The science of play --a wonderful APM audio piece

Thanks to two friends, I found this excellent piece of audio journalism from American Public Media, "Speaking of Faith" about the science/nature/wonder of PLAY...I highly recommend it!

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The "I like" game, a recent favorite

Since the "I like" game was one of the most popular at our last playformation workshop, and it is obviously a very simple exercise to incorporate into daily life, I thought I'd say a few words about it here:

So, the skinny, with some tips:
1. Give yourself* a time limit (we gave ourselves 2 minutes, but you could do anything. I'd suggest 1-5 minutes to not burn out)
2. Try and find/feel that place in you that is 'real', where you really 'are' right now.
3. Start saying "I like" ...whatever you honestly are liking, enjoying, diggin', at this moment. It might be a certain color, a feeling, a memory, an excitement about something upcoming, a food, a friend, whatever is true.
4. Repeat "I like" for each one and don't stop talking -even if you need to repeat the same thing over and over. Why not groove on the goodness of that particular thing?
5. Check in with yourself, how do you feel compared to before?

*Note: while you can surely do this by yourself, as a recent participant mentioned, there is something powerful about hearing the "I likes" of someone else as well as knowing that your "I likes" are being heard. Do you have a friend, family member, coach or counselor you can do this with when needed?

This game started years ago with a much more 'exterior' motivation (what 'should' I like and 'praise the lord' for?), and sometimes led to the more authentic kind of 'praise' of God and life that my current practice does. Patricia Madsen's 'improv wisdom' has a chapter related to this entitled "Wake up to the gifts" and I'd highly recommend reading her book.

People often make the mistake in thinking that one FIRST finds happiness, then one is 'feels' thankful. Surprise surprise. It is often the other way around...find what you like, what is already there, 'the good' (from the simplest to the most sublime) and then you'll likely feel happier.
Enjoy, maybe it will lead you closer to Pronoia (more on that later!)

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First Spark Northwest Playformation Meeting For Indie 'Bizniks'

Whew! I'm tired...though from some good fun work. Spark NW had a great playformation 'teaser' workshop last night that brought together about 22 different indie biznik folks from around the greater Seattle area. We had a great time and overall it was clearly a successful evening with lots of new connections between people, new creative breakthroughs sparked, and goofy playful fun. However, I stayed up way too late afterwards summarizing the 20 post-workshop surveys I received. Overall, the response was great. Here are some of the highlights:

• 95% of participants said that they enjoyed my facilitation process.
• 85% said it was a worthwhile event (the other three were 'neutral')
• 60% said they would like to come to a full day playformation workshop (7 neutral about it, 1 wouldn't come due to his not being able to connect that evening.)
• In addition, 12 out of 20 of the people were interested in talking more about either breakthrough coaching, team-building, or other Spark NW workshops. Excellent! I look forward following up with each of them (or you!)

The verbal feedback was also overall positive: many comments like "Very interactive, lots of movement and laughter. Total participation. Loved getting a chance to talk to so many of the people. Great Activities!"


Here are some pictures from the evening:

Find more photos like this on The Spark Life


The primary two threads of critique confirmed what I too felt were problematic (and had warned the group in advance about:

1. We did too much, too fast...not enough depth to really get into activities
2. Related to that, not enough explanation about the purpose and 'life-application' of each activities.
   

These issues are issues I've struggled with a lot --I want to do and share as much as possible (everything!) and that can be a little overwhelming for folks, understably. It didn't help that I had advertised this event with fairly general, 'catch-all' terms so that people came with expectations and interests from 'just having fun with other people' to 'learn creative exercises to enhance my business'. While I believe that one can do both, indeed that is the heart and soul of Spark NW ('breakthrough transformation that is also fun and enjoyable), the people with interests focused on either ends of the spectrum will probably go away feeling like there was 'too much' of the other.

How can I resolve this tension? Well, I think I can solve much of it by forcing myself to narrow down my focus both on WHO I'm doing workshops for and WHAT outcomes one can specifically expect from this. That's why I've decided to make the full day workshop on the 13th of October very focused on indie business / entrepeneur types who want to find creative ways to Spark their business, while I'm making the Oct. 26th a more fun personal development day open to all. Hmmm, but even that second one is still too vague. Should it be about increasing personal confidence, having a more positive mooditude, increasing creative flow and innovation, better listening and people skills, centering/awareness/groundedness, opening up and receiving offers from the universe, or what? Maybe the trick is to narrow down the WHO first (but but but, I like the idea of it being totally open), and then find out what their needs are. Anyway, if you are one of the 'them', let me know what you YOU are looking for. More details coming on those two events by the end of this week. Check back here, or at the SparkNW.com site.

Hope to chat with you soon!
Warmly,
Leif

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Technorati Tags: sparknw, leifhansen, wonderosity, workshop, improv, personaldevelopment, biznik, indiebiz, indie, play, fun, seattle,

Improv your life

I'm always a little surprised at how seldomly people taking improv classes think about how their new skills can add to their life. I was therefore happy to find this brief blog entry by an improv student applying to her life what any improv actor quickly learns on the stage:
JANE CHIN » Blog Archive » What Comedy Improv Taught Me About Life

What I learned in comedy improv has helped me live life the way I want to live life. Each opportunity to get up and perform is like applying life skills in a sliver of time. In addition to having an environment where I can exercise my extreme quirkiness, I’ve learned that…

1. I can spend a lot of time going over what I could have done or should have said to be “funnier”, but what truly counts is what I actually do and say in my turn.
   
   
2. A true skill of improv and in life is to be with the fear when fear comes, listen intensely to what I am given, and trust that something comes to me in the nanoseconds I have to respond in the scene.
   
   
3. Being a good audience member, clapping and cheering for my fellow improv’ers when they’re on stage is as important as being a good improv’er when I’m on stage. I enjoy being a good audience member as much as performing on stage.
   
   
4. When I bomb and fail miserably, I know that it will be all over in minutes. A classmate suggested that we can aim to fail on stage early on, and get over that part of our mindtrash so we can go on to enjoy ourselves.
   
   
5. Yes, and. Yes, and. Yes, and. The mantra for comedy improv is “yes, and.” Whatever I get, I say, “yes, and.” Whatever happens to me in life, I say, “yes, and.” I accept everything that comes by saying “yes”. I create my own experience from what I’m given by saying “…and…”

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Humanity 2.0 -Orcas Island, a great success!

Well, I was planning on writing up a more detailed summary of our Orcas workshop, but to be honest I am POOPED with the process of creating the new H2.0 social site, so hopefully you'll get a general sense of things by checking out the pictures, etc. Pictures are only from me so far (thus I'm not in them, nor the games and interactivies I facilitated), but they show the group's process as well as pictures of all our poster-board notes filled with great ideas, burning questions, and helpful insights.

In short, it was a great time of meeting and experiencing wonderfully diverse people and perspectives, brainstorming, problem solving, and playing together. All what we hoped it would be.

Thanks to all who came and who helped promote it! We have decided to definitely do a Seattle version, most likely sometime the first half of October. So the bunches of you who wanted to come but found the time and distance (to Orcas) a little too much, you'll get to come. Woohoo!


Find more photos like this on Humanity 2.0

A new blog sparks into being...

Strange indeed.
I just realized that I have three active blogs and two semi-active podcasts, not counting all my other half-baked projects, yet none of them are related to my work! This fact has only now become 'bizarre' to me because of an excellent biznik marketing event I recently attended. "F**k Marketing", faciliated by Dominic Canterbury, drove home how potentially useful (or arguabley essential) having a blog is in this day and age.

Honestly, before this event, I was starting to believe that the web was just too saturated with blogs. Why start another blog when people were already too overwhelmed with options. However, I know realize that providing a blog can be a great way to let clients and potential clients peek at who I am, what Spark Northwest is about, as well as to share some great resources, tips and fun ideas. So that's what I'm going to do. I hope you like it, and of course I'm always open to suggestions.

Though today is the first REAL day of The Spark Life blog, I plan on back-posting writings from yonder years which I think will be of interest to folks like you. I've had some pretty wild, wonderful, transformative experiences in life life --events I've been a participant in and events that I've helped Spark -so why not get a little more life out em?

Humanity 2.0 -a go!

Well, we've finally decided (largely due to some welcome external energy and enthusiasm) to give the green light to the Humanity 2.0 workshop on Orcas. Though I started with excitement, the surprising lack of initial response and registrations took me somewhat by surprise. Though "I love the idea." "Yeah, it sounds great!" were frequently heard, it unfortunately seems that the people I was talking to weren't as into the retreat part of it --the time and financial commitment of heading out to Orcas that is. "Do it in Seattle, and I'm there!" Cheapskates! (: If this goes as well as planned, Seattle will happen as well, but first we're sticking with this Orcas Retreat and I think its going to be great.

I am particularly thankful to three people.
1)My wife Anna for dealing with my ups and downs and encouraging me that whether we have 3 or 30 people, the experience and learnings involved are still worth it.

2)My partner in crime for this workshop, Jay Kimball of 8020vision.com --for he also had to listen to me process a lot, provided some great feedback, and did some really great work in promoting the workshop in various ways.

3)Nancy White, who I haven't yet met (though I look forward to it), but who found out about H20 through another friend's blog (Stuart Maxwell's meetatthepig.com) She encouraged me with her enthusiasm about the topic ("Oh, there are more people like me out there --thanks I knew it!") and looks like will be responsible for getting another half a dozen people to the workshop.

Thanks to each of you, and to others who helped get the word out. Now, to the details!

i-link, an internet coaching business ahead of its time...and mine

Starting i-link back in 1995 was my first big venture into the world of entrepreneurship and my first professional experience coaching. The Net, believe it or not, was still pretty new then. Who knew it would grow into such a massively ubiquitous part of our culture!?! My main interest was in working with people who were computer-phobic, which was most often the 'older generations' (which meant 'above 35' to me then.) I apparently had a unique talent of being both personable and being a tech geek.

I was newly married, new to the beautiful Orcas island, and now starting a new business in a new frontier. Wow, I never really realized how much new stuff actually happened that year between 1995-1996 (and that's not mentioning the amazing and crazy spiritual/creative things that happened that year -more on that in a later post.)

As it turned out, my business only lasted for a couple of years. The main reason, besides probably not having enough business experience, was that I had the same mixed feelings and struggles with technology as I do today. Funny how some things don't change a whole lot isn't it? I mean, Spark Northwest has just launched our first "Humanity 2.0 workshop -where the tech are we going?" Full circle? Sort of. I think a spiral is more like it. We curve back towards issues from our past, but we have move on and have grown in other ways. I know I have. Just look at the young SparkGuy below.