9 Tips for Men in Circle

My friend and colleague Rina Patel reminded me recently of the phrase, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is now.”

There are many things that we may wish we had done 20 hears ago, or that would have started to grow 200 years ago. But Rina reminds me of the hopefulness of today, and of the rigor that is sometimes needed to simply start. Or preserver. Or add practice.

This article, “9 Tips For Men in Circle,” was also published in The Circle Way Newsletter this month. It goes with yesterday’s, post, “Is The Circle Way for Men?” These tips are my version of a cheat sheet for welcoming men and the masculine into the process and way of being that is The Circle Way. It would have been good 20 years ago, and 200 years ago, and 2,000 years ago — but I offer it as practice now to help grow further a healthy masculine connected to the thoughtful listening and awakening that is circle.

Think of this as a cheat sheet. It’s over-simplified. I offer it to steer through a few common bumps on the road that is men adjusting to circle-based forms of leadership and engagement. These tips won’t resolve everything. They won’t remove all misgivings. But they will, perhaps, help some of us to get past the first stretch of potholes, so to journey into important vistas ahead, made visible only by circle.

Get the full cheat sheet description here.

Here’s to planting a few trees, today.

Man Up

To a mythology of perpetuated unmatured psychology and misdirected masculinity that is wreaking havoc, and yet oddly inspiring evolutionary directive.

Thanks Roq.

Thanks Guante, American musician, hip hop artist, National Slam Poet Champ — among other things.

Ten responses to the phrase “Man Up” in three and a half minutes.