Adsum: Being Here with David Firth

My guest on this episode is my dear friend, Tom LaRotonda.   We discuss the distinction between Truth and Perception, why people seem all too willing to give up their own power to others, and a perennial theme in conversations between Tom and me: Love.   “You need to hear the truth about yourself as frequently as possible, because your mind is so preoccupied with false self-images.” Foundation for Inner Peace, A Course in Miracles   Tom LaRotonda is an Author and Life Mentor. After 20 years working for some of the largest corporations in the world as a culture change leader, he left the business world to strike out as an entrepreneur.   After obtaining a life coaching certification in 1999, he started a transformational leadership organization in 2000 called Core Matters that focused on helping small businesses and individuals to break free of conventional patterns and unleash their divine inner power to create inspiring projects that serve humanity.   In addition to being a life mentor, he has been a  keynote speaker, a radio show host, author of  3 published books, and creator of two popular and powerful 6-month group transformation programs, The Field of Dreams and Mastery of Love, that hundreds of people benefited from.   In 2017 Tom semi-retired to pursue new life adventures yet continues to write and provide mentoring to a select group of visionaries.   You can read and hear more from Tom on Instagram:  tomlarotonda.core.simplicity

The next of the Holiday Season "Favorite Quotations' episodes; Rich's meaning-rich email; airport adventures; the joy of improvisation, play and the Fool; the best use of brain and heart; Monty Python's great wisdom; the transformative power of hospitality; and the presence of our innate goodness.       Richard is the CEO of YES www.yesindeed.com and has been designing purpose-based change programs for 25 years with organisations such as Google, Unilever, Procter and Gamble, Allianz, Coca Cola as well as government bodies, NGO’s and charities.    Richard specialises in the creation of immersive development experiences in both live and online events using interactive theatre, storytelling, comedy and improvisation as well as group exercises and self-inquiry. His work is designed to make the world of work more meaningful, innovative, connected and sustainable.   He is the author of ‘What’s your Purpose?’ and “The 7 Questions to find your Purpose?” www.the7questions.online and is currently writing “Rides of Passage; the cyclist's guide to transformation”.

The first of the Holiday Season "Favorite Quotations' episodes; making God laugh; our only failure; the buried blessings; a different take on retirement and being professional; and the Mother of all Problems...       Charrise is a lover, a creator, and a helper. Powered by creativity and heart, she uses her superpowers to discover possibilities for people who want create something meaningful. Her work since 2006 as a coach, facilitator, teacher and retreat leader has changed lives for the better. Over the years, she has also found her muse as a fine artist and writer.    She has been married to the love of her life since 1982, has two amazing grown children, two adorable grandchildren, and is caregiver for her beloved mother.    Her art can be found at @greatmotherart on Instagram and you can contact her at mailto:[email protected]

My guest on this episode is Adam Barley. What a far-reaching conversation we have! Relationship, movement, zero is not nothing and the future of our beautiful planet...and more!   Adam Barley is a movement catalyst and creator of ZeroOne, a creative movement meditation practice for personal and collective evolution. For almost 30 years he has got people moving more freely and breathing more deeply in business, schools, prisons, Balinese dojos and windswept mountain tops, as well as open studios for the public in over 25 countries, creating inspirational transformative experiences for individuals and groups.    With ZeroOne, he is integrating influences from four decades of study in movement, dance, music, voicework, tantra, meditation and therapeutic techniques.   Adam's extraordinary movie about Euler's Identity is at https://vimeo.com/431159716   Two other things we mention during this episode:   The verb "To grok"   A lovely word invented by American author Robert A. Heinlein for one of his novels,  Stranger in a Strange Land, in which he writes:   'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science and it means as little to us as color does to a blind man."   Math or Maths   Why does Adam say Maths but David, who used to say Maths, but now says Math because he's lived in America for 12 years? Who is correct?   We both are (yay!). Maths and Math are both short for Mathematics (it's not like the Americans call it Mathematic!) - which is a plural word designating a singular concept. Other examples are words such as economics, measles and politics. The confusion only arises because we shorten Mathematics, but never politics, for example.   Although I often wish we could shorten politics.

David: ‘Are we going to be OK?’ Heather:  ‘We may need to get a new definition of OK.’   Heather A. Cook, MA, MPH, LPC, is the Principal of HECO Consulting.  Heather is a scientist, integrative systems thinker, and a navigator of the individual and collective human experience. Above all, she is a consultant in the traditional sense of ‘gathering the people who know.’  Her background in Laboratory Science, Public Health, Emergency Preparedness and Psychology provides her with a unique ability to support individuals and organizations through complex situations. With this combination of disciplines, she says, “I fuse the art and science of exploration, discovery, and practical application. The result is that a newfound capacity is accessed for the people I work with, which allows both the individual leader and their team to emerge stronger from whatever it is facing.”

’Lessons from theater, Landmark Education and falling in love at a distance...' Marc is founder and Managing Director of Emailogic – a consultancy and training company that specializes in changing organizational email cultures. His background spans Psychology, Information Technology, HR and Theatre. Originally he trained as an engineer, then as a professional actor after which he acted for 6 years. Since then and for the last 25 years he has been helping businesses use technology more effectively through changing human behaviors. His passion and work is all about empowering organizations to move forwards with new ways of gaining time, improving well-being and increasing productivity.

The audio version of my email newsletter, July 21, 2020, with some additional thoughts on what's possible in communities in the light of the George Floyd killing and its aftermath.

Having spent so much time in my workshops reading other people's poetry out, I accepted a challenge to write a poem. This is it.

Give yourself a minute - or specifically one minute and two seconds - to listen to this beautiful poem by Vaclav Havel. This is a poem about the faith we must have that our individual actions can and will make a difference.

An extract from a recent interview, addressing the problems associated with Virtual Communication.