An invitation to understand yourself & others waaaayyy better
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Training & development
Quote from Ragged Wood by the Fleet Foxes
What if I told you I had the secret sauce to building your personal & professional resilience? To simplifying communication & conflict resolution? To understanding yourself & others waaayyyy better so you can create better connections?
We’re connected & disconnected all at the same time
Because never in human history have we been so connected. In mere seconds we can find out the weather forecast in Prague, Rembrandt’s birthday & a great recipe for leeks. Yet never in human history have we been so far apart.
Because our world is becoming increasingly polarized, with people unwilling or unable to relate to each other.
Feeling frazzled, overwhelmed & exhausted
Because having a plethora of choices, leads to feeling frazzled & overwhelmed. Feeling misunderstood leads to misunderstandings. We turn inwards. Our protective shields grow thicker & more impenetrable. With a million demands on our fractured selves, we feel exhausted, stuck in a quagmire.
Because we’re uneasy & weary of the dissonance.
Because of all these reasons we seek clarity, illumination. We want a simple framework to help guide the way without giving up our sense of self (no gurus thank you). We’re ready to dig in, dig deep & connect.
We need & want to ‘scratch our own itch.’
We’re itching to have a way out of disorientation, when we want to bang our head against the wall because we can’t communicate with someone.
We’re itching to have options, to get off the dizzying merry go round & have a tool to give us traction when we’re stuck in a conflict.
We’re itching to find a way forward, out of confusion & into choices.
We’re itching to ditch the overwhelm & amp up ease.
We’re itching to the find a path forward, carving it ourselves out of seemingly impenetrable forest.
Are you with me?
Are you ready for some adventures in learning, in growing?
Are you a seeker, a wanna be sense maker? Are you curious about yourself & others & the world around you? Do you have an appetite for discovery? Are you open to change? Are you seeking clarity?
(If not, no problem. This may be a good time to leave & head outside for a nice walk. Thanks for your time.)
If so though, if you’re really ready, then welcome.
Belonging isn’t the same as fitting in. And I want you to belong.
Take a deep breath.
Welcome to a community for waywards ….
… those difficult to control or predict due to unusual behaviour). I’ve got your back.
Because we desperately need better relationships. With ourselves & our workplaces. We need skills to build allies instead of adversaries.
And surprise! That’s not only possible, but surprisingly easy.
First off, some rules.
- You are in control. Dip into the well of learning with your toe, wade into your waist or dive in. Your choice.
- Your creativity is not only welcome, it’s integral. (And if you’re saying to yourself ‘but I’m not creative’ then know two things: 1) everyone is creative, 2) creativity takes many forms, & 3) brush that negative self talk away, it’s not invited to the party).
- Suffering is optional. While this can be arduous, I don’t recommend it.
- Humour is our golden ticket. Laughing
- We’re in it together. Community works.
- This isn’t a place for lectures. Your participation is critical. It’s our path to effecting social change.
Laugh, learn & lead
So here we go. The journey’s beginning to unfold. With tools & trainings to help you laugh, learn & lead, as a learning & development expert with more than 30 years experience, I’ll be blogging & sending out e-newsletters weekly & listening to you.
Take action
- subscribe to our learning community blog at the top right of this page
- sign up for my newsletter &/or
- comment below & tell me what you want & need when it comes to laughing, learning & leading
Tags: community, perspective, secret sauce
Why Mom’s Time Is Different From Dad’s Time or the Search for Wormholes
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication
Loved this article about how moms & dads see time differently from the Wall Street Journal so much I thought I’d share it with you…
Several years ago, while observing a parenting group in Minnesota, I was struck by a confession one of the women made to her peers: She didn’t really care that her husband did the dishes after dinner. Sure, it was swell of him, and she had friends whose husbands did less. But what she really wanted, at that point in her day, was for her husband to volunteer to put the kids to bed. She would have been glad to sit in the kitchen on her own for a few minutes with the water running and her mind wandering. Another woman chimed in: “Totally. The dishes don’t talk back to you.”
According to the American Time Use Survey—which asks thousands of Americans annually to chronicle how they spend their days—men and women now work roughly the same number of hours a week (though men work more paid hours, and women more unpaid). Given this balanced ledger, one might guess that all would finally be quiet on the domestic front—that women would finally have stopped wondering how they, rather than their husbands, got suckered into such a heavy load. But they haven’t. The question is: Why?
Men and women now work roughly the same number of hours a week, but women are still carrying the heavy load when it comes to child care. Jennifer Senior, author of “All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood,” discusses on the News Hub. Photo: Getty Images.
Part of the problem is that averages treat all data as if they’re the same and therefore combinable, which often results in a kind of absurdity. On average, human beings have half an Adam’s apple, but no one thinks to lump men and women together this way. Similarly, we should not assume that men and women’s working hours are the same in kind. The fact is, men and women experience their time very differently.
For starters, not all work is created equal. An hour spent on one kind of task is not necessarily the equivalent of an hour spent on another. Take child care, a task to which mothers devote far more hours than dads. It creates much more stress in women than other forms of housework. In “Alone Together” (2007), a comprehensive look at the state of American marriage, the authors found that if women believe child care is unevenly divided in their homes, this imbalance is much more likely to affect their marital happiness than a perceived imbalance in, say, vacuuming.
Or consider night duty. Sustained sleep deprivation, as we know, consigns people to their own special league of misery. But it’s generally mothers, rather than fathers, who are halfway down the loonytown freeway to hysterical exhaustion, at least in the early years of parenting. According to the American Time Use Survey, women in dual-earner couples are three times more likely to report interrupted sleep if they have a child under the age of 1, and stay-at-home mothers are six times as likely to get up with their children as are stay-at-home fathers.
Funny: I once sat on a panel with Adam Mansbach, the author of the best-selling parody “Go the F— to Sleep.” At one point in the discussion, he conceded that his partner put his child to bed most nights. He may have written a book about the tyranny of toddlers at bedtime, but in his house, it was mainly Mom’s problem.
Complicating matters, mothers assume a disproportionate number of time-sensitive domestic tasks, whether it’s getting their toddlers dressed for school or their 12-year-olds off to swim practice. Their daily routine is speckled with what sociologists Annette Lareau and Elliot Weininger call “pressure points,” or nonnegotiable demands that make their lives, as the authors put it, “more frenetic.”
These deadlines have unintended consequences. They force women to search for wormholes in the time-space continuum simply to accomplish all the things that they need to do. In 2011, the sociologists Shira Offer and Barbara Schneider found that mothers spend, on average, 10 extra hours a week multitasking than do fathers “and that these additional hours are mainly related to time spent on housework and child care.”
When fathers spend time at home, on the other hand, it reduces their odds of multitasking by over 30%. Which may explain why, a few years ago, researchers from UCLA found that a father in a room by himself was the “person-space configuration observed most frequently” in their close study of 32 families at home. It may also explain why many fathers manage to finish the Sunday paper while their wives do not—they’re not constantly getting up to refill bowls of Cheerios.
Being compelled to divide and subdivide your time doesn’t just compromise your productivity and lead to garden-variety discombobulation. It also creates a feeling of urgency—a sense that no matter how tranquil the moment, no matter how unpressured the circumstances, there’s always a pot somewhere that’s about to boil over.
“My husband says I cause some of the worry unnecessarily,” another Minnesota mother, who was part of the same parenting program, told me when I spent some time in her home.
It’s something that I hear a lot from parents. One of them—usually the mother—is more alive to the emotional undercurrents of the household. As a result, this more intuitive parent feels that the other parent—usually the father—is not doing his fair share, while the father feels that his wife is excessively emotional and wretchedly inefficient. But what really may be going on is that the couple is experiencing time differently, because each person is paying attention to different things.
It’s important to remember that fairness isn’t just about absolute equality. It’s about the perception of equality. Women may work fewer paid hours than men, but because they devote nearly twice as much time to family care (housework, child care, shopping), it doesn’t look to women like their husbands are sharing the load evenly when they’re all home together. It looks instead like their husbands are watching “SportsCenter.”
It’s hard to overstate how stressful these perceived imbalances can be. At one point, the UCLA researchers took saliva samples from most of the subjects of their study to measure levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. They found that while leisure time went a long way toward relaxing fathers, it did far less to subdue anxiety in mothers. So what, you may ask, did calm the mothers?
Simple: Seeing their husbands make a bigger effort to reduce the pandemonium in the house.
—Adapted from Ms. Senior’s new book, “All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood,” published next week by HarperCollins.
~~TGIF- each Friday I rejig & re-post a blog entry from my www.life-lenses.com blog, which is about enhancing our perspective & worldview.~~
What do we call non-academic skills
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Training & development
More and more people in education agree on the importance of learning stuff other than academics.
But no one agrees on what to call that “stuff”, says a great article from NPR.
What do we call non-academic skills? You know, the ones we all intuitively know are critical but are hard to nail down.
Soft skills? Sounds too wishy washy.
Character? Sounds too odd.
Noncognitive traits & habits? Sounds waaaaay to academic & not user friendly.
How about social & emotional skills? Uhm, perhaps but still vague.
Grit? Hell no. Enter John Wayne.
21st century skills? Sounds too techie.
Growth mindset? Doesn’t capture enough.
I don’t have the definitive answer but I do know that the conversation is critical.
Tags: education, npr, soft skills, training & development
Learning from one of the world’s best pickpockets … yes pickpocket
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication
Hailed as the greatest pickpocket in the world, Apollo Robbins studies the quirks of human behavior as he steals your watch. In a hilarious demonstration, Robbins samples the buffet of the TEDGlobal 2013 audience, showing how the flaws in our perception make it possible to swipe a wallet and leave it on its owner’s shoulder while they remain clueless.
“Attention steers perception.
It’s the gateway to the reality of our mind.”
~~TGIF- each Friday I rejig & re-post a blog entry from my www.life-lenses.com blog, which is about enhancing our perspective & worldview.~~
Tags: apollo robbins, perception, TED
Should art should be owned by the person who feels the strongest for it?
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication
Art should be owned by the person who feels the strongest for it. That’s why we arranged the world’s first auction completely based on emotions, in Stockholm, Sweden.
More than 300 people placed bids on three unique art glass pieces, worth in total over € 25 000. Biometric sensors were used to determined who had the strongest emotional reaction to the art. Says Kosta Boda
Do you (knowingly) use your emotions to guide your behaviour (purchasing or otherwise)? Watch the short video & feel free to leave me a comment in the space below.
Tags: decision making, emotion, kosta boda
Revisiting your ‘Friend’s’ perspective – making the old new again
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Creativity & innovation
If you spent any length of time in North America in the 1990’s watching TV then you’ll know the show Friends. You’ll also likely have the opening song resonating somewhere in the dusty recesses of your mind.
Prepare to haul it out & take a new listen.
It’s lovely. Somewhat haunting. Evocative. And new.
Perspective. Revisited.
What’s something you can haul out & revisit with new eyes?
~~TGIF- each Friday I rejig & re-post a blog entry from my www.life-lenses.com blog, which is about enhancing our perspective & worldview.~~
Tags: friends, perspecctive
How ear worms get your point across
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication
My kids, hubbie & me were driving down the highway & the song Mahna mahna da da da da da came up in conversation.
Say what?!
If you grew up with Sesame Street & you know the Muppets then it’s likely you would recognize this song. (And if you don’t or you want to revisit it, check out the video below.)
All of a sudden we were belting it out & ear worms (a.k.a. songs that get stuck in your head) were cemented.
Which got me thinking how powerful rhythm is. The amazing processor that is our brain LOVES rhythm.
Don’t believe me? Just try saying (not singing) the words to happy birthday.
Betcha sound like a glitchy robot. It’s because you learned the song by singing it (rhythmically) not by saying it.
Need to get your point across? Need to get somebody to remember something? Try using rhythm – & the more ear worm like the better.
Let me know by commenting below how it goes. I’d love to hear.
Tags: communication, ear worm, muppets
Take comfort in this sweet sweet sheltering
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Change management & wellness
We all need shelter.
And …
We all provide shelter.
Whether through a helping hand, a kind word, a smile or even a belly. Yes belly.
Love both the comfort this pig takes in the dog’s shelter & the dog’s kindness in the video below. Check it out..
Chuckle & enjoy.
P.S. I’ve been away from blogging for a bit. Miss me? I’m back with all sorts of refreshing tales including, wait for it, I’m headed to Jonathan Field’s The Good Life Project Camp in New York this summer. (Insert big, sloppy grin here)
Tags: good life project, jonathan fields, shelter
Replacing the grinding & gnashing of teeth that technology can induce with some chortles
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Business & organizational development, Communication
Photo Credit: Elsie esq. via Compfight cc
If you’ve ever found yourself grinding your teeth during a conference call then prepare to chortle while relating to this short video below.
I teach a course on using social media for learning & development purposes & one thing that most of my participants have in common is frustration with technology. It’s an inclusive club.
Enjoy the video, it’s a completely different perspective on something we’ve all likely experienced. Enjoy.
~~TGIF- each Friday I rejig & re-post a blog entry from my www.life-lenses.com blog, which is about enhancing our perspective & worldview.~~
Tags: humour, social media, technology
Using ICTs to enhance teaching & learning
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Training & development
You may recall that I was the instruction designer for & taught one of the modules of a recent MOOC (massive open online course) on using ICTs to enhance teaching & learning.
Spiffy new news – you can get the whole course right here. Simply click on the links to download the pdfs. Enjoy!
Using ICTs to enrich teaching & learning Module 1
Using ICTs to enrich teaching & learning Module 2
Using ICTs to enrich teaching & learning Module 3