Sam Killermann's Blog: Dear World, page 4

Meet FacilitatingXYZ: A Free Online Resource for ALL Facilitators

Updated September 12, 2016:weofficially launched this project, after about 11 months in development, production, and ideation. Woohoo!

FacilitatingXYZ is everything I wish I had when I got started as a facilitator — and together, we can build it into something that helps us continue to learn, develop, and grow. It’sa free online resource with videos, articles, downloads and (soon!) community to help all facilitators improve their craft.

There are so many parts to this project that it’s hard...

Building a Daily Meditation Habit

About a year ago I committed to writing on this site every day for 100 days in a row. Today, I’m committing to something similar and different: I’m going to start meditating every day, for at least the next 100.

Let me explainwhy, and how I plan to do it.

I’ve had an inconsistent meditation practice for about a decade now. At its best I meditate every day for a streak of a week or two. At its worst, I meditate once a month.

But here’s the thing: I know that meditation makes me happier, calmer...

Why I’m So Excited About FacilitatingXYZ

FacilitatingXYZ is everything I wish I had when I got started as a facilitator — and together, we can build it into something that helps us continue to learn, develop, and grow. It’ll be an online resource with videos, lesson plans, reflective activities, and quizzes and community to help all facilitators improve their craft.

First, the videos. The goal of the videos is to have short, clear, actionable explainers of different facilitation techniques. They’ll be helpful for individuals to wat...

Waking up in Nong Pladuk (on my way home to the US)

It’s 9am and a woman wearing an apron is leaning over me yelling in Thai, waking me up from a nap with an urgency no alarm clock could match. I’m panicked, not sure for a moment where I am, or what I did wrong, or maybe if I’m covered in spiders (millions of spiders?!) until I notice she’s hawking food — a tray of a dozen small, folded banana leaf bowls full of shrimp, fried noodles, and a few indiscernible vegetables — and I’m not about to die. There are zero spiders.

“Mai,” I manage to grun...

Loving the Uncertainty of Travel: From Bangkok to Chiang Mai

We pile our bags on a little side street in downtown Bangkok. It’s 8pm, the city’s lights are waking up, and busses fill the street. A double-decker bus drives by, inside on the top level a man is singing karaoke to the rest of the travelers. We’re waiting for bus #3, our nine-hour overnight ride to Chiang Mai, a rural town in northern Thailand.

We can’t find our bus.

Mike and I are sitting on the stoop of a closed shop, the dozen pieces of luggage and gear scattered around us. We are drinkin...

Me + Thailand = August ’15

I’m excited for Thailand. I’ve heard so many amazing things.

I’ve spoken with people who have immersed themselves in the culture, and had opportunities to reflect on things that were previously invisible in their lives. I know a couple people who have gone and never returned. That says a lot about a place.

I’ve talked with activists who are doing tremendous things in the worlds of gender liberation, sex worker advocacy, and social justice education. I’ve learned so much from them already, fro...

I’m Publishing A Book

I’m writing from a rooftop in Austin, taking a break from my break — which was part Naomi Klein and part Real Ale — to share a reflection that just sunk in: I’m about to publish my first book, and I couldn’t be more excited.

Now, to be clear: this isn’t me publishing the first book I wrote (that happened a couple years ago, and still hasn’t sunk in); this is me, under the auspices of Impetus Books, publishing my first book someone else wrote (in this case, I’m glowingly happy to say that som...

1 Simple Productivity Hack: Leave your charger at home

I’m going to keep this short, because I only have 56 minutes of battery left on my laptop and still have about 100 emails I want to write today.

If you want to get work done, and are having a hard time controlling your focus (Facebook), keeping yourself from being distracted (Twitter), or hurdling any of the other hurdles between you and what you need to do today (Taylor Swift’s instagram account), take your laptop to a coffee shop and leave your charger at home.

Yes, leave your charger at home...

I’m terrified. I’m a professional performer, but in 90 minutes I’ll be sitting down to my first ever singing lesson.

The lesson will beprivate. One-on-one. And the instructor, Mady, is, by all accounts, an incredibly delightful, non-intimidating person. I’ve performed on stages in front of 5000+ person crowds. I’ve spoken to hundreds of thousands of people around the US. I’ve done stand-up comedy on a stage in a country where the material I was performing could have landed me in jail, or worse.

So why am I so nervous about this?

It’s hard to ask for help. I’ve been taught not to. I’ve been told as long as I’v...

Starstruck

I would have replied, but I didn’t know my voice would be so hard to find. You don’t get starstruck, I kept telling myself, but maybe I’d never seen a real star. She felt like a star. A sparkling, ancient light, as beautiful as it is mysterious, sincere but distant.

I knew that I was going to hand her my book and explain why I needed to see her, what she symbolized to me, the support she’d offered without even knowing it. The new best friend who pops into your life right when you need them.

Sin...