A funny thing happened while I was just doing my job

This week, my employer, D2L Inc., held it's annual users conference Fusion in Las Vegas. One of the main stage keynote sessions is called Solutions Spotlight, and it is focused on the new products and features that we're about to release. The hallmark of the keynote is that we demo new things that aren't live on the product yet, and we demo them live. My role at D2L is Product Management Director for our corporate segment, which basically means I drive strategy across development, marketing, support, and sales to meet the needs of our corporate customers. I was invited to do the portion of the keynote focused on the new corporate features, and while I practiced more for this demo than anything I've ever presented in my life, it was an honor to represent the work of the team at Fusion.

My mom has been asking me for the last year or so if there was a chance for her to see me in action at work. She obviously knows me very well, but she has told me she doesn't get to see "Work Koreen" and so, when our CMO took a picture of me onstage in one of our practice sessions, I posted it up on Facebook and tagged her in it, as well as my husband who was holding down the fort at home and who loves to see me present. So I posted the pic quickly in the minute or two I had to myself that day, thought nothing of it, and spent the rest of the day in customer meetings and more practice sessions.

When I got back to my room late that night and finally had a chance to talk to my husband, he asked me, "Did you see the comments to your post on Facebook?"

I of course had not, as I had been working hard for about 16 hours that day.

This was the first comment on my post:

I know the guy who posted the comment only as an acquaintance. I met him years ago through some learning industry event or another, and we had somehow ended up as Facebook friends. I know that he's retired, I know that I don't agree with his politics but I appreciate that he seems willing to agree to disagree. I know that he likes to make controversial (but I've never thought offensive) statements at times on people's Facebook posts. I know that he often will post complimentary things on my own Facebook posts, about my kids or family, etc. I was surprised by his comment on my picture.

Now, if you remember, I had tagged my mom and my husband in the post. So the first thing they saw after seeing my pic was this comment. My mom was upset. My husband was upset. My sister saw it too and was upset. I mean, it's pretty upsetting, right?

So here's the sad truth. I wasn't actually that upset. It wasn't, to be honest, the worst thing that had been said to me even that day. And over the course of my career in tech and gaming, the most dismissive, sexist, over the top things have been said to me that I think I have become numb to a lot of it.

The obvious sexism rarely bothers me anymore. It's the subtle stuff, the things that happen by well intentioned people, that accumulates and over time suffocates me.

What DID upset me, though, was that my family was upset. My mom doesn't know all of the overt and subtle sexism I have to navigate. My sister hasn't ever worked in tech. My husband has heard my stories, but I don't think he always gets what it's like; he can sympathize but not empathize. And here was a really crude comment that showed them all, more than I intended to, what it's like to be a woman in tech leadership.

Here's where things get pretty amazing. Other friends that I've met through work started commenting on my thread. Some of them copied the comment and posted it on their walls, calling out the bad behavior. Some of them replied back directly to the poster on how inappropriate it was. But the best was when people started posting comments about what I'm like professionally, where they first met me, what they thought of me both personally and professionally, and how I've impacted them and their careers. And my mom, my sister, and my husband got to see all of that, too.

In honesty, I wasn't able to respond to the hundreds of people who reached out to me over the past few days. I hope that this post helps in way of explanation: I was full stop working and connecting with folks at our user's conference, and I'm happy to say that not only did the live demo go off without a hitch, but I didn't fall off the stage or accidentally curse during the demo. I did read all of your incredibly kind words. I was lifted up by the memories of when we first met, and how you've all impacted me and my career as well.

It has crossed my mind that I'm sorry it took such a bad situation to hear all of the incredibly humbling things people said about me, but I am so grateful that I did. In the balance, more happy tears were shed than sad. That's all you can ask for, really.

And the guy who posted the comment? He never responded to any of the subsequent comments and posts. He hasn't deleted the comment. Maybe he was serious, maybe he was trolling us...I don't know.

Last night when I finally got home from the conference, Sallie, my 10 year old daughter, asked me how my trip went. I told her pretty good, and that I had presented that day. She said, I know, I saw the picture of you on that BIG stage. She said, "You're pretty badass, mom."

I think I'll excuse her cursing, just this once.

Becoming a mom

When Jackson, my firstborn, was about to turn 1, I knew I wanted another child. My pregnancy with him had not been easy, and with 3 months of bed rest fresh in my mind and the complications I experienced with a second round of fertility medication, another pregnancy seemed too great a risk. We decided to adopt. In the late summer of 2004, I traveled to Russia to meet my son Vardan. 

When people ask, I've compared the process of international adoption to pregnancy. The first trimester is filled with emotion, anxiety, and trying to figure out what all of this means to you...with adoption, it also means A LOT of paperwork. More than you can even imagine. It also means a lot of decisions. One of the unique decisions that you can make in the adoption process is selecting the gender of your child. I agonized over that decision, until one day, sitting alone in the car and talking to...I don't know. Myself? the Universe? God? I heard myself say, "Jackson needs a brother." And so the decision was made. 

The next few months, like the second trimester, is just waiting. And waiting. Your paperwork has been submitted and you fill your days thinking about your new child, wishing, wondering and trying to make plans. The last few months are just like the last trimester of pregnancy. Can I just have this kid already? I want to meet him! The wait is almost painful with anticipation.

My last trimester of the adoption process began with the arrival of an email with two pictures attached of our "referral." He was beautiful. Big brown eyes, chubby cheeks, and curly brown ringlets covering his head. From the minute I saw him, I was in love. We had a name picked out for him, but when we saw him, we knew he'd already been appropriately named Vardan. Every day waiting to meet him after receiving that email was agony, but a few weeks later, he was cuddled up in my arms for the first time. Our first trip was to officially accept him as our son, and then we had to leave him at the orphanage and wait 6 horrible weeks until our second trip to Russia and court finalization of the adoption, when we could bring him home.

It was that second trip, after leaving the orphanage and walking around the streets of Sochi with him, that I feel like I actually became a mom. Sure, when I had Jackson, I had that moment too, holding him in the hospital, the nurse came in to give me a shot and he cried in empathetic pain and I knew that he was MINE and I was a mom. But it wasn't until I had Vardan, 18 months old and holding on to me like a koala bear, that I really felt what it meant to be a mom. 

Some people have asked me why I chose international adoption. The selfish truth is that it seemed easier. There is an abundance of babies in overseas orphanages who need homes and families to love them. But it wasn't even that. I didn't want my son's "real mom" showing up some day. I didn't think I could handle the competition of another mom. This little boy was mine and I didn't want to share him.

As I walked along the Black Sea shore, holding my son, I felt desperate. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I wanted to meet Vardan's birth mom. I knew that it was not a competition for who was more of his mother, and I desperately wanted this stranger who had given birth to my son to know that he was going to be ok. I don't know much about her. I know he was her first child, that she was an immigrant from Armenia, and that she was only 4'10". I know that she was a hairdresser, was homeless and living with a friend, she didn't smoke, and before she gave birth to our beautiful boy, she visited the orphanage on numerous occasions to make sure that he was going to be ok. That's the piece that stuck with me: she wanted to know he was going to be ok and there was no way for me to tell her.

I can only imagine her life, and the circumstances that led to her decision. I can only project my own experience of motherhood on her, this woman who lives on the other side of the planet, who gave me the most precious gift in all the world. When I was flying back from Moscow to New York City, all I could think was: I want her to know he's ok. He's safe, he's beautiful and he's going to be ok. I wanted her to know that it didn't even phase me on that flight when he stayed awake for 36 hours and only wanted me to hold him, feeding him Cheerios one-by-one. I wanted her to know when Jackson met him for the first time after our long trip home from Russia, the first thing he said was "Oh brother, I've missed you so much." Later, I wanted her to know when we got his asthma controlled and he said his first English sentence (I want that!) and he got his hearing aids. I want her to know how he's shockingly gifted at Legos and that he plays a mean trombone. I want her to know that he's got a big heart. I want her to know that he asks about her, and wants to learn Russian so that if he meets her someday, she'll understand him.

If you've seen my family and I walk in to church on Sunday, you know that we take up a full pew. Together, my husband John and I have six children. Some people have said, "Oh, you're a blended family!" and usually we reply, "No, we're just a family." And this is why:  our family is not defined by biology, but by choice.

Your heart, the love you can give, is not finite or discriminate. It multiplies and grows in ways you can't anticipate. When you have a child, you think, I could never love another person as much as I love this baby. And then, miraculously, you do, with the next child, and the next and the next. There is no limit, and that love is not tempered by the circumstances that brought a child to you, only by the openness with which you bring her into your heart.

John tells me that I have a big heart, and if I do, it's because each kiddo that came into our family...by birth, by adoption, or in our big fat geek wedding last summer: Jackson, Vardan, Sallie, Clarisse, Elvis and Zevon, have shown me how to open my heart bigger and wider, not just to them, but to the people, history and circumstances that brought us together. I've learned that being a mom is very little about giving birth to someone and everything about the choices and sacrifices you make for another to help them grow. I understand now that it’s only a good thing to have more people to love and nurture our children. Our family is big and complicated and, more than anything, loving. 

On this Mother's Day, I'm thinking about Vardan's first mom, his Russian mom, his biological mom. Maybe I'll be able to share the blessing she gave me with her someday. Until then, thank you - cpaceba, Anna, for helping me see what it means to be a mom.

Top # of reasons you should buy my new book, Immersive Learning

It's official! The book is out!

(Ok, technically you could have already pre-ordered it, but today was the official announcement from my publisher, ASTD)

Having stole my own thunder yesterday, I'd like to celebrate the official release by listing the top # of reasons to buy Immersive Learning. I don't know how many reasons I'll come up with, and I titled this blog first, so the exact number of top reasons is a mystery even to me until this post is published. Actually, I'm not even going to count :)

Here we go! Reasons to buy Immersive Learning:

• You believe that learning is better when it's not passive. 
• You've ever said "Practice makes perfect," or quoted that "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" quote. 
• You think performance objectives are more meaningful than learning objectives.
• You've ever created an avatar. 
• You think there must be a better way to assess learning than multiple choice questions. 
• You have a smartphone. 
• You've ever played house, army, or, if you were like me, "store."
• You prefer green apples.
• You're related to me. 
• You've played one of my ARGs.  
• You want to know what an ARG is. 
• You know who the Underpants Gnomes are. 
• You work in corporate learning and want to learn a new design skill to add to your designer toolbox. 
• You work in higher education and want to engage your students in meaningful practice.
• You work as a K12 teacher and you're looking for ways to transition your classroom to Common Core.
• You want to flip your classroom or training and want to create amazing application activities with  all that time you used to spend lecturing. 
• You have a favorite character from a movie or tv show that you quote. 
• You made a resolution with me and my book can help. 
• I used you as an example in it.
• I used someone you know as an example in it. 
• You are looking for a book to give a great Amazon review. 
• You haven't spent all of your holiday money on Candy Crush yet. 
• You believe knowing something and doing it are two totally different things.
• You heard me speak at a conference and I made some sense.
• You want to design meaningful and effective learning experiences.  

I'm sure there are more! If you think of any, please add them in the comments. And thank you, THANK YOU, for all of your support!

Book release eve! Immersive Learning has left the building

Well, it's finally here. My book release.

It's been 2 1/2 years and tomorrow, ASTD Publishing will officially announce the release of my first book, Immersive Learning. While I haven't seen the actual physical copy of the book yet, I hear that it is currently on it's way. Last week, in a book marketing call, I had this surreal moment of "OMG MY BOOK IS DONE." Which is true, and has been true for awhile, but there is something pretty amazing about knowing that all of the work that went into it is now, finally, realized in an actual book that you can buy on Amazon.

My kids also think that is pretty cool.

You're going to hear a lot about my book and about immersive learning this year. I'll be speaking and blogging and organizing book clubs and collecting case studies and in general, happily talking about how to design for practice. I am thrilled to have an actual artifact that encapsulates my research, experience and design practices. I'm excited to share it with you, to talk and discuss and debate and to learn.

I thought I would be terrified, putting something so personal out there for the world to critique. But as we're on the cusp of the book launch, all I feel is joy.

So, pick up a copy of my book if you're so inclined and join in the conversation this year about immersive learning. You can even get a free chapter to see what it's all about. Or just make a training resolution with me and commit to making this year a better year for design and learning (or both).

Happy 2014 everyone and thanks for your support!

Sincerely,
Koreen Pagano, Author :) 

Ring it, 2014!

It's my end of the year post, and I probably should be writing it tomorrow because this morning I have such a heavy heart. When I think back on this year, I'll remember so many amazing things: a scruffy little dog joining our crew, John finding a job he loves, our wedding, how the kids have grown and blossomed, finishing my book, finding an amazing community at USSB (and jumping in with both feet), and exciting new ventures on the horizon. It has been such a great year.

And still, there are things to do. Today the youngest kiddo got on a plane back to Pennsylvania, throwing the house into a gloomy quiet as we all deal with missing him. We have more work to do to replace the band-aids put in place when we moved to California and it's tough to know what to say to him when he tells us he doesn't want to leave. We don't want you to either, little guy.

This year challenged me to heal and forgive myself for past mistakes. Early in the year, I took a deep breath and told the truth about a past relationship, which was hard and scary and long overdue. After I finally just said the truth out loud, I realized that although we're all the heroes in our own stories, you can easily be cast as the villain in someone else's. Do any of us really see ourselves as a villain? And yet, we make mistakes, we hurt other people, we act out of selfishness and fear. We all do it. As we travel along our paths and make good and bad choices, some of us look at others with compassion and love and forgiveness for the mistakes that we make. Others call names and throw stones and vilify people for their bad choices. I guess it all depends on how you look at the world and how you write the story of your life. I have never thought in terms of good guys and bad guys; real people are so much more complicated than that. And yet every day you meet people who throw a label on you, fitting or not, and there you are, cast in a role you didn't audition for.

This year I've come to terms with being other people's villain. It hasn't been easy. When you're your own toughest critic, it's easy to hear the bad stuff because it justifies that little voice in your head that tells you you're not good enough.  I want to be worthy of all of the good in my life, and it's so easy to believe that I'm not. When I see the amazing people our kids are, when John shows me every day what an amazing partner I have, when I walk out the door in the morning and see ocean and mountains...it's easy to wonder if I'm worthy of all of this beauty. Maybe I'm not. And yet, here it is.

If there was a word of the year for me, it was appreciation. I do not take for granted a single second of the happiness of 2013: so much growth, so much joy, so much love. I'm looking ahead with wonder at the possibilities of 2014 and the work I still want to do. And with that, here's the resolution recap and reveal. It's good to have goals :)

In 2013, I had 3 resolutions: play more games, run another 5k and get to know the local Unitarian Universalists here in Santa Barbara.

I definitely played more games, although they were more of the board game variety. Maybe it was the fact that I can't get much console time with all the kids in the house, but I branched out to mobile and new board games this year. All in all, I'd say mission accomplished, although I'd really like to up my video game play in the next year.

I didn't run another 5k because my doctor told me no. Shortly after running my first 5k, I threw out my back spectacularly, and afterwards was basically cut off from running. Instead, I did p90x before the wedding, which would have been great, but as soon as the wedding was over we were DONE. Not a total bust, but not really what I had in mind in terms of consistent training.  

I totally pwn'd the third resolution. Not only did we join USSB in January of this year, but I'm now serving on the Worship Committee and the Membership Committee. I have grown so much from being part of this community. I can hardly remember what it was like to not be part of this church and am so looking forward to the opportunities to participate in the next year. 

So, for 2014, I've been giving the resolutions a lot of thought. There are some big ones. Let's see how it goes!

My first resolution is to consistently practice yoga. Back in my pre-kid days, yoga helped  me overcome anxiety attacks, kept my back in shape, and generally made me a happier person. Plus, I like it. So for this year, I'm committing to practicing yoga consistently again, finding a studio or two that I like, and carving out an hour or two a week for some time to find my center. 

Second, I'm resolving to find my focus in my "hobby" ventures. I've had a couple great starts in 2013, but 2014 is all about follow-through. There's some great things ahead and I'm ready.

And finally, the big one: I'm giving up meat. This one is going to be a huge challenge, and I don't want to say I'm going to be vegetarian, because I'm still planning on eating fish and eggs. I'm also pretty sure that I'll eat bacon, and if I go to Michigan and my mom makes venison steaks, well...I'm eating them. Despite these exceptions, I've just been reading too much about factory farming, and I've come to realize that I don't believe in the practices that provide us with meat. Having grown up a butcher's daughter, I knew exactly where our meat came from. Today is very different, and while I have no moral opposition to eating meat, I want to know how it got on my plate. I already started on this resolution, and so far, so good. 

Thank you 2013 for all the adventures and wonder and love. You're gonna be a tough act to follow.

  

 

Vote now! FUND$TER in the Global Startup Battle

I need your help.

Our start up FUND$TER from Santa Barbara Startup Weekend is competing in the Global Startup Battle. 

Would you vote for me? 
http://globalstartupbattle.agorize.com/en/juries/10/votables/315

Reasons to vote:
1. You gave birth to me or we're in some way related. 

2. We went to school together, we've worked together or we've dated(!) and if i win you can have bragging rights that you know me.

3. You still owe money on your student loans.

4. You have no idea how you're going to afford your kids' college.

5. I voted for something for you or your kids at some point.

6. You have ever had a conversation about the lack of women tech entrepreneurs.

7. You drink Coke. (They are sponsoring the competition.)

8. You think there should be an option for funding college besides student loans and your parents.

9. You need a distraction from your family over Thanksgiving and you can use this as an excuse.

You can vote every 24 hours until December 6th! Please help us make it to the finals!

And please share...thank you :)

Immersed in fear: a study in design

This weekend, I took John on an early birthday date to Knott's Scary Farm. If you haven't been, imagine an entire amusement park transformed into a macabre scare fest, where you can't even walk from one destination to the next without something jumping out at you. All in all, we went through 11 haunted houses/mazes, saw a couple creepy shows, and even snuck in a roller coaster ride. We literally spent 6 hours surrounded by fog and freaks, screaming and laughing the whole time.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect before we went, but coming out of the experience, I couldn't help but apply my designer lens on what it was like to be scared for hours on end, and how it changed my behavior and thinking.

From the moment that you passed the ticketing gate, the experience began. Frightening characters accosted you as you tried to orient yourself, snapping some sort of clicking contraption so close to your face it was a wonder they never actually touched you. It was dark, the fog machines were in high gear, but you could still see the creepy people intermingled with the crowd, and just as you thought you had safely passed them, they would jump out at you or target you for spooking. If you showed weakness, screaming or otherwise obviously reacting, they would continue coming after you, and often others would join them. There was more than one occasion when we'd see a patron cornered, cowering, surrounded by spooks. It was unnerving, yet exhilarating, trying to face your own startle reflex and forgotten nightmares.

The haunted houses and mazes were worse, of course. Not just because of the closed in walls with creepers hiding behind curtains and in corners, and not only because the clicking in your face and the jumping out was unavoidable...it was worse because you knew they were there, you knew what was going to happen, and it STILL made you scream.

And not just scream, but laugh...laugh because while you were scared to death, it was mixed with the

Photo credit: http://ocdeals.ocregister.com

relief of knowing that even as that killer clown was LITERALLY breathing down your neck as he followed you from room to room, you were safe knowing they couldn't actually touch you. We went through haunted maze after haunted ride after haunted house because we wanted to be scared but we knew there was no real danger, and that gave us the freedom to feel the fear and work through it.  We could laugh at the folly of our screams and yelps, knowing it wasn't really a vampires' lair or a BBQ joint where the sandwiches were made out of...well...you can probably guess.

Even as we walked through paths between attractions, our radars were on high alert. We learned that certain scenarios increased your likelihood for an "attack"...particularly if you looked directly at them. Or if you were completely engrossed in something, like looking at a map (thanks, corpse bride, for smacking that out of my hands...good one. I was just trying to find the next maze...). Three hours in, we had seen enough other people attract the unwanted attention of the creepies and made enough of our own errors that we finally were able to make through a path (mostly) without being attacked, only to turn a corner to walk down a completely fog-filled path, where you could barely see the person in front of you, and no more. Surrounded by mist, we were vulnerable again, waiting for something bad to happen...but it didn't. It didn't even matter; after hours of raw fear, just walking through fog was terrorizing.

I relied on John to help buffer my fear, to assure me that if I was going down, it wouldn't be alone. While strangers would give you up or run away when the ghouls attacked, couples and friends physically clung to each other for support, screaming and laughing together.

This is what immersive design should do...elicit the emotions of a real event and challenge you to react and adapt appropriately, but give you the freedom to experiment and practice and fail and succeed and see what happens in all of those situations. Yes, we all would hope that we wouldn't be trapped in a post-apocalyptic gaming arena a la Mad Max's Thunderdome...but if we found ourselves there, there's a certain simulated arena in Knott's Scary Farm where we could practice.

I've never been scared for six hours straight. And I can't remember having so much fun. 

DevLearn 2013 Lessons Learned

I'm a notoriously bad note-taker (I blame it on paying attention), but coming out of DevLearn this year, I had some big epiphanies that I wanted to get down in writing.

First, thank you, as always, to the e-Learning Guild for hosting a wonderful event. Every year I say I'm going to present less and attend more sessions, and every year my dance card fills up. David Holcombe, Heidi Fisk, David Kelly, Reuben Tozman - another inspiring year! And a special thanks to Juli Balding, who is the world's best herder of cats.

In no particular order, my thoughts and observations on DevLearn 2013:

1. People have a hard time breaking out of "conference mode" - I would have liked to see more people building Lego robots. Maybe next year I can convince them to have a "Battle Bot" competition during DemoFest and bring in a Battle Bot alumni to host (ironically, I know one...). In general, I like the hands on learning activities, but I think it's difficult to get people to transition from soaking it all in to trying something new. Still...I think this is worth broadening and refining - and could evolve into a real application at a conference of immersive learning.

2. I wanted more diversity in the keynotes.

3. I didn't have to explain what immersive learning was so much anymore. I had GREAT turn outs at my pre-con workshop and Morning Buzz sessions. I like seeing the shift from "ooh shiny" technology focus to "what can we really do with this," and not in a dismissive way.

4. The data sessions were packed, and it's clear that many people still don't know what or how to measure. What the LMSs typically measure and track aren't the metrics that executives care about and that is a serious gap we need to bridge. A few years ago, I did a panel with Cammy Bean and Ellen Wagner at Learning Solutions on speaking the language of the business. We need that BIG TIME in data analytics. I want to show more examples. I want to break down a PNL for training professionals to really get what we need to communicate. I already have ideas on how to refine my session. Maybe there's a book in there.

5. There seemed like a lot less higher ed and government attendees. I like seeing a good mix, but all of my sessions were heavy on the enterprise attendees. I'd love to see more diversity, not less!

6. I worry about the new tech hype. As the girl who touted virtual worlds a few years back, I am seeing parallels in some of the new technologies. Augmented reality hasn't found it's home yet. Mobile is still struggling with good design practices. Games are finally accepted as valuable, but still there are so few examples of organizations implementing them in deep ways...still a lot of pilot tests. And now we have AI and robots and Google Glass and sensors...and yet many are still struggling to show how training adds value (and is not just a cost center) to an organization. Which, of course, takes me back to analytics...we need to keep the horse in front of the cart, and while I'm a huge fan of new tech, I worry that we need to catch up to where tech was 3 years ago. (Am I getting old and jaded?)

7. I was thrilled to get to hear Ian Bogost's keynote and even more excited that he delineated games from gamification. It's a message that learning folks need to hear, and he really broke it down well. I hope it helped some of that "let's make this boring activity a game" syndrome. Plus, I fan-girled out a little that he recognized me.

8. I've been talking about ARGs for 5 years and people still don't really know what they are. Part of it lies in the confusion of games versus gamification, but I'd like to really push more examples and case studies. It's a low cost way to create immersive learning that is completely under-leveraged. It may be time to jump back in to that pool.

9. Don't get a tattoo in Vegas when you live an hour from LA. Especially if you already got a tattoo in Vegas last year.

10. People are sheep. NO ONE would enter the Silver Clouds exhibit at the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Bellagio, even after John and I stormed in. Why would you not experience the art? Jump into it, people. JUMP. IN.

11. Every conference I go to, I think about the difference in value of presentations versus conversations.  Presentations are valuable, but it's usually the conversations where we learn the most. What would it look like to structure sessions around conversations with the goal of an outcome. Something like, "I need help with..." and "I can help with...!" and pair people up? Maybe we need problem - solution speed dating?

12. I didn't get as much social time this year. I think that's ok, but I do like to stay for the whole conference, which I couldn't do this year. There's always next year, right?

13. Smart people I admire take lots of good conference notes, or compile peoples' tweets, etc. You should check out Cammy Bean's blog for notes on the sessions she attended (including one of mine, and Ian Bogost's previously mentioned keynote). And David Kelly's compilation of the conference back channel, of course.

14. People really do love lynda.com. I can't tell you how many people stopped me to tell me their personal stories, and thank me for what lynda.com has done for them. It really makes me proud to represent a company that people feel so passionately about.

A few more thought-provoking conversations will be covered in separate blog posts, but my key take-away from DevLearn 2013? It's still all about the design, and the data, not the tech. We just need to figure out design and data FOR the tech. 

A Habit of Forgiveness

Wayside Pulpit quote

Yesterday morning I led my first service at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara. This month's theme was forgiveness, and I focused the service around learning to forgive, and building a habit of forgiveness. I can tell you that this process of leading a worship service is one of the biggest challenges I think I've ever taken on. It has taken me weeks of focus and thought to figure out how to approach the service, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to push myself to learn and grow and hopefully help others to see forgiveness in a new way.

A surprise good luck card

Thanks (always) to my wonderful family who were amazing cheerleaders, to Minette Riordan for being a great worship associate partner for the service, and to Ken Ryals for surrounding us with beautiful music.

Here, in its written form is my reflection: 

A Habit of Forgiveness

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm really sorry. I'm sorry.

I have a really bad habit of apologizing for...everything. Problems big and small, things that I did directly, or things that I had nothing to do with, chances are if you are upset about something and tell me about it, I'll apologize. It’s not that I walk around carrying the weight of the world; I just tend to take on responsibility for things in an attempt to alleviate the burden on everyone else. So I'll say I'm sorry for all manner of things and shift the responsibility of dealing with issues from other people to myself, as if to say "this is my fault, I'll try to fix it and make things better for you."

A few years ago, I made it my New Year’s resolution to stop apologizing.

It's not that I didn't want to offer support or friendship or kindness, but just the simple act of apologizing misplaces responsibility when the apology isn't warranted and puts me in a position of constantly being responsible to everyone. Quite frankly, I make enough mistakes on my own without taking on other people's.

To be honest, I failed pretty spectacularly at breaking the habit. What the resolution DID do was force me to take a look at how much I apologize and why. 

We all learn to apologize at a very young age. Our caregivers prompt us to say I'm sorry as part of the process of learning from our mistakes. We learn that apologies do two things: first, they allow us to take responsibility and acknowledge our mistakes and secondly, apologies are implicitly an ask for forgiveness from whomever our actions impacted. I learned this from my parents and teachers, and in turn, I'm teaching my children the importance of apologizing too. 

We also are taught, from a young age, that there are "right" ways to apologize. It's not simply a matter of saying the words...you have to show that you mean it and that you don't intend to make the same mistake again. We learn that an insincere apology often has the exact opposite affect of what we want; when my kids try to give me a fake apology like "I'm sorry that you're upset that I didn't finish my homework" or "I'm sorry that I can't seem to do anything right" or "I'm sorry that you didn't wake me up on time"...typically, that will escalate the conversation to a more unpleasant one about taking on personal responsibility, sincerity and consequences for not owning up to your mistakes. But a sincere apology conveys an important message: the person who hurt me is sorry, I believe that they understood what they did and I believe that they will try not to hurt me again.

Usually by the time we're adults, we've learned from role models and experience the importance of a sincere apology. For some people like me, the lesson was over-extended, learned so well that it became a habit. I had begun to confuse empathy with apology.

We learn how to apologize, but do we learn to forgive? 

Forgiveness for me is a much harder habit to form than apologizing, because apologizing is a simple ask, both a statement and a question: I’m sorry and will you forgive me?  But forgiveness is not so simple. Forgiveness is a process of letting go, and healing that doesn’t always happen right away. Forgiveness is both healing and release, and some times those things take time.  But it is worth it, learning to forgive, because without forgiveness we would walk through our days with broken hearts…suspicious, bitter, angry…when we forgive our hearts are mended and we are able to move forward in joy and love and an openness to what is next.

Forgiveness is also much harder to teach because while apologizing is an outward expression of regret, forgiveness is an internal process, often unnoticed and not explicitly communicated. How do we learn something that needs to happen within us, without external feedback from others?

Colloquial wisdom tells us to "forgive and forget." But let's be honest: when we are hurt or when someone does something hurtful to us, do we ever really forget? Yes, the intent of this quick phrase is good...when you forgive, you should truly forgive and let the hurt go. But forgiving should not be followed by forgetting, even if we'd sometimes want it to be, or else we can’t learn from our experiences. 

We've probably all known someone who, as I call it, is prone to bring out the "laundry list." You know, the person who appears to forgive some infraction in the moment, but who, at some tipping point, can list out everything you've done wrong in the last 10 years in great detail. It becomes clear that they didn't truly accept your previous apologies, just as surely as they won't truly accept your apology in that moment. Maybe you've even been that person, the one who has brought out "the list" even though you knew that you would neither receive a real apology for your list of grievances, or if you did, you were likely not in a place to offer your forgiveness. It's hard to forgive the accumulated hurts we collect over time all at once, if not impossible. And forget them? Not a chance. 

I taught a workshop a couple weeks ago on learning; specifically, the cognitive science of learning and memory. There's sensory memory: everything you perceive creates a sensory memory that you may or may not even realize moment to moment. We remember the taste of really good hot cocoa or the sound of our partner's voice or the subtle smell of our grandparent's house that we probably can't describe, but we know it when we smell it. There's also short-term memory: a little bit of information that we can store in our brains until we use it...and then it disappears. And then there's long-term memory: things that we remember because as we take in the information, it makes connections in our brain. Those memories strengthen the more connections that are made, or when the same thing happens repeatedly. Each time I walk into my kids' rooms and see that they didn't put their clean laundry in their drawers, it connects to the previous times that that has happened and fires a series of responses in my brain: they're lazy! they're dirty! they're rooms are a total mess! i'm a bad mom! i'm not appreciated! or, they're just kids and when I was their age, I didn't much like putting away my clean clothes either...and it's with that last one that I set aside whatever anger and frustration I feel and move on to forgiveness, and resolve to work as a family in keeping our house in working order. 

When we remember, we have learned something. When we use that information, retrieving it from our memory over and over, to apply it in new situations, with new memories formed each time we use what we know in new contexts, it strengthens the staying power of that information in our brain. That's the value of the memories of my childhood in raising my own children - I can remember what it was like to be 11, and it allows me to empathize with my kids and move past hurt to forgiveness. 

There are different types of memory: episodic memory is the composite of your experiences. And "flashbulb" memory - the memory of a particularly emotionally charged event. I used to ask the question "where were you when the space shuttle challenger exploded?" until I realized that many younger folks weren't born yet. Unfortunately we have a more modern collective memory: where were you on 9/11?  Our episodic memory and our flashbulb memory are why it's difficult to forgive and forget. In fact, we shouldn't forget, because forgetting means we haven't learned. Keeping the memory of a past hurt or pain is what can help us not repeat mistakes, or motivate us to approach life differently, or reprioritize the things in our life that are truly most important. If those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, then remembering the past, good and bad, helps us to move forward, learn and grow.

Sometimes, we use knowledge so much and in so many different contexts that we develop muscle memory - the type of memory that causes you to automatically brake when you see a police officer with a speed gun on the highway, or not remember how you drove from home to work, or allows my pre-teen boys to play a video game using complex button controls without thinking about it...or allows me to play the song from my freshman year of high school marching band from memory if someone were to hand me a mellophone. 

This muscle memory is the sign that you've mastered and internalized a process that you can retrieve at the right time without even thinking about it. This is the same type of memory that forms habits, like my constant apologies. 

What if we learn to forgive and practice it so much that we create a habit of forgiveness? What if, just as we learned the right way to apologize, to identify and communicate the feeling of remorse, we could learn, internalize and build muscle memory around the process of forgiveness? 

Charles Duhigg, the author of the book The Power of Habit, breaks down the process of building a habit into three steps.

Step 1 is “The Cue.” The cue is the context, the trigger for the habit that you want to create. If the habit we are hoping to develop is forgiveness, then you might think the context or trigger would be an apology.  But how often is an apology insincere, or never comes at all? An apology might be the prompt to express forgiveness to another, but can’t be the cue to develop a forgiveness habit. Better, the cue for forgiveness is actually the hurt itself, the point at which we feel emotional, psychological or physical pain. 

Step 2 is “The Reward.” When forming a habit, Duhigg tells us that one of the critical components is making the behavior more favorable than any other action. In the case of forgiveness, it’s hard to imagine what type of reward would be better than the forgiveness itself, and that’s actually a good thing. Because in order for a habit to really form, we have to be able to remove an extrinsic reward like a cookie, and replace it with the intrinsic reward of the feeling we get from repeating the habit. Anyone who has had to potty train a toddler knows this all too well. The tipping point of potty training is not when the child gets a gold star on the potty chart, but when she is motivated to use the potty because she’s proud of being a big girl. Until the intrinsic reward is motivating, though, cookies and star charts help to tip the balance to motivate us to practice our desired habit.

Step 3 is “The Routine.” It’s not really a new step so much as a call to action to commit to performing the desired habit whenever presented with the Cue and to follow that up with a Reward. Neuroscientists have traced our habit-making behaviors to a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which also plays a key role in the development of emotions, memories and pattern recognition. Decisions, meanwhile, are made in a different part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. But as soon as a behavior becomes automatic, the decision-making part of your brain goes into sleep mode and transfers responsibility for performing the behavior to the habit-performing part of the brain. That transfer of memory from intentional to automatic is the goal of forming a habit, and establishing the routine to reinforce it is critical to getting your basal ganglia to take over.

Duhigg cites research that suggests the best way to create the routine is to write down your intentions.  In it’s basic form, your plan should be  “When the Cue, I will Routine because it provides me with Reward.” For example, if your goal is to lose weight: When my 2pm meeting is over instead of getting a snack in the break room, I will take a walk with my co-worker because it provides me with a chance to catch up with a friend.

While Duhigg uses lots of examples in his book of how this process works, one of the most recognizable is Alcoholics Anonymous. He says,

“There's no real logic to how AA was designed. But the reason why AA works is because it essentially is this big machine for changing the habits around alcohol consumption and giving people a new routine, rather than going to a bar or drink. ... It doesn't seem to work if people do it on their own. ... At some point, if you're changing a really deep-seated behavior, you're going to have a moment of weakness. And at that moment, if you can look across a room and think, 'Jim's kind of a moron. I think I'm smarter than Jim. But Jim has been sober for three years. And if Jim can do it, I can definitely do it,' that's enormously powerful."

In the case of AA, the Reward is the social connections and support for not drinking, until you get to a place in your life that you’ve created new habits, removed triggers and established an ongoing support system to help you handle the inevitable cues that used to result in having a drink.

But what about forgiveness? Some of us have already developed routines to help us along with the process. Taking a drive, going for a run, grabbing coffee with your best friend, listening to your favorite song…these are all examples of routines that we establish to help us work through our emotions when we are hurt or angry or sad. Sometimes they help, but sometimes they are more of a distraction, a temporary band aid that doesn’t elicit the forgiveness we want to achieve.

Forgiveness is a process prompted by a decision to forgive. In creating a habit of forgiveness, the intent is to get to a point that we can bypass that decision and internalize the forgiveness process for the little hurts, and be armed with the ability to forgive when we are strong enough for the big hurts. Not all forgiveness is equal, not all pain is the same, and hurts may not be forgiven equally. But by knowing, and internalizing the process of forgiveness, by making forgiveness a habit, we will have the ability to truly forgive when we are ready.

Although I wasn’t so successful in breaking my habit of apologizing, I’m now more interested building a habit of forgiving. I’m learning that this forgiveness habit, not surprisingly, comes easily now when with the daily hurts and grievances, but I still have to work at the big things. I think that’s ok, because when I face those big things, my heart is already light, not weighed down by accumulated pain, but open to begin the journey down the tougher paths and armed with the knowledge and experience of the process and joy of forgiveness.

There are many examples of how to intentionally practice forgiveness, and I’d like to share one with you today in our meditation.  This process can be used as your Routine to practice, a few simple steps to repeat on the path to making forgiveness a habit.

(This exercise is adapted from Robin Casarjian’s Forgiveness: A Bold Choice for a Peaceful Heart.)

Everyone take a deep breath.

Close your eyes.

Take one more deep breath, and think about someone who recently upset you, made you angry or hurt your feelings…someone who you want to forgive.

Think about what the real issues behind this conflict are for you. Think about what you are feeling about this person.

Think about what is still valuable, still workable for you in this relationship.

Take another deep breath and feel the strength and wholeness within you.

Now imagine yourself in a safe place with this person.

In your mind, tell this person, as simply and clearly as possible, how you perceive the issues between you and the truth of your experience.

Speak from your deeper self to his or her deeper self.

Imagine that the person really listens and hears you.

When you are ready, bring your attention back to the present moment.

As you bring yourself back, think about what it would be like if you could actually have the conversation you imagined. If you can’t have that real conversation, imagine what it would be like to move forward as if you had.

As you go out into the world this week, find opportunities to actively practice forgiving. Think about what it feels like, think about the steps in the process and practice a meditation or reflection when you’re faced with an opportunity to forgive. Let your heart be light with forgiveness, towards yourself, towards the people you love, and towards the world. Let’s all work on building a habit of forgiveness together.

Acknowledgments

I've just written the acknowledgments page for my (coming soon!) book and it made me pause. There are SO MANY people I'd like to thank in my life...people who have given me parts of themselves, people that taught me things about myself, and those whose failures showed me how to avoid making the same mistakes they have (no worries, I've made PLENTY of my own).

I look forward to the book being published, and for those I've thanked to know that they contributed to this milestone for me, whether they knew it or not.

It's made me think about gratitude, and how often we thank people without them really knowing what they have meant to us or brought to our lives. How, while my acknowledgments are heartfelt, they are just a glimpse into how I feel about the people who have supported me, a little hat tip to a much deeper emotion of gratitude that I carry in my heart.

We probably can't ever truly express, or make someone understand, what they mean to us or how they've impacted our lives. That shouldn't mean that we don't try, though. Maybe because it's 9/11 and this sad anniversary is a reminder that life is short and fleeting. Maybe because you get a twinge of guilt when you think about how long it's been since you've talked to your mom, or dad, or sister, or best friend. Maybe it's for no reason at all, except you are thinking of someone in your life with gratitude. Tell someone today what they mean to you, even if they'll never truly understand the place they hold in your heart. 

Putting yourself out there

At the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara's new members' luncheon this spring where John and I were celebrating officially joining the congregation, Rev. Aaron McEmrys leaned over and said to me, "You should join the Worship Committee." We were actually in the middle of a whole group discussion, and the comment was a whisper, almost as if he had slipped me a note in the middle of class. My heart almost literally stopped. How did he know, how could he have known, how much that one sentence would mean to me?

On our first date, as I was throwing everything I could at John to scare him off, I told him that I wanted to go to seminary. He didn't flinch, but even as I talked to him about it, I was terrified.  With many of my crazy ideas, reality (at some point) settles in and I realize what I've gotten myself into. Usually, this pertains to something fun, like driving cross-country or creating our own prom. Sometimes, it's big stuff, like starting a company or writing a book. In all of these things, when I start out down the path, I'm excited, not scared.

It is different when it comes to my spiritual beliefs. As passionate as I am about my own journey, what terrified me was leading others in their journeys. How could I teach anyone else anything about spirituality when I have so many questions myself? How could I be worthy of that awesome responsibility?

Yet, I wanted to try. When Aaron invited me to join the Worship Committee, I said yes. And then I signed up to help lead the service on August 4th. The monthly theme was despair (great, uplifting theme for my first service!). The service ended up including a puppet show put on by our kiddos and John supporting the service on stage, doing the candle lighting and helping with the puppet show. I was honored to be trusted to help lead the service and honored to have John by my side as I put myself out there (literally, actually...Ken Ralph, who was the other lay-leader for the service, built an extension for the chancel so that we could do our reflections closer to the congregation).

I am so very grateful for my amazing partner and family, and for Ken Ralph, Rev. McEmrys, the Worship Committee and USSB for trusting me. Yesterday was amazing and everyone's support got me to take the risk of putting myself out there and work through my fears.

Below is my reflection that I shared with the congregation yesterday. I'm already looking forward to the next service I'll help lead later this month (two services on despair!) and more committed than ever to working, seeking, persevering and honoring the title of our service: "Pounding the Stone."


Finding my religion 

Growing up, whenever someone asked me what religion I was, my mom told me to tell them "Christian." The truth was, we weren't really anything...I suppose if pressed, I would have said yes, I believe in God, and I do remember praying, but I never had any sort of religious education. By high school, I was starting to feel a gap. I had lots of questions and I wanted answers. I decided I would find my own beliefs, not blindly believe what someone told me I should. 

The first real connection to religion I felt came when I stumbled across excerpts from the Old Testament and the Torah. That's it! I thought...I'm Jewish! I told my mother that I wanted to be Jewish, and she patiently explained to me that being Jewish and practicing Judaism were different, that I could practice Judaism but that by bad luck of birth, I would never BE Jewish. It felt like a door closed on me that day, but I kept searching.

I took a comparative religions class my senior year and was introduced to Hinduism with its beautiful gods and Buddhism with its centering meditational practices I still use today. I learned more about Muslims and Christians...the basic facts, really, but enough for me to question the validity of organized religion. Over and over again, the stories the same: my beliefs are right, yours are wrong and you should be punished for not thinking the same as I do. And the Jews...usually the target of the other religions, the perpetual underdogs, but with idiosynchrocies in their own right...I realized I couldn't convert to Judaism after all, as I was NEVER going to give up bacon cheeseburgers. 

In college, I read the Bible cover to cover. Yes...even every "beget" in the Book of Numbers. I read more of the Torah and continued my study of Jewish history. I read much of the Quran. I read Siddhartha and books on Native American mysticism. I researched the Mormons and Mayans and the practice of VooDoo and HooDoo. I read story after story of near death experiences, watched the tv psychics who claimed to speak to the dead and researched ghost stories. I did everything I could to try to see the patterns, to see what all of these religions and spiritual connections were trying to tell us, to understand the underlying thread that ties together religious beliefs and tries to answer THE question of the meaning of life. 

In graduate school, I attended a Lutheran church and went through classes to be baptized. Every week I came to class and argued with the Pastor about the content of the homework he had assigned to me. I didn't even really buy the concept of baptism by that point, and I was disillusioned that I could disagree with so much of the Lutheran religion but by showing up each week and arguing, they would baptize me anyway. What was the point of it all?

At the end of all of my seeking, and after reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I decided that as an answer to “What is the meaning of life?” 42 was as good an answer as any. 

Many years later, recently divorced with three small children, my parents having moved back to Michigan from living with me in Pennsylvania, in the midst of a destructive relationship from which I was desperately trying but couldn't seem to break free, I started questioning whether "42" was really enough of an answer, and whether it was enough of an answer for me to give my kids as they started asking inevitable questions. I felt alone, more alone than I had ever felt in my life - I felt alone in my soul. Reaching that point, the bottom of the pit of despair, is not always a sudden, shocking drop. Sometimes falling into despair is a slow descension, as bit by bit, every belief you have is challenged, everything you hold true is shown to be false. When I looked in the mirror, when I looked at my life, I didn't know who I was anymore and I didn't know how to find her again. 

What do you do when you realize that your life is not what you want? How do you move forward when you don’t know what will make you happy? I didn’t know where to start. It became difficult to face each day, to wake up to that loneliness, knowing that I didn’t want to be in this place of sadness, but not knowing what to do to change my life and move forward.

Religion seemed an unlikely answer to my despair. I had studied, researched, analyzed and tried on so many beliefs, but none of them fit. I was still asking the same question: what is the meaning of all this? What is the point of suffering through all of this loneliness, pain and sadness? I couldn't answer it for myself, and I couldn't answer it for my children. 

In a desperate conversation, I expressed all of this to a friend. She listened to everything I had to say, then simply said, "you sound like a Unitarian. You should check out your local congregation and see what you think." I was skeptical, but despair can drive you to try one more time.

The first service I attended was almost exactly two years ago today. I went alone, sat in the back of a converted Colonial house in West Chester, PA on a metal folding chair. The room had a Shaker feel - wood floors, white walls with quilts hung for decoration. I listened to Rev. Deborah Mero lead the sparsely attended summer service. It was the first time I had been to a church led by a woman. Not long into the service, she lit the chalice and invited anyone to come up and light a candle, and if they so chose, to share with the congregation the reason for lighting it. She called it "caring and sharing," and as I watched that week and each week after, members of the congregation would come up to light a candle, sometimes alone, sometimes as a family, and take the microphone to tell of the death of a loved one, or thank someone for an unexpected kindness, or to celebrate a birthday or birth. Sometimes candles would be lit for a political cause, or for someone none of us had ever met but had heard about through the news. Sometimes no one would come up to light a candle at all. The "caring and sharing" each week helped me get to know the congregation and, when I eventually found the courage to share myself, gave me the opportunity to let others get to know me, too. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad - lighting candles together was my favorite part of the service, because it was completely unpredictable and undeniably human. It was what showed me, more than anything else, that I am a Unitarian. It let me know that I belonged, I was not alone, and that sometimes, even when you think you've tried everything, you should give it one more try.

As this is my first service assisting as a Worship Associate, I'd like to share with all of you the experience of sharing together our Joys and Sorrows. Ken and I will be bringing the microphones down into the congregation. If there is a joy or sorrow you’d like to share, please let us know. In the interest of time, ten people will share with us today and John will light a candle for you as you share with all of us.

To begin, I’d like to light two candles today, first, for my first Unitarian family back in West Chester and for Rev Deb as she prepares for her retirement. Thank you for raising me up from despair, not through any special outreach, but just by sharing yourselves with me. And second, for my new Unitarian family here in Santa Barbara: thank you for welcoming me and my family so warmly, for giving me an opportunity to continue my seeking surrounded by support and enthusiasm and love. 

[congregation lights candles]

And now I light a candle for all of those joys and sorrows carried in our hearts which could not yet be spoken aloud. May this candle lift them out of the darkness and into the light.