Exploring Limitlessness

Exploring Limitlessness

I’m fine with not knowing how to do something before I start doing it. In fact, that’s one of my strengths. For as long as I can remember, I have been very comfortable with ambiguity, and happy to set sail towards something, without knowing how I am going to get there. Initially, I didn’t know […]

Utter Irrelevance

Utter Irrelevance

I remember the intensity of school and university: how the environment and everyone in it were in ‘do or die’ mode, regarding the qualifications to be gained at that time.  Later on in life, I reflect that those moments really didn’t matter as much as my mind thought they did, then. The pressure came from […]

The Fallow Year

The Fallow Year

One of the few things I remember learning at school was a land rotation technique that restores farming land by leaving it fallow. Continual farming of the same land in the same way gradually depletes its growing yield – unless it is left alone for awhile, to restore itself. This is an idea that’s always […]

Permissionless Progress

Permissionless Progress

When we started The Dandelion Foundation, one unexpected realisation was that many people had ideas and answers for solving challenges in community, but they were waiting for permission (they didn’t need) to get started. Many people had no frame of reference for having an idea, and just making it happen. I grew up in an […]

Nodes In The Network

Nodes In The Network

When we launched The Dandelion Foundation 4 years ago, we were initially a high-profile organisation with a very public lobbying and communication strategy. One of our challenges was that new ideas and approaches often create a lot of noise and push-back. Operating publicly, there was a need to demonstrate results and go for ‘quick wins’ […]

Wellbeing Assisted Transformation

Wellbeing Assisted Transformation

One word that has become fashionable in modern times is ‘disruption’. The business world is talking about the disruption of old business models by new ways of doing things – and the difficulty of existing organisations in adapting, to make the transition from old to new ways. An often-used example is Kodak. This once-thriving market-leader […]

Engaged Indifference

Engaged Indifference

It was at the neurofeedback institute, Biocybernaut, that I first heard the phrase ‘engaged indifference’. There, I learnt that our emotional responses in the present are often a signal to the past – and that we can let go of these emotional attachments. Emotional attachments like frustration, anger, self-pity, or simply wanting things done a […]

Poacher Turned Gamekeeper

Poacher Turned Gamekeeper

‘Poacher turned gamekeeper’ is a phrase I remember from my childhood. It means someone whose behaviour is the opposite of what it used to be. As an activist and changemaker, over the years, I have learnt how resistant to persuasion people are, and how readily they will cognitively dismiss new ways of doing things, or […]

Ego Flipping

Ego Flipping

Over the years, I have developed a technique that gets very quick results in terms of personal and collective transformation. I call it ‘ego flipping’. In short, it is a frame of thinking and subconscious reprogramming I have developed to get quick results, without requiring willpower or self-sacrifice. There’s nothing new about it, since it […]

Professionalism vs Being Human

Professionalism vs Being Human

The bureaucratic global demand for exacting policies and procedures has become stifling. The quest for ever-greater professionalism comes with an unintended cost: the price of being human. Large organisations and governments are increasingly driven by a desire to create consistent outcomes; so tied up in the quest for ‘perfection’ – afraid to get thing wrong […]