The UnConvention

People spend so much time worrying about whether they’ve made the right decisions that it occurred to me to write the quick and easy guide to making successful long term decisions.

Get on the right path and you’ve won

Last evening, I was driving back from the park with Lauren and the kids and I had the overwhelming feeling that I’d already won. Money is tight, we’re living in a hotel, so much seems uncertain – but I’ve already won because I know I’m on the right path.

We’re in the right place at the right time doing things that we love and are important to us. I’m working on my filmmaking and getting good feedback. We’re meeting amazing, interesting people in Albuquerque. Kids are happy, projects are underway. I could name two dozen things that might strike fear into the heart of anyone looking for something to worry about – no health insurance, no permanent place to live and rapidly dwindling cash.

Doesn’t matter. That’s the short term sacrifice. We won, now.

How do you know you’re on the right path?

Here’s one way to figure it out.

Through Seth Godin, I learned about the inspiring work of Chris Guillebeau. If you haven’t seen his website The Art Of Non Conformity, you need to go visit it as soon as possible. Gorgeous design, powerful life changing content, and free eBooks to download, too.

Chris’s A Brief Guide To World Domination presents what he calls the two most important questions in the universe.

1) What do you really want to get out of life?

2) What can you offer the world that no one else can?

Here’s the plan: answer those two questions then ask yourself if you’re on a path to make the answers real and present in your life.

Because if not – what the hell are you doing?

I got some great feedback yesterday on a script I’m working on for a project I started that wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t done it. The project is real and every day it’s moving closer to completion. It’s satisfying in a way that years of working for someone else never was one single time.

Stop for a few minutes today, look at your life and ask yourself Chris’s two questions.

If your current path isn’t going to get you what you really want and it’s not going to lead to you offering your special and unique abilites to the world, then seriously….you’re wasting your life.

Right?

crossposted with slight changes at LeeStranahan.com

There was a Winter Storm Warning for parts of New Mexico on Sunday, so we took the kids up into the mountains to see snow for the first time on Sunday. You’ve never seen two more excited kids.

On the way, we stopped to see our friends Brad and Andrea Carvey, Brad got to talking about living in the altitude of Albuquerque; elevation 5312 feet although I bet it’s higher up in the foothills of the Sandia where the Carveys live.

Brad was telling us that the altitude has all sorts of effects; for example you need to drink a lot more water, he said. He also said something really interesting….

“After six months, your blood totally changes. It takes that long for the old blood to run its way through your system but once it does, your blood oxygen level is totally different. When you go back down to a normal altitude, you can feel it when you breathe; it’s easier.”

There’s a lesson in there.

I’m about two and a half weeks out of a full time job and I’m realizing that my blood hasn’t changed yet.

I’ve been staying busy, but to some extent I’m still mentally not where I need to be. It’s hard to explain, but in my head it’s more like I’m working while on vacation. I was freelance for a long time so I know the difference and my mindset isn’t exactly right. I think this is probably pretty common.

It reminds me of the initial change to homeschooling that Lauren and I made. This was about 11 years ago, when we decided to pull my son Shane out of the first grade. At first, we just did what we thought we were supposed to do – ’school at home’. We had a schedule and some kind of curriculum and we sat down and went over lessons with Shane every day.

And it was miserable and we all hated it.

We barely knew a thing about unschooling but we knew what we were doing wasn’t working in any way for us or for Shane.  We were trying to graft the artificial schedule of school onto our lives. Our blood hadn’t changed; we were breathing home school air with conventional education lungs.

It’s easy to leave a job. It’s harder to adjust away from that mindset but it’s really crucial to long term success. You have to start to look at the world differently – you need to stop seeing hourly wages but start seeing dollar bills floating everywhere and sometimes giant piles of them that you can get all at once.

And after a while….it gets easier to breathe.

I sent out a mailer today asking people for suggestions on the upcoming UnConvention and one interesting thing that came up a couple of times is that my biography as an UnJobber doesn’t seem to be clear. That’s my fault, of course, since most of the my recent posts have been focused on leaving my job a couple of weeks ago.

The job I just left is major exception in my life, not the rule. Prior to working at NBC, I was doing projects on my own for about 15 years. I had a few brief periods of what would qualify as regular jobs in there but those usually morphed into a consultancy or other freelance work.

Whatever I was doing, I was following my interests and passions. This even applied to my last job at NBC, actually, although it devolved into very much ‘just a job’. I had some great, prosperous years in there as well as some lean times. I’ve started businesses, done freelance writing, traveled all over the world doing seminars, made movies and more. I think all of that experience will inform this seminar.

cross posted at LeeStranahan.com

When I used to work in marketing for a company called NewTek, they got a TON of press. Really great, mainstream press. They were a small compnay in Kansas that was featured in Rolling Stone magazine and on the NBC Nightly News and a zillion other places.

This was under the late great Paul Montgomery and it was no accident.  One of Paul’s trick was simple and it should be a mantra for the unemployed, self employed, or anyone whose plate and bank account aren’t full.

“Outflow equals inflow.”

It’s just that simple. The more you put out, the more you get back.

If you’re sitting there looking at a lack of customers or projects, you probably have an abundance of free time.  The last thing in the world to do is to be passive. Go make some stuff happen.

Have coffee with someone. Knock on doors. Send emails. Read Craigslist or Elance and submit yourself right away to projects that are interesting. Take the next step in a project for yourself. Start an email list. Create a community or communicate with one you’ve already standing. Do all of these, right now.

And then while you’re waiting for the results, do some more.

by Laura Shanley

Unassisted childbirth (also known as UC, unassisted homebirth, and freebirth) can be defined as “giving birth at home without a doctor or midwife.”  It’s based on the belief that childbirth is inherently safe and relatively painless - provided we don’t live in poverty, and do not interfere either physically or psychologically.  Granted, this flies in the face of “official” doctrines and practices, however, as many of us know, mainstream beliefs are often wrong and need to be challenged.

My journey to unassisted childbirth began in the 1970’s when my husband-to-be, David, loaned me a book called Childbirth without Fear by Grantly Dick-Read, M.D.  Dick-Read, an English obstetrician who practiced in the first half of the 20^th century, believed that birth - like all natural bodily functions - had been beautifully designed.  Most of the pain and problems, he wrote, were caused by fear which triggers the fight/flight response and shuts down labor.  This is actually a protective mechanism, for if a woman were truly in danger, she wouldn’t want to give birth.  These days, however, the fear women experience isn’t justified.  Yet it still causes blood and oxygen to flow away from the uterus which makes giving birth painful and problematic.  When fear is eliminated, blood and oxygen can flow to the uterus, and babies can be born easily with very little effort on the part of the mother or her attendants.

This made sense to David and me, and we felt excited about the prospect of applying these concepts to our future births.  Several years later we conceived our first child, John.  We briefly considered hiring a midwife, but realized we would basically have to educate her as to the real reasons for the problems in birth.  Giving birth alone felt like the better option.  My pregnancy went beautifully, and while I chose to forego prenatal care from a doctor or midwife, I ate well, got plenty of fresh air and exercise, and felt great.  I gave birth easily on my due date, surrounded by David and our friends. In the years to come we went on to have the rest of our children unassisted, as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

crossposted at LeeStranahan.com

I want to start to drill down to some specifics on the process of leaving my job. I’ve talked a lot about fear in general terms and said that it’s something you need to overcome. That’s all true and important but I don’t think it’s just a matter of willpower or blind faith. I leapt at a certain point but quite a bit of planning and thought happened before I jumped.

The first thing I did only took five minutes, it’s simple as all get out, and it had an immediate impact. I faced my fears and asked myself if they made sense.

The problem with fear is that it seizes you up. You ask the questions but instead of answer you get a dry mouth and clenched butt cheeks. So start by asking simples questions and then answering them. What am I afraid? Write it down, too. Get the fear our of your head and down on paper, where it’s not part of you but something you can lift up and examine.

The big fear is not having a job is usually ‘where will the money come from?’ Almost every other issue like replacing insurance or benefits can be solved with more money. So solving the money fear was my first step.

The solution was easy – I made a list. I listed all the ways I’d made money in the past. Then I wrote it all down; people have paid me for consulting, corporate training, seminar tours, video production, delivering pizza, been a restaurant chef, writing books, doing visual effects, laying down hot tar and more.

Write fast and don’t think about whether it’s something you’d WANT to do. Just get the facts down on paper. If anyone has paid you to do it, write it down; cleaning closets for your Aunt or delivering newspapers

Make a big ass list. Look at it. It’s already a little less scary, isn’t it?

Okay, you’re done.

(What’? I’m still broke! I still have a job! How am I done!?!)

Remember, the goal here isn’t to make money. That comes later – the goal was reduce fear and look at your situation rationally. The fact is, you have a LOT of ways you can make money. Some of them are lame, some don’t pay well, and there are some you haven’t thought of yet that can make you rich and happy beyond your wildest dreams.

And they are all there on that list somewhere, once you take the time to make it and your brain kicks into gear again. Your past is the soil that the seeds of your future are planted it.

Make the list. Even if you’re happy in your job now, know your options. Plant seeds.

I’ve been unschooling since my oldest didn’t go to kindergarten when he was barely five.  He’s 22 now, and we had three children, all of whom chose to stay home, all of whom are now old enough to be out of school.  Holly is 17, Marty is 20 and Kirby is 22.

During most of that time I’ve helped other people understand unschooling, so it’s possible I’ve heard all the questions and objections dozens to hundreds of times. Unschooling isn’t easy to understand, and it’s not something someone can just try for a few weeks.  It does take a longterm commitment and change.

Why would anyone want to do something that required them to change the way they thought and behaved and lived?  It seems so much work. It is, but it can be fun work, and joyful.

Because learning comes naturally to people, unschooling goes with that instead of against it.   Children are curious about what they don’t know and excited about discoveries they make.  If opportunities can be found for the families to explore ideas, objects, parks, architecture, music, art, movies, art materials, antiques, foods and events, the children’s need to learn can be satisfied, and the parents can begin to overcome prejudices and misconceptions they might have that learning requires teaching, or that there’s a small part of life that “has to be learned” and a vast other part that is wholly unconnected to what’s officially “important.”  There are many different ways to learn about a historical era or a city or a work of fiction, and memorizing three or ten facts from a textbook is unlikely to be the richest and longest-lasting way to learn.  Connecting what one already knows with what comes up next, and connecting a new idea with two or three old ones, is the way adults learn; it’s the way children learn best.

When the complaint is that unschooling isn’t methodical enough, I say the method is enrichment - creating an environment in which learning cannot help but happen.   When the complaint is that unschooling isn’t predictable enough, or the results aren’t guaranteed, I pause and wait to see if that complainant really wants to leave that chess move on the board.  NO results are guaranteed.  Predicting and depending on “results” is looking at a template and not at a child.   What good is it for children to have their own particular parents if the parents are going to treat those individual children as generic pegs to be stuck into generic holes?

Living a rich life together and having learning as a focus makes learning easy to find and to encourage, once parents see what it looks like outside of school and schoolish methods.   It’s not far away, it’s just a different angle from which to see the same world, the same materials and history and geography.

From the point of view of conservative homeschoolers, unschooling might look like disorganized unit studies.  Unit studies have a beginning and end, though, and a family moves on to a new topic, a new focus.  With unschooling, the assumption is that each human learns about those things that interest him from the first time he sees them until he dies, so the “unit” being studied is everything in the world.  No one ever finishes learning everything in the world, but if there’s learning happening every day, in fun, relaxed, real-life ways, each person knows a great deal about himself, his family and the world, without any danger of a cut-off point after which he “failed” to learn enough.  There is always more to learn, and those who grow up learning for fun will have no reason to avoid or fear learning when they’re older.

Anyone interested in more about unschooling might want to look at the typical days section on my unschooling page, or at some of the introductory materials here:  SandraDodd.com/help.   

More information about my family and my experiences with unschooling are at SandraDodd.com/unschooling.

This afternoon I signed some papers, turned in my badge and walked out of the job that I’ve been working at for five years. I wasn’t fired or laid off. In the middle of a huge economic crisis and big unemployment numbers, I left of my own free will. I walked away from a steady paycheck, benefits and health insurance…and I walked away smiling.

People’s reactions generally fell into two methods of showing concern for my welfare. Some people showed a mixture of concern and an odd sort of pity at the horrible and possibly insane decision I was making. Others looked me in the eye and told me they weren’t worried and that they knew I’d do great things. Both of these reactions came from people who cared about me but they show the single biggest factor in deciding to make a living without a job.

Fear.

If you can overcome your fear by thinking through your options and coming up with a workable plan, you can overcome your fear and leave your job.

I wasn’t afraid today when I walked out of the the building but I sure have been afraid. I was in fear that I’d be laid off or worse, that my hours would be cut or that everyone in the company would be required to take a few extra weeks off without pay. I’d seen it happen and I was barely making it, living week to week and paycheck to paycheck. I was afraid of blogging the wrong thing and losing my job because of something I said. I was afraid to do much to try and get outside work to increase my income and I was afraid to make waves or ask for more money.

I walked out on fear today. I got tired of the illusion of security and of trying to tell myself that my job was somehow going to work out any better for me in the future. It wasn’t. Simple math and common sense told me that I wasn’t making enough to pay my bills or that the work wasn’t going to become satisfying. So, I quit.

I quit fear…that’s what I gave up.

I’m Lee Stranahan and my wife Lauren and I are excited to announce a new, one day conference that we think will challenge, educate and enrich people’s lives : the UnConvention.

We wanted to create an affordable event that brought top experts in three topics that some people consider radical; unassisted homebirth, unschooling and unjobbing. These aren’t topics that are necessarily related, of course – you might just be interested in earning a living without a job and not even have kids or you might be interested in homeschooling your children in a freeform way but you had a hospital birth. We’re aware of that and so we’re pricing the conference so it’s a great value even if you only want to learn about one of the topics we’ve covering.

One exciting thing for us is the experts that we have coming to speak. Sandra Dodd will be talking about Unschooling and Laura Shanley will be discussing Unassisted Homebirth. We couldn’t find two better people, both of whom have been an inspiration in our own lives.

We’ll have lots more details in the coming weeks but right now please sign up for our free mailing list to stay informed.