[Podcast] Whisper Space – The Earbud_U Minute

We give language to our thoughts.

We speak into existence what we believe and—being narrative animals—we weave stories together and create myths for ourselves based on the conscious language of our thoughts.

We look for assurances that our stories are the “right” ones because, to hear something different—or to experience something different—causes a continuum of reactions inside of us, from mild cognitive dissonance to jarring trauma.

Our lizard brains seek comfort, reassurance, quiet and the reserve of the appearance of “normalcy.” Anything that might cause the lizard brain to reject its own, natural story and to create a new one is automatically rejected and dismissed.

Then, when our stories and other peoples’ stories rub up against each other in intimate locations—such as work, school or even church—we have difficulties, confrontations and conflicts.

In the whisper space between confrontation and conflict—a space which can also be referred to as “the dip”—we take a pause before either avoiding a new story, denying a new story, or incorporating a new story into our familiar one, and we hear the tiny voice, urging us to do the right thing.

However, in the impatience to rush to judgement, and give language to our raging emotions, we move past the whisper space—and ignore the choices that we are provided in that space.

And then we blame others, blame circumstances and—ultimately—blame the narrative that caused us to contemplate all of these changes in the first place.

Thus, we give language to our new thoughts—and the added elements to our old, comfortable narratives.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Advertising Drowning

These days, advertising is flashy, interruptive, and mostly tuned out by an organization’s target audience.

Sales are harder because the distance from initial engagement to close has never been more tenuous.

Marketing, ironically enough, is easier than ever before because the tools for creativity, engagement and growth have never been more accessible than they are right now.

The individuals, organizations, associations and corporations that get this are thriving.

Those that don’t are either treading water—or are drowned already and don’t even know it.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Tragedy of the Abundance Commons


In an abundance economy, built on trust, generosity and collaboration, the real tragedy of the commons is those who choose to participate selfishly, and in essence destroy the very thing that they are building in the first place.

http://hsconsultingandtrain.wix.com/hsct
Jasmine Starr’s recent issues in the blogging world are one example.
So is Marissa Mayer’s commentary about the photography world.
Many look at collaborative work in a social space as competing against the soiling of that same space by the presence of big brands with their ability to pay big money to clog your Facebook feed with advertisements.
However, the real tragedy, is allowing the collaborative possibilities to wither under the weight of fears and concerns over Edgerank, “what kind of content should I post,” and irrelevant speculation about an overabundance of noise and chatter.
Collaboration cuts through all of that to the bone of what abundance is at its heart: sharing.
Didn’t someone else bring this up about 2,000 years ago?
-Peace Be With You All-
Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com

[Opinion] Generous Polluters

In an abundance economy, there is one polluting element that is produced.

It’s more toxic than carbon dioxide and more damaging to the environment than the plastic bag island floating out somewhere in the Pacific.

It’s more damaging to the body politic than a disease epidemic. It corrodes and destroys as surely as acid does.
This pollution destroys access, ownership and privacy. It overrides the values that a connection economy is based upon, including honesty, transparency, clarity, motivation, courage, self-awareness, focus, discipline and empathy.
It turns adventure into obligation and has its own properties.
It is colorless, odorless and tasteless.
We’ve even written about it here in this space before.
Fear is the most abundant, most toxic, most polluting element generated in an abundance economy:
Conflicts arise in the abundance economy from a fear of a future that is likely (rather than preparation for the future that is desired), a perceived (or actual) scarcity of material resources and a lack of patience.

Mediators, lawyers, counselors, theologians, therapists and others in the helping professions are going to become more middle class (and in some cases, wealthier) in the developing connection economy, because fear is not disappearing. As a matter of a fact, fear is growing and expanding as the disruptions generated by the inexorable rise of an abundance based economy, become more and more acute.

The lizard brain has been with us too long.
However, there is one antidote—one environmental scrubber—for the pollutant of fear. Plus, it’s the final leg on the three-legged stool of the connection, abundance based economy of both now and the next 100 years:
Cooperation.
-Peace Be With You All-
Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com

[Opinion] The 1%

Already acquired wealth generates abundance, right?

It follows then, that from wealth a person, organization–or, even an invention or an idea–can spread more quickly, and the people promoting it can decide to be generous or greedy, based upon market forces, government regulation and personal preference.

Right?

But, what if everybody (or, let’s say 60%) of “average people” (those who haven’t acquired wealth) had access to the same tools to disrupt the market, and create abundance, as the people who built the market in the first place?

What percentage of  that 60% would use those tools to dream—not just big, but gigantically—to build something world hacking and world changing?
15%?
10%?
5%?
We had a discussion the other day about this very topic—and the conflicts and tensions that such a question raises—and the point was made that if people are unemployed in, or left out of, an economic system that has shifted toward sharing and abundance, rather than staying in the stagnant model of scarcity and parceled out wealth, then those unemployed won’t get a new job…
…they won’t participate in a new economy…
…they won’t play the game.

And the enterprising few who do parlay the access and tools in the abundance economy will be the ones who will make up the upper 1% of a society.With the unemployed generating no revenue, because the jobs they have don’t exist anymore and the industries that they used to work in changed radically.

Ultimately, the unemployed will be left behind in an abundance economy.
This perspective and argument is representative of a “stuff” based mentality that operates on a scarcity principle.
The people who will be unemployed by the disruption of generosity have nothing to worry about.
Neither, as a matter of fact, do the people who will advocate for them, try to pass laws to protect them, or develop charities to feed and clothe them.
We think that the number of those who will be enterprising (or entrepreneurial) enough to take advantage of the tools of a disruptive, abundant economy will remain where they have always been (somewhere around 1%-5% of the overall population) for quite some time, because of one factor that overrides paying bills, feeding a family, paying for college or getting ahead.
Fear.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/