And thanks to all those who commented on the previous post so far: Joanna Young, Jean Browman, Slade, dailytri, Patricia, Judy Murdoch