As Bob Burg and John David Mann put it in their book, The Go-Giver, “The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.” So, I had to ask these great givers about how they take care of themselves and each other.

And, surely enough, they were willing to talk about the value that sleep, sex, fly fishing and community bring to their lives!

Here’s our conversation:

Q:  I want to thank you for all that you do for your listeners, readers, workshop participants and audiences in general.  What do you do or where do you go when you need to be recharged?

Response from Ariel and Shya:

We hope you’ve enjoyed this blog conversation as much as we have.  Follow along by reading Part I, Part II and Part III of this four-part series.

Special thanks to Ariel and Shya Kane for your great responses to my questions.  Thanks for being so open!  And, to Valerie Paik, thanks for helping this idea come to life!

I’m looking forward to meeting the Kanes soon at one of their upcoming Monday Night Alive sessions in NYC.  Hope to see you there!  You can also find out what the Kanes are up to on Facebook and Twitter!

Listening to Ariel and Shya’s show, Being Here, has helped me see things differently.  As I said earlier, my friend Kathryn introduced me to the show.  And, now I’m a huge fan!

Catch a show some time, why don’t ya?!  Enjoy Being Here!

As someone who loves to see happy couples, I was instantaneously inspired by the love that they share and how they use that love to help others.

So, we asked them about it!

Q:  Seeing the two of you together provides wonderful images for me as someone in your audience because it’s clear that you enjoy each other, work well together and have a common purpose.  How did you two meet, and how did you know that you were right for each other?

Response from Ariel and Shya Kane:

Follow along by reading Part I and Part II of this four-part series.  Stay tuned for Part IV!

Through their show, Ariel and Shya help listeners discover how to live in the moment. Rather than “working on yourself” to fix what you perceive as problems, to Ariel and Shya it’s about Instantaneous Transformation.

Their approach to Instantaneous Transformation by way of living life in the moment comes down to this:

1. Anything you resist will persist, grow stronger and dominate your life.
2. You can only be exactly as you are in the current moment of now.
3. Anything that you allow to be as it is, COMPLETES itself.

So, we asked them:

How did you narrow down the principles of Instantaneous Transformation to just three?

Do you find people have a hard time grasping any one principle more than the others?

Response from Ariel and Shya Kane:

Click here to read Part One of this conversation.

Here is our conversation:

The first time I listened to your show, Being Here, I played it in between doing tasks at work. Without really getting a sense of what the show was all about, I had to put my headphones down for a little while to run an errand. When I picked them up to tune back in, you were talking to a woman who was having difficulties with her mother. She was upset that her mother told a story to friends and got her age wrong, even though she’d told her mother several times before how old she was at the time of the incident that the mother was telling the story about. She thought her mother was being intentionally careless and hurtful.

I expected that you would have taken the daughter’s side by telling her how to interpret her mother’s action or by making suggestions of what she might say in order to confront her mother about this tendency to forget details.

Instead, you actually lit into the woman herself!—and what I mean by “lit in” is that you challenged the woman herself. You asked her, “How old are you?” And she said 60, I believe. Uh-oh, I thought. First of all, it takes a lot of guts to ask a woman her age.

You basically told her that she was too old to think that she still needed to prove to her mother that she was an adult. To tell a woman who has just confessed her age that she is “too old” to do something… Wow! I was captivated. What was going to happen next? Was the lady going to go off?

You then told her something that transformed my way of thinking. You told her that her mother was not the problem. The problem was that she was COMPLAINING.

When I heard this, I realized that I was listening to a show unlike any other I’d listened to up to that point. I was impressed and surprised that you didn’t let the caller throw a pity party for herself. You challenged her to draw power from the vantage point that she had in the situation: her attitude towards it.

Could you tell me more about your point of view and how you’ve come to take your approach to transformation?

Response from Ariel and Shya on their approach to “Instantaneous Transformation“:

Great stuff, right! If you’re in New York City, you might enjoy attending one of their Monday Night Alive workshops. I’m planning to go! They’ve let me know about a promotion they have running right now. “Like” their Facebook Page, and you’ll get a coupon for half off of their Monday Night Alive workshop in NYC.

Stay tuned for the rest of this four-part blog series with the Kanes!

I’m sure you’ll understand
Because You’ll Be There too

And then you’ll understand that
This one’s for me and you.

If I go and be grand
I’m sure you’ll understand why
My life exists for now in leaves and books
And visions.

You won’t take a second look
When you see my Reality.
A place for you and me.

Excuse me while I go and be grand.
I’ll be gone ’til November,

But just remember
That I told you it was so.
You were first to know.

Excuse me while I go and be grand.

Meet me there.

written by Ciara C.
while Abadeu was playing the guitar

I can be judgmental, and sometimes I wonder, “Would I like others to judge me this harshly?”  So, then I scramble to sort of put away my mistakes.  Remember that Kanye West song, “When it All Falls Down”?

Here’s a line:

She’s so self conscious

She has no idea what she’s doing in college

The major that she majored in don’t make no money

But she won’t drop out. Her parents would look at her funny.

Now, tell me that ain’t insecure…

I was feeling that song for quite some time.  I used to be afraid of messing up the image of perfection that I had for myself.  Now I realize that while the image of perfection served a purpose in that it gave me something to strive for, it was also limiting.

In life, sometimes we’ve got to make our own definitions so we can forge our own path.  I’ve had to break out of the box of some of my own limiting definitions in order to take risks and grow.

Just today, however, I still found myself reflecting…  What if, when I’m famous (yes, y’all, I have dreams of being famous), people throw my mistakes in my face?  How could I handle that?  How can I manage that?

Then, as I was having this moment of reflection, it hit me! Growth is personal.

We all undergo our own process of growth in our own way, in our own time.  A friend I met in Brazil once said, “The revolution is personal.”  Whatever you believe, whatever you strive for, whatever you practice, whatever you want for yourself starts from within.

It’s a private thing.  It’s a personal thing.  It’s yours.

We ourselves are responsible for learning what life is trying to teach us.  Whether we live a very public life, or a very private life, or whether our lives are somewhere in between, we are all responsible for our own growth and development.  And, that growth is personal.

I’ve been reading so much about OWN lately, and just finished the interview that Susan Casey did with you about the new network in the latest issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.  I also read that you still need about 9,000 hours of programming for the Oprah Winfrey Network.  I have the ideal show:  Everybody Is A Journalist™.

I just won a national contest for best business concept with this idea, through a program sponsored by UNITY Journalists of Color and the Ford Foundation.  (A link to the announcement of winners is here: http://unityjournalists.org/category/newu/.)

This is a program about helping everyday people pick up their pens, their computers or their laptops, their cameras or their camera phones, and tell stories about the world they see.

Journalists have the ability to connect worlds.  That’s where the power comes from, in some ways.  We get to be the eyes and ears of the world and help the world reconnect with itself.

We’ll create works of journalism that incorporate poetry, music, events, songs, lyrics, academic principles of writing or researching, quotes from books, citing authors whose words speak to real-life issues.  We’ll create a journalism that is human, creative and forgiving.  We can handle the responsibility!

*****

While the economy is supposedly on an upswing, many of the impacted industries have now learned the lesson of flexibility. Like many other markets, the fashion industry struggled when the economy took a downturn. Just the same, the industry found ways to adapt and continue to prosper.

The Introduction of Fast Fashion
As the market has changed over the last three years, “fast fashion” has become a dominating force. Fast Fashion is the rapidly emerging trend of quickly produced designs hitting the retail floors in as little as one week. Some brands, like H&M get shipments at their large metropolitan stores up to three times per day, to keep store racks full of the low priced, yet fashionable selections.

Eco/Green Fashion
As a means for saving the planet, the fashion industry is doing its part to “go green”. Many stores are creating eco-friendly shopping spaces, pop-up stores, and promoting the use of reusable shopping bags. When savings can be made on overhead and incidentals, those same savings can be passed on to consumers.

Luxuries Built to Last
This trend is not so new, but has been of great importance in this changing industry. Large luxury brands like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel stand by their promise to provide lifetime guarantees on their goods. This promise has become increasingly important in a market where money must go a long way.

Investment Fashion
Although online shopping has taken a greater role in our changing economy—especially with physical stores closing, being just an online outlet is not enough these days. Now, online vendors are even allowing consumers to get involved in the experience by offering opportunities to buy into the company, or get discounted rates by supporting the brand financially, and donating to special causes close to them.

Fashion is all about the experience, and these trends are surely giving consumers new ways to enjoy shopping.

Over the last few years, saving the environment and “going green” have become major fixtures in our society.  From creating green jobs to building eco-friendly structures, going green is the new in thing!

With conservation becoming so prevalent, there’s no way the fashion industry would be left out.  One of the main attractions in shopping and retail these days is the “shopper”.  Shoppers are reusable shopping bags, which have taken on even more personality and fashion sense as they’ve started to show up Everywhere!

Bloomingdales recently released their own limited edition shopping bag, for the eagerly green shopper.  Many grocery stores and large scale retailers are offering their own bags at low rates for consumers to save on plastic.  Like everything else is fashion, you can even create your own personalized shopper with Green Bagz!  

Fashion weeks across the globe have put their stamp on going green.  Fashion shows and industry events have given shoppers away and promoted the use of reusable bags.  

The importance of going green and being fashionable are now paired hand in hand.  You can carry your fashionable shopper anywhere you go, save on plastic, and protect the environment.  Now that’s fashion savvy!

Check out the 10 Best Reusable Green Shopping Bags!

Your fashionable green shopper:  Don’t leave home without it!

Check out a sneak preview of our website, EverybodyIsAJournalist.com:

Stay tuned for more….