re: what's in a blog?

I am so grateful to Neil Ryder one of my new twitter buddies for providing the inspiration for this post when he wrote that it was important that all bloggers produced content rich blogs. This immediately got me thinking about how one defines content rich and then made me analyse what I am trying to do with my blog and so I have reproduced my thinking for you below.

For many content rich translates into producing articles/ blogs that act as a how to guide for readers. I presume that for many particularly those that see themselves as trainers they feel that in so doing they are adding value. Of course there is a place for this kind of writing and one cannot dispute the view that it could provide invaluable advice for others. And yet that kind of writing leaves me cold. This is because I cannot see any passion in this type of endeavour, it seems rather a left-brained approach to life from people comfortable with living in the mind rather than a whole self approach to life where one has access to the mind, body, heart and spirit spaces. And that is how I came to thinking about what content rich means to me and what I am trying to do with this blog.

What I believe is that no matter what tools we consultants and coaches have in our tool bags, we are still human. This means that we have moments of great fulfilment and in equal measure we have times of despondency. To be effective in any sphere of life - home, work or social - we need to be aware of the emotional/ energy states internally and externally and have the tools to access the state we need if we are not in it/ the external energy is not in alignment with our own. In fact those who are very charismatic have the power to change external negative conditions (see Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point) but they are few and far between. On a personal level, how can this be achieved? It means developing the ability to live in the present moment as much as possible - which those of us who have young children witness on a daily basis, such a gift.

The theoretical underpinning for me is to take the view that whatever the circumstances we are at choice as to whether we create/ break partnership; at every point we have the opportunity either to move closer into partnership or to turn away from it. At a minimum this means giving the other party the benefit of the doubt and where possible loving the differences that we experience rather than critiquing them. As we all have an ego, unconditional love is extraordinarily difficult to achieve. These are the key reasons why I focus on the sorts of topics that I do in these blog posts because I am passionate about helping others access their own key to living a more fulfilled life and becoming whole. It is only from such a place that we can really tackle the major issues of this century such as climate change. And yet I acknowledge that for others this may appear insubstantial, fluffy and a bit too alternative. I am curious, what do you think?