Welcome to my yearly ritual of sense making. Writing this update at the conclusion of our year end push helps me find meaning in the chaos of creation. Deeper themes present themselves along with surprising delights I might have missed in the madness of doing.
Birthday Police station visit with our immigration lawyer Dino.
I’ll be offering both personal and organizational observations freely mixed.
This year we made good use of every minute and wrapped up our efforts by spending my 50th birthday at a Croatian police station filing our EU Blue Card residency application on December 30th. Oddly delightful.
The theme of Exploration in 2018 turned into Execution in 2019.
We did one thing last year
We committed to the Nova Earth mission of Transforming Lives Through Creativity in Service to a Beautiful New World, and applied ourselves wholeheartedly to creating it.
This involved some big firsts:
Alysia joining NEI full time
Moving our base to Motovun, Croatia
Offering a new pilot foundational program
Creating an advisory team
Developing a long term business plan
Shifting to a hybrid non-profit model and developing fund raising initiatives
The big move! NEI advisor Cayla Moss drops us at the Denver airport.
Focused action
This theme presented itself above all others. We completed our various projects, contracts and jobs, liquidated most of our possessions and assets, packed a trolley full of suitcases and a cat, got on a plane, and flew through the eye of the needle to a new life. Everything we thought or did, large or small, was applied in service to this.
How’s it going you ask?
Full contact fairy tale
When I zoom out and look at the sequence of events, things are falling in to place like brush strokes in a masterpiece. Magic and beauty abounds. That’s cool, I like that.
When I zoom in and feel the texture of life moment to moment it feels more like a rodeo on an off-world mining colony. The level of uncertainty we live with constantly is mind bending and the effort required to create a foundation is extreme.
We feel like aliens here, everything is different in ways that can’t be grasped during any number of visits. EVERYTHING. Every achievement no matter how small is a research project and an exercise in resilience, humor and flexibility.
Resources are uncertain, relationships are baffling, no one quite knows what to do with us, including us.
That in itself is a non-trivial component. The WE factor. Partnering with your partner is not for the faint of heart and it requires copious courage and patience. Especially in a remote medieval hill town where neither of you speak the language in a country you may or may not have permission to reside in depending on the whims of a distant government official.
That said, we’re settling in, a bit. Learning how to buy groceries and cook our favorite asian and Mexican foods we used to casually find across the US. We’re meeting neighbors, going for hikes, tasting local honey and learning migration patterns of the neighborhood cats.
Between the pressing duties of NEI to wrap up a pivotal year, planning for an entirely new one on the fly and responding to the often daily needs of a resident Blue Card or EU grant applications, we’ve been very busy. I’ve always felt like more of a mystic than a doer, but apparently mystics can learn to get things done too. Having a partner that complements my disposition and skill set has been pivotal to our ability to create a workable foundation.
Happiness is discovering hot glass at the NEI Christmas in August event.
2019 Achievements:
Some are worth repeating.
Alysia joined NEI full time!
We Moved!
Together — this year the We became truly We-er.
Developed a full business plan
Created proper seasonal fund raising campaigns — and ran them successfully
Created an NEI advisors team
Began developing a system of success metrics — Qualitative, Quantitative, Intrinsic and extrinsic.
EU resident Blue Card application
Started a new company with a Croatian director (long story)
1st proper EOY planning retreat BEFORE the end of the year. Well, partially.
Created new core business systems for budgeting and resource allocation
Liquidated and packed our Boulder studio
First NEI product in collaboration — the Creators’ kit with Cayla Moss
Christmas in August Studio Event and fund raiser
Ran Embodied Creators pilot program- NEI’s 1st dedicated program — based on Alysia’s architecture training and my embodiment work. Collaboration!
Taught embodiment workshop to facilitators in Slovenia
Welcomed a new apprentice into the leadership work
Took a research trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico for MeowWolf, Santa Fe Opera and Ghost Ranch.
Spoke at the International Investors Conference in Split, Croatia on impact finance
Spring EU Listening Tour to Austria, Italy, Croatia and Slovenia
Wrote 2 chapters for a new Transformational Learning textbook — publishing date in June
Created new programs — apprenticeship, retreat, special topics, coaching,
Turns out that one thing had a LOT of steps.
This is what focus looks like. Our entire lives - home, studio, office, art.
Lessons, Themes and Revelations:
Community — it truly takes a village, even for introverts. Collaboration is the crucible or Human development. It’s also load balancing, network sharing, deep connection and meaning and soul level nourishment.
Embodiment — Transformation is a re-embodiment process that effects not only our thought patterns and emotions, but our very chemistry, breath, cognition and spiritual experience.
Transformation — To facilitate transformation means to live it. It’s truly a magical life, but it has a certain wildness.
Grounding — This is the foundation of transformation. We can only go as far up and out as we first go down and in. Roots first, then branches.
Values — these have been tested mightily and we’re finding that a life intentionally aligned along shared principles and tempered in the fires of action is a powerful thing.
Boundaries — The art of NO is key to achievement.
Expectations — Right relationship requires self awareness and doing the work of clarity in communications. It can be very difficult, but not doing it is worse.
Life — There is one life form in the universe and its called Reality. Allow room for it to breathe and dance with it. Let it play and inform and fill your experience with magic beyond hope
Living Questions:
Who are our people? NEI occupies a pedagogical space like the connective tissue of the body. We’re everywhere and nowhere. That allows us to participate in partnerships that cross over with many communities and industries from personal growth to United Nations programs or Industry Incubators, but no one else is quite like us. We’re always that weird kid.
What is our core offering? Creativity can be a universal experience, what specific communities or industries are our foundation? We have many versions of various offerings we’ve developed over the decades but we are now distilling those and taking the time to organically develop our curriculum, market and partners.
Who is our audience? Identifying our audience with precision is equally challenging for all these same reasons. These things clearly relate and are an opportunity to creatively serve our mission in the way we both strategically and organically choose our audience and they choose us.
We are open to program partnerships with like spirited people and organizations.
Fund Raising with the Envelope Guardian
Funding
2019 was NEI’s first year of responding to our mission by moving toward a non-profit or hybrid model in order to counteract the imbalances inherent in a purely profit driven approach. Profit creates an efficient monoculture. Unfortunately, we’re also discovering globally that the imbalances these efficient monocultures generate are quickly destroying the ecosystem of the planet. Which is, BTW, OUR ecosystem as well. This is one of the reasons I attended SOCAP and Conscious Business Leadership Forum in 2018, to participate in the development of what comes next now that we’ve reached peak capitalism.
Pursuing funding is tremendous work, be we made good progress this year and are very pleased to be working with some some deeply devoted and visionary people that believe in the cause. If it speaks to you and you’d like to make a supporting contribution, please reach out, we’d love to discuss it with you.
Taming the crazy in Ouray, Colorado.
Personally:
In late Feb the world started closing in so I did what any sane person would do. I went ice climbing for a week by myself in the San Juan mountains of Colorado. Highly therapeutic.
Year 1 of a truly WE approach to my work and NEI — no words can describe the shift this represents in life for me.
Year 2 of zero alcohol — I’m appreciating the clarity, Europeans think it’s weird.
Deepening my spiritual journey with the Inipi, Umblechya and Sundance ceremonies.
Tea, always tea. The gong fu tea service is my metronome.
Art — my creativity is full throttle creating NEI. Turns out this leaves little room for a dedicated art practice, but something is whispering…
Energy work — again I am reminded I’m a healer and to bring the work where I am called no questions asked. Turns out it’s being called in major corporations, public institutions and communities of practice.
Leaders and Creators
After a review of our 2020 offerings, I’ve decided to make room for 4 new coaching/mentoring clients in response to the calling for a new leadership in these change times.
A Leader is equal parts Warrior, Artist and Healer.
My approach to Transformational Leadership grounds the skills and capacities of energy work into a practical embodiment to help leaders develop their unique mastery in truth. It’s highly personalized, intense, and often in response to a significant professional or visionary calling.
Bridge builders! This is where devotion meets action and the above and below meet in service to all of life.
Personalized year long programs are a combination of online and in select global locations. If this resonates, contact me.
Mischa Altman in the Small Conference Room - NEI Motovun temp office.
Living the Fairy Tale
I’m watching my own experiences gained through nearly 20 years of facilitating transformational processes play out in my daily life here. It turns out we have the tools, skills and capacities to navigate this space of massive change. We’ve developed them in our client work and now get to apply them from inside our own lives as we make this leap. Transformation is in part a metabolic process and it takes work to develop our capacity to change at the depth and speed facing us.
The Big Why
For a beautiful life that contributes to a beautiful world, of course. To become what we are capable of because it’s rewarding, it scratches that itch of the primal human urge to self actualize, to respond to that small voice that wants to bring something to this world and find out what it might be.
Because transformation is both what’s happening and what’s needed in this ailing world and it can be learned, taught and catalyzed. It can also be relished and delivered with great fabulosity.
Because in a world gone mad and full of pain what better medicine than supporting the proliferation of human creativity and our capacity to participate in this glorious ecosystem on Earth in a good way.
The Great Change is upon all of us now on this planet and I think it’s best to meet it head on and learn how to land on our feet and make a real contribution to a version of reality that includes happily ever after for all of us. The human us, the planetary us, the plants and animals and microbes and water and spirits and all of life in 7 generations in all directions.
Inspired to share the journey with us? Visit our website or Reach out.
Gratitude
First and foremost my beloved Alysia Kampf without whom none of this would get past the dream stage. I am grateful beyond words for your presence in this life.
A few people have been special champions of the cause and tremendous supporters for us. People like Cayla and Michael Moss Dana Harrison Mike Lavigne Tanya Woods Christine Chrisman Jacque Lucero Tomislav Pahovic Chris Cleary Lorena Sviličić Anja Mutic Mauro Lukic Dino Gliha Vida Ogorelec Ranko Bon Marjeta Novak Branko Metzger Maggie and Tom Lund Dorothy and Julian Kampf Laura and Emily Blose and so many others. This is the village.