Want to to kick off your new year in a way that will spur growth, enable you to  savor time with others and create fresh meaning in your life? Try this ….

Create a Mutually-Reinforcing Group Ritual

For over a decade in Lake Oswego, Oregon, eight women, including my college friend Jane, get of bed to meet at the same corner at 6 am for their rigorous one hour walk. Husbands, children, bosses all know that it is going to happen and to not get in the way.  Sometimes they don’t even talk.

Over the years they’ve walk/talked about an embezzling business partner, son’s first girlfriend, unexpected job promotion and a sick, aging pet Labrador that must be put to sleep that day. Increasingly, over the years they’ve come to see this daily ritual as a stabilizing continuity in their lives. It took several years yet the rhythm of walking, looking around as they talk and the reliability of knowing they will meet each morning has enabled them to ease into increasing candor and caring for each other, and so can you with others.

When they ask for advice they know it will come from women who know them well and who will speak frankly. Contrary to the saying, “familiarity breeds contempt,” instead over time, in a safe group ritual, familiarity breeds acceptance and even reliance on each other.

Let us forget things and consider only relations. ~ Georges Braque

Getting in Action Together Eventually Brings Us Closer

My former husband is in two poker groups that have been meeting in each other’s homes for over 25 years. The players are mostly lawyers.  From upstairs I’d overhear snippets of conversation. In the early years, between poker hands, they’d mostly talk about their legal cases. Later one man got cancer, then another, one divorced, another became a judge. Over time there’s more conversation between hands. Some now fish together. Others share vacations and settled arguments between each other. They’ve been at each other’s birthday parties and attended funerals of three of their fellow players.

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.  ~ Lily Tomlin

It’s Never Too Late to Start Your Small Tribe

Group members can nudge each other in supportive ways. Some of the benefits I’ve enjoyed over the years in the two small groups to which I belong include:

• Seeing how wrong I was about first impressions, after getting to know someone better, especially what really matter to them and why they got upset or happy.

•  Discovering, first-hand how the same experience in the group can be seen and felt so differently by each person and recognizing that this happens all the time.

•  Realizing that I learn more about myself from what I react against than from what I am attracted to.

• Recognizing that everyone has hot buttons that hold them back, no matter how confident and calm they appear; and it’s possible to create mutual support in mitigating their power over us.

• Learning how often we discount how much we can accomplish with our best talents; and concrete insights from those who know us well can be a guide to better using them.

• Gaining the rare opportunity to get candid, caring, confidential advice at crucial points in my life.

“Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” ~ Oprah Winfrey

What Helps a Group Feel Closer?

1. Share One Thing in Common

That shared interest provides a safe place to start getting to know each other better. Jane’s walking group lived nearby, are all women and mothers. The poker groups were lawyers and, with one grand exception, all men. For the richest adventure and learning, then seek diverse individuals with backgrounds different than yours.

2. Make it a Priority to Meet Regularly

Group glue begins as we prove to each other that getting together is important and nothing proves that more than turning up.

3. Do Some Things the Same Way Every Time You Meet

Familiarity fosters trust. Jane’s walking group always walks the same route. The poker group host always provides the snacks and drinks.

4. Get in Motion Together

From the beat of our hearts to our gestures and rate of speaking, we literally get more in sync with each other when we are in motion together. That’s why people often agree on things more easily while walking down the hall to the meeting than while sitting in it.  Consequently walking is more powerfully connecting than eating or playing a card game together yet any kind of shared motion builds closeness.

5. Affirm Your Appreciation of the Group

Set aside a time for each person to share what’s been most helpful about the group. Consider sharing this appreciation as an ongoing, private group diary in a google doc or an ongoing email to which each person adds something at regular intervals. Research show that the more actions taken on behalf of a belief the more deeply a person feels about it, speaks about it and will defend it.

“Those who regularly come into contact with people having diverse interests and viewpoints are more likely to come up with innovative ideas.” ~ Steven Johnson

Launch Your Year Off on an Up Note by Starting a Small Group

1. It is often easier on others in a group if best friends are not part of it. Instead consider including people who, while they share the group’s common interest, are only slightly acquainted. That way the group can begin as Consequential Strangers.

2. Seven members is the best small group size for individuals to get close, according to some research.

3. As you explore the idea of starting a group, consider inviting individuals to get together for some activity such as a meal, walk or attending an event.

4. If they seem to enjoy each other you might then ask them later, one at a time, if they’d like to get together again as a group. If they would (and this is the brave part) ask if they’d like to meet regularly for awhile and collectively get to know each other better.

5. If they do, in fact, share your interest then ask them to discuss how often and what regular time works best and how long they’d like to experiment with the get-togethers.

6. Be clear that, although you started the group, you do not seek to lead it. Instead you hope everyone can participate in co-creating the group. That might include agreeing on:

•  The common interest that gets you started.

•  Some simple ground rules such as confidentiality regarding what’s discussed in the group.

•  A mutual support goal and/or specific ways each member would like to be supported. If you do it will probably change within six months as the group evolves.

•  How you might include motion in the way you meet, such as walking and/or eating around a table together.

“Let’s just keep asking ourselves this question: ‘Is what I’m about to do strengthening the web of connections, or is it weakening it?’” ~ Margaret Wheatley

Hint: Your group does not have to have to be productive. It may simply be. It can take its own course, evolving with the samemembers, meeting in much the same way at regular times. In so doing, you may become close-knit and a vital and meaningful part of each other’s lives. That will be something to celebrate this time next year.

Also consider creating mutual support with these variations:

1. Mutual Mentoring

Partner with another person or form a small group where each person has something to teach the other(s). Agree on the way to mentor each other. For example, in a two-person mutual mentoring arrangement I have, we spend one session focused on my learning and the next session on his learning.

In my mutual mentoring group, we round robin the five-person discussion in a two-part format in each meeting: First each person briefly gives one tip related to their expertise, then one member gives a ten minute briefing on their expertise as it relates to the group’s interest in it, followed by an hour of Q and A.

2. Accountability Buddies

For your top goal for 2011, pick one person who shares that desire – or a different yet specific goal and get specific about:

•  The small steps along the way to accomplish each person’s goal.

•  How you will stay accountable to each other for taking those steps, such as daily by phone.

• What temptations or obligations might get in the way and what you will do to overcome them.

• How you will celebrate together when you each accomplish your goal.

3.  Mutually-Managed Project Team

This follows the same approach as the small group except that it is formed to accomplish one specific task that reflects a sweet spot of strong shared interest by all members. Consequently, each member brings a specific talent to the group that is needed to accomplish the task, all members agree on who is to take the lead on what parts of the project and on a few rules of engagement regarding how they will work together.

Such mutually-managed project teams will grow in popularity for work and for personal and social interests so you may become sought-after as you gain experience in participating in them.

“Because I helped to wind the clock, I come to hear it strike.” ~William Butler Yeats

Here’s to a nourishing new year in spite of and because of the increasing complexity, uncertainty and connectedness of our world.  I look forward to continuing to learn with and from so many of you as I have this past years. Also consider joining in on our Twitter conversation: @KareAnderson

There’s a Relationship Revolution bubbling up and you’ve probably seen signs of it.

Rain or shine, for over a decade, my college friend Jane Burns has been walking the same route in Lake Oswego every morning at 7:00 am with the same hardy group of women. Neighbors yet strangers at first, the habit has bound them together.

Inevitably when the same people meet regularly they get in sync in mysterious ways; they talk in shorthand and know what each other are saying, even when they choose silence to covey it.

Every Wednesday after work, also for more than a decade, my friend Paul Geffner joins other men on the public basketball court next to the park and the tiny city hall in Sausalito. Watching the rag tag look of them when I’m on my regular walkabout with friends, it would be hard to guess what the men do for work or how much money they make yet it’s clear by the verbal jabs that they are thoroughly enjoying themselves. I know from conversations with Paul that the players have included two sushi chefs, an animator from Pixar and a stay-at-home Dad.

Walls fall with familiarity.

Over time, repeated a ritual gets us in sync so we see each other more clearly:

1. Our regular gatherings become the place where we are most likely to tell the stories that are giving our lives cohesion and meaning.

2. The gatherings themselves become, over time, an increasingly central part of the narrative of those stories we tell.

“Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” ~ Oprah Winfrey

Why start a closed group?

When you start a group you have the opportunity to change the role you play in the stories you tell and you live. Change your story and you can change the kind of adventure story want for your life now.

In this time-starved, often transient world nothing beats the comfort of a regular ritual of face-to-face contact, especially sharing time in motion together, for becoming extremely familiar with each other and increasingly mutually supportive. We women, for example, don’t have to be twisted sisters.

Yes, it’s helpful to have slight acquaintances, especially as we are making radical changes in our life or trying on parts of our personality long forgotten. But, with the moves, job and life changes and fewer formal affiliations we can feel alone when our friends are in different parts of our lives and we do not have a regular group that knows us well.

Because we have fewer threads of continuity in our lives it is well worth the time to create a small group, perhaps around a shared activity however daunting it might be to suggest such a thing to others. That may be why so many book groups have sprung up – not just to discuss what we’ve read but how we felt about the book – and our lives.

My friends Diane Lee and Tom Morrison are having great fun with a group of food lovers who dine in a different restaurant each month. A client told me that he has been part of group that has gone to movies together, then met afterwards to dine and talk about them.  They just changed to meeting in one person’s home, sharing sofas and chairs, watching Netflix-streamed movies on a big screen, then dining in, potluck style around a table to discuss them.

Sometimes the best way to start a group is to have a convivial, sharing gathering and see how people gel or not.  Two ways to consider revolve around food, with the holiday coming.

“I missed all the girlfriends I left behind and often thought about how a grown woman would ever make friends like that again,” she said. “When I started throwing this party, I realized food is one of the best ways to bring people together” said Cookie Swap author Julia Usher.

Consider co-hosting your modern version of the cookie exchange or a Sunday potluck. By the way, last December a male friend who’d been working long hours on his biotech start-up wanted to start a regular gathering of friends who were not related to his work. So he hosted a cookie exchange with his men friends, suggesting that each bring a favorite they remember their mother or other family member made and to come with cookies and a related memory to share.  All nine showed up.

As you think of whom you’d like to get to know better in a group setting, consider two things.

First, settle on a core belief or interest that all potential participants share – your sweet spot of mutual interest that can bind you together.  Second, seek a diverse mix of individuals – not more than seven as that seems to be the limit for becoming close as a group.

“Groups become more extreme and entrenched in their beliefs and polarized from others when members only exchange information that reinforces their views and filter out all else or never learn of alternatives. Thus they narrow their options, and magnify each other’s prejudices and misconceptions.” ~ Cass Sunstein

Your variety of backgrounds means both a richer experience together but also the increased potential for misunderstanding or even conflict at times.  Yet the opportunity to share and grow exponentially more – emotionally and intellectually – is often worth the effort.

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”  ~ Carl Jung

If you  feel bold enough to recruit one likely member for a small group, then tell that person the core interest that you’d like all members to share. Ask for feedback and listen closely. That shared interest is the sweet spot and can be group glue. After you find your first person, agree on a total number and together agree on the third person to approach.  Involve all committed participants in choosing the next prospective member until you have reached your total number of members. Agree on a few rules of engagement on vital topics like confidentiality, format for meeting if any and let the rest evolve. You are more likely to build trust if you close the group at that number and focus on building the sense of “we” as you get to know and support each other over time.

One final thought: sharing experiences enables us to mirror each other’s emotions and thus feel greater empathy for each other. That not only brings us closer, evoking one of the most meaningful memories we can share, looking back on our lives, it positively affects the friends of our friend’s friends.

Our close-knit group’s mutual support ripple out in comforting ways we feel first hand and in ways we will never know.

As Marconi Iacoboni wrote, “Some of us cry when we watch sad movies or wince when we see athletes fall. This sense of shared experience is at the core of human experience. Because our brain has mirror neurons, we are capable of interpreting facial expressions of pain or joy, the first step towards feeling empathy, which causes an instinctively imitative response – the chameleon effect.

That ‘mirroring’ response enables two people to literally see they are more alike in that moment.  That similarity evokes familiarity and thus a feeling of comfort that can lead to mutual trust with others.”

Coincidences. Recently Daniel Johnson wrote about those in his life. Some were meaningful. Ironically I discovered his article by coincidence because he cited a story that involved my friend and how she met her husband at a party she had not intended to attend – in my village, Sausalito.  

Even today that story warms my heart and brought to mind a holiday party this year that I thought I could not attend yet unexpectedly could. There I fell into conversation with two people who will become lifelong friends I feel.

What are the coincidences that startle you?

No one in Beatrice, Nebraska, will forget what happened just prior to church choir practice on March 1, 1950.  All fifteen members of the choir were due at practice at 7:30 p.m. The minister, his wife, and their daughter were delayed when his wife decided to re-iron the daughter’s dress.

One member took longer than he expected to finish his sales report; another couldn’t get her car started; two others lingered to hear the end of an especially involving radio program; a mother and daughter were delayed when the daughter came home late from babysitting; and so on.

Ten separate and quite unconnected reasons for fifteen responsible people meant that all would be late that one night.

Fortunately, none of them arrived on time at 7:30, because at 7:35 a furnace explosion destroyed the church building. Mathematician Warren Weaver recounted the story in his book, Lady Luck: The Theory of Probability, calculating the staggering odds against chance for this uncanny event as about one in a million.

What are the stories that reverberate in your mind, then guide you?

Two people set up a woman friend on a blind date, five years apart. They were the only blind dates she ever went on. One was on the East Coast and the second on the West Coast – both with the same man.

A singer’s career changes direction from opera to musicals after he walks into the wrong audition and successfully wins a prime role.

Just when he is feeling particularly alone in the world, a man runs into a close college friend on a remote outpost on a South Pacific island.

In each of these real-life stories, coincidences changed lives. Some coincidences are almost too purposeful and too orderly to be a product of random chance – but then how do we explain them?

Synchronicity is when the coincidence has great meaning for the individuals or people who experience it.

When you experience synchronistic events, you might see them as a signal to change your life, especially if you initially resist the message as outside the usual “story” of your life.

We Make Choices Through the Stories That Stick in Our Mind, the Stories We Keep Telling Others

When you meet friends or family at the end of a day, you are often asked first, “How was your day?” Kids ask, “Tell me a story.”  Each of our lives is a story. Synchronistic events call attention to the structure of the story we are living. What if you were a character in the story of your life, but not the only author?

When external events so precisely mirror our own inner state that the impact of a coincidence cannot be ignored or its significance denied, and our lack of control over the events is indisputable, we are faced with the question: If I am not the author of my story, who is?

Synchronistic events confront us with the possibility that sometimes the stories we make up about ourselves, the stories we would like to live, are not necessarily the stories we are actually living or – to go a step further - are meant to live.

An “odd coincidence” can wake you up and point you in a new, truer direction, rather than the life path you should be on.  Synchronistic experiences can be the turning points in the plot we can use to lead our lives more meaningfully and to experience our fundamental, unavoidable, and potentially much more conscious connection with all others.

Synchronicity Can be a Way to Feel Connected to Others

Synchronicity is emerging as a phenomenon from many directions of study, as diverse as quantum physics, medicine, and astronomy. As Arthur Koestler observes in his book The Roots of Coincidence, synchronicity reflects the presumption of a “fundamental unity of all things,” which transcends mechanical causality and relates coincidence to the “universal scheme of things.”

Synchronicity is when traditional notions of causality are not capable of explaining some of the more improbable forms of coincidence and, further, when no causal connection can be demonstrated between two events but at least one person feels a meaningful relationship exists between them.

According to historian Koestler the human psyche has the capacity to “act as a cosmic resonator.” Some people believe that individuals and the universe “imprint” each other, which leads them to a belief in the ultimate ”oneness” of the universe.

Everything is “interrelated and mutually attuned,” wrote Arthur Schopenhauer. 

In exploring the parallels between modern science and the mystical concept of a universal scheme or oneness, Koestler compares the evolution of science during the past 150 years to a vast river system in which each tributary is “swallowed up” by the mainstream, until all are unified in a single river-delta. The science of electricity, he points out, merged during the 19th century with the science of magnetism. Electromagnetic waves were then discovered to be responsible for light, color, radiant heat and Hertzian waves, while chemistry was embraced by atomic physics.

The control of the body by nerves and glands was linked to electrochemical processes, and atoms were broken down into the “building blocks” of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Soon, however, even these fundamental parts were reduced by scientists to mere “parcels of compressed energy-packed and patterned according to certain mathematical formulae.”

What all this reveals, then, is that there might be what Koestler refers to as “the universal hanging-together of things, their embeddedness in a universal matrix.” Many ecologists subscribe to this sense of interrelation in the world – what the ancients called the “sympathy” of life.  Some scientists are moving to this worldview.

Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigione is studies the “spontaneous formation of coherent structures”- how chemical and other kinds of structures evolve patterns out of chaos.

Karl Pribram, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, proposed that the brain might be a type of “hologram,” a pattern and frequency analyzer that creates “hard” reality by interpreting frequencies from a dimension beyond space and time. That means the physical world “out there,” is, in Pribram’s words, “isomorphic with” (the same as) the processes of the brain.

If the modern alliance evolving between quantum physicists, neuroscientists, and others is not just a short-fused phase in scientific understanding, a paradigm shift may be imminent. We might come to see a new image of the universe, that it functions not as some great machine but as a great thought – unifying matter, energy, and consciousness.

Thus, the synchronicity you see can be the confluence of forces that you, well-connected to others, are using to guide you on a fruitful path of wise choices. That could be a comforting belief for mindful “us” to carry into the year 2010.

We Aren’t Crazy to Fear Losing Control 

Synchronous events can be unnerving because they show we do not have complete control over our life patterns, and we, like all animals, fear the apparent loss of control in our lives. The fear of losing control (as when we experience coincidences that cannot be explained) makes our emotional lives threatening to our rational minds. It also challenges the assumption that we are separate from each other.

If we are open to feelings, we can feel not only our own feelings but the feelings of others as well. We then “know” that we affect each other in ways of which we cannot be completely aware.

Synchronicity brings us in direct contact with the collective unconscious, where we are in danger of losing our own standpoint while realizing the common pool of connection.

The Comfort in Feeling Connected 

Theologian Rudolf Otto described “numinosity” as that experience we have when we feel we are undeniably, irresistibly, and unforgettably in the presence of the Divine – our experience of something that transcends our human limitations. This heightened quality of feeling that accompanies synchronistic events is their most striking characteristic.

If synchronicity is, above all, a connecting principle, then the quality of feeling produced by a synchronistic event – the numinosity and psychic energy it evokes – is the medium by which such a connection is made. The symbolism of a specific incident of synchronicity shows you the place in the story of your life where you are connected with all other human beings.

What You Can Do With Synchronicity

o Have a clear vision of your path in life, and be equally open to seeing the coincidences that “tell” you to consider another direction.

o Notice how meaningful coincidences reveal your inevitable connection with everyone, even those you do not “know,” and thus you must …

o Be aware that every action you take has immediate and continuing effects on many people, even those you might never meet face-to face.

o When coincidences happen, especially those that have an emotional impact, consider what special meaning they have for you regarding your beliefs, especially about who you are and what you “should” or could be doing.

Become more conscious of:

o What you most value. 

o The best gifts you have to offer the world.

o What you can let go and stop trying to do or be.

o How many things are outside your control, no matter how hard you try. 

o How you are often supported by a common river flow of other people, if you can just recognize their commonality in the symbolism of the synchronistic events that happen in your life.

Prepare Yourself for Helpful Change

Synchronistic events are often “wake-up calls” for you to make a change in your life. How do you work with synchronicity? Be open to the meaning in what you did not want to happen. Set aside your agenda, and consider that your story should take a different turn. Consider the possible symbolism for you in the incident.

If you are in a work or personal relationship, consider the real reason you are together, what you are to learn. See how you can use the experience to tame your ego, to move to a larger perspective.

Do not rely on your own ability to control and manage events, people, and objects. The most creative and effective part of your work can emerge only when you lay aside your own agenda and permit randomness to have a place in the story of your livelihood.

If you resist the meaning of a synchronistic event, you are likely to experience similar ones again and again, until you face the meaning.

Every movement forward in life has three parts:

1. Recognition that the current situation no longer fits or works. An event can make this clear. When the event is synchronistic, we see that there might be more to our story than we thought before. Events that might be frightening or bad are, in fact, openings to a new life.

2. We enter a state of confusion and transition. We imagine how things might be different.

3. Then something happens. We get some help, our feelings become clearer. An opportunity presents itself. We take some action, and we move to a different, more satisfying way of being.

Our lives are full of meaningful events we deliberately set out to cause for ourselves in pursuing work and relationships. These are intentional actions.

Synchronistic events, however, by their very accidental nature, urge upon us another truth about our lives – a truth that we are in the habit of ignoring – that the meaning of our lives, the plot of our life stories, is not written simply by what we know about ourselves but comes from a much deeper place, from our innately human capacity to experience wholeness through living life in more aware connection with others.

When an ”accidental” twist of fate reorganizes our lives and shows us something we did not expect, we have two choices:

1. Numb out, ignore it, and move on so we’ll bump into a variation of it again and again, until we take notice.

2. Notice what it means for us and become more truly alive and connected with each other.

Which patterns of accidental meetings and conversations with others stay uppermost in your mind?  How can they guide you to open the next chapter of the adventure story you want for your life now?  

Job hunting is dispiriting – often lonely and isolating. 

That’s why it was so comforting for job seekers to be in a room full of knowledgeable people who were ready to meet with them, one-on-one, to answer their specific questions. 

From job hunt web sites to career counseling coaches could personalize their advice to each person’s need. Hundreds of unemployed people flocked to this free speed-coaching event in New York. My colleague, transitionist coach Terrence Seamon was one of many coaches who volunteered to sit in “twenty minute sessions, to review their job search campaign strategies as well as their resumes, making sure that they are accomplishments-focused.” The event was the co-created service of The New York Library, Vault and volunteer coaches. 

In this bad economy what top-of-mind topic most concerns your kind of client? 

Recruit a cadre of non-competing and credible experts to coach them in a fast-paced, speed coaching event where participants get hundreds of dollars worth of the specific advice they most seek – and coaches demonstrate their expertise to “pull” prospects towards hiring them.  More than a free for all, “here’s my card” networking event people actually get to meet the individuals they’d most like to know at that time.

You, too, could leverage your value with a custom speed coaching event that serves a hot need or avid interest felt by your kind of clients. Here’s a quick checklist of jumpstart your first popular, speed coaching event:

• What other credible, complementary (non-competing) experts and organizations serve your “mutual market?”

• What preoccupies your clients?  

• When would it be easiest for them to meet?

• What is a convenient and attractive meeting location for them?

• What if you created a helpful meeting momento – an eBook of three tips from each coach plus their bio and s brief description of all partnering organizations, with links to all resources cited in the eBook?

• How long should your event be?  Some are as short as two hours and as long as a day.  One-on-one coaching sessions in different events range from five-minutes to 20-minutes. Collectively choose the length that works best for your kind of attendee and speed coaching theme.

• Consider combining 20-minutes “expert roundtable” sessions for five to eight attendees to ask an expert questions – concurrent with the one-on-one speed coaching sessions. 

Put the coaching sessions on one side of a ballroom or other large meeting place and the roundtables on the other.

• Place large signs behind each coach with their name and/or topic and on roundtables with the table topic.

The more partnering coaches and organizations you involve the lower the per-partner cost and the higher the benefit to them for participating – and the higher the number of people you can reach and serve.

Here is one kind of speed coaching event I co-designed with the astute head of the S.F. chapter of Savor the Success, Ayesha Mathews-Wadhwa. 

In our increasingly connected world, everyone must manage “the brand called you” announced Tom Peters years ago. Reluctant to see yourself this way? Your impetus can be to protect your reputation. 

The upside motivation to think of self-branding, however, is to attract the people and opportunities that help make your life the kind of adventure story you want it to become.  That’s my takeaway from the message of two popular authors, Dan Schawbel in Me 2.0 and Rohit Bhargava in Personality Not Included. Why am I talking about this today? Because PR maven Rohit asked women how they came to recognize a distinctive part of their personality and what it has meant in their life.  Get these insights in a gift eBooklet you can download today.  (Confession:

 I am one of the 20 women). 

Diversely distinctive women benefit from honing their brand. Consider Michelle, Heather, Jhumpa, Sarah, Peggy, Doris and Angela.

Or Penelope, Anita, Andrea and Angelina. What warms my heart is when I see someone vividly describe the smart, thoughtful action of another. Naturally, such behavior burnishes the brand of both people. 

… is to have someone to “stand by you”, writes empathic Pamela Slim. Here are two of her

 Me2We suggestions for pulling yourself through hard times by involving others.

1. “Don’t try to do everything yourself. 

 Do you have great ideas, but are a bit challenged getting them off the ground?  Now is an excellent time to look in your extended circle for joint venture partners.  I am working with my good buddy and fellow business coach Michele Woodward on a marketing program for our tribe of Martha Beck coaches.  I have forgotten how fun it is to work with someone else, especially someone like Michele who is open, fun and creative.  By working together, we are delivering a better program, more quickly, than if either of us had done it ourselves.”

2. Stand by someone else. 

When I have my down moments, one thing that always makes me feel better is to do something that will help someone else.  Often, this is writing a blog post that addresses a common concern. Sometimes it is connecting two people who I know will benefit from each other’s expertise or service.  Sometimes it is just taking an extra moment to really listen to someone who is in my life, like my son’s preschool teacher, or the pharmacist at my local grocery store.  By doing so, I have learned that my pharmacist is a poet, and my son’s preschool teacher wants to write a book.”

 To lift your spirits up - with others -  during down times …

Lean on me when you’re not strong.

Turn one to another.

I’ve got your back.

Stand by me.  

When meeting Natasha, photographer Rick Smolan never imagined she’d be an emotional thread of continuity for his life. Human stories take unexpected turns, especially next year. 

I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine. That’s a mighty welcome feeling as we enter 2009.  Why?  Because, more than any of the last 25 years, 2009 will crackle with change, unexpected loss and fresh opportunities to be there for each other. Consequently, 

prepare by picturing your Circles of Connection.  On whom can you most depend and how?  What can you ask of each other? 

It’s time to:

• Hone your differentiating mastery for a more fulfilling life. 

• Be more specifically, continuously helpful in your tribes.

To practice your greatest talents more often and maximize your value for and with others, visualize a set of circles of relationships, with the strongest connections in your inner circle and the weaker ties further out.  Here’s the rewards for picturing them, then the plan for identifying those circles.

 First the rewards.  Circles …

1. Create a context for your life …

2. That enables you to make wiser choices with …

• more grace towards yourself and others, and

• less stress or regret.

3. So you can be …

  • less rushed and more focused.

  • able to accomplish “first things first.”

4. Use your best talents more often to hone them sooner (10,000 rule).

5. Provide help that is appreciated and often reciprocated.

6. Collaborate in ways that use best talents  - and benefit all participants.

Now, the plan – picturing your circles.

In light of your …

• top two goals (one for work and one for life) for 2009.

• two kinds of resources – yours and those you can attract from others.

… what is your “first things first” plan for each month?  What tasks will you do “first thing” each week, each day … each hour?

To become higher-performing and happier – with others, see how you want to involve them in the next chapter of the adventure you want for your life story in 2009.

Picture your personal circles in a more concrete way using Christopher Allen’s helpful template. When done, consider people you’d like to move to a closer circle or further out or add to a circle. How will you make it more likely to happen?

(I add a first category to Allen’s four circles)

0. My Main Friend

To whom would you turn first for any kind of help, sympathy, celebration or other need to connect? (How many would not turn to a spouse, other kind of partner or family member first?) 

1. The Support Circle

Any time, night or day, you can rely on these 3-5 people, some of whom may be kin. 

2. The Emotional Circle

You can turn to these individuals for sympathy and whose death would be devastating to you. You may have a “non-mutual” emotional connection with them. Many have 10-15 people in this circle yet others have 7 or 20, according to Allen, yet other research shows those numbers are going down.  Increasingly individuals have just  2 to 3 people in this circle.

3. The Trust Circle

You have experience with each person in this circle, instances that made you feel you could trust them. You feel strong ties to the 40 to 200 people in your circle.

4. Familiar Strangers

People you recognize and they may have heard of you. Individuals here may be a two or three degrees away “friend” such as those who have befriended you at  Facebook or LinkedIn because you share a mutual friend or friend-of-friend.  These are weaker ties than those in your Trust Circle yet are also valuable in job-hunting and other needs.

“The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable.” - Martin Buber

When you finish writing your top two (actionable) goals and then crafting your Circles of Connections, tell me how you would improve this approach – or suggest a better approach to planning for a positive 2009. What emotional shifts, if any, happened in you as a consequence of this process? Did it help you picture your opportunities? Did you discover a way to be more valuable for yourself – or someone else?

Concluding caveat from Tom Paine, “It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies…”

In conversation with an acquaintance you mention that your CPA has retired. This semi-stranger suggests a CPA who specializes in your kind of work. Should you follow-up? You’d be more motivated to do so if that acquaintance:

1. Had first-hand knowledge of the quality of the CPA’s work.

2. Would be adversely affected if the CPA didn’t do a great job for you.

In today’s podcast you’ll hear about the only small business alliance model that is built around those two crucial factors. It’s so successful that the organization that created it is now the world’s largest referral group with over 4,200 chapters with 84,000 members in 27 countries. As Scott Allen advises, “get referrals, not just introductions.” (Online social networks could help members by adding this methodology.)

Because of the rules, members become strong business partners, committed to helping each other grow faster. They learn enough about each other’s work to know when and how to make a helpful referral. “Viral”, “contagious” third party endorsements and word of mouth campaigns are a popular topic these days. What makes the approach you’ll hear about today more powerful for me – as a consumer and a small business owner?

Two things. The inherent mutual improvement and mutual reliance upon which it is based. Founder Ivan Misner calls this the “Giver’s Gain.” In effect, he’s designed a profitable “Me2We” networking model that motivates members to recruit other reputable business people as members. Members’ reputations reflect on each other. Thus, as they help each other improve business operations and quality of referrals, they become increasingly visible and valuable for each other. Yet, as Cyndi Wiley mentions, BNI itself could use an image update. The second reason for my interest is the focus on face-to-face relationship building – so the phone, text message and email follow-up feels more personal.

Now we’re not talking about commissions, affiliates or other kinds of kickback arrangements. Is your main market local? Then hear exactly how this alliance model works from Joe McBride the chapter president of BNI in Arkansas. For a hip, looser yet still efficient alternative see Biznik.

Ike Pigott wanted to help more people find out if their loved ones were safe when Hurricane Katrina hit, but he couldn’t. Soon after it struck, phone lines became jammed at his regional Red Cross office. He didn’t forget. Pigott convinced his global non-profit to create a general blog. And now, when a crisis hits, such as the wildfires in Southern California, Red Cross can set up a blog. Quickly.

People to find each other faster. Donors, volunteers, those affected and the media can turn to each other to work smarter, faster.

Why not spearhead your group’s social media plan to help members in times of sudden crisis – or opportunity?

Is your member-based club, religious organization, special interest group or association ready to set up a blog quickly? Are there other kinds of social media that could strengthen your members’ ability to support each other, attract more members, serve the media and grow closer? For example, I am a fan of google groups and Yahoo groups because they are free and relatively easy to use, provided the group is well-moderated and agrees on rules of engagement.

Thanks Michael Sebastian, for this story.