The Top 3 Hard Things

The hard things are the very things that appear easy.

Active listening seems easy. It’s easy to be engaged, totally focused on the content of a conversation or an interaction. It’s easy to pay close attention to what another person is saying, or doing, in the moment.
Active engagement is the easiest thing in the world. It’s easy to be engaged with a situation, a conversation, or a person whom we love and care about.
Active participation with your life, with another person’s life or with a critical situation is the easiest thing in the world.

But, it turns out, in a world of fractured attention spans, media distractions and fancy technical tools, attention, engagement and activity come at an embarrassingly high premium.

And we all make private choices (reflected publicly in our social media posting choices) about what events, people and places we give the most precious resource that we have–our attention–and then, when the world “explodes” the first question we ask is “Why didn’t I know about this?”

Well, we could have paid attention and could have known, if we had really wanted to…right….?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

The Longest Good-bye

Future historians looking at the sports marketing history of the United States will be puzzled by the rise and fall of American Baseball.

They will note that it mirrored the loss of attention span in the overall culture, the need for greater and more brutal spectacle (see the fall of boxing and the rise of MMA for more of this) and the rise of American Football.

American Baseball’s long goodbye also follows closely with the fracturing of media markets and the loss of patience for the long themes inherent in long form journalism.

No event marks this more starkly than the swan song of Derek Jeter. Here is a player that–if he had come along 75 years ago–might not have been as honored because of the statistics, but would have been valued even more because of his heart.

Unfortunately, he came to athletic prominence in a time of dwindling respect for athletes as people and potential role models and a rise in overall cultural coarseness, disinterest and, of course the decline in interest around of his chosen game.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Gatekeepers’ Dent in the Universe

Nobody wakes up in the morning and decides to say “no” to the next big idea.

People wake up in the morning and decide to go to their jobs as secretaries, executive assistants, Vice-Presidents and others, and do their job as best they can.

For them, that’s making a dent in their universe.

And, when a “no” falls from their lips about the big idea that you want to pitch to their boss who signs the check and makes the decision to go forward, they are making a dent in your universe.

Their dent doesn’t match your dent, but it doesn’t mean that their dent is any less valuable, interesting or relevant.

It just feels that way in the moment…

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-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] 3 Truths of Innovation for Human Failures

Working in the space of forgiveness and reconciliation has exposed us to some unusual truths, that people and organizations experiencing conflict situations in the more “concrete” segments of our world–such as the workplace, or the school–would rather ignore.

The first truth is that people in conflict are truly people and bring all the dimensions of people, including spiritual ones, to bear in a conflict, no matter the location of that conflict situation.
The second truth is that many segments, organizations, and profit-centers in our Western culture would prefer to ignore those spiritual dimensions and how they play into conflicts spirals.

This is based upon the mistaken belief that spirituality only occurs between 9am and noon on Sunday mornings.

Or not at all.

Ever.

The third truth is that high conflict people have a spiritual dimension that rules their behavior, based in deep seated beliefs, past experiences, and deep seated traumas and that no one engagement–or workshop attendance–and learning of new skills will “fix.”

Our “move fast and break things” approach to innovation and disruption is fine in the world of physical objects such as technology, but falls miserably short when addressing the issues that real people bring to the table when they are organized into groups of larger than three to accomplish a task.

There’s no app, or cybernetic/Internet of things, revolution that’s going to address these three truths.

The only way to get there is to delve deeply, truthfully and uncompromisingly, into the human heart.

Download the new FREE eBook courtesy of Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT), on Forgiveness and Reconciliation by clicking the link here.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

The Political Body

The monumental conflicts of the 21st century will revolve around who owns your privacy.

Think about it: When you engage in social sharing–and, increasingly all of the Web works because you decide to share pieces of yourself with others–you tacitly provide approval and permission to your personal life.

Carol Hanisch had it right, but not the way that she thought. The body even is going to be turned to the benefit of the social Web, collected data, and politicized privacy.

But the core question remains: Who owns you, your data and even your body? Women have a right to choose, but does everybody have a right to privacy in spite of wanting access to the social web, wearable and even methods of payment, that collects their data?

Intriguing questions, and ones that are already being asked, but not answered, by ethicists, moralists, lawyers, philosophers and others. We know this: where there are no easy answers, black and white seem to be the only ways forward.

Which leads inevitably to more–not fewer–shades of gray.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

On 9-11

13 years ago today, between 8:46 am and 9:03 am two planes hit the both the North and South towers of the World Trade Center.

The ripples from that event are not done going out yet into the pool of years that will compose the remainder of the 21^st century.

The results of those events—and the consequences from our decisions in response to those events—are shaping our lives, our governmental policy and our societal responses to everything from social justice to economic policy.

Let us honor the dead, keep consideration of the living and work toward positing more questions that can be answered with peaceful conflict instead of the violent kind.

-Peace Be With You All-

Failure is Not an Option

It turns out that the most important trait for success for children is conscientiousness.

Conscientiousness now has become the third positive character trait for success in life along with grit and empathy.

Empathy is a core trait of emotional intelligence, in that it requires us to abandon self to try to get into the skin of others.

Raising children who are conscientious—even in this world—and who will find a way through failure without damaging others, is the only way to bring about the next great moon shot.

You know that place where failure is not an option.

-Peace Be With You All-

Most Valuable Battleground

Is anyone listening?

Reading well, listening thoroughly and responding appropriately are the hallmarks of working through the minefield that is adult interaction.

However, our brains are changing demonstrably through intersection and interaction with the internet, social media and mobile devices.

The brain already processes information twice as fast as a human being speaks it, and thus attention wanders and multitasking becomes a way to keep the brain engaged and to avoid boredom, rather than to actually accomplish tasks of merit.

Listening well and maintaining eye contact is critical, but as face-to-face communication has degraded, eye contact becomes the hallmark of a valuable conversation.

The bunker that we have built inside of ourselves is cracked through eye contact, listening well and responding appropriately, but attention—true attention—becomes the most valuable battleground in the 21^st century.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Christian Peacemaking in a Fallen World – Bully Edition

Bullies are everywhere it seems.

They are at school. They are at work.

Have they always been around or are we only now becoming sensitive to their presence and their impact?

From Donald Sterling to the workplace bully to the disaffected school shooter, modern Western culture seems to be turning up more and more of the disaffected and the dysfunctional.

Eventually, the societal call will come to violate the inviolable in order to ferret out and better address the impacts of bully pathology.

The conflation between the everyday bully and the societal scourge will become easier and easier as time progresses and peace will become harder and harder to attain.

There will be less understanding, less forgiveness and the road to reconciliation will be even tougher.

The hard work of #BuildingForTheFuture is just beginning…

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Grains of Sand in the Human Heart

A handful of sand contains one million grains.

How many ideas does that number of grains represent?

How much untapped potential?

The conflicts of the 21^st century will more pointedly focus on the conflict between potential and potential neither realized, nor accessed.

Real wisdom and leadership will come, not from designing more fancy tools, but from accessing old knowledge and applying it to, what will appear to be new challenges.

How many grains of sand can be contained in the human heart?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/