The stories we tell and language we use creates our culture

We can shape our culture in society and in our organisations by the stories that we tell.  There is an excellent TED talk on this idea here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq5NbWmyGWk&feature=share

What are the stories your organisations are telling about community, environment, ethics, sport?  What do we talk about at the coffee table?  Climate?  News?  Entertainment?  Sport?  

Know thy self - we need to know ourselves, who am I, in order to even start to be authentic?  Who do you want to be?  What are you doing to get there and how are you measuring it?  I always love the exercises of creating self trees of goals, aspirations, visions and who we are... At yoga teacher training my sister looked at the question who am I for hours on end... do we ask ourselves this question often enough or even at all?  Are we living the lives we want to live, do we even think about it, what effect does this have?  What effect could thinking about it have?  “every person has the right to invent their own wheel (Friere, Paulo)

Knowing thy self creates power in yourself, for yourself, it builds confidence, it makes you happy to be pursuing or working on what you know/want to work on and knowing that this is what you want and what makes you, you.  Knowing what makes one tick so to speak, knowing your plan de vida, allows you to work towards it.  Not knowing, not having a plan, can lead to neurosis, dis-empowerment, feeling lost...

So if we know the stories we want told and we start telling them to ourselves, about ourselves, in our organisations, in our communities, we just may start to see these stories come true.  What stories are we telling?  Hope?  Despair?  A beautiful sustainable vision for the world?  A world that loves all the children of all species for all time (McDonough)?

sharing thoughts from day x?? of residency, morning lectures and a little inspiration from classmates and professors.