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I’m grateful to Lexi Sundell for including my post, How to Cross the Gap From Knowing to Doing in the Carnival of Creative Growth. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Lexi’s work, she is not only a talented painter and blogger, but is also a Senior Thought Leader at Personal Development Partners. In that role Lexi contributes tremendous insight and advice to people seeking to improve their lives through personal development tools and techniques.

Normally, a membership at Personal Development Partners costs $19.95 a month, but for a very limited time, you can purchase a lifetime membership for $57! If you aren’t familiar with PDP at all, it is a community of people who have come together to take the information they have gathered from years of study and support each other in applying it to actually improve their lives. In short, it is part group therapy, part peer coaching, and part butt-kicking!

I’ve been active at PDP for about 6 months now and I can definitely say that it is the nicest, most helpful, most success-oriented community I’ve ever participated in. Because there is a cost involved in being a member, the people who are active on the message boards are all committed to gaining positive results as well as offering genuinely useful advice.

I am certainly going to take advantage of this steal of an offer, and I hope you will too!

Other Resources
I would be a very bad blogger if I mentioned a carnival appearance and didn’t highlight some of the other outstanding posts. My personal favorites from this carnival are:

• 24 Weekly Actions for Creating Lasting Success from The Next 45 Years. Alex Blackwell gives you some very concrete steps to set up your week for serious achievement.
• Overwhelm: How to Break Your Life Down into Manageable Parts from Slow Down Fast! David B. Bohl has been putting out great posts for many months now, and this one is no exception. In this post he explains how to do some charting and time auditing to get a handle on your multitude of roles in life.
• How to Get Rid of Excuses NOW and Start Living the Kind of Life You’ve Always Wanted is from the new-to-me blog Super State. Discovering unfamiliar blogs is a great reason to peruse carnivals, by the way. Arin Vahanian encourages us to practice some mindfulness to catch ourselves in the act of making excuses and finding ways to reframe them as choices. It’s a helpful practice that I’m going to work with.

Don’t be scared off by this headline! I’ve been tagged by my blogger friend David Rogers at Reasons-4-Smile to participate in a meme. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, so I thought I could share a little bit more about myself. So, without further ado, here is my list:

1. Back when I was cool, I played in a band call the Deep Fried Pickle Project. I was a multi-instrumentalist, but my specialty was washboard. Unfortunately, grad school and other obligations got in the way of my ascent to musical super-stardom!
2. I’m an aficionado of unusual condiments. I just cannot pass by a bottle of curry ketchup, wassabe mustard or jalapeno peach jam without grabbing it up.
3. I started college as a theatre major. That didn’t last very long, but I gained a lot of valuable skills through acting. I’m not afraid of public speaking, I know how to project my voice, and I can apply stage make up like nobody’s business!
4. I can write with my toes. You probably don’t need more details about that.
5. I took two years of Ancient Greek in college. I barely remember a thing, but I did memorize a few lines from the Iliad for party trick purposes.
6. My favorite thing to do at a party is find a good place to stand back and watch the action. I guess that’s why I’m a professional researcher.
7. I’ve never traveled outside North America and the Caribbean. Hopefully I’ll remedy that this spring with a trip to Cracow, Poland for a work exchange.

Now comes the fun part. As is the custom with these memes, it’s my solemn duty to tag at least five other bloggers. I wanted to give my fellow members of Personal Development Partners an opportunity to respond. I’m explicitly tagging five awesome bloggers that I’ve interacted with, but I invite all members to participate. If you have a blog, link to this post and I’ll add you to the respondents list. If you don’t have a blog, add your list in the comments and in the discussion thread at the site. Here’s my list:

• Tristan Loo at Synergy Institute Online
• Lyman Reed at Creating a Better Life
• Lexi Sundell at Energies of Creation
• Priscilla Palmer at PriscillaPalmer.com

and last but definitely NOT least, the man himself

• Aaron Potts of Today is That Day

ChangeLinks is a semi-regular series at Never the Same River Twice. Each edition will feature one aspect of personal or organizational change and point the way to resources that explore the problem and suggest solutions.

The United States (and much of the rest of the developed world) is on the brink of one of the largest demographic shifts in human history. Within the next 10 years, most of the Baby Boomer generation will have reached retirement age, causing unprecedented amounts of turnover at the leadership levels of all types of organizations. This is definitely going to be a time of rapid change!

My day job is in the nonprofit sector, a part of the economy that has grown exponentially thanks to Baby Boomer founders and the Reagan-era devolution of government. The average age of organizational leaders (many of them the founders of those orgs) in the sector is rapidly approaching 60 and we are all trying to figure out what to do about it. It’s a huge challenge, but also a huge opportunity and I want to highlight some resources that are helping organizations with those transitions.

The Building Movement Project offers a series of free reports looking at generational change and leadership transitions. Although their stuff is written mostly for nonprofit leaders, the ideas are applicable to many types of small business.

Rosetta Thurman is a passionate emerging leader in the nonprofit sector. Her blog Perspectives From The Pipeline focuses on the next generation of leadership and the new characteristics that Generation X and Y leaders bring to the table.

Jim Carroll is a futurist who shares a very funny, but telling story of the generational disconnect between Baby Boomer traditionalist and Millenial technologists. I do have to say this though, “Jim, put your videos on YouTube!”

Employee Evolution is a site that helps Millenials transition into the workplace and find fulfilling jobs. You’ve got to love a job coaching site that includes an article titled, Ask These Questions to Make Sure Your Boss Won’t Suck.

The Millennials are Coming! is a hyperbole riddled, but informative video about some of the major values of the Millennial workforce. I’m somewhat reluctant to recommend it, but it’s probably worth 12 minutes.

Finally, I’m going to self-promote a bit and point to my post What is MeBranding and Why Does It Matter For Your Nonprofit? Again, this is written with nonprofit needs in mind, but this new type of mass customization has a lot of implications for all types of organizations.

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There’s been more updates to the Personal Development Partners site and subscription options. Aaron announced a few days ago that he is converting the 6 month subscriptions to $20 EVERY month. The good news is, if you join now at the $20 for 6 months price you will be grandfathered in at that rate for as long as you are member. He is also adding a new subscribers-only podcast, as well as offering his e-coaching program all included in the membership. Even at $20 per month, this is a steal!

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, get better grades in school, or train for an athletic competition, someone has probably told you, “Get a partner!” The idea is that being accountable to another person and having a support system is great reinforcement as you journey toward your goal. I’ve had great success with this in the past and have been seeking support systems recently to help me achieve new goals.

I am excited that there’s now an entire community on the Web devoted to supporting people working on their personal development.

As you can see, it’s called Personal Development Partners, and it’s a new community site dedicated solely to personal development. It just so happens that today is the last day of a huge membership drive and is a great time to join. The community has grown enormously over the past few weeks so the discussion boards are starting to see a good amount of activity.

One unique aspect to this site is a group called the Senior Thought Leaders. These include some well known personal development bloggers like Priscilla Palmer, Aaron Potts, and Dave Olson. From what I’ve seen, all of the Senior Thought Leaders are quite active in the discussion boards and more than willing to give advice and feedback.

Another great feature is the Forum dedicated to forming partnerships and Mastermind groups where members support each other in achieving goals. It’s one of the most popular forums on the site and one where I plan to participate the most.

I joined a couple of weeks ago at the free level which gives you access to most of the discussion boards and a MySpace-esque user profile page with lots of customization and social media options. A couple of days ago, I decided to upgrade to the Premium level (for the bargain price of $10 for 6 months!) to gain access to the electronic resources contributed by the Senior Thought Leaders. To see what’s available have a look a this list. I’ve downloaded a couple of the ebooks and audio selections and am enjoying those as well. You’ll have to hurry is you want to get in at the $10 price, because it’s going up to $20 for 6 months tomorrow!

If you have any interest in working with others to achieve your personal development goals, I encourage you to check out Personal Development Partners. When you sign up, be sure to introduce yourself!