The Library of Lost Ideas

Annals of unrealized dreams

Like all of us, I believe, I have a Library of Lost Ideas.

These are thoughts that never came to be. Projects that died unmade, organizations never founded, workshops never held, art that never moved from the conceptual to the real.

I’ve been really into teaching a workshop, lately, called “Death to the Soul Eaters”. (I’m doing a free one on July 9, if you want to come.)

In Death to the Soul Eaters, we examine our unfinished business. What emails have we avoided sending? Tasks we’ve put off? Little niggling unaddressed truths that eat at our souls?

These things, over time, sap our energy and our belief in ourselves.

The Library of Lost Ideas is like this. It doesn’t eat my soul, but it does live in my longing.

I want to tell you about my library.

I welcome you to check out an idea. Perhaps there is something in here that you would like to make, or collaborate on. The library merely requires your name, your intent, and your date of renewal, when we can ask about the progress of this idea in the world.

I welcome you to create libraries of your own. I consider ideas cheap and freely-available. But, there are ones others have created that I have certainly benefited from. Perhaps someone will find, in your library, the very idea they have been waiting for.

This library may grow over time. I’m sure you will find new ideas within these pages, as more enter my vault.

Come, reader, and look around…

The League of Grandparents

This is one of my favorite ideas, which someday, I’d desperately like to make real. It would require the collaboration of some elder care organizations, assisted living or retirement communities, and perhaps unions or churches to find the younger members.

Here’s the general heft:

I believe that the elderly in America are an underserved population when it comes to sources of social meaning and fulfillment.

The elderly were once a strong part of the community, caregivers for the young and keepers of a generational history. Now, they are more likely to be seen as a burden than an asset. They are shunted off to nursing homes or elder-care communities. They find golf courses and bridge games to pass their days, but have few - if any - ways to give back to their community in ways that create meaning.

The elderly have already experienced many versions of what their children and grandchildren (related or not) are experiencing now. While grandparents are often leveraged for childcare, they are more rarely asked for their opinion. They are expected to be consumers more than givers: consumers of time, attention, and medical care, not givers of wisdom and support to adults as well as children.

This is a pity, because in most cases, adults seem more needful of this support than children. Meta-analyses of life satisfaction show that, all other factors being accounted for, happiness tends to decline in middle age and peak at the lowest ranges in people’s mid-forties. Depression and suicide rates are at their highest in midlife.

All of this data seems to point to an interesting idea. What if the elderly had an opportunity to provide support to adults outside of their immediate family, in a way that would provide them with both meaning and social connection?

This is the idea behind the League of Grandparents.

This is our credo: 

1. That any person, over the age of 60, can be a Grandparent. This holds whether or not they have physical children.

2. That a grandparent is defined by the choice to give emotional support and consensual advice to adults between the ages of 18 and 50.

3. That through these connections, grandparents will take their place as valued elders within their community, and adult children will receive the love and support they need for their own health and happiness.

4. That through this program, we will form a more empathetic and connected world.

The Process

1. Grandparents and Grandchildren will be matched primarily by current/past career, familial status, and demographic identity.

2. Grandparents and Grandchildren will agree to meet at least once a month for 2 hours, for a period of at least 6 months.

3. Once at least 3 Grandparents are mentoring within 15 miles of each other, a volunteer will reach out to each and ask if they want to form a Grandparent Group (internally known as a “Grandpod”).

4. Grandpods act similarly to case worker support teams. They meet in person on a regular basis to discuss their Grandkids, and support each other with any needs or questions. This allows the Grandparents a chance to make friends and connections within their locality.

You can find a full treatment of the League of Grandparents here.

Possible collaboration

Have institutional connections to help with this idea, or know others who do? Email me at sara@authrev.com!

Death to the Soul Eaters

They live in your soul. All the projects you've avoided. All the people you've put off. All the unfinished business you never completed.

They are your Soul Eaters. They eat at you...
And they don't have to.

…As you saw in the introduction, Death to the Soul Eaters is an event I’ve recently started running (again). I conceptualized it, and ran a 1-day pilot, more than 7 years ago. The idea then lay fallow until a few months ago.

But the name was too good to waste, and so was the concept. I started running DSE (I really wish Soul started with an I 😣) at a womens’ retreat I’m part of, and the ladies loved it so much that it became a standard for us.

I’d love to find a way to get DSE more out into the world. Like Fight Lab, it’s the kind of workshop where people walk away having a totally new sense for what is possible in 1 hour. Connection workshops are great, but try having addressed or even completed a conflict or project that has been eating at you for years.

I could imagine this workshop being templetized and run all over the world, by different facilitators. Or running it myself at events. Or…I’m not even sure what else to do with the idea. To start with, I might host it as a monthly offering, because even if other people don’t show up, I’ll still do the work and benefit from it 😂

It’s a simple process:

1. Define your Soul Eaters.
   These are unfinished projects, tasks, or relationships that sap some of your energy. Think: things you are ashamed of not having finished, tasks that remain forever on your to-do list, conversations you know you should have but keep putting off.

2. Identify your reasons for addressing this Soul Eater.
   What’s at stake? What happens if you keep putting it off?

3. (Optional): What stands in your way?
   Explore the blocks

4. GTD it! What is a first step you could take on your Soul Eater, that is so simple it is nearly effortless?
   Think: if you want to clear your emails, the first step is just opening your inbox and clicking one.

5. Do the thing
   For 1 hour

6. Celebrate!
   Each person shares what they got done, and gets cheers and applause

7. Dance party
   Shake out the energy

This process is so powerful and works SO well. One time, I got myself to apologize to Kickstarter backers for not finishing a film funded 10 years ago. Another time, I created an organization system for facilitation stories, practices, and ideas. Friends I've taught this to have:

• Digitized baby pictures

• Cleaned up their house

• Re-examined their direction in work

• Followed up with social connections

• Organized hundreds of emails

What will YOU complete?

Possible collaboration

Workshop leaders, course creators, coaches, or marketers, HMU if you have a platform and want to scale this with me!

The Mood Ring

What? It’s totally a mood

Over the last 3 years, Geof and I have taught our Art of Difficult Conversations class to over 300 students. The purpose of the class is to equip our students with the tools they need to resolve any conflict. This class, and the publicly-available Fight Labs we've now run literally hundreds of times in person and online, has given us a rare view in the etiology of a conflict.

What we've found is that there are few inflection points in conflicts - spaces where the person or the pattern could be interrupted. One of the biggest potentials comes in just being able to realize you're triggered.

Most of us can't identify the early warning signs of our trigger. We're angry, hurt, or frozen before we know it, and things spiral from there. We can't think clearly when we're upset.

But, as we teach our students, there are easy de-escalation tools you can use with yourself when you're triggered. Box breathing, the double sigh, and taking a break are all viable options, among many others.

The problem is...if you're too far along in a trigger, it can be really hard to stop and use these tools. And unless you're a practiced meditator, you probably won't know you're upset until it's too far along. You'll just get even more angry when someone says "Calm down", and probably snap, "I am calm!" like any calm person would do.

From this background rises Geof and my idea of the "Mood Ring". This would be a wearable device that recognizes the signs of trigger - increased heart rate, sweaty palms, - and buzzes to alert you that you're getting upset. Most people, given such a specific trigger, can then train themselves to use a breathing or other self-regulation technique to calm down, before they escalate past control.

In an ideal world, we'd start the Mood Ring off as an app that resides within a current wearable device such as an Apple Watch. We'd need to distinguish the signs of trigger from, for instance, the activation of exercise, but I think the signals are different enough for it to be doable.

Possible collaboration

If any biohackers or device designers out there want to partner on this project (or just make it), let us know!

The Connection School

Damn, GPT made a logo and everything O_O

Last but not least, the Connection School.

This is what Authentic Revolution, at one point, hoped to be. A clearinghouse for all things relational and all skills of communication. Perhaps the purveyors of an app where people could find the tool they needed, in the time they needed it, whether it be for having a difficult conversation or starting a conversation with a stranger at a coffeeshop.

Here’s the pitch we wrote, once upon a time:

The hardest conversations are the ones we're not having.

• To our partners: "I don't like how you treat me."

• To our colleagues: "I can't depend on you."

• To our children: "I don't agree with your choices."

• To our friends: "I don't have the same opinions as you.”

We don't want to lose people, but we also don't want to live in fear of them.

If no number of communication classes have helped you have the conversations most important to you, this is your place. We don't all learn the same; we can't all use the same strategies. In Connection School, find the practices that are right for you, in the exact areas you need to apply them. Then, try them out with others within our Connection Labs, in sequentially more challenging spaces.

We all deserve to live a life of great connections.

Possible collaboration

If you are the Gottmans, shoot me an email 😉 Otherwise, feel free to build this app or school and invite us in to contribute content, help design the experience, and teach!

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I’m sure I have many other ideas buried in my annals, or lost in the recesses of my mind. But these few are the ones whose aborted lives I feel most keenly, the alternate futures I would love to live. Alas, I have only one life, and limited funding. So - perhaps one of these ideas will be yours to animate. Or perhaps they will live forever in my imagination as possibilities, soul-eaters and soul-fillers at the same time.

Your Loving Thought-Dom,

Sara Ness