The Brilliance of Pooh

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Regardless of what you do (artist, chef, teacher, writer, hair stylist, gardener) there are countless times during the day when just be-ing is imperative.

It’s typically in the be-ing space that I join the esteemed ranks of Winnie the Pooh and think, Think, THINK.

In autumn I’m speaking in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico at the Women with Sacred Souls International Gathering and Retreat. My topic is keys—keys that help us open our emotional baggage, examine it, and offload it.

In my desire to leave each listener with something tangible from the presentation, I had colorful mini-cards made with a skeleton key on one side, and my quote “Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing” on the other.


Next to HolEssence people made a vertical garden in a discarded pallet – brilliant!

What’s your brilliant idea?

Listen with your heart,

Laurie Buchanan

“Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing.”
— Laurie Buchanan

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© 2012 Laurie Buchanan– All Rights Reserved

84 thoughts on “The Brilliance of Pooh”

  1. Sounds like a wonderful workshop! Oh you will love it~~and people will love hearing your message and experiencing your being. My brilliant idea? I don’t have any yet this morning, except maybe making a cup of coffee after the second sleepless night in three days.

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  2. “Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing” is one of my all time favourite quotes Laurie, and as for the Brilliance of Pooh, well, he is, isn’t he, and so wise too!! I’m sure your upcoming workshop will be a great success. 🙂

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  3. We just have to will ourselves and bend down to pick up those keys and to always remember they are within reach so that we need not stay in the cell of our making.
    Today’s plan is to open eyes wide and enjoy the potted plants and flowers around in the parking area.
    Have a great time at the workshop.

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  4. Laurie, your workshop sounds awesome! Those ladies are in for a real treat.
    I also just adore the pallet vertical garden! What a great idea! I may copy that idea and teach others to create their own. Any time I can recycle something to create something useful, I’m happy.
    I have always enjoyed your quote, “Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing”…kinda says it all.
    🙂 KMC

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    • Karin – I walked over to the vertical garden and took a really up-close-and-personal look. It’s neat! And it looks fairly simple (at least to my untrained eye). I think the idea is absolutely brilliant!

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  8. There seems to be several themes going on here today or is it just me? Pooh, funny I never read Pooh! Neale Donald Walsch in Conversations with God Bk 1 says, “Think about what you are thinking about.”

    Congratulations on your journey to Mexico! Wow! That is a big deal! I love the idea of keys, in charka colors…

    It think is very Now to have vertical garden, even when people have plenty of yard space. Hmmm?

    I am not sure that I am brilliant, most of the time I am expanding on someone else’s idea or thought…

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  11. Thanks Laurie … for some reason today (maybe because of the association with Winnie the Pooh) I was prompted by your blog to recall the number of young people and children who have come up with ideas to help children in other countries (or here). Perhaps they are old souls or have parents who have planted the seed of generousity. I found a website http://www.KidsCaring4Kids.org To me, on this anniversary of 9 11, it gives me hope for the future.
    One simple thing I do to try to capture ideas is to carry a small thin notebook with me. I love your keys mini cards. When I had my business I had bookmarks made with a couple of key quotes related to my business as a give-a-way and a marketing device.
    Thanks as always for your creative teases and equally creative blogs. Audrey

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    • Audrey – I love the link that you shared with us here, thank you!

      (I keep a small notebook with me too, but with the advent of recorders on cell phones, I find myself capturing my thoughts verbally just as much as in writing)…

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  12. I love Pooh and your photo reflects his thought beautifully! Those bookmarks are a great idea and the sentiment on the back is wonderful. I’m sure your workshop will be inspiring. The vertical garden is lovely. As for my brilliant idea, my brain is feeling a little tarnished this morning. Must be the gloomy weather! 🙂

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      • Laurie your comment about Pooh (and truly his creator Alan Alexander Milne b.1882) being a “really cool Zen Master” (I so agree) … caused me to wonder more about him. I went to Just-Pooh.com found great info … 1st) interestingly to me he never wrote Pooh for children but for the child within us. 2nd) He was a pacifist (maybe where the Zen comes in)and despite that served as a signal officer in the 1st WW. 3rd)Interestingly, Milne didn’t write the Pooh stories and poems for children but instead intended them for the child within us. “He also never read the stories and poems to his son Christopher, preferring rather to amuse him with the works of P.G. Wodehouse, one of Milne’s favourite authors.” Sadly, in 1952 he had a brain operation and became an invalid. Sorry for the long note. AD

  16. A brilliant idea, indeed. All the best with the retreat, Laurie. And, oh, those lucky participants. Some day… some day…
    My brilliant idea: I made some coffee mug cozies, added a pocket and slipped in a short story. Now I hope folks realize–not only does she knit but she writes as well.

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  17. Hi Laurie

    My idea is one I speak of often:

    Imagine a world in which the only people who are hungry are those who are choosing to be.
    Imagine that you own your own home, and that home is maintained by a set of machines that also maintain themselves.

    Those same machines tend your gardens (when you are not doing so yourself), keep them watered, and keep animals, insects, and weeds at bay. They gather and store the crops at the appropriate time (if you are otherwise engaged).

    Those same machines maintain your water storage and sewage treatment systems, and your communication and transportation systems. If you do not feel like preparing food yourself, they are capable of preparing and serving a wide variety of basic nutritious meals.
    Those machines trim your trees, and dry and store those trimmings to give you cooking and heating fuel.

    The computer systems in your home contain training courses to take you to masters level in any discipline that takes your interest, and via the inter-mesh network, you can find a community of like-minded people, wherever you are on the planet, whenever you feel the need.

    All of this is at no cost. The machines that make it all possible were developed long ago, and because they were designed to build and maintain copies of themselves, as well as do all these other things, their development was a one off cost, paid for by those who could see the need for such abundance in the lives of all humanity (themselves included).

    The whole system is powered by solar cells on the roof of your house, and all of the nutrients are in a closed loop, with the treated sewage being recycled into the compost systems and back into your garden on a 5 year cycle.

    Without the need for commerce to sustain life, most people live in communities of interest. There is no daily commute to work. Motorways are a thing of the past.

    Long distance travel is by underground maglev trains travelling in vacuum tubes that are both silent and very fast, far faster than the jets of today as there is no air resistance to overcome. Again the system is built and maintained by robots, so there is no cost in using it – yet another of the free and abundant things that are as abundant and free as air is today.

    Such a world is technically possible, and it will never result naturally from the action of free markets.

    Markets are places of exchange, and the value of the market place is an exchange value, and as such has two major components.

    One component is the human value, how much each individual values the thing, in and of itself.

    The other component is the scarcity, how rare is the thing, how difficult is it to find another one.

    If scarcity is high, then we are willing to exchange much more than if scarcity is low. If there is no scarcity (as in the air we breath) then it matters not how valuable it is, we are not willing to exchange anything for it, because we already have all we could ever need.

    Anything truly abundant has zero market value.

    Markets value abundance at zero.

    Markets cannot deal meaningfully with abundance, however valuable that abundance may be to individuals, a market will always value it at zero.

    Thus, the idea that markets can ever deliver abundance is a logical nonsense.

    Markets will always tend to deliver an optimal level of scarcity (which may seem like abundance to those who are in dire scarcity), and markets cannot ever deliver true abundance.

    One final thought to add: that in order for their the be world peace, the term “patriotism” needs to have the same sort of social condemnation as the term “racism” does today.

    Patriots put their nation before all else.

    What we need is a world where all people are valued above all things, Where people put people before clan, village, region, or nation.

    This is a world of global cooperation and acceptance of diversity.

    Many who champion free market capitalism point to evolution by natural selection, and the constant competition.
    What they fail to see, is that all of the great advances in evolution have been characterised by new levels of cooperation.

    It seems entirely logical to me as an evolutionary biologist, that the next great leap of evolution will be a system where the entire human population cooperate, and the concept of money is rendered of historical interest only, and it seems logical that the sort of picture painted above would empower such a world.

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    • I took time to read through every detail of what you wrote here, Ted. This is beautiful! I’ve been wondering if it is possible to fix that up for myself. I didn’t even know that people like you have given it as much thought as this! Great creativity merged with facts. I consider this a job welldone with thoughts. I’ll be checking out your blog as soon as possible. I love thinkers and you seem to be one good one! Keep up the good work. 🙂

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  18. I am not nearly as thoughtful as Ted, but I do love your quote, I do love the idea of the card with the key and the quote – I love Winnie the Pooh. I wish you well and great enjoyment on your talk at the seminar. I’m zig-zagging here – but I think what I must do is go back and read some Winnie the Pooh. My son and I read it repeatedly when he was very little. I think perhaps in my next life I shall be Pooh.

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  20. Laurie, brilliant ideas have been scarce around here lately, they all whiz by me so fast that I can barely grab one before it is off and gone. They seem to have heard that once I lay my hands on a good idea that I will work it and work it hard. And like Pooh, working hard is not on his list of things that must be done, like counting the bees in the Hive and chasing the clouds from the Sky. Every so often one will come by and stay with me for a spell then up and leaves for better working conditions.

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  22. Love the keys presentation Laurie! I’m sure you’ll be opening up another portal to human insights. Hope you’ll be posting on the workshop! I am searching for that special inspiration that will allow for a memorable first marking period that this year features the teaching of several wonderful novels to middle schoolers. I’m doing MRS. FRISBY AND THE RATS OF NIMH with the 5th and ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS with the 4th. Still pondering the game plan for the 6th.

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    • Sam – “Island of the Blue Dolphins” is one of my favorite books! Now I’m going to have to add “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh” to my reading list – I love the title!

      Depending on the genre, here’s my pick for a good 6th grade read:

      Action & Suspense
      Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

      Fantasy
      Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

      Realistic Fiction
      War Horse by Michael Morpurgo
      or
      The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet by Erin Dionne

      Historical Fiction
      Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko

      And of course you can’t possibly go wrong with:
      The Call of the Wild by Jack London
      Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

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      • Laurie, I never really speculated that THE HUNGER GAMES was Grade 6 level, though I do like the book and the movie quite a bit! Similarly I adore WAR HORSE too, but didn’t connect the dots here, focusing for some reason on a more traditional approach. But those are some SERIOUS ideas. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Al Capone/Shirts by Cholodenko and taught it once six years ago, but I see another classroom teacher is planning to do it. Two other exceptional sixth grade titles I did order in bulk with teaching resource materials are BLESS THE BEASTS AND CHILDREN by Glendon Swarthout and THE PIGMAN by Paul Zindel, two of my all-time favorites. Also ordered a bunch of THE CAY by T. Taylor, THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK and fourth grade copies of CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY by Roald Dahl.

        Thanks so much for these marvelous suggestions!!!

      • Sam – Ohhhhhhh, you’ve responded with some delicious reads! I’m at the library right now — as we speak. I may well have to go to the junior section and snag a few books just because I can 🙂

  24. Now, I like your quote but I won’t apply it to my cooking. I wanna say not having that skill is in my DNA but that wouldn’t be true…Maybe I was adopted.

    My best to you at the conference.

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  25. Great topic Laurie and good luck with your talk! I have so many ideas and I have to be willing to let some lay dormant while I work on others. My brilliant idea is to listen to my heart and choose the idea that fits me the best! And that is to write fantasy stories, so excited!

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  26. What a fun post – I am totally distracted these days with my grant writing class and project to build a house for the LIVING BUILDING CHALLENGE 2.0…I am attempting to build a team into the project, as I do not want to do something this big alone and I think if I have some folks to work with the project will take on some stability for granting the grant money…I wish I had a key….but so far just the concept, idea and desire.

    You inspired my energy today Thank you – and a conference in Mexico…lucky and creative you!

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  27. Laurie, I am sure your 7 Keys will be welcomed warmly. What a wonderful opportunity to share your book and knowledge with so many other like minded individual. I am sure your will “Break A Lip!”I think Winnie’s Thinking is Green, just like yours. You are in good company. I have been blessed with copious Brilliant and Creative ideas for my professional life. However, the ones I treasure most are the Brilliantly Grand and Creative ideas about my family life that I safely store in the honeycomb of my heart! 🙂

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  29. Amazing! For now, my brilliant idea is think, think think. Maybe sometime soon I’ll come up with some brilliant idea. I love the key concept with the quote behind. I can already imagine how awesome your presentation would be in Autumn. Keep up the good work!

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  31. Hi Laurie,
    That workshop sounds fabulous! I love the key idea – brilliant!!! After a summer up at the lake, I feel plum outta brilliant – I’m sure it’s only a temporary lull til something fabulous pops in! 🙂
    Hugs
    SuZen

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  34. what a wonderful feeling workshop
    I love the keys…
    and I know you will be the key to someone changing and choosing
    to let go of their luggage
    for you will give them a key of their own to choose…
    I liked this post!
    Thank you for sharing a part of you again…
    take Care..
    )0(
    maryrose

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