You have reached the Landing page for Reinventing Life Enterprises: a diverse group of activities all of which are aimed at helping people, students or organizations build their dreams and take the steps to make them come true.

From this page you can:

1. You can find out about Alana's work as a consultant and speaker and hire her for your next professional development activity or to provide motivational support.

2. Investigate our work in support of leading edge technologies for human development (CieAura page) and purchase those that interest you.

3. Read articles on the successful implementation of action research for business, non-profits and public administration, education and for personal development

4. Rent Our apartment in Kinsale, Co Cork Ireland as a tourists or visitor.

5. Investigate past writings from the early years of the company or link to an over view of the work we used to do to aid the future of education.

6. Link to information about the three principle forces in our work: Dr. E. Alana James, Margaret Milenkiewicz and Tracesea Slater.

Weekly Report: November 21, 2010

When reinventing life, a solid reflective protocol or reflective practice is necessary - this is the first in a series where Alana makes her business growth transparent using solid action research strategies.

Discovery

What happened this week? - I wrote another article (embarrassing to say one of many) that extolled the virtues of regular reflective protocol. Feeling guilty in that I don't always walk my talk, I decided to put an end to that and to start this weekly reflection on the evolution of my business and ideas. That requires a little catching up so that my readers may understand all the things I have been doing and how I got to this place.

1. In October I unexpected was given the opportunity to suggest a COPAR like program in Bahrain – one aimed at helping the ministry for education to help their principals and teachers improve curricula aimed at creating independent and critical thinkers, capable of being entrepreneurs.

2. My second book is progressing in fits and starts. It's title will be: Action Research for Business, Nonprofits and Public Administration: A Tool for Complex Times

3. I have taken on the challenge to write 101 articles in 100 days – now about day 55.

4. I have started to work Tracesea on a part time basis – she will catch up the publication of my articles to the web, to ezine and to be spun and article marketed.

5. I am actively reading “GetAbstracts” on consulting and small business – I have learned/remembered ways of doing business such as contracts (will need a solicitor) and requiring 1/3^rd up front, half way through and at the end. So for a large contract as with Bahrain the freedom to rearrange other work comes with the contract.

I have found that I have both the motivation and the time to write – but not to publish. Therefore it is a good use of my resources to have that part done by others. This will allow me to put my energies toward marketing RL Enterprises as a set of websites and services that help individuals, businesses and government offices through using action research to develop locally designed solutions and create internally driven professional development. These solutions and designs for training will be more efficient, effective and at lower cost than if they outsourced or paid consultants.

Measurable Action

My baseline is that until I took on the 100 day challenge and then went to Bahrain I had not considered merging what I had started (the websites) with my expertise in action research. Now it seems like a no-brainer, a natural evolution and I am almost embarrassed not to thought of it earlier. Part of my baseline is the previous 5 year project in the United States, part of it is my teaching of action research at CTU and another part are my books. Merge all these with regular articles, which Tracesea is not spinning and web publishing and it seems a lot of capacity has been brought to bear on this idea quickly. My steps to date are:

1. I have written a total of 18 articles on some aspect of using action research to improve life, business, or education.

2. I submitted a proposal to the Kingdom of Bahrain for a Train-th-Trainer hub and spoke PAR design.

I do not have any measurements of success as of yet. As I wrote, the articles are slow in getting published, but Tracesea is attacking that so it should change soon. Then we can track how they are noticed and the relative improvement of visits to my site.

I have also heard that things move slowly in Bahrain – we will see.

Nevertheless I am psyched and ready to take on other opportunities to test other opportunities to consult and facilitate action research groups. Perhaps €500 for a consult and then €100 a month for access to an online classroom set up for your group? There is a Small Firms Association networking night coming up in December and I will prepare a brochure and business card for the event.

I can see progress. And as with all progress, there is more work to bring the other things (professorship, writing, and websites) into line with these new ideas and actions. Progress seems slow when I look at how little it seems I can get done in a week – but speedy when I look at how much I have done this year.

Reflection

I am excited by these changes. It seems as though a long lost part of my personal capacity has been reawakened. This feels as though it may be the end of the five year cycle of change that started with the relocation to Ireland. When I start to lead action research groups again I will have finished re-opening all the boxes of my life that I had to pack up in order to make the move to Europe.

My next steps are to work on marketing myself and this firm as consultants. I like the elevator pitch that RL Enterprises is a set of websites and services that help individuals, businesses and government offices through using action research to develop locally designed solutions and create internally driven professional development. These locally driven solutions and designs for training will be more efficient, effective and at lower cost than if the company or government outsourced or paid consultants to design and implement them.

Next Steps:

I should start carving out time to network – I 'll see how it goes in Dublin and then redesign a campaign for the new year. I'll ask Tracesea to look into social marketing opportunities and carve out time to work with Alan and Tracesea on the Facebook site. Done properly the marketing should be positive for both my consulting, the articles and website and the book.

I have friends I think that can help.  Since John is involved in a business growth group in Kinsale I will ask him about it. Also since Patrick was so helpful on the sites I will ask him to take a look at brochures.

Trying to start a new way of living? Wanting to reinvent part of your life but feeling tired? Four simple steps give you a reality check to help your feelings of whether and to what extent you are making progress towards your goals.  Picture a big uphill learning curve. The first parts are the hardest, inertia works against you and much of what makes this hard is lack of momentum. The important thing to remember is that you may have taken on a long process, if so, any ONE period of time will not be significant. What will count is how you put them all together.   Let me tell a story about myself that illustrates this point. 

The longest journey starts with a single step: Proverb

Many people may be faced with reinventing their lives. Some will come to it by choice and others by necessity but it has been my belief that the human ability to start over, take what we have learned and apply it in new settings or problems is one of the greatest gifts of our humanity. Living in troubling and complex times, this skill is needed by many.

An examination of where we want to go, the obstacles we face, and the support systems we can count on encourages us to "shoot for the moon" while grounding us in the "here and now" realities of our lives. It is our ability to maneuver through the tensions between our dreams (moving our hearts and bodies forward) and our current connections (conservative, holding us in place) that will determine the sustainability of our success. My mother used to use the phrase, "Don't run off half cocked" or "You are like a chicken without its head." She was trying to tell me that my current zest and enthusiasm were not grounded in anything.

On the other hand, people who want

Good morning world!

In this business of creating the life we want, of creating happiness or of reinventing ourselves there are twists and turns in the road we have to be aware of.  About a week ago I got in infection, and subsequently the doctor gave me 10 days worth of full range antibiotics. The result has been very interesting,

One of the fantastic things about reinventing our lives is when we unexpected bump into "birds of a feather" - others who seem to hit it off with our ideas easily.  When you reinvent your life you need to keep singing, keep focusing on the happy and the potential of life!   Ruth Howard, a virtual friend is one person who seems to agree - and she adds to the silly song that is growing here with a great new verse.

I'm allowing myself the full hearted feeling
the full hearted feeling
the full hearted feeling (heartfelt?)
I'm allowing myself the full hearted feeling
of living what I want!

Please feel free to add other verses as we go and thanks to all who are now humming or singing along!

9 July, 2010

My nephew told me that it is not how well we exercise that matters, but how well we go back to exercise when we have stopped. I think this is the truth about every aspect of reinventing our lives, or creating success. As an example, my current dreams include: 100% health, three active Web businesses creating solid cash flow, and reaching a growing population of readers and viewers for the three things that matter most to me, building great personal lives, solid businesses, and new designs for education. Most weeks I chip away at small aspects of each of these dreams and over the course of the month I can see real progress.

And then we have weeks like this week. I did a lot, but little of it advanced my dreams. To turn to my nephews wisdom then, what matters most is not how well I did this week but how well I would go to building my dreams after this week. I feel a little discouraged when I look back, but I feel hopeful and excited when I look forward. As Abraham/Hicks reminds us -- the only thing that matters is that we feel good. So I sit here this morning working on feeling good and advancing some small part of my dreams. Since blogging both advances my dreams and helps me feel good that is what I am doing.

What are the tricks of I learned that helped me get back on building my dreams when I stop? Well there is the time management tool that Tracesea and I designed this spring, and while it premature to roll it out and tell you all about it, one of the best things is that you give yourself more point for doing tasks that advance your dreams than for doing the mundane things that may distract you and catch your attention like e-mail.

So that is where I will leave this blog today, asking you what are you going to do today? What points will you give the mundane versus the dream building? And what is the one action you can take that will bring you the most joy? Of course you will give that the most points.

Thanks for reading! - Alana

6 July, 2010

Tracesea and I are re doing this website, reinventing its life, you might say (smile). As I do web work,  I celebrate the fact that I am so much better at it than I was just a short year plus a few months ago when I started.  Still, there are some things, even small things, that drag on.  Today however I am delighted by the end result of one.  The words that show up in a tab at the top of the browser window have been haunting me.  We installed the new template, quantive, and the name of the template continue to stay in the Tab.  Dutifully, I went to the forums, and asked how to change it.  And, as usual, I was reminded of where this little thing hangs out.  That is when inspiration hit!

If you are using a browser that has tabs you will see it.  Our new tab says "Change Your World!" And that is what Tracesea and I know we are building here, a site where we share those tools and ideas to help us change our world, transform life, and get to travel along with people like you, who are also building exactly the life you want.  Please keep your comments, ratings, and ideas coming.  We all learn from them, and that is what we are here to do -- keep on learning!