Well okay, not literally, but quantitively. My gym has launched ‘Channel Challenge’ where we sign up and keep tally of our lengths between now and the end of August, aiming to rack up 21 miles in total.

When I first saw it advertised, the idea was intriguing. I asked a lifeguard for more details and he said his team were about to have a meeting to formulate a plan. It turned out to involve tally cards, celebratory drinks at key milestones, conversion tables to calculate mileage in the indoor versus outdoor pool, plus a giant chart representing how far each of us has travelled.

There are some bonuses they hadn’t necessarily planned for. There’s been a buzz by the pools with the lifeguards excited and engaged, suddenly enjoying a role other than merely saving us from drowning. My own fitness is increasing and my partner has started accompanying me, inspired by the personal target setting. I’ve got to know a fellow swimmer: a 62-year old grandmother of eight with some amazing life stories which she shares with me in the jacuzzi, after having put me to shame with her stamina. People are breaking their own personal bests, challenging family members, enjoying the outdoors, losing excess weight.

All this because someone had an idea.

We all have ideas, often a lot of them. Many of them stay merely as ideas without accompanying plans. Sometimes this can be a relief: we get to enjoy the fantasy. Other times this gulf between what’s in our heads and what’s in reality can be overwhelmingly frustrating.

With an idea that could benefit others, whether it’s bringing laughter or insights, sanctuary or motivation, ease or excitement, this idea is not just for us. We receive it, with no input on our part, into our consciousness and it is our choice whether we delve deeper. Whether we share it with others. Whether we take it from idea to clearer idea. To compelling idea. To plan. To action. To reality.

Had any ideas lately?

The World Needs Your Passion, So….

1) Action: Make a list of all those ideas you have that just will not go away.

2) Inquiry: What do your personal idea-full, plan-less places feel like? Are you quite comfortable there with no action required, or do they feel frustrating?

3) Found this blog helpful? Irritating? Inspiring? Challenging? Let us know by leaving a comment below….

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

* A Place To Go With The Idea That Won’t Go Away *

If it’s time to take the first step towards turning it into reality, the Kickstart Your Venture workshop has been designed for you. Click here for more information. Pre-booking essential. Date: Sat 10th October 2009 (Cambridge)

I was the columnist in The London Paper last week, suggesting that the recession is a good thing. Readers vote on whether they want more of you… and 96% did. I also had many comments calling this point of view “refreshing” and “inspiring”. In this, I hear a whispered hope for a move away from ‘business as usual’ to a more enjoyable and equitable way of running our economy.

At its best, this shake-up wake-up call will prompt us to re-prioritise and re-allocate resources. It will make us more aware of where we use money as an excuse to see ourselves as separate from others. Instead of this isolation, we will find ways of leaning in to human energy as our most precious resource and recognise our interdependence.

A great example of this is liftshare – an organisation that works to bring about sustainable change by encouraging individuals to do things together. There are now 290,000+ people registered and several inspirational stories have emerged.

Sandra from Clacton-on-Sea started car-sharing as a way of saving petrol and impact on the environment and found that “two people who led separate lives have now become great friends, with all the benefits and opportunities that new friendships offer”. They socialise regularly, found they had tons in common, and get to chat, laugh and sing along to 60s and 70s music on the way to and from work.

Similarly with Emma from Swindon, her initial motivations were financial and environmental and says “I have benefited in ways I never imagined, including socially. The company is great, we share ideas, and we exchange knowledge about the local area – where the best markets are, what’s on at the theatre. As I know we have to rely on each other at a particular time of day, I’m much more efficient at work. I can no longer stay late to get things finished so I don’t faff about any more, I just get it done.

And there are wider community benefits, as Clare from Herefordshire describes: “We also pick up and drop off a regular prescription for a friend who has retired and finds it difficult to get to the doctors”.

With liftshare, we see the Triple Bottom Line of a solid, sustainable venture – intending to bring about economic, environmental and societal/inter-personal benefits through its activities. As we tighten our belts and make changes economically, perhaps we’ll also tighten our belts as a community, finding afresh how fulfilling it is to need each other.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) If you had 50% of your current income, what would you do differently? Make a list. Then assess: in what ways would any of this be preferable? What could you gain as side-effects of these changes? Plato said “Necessity is the mother of invention”. In which ways would your decreased income increase your creativity and innovation?

2) Now return to your current level of income – but keep those new ways in place. What would you do with all that extra money?? Which deeply fulfilling lifestyle benefits would all that abundance bring you?

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2008

* Why The Recession Is A Good Thing *

Read the article here.

This is Global Entrepreneurship Week and to mark its start, I volunteered at the first day of Chain Reaction, an event which saw 700 people gather to explore how entrepreneurship can be a source of social good.

There was a variety of inspirational speakers including Tim Smit of the Eden Project, Sophi Tranchell of Divine Chocolate, and Eugenie Harvey of We Are What We Do. My greatest surprise of the day was the closing remarks made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. His focus was on the economy but not the all-too-familiar message of “this is just a downturn, we’ll be back to big, strong, lean and mean again soon” of which many politicians and business people are trying to persuade us. Instead, he acknowledged the economic crisis as one and the same as our resource crisis, emphasised the ‘climate change imperative’ and urged the importance of investing in renewable energy and agriculture. He described these times as experiencing the birth pangs intrinsic to us becoming a global community and as such that they alert us to the need for transition phases.

In many ways, the general thrust of the day was similar to the approach taken by Rob Hopkins, instigator of the Transition Town Movement – that we are entering transition years and that the innovation, ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit which got us in to this situation can now be re-harnessed and directed towards finding solutions to the world’s needs.

As I left the conference and spotted in the newspaper that more City jobs are being cut, I had a vision of those thousands of people moving not from employment to unemployment, but to enterprise. A move away from complacent expectation that someone else will employ us as a cog in some wheel…. to a belief that we can have great ideas, gather with others to turn them into reality, and effect social change through doing so.

It feels like time to get excited. There’s the sense of a new model of business emerging. It’s not the old way where business is set up purely for the sake of profit with the directors perhaps developing a conscience later in life, creating philanthropic foundations to offset the damage their enterprise has done. The new model is that enterprise itself is a vehicle for answering society’s needs.

The win-win-win nature of this transaction continually inspires me. I spoke to two women at the conference who were feeling increasingly frustrated as the day went on. They were hearing about all these inspirational projects yet feeling that their own gifts were being wasted, their potential not fulfilled. I hear this so frequently when interviewing women for my Inspirational 100 project – the pain of that gap between what you could be doing, and what you are doing. One of the women started crying as she told me that in her previous decade of working life she felt that she had added no value. She knew that she could give, and that she WAS, more than that. It reiterated to me this great human need for personal fulfilment through fulfilling our own potential – and that one way of doing this is by fulfilling a need in the world through enterprise.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) Inquiry: What is the most entrepreneurial thing I have ever done? What was it like to match my strengths/interests with a need in the world?

2) Inquiry: If starting a business were the only way to effect social change, what need would I want to meet and how could a business model serve that need?

3) If there were no time to waste and you were really needed right now, what would be your next action step? Get whatever support you need to make it.

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2008

** You – The Entrepreneur **

This is the very exciting launch of a new workshop designed for anyone who is considering starting their own entrepreneurial venture. This is a FANTASTIC opportunity to attend a super-affordable, high-impact workshop and get you moving on that entrepreneurial path. For more information, click here.