Women in the LEAD

WOMEN: Letting Your Light Shine

I would guess if we sat down together, we would discover that most of us have longed at one time or another for acceptance, struggling to overcome the fear of what others think of us. I think this is a pretty common experience for most women ---- and perhaps men too.

One time, a mentoring partner gave me a book and tape called The Simple Path by Mother Teresa. One of my favorite messages in the book has helped me out many times when a wave of doubt caught me by surprise. I share it with you...

Deliver me, from the desire of...
being loved.
being extolled.
being honored.
being praised.
being preferred.
being approved.
being popular.

Deliver me from the fear of ...
being despised.
suffering rebukes.
being forgotten.
being wronged
being ridiculed.
being humiliated.
being suspected.

Interestingly, when you can let go of these longings and fears --- reaching inward, reaching out, reaching HIGHER, your life and work are opened to flow from the heart as intended. Good follows good. When our intentions are clouded by self-interests, it makes it difficult to let our Light shine.

Today, in a conversation with pianist and music educator, Jessica Roemischer, I was reminded of how quickly we can reach self-acceptance. As we talked, I remembered the miracle that takes place when she works with her students --- in just a few minutes, in a welcoming environment of belief and possibility, they reach inside to discover their own brand of greatness. Notice I didn't say hours or months of grueling work ... in just minutes, when we decide, the transformation can begin to take place. I, too, have witnessed this happen in my own work with dialogue across the world. It is a miracle available for all of us. Something magical happens when we have the opportunity to dwell in Possibility. 

Have you had this experience yourself?

If not, and it seems far-fetched, I encourage you to inspire yourself by visiting Jessica's moving exhibit at our Women's Gallery at the Global Dialogue Center. It pays tribute to her remarkable work, showing us the transformative power of music ...and the heart. We named the exhibit "DIFFERENCES in DUET." It features a beautiful self-learning visual exhibit, music, videos to watch, my personal interview with her, and links to her website and other resources. Be sure to put your headset on and let her amazing rendition of "When You Wish Upon A Star" guide you as you explore all the exhibit has to offer.

As I finish this, I keep thinking of my favorite childhood song, this little Light of mine, I'm going to let it Shine. Spring is a great time for this kind of renewal.

Warm regards to all who stop by...

Debbe

Debbe Kennedy
founder, Global Dialogue Center
home of Women in the LEAD
author, Putting Our Differences to Work:
The Fastest Way to Innovation, Leadership, and High Performance

I would guess if we sat down together, we would discover that most of us have longed at one time or another for acceptance, struggling to overcome the fear of what others think of us. I think this is a pretty common experience for most women ---- and perhaps men too.

One time, a mentoring partner gave me a book and tape called The Simple Path by Mother Teresa. One of my favorite messages in the book has helped me out many times when a wave of doubt caught me by surprise. I share it with you...

Deliver me, from the desire of...
being loved.
being extolled.
being honored.
being praised.
being preferred.
being approved.
being popular.

Deliver me from the fear of ...
being despised.
suffering rebukes.
being forgotten.
being wronged
being ridiculed.
being humiliated.
being suspected.

Interestingly, when you can let go of these longings and fears --- reaching inward, reaching out, reaching HIGHER, your life and work are opened to flow from the heart as intended. Good follows good. When our intentions are clouded by self-interests, it makes it difficult to let our Light shine.

Today, in a conversation with pianist and music educator, Jessica Roemischer, I was reminded of how quickly we can reach self-acceptance. As we talked, I remembered the miracle that takes place when she works with her students --- in just a few minutes, in a welcoming environment of belief and possibility, they reach inside to discover their own brand of greatness. Notice I didn't say hours or months of grueling work ... in just minutes, when we decide, the transformation can begin to take place. I, too, have witnessed this happen in my own work with dialogue across the world. It is a miracle available for all of us. Something magical happens when we have the opportunity to dwell in Possibility. 

Have you had this experience yourself?

If not, and it seems far-fetched, I encourage you to inspire yourself by visiting Jessica's moving exhibit at our Women's Gallery at the Global Dialogue Center. It pays tribute to her remarkable work, showing us the transformative power of music ...and the heart. We named the exhibit "DIFFERENCES in DUET." It features a beautiful self-learning visual exhibit, music, videos to watch, my personal interview with her, and links to her website and other resources. Be sure to put your headset on and let her amazing rendition of "When You Wish Upon A Star" guide you as you explore all the exhibit has to offer.

As I finish this, I keep thinking of my favorite childhood song, this little Light of mine, I'm going to let it Shine. Spring is a great time for this kind of renewal.

Warm regards to all who stop by...

Debbe

Debbe Kennedy
founder, Global Dialogue Center
home of Women in the LEAD
author, Putting Our Differences to Work:
The Fastest Way to Innovation, Leadership, and High Performance

WOMEN: Learning to LISTEN

Learning to LISTEN...really listen without personal agenda...is a wonderful quality. The mystic Persian poet, Rumi helps us recognize that even in silence there is much to hear if we are still.

There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.

In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.

I've experienced Rumi's idea here on this blog. I hear you hovering---sense when you show-up to take-in, always leaving a special energy that speaks of your presence. One person, when I asked, "Why do you show up?" wrote me and I listened and remembered. "I come here, because in you I share my day." This listening inspired several years of writing for both Maureen and me.

Recently, I learned a whole new perspective on the art of LISTENING. A new friend in the distance from Mexico, shared a wonderful video with me. I wanted to share it with you... 

Evelyn Glennie lost nearly all of her hearing by age 12. Rather than isolating her, it has given her a unique connection to music. In turn, she teaches others to listen differently---giving us all a new vantage point from which to LISTEN to one another---escaping our limiting beliefs about who we are and what we can contribute.

What Evelyn also demonstrates is a resolute passion in her work---a confidence about her presence that is one we all could benefit from seeing and experiencing as she brings to her insightful, inspiring message.  (TED Talk: Ideas worth spreading)

What lessons are you taking away about LISTENING?

Warm regards to all,
Debbe

Debbe Kennedy
Founder, Global Dialogue Center
www.globaldialoguecenter.com
Home of Women in the Lead

Twitter: @debbekennedy

Author...
Putting Our Differences to Work
The Fastest Way to Innovation, Leadership and High Performance
by Debbe Kennedy ▪ Berrett-Koehler ▪ 2008 – Hardcover
Foreword by Joel A. Barker, futurist, filmmaker and author

YouTube Book Review by futurist Joel A. Barker

WOMEN: REMEMBERING DREAMS COME TRUE

This has been a time for remembering and renewing what we know about possibilities. As I reach for new challenges in my life at this time of crisis and opportunity, I am again reminded to Nwakego's dream come true. I've been playing her music for inspiration again. Perhaps, her story will touch you too, so I am posting it again in remembrance:

NWAKEGO's DREAM COME TRUE
Life is always calling to us. Do you listen for it? Do you hear its whisper on the wind asking you to reach inside to be more, to bring out that special gift you have to offer the world? Sometimes, the call comes and we act right now ... more often I think it comes in incremental steps. We hear it. We respond. Then other things need to happen to make all the pieces come together into that DREAM of ours come true.

The story of Nwakego demonstrates this truth:

Nwakego is Igbo (pronounced e-bo). She speaks English and Igbo. Her motherland is Nigeria. She is a poet with a beautiful voice and a message of love and thanksgiving for the world. Her new CD, MMA-MMA in Thanksgiving and Love is a celebration of Igbo songs brought to life as a gift to her children and all Igbo children of the world --- and for you and me too! Nwakego explains it this way...

"After my baby, Chizaram, uttered her first Igbo words “Bia” and “hapu ya” I knew I had a sacred responsibility to raise her as a well rounded Igbo child, who will understand, speak, write and BE truly Igbo. I thought of all the Igbo children in America and Europe who are suffering identity crisis because of the loss of their mother tongue. By maintaining our Igbo mother tongue, we maintain our pride and ethnic identity as a people. Our language is our identity. It is whom we are. God made it so"

Nwakego's work on  MMA-MMA started in 2001. It was inspired by Fr. Eustace Edomobi came up with the idea of doing studio recordings of some of our traditional catholic hymns as a way of preserving them for future generations. So, the multi-talented group began recording with a mini home studio at the church basement of St. Antoninus Catholic Church of Newark, New Jersey. In 2002, Nwakego went to Nigeria and recorded in a professional studio. "When I returned to NJ, I listened to it over and over again. I decided to re-do the work sometime in future."

Baby Chizaram's inspiration resulted in a new album with nine songs --- eight are Igbo. Nwakego's intention is to clear and her call-to-action to parents of Igbo children is compelling. She says to them:

“Let us begin to speak Igbo, eat and drink Igbo, wear Igbo, SING Igbo and BE Igbo! It is our birthright and ebere emegbuorelam onye tufuru birthright ya!"

IGBO: Spawned, sustained and graduated on a stalk of HOPE
As I've listened to the beautiful sounds, voices and the call of the African drums, I am reminded of Nwakego's dream come true. Perhaps it is the example of the Igbo people that makes their sounds so precious. If you are like me at one time, you may not know that the Igbo people survived The Biafra-Nigeria Civil War that lasted 3 years back in the 1960's. A dear friend of mine, Igbo visionary, Dr. Oguchi Nkwocha from Biafra/south-eastern Nigeria, shared these insights with me to help me appreciate the strength being Igbo people; it also has made each of Nwakego's songs be an echo of strength and hope of the Igbo people: |

"While the world watched or stood by the Nigerian government made a decision that "starvation was a legitimate instrument of war" --- at least two million Biafran people starved. However, in the years that followed, they emerged from the hope to start again. The Igbo lifted themselves up from nothing. Many Biafrans alive today were spawned, sustained and graduated on that stalk of hope. Today, I look at the pictures of starving Biafran children from that era. Perhaps, it's me, but I can still see that lingering ray of hope hiding in their faces... ' ...give me hope. Any hope at all, and I can sing a song for you..." Learn more from Dr. Nkwocha

With Dr. Nkwocha's mentoring, I have learned to see the power of DREAMING and also to more fully appreciate Nwakego remarkable new gift to the Igbo children, mothers, families and the people of the world. For in each song --- in the sweetness of the voices and each beat of the African drum is Nkwakego's calling ---- her DREAM come true ---- her personal contribution with the potential for sweeping influences on the lives of others.

WON'T YOU SHARE IN THIS GREAT WORK?

Nwakego
MMA-MMA in Thanksgiving and Love
Visit Nwakego's website
BUY a copy; listen to MMA-MMA in Thanksgiving and Love
Let it move you...and its proceeds to benefit Igbo children all over the world.

To You, My Love
A Collection of Love Poems
by Nwakego Ihenacho Ezeanuna
Buy at Amazon.com

A beautiful collection of life and love, expressing the feelings we long for as humans.

I listened to MMA-MMA while I was writing this message to all of you. Imagine this coming as a gift to Igbo children all over the world, emerging from that distant stalk of hope. ...and for Nwakego, bless your contribution as a woman in the lead!

With love and gratitude for this work...and its inspiration at a new time.
Debbe

Debbe Kennedy
Founder, Global Dialogue Center 
Home of Women in the Lead
Author, Putting Our Differences to Work

WOMEN: LEARNING from Others in Hard Times

Just when we need it most, have you noticed how people show up shake the status quo and shatter any DOUBTS you might have about the timeless truth that all things are possible? At this time of CRISIS, CHANGE, and GREAT OPPORTUNITY, these special individuals bring inspiration for all of us and hope for bringing the best of who we are to our lives and work.

THREE SURPRISES
Sometimes inspirng people arrive by surprise, breaking through all the norms in our thinking about what is possible. Three of my favorite SURPRISES come to mind...

I wrote about two of them in a recent post on my book blog, LESSONS from the TALENTED: Adam Lambert and Susan Boyle, pointing out some not-so-talked-about lessons we could learn from American Idol's Adam Lambert and Susan Boyle of Britain's Got Talent. Whether you are fans or not, they have taken the Internet by storm and shattered the status quo each in their own ways. Most of all, they serve as catalysts for learning about ourselves. My writing points out a few valuable lessons about being a leader and innovator. Interestingly, I discovered that others are seeing them as teachers too. Check out Scott Eblin's Executive Coach Blog features this post: Feedback Do's and Don'ts from American Idol at Government Executive.

Another favorite SURPRISE that forever changed my thinking came from my friend, Bill Tipton, a contributing author at the Global Dialogue Centerand Project Manager for Hewlett Packard. Bill writes a popular blog called Dialogue with Bill: Life and Work with a Disability. Bill became blind through illness just a few years back. Imagine going to the hospital with stomach pains after work one day and coming home months later blind and unable to walk. This is where Bill's story of life and work reinvention began. There is much to learn from his journey about what we need most today at this time of CRISIS, CHANGE, and GREAT OPPORTUNITY. What he's done since proves all things are possible! He was awarded Employee of the Year for Hewlett Packard and was recently  profiled in a national magazine. Bill tells us in an inspiring blog post that Adaptability and Attitude is Crucial for Success.

What I hope most is that you will take away how important it is to have a positive vision for your future and the your investment in hard work will pay off. This is a time for REINVENTING, RETHINKING, REACHING for more. YES, we can!

What SURPRISES are influencing you?

What have you learned from others that you can share with others?

Warm regards,
Debbe

Debbe Kennedy
Founder, Global Dialogue Center
Home of Women in the Lead
author, Putting Our Differences to Work

RELATED ONLINE DIALOGUE EVENT
MAY 19 - ONLINE DIALOGUE - You're Invited!
CONNECTING for Success in Hard Times
How can Business and Social Networking help you deliver a renewed PERSONAL BRAND, REINVENT how you present your work to others, and open up opportunities for COLLABORATION and INNOVATION? Join us to learn how. REGISTER at http://tinyurl.com/MAY19dialogue  (NOTE: Allow a few seconds for the URL to open). No fees, but registration is required, so we can send the login information.

WOMEN: Reflections on Healing a Broken Heart

When I was young, I use to play the guitar to soothe my life and comfort my broken heart here and there. I love the memory of it. The sadness now far gone. I was quiet. Alone. Meditative. Growing underneath the warmth of a better day soon to come. Today, out of nowhere, I found myself singing a jazz song from those days. As I listened outside myself, I marveled at knowing all the words as if I had written them. I share them with you...

When Sunny gets blue,
Her eyes get gray and cloudy,
Then the rain begins to fall.
Pitter, patter, pitter, patter,
Love is gone, so what can matter.
No sweet lover man comes to call.

When Sunny gets blue,
She breathes a sigh of sadness,
Like the wind that stirs the trees.
Wind that sets the leaves a swayin', like some violins a playin'
Weird and haunting melodies.

People used to love to hear her laugh, see her smile,
That's how she got her name.
But since that sad affair,  she's lost her smile, changed her style.
Somehow she's not the same, but...

Memories will fade,
And pretty dreams will rise up,
Where her other dreams fell through.
So,  hurry new love,  hurry here,
To kiss away each lonely tear,
And hold her near when Sunny gets blue.

How about you?
How have you soothed your life and comforted your broken heart?

WHEN SUNNY GETS BLUE HISTORY

Debbe

Debbe Kennedy
Founder, Global Dialogue Center
www.globaldialoguecenter.com
Home of Women in the Lead

WOMEN, Economic Realities, Injustice, and Possibilities

These are times that have left many people worried and scared about the future. The economic realities and other injustices that have hit people's lives throughout the world bring with them great cause for concern and hope for the change we need so badly.

There are always lessons to learn from those who came before us. In times of tragedy and trouble in my own life, learning from those I would never know has always been comforting. Somehow I didn't feel alone, knowing someone else had made it through the seemingly impossible.

In one of my cherished old books written by John Homer Miller, I read about two such people this morning. Interestingly, they lived nearly two thousand years apart: Socrates, the Classical Greek Philosopher ( 469 BC–399 BC), and Fanny Crosby (1820-1915) --- and yet, one's wisdom is brought to life by the other's example. Now there is an demonstration of putting our differences to work that I hadn't thought about.

"Socrates was right when he said that if you would gather together all the troubles of all the people in the world, weigh them, and find the average, you would pick up your own and sneak off better contented with your lot. That is was Fanny Crosby did."

I didn't know who Fanny Crosby was until today. She was an American Lyricist, well known for her quite famous Christian Hymns, many that are sung in churches all over America and the world today. She wrote over 8000, despite being blind from age 6. She developed an amazing positive attitude about her life by taking a long look around. "She saw although she was blind she had many things which other people did not have." Listen to her in this early poem...

O what a happy child I am;
Although I cannot see!
I am resolved that in this world
Contented I will be.

How many blessings I enjoy;
That other people don't;
To weep and sign because I'm blind
I cannot and I won't!

John Homer Miller wrote about this ability to look out into the distance at what is possible... "One more thing can be said.  You develop and maintain a balanced attitude toward life by taking a long look ahead. When you do that, you inevitably view your present moment in a totally different perspective. The knowledge that in the past an apparent defeat has turned out to be a victory enables you to live in the hope that what happened yesterday can happen tomorrow. Then you live your present moment, whatever it may be, in the faith that it is filled with unforeseen and unforeseeable possibilities."

What possibilities are you overlooking?

Look out and around with me to see the promise in a new tomorrow.

Best...
Debbe

Debbe Kennedy
Author and founder, Global Dialogue Center
Home of Women in the Lead

My New Book! Putting Our Differences to Work (June 2008)
The Fastest Way to Innovation, Leadership, and High Performance
Learn more: www.puttingourdifferencestowork.com
Next Monthly Online Dialogue:
Tuesday, October 14, 2008   Join me!
TOPIC: When the going gets tough...

WOMEN: Finding New Levels of COURAGE

Life is always asking a little more from us, yes? Asking us to be more, do more. This has been on my mind with all the tragedy, death and destruction and it has reminded me again that I've collected a few pieces of encouragement that seem to help me find new levels of courage---that always leads to creating new VISIONS of what is out there for us to capture.

Below are three things that have been trusted friends:

1. I have a big rock on my desk that has YES! carved into it. It reminds me that once I really answer, "YES!" to a question life asks me that the way is opened.

2. When I get scared about doing hard things, I repeat a mantra over and over that a friend shared. I CAN, I WILL, I MUST, I AM. Try it sometime. It gives you an instant lift.

3. Twelve two word sentences define my heart's desire. I found them in a spiritual song some years back. If these things happened what else does one need?

Melt me.
Mold me.
Fill me.
Use me.
Cleanse me.
Teach me.
Hold me.
Reach me.
Shield me.
Free me.
Call me.
Lead me.

How about you?
What encourages you?
What tools to you use to find new courage?

Debbe Kennedy
Founder, Global Dialogue Center
www.globaldialoguecenter.com
Home of Women in the Lead

WOMEN: Beginning Again

Sometimes our life lessons come from unexpected places. As we look to the new year coming along quickly, we have this promise awaiting: We always have an opportunity to begin again. I remembered writing about this less in an article I wrote a while back entitled After a Storm the Birds Sing.

Beginning again...
With the music blasting as I was doing Saturday’s one’s and two’s a few weeks or so ago, a favorite old song came on the radio. It was Carly Simon singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” As I began to sing along with Carly’s rendition of the well-known nursery rhyme, I realized for the first time that I was singing about the same familiar life pattern that goes on in all of life. It recounts one of the defining moments in a spider’s experience.

“The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain, and the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.”

Obviously, she chose, in a new day’s sun, to risk it all again — to go on.

Debbe

Excerpt from After a [i]Storm the Bird Sings[/i] by Debbe Kennedy

Debbe Kennedy
Founder, Global Dialogue Center
Home of Women in the Lead

WOMEN: Doing What You Are Born to Do

Once in a while, some small piece of evidence emerges to help us all remember that we can make our own dreams come true if we truly believe and prepare ourselves, taking one goal-directed step at a time. Then if we're fortunate we get to be there to see this moment when someone else steps up to claim their moment --- to be all that they were born to be with the whole world watching. I invite you to have this experience...
WATCH THIS 

NOTE: Scroll down, there is a second video at the bottom of the page above.

There is something very special about stepping inside this moment with Paul Potts. I wrote after replaying it a number of times, crying and crying. "There is something in that video that is about all of us. It reflects our ordinary-ness, our imperfections, the doubts we all harbor at some level, our dreams of being there in the moment we've chosen, and having others be there to share in it with you."

Epilogue:
Paul Potts went on too win. His first album is called One Chance

What are you born to do? Believe in it! 

Debbe

Debbe Kennedy
Founder, Global Dialogue Center
Home of Women in the LEAD

WOMEN: Light in the Dark...Tribute to Viktor Frankl

Sometimes when we least expect it something happens to connect us as people. We meet each other in some unimagined way. This experience has happened so many times on our Women in the Lead BLOG. We've met so many wonderful women and men right here. Many of you don't write comments, but I know you've been here. Those of you that do or send email messages, we greatly appreciate hearing from you and knowing your stories. Beyond the tracking of the blog itself, I also sense your presence. I feel you hover even when you don't comment. This is why Maureen and I keep writing.

Recently still another experience came along that I wanted to share with you. This is a story of collaborating in the distance with two people I've never met. The result is a small miracle! A moving story and tribute emerged from it. One that speaks to each of us about the strength of the human spirit!

THE STORY
Imagine reading a page in a book that moved you to write a poem to tell the story you heard. This is what happened for Sara Robinson. She was reading Viktor Frankl's classic book, Man's Search for Meaning.

Sara Robinson wrote me an email some time back. She wrote telling me she had written a poem about Viktor Frankl. At the Global Dialogue Center (home of Women in the LEAD), we have a Viktor Frankl COLLECTION, honoring the famed author, psychiatrist and holocaust survivor. She inquired if there was some way we might publish the poem.

What resulted was a beautiful visual online self-learning exhibit featuring Sara's poem. It is now showing at our WOMEN's GALLERY at the Global Dialogue Center. I hope you will come "walk through the gallery" and listen to Sara share the story of the poem's inspiration. She also did a reading of the poem. Be sure to listen to it as you guide yourself through the gallery exhibit. It is a story of a young women demonstrating for us how it is possible to find inner strength and joy in the worst of circumstances.

Light in the Dark
...A Tribute to Viktor Frankl
with a poem by Sara Robinson
at the WOMEN's GALLERY at the Global Dialogue Center

Take a tour now

The miracle in it all beyond the magnificent collaboration is that it was a work completed without one meeting or with any of us meeting physically. This is how it came together: Sara Robinson wrote the poem and recorded her reading and story. Sally K. Green, Bay Area Artist did the exhibit design and production, Dr. Alex Pattakos, author of Prisoners of Our Thoughts, wrote the Reflection at the end of the exhibit and Kevin O'Connor from Elevation did the technical production. And I recorded the introduction and served as a writer/producer. This is a tiny example of the power of real collaboration and what we can do together.

I hope you stop back by to let us know what you think.

How have you been able to reach inside to experience the strength of the human spirit?

Debbe Kennedy
Founder, Global Dialogue Center
Home of Women in the Lead