Inspiration.

There is so much inspiration to be found in the world around us.

It can be a poem, the lyrics or tunes of a song, the birds in your garden playing hide & seek, great architecture, books with fresh ideas, beautiful art or the wonder on a child’s face. Random acts of kindness that we give, receive or simply observe in others.

It can be anything really. We just have to be open to it, tune into it, see with new eyes how wonderful life truly is.

Here some small bits of inspiration that have inspired me. From the encouragement of Rilke’s poems to the music, insightful videos, books and quotes that have opened my heart throughout the years.

WHAT MAKES YOUR HEART SING?

 

Go to the limits of your longing

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Book of Hours, I 59

Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Joanna Macy

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Videos.

One of the great wonders (and time consuming monsters) of our day & time is the Internet. It allows for ideas, insights, research and inspiration to spread ever more quickly. Below I have provided links to some videos on topics relevant to individual organizational change (living systems if you will). Topics such as trust, connection, grief, storytelling, courage, authenticity and wholeness. With credits to Nic Askew and his beautiful Soul Biographies work. Please share if it touches your heart.

Interestingly, the essence of all these stories is that meaningful change starts with and within us as people. With how we consciously decide to show up and connect. Connect with ourselves, others and the living world.

  • Scilla Elworthy - building bridges of peace

    What if we developed our ability to truly listen to understand the other? What if we developed our sense of safety? Safety within ourselves and with others. To resolve conflict and competition, and instead create peace. Peace in our world, in our organizations, communities and families.

  • Nic Askew - the true voice of transition

    How do we change the world for the better? And how do we use our voice in a congruent way? So as to honour and reflect the authentic source energy of transition movements.

  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - The power of multiple stories

    The stories we tell shape our world. What if we learn to share multiple stories of the world and its people? What if we expand our view of unknown cultures and people by sharing a variety of perspectives? How would that change our perspective? How would it change us?

  • Robin Wall Kimmerer - What we can learn from nature

    How do we integrate the wisdom of traditional ecological knowledge and the tools of western science to restore our human relationship with life? So we can learn to live in right relationship, in balance, with all life.

  • Rob Lindemann - Concerning Trust

    Trust makes or breaks relationships. People and organizations can thrive when there is a culture of trust, instead of control.

  • Susan Cain - The power of bittersweet and its relevance for organizational culture

    With increasing societal challenges, and employee sickness & turnover rates and quiet quitting skyrocketing, how do you create a healthy work culture? What does embracing our deepest longing, that slight feeling of sadness, make space for?

  • Reimagining education

    How do we overhaul our current educational systems? How can we redesign education so that our younger generations can learn how to use their potential for the benefit of all life?

  • Lauri Feinsod, CEO and Geo Krieg, President & CTO

    2 short videos on transforming organizations into places where people can belong, and develop their potential. How do we develop the courage to transform the way in which we work together? The way in which we run our organizations.

  • Jenny Garrett - Unprotected Conversation

    Leadership is about knowing yourself. What if we learn to truly connect with others? By knowing ourselves, and by feeling safe within ourselves. So that we can lead from there, and others will follow us for who we are.

  • Jeff Mitchell - If I were to know you

    Conflict is universal. So is love and our need for connection. How can we develop wholeness, peace, in a fragmented world? How do we move from surviving to thriving?

  • Simon Western - Don't look away

    Can we find the courage to face the beauty of love, and the sadness of losing it? Are we brave enough to stay with our own and someone else’s grief, and allow it serve as a means of connecting to each other, to our shared humanity?

  • George W Stewart - This world is one

    Can we heal ourselves and our relationship with others by letting go of our conditioning, our old perspectives? What if we valued of all us, all our perspectives? Where would forgiveness of ourself, and others lead us?

A Million dreams

I close my eyes and I can see
A world that's waiting up for me
That I call my own
Through the dark, through the door
Through where no one's been before
But it feels like home

They can say, they can say it all sounds crazy
They can say, they can say I've lost my mind
I don't care, I don't care, if they call me crazy
We can live in a world that we design

'Cause every night, I lie in bed
The brightest colors fill my head
A million dreams are keeping me awake
I think of what the world could be
A vision of the one I see
A million dreams is all it's gonna take
Oh, a million dreams for the world we're gonna make

There's a house we can build
Every room inside is filled with things from far away
Special things I compile
Each one there to make you smile on a rainy day

They can say, they can say it all sounds crazy
They can say, they can say we've lost our minds
See, I don't care, I don't care if they call us crazy
Run away to a world that we design

'Cause every night, I lie in bed
The brightest colors fill my head
A million dreams are keeping me awake
I think of what the world could be
A vision of the one I see
A million dreams is all it's gonna take
Oh, a million dreams for the world we're gonna make

However big, however small
Let me be part of it all
Share your dreams with me
We may be right, we may be wrong
But I wanna bring you along to the world I see
To the world we close our eyes to see
We close our eyes to see

Every night, I lie in bed
The brightest colors fill my head
A million dreams are keeping me awake
I think of what the world could be
A vision of the one I see
A million dreams is all it's gonna take
A million dreams for the world we're gonna make

For the world we're gonna make

Lyrics written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

Books.

So many wonderful, insightful, inspiring and great books & stories have been written throughout history. Books that allow us to develop ourselves, and stories that make us disappear in previously unknown worlds. Below I have listed a few titles that have inspired me, offered me a fresh perspective or soothed my soul.

  • Fritjof Capra, Ugo Mattei - 'The Ecology of Law' Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature And Community.

    Capra and Mattei outline the basic concepts and structures of a legal order consistent with the ecological principles that sustain life on this planet. This is a profound and visionary reconceptualization of the very foundations of the Western legal system, a kind of Copernican revolution in the law, with profound implications for the future of our planet’

  • Mark C. Scott - 'Reinspiring the Corporation: The Seven Seminal Paths to Corporate Greatness'

    What would it be like for a company if fifty thousand souls were as single-mindedly driven to do what they did at Chartres? What would AT look like? IBM? ABB? Your company? This book argues that it is possible for the corporation to inspire and harness comparable committed, co-ordinated energy. The process is called Reinspiration. Apply it within your corporation and reap the benefits.

  • Margaret Heffernan - 'Uncharted' How to Navigate the Future.

    Ranging freely through history and from business to science, government to friendships, this refreshing book challenges us to mine our own creativity and humanity for the capacity to create the futures we want and can believe in.

  • Margaret J. Wheatley - 'Who Do We Choose To Be?' Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity

    In a world we cannot recognize, how do we find a way forward? In this world we do not understand, how do we know what to do? When so little is comprehensible, what is meaningful work? What is genuine contribution?

  • Daniel H. Pink - 'A Whole New Mind' Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future

    The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't.

  • Jeremy Lent - 'The Web of Meaning' Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find our Place in the Universe.

    A profound personal meditation on human existence and a tour-de-force weaving together of historic and contemporary thought on the deepest question of all: why are we here?

  • Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Douglas Carlton Abrahams - 'The Book of Joy' .

    Two leading spiritual masters share their hard-won wisdom about living with joy even in the face of adversity, sharing personal stories and teachings about the science of profound happiness and the daily practices that anchor their emotional and spiritual lives.

  • Carol Sanford - 'Indirect Work' A Regenerative Change Theory for Businesses, Communities, Institutions and Humans.

    Indirect Work offers you clear and practical approaches to test any change theory or programs for your organization, community efforts or personal growth, before you start or to examine what you do now. It can even help you make sense of past failures. Indirect Work strongly challenges the validity of pop psychology and the damage it causes to human psyche and soul, ultimately, impacting the quality of our Society.

  • Robin Wall Kimmerer - 'Braiding Sweetgrass'

    In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

  • Daniel Christian Wahl - 'Designing Regenerative Cultures'

    This is a 'Whole Earth Catalog' for the 21st century: an impressive and wide-ranging analysis of what's wrong with our societies, organizations, ideologies, worldviews and cultures - and how to put them right. The book covers the finance system, agriculture, design, ecology, economy, sustainability, organizations and society at large.

  • Gary Zukov - 'The Seat of the Soul'

    Beginning with evolution, Gary Zukav takes you on a penetrating exploration of the new phase humanity has entered: we are evolving from a species that understands power as the ability to manipulate and control (external power) into a species that understands power as the alignment of the personality with the soul (authentic power).

  • Naomi Klein - 'Hot Money' (Green Ideas)

    In Hot Money Naomi Klein lays out the evidence that deregulated capitalism is waging war on the climate, and shows that, in order to stop the damage, we must change everything we think about how our world is run.

  • Charlie Mackesy - 'The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse'

    A book of hope for uncertain times. Enter the world of Charlie's four unlikely friends, discover their story and their most important life lessons.