I was in the studio with Jeff yesterday. We were recording the new and eighth CD in the Emerald Keys series. It’s the best CD so far. The Key we focus on is Stepping Into The Unknown. It’s about taking risks and how critical it is to step into unknown situations if you are to unleash your fullest potential. On this CD I tell stories I never told before about my experience flying jets and about what happens to each of us when we step into new and unknown situations.

Jeff is an amazing man. He is an electrical engineer for Boeing and works on the 787 program. He has his recording studio next to his house. I love working with Jeff. He has a relaxing and steady presence and he always has good humor. He is helpful and willing and he has got a good ear. Recording the Emerald Keys with Jeff’s help has been a great ride.

When we walked into the studio this Sunday his guitars and a list of songs he was working on were out. “I got to play some this morning” he said “after I haven’t touched the guitar in weeks.” Now I know playing the guitar is Jeff’s passion but I was very surprised to hear myself saying: “What if you knew that it could add 10 years to your life? What if you knew that following your passion and playing the guitar daily for say 30 minutes, or playing it two hours a week for would give you 10 extra years of life?”

Now, I cannot prove it to you in scientific terms. That is, I have not done a scientific research, complete with a control group, etc. to demonstrate that people who ignore or hold back on their passionate pursuit in music, art, sport, science ,hiking or another hobby cut 10 years of their life. Even though I cannot claim this scientifically I have a strong intuition that this is the case. Acting on your passion may amount to an extra 10 years of life because it feeds and inspires your spirit which innervates your life.

Here then is a question for you: what passion are you holding back on? What’s holding you back? What if you knew that not acting upon your passion amounts to slow poison pills that will shorten your life? What if you knew that acting on it would add 10 years to your life?

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.15.2007 :: Personal Growth :: No Comments »

Hello Leader,

The blind spot we will examine today is a rampant problem seen in most corporate offices in the last few years. In fact, it’s an epidemic, a symptom of the times and of the dis-ease of culture and society. Applying this Key helps you build stronger foundation for durable success.

Too many managers confuse “urgent” with “important” and mistake “being busy” for “being productive.” Here is a question to think about: Are you always busy? Do you allow yourself to fall into the activity trap of never ending busyness to the point that it has become your second nature? Is “being busy” an identity or even a status factor for you? If the answer is yes, you might want to reflect on this and find a way to dissolve and breakout of the “being busy” identity. Too many people stay obsessively and addictively busy to build their sense of self-importance. They end up filling their lives with an excessive amount of urgent but totally unimportant stuff. It’s an unhealthy self-concept and a distorted self-view that says: “As long as I am busy, I am included. I am in on what’s happening and I am important.”

The Story of Monty
Monty always walked fast. It was a habit he had developed to confirm to himself that he was indeed a very busy and successful man. This let everyone around him know that he had urgent things on his plate and was working very hard. It gave Monty a sense that he was important and he believed this was the surest way to gain people’s respect. Through years of dedication and hard work he rose up the corporate ladder to the level of Vice President. Monty’s perception of a leader’s image was someone who was always on his way somewhere, looking intense and necessarily short on time.

Discover the KEY and find out what happened to Monty here.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.13.2007 :: Leadership, The Key :: No Comments »

The recent Futurist, the World Future Society magazine offers 70 forecasts for 2008 and beyond. The first forecast is: The world will have a billion millionaires by 2025. It says that according to James Canton, author of The Extreme Future globalization and technological innovation will drive this increased prosperity. I have not read yet the book but I have a few quick reflections.

1. First, I bet before there are billion millionaires there will be million billionaires. Now if you are like me struggling with big numbers here is how it works:

1 Million	1,000,000	106
1 Billion	1,000,000,000	109
1 Trillion	1,000,000,000,000	1012
1 Quadrillion	1,000,000,000,000,000	1015
1 Quintillion	1,000,000,000,000,000,000	1018

A million seconds is 13 days.
A billion seconds is 31 years.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

2.This means according to this forecast it will look like this: Billion (10⁹) x millionaires (10⁶) = Quadrillion Dollars or 1000 trillion dollars. Now add to it: million (10⁶) x Billionaires (10⁹) = which is another 1000 trillion or Quadrillion dollars. This is without calculating that many of the millionaires will have 10 or 25 or 55 million and that many of the billionaires already have 5 or more than 35 billion. Whichever way you do the math you are talking about a hell of lot of money.

3. Where is this money going to come from? How is it possible for there to be so much money sloshing around? Okay, I get it. We have three billion people joining now the market economy and the capitalist society in China, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico and soon Africa and they are all going to want a better life style. Therefore we will all be creating such wealth. Right? No, it still doesn’t make sense unless you factor in hyper-inflation.

4. In the last 80 years the Dollar lost about 80% of its value. This means that to buy the amount of bread, milk, clothing, oil or gold that you could buy in 1920s with 10 dollars you now need to pay $50 or a lot more. In the early 20th century an ounce of gold was about $20. Today its $750, which is 37 times $20. A similar thing has happened with food and real-estate. We all have a lot more dollars to pass around but most people are not richer. This is what it means when you hear that the dollar is losing its purchasing power. Inflation is more money chasing goods. Hyper inflation is a lot more money chasing goods.

5. Here is another way to put it. A million dollars in the 70s made you a millionaire. To be a millionaire today with a purchasing power of a millionaire in the 70s you need
to have a lot more than a million dollars.

6. How is this possible? What causes such hyper inflation? Central banks work overtime to print money. In a global economy every country wants to devaluate its currency because it makes it more competitive as the goods it manufactures become cheaper. How does a country devaluate its currency? It prints more of it. We are now living through a great competitive devaluation of most currencies. The Central Banks of most nations are printing tremendous amount of currency. They can print as much as they want because in most countries fiat currency doesn’t have to be backed by anything. This means that the $100 bill you hold in your pocket has less value or can buy less today than a week ago and will have even less purchasing power next year. Heck, you better be a millionaire 20 years from now or sooner because the $100 in your pocket today will not buy much tomorrow.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.12.2007 :: Money & Market Behavior :: No Comments »

Let’s stop grappling with the question about which is more important, a Manager or a Leader. “Leading” and “managing” do not constitute a polarity. They are both important functions that complete each other. You need both. You need to master the greater continuum of management and leadership whether you are a manager by title or not. Like the human body, you cannot do without both the venal and arterial blood systems. You don’t choose one over the other as they are both vital parts of a greater whole. It’s the same with Management and Leadership. They are two vital processes and capabilities. They complete each other into a greater whole to include a full spectrum of competence. Here are some descriptives to highlight these natures. You can mentally insert a third line under every coupling below to read: We Need Both.

We lead people.
We manage things.

Leadership is an art.
Management is a science.

Managers are promoters of stability.
Leaders are agents of change.
We Need Both.

Managers seek efficiency.
Leaders seek effectiveness.

A leader does the right things.
A manager does things right.

Leadership is formulating where you are going and why.
Management is executing a plan effectively according to an agreed-to roadmap.

Management accomplishes necessary goals through direction of resources.
Leadership illuminates pathways for others to follow.
We Need Both.

A manager helps people see themselves for what they are.
A leader helps people discover the greater person they can become.

A leader inspires collaboration and commitment.
A manager ensures compliance with policy and regulations.
We Need Both.

The leader’s focus is on people and opportunities.
The manager’s focus is on systems, structures and processes.

The leader has his eye on the horizon.
The manager has his eye on the bottom line.

A manager’s mindset is centered in the facts of today.
The leader’s mindset is centered in ideas that can create new facts tomorrow.
We Need Both.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.11.2007 :: Leadership :: No Comments »

(The Discovery Journey is dedicated to the young people of the world. To read previous episodes in The Discovery Journey of K visit here)
It was still dark, an hour before sunrise when K got up to do her morning journaling and reflection. She liked to go out into her garden at that time of day as it gave her a sense of peace and she could quietly listen to the sounds of the morning. Over the last few weeks, she was starting to discover clues or hints about what each day might be like before it unfolded and she was becoming better at aligning and preparing herself for the tasks ahead of her. This morning she noticed that the color of a few leaves on the large tree in her garden was changing. She wrote in her journal. “Color is the herald of change.” A breeze of cooler air came through as she wrote these words and she added: “Change brings many changes.” She thought about what she was finding. Change was not a single event. When one thing changes, it changes everything else connected to it; therefore, when one thing changes everything changes. K recognized this as a principle of how things work in every field. It was true in health, in interpersonal matters, in her garden, in the weather system and the climate, and in the stock markets and technology and in everything else: “When one thing changes everything changes. This makes change a constant.”

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.11.2007 :: The Discovery Journey Of K :: 1 Comment »

(Excerpts from writing on June 20th, triggered by the Economist Magazine: Biology Big Bang, June 14th)

In 1953 the double helix molecule of the DNA was identified. The secret to life was believed to have been found. It is difficult to overestimate how far reaching and enveloping this belief became in the following decades. It was a paradigm that captured our imagination. We learned to believe that our “Indiana Jones” biology scientists had discovered a secret map to the Holy of Holies – the secret chamber at the nucleus of the cell. Coded in it were supposed to be all those final secrets that would unlock the mysteries at last. It suited the mythologies and archetypal thinking of the old world. The secrets were kept in a hidden cavern and they were now being brought out into the light.

Within a short time DNA became central to our collective awareness, a core component of the cultural narrative and political discourse, engrained in our self concept as well as in our language – “my DNA”, “your DNA”, “their DNA” – the language-form perpetuating the perception-form in the cultural story-field.

Every once in a while “something” gets through to enter the collective discourse. Something got through this week to the editors of The Economist. Their cover page reads: “Biology’s Big Bang: Unraveling the secrets of RNA”. The article tells a story of a dramatic shift in Biology. Biology’s “Neutron Moment” (relative to when the neutron was discovered in 1932 and changed physics) tells the story of redeeming the RNA from a lesser role of a secondary molecule that carries the genetic content as a messenger.

The Economist: “There is in biology at the moment a sense of barely contained expectations reminiscent of the physical sciences at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a feeling of advancing into the unknown, and that where this advance will lead is both exciting and mysterious.”

“IT IS beginning to dawn on biologists that they may have got it wrong. Not completely wrong, but wrong enough to be embarrassing. For half a century their subject had been built around the relation between two sorts of chemical. Proteins, in the form of enzymes, hormones and so on, made things happen. DNA, in the form of genes, contained the instructions for making proteins…. Oh, and there was also a curious chemical called RNA, which looked a bit like DNA but wasn’t. It obediently carried genetic information from DNA in the nucleus to the places in the cell where proteins are made, rounded up the amino-acid units out of which those proteins are constructed, and was found in the protein factories themselves.”

“All that was worked out decades ago. Since then, RNA has been more or less neglected as a humble carrier of messages and fetcher of building materials. This account of the cell was so satisfying to biologists that few bothered to look beyond it. But they are looking now. For, suddenly, cells seem to be full of RNA doing who-knows-what.”

So – Biology is going through a new big bang, big time! All of a sudden the primary focus is about to shift from the FORM and CONTENT of the DNA to the PROCESS of the RNA – that’s where the cell life and mystery lies. Scientists are discovering that there are many kinds of RNA with a variety of functions and capacities. It’s as if the DNA is being dethroned and with it some of the magical powers we attached to it. But now a new story unfolds. This illusive, multi-natured, shape-shifting RNA is taking center stage. How will this shift our self-concept and view of each other? How will it reframe the stories we tell? What is the bigger context of this shift and why now?

Let’s try to extrapolate and fast forward conjecture this shift to guess into what an RNA story-field is about to bring:

1. First, it will redefine Biology.
2. Then, the age old debate of Nurture versus Nature will be re-ignited with a great impetus on the nurture side. Many new understandings about evolution will open up.
3. The new emerging mindset will be adaptive: “I can choose and change… I can evolve”, replacing the old epoch deterministic mindset of “I can’t help it, it’s genetic.”
4. Society will discover in this a new collective narrative and a new self concept. It will shift from identity centric narrative to one of inter-relationships.
5. If DNA was about ME, RNA will be about what might be. Where DNA focused on the individual and the ethnocentric persuasion, RNA mindset will highlight a collective and world-centric view.
6. The new RNA conversation will be about how we grow, change, transform, and evolve, where the DNA conversation used to be about MY genetics versus YOUR genetics.
7. In the emerging epoch we will be talking about what RNAs we are cultivating and connecting, not about our unique genetics as we did in the old epoch.
8. In the old epoch people used to shut doors. In the newly emerging epoch there will be no need to shut doors – you could choose to not walk through certain doors until such time that you have a reason or a need to do so.
9. In the old epoch people focused on “things” – in the emerging epoch we begin to focus on the space in between and around things.
10. DNA was the foreground and RNA the background. In the new times one’s ability to shift the background to the foreground is where new possibilities or even the kiss of life may be found.

It may take a while for this to permeate throughout mainstream thinking in order to become the culture narrative but cell biology has just discovered that “the Earth is not flat.” The DNA paradigm produced a bias in which the FORM and CONTENT of the DNA were paramount. Now the PROCESS of the RNA is turning things upside down.

What will our world look like when we recognize FORM as a supportive rather than primary principle? When FORM is fashioned to facilitate PROCESS and Emergence?

(In Tribute to SOD – the “Souls On Deck” Circle where we muse about the evolution emerging now).

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.11.2007 :: Evolution, Organizational Development :: 3 Comments »

I conducted an Emerald Keys Class with a managers group in Guadalajara, Mexico. We played with the ninth Emerald Key: Focus on Solutions, Not on Problems. Half way through the class everyone was doing the Mind Consult exercise in groups of threes. Each person put an issue on the table for the team to generate solutions. One participant put forward the following issue for the team: “I am not saving enough money (problem), how do I build my savings (seeking solutions)?”

Five minutes into their discussions as they were busy generating ideas and options his cell phone rang. A financial adviser was on the line with ideas for a better mortgage and savings. The Law of Resonance is fast…

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.10.2007 :: The Greater Laws :: 1 Comment »

(The Discovery Journey Category is dedicated to the young people of the world)

K and D had been friends for a number of years. Their friendship had grown from their shared experiences. They tended to see the world from a similar viewpoint. At some point K decided to focus on her personal growth. She became involved in a development journey and began to practice introspection in order to deepen her self-awareness and self-knowledge. K discovered that standards, namely what she allows and doesn’t allow into her life, determine her well being and she began to find out that adhering to these standards had a dramatic influence on her productivity and creative capacity. K realized that there were four categories of standards she needed to focus on:

1. What comes into her mouth – what does she eat and drink?
2. What comes out of her mouth – what does she say and speak about?
3. Where does she spend her time and specifically who does she spend time with?
4. What thoughts does she empower and take into action?

K decided to keep a daily journal and monitor these four categories with a specific mindset. She examined these categories with a single focus: What energizes me and makes me strong and bright? What tires me and makes me feel weak and dim?

She kept her little journal and reflected on these four: What am I eating? What am I saying? Who am I with? What thoughts do I empower and take into action? She studiously noted her comments in these columns: I get energized-bright-strong / I get tired-dim-weak. Patterns and new self-insights began to emerge.

K discovered that her body and mind have an innate wisdom and intuition; that this intuitive part of her is quick to know what is good for her and is very accurate. K said to herself: “I want to tune my awareness into my natural intuition so I’ve got to start paying attention when it communicates information and I need to learn to trust it.” Her development coach said: “If you don’t listen to your intuition it will stop delivering messages. When you listen to your intuition and act on it, your intuition will bring you increasing amounts of information. As you learn to trust it, it will trust that you do not dismiss its input. Your intuition will strengthen and you will gain more confidence.”

This is what K started to do with her journal. She began to listen to her intuition. Suddenly, K was becoming sensitized to many things she never considered before. She was growing and changing. Her friendship with D was about to take a turn.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.10.2007 :: The Discovery Journey Of K :: No Comments »

In our recent Toronto trip to teach the Blue Belt Top Talent program for Hewlett Packard Canada we made the journey to Niagara Falls. It was a beautiful day. As we walked in a crowd of tourists, I counted 23 languages and dialects from Japanese to German, from Arabic to Russian, from Hebrew to Dutch and more. Everyone was polite, peaceful and happy. No conflict, no war. Nature does bring us together beyond our differences. It reminds us of what was before us and what will be after us. It brings forward humility and awe and forwards the image of our greater selves.

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.10.2007 :: Reflections, View :: No Comments »

The movie Iris about the life of Iris Murdoch, played by Judi Dench and Kate Winslet, portrays the extraordinary journey of Iris from a vivacious young woman to a highly admired author and her descent into the darkness of Alzheimer’s disease. Here are some words spoken by Iris in the movie: “Every human soul has seen, perhaps even before their birth, pure forms such as justice, temperance, beauty and all the great moral qualities which we hold in honor. We are moved towards what is good by the faint memory of these forms, simple and calm and blessed which we saw once in a pure clear light form, being pure ourselves”

Iris captures in this paragraph three eternal truths:

First, that consciousness exists independently of the flesh, in that the spirit was before and will be after the appearance in flesh.

Second, that qualities fashion an energetic form, so that whenever a human anywhere awakens to justice, care, courage, and compassion, their individual experience may be uniquely personal but the pattern and the energetic signature or form is recognizably the same. When you or I embody and become these or any other qualities we fashion a fractal of the universal pattern of that quality.

Third, that the human story consists of the journey of a spirit/soul compound coming into the flesh to experience, feel, discover and make choices and thereby refine and fashion the inner formation into an indestructible gem, a gem that makes a value added return to life itself, to consciousness and to the evolutionary process.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.10.2007 :: Movies, Spirituality :: 1 Comment »