This is just a smattering of Social Work prn posts that have gone up in the last month or so. Enjoy. ;}

Social Work and the Power of Belief
My usual routine, most Tuesdays and Thursdays, is to wake up at 5:30. I stumble through finding clothes and brushing my teeth, grab some small breakfast, take my vitamins, pin up my hair and go to the gym where I CrossFit five days a week. When I get done, I’m woozy and exhausted—but by the time I get home I’m starting to get my brain and my energy back. I wash the grit off my hands and sit down at my computer—still relatively filthy from the mats—and post my Social NetWorker entry for the morning. (Read more…)

Hunting That Elusive Internal Motivation
I’ve told you about CrossFit, and I’ve told you about my sometimes-favorite strategy for personal change (that is, gettin’ coached!). There were great allegories for social work there, but there’s an obvious and important aspect that I didn’t mention: The coach can’t always be there. (Read more…)

Authenticity and Better Business in Social Work
I learned early on that in order to be a good businessperson, I had to pretend to be someone other than myself. I had to pretend to be “big business”—or at least “bigger business”. I had to stay aloof and withdrawn from my clients, so they would know I was “professional”. I had to use words like “we” and “us” to talk about my company (even though I was a one-man band, back then). And no personality—not in the business world! I had to be slick and sere and professional at all junctures. At networking functions, I had to have a canned approach (as a response to everyone else’s canned approach) and there wasn’t going to be any of this banter about issues unrelated to business. (Read more…)

Mental Clarity and the Power of Now
I’m four or five chapters into Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, a book that seems to have temporarily rescued me from myself. Ever get that voice going in your head? The one that won’t shut up? (Note: I do realize that I’m writing about the voices I hear in my head to an array of mental health professionals. No, this does not bother me. Well, at least until I hit “publish”...!) (Read more…)

The Social Work “In”: Create a Positive Environment for Ideas
When you’re running a business, you want lots of ideas. Every new idea is an alternative option you can take advantage of to make everything better, so the more options, the better. You want to create a positive environment for new ideas and you want to engender a mindset in yourself that takes advantage of new ideas when they float through your head—instead of rejecting them without really thinking about them. I think many of us are actually conditioned to this kind of instant rejection. We’re so used to our lives as they are, we often fail to notice subtle opportunities to change our lives dramatically because we’re simply not expecting to see them. (Read more…)

Fear, Listening and Opportunity in Social Work
I was inspired to riff on Bob’s post yesterday when I read the following: “One of the most common reasons is that they don’t want people to talk about them because they are afraid of what they might hear.” He’s right, folks—it is too late. Everyone you make an impression on (good or bad!) has an opinion of you that they’re reasonably likely to share whether you see them do it or not. The great part of this is that you, as social workers, and every individual and company under the sun have the resource you need to change all your word of mouth for the better: Your Ability To Listen. (Read more…)

I recorded this yesterday, but wanted to give Athena a little more airtime—so I held the video post for today.

After an exhaustive search, I found the series in question: The Secret of the Unicorn Queen. I can’t find a really good primary link for it, but here’s the search in Amazon, and a fan listing of all the books in the series. Apparently the books were out of print, but they’re coming back (with all new, nearly-unrecognizable covers).

I wish I knew where mine were; they may all be in a box in Ohio, for all I know. But after making this video, I’d probably read them again happily, kids books or not! They were fantastic, at least from what I remember.

My CrossFit class today—my first real class ever—was amazing, incidentally. And I got through the whole thing.

Day-After Update: Marty listened to this video and walked wordlessly out of the room in the middle of it—I didn’t even notice. He came back five minutes later with this book, absolutely coated in dust, the pages yellowed, but otherwise in reasonable condition. I asked aghast where he had found it, and he said it was just in a pile with some other books he’d noticed the other day. It’s the only one we know of that I have with me in Austin, it’s the first book in the series, and I had no idea it had moved with me from Ohio.

It’s going on the shelf with the rest of my Really Good books—the motivating ones, the inspirational ones, the ones that really mean something to me. Well-deserved, I’d say, if accidental. ;}

Double-test: The new camera (read: the camera I bought months ago) and my Toastmasters speech for tomorrow morning. ;}

You know… I never really listened to these lyrics. And now that I’ve have, I’ve been playing this one song over and over:

As of last night, there is no doubt in my mind that eating more raw produce puts me in a more emotion-based state of mind. I feel moved more often. I feel connected. I verge on tears more often, in a way that identifies what is important to me, what must happen next, what it’s time for me to do. All issues with internal and external motivation aside, the explosion of emotional growth I’m experiencing has served as a compass for the decisions I make and the energies I expend. I’m getting more sensitive to it all the time. It’s one of the things that makes me truly wonder about being completely, 100% raw, even considering the dramatic change that would mean for my lifestyle. (Well, I suppose I’ve undergone some pretty dramatic changes already. Big deal, right?)

For those of you who are curious, I’m not completely sure when the step from 90% raw to 100% raw will happen (or if it will happen?), but I have a feeling there will be a time for it and I’ll know when that time is. I’m looking for the right route, the one that feels the best and results in the healthiest, strongest, most stable Megan. It’s not going to be exactly like anyone else’s, but that’s what makes it interesting. ;}

I feel like I’m understanding, in touch with, more than ever. Or maybe it all just spoke too quietly for me to hear, or maybe I just wasn’t listening. And although I’ve been following these ideas for awhile now, the understanding just continues to get… louder.

Your number has been called. Don’t let yourself down, don’t let yourself go. Your last chance has arrived. You’ve got to be the best, you’ve got to change the world and use this chance to be heard. Your time is now.

That’s pretty straightforward, folks.

Listen to the band.

Why, exactly, do you need an excuse?

Why do you need a program? Or a scholarship, or a recommendation, or a mandate, or an initiative, or somebody else’s carefully crafted plan?

Why not execute your own carefully crafted plan?*

Why do you have to wait for opportunity to knock? You can make your own opportunity, right now.

You know what it looks and feels like. You know what you want the results to be. You know that you’re craving a challenge, but you don’t need someone else to challenge you. Challenge yourself. Cut the path on your own. If you’re waiting for someone to boot your success system, you might be waiting a long time. WHY. WAIT. (!?)

Is this what they teach us? Is this the conditioning we’ve been living with? Is this what we tell our kids? Is this why so many of us are sitting on our butts playing blame games with our lives? Who told you to wait? Why do you think they were right? Stop listening to them. They don’t know what they’re talking about. It was time to get started years ago. You can catch up by getting off your ass now and doing something.

Do I have to beg, or are you going to quit jerking around and make something happen?

* “But Megan, I don’t have a plan.” Oh geeze, of all the goofy excuses. GO MAKE ONE!

I’ve always considered myself “self-motivated”, but in January I’ve begun to make the distinction between internally motivated and externally motivated. And although I sometimes am the former, I am MOSTLY the latter.

I still consider myself gigantically self-motivated because I’ve mastered the creation of externally-motivating circumstances. Committing to a project, signing up for a seminar, promising a deadline—becoming aware that something must be done and I must do it, or that someone really needs me. If I want something done and I’m not feeling a surge, I create the situation that “makes” me do it.

My internal motivation, on the other hand, is largely centered around the occasional sprint of excitement. These seem to be less under my control, and they come with big realizations and sudden passionate dedications that supercede less important items on my tasklist. They tend to pull me along of their own volition. In fact, I’d say THEY are in charge—not me. (Most of my website redesigns, and Marty’s, have been like this. The biggest examples so far: Seth’s Alternative MBA. The Tribes Q&A.)

[Last minute note: Saying that my internally motivated projects are in charge—not me—is an incredibly strange way to further blur the line between internal motivation and external motivation. I don’t quite know what to make of it, so I’m going to leave it for you to work out!]

There’s no doubt that internal motivation, for me, is more enjoyable (and more effective!) than external motivation. External motivation, however, is far easier to come by. I’ve also gotten extremely good at manipulating it over the last ten years.

If my internal motivation tends to fail me, and I can actually accomplish things by harnessing (read: trapping myself into) some good external motivation… I say, well, at least it works. Do things, by god! But what if I want to switch? What if I’m tired of having to trick myself into doing great things, and I just want to do them on my own steam?

Are there key differences between internally motivated people and externally motivated people, other than the fact that they are one or the other?

Which one are you?

And why?

Here are the links I promised to include:
Evil Web Valentine for you! (Pass it on!)

Add your evil Valentine’s quote on this page:
Valentines for Villains Squidoo page (with Twttrstrm, if you use Twitter)

I hope you have enough of a Monday left to have a GREAT one – this was meant to be posted earlier, but video editing takes me a damn long time. In any case, uh… Happy Early Valentine’s Day, too. ;}

I don’t like to make a habit of simply reposting things, but this one’s just too good. What matters to you? What drives you? What keeps you up at night? (You know—other than all the sugar you consumed over the holidays…) ;}

Discovered on the very fabulous dripit.org.

I’ve been feeling really… vehement lately. Please raise your standards. You might be the pivotal factor that makes everyone else raise their standards, too. And if you’d like to hear more about that, you’ll have to watch the video! (Hint: I wear a very awesome tie, and talk about subject that really means something to me: POTENTIAL.)

Below is an image of how I started my application mind map! Markers make me happy. I made boxes for each of Seth’s questions, and put some mind maps in the boxes. (The boxes are particularly nice because they change the shape of the information I’m working with—that is incredibly brain-helpful. Text as text can get old fast!

Some happy fun marker-using tips:

• HAVE FUN! I’m serious about this part. It’s fun, it’s fun! (Anyway, that stokes your creative energies—and you’ll need ‘em!
• Use as many colors as possible! Don’t use black, don’t use a pencil, and don’t try to do it all in one color of ball-point pen. (Anyway, ball-point pens are seriously low-creativity. BEST IDEA: FINGERPAINTS!!)
• Shameless familial plug: Listen to Daydream on Autopilot while you work. Okay, this might not work for you. But it rocked for me. Their music is pretty freaking motivating. (Careful about that autoplay, though.)
• Highlight things! Highlighting is fun, especially if you have lots of colors. I didn’t highlight a lot of my mind map, but I went through a print-out of the Alternative MBA Squidoo lens and highlighted all the things I wanted to remember, plus added checkboxes so I could run through them before I finish up and make sure nothing got left out.
• Yours can be WAY better than mine. I don’t think mine is all that fantastic, but I’ve had a lot on my plate this week so I’m feeling forgiving. ;} The best mind maps are great organic beasts of information! Think about fractals and vines and tiny flowers, and you’ll have the right idea.
• Don’t use boxes. Yeah, go ahead, laugh. I think boxes are overrated. The shape-changing bit was awesome, but with a little more thought I might have made the whole map organic. Man, that would be cool! Don’t do it the way I did it. :D

That’s all for now!