Zen of Attraction

From Graham English comes the Ten Zen Laws of Attraction








Ten Principles To The Zen Of Attraction

1.Promise Nothing
Just do what you most enjoy doing.
Hidden benefit: You will always over-deliver.

2. Offer Nothing
Just share what you have with those who express an interest in it.
Hidden benefit: Takes the pressure off of wanting other people to see you as valuable or important.

3. Expect Nothing
Just enjoy what you already have. It’s plenty.
Hidden benefit: You will realize how complete your life is already.

4. Need Nothing
Just build up your reserves and your needs will disappear.
Hidden benefit: You boundaries will be extended and filled with space.

5. Create Nothing
Just respond well to what comes to you.
Hidden benefit: Openness.

6. Hype Nothing
Just let quality sell by itself.
Hidden benefit: Trustability.

7. Plan Nothing
Just take the path of least resistance.
Hidden benefit: Achievement will become effortless.

8. Learn Nothing
Just let your body absorb it all on your behalf.
Hidden benefit: You will become more receptive to what you need to know in the moment.

9. Become No One
Just be more of yourself.
Hidden benefit: Authenticity.

10. Change Nothing
Just tell the truth and things will change by themselves.
Hidden benefit: Acceptance.

Your New Teacher, Mr. Claytron

The May issue of the trend-scanning magazine Business 2.0 (from Time, Inc) has an interesting section on "What's Next?" Some of the new ideas are fried chicken, but item #10, p. 33 "Forget Nanotech, Think Claytronics" caught my eye.

Claytronics is the new science of mainulating programmable clay that can "morph into a working 3-D replica of any person or object, based on information transmitted from anywhere."

Computer scientist Todd Mowry, Director of Intel Research in Pittsburgh, is the prime mover. Inspired by his hatred of video-conferencing ("Its like visiting someone in prison" Mowry says,) he had a brain storm -- why not just FAX your body-replica to the meeting, where it could mimick your bodily motions in real time and speak with your own voice. More real than real!

Business 2.0 admits that the idea seems "utterly nutty". The illustration is not merely nutty but terrifying: a conference table with a bunch of flesh and blood people chatting it up with Mr. Claytron, a dark looming presence.

Coming soon to a school or college near you?

Could we check out that video-conference set up one more time?

History is Bunk

I repeatedly heard the same troubling message when I attended the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Chicago last month.

History teaching is disappearing. Memory is fading. The connections between generations of professionals are broken.

Historians of education complained that their courses are being eliminated, and senior scholars in the field are not being replaced when they retire.

Prof. Vincent Anfara, a nationally recognized expert on middle schools, told me that the founders and thought leaders of the middle school movement were now either dead or no longer active. The current generation of middle school leaders, moreover, hardly even knows about these founders or their ideas. The current crop of leaders have no clear idea why middle schools were created, and are falling prey to such "innovatons" as standardized curricula and testing that would nullify everything special about middle schools as places to explore and learn in developmentally appropriate ways.

National Novel Writing Month

Last night I read Chris Baty's quirky writers guide, No Plot, No Problem. Chris is the founder of National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo). Every November thousands of writers, from school kids to professionals, write 50,000 word novels (think The Great Gatsby or Of Mice and Men). The rules are simple: You may work for no more than one week prior to November 1st thinking about your novel plot, setting and character, but cannot write a single word of text until November 1st. You must finish by midnight, November 30th. You can submit the mss (scrambled if you wish) to the word count "validator" after November 25th. If your word count is 50K +, you are a "winner". Every year about 17% of the entrants completes a novel. Many have been published (after extensive editing, I am sure), some by first rate publishing houses.

Chris's book is an excellent guide to the writing process. The key to completing a writing project is having a real deadline. Other important factors are being part of something larger than oneself, gaining support from friends and family, making very public commitments which will bring total humiliation in case of failure.

There are nanowrimo groups in hundreds of cities across the US and in many other countries. Nanowrimo also encourages high schoolers to join in the effort and has a national school coordinator.

Nanowrimo makes an ironic commitment to the idea of quantity over quality: 50,000 words and we really don't care how awful. But Chris thinks that the only way to do anything well is, well, to do it. Quality arises out of intelligent effort, and that requires a structured activity with a real deadline.

The best learning experiences involve doing something hard and lonely. Schools specialize in making this just about impossible. Nanowrimo is the real thing! And doing something as lonely as writing a novel is just a tad easier when you can draw on the strength of those thousands of others writing along with you.

This November you can go out to the cafes all over the country, late into the evenings, and see dozens of people typing away furiously on their laptops. Look for copies of No Plot, No Problem sitting next to the coffee mugs. Better yet, you can sign up on the nanowrimo website and write your own novel.