Hub Sydney Comes Alive

After my last post and thinking I was moving to Sydney, as life sometimes happens, things change. I’m not so sure that I am moving here now.

However, I am spontaneously here to support the opening of the Hub Sydney pop-up hub, before we move to upstairs 101 in a week or two. It has been an amazing 3 days. More people keep signing up to the Pozible crowdfunding campaign every day. Incredible entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs and corporate directors keep walking in the doors every day. Amazing diversity. However having spent 2 years in Hub Melbourne, there is something that is very similar.

It is the value set. Most people who walk through the door or sign up to the Pozible campaign have this in common. We love the following:

Entrepreneurial: We value entrepreneurship, feasibility, follow-through and the capacity to get things done.

Collaborative: We value community, social capital, responsibility and a holistic approach to life and work.

Open: We value being open to new ideas, people, technology and business models.

Autonomous: We value personal choices, self -direction and the freedom for authentic self expression.

I have immense gratitude to @bradkrauskopf for getting the ball rolling on all of this. Thank you Brad. And thank you also to one of the most awesome teams on the planet. And thank you @stevehopkins and @rosshill. You guys are the best. x

Moving to Sydney

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I am moving to Sydney.

Last week my insightful Hub Melbourne colleagues Leslie Swearingin and Brian Kurtz came to me with this suggestion. I stopped for a moment, as this was not something I had really considered, but as I let it sink in, it seemed right.

I had the same experience 5 years ago when I was living in the US. After 10 years in a very fulfilling environment, life wasn’t optimal any more. Back then someone came to me and suggested I move to Australia. Same thing. I had thought I would never live in Australia again, however when I let the suggestion sink in, I knew it was right.

So I am off on the next adventure, to help set up Hub Sydney with the amazing Brad Krauskopf and Caroline McLaren and the rest of the wonderful Hub Australia team.

This year I am also going to become certified in an Australian meditation teachers training program, so 2013 is full of new and exciting challenges.

Cross-sector coworking is taking off in leaps and bounds, and I look forward to helping to create Hub Sydney as a dynamic complement to the Sydney coworking ecosystem.

Hope to see you there!

Resonance

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I have been contemplating the importance of resonance in one’s life, and how key it is to listen for resonance with everything we interact with in the world, be it people, environments, food, and nature.

Sometimes we try to force ourselves to relate to our environment, and in my experience, wherever there is not a natural resonance, is generally a sign there may be another way to go.

We are all on a developmental path, at some times we will relate to a certain environment, and after a period of time, we may find ourselves moving in another direction and into new environments.

In trusting in the developmental process, and not thinking that we “know” how it should go, we may find at times that we can revisit environments that we used to frequent, and have a completely different relationship to them.

Life is good, and if we surrender to its intelligence, we will find amazing streams of action happening all around us and with us. We just need to listen to its call.

Bringing in 2013

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After 10 days of silence and meditation, I have decided to finish the intensive part of the silent advance. For the next couple of weeks I will still lay low and quiet with additional meditation. However I wanted to share the findings of my self experiment.

I entered the advance thinking I would probably do a classic 10 day (to 3 week) “retreat” as that is all I have known. As the days progressed I realised that was not what I needed. I was happy and tired after a full on year helping to develop Hub Melbourne to become a thriving coworking space. I was craving quiet and rest, to recharge from an awesome 2012, and to also listen for what is next for 2013.

I pretty quickly dropped into depth in meditations. The silence and quiet and expansiveness were golden.

I also started to experience the arising of old memories, the phenomenon which I always find interesting, as life experiences one hasn’t considered for years come floating out of the subconscious mind seemingly at random.

I also started to experience insights and next steps for 2013. It was pretty clear and simple. How to develop on what had been established in 2012, how to work and live smarter, not more. And next priorities, what to focus on personally and professionally.

I also decided to let myself read in between meditations. I am normally not a big reader, however I found during this time that I was able to read fast and deep. The books I happened to have in my house were perfect for my contemplations. I had tried to read them all once before, however hadn’t had the concentration for it. This time I did.

The rest of the time I went for walks (on the beach), did yoga, swimming, gym, generating momentum for positive habits for 2013.

All the books I read had a big impact on me.

The Power of Habit. This book explains how to change your routine or habits. One of the things I realised while meditating was that I was drawn to meditate 4 times a day, before breakfast, lunch, dinner and bed. The meals and sleep were my reward for meditating. I realised how I can set up new work patterns around exercise and meditation to deal with work stress.

The Responsible Company. This book really hit home about our situation on the planet, and what we all need to do to take more responsibility both personally and professionally. It’s really urgent. We are on the edge as a people. The planet can go on without us. We can do this. Humans have risen to the challenge before.

The Personal MBA. This book is amazing and generous. I was only able to process so much of this information, as my heavily meditating brain didn’t want to go as much into this area. However I am looking forward to reading more. I made it half way through. Business acumen without having to pay for an MBA.

The Quantum Wellness Cleanse. This book is to be read one chapter a day for 3 weeks. This fits in perfectly with my 3 week quiet period. I have cut out most of what she recommends, and will be making some changes to my diet for 2013.

I’d Rather Be in Charge. I saw Charlotte Beers speak at TEDxWomen, and immediately bought her book. She is an inspiring woman, whose vulnerability in expressing her shortcomings is amazing. She is a fundamentally open person who is keen to learn from life and keeps developing herself with it, and shows us how to also.

Meditation, Bringing Serenity to a Busy Life. The biggest take away I got from this book is that if you bring moments of stillness and quiet into your business life (for example, with your team just before meetings), that this can have a profoundly positive impact on your business. I also loved his key message that life is fundamentally about being of service.

I spent 10 years engaged in 10 day silent retreats. They are invaluable for going deep into oneself, really getting to know oneself. However this is an ongoing journey, and there is always more to discover, as we are always learning and growing and developing. One of the things I developed from those 10 years was a better ability to hear the voice within that is attempting to guide us all the time. There is wisdom in this deep voice, and if one surrenders to its guidance, amazing things can be revealed, the perfect quiet and stillness and spaciousness that we have within, and the perfect next steps for one’s life.

I strongly encourage you to start meditating if you haven’t yet. You can start with one minute a day as I did, and listen to guided meditations as I did. I will be writing more on my blog about daily practices, and after doing an Australian meditation teachers training course a bit later this year, will start offering meditation classes. Although I have 10 years experience with Integral Yoga and 10 years experience with Evolutionary Enlightenment, I would like to incorporate an Australian context for teaching as I am going to offer to teach locally, and local culture does play a part in our experience.

It has been a relief to take a break from social media and work emails (I missed them too). It has made me realise I want to be more selective with my attention for 2013.

Last night I did a meditation at midnight to bring in 2013. I contemplated what is happening in the world, and prayed the United States of America does the right thing for themselves and for the world.

I also watched the new year address of Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. The word confidence struck me in both their speeches. It is now time for a united positive and optimistic collective focus so we can bring our planet into an era of sustainability for all people and other living things. We are moving in an amazing direction.

Wishing everyone an awesome 2013, see you in the depths!

Silent Advance

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I have decided to engage in 3 weeks of silence and meditation over the holiday break (except for Christmas day).

I used to do this sort of thing for 10 years when I lived in the Berkshire mountains in Massachusetts, before coming again to live in Melbourne. It has been 4 years and I am ready to dive in again.

The last year and a half I have been working as full time host and manager for Hub Melbourne. It has been an exciting and full on time. One of the things we in coworking are coming to realise is that as coworking is a fairly new phenomenon, we are all still figuring it out. We have had a very successful year. We were voted best (most brilliant) Hub culture by the entire Hub global network of 35 coworking spaces. And we also recently just won the Anthill magazine's best microbusiness in Australia award, for having a small team of 4 fulltime people making the biggest impact.

I also started a coworking masterclass with Alex Hillman from Indy Hall, and between this and speaking with fellow community managers in Melbourne, I can see that this role, along with other coworking roles, demands a lot.

Hence the 3 week silent advance (term coined by Ross Hill).

As we all upleveled in 2012, I can feel another massive shift about to occur for 2013. As we continue to be more engaged online, we continue to benefit from more advancing into our own depth.

As I experiment with myself during these 3 weeks, I may share some form of silent meditation in the new year.

Wish me luck! Zero point, here I come.

Community Builder Masterclass

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This month I am participating in a Community Builder Masterclass facilitated by the passionate Alex Hillman from Indy Hall in Philadelphia, plus an awesome class of fellow coworking community managers from all around the planet.

Three things are striking me immediately about the class, how amazingly similar community managers are, the diversity of sectors attending the class is exciting, and how different our cultural styles and hence communication styles are.

Indy Hall has been at coworking for 6 years, so they have quite a bit of experience under their belt already, and are very generously sharing their hard earned knowledge with us all (and making money for themselves at the same time – good shared value).

I have already learned a lot, look forward to the next few weeks together, and highly recommend this class to other coworking community managers. We are learning and evolving this new way of working together, which is exciting that collaboration is at the core of our work and play both within and without.

deep listening

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Today I was invited to a lunch of The Long Walk. There were many amazing speakers telling their truth and being a witness to change in our society.

This week we also saw the impassioned speech by our Prime Minister Julia Gillard, also telling her truth to change our society.

These events have got me thinking yet again, what is it I most deeply believe in, that will bring a positive change to our society? It has to start with me, living in such a way that is in deep alignment with my life experience, my sense for good and the betterment of our society.

What is it you most deeply believe in? How do you wish to live? Are you and am I living in accordance with our most deeply held beliefs and life experience?

Let us all let go, allow ourselves to sink into our deeper selves, and courageously live what we most deeply know to be true, and we may just pull our fellow citizens with us into a more deeply caring world for women, for men, for our planet.

Ambiversion

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I've been hearing a lot of talk recently about people classifying themselves as introverts, people that you wouldn't expect to be so. I've been wondering about that. Recently I was also tested on whether I was an introvert or extravert, and I couldn't say. I feel like sometime I am outgoing, and sometime I enjoy solitude. I get energy from within and without, and I give energy from without and within. I think what is going on is that for the longest time the general societal emphasis has been on extraversion, and it is only now starting to be okay to admit that we enjoy and need quiet and solitude as well.

There is so much labeling in our society, we have to know and pigeon hole everything. What if our energy, our sexuality, our preferences actually change? What if we were more interested in giving life to the creative life force both within and between, whatever the authentic expression may be, rather than it having to be anything in particular. Wouldn't life be more colourful, more exciting, more adventuresome, more thrilling, and more unknown? Why do we need to know? Why do we feel the need to lock everything down?

We can choose to stop placing labels on everything, and see where life leads us instead.

I bet it's someplace pretty awesome, where we can be quiet, loud, unleashed and still, all in the one person, and surprise even ourselves.

Next Level

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Doesn’t it seem like a shift, an upleveling, is occurring? One of the things I’ve learned is that whenever I think this is happening to just me, all it takes is a few conversations to realise it is not personal at all, that it is happening on a bigger scale. I always find this both comforting and reassuring and also a bit scary, as I realise it really is time to expand and grow into the next level, which also means more responsibility. However, we are doing it together, and collective power and collective intention is massive, and together we can do way more than we can do alone, and it’s all for the common good and betterment of life anyway which means us too.

We really are shifting in to a new world, radically new systems and radically new sense of self. Power is becoming distributed. Ownership is becoming sharing. Online is serving us in more and more brilliantly creative ways. We’re all acutely aware of the need to redistribute wealth and resources, so all the people on the planet and the planet itself can thrive.

We’re going to the next level.

Are you feeling this too?

wholehearted people are committed to creativity

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Last week I started dreaming again at night, after having a spell of not dreaming. I am really happy I am dreaming again. I think it signifies something.

I have been involved in a startup over the past year, and the last few months have seen me working a lot in order to make the vision and dream come true. After the first year, we have a lot to be happy about. I took a week off, did some solitude, let my mind empty completely, so the next could come in.

And now the dreams are here again. Next actions revealing themselves to me.

Elise Bialylew of Mindful in May is currently at the World Domination Summit. She tweeted a comment from Brene Brown: “wholehearted people are committed to creativity. Unused creativity is not benign – it turns into grief, judgement.” I can completely relate to this.

Once after attending an intensive retreat, I got in touch with a very deep dimension of creativity, and started giving myself over to it. Everyone around me was astounded by my change in behaviour and were excited by the depth of creativity I was expressing. I remember after the retreat, I started to hesitate again around expressing my passions, and I could feel depression descending upon me. After a couple of weeks I copped to the fact that it was repressing the creativity that was causing the depression. This was a liberating insight for me.

I am fortunate to be working at Hub Melbourne, which is a font of collective creativity. One of our members and an amazing graphic designer Spencer Harrison, referred to Hub Melbourne as a city rather than a company, with all the positive attributes that come from a culturally diverse environment.

My main point is that giving myself over to my own passions and creativity continues to be a positive experience for both myself and for the environment around me. The natural motive of deep creativity is service of the whole, so both self and other are served in its release and manifestation.

What are you dreaming about?