Showing posts with label Groups. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Groups. Show all posts
Monday, January 07, 2019
Want emergency help?
Recovery, getting back up, sometimes requires help. How do you find help? That's the topic today on Startup Club, click on "Visit Group" on www.Facebook.com/Small.Business.Chamber and join us, it's free and fast.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
The Small Business Chamber of Commerce, Inc. http://www.SmallBizChamber.org cooperates with local chamber of commerce leaders, community newspapers, and others to create IDEA Cafe Startup Workshops and Franklin Circle Peer Advisory Groups.
People ask me why I'm doing this. See my explanation on our Meetup site, and while you are there RSVP for an upcoming meeting here in Denver or online this afternoon or any Tuesday afternoon at 4 p.m. Mountain (6 p.m. Eastern, 3 p.m. Pacific), they are free now, as they have been for nearly 20 years as I've learned more, clarified my thinking, and looked for direction, but the meeting this afternoon may be our last free online session. Why have I been working on this for nearly 20 years? See http://Meetup.com/Small-Biz-Chamber , and join us this afternoon at 4 p.m. for our Google+ Hangout meeting. Free. Today.
People ask me why I'm doing this. See my explanation on our Meetup site, and while you are there RSVP for an upcoming meeting here in Denver or online this afternoon or any Tuesday afternoon at 4 p.m. Mountain (6 p.m. Eastern, 3 p.m. Pacific), they are free now, as they have been for nearly 20 years as I've learned more, clarified my thinking, and looked for direction, but the meeting this afternoon may be our last free online session. Why have I been working on this for nearly 20 years? See http://Meetup.com/Small-Biz-Chamber , and join us this afternoon at 4 p.m. for our Google+ Hangout meeting. Free. Today.
Thursday, May 09, 2013
Grief Will Become Joy
Grief Will Become Joy
So far in my life I have not had many occasions to be close to dying friends and their families, though that will surely increase through the coming years. Five years ago a friend was in her mid-thirties when lung cancer was detected late in pregnancy. She and her husband were valiant throughout, enduring with parents and siblings as they faced the disease, struggling to care for each other and for the baby. It was impossible during that time to believe that grief could become joy.
So far in my life I have not had many occasions to be close to dying friends and their families, though that will surely increase through the coming years. Five years ago a friend was in her mid-thirties when lung cancer was detected late in pregnancy. She and her husband were valiant throughout, enduring with parents and siblings as they faced the disease, struggling to care for each other and for the baby. It was impossible during that time to believe that grief could become joy.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
The short quote below is from an interesting article in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine about a yearlong couples-therapy group led by a Philadelphia psychologist named Judith Coché. Seems to me the benefits of the couples group are very similar to the benefits of participation in a Franklin Circle: accountability to the group, the benefiting from shared experience and observation of changes in behavior, and the isomorphism (see excellent definition below.) I wonder if Ben Franklin has influenced Coche’s work.
Professional-led groups for people with discrete emotional or physical conditions — Coché has run them for overweight adults and learning-disabled adolescents — have become ubiquitous in the last three decades. More recently, couples education, especially the premarital sort, has taken off inside and outside of religious groups, spurred in part by federal financing from the Bush administration. But the type of ongoing experiential group Coché runs, which is heavily dependent on mining the interactions among the members in the so-called here and now (“Sitting here for six hours you just know what it’s like to be married to him,” Coché muttered to me once, out of earshot of the offending spouse), aren’t terribly common.
When Coché lists the virtues of the group over other forms of therapy, she cites the “Greek chorus” effect, a term that captures how members begin to harass one another, if politely, about the habits corroding their marriages. “In a group, there’s an experience of being held accountable for one’s own behavior,” Coché told me, adding that it’s more powerful to be called out — or cared for — by a civilian than by a professional. “I’m a paid consultant. I’m a nonperson.” Other benefits she cites are the often-silent products of group dynamics. No matter how ultimately prosaic their woes, members are startled to see reflections of themselves in the other marriages — My God, I do that, too — and if one person musters the strength or resolve to make a change, somebody else may consciously or unconsciously follow. The principle of isomorphism also comes into play, she said, meaning that as people forge intimate connections within the group, the enriching encounter in that system may spread to the other system: the marriage.
Professional-led groups for people with discrete emotional or physical conditions — Coché has run them for overweight adults and learning-disabled adolescents — have become ubiquitous in the last three decades. More recently, couples education, especially the premarital sort, has taken off inside and outside of religious groups, spurred in part by federal financing from the Bush administration. But the type of ongoing experiential group Coché runs, which is heavily dependent on mining the interactions among the members in the so-called here and now (“Sitting here for six hours you just know what it’s like to be married to him,” Coché muttered to me once, out of earshot of the offending spouse), aren’t terribly common.
When Coché lists the virtues of the group over other forms of therapy, she cites the “Greek chorus” effect, a term that captures how members begin to harass one another, if politely, about the habits corroding their marriages. “In a group, there’s an experience of being held accountable for one’s own behavior,” Coché told me, adding that it’s more powerful to be called out — or cared for — by a civilian than by a professional. “I’m a paid consultant. I’m a nonperson.” Other benefits she cites are the often-silent products of group dynamics. No matter how ultimately prosaic their woes, members are startled to see reflections of themselves in the other marriages — My God, I do that, too — and if one person musters the strength or resolve to make a change, somebody else may consciously or unconsciously follow. The principle of isomorphism also comes into play, she said, meaning that as people forge intimate connections within the group, the enriching encounter in that system may spread to the other system: the marriage.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
On this day in 1903 the Wright Brothers flew the 1st powered aircraft.
Who Americans Are and What They Do, in Census Data
By SAM ROBERTS
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/us/15census.html?em&ex=1166504400&en=ebb509a94fc011e8&ei=5087%0A
Americans drank more than 23 gallons of bottled water per person in 2004 — about 10 times as much as in 1980. We consumed more than twice as much high fructose corn syrup per person as in 1980 and remained the fattest inhabitants of the planet, although Mexicans, Australians, Greeks, New Zealanders and Britons are not too far behind.
At the same time, Americans spent more of their lives than ever — about eight-and-a-half hours a day — watching television, using computers, listening to the radio, going to the movies or reading.
This eclectic portrait of the American people is drawn from the 1,376 tables in the Census Bureau’s 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States, the annual feast for number crunchers that is being served up by the federal government today…
… since 2000 the number of hobby and athletic nonprofit associations has risen while the number of labor unions, fraternities and fan clubs has declined.
“The large master trend here is that over the last hundred years, technology has privatized our leisure time,” said Robert D. Putnam, a public policy professor at Harvard and author of “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.”
“The distinctive effect of technology has been to enable us to get entertainment and information while remaining entirely alone,” Mr. Putnam said. “That is from many points of view very efficient. I also think it’s fundamentally bad because the lack of social contact, the social isolation means that we don’t share information and values and outlook that we should.”
Who Americans Are and What They Do, in Census Data
By SAM ROBERTS
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/us/15census.html?em&ex=1166504400&en=ebb509a94fc011e8&ei=5087%0A
Americans drank more than 23 gallons of bottled water per person in 2004 — about 10 times as much as in 1980. We consumed more than twice as much high fructose corn syrup per person as in 1980 and remained the fattest inhabitants of the planet, although Mexicans, Australians, Greeks, New Zealanders and Britons are not too far behind.
At the same time, Americans spent more of their lives than ever — about eight-and-a-half hours a day — watching television, using computers, listening to the radio, going to the movies or reading.
This eclectic portrait of the American people is drawn from the 1,376 tables in the Census Bureau’s 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States, the annual feast for number crunchers that is being served up by the federal government today…
… since 2000 the number of hobby and athletic nonprofit associations has risen while the number of labor unions, fraternities and fan clubs has declined.
“The large master trend here is that over the last hundred years, technology has privatized our leisure time,” said Robert D. Putnam, a public policy professor at Harvard and author of “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.”
“The distinctive effect of technology has been to enable us to get entertainment and information while remaining entirely alone,” Mr. Putnam said. “That is from many points of view very efficient. I also think it’s fundamentally bad because the lack of social contact, the social isolation means that we don’t share information and values and outlook that we should.”
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