Tankespjärn with Helena Roth

First published on my blog on December 25th, 2016: https://tankespjarn.com/being-gentle-to-me-reflection-december-16/

Website: https://helenaroth.com/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/helenaroth

FB: https://www.facebook.com/HelenaRothChangeAgent

Audio production: Caspian Almerud

Photography: Anders Roos http://www.andersroos.nu/

Soundtrack: Olof Jennfors Ljudtjänst http://jennforsljud.se/

Frank Ebbert is a character, as you will soon discover. He presents himself as an architect based in the Washington DC area. A musician, writer and designer, he is exploring the intersections of the humanities and technology. His current projects include an introduction to how our built environment impacts ocean health. Find out more about Frank at http://landwaveae.com (business), https://stealinggenius.net/ (music) and landwaveae.com/rp/ (musings).

I met him in Story Skills, an AKIMBO-workshop we both took at the end of 2020. Now, Frank can talk, and talk a lot. He even said during our conversation on April 10th, 2021, that “as a public service to my friends and family, I ought to write more, I think, because I've got so much to say and I don't know why that is.”

I don’t know about that, as I enjoy speaking to Frank as much as I enjoy reading his writings. Our conversation start off with me reading something Frank wrote to me as we were trying to find a date for our first conversation. He wrote:

“I mention it - your focus - because there is a part of me calling out again for that blessed space beyond the actual demands of others AND the call of a dozen projects I want to be working on.

I am taking this morning as a windfall of time to consider the last two months roughly starting with altMBA. I am noticing that my attention was drawn to the wide range of challenges I face and decisions I have to make: all within a 30 day, 13 assignment timeframe with 14 hours per week of group discussion. It wore me out and depleted whatever tankespjärn I had in place to handle my situation.

So I am in a reset. Not exactly negative. But not really positive either. Wintering.

The gentle and the edge is in observing, just observing, your productivity and my anxiety. Letting my curiosity wander a bit. Letting my fears speak so they can know they are heard and don’t amplify themselves to get my attention. Then I can start to see what is what.

As seems to be the case frequently, I notice nothing has really changed around me. It’s just me being drawn into the myopia of deadlines without breathing.”

Now, you see as well as I, that what he wrote has nothing to do with finding a date for podcasting. It’s about finding focus in life, and paying attention to the pace you are living it with. Perhaps a different pace, more in tune with your current whereabouts is needed?

We talk about finding those places, spaces, settings, and/or contexts that nourish you. Being able to find them, making sure to hang on to them and how important that is for a life. Lived really well. 

One of my most nourishing fields is my Mastermind-group (started in 2013), and not a session goes by without me learning something new. About myself, the others, or the world. In the session I chaired a few hours before sitting down to converse with Frank, I was saying how time flies, without actually paying attention to what i was saying. Inga-Lill stopped me and said ”No. Time comes. Every day time comes to you. It's a gift.” Have you? Found the others, I mean? 

During our long and rambling, meandering conversation, we touch upon the importance of language, not once, not twice, but over and over again. The origins of the word deadline, how paying attention to right/wrong, must/should makes for a shift in how life is experiences, and specifically the difference substituting judgment for discernment has had for me. But we also touch on the American dream and the pursuit of happiness. Isn’t it fascinating that American’s aren’t entitled to happiness, but rather the pursuit of it. Tankespjärn indeed!

First published on my blog on November 25th, 2016: https://tankespjarn.com/being-gentle-to-me-reflection-november-16/

Website: https://helenaroth.com/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/helenaroth

FB: https://www.facebook.com/HelenaRothChangeAgent

Audio production: Caspian Almerud

Photography: Anders Roos http://www.andersroos.nu/

Soundtrack: Olof Jennfors Ljudtjänst http://jennforsljud.se/

Welcome to the very first conversation of this pod series. One where I want you as a listener to feel invited in to be a part of the conversation, as if you could chirp in anytime, with your own reflection about whatever we touch on. These pods will be meandering conversations, a little like a bumble bee flying around my garden. Stopping for some nectar here, rest in the sun over there, only to dive headfirst into a garden bed of enticingly-smelling flowers everywhere. I truly enjoy watching them on their bumbling flight-path, knowing that they will help me see some aspect of my garden that I’ve yet to notice. I’d love it if these conversations could be like that for you!

Me and Beverly Delidow, on April 8th, 2021, had just that type of conversation, where the transition from one topic to another can be completely unfathomable. You talk, you listen, and then, BAM, a new thought or connection or analogy pops into your mind…

Now, remember when you were a kid, lying underneath the dining-room table, listening to your parents and their friends talking? Grown-up conversations. About work, and family, and the latest movie/song/book, or what will happen with politics or grandma that’s sick and in the hospital.

Oh. I loved that. 
Did you? 

As Beverly share bits and pieces from her childhood, we take a walk down this particular memory lane. For me, it served as an initiation into adulthood. Makes me wonder if kids of today have these experiences or are they off –as soon as dinner is over– to a corner of the living room, or their own room, immersed in a computer game, or watching YouTube or SnapChatting or…?

Different styles of conversing, from the ”lying under the dining room table listening to the grown-up’s talk”, to SnapChatting with a gazillion friends, to when you write a letter to someone. This latter is a form of uninterrupted conversation, where I can put the entire thought down on to paper only to wait for a response. Letter writing uses a different kind of patience and social cue where cues are given from the way it's written, the word choice and maybe even the handwriting.

As humans are pattern seeking creatures, that must have been an evolutionary boon, otherwise would it not have been ousted through evolution? It helps us take in what's happening and make a prediction for what happens next. If it’s protective to be able to recognize patterns, what if the curiosity of children, the never-ending question Whazzat that Beverly shares was her first fully formed sentence, is a way there? Makes you wonder at all those times you shut your kid up from asking Why for the umpteenth time, doesn’t it?

Now. Reflection is important as a way to process life, and, in my view, a somewhat forgotten art. But do you think there are people who don't benefit from reflection, or have they simply not learnt how to? And is this ability (and the link to pattern recognition) what makes stories so important to our species too? Is there an evolutionary advantage to being able to tell (and later on to write down) stories?

Yes. Likely. 
The oral tradition was the only way we had to pass on history and culture. So in part we became storytellers because it gives structure to human groups living together, creating societies. It allowed us to make labor more efficient too, Beverly muses. Some people were farmers, some hunters, other people took care of the children or made clothesand so on. Once you had professions you have to have a way to pass that on, and to start with we didn't have textbooks. We learned by doing and telling.

Which is funny, as people seem to think we need schools in order to learn. 
We. Don’t. Humanity evolved long before modern-day schools and the education system was invented. Now there’s some tankespjärn for you!

First published on my blog on November 24th, 2016: https://tankespjarn.com/beauty-surrounds-us/

Website: https://helenaroth.com/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/helenaroth

FB: https://www.facebook.com/HelenaRothChangeAgent

Audio production: Caspian Almerud

Photography: Anders Roos http://www.andersroos.nu/

Soundtrack: Olof Jennfors Ljudtjänst http://jennforsljud.se/

First published on my blog on November 27th, 2016: https://tankespjarn.com/doing-gentle-46-expectations-vs-agreements/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/helenaroth

FB: https://www.facebook.com/HelenaRothChangeAgent

Audio production: Caspian Almerud

Photography: Anders Roos http://www.andersroos.nu/

Soundtrack: Olof Jennfors Ljudtjänst http://jennforsljud.se/

First published on my blog on November 10th, 2016: https://tankespjarn.com/i-miss-me/

Website: https://helenaroth.com/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/helenaroth

FB: https://www.facebook.com/HelenaRothChangeAgent

Audio production: Caspian Almerud

Photography: Anders Roos http://www.andersroos.nu/

Soundtrack: Olof Jennfors Ljudtjänst http://jennforsljud.se/

First published on my blog on November 20th, 2016: https://tankespjarn.com/doing-gentle-45-source-of-information/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/helenaroth

FB: https://www.facebook.com/HelenaRothChangeAgent

Audio production: Caspian Almerud

Photography: Anders Roos http://www.andersroos.nu/

Soundtrack: Olof Jennfors Ljudtjänst http://jennforsljud.se/

First published on my blog on November 9th, 2016: https://tankespjarn.com/what-we-focus-on-becomes-our-reality/

Website: https://helenaroth.com/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/helenaroth

FB: https://www.facebook.com/HelenaRothChangeAgent

Audio production: Caspian Almerud

Photography: Anders Roos http://www.andersroos.nu/

Soundtrack: Olof Jennfors Ljudtjänst http://jennforsljud.se/