Many of you post these images regularly – from the safety of your American homes. Please rethink them.

I used to live there – now Ireland is my home. It has been since November 2008.

It is not always safe here on the border. Our world is different than yours.

I live and work between Dublin and Belfast. I am privileged to carry both US & Irish Passports.

The UK government honors my Irish Citizenship conferring upon me every right of her citizens. I was welcomed when I established my business in County Down. I have been as free to live in Northern Ireland as the Republic.

We are 32 counties of residents on the island of Ireland. 17% of us were born elsewhere.

Our average life span is 80 years; longer than yours. We all have a vote. We could even vote to unite Ireland. Take a long view – it will likely happen. The island has been populated for over 12 thousand years. The British have been here only 850.

Governments in the 21st century amount to “taxing authorities”. We don’t raise armies to protect these borders, we live in the EU. Our borders are collectively protected.

Things are better in the Republic for Protestants and in the North for Catholics* than for African Americans across much of the US – So I’d argue your civil rights movement needs your attention more than ours.

Consider this:

•  In NI we don’t pay our own way – the UK government (and every British taxpayer) subsidises 70 p of every £1 floating through our economy.
• In the Republic we have mortgaged our grandchildren’s futures to bail out the excessive spending of the “boom”.

Try this:

• Ask a patient on a gurney at an A&E (ER) in the Republic if they’d cross the border for better medical care?
• Ask a dole recipient on either side of the border if their Northern/Southern neighbours have a better deal. Then ask either government if they could afford the burden of more mouths to feed and care for?
• Ask a US or other foreign corporations in the Republic employing thousands and contributing millions to the economy if they’d have come to the 6 counties given the higher corporation tax?
• Then ask those corporations located across Northern Ireland if they would have gone to the Republic without the heavy subsidies the UK government offers for R&D, training and facilities.

STOP the madness, please. There is not a strong enough political class anywhere on the island of Ireland to effectively govern a single county, no less the 32.

• Leave us to our learning curves – let us do what it takes to survive. Consign your leftover venom & bile to history.
• Your rhetoric inflames your compatriots here to build bombs, kill innocents and wreck our recovering economies.
• You foment this hate from safe living rooms amid ample resources and opportunities.

This is Ireland in the 21st century, our young people united in sport, the Queen at Croke Park and with the Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland touring the now restored Crumlin Gaol. Having both spent time there during the Troubles, they used the occasion to thank her for her hospitality.(Both served time)

I’m sorry our ancestors emigrated to America under duress. I’m sorry you are emotionally stuck in the pain of their loss. I’m sorry you have not made peace with Ireland’s political reality in 2015.

These images are not icons of nationalism. They are hate speech. That you would encourage violence to be visited upon yet another generation is despicable.

If you passionately believe in a “united Ireland” then come. Move here, work for a political solution, work to bring out the vote and work for an economically sustainable Ireland.

In the meanwhile – do not overtly or inadvertently encourage violence. Do not encourage or support dissident activity. And do not undermine the Police Service or either government.

Here’s why:

The Wikipedia entry for the activities of just one dissident group in the 6 years between my arrival & November 2014 is over 2500 words. 

The heinous acts committed by “other” dissidents encouraged by the rhetoric of  26+6= 1 over the same 6 years, are not even included.

Let me introduce you to Northern Ireland men Ronan Kerr, Omagh, David Black, Cookstown and Stephen Carroll, Banbridge. All are dead. All killed at the hands of madmen (and women) in service of this rhetoric.

Mark Quinsey, Birmingham and Patrick Azimkar, London were young sappers stationed here in 2009 and due to ship out to Afghanistan the next day.

More than likely their families had not yet begun to pray for their safe deliverance from extremist terrorists.

Life here is far from perfect – but since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement things have and continue to be improved. Many like me work tirelessly to see that this continues.

Learn from the best among us!

Take Maeve Aine Kerr, the mother of murdered Catholic police officer Ronan Kerr. Pictured here, she has born this tragedy with dignity and grace collecting his University Degree at the commencement he didn’t live to see – and still urging more Catholics to join the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

In November 2014, 12 “dissidents” (read terrorists) were arrested in Newry and more weapons were seized in Dublin.

Deputy First Minister Martin McGuiness’ whose life is regularly threatened – was threatened with an RPG in February 2015. How many innocents would likely die in the fallout of a rocket propelled grenade? How many RPGs might the dissidents possess?

Nothing changes here until we, our emigrants and the descendants of generations of our emigrants begin to care more about our collective, living children than we or they, hate the enemies of our ancestors.

The centenary of the Easter Rising next year will be enough of a flashpoint. In the meanwhile, please respect our need to build bridges and not intimidate our neighbors.

I will return to America at least three times between now and that centenary. I will likely visit New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Florida, Chicago and San Francisco. I am happy  to continue this conversation in person. Get in touch. Email eve@eveearley.com or contact me via Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

* See graph p 25 of linked article.

What is a “Career Check-Up”?

Careers are like relationships – the more you value them, the less you take them for granted.

Whether you are in your “dream job” or working at something that covers expenses, pay attention!

Ask yourself:

• Are you putting your best foot forward every day?
   If not, what would that look like?
• If you interviewed for your job tomorrow…
   Would you get it?
• Have the job requirements or responsibilities changed since you assume it?
  Does your supervisor/manager know?
• Are your accomplishments, awards and new qualifications acknowledged?
  Have you brought them to the attention of your supervisor/manager?

Not sure of the answers? Get in touch!

We can help you focus on what’s next.

Skeptical? Book a preliminary appointment. The 1/2 hr consultation is free.

My relationship with the Irish language has evolved over the half dozen years I have been here.

It’s doubtful I’ll learn to speak it, I’ve little facility with language, but what I’ve learned about it has certainly informed my understanding of the people of this island.

Three people opened the door to that understanding.

Carol Conway, Freelance Catalyst, facilitator and youth leadership trainer was the first. I’d no idea that she “had Irish”. She’d studied it for the love of the language.

She held my frustration with the use of it – often politically on the border – as a weapon designed to divide an audience into “them vs us”.

“Eve, you won’t understand the Irish people until you’ve studied the Irish language .”

She got my attention with two relevant aspects of the language:

• The absence of the possessive to have. I don’t have a coat. It’s the coat on me or the coat beside me.
• Tenses are constructed differently. We haven’t had a conversation – the absence of a “past perfect” means we’re “after having a conversation” and after living here, one learns to ask, is anything really in the past?

The net effect informs our use of English – and I’ve heard it posited – makes us the storytellers we are.

Linda Ervine, is a Belfast teacher and an Irish Language evangelist. She sees merit in teaching the “Hidden History of Protestants and the Irish Language” going so far as to suggest that in refusing to become familiar with it we deny the connection of the language to the culture of Ulster.

Beyond opening my eyes to the inclusive nature of the language she opened the door to tolerance. In delivering “The Hidden History of Protestants and the Irish Language” as a talk at the 2012 PUP Conference she even addressed my intolerance of what I once thought was a Northern Irish ignorance of grammar. It’s not! *

This abstract is from the Slugger O’Toole blog on the event.

Linda Ervine spoke about the “hidden history of Protestants and the Irish language”. In what was probably the best delivered session, she explained how she had been filling out the recent census online when she looked back at the 1911 census and discovered that her husband’s relatives had lived in East Belfast and spoke both Irish and English. Yet their signatures were listed on the Ulster Covenant. Linda deduced that their knowledge of Irish wasn’t linked to their politics…

She quoted Douglas Hyde, son of a Church of Ireland minister, first president of Ireland and founder of the Gaelic League in 1893, an organisation set up to preserve the Irish language. In 1905 he said:

The Irish language, thank God, is neither Protestant nor Catholic, it is neither a Unionist nor a Separatist.

 Linda went on to illustrate how Irish is behind many place names, and words and phrasing we use in everyday vernacular. She also pointed to the Red Hand Commando’s motto which is in Irish! During the coffee break, several delegates signed up for Irish language classes at East Belfast Mission!

She concluded that language was neutral, only a tool to communicate.

She drove home Carol’s point about the structure of the language and what we have carried over into English. Things she used to correct about her Belfast students’ grammar were actually correct in Irish. This among people who are many generations removed from Irish speakers.

She is “Beating swords into plowshares” in Belfast.

And lastly, a cultural and evolutionary observation which bears out the message of both women:

Anthony McCann has proposed imagining an Irish cultural equivalent to “Ubuntu”

Garaiocht: An Irish Value for an Energised Ireland

A linguist, musician and  a coach he reflects on Garaiocht as a deeply hopeful value which allows an understanding of the possibility of potential and an openness to a deeply hopeful future.

The link will take you to a brief video describing it in greater depth. In short- imagine the folks of this island – at our convivial best, in good company with a pot of tea and the time to express ourselves in stories. This concept of Garaiocht embodies:

1. Nearness
2. Hereness
3. Withness
4. Helpfulness
5. Conviviality
6. Continuous Action (verbal noun – a noun that acts as a verb) Can’t have an absence of action in the notion of Garaiocht
7. Mutual support/interdependence
8. Resourcefulness/Entrepreneurship the ability to make the best use of the resources that you have (opportunities for helpfulness)
9. Response-ability appropriate to context. Leadership quality with its core values at the heart of Irish life This notion of leadership which is not authoritative – not reliant on command and control.

In “sourcing” the wisdom from this ancient language – he reiterates Douglas Hyde’s point, Linda Erivine’s point and Carol Conway’s widsom when she told me:

You won’t understand the Irish people until you’ve studied the Irish language

We can better understand each other with the gift of a language that predates our generations of conflict. A language that is neither Protestant nor Catholic, it is neither a Unionist nor a Separatist.

Thank you Carol, Linda and Anthony – for opening the door to knowing what I might never have otherwise known!

For more on this subject: “Beating Swords into Ploughshares”

* at 16:55 Linda Ervine discusses the structure of the language. To “twig on” begin a bit before that for a fascinating overview of the words that have entered the Northern Irish vernacular directly from the Irish.

Here’s a  2022 update on Linda Ervine’s work

Sharansky Steps, Ralph Bunche Park From Tudor City, NYC.

They shall beat their swords into ploughshares… Isaiah 2:4

This New York City park sits just below my first apartment. I visited it almost daily during the years I lived in Tudor City.

The adolescent, protesting child of the Vietnam War era wondered whether those words would come to pass in my lifetime. Here in Northern Ireland, I believe they have.

Given the full blush of naïve optimism, I assumed that should I live to see such a thing, it would be momentous. It is not.

Moving from war to peace has nothing to do with signatures on treaties or momentous occasions.

It has everything to do with a sustained desire of the majority to maintain the peace, coupled with their sustained and vigilant attention to creating a new reality.

What swords into what ploughshares?

The Irish Language

Hijacked as a weapon during The Troubles there’s an oft repeated quote by then Sinn Fein Cultural Officer and Belfast teacher Padraig O Maolchraoibhe in 1982: “I don’t think we can exist as a separate people without our language. Now every phrase you learn is a bullet in the freedom struggle.”

He added that the restoration of the Irish language was part of the process of the “decolonisation of Ireland”.*

My relationship with the Irish language has evolved over the half dozen years I have been here. In early days I heard it used only in the public space by politicians intent on dividing an audience into “them” and “us”. I viewed it as a weapon, as when it was wielded, I found it hurt not to be able to understand.

I’ve made peace with it now. The journey is described in a blog post called “The Irish Language“.  It includes the stories of the three people I have to thank, both for enlightening me and for their wider impact on the culture.

It is in the work of one of them that I see not only the ploughshares, but this:

Tell them to beat their swords into ploughshares!

And then tell them to beat their ploughshares into musical instruments!

Then, if they want to make war, they’ll have to stop and make ploughshares, first.*

Linda Ervine is a Belfast woman making such music with the Irish Language. Simultaneously , it’s being embraced by the Diaspora. I can’t imagine a better way to “de-politicize” the language.

A young colleague, passionate about Irish and it’s cross-community cultural significance has been sharing his vast knowledge of it’s history. Between his and Linda Ervine’s evangelizing I have learned:

• the Ulster Scotts forefathers of America lived there in Irish speaking households and communities
• there are currently 11,000 Protestant Irish speakers in NI
• every 3rd week of the month  there is an inter-denominational Irish language service at a Protestant church in Belfast
• more newspapers magazines and books have been recently published in Irish then in the last 150 years
• in Australia the number of Irish speaking households more than doubled between 2001 & 2011 – 828 to over 1825
• in Bucks County, Pennsylvania a volunteer runs a FB page and an outreach to Irish Language Learners. It has over 14,000 likes!**

Interest in the Irish Language emerging in the Diaspora, the growing number of Irish speakers in the Protestant community in Northern Ireland and a hunger to understand the cultural significance of the language among many – all mark a move toward reclaiming the language for all the people of Ireland.

Use of the language is no longer about “decolonizing” but rather reflective of a common cultural heritage. It embraces how we are related to the ancient land and not attached to recent politics.

We who have sprung from this island – from Ulster, Leinster, Munster or Connaught – have more in common than that which divides us.

The Irish Language may now be the vehicle that unites the people of the island of Ireland, irrespective of their taxing authorities.

An article by Camille O’Reilly, which is a studied review of the Nationalists and the Irish Language in Northern Ireland may be of interest for more on this.

My exploration and understanding why reconnecting with the Irish language is so significant can be found at: The Irish Language

* a remembered quote from a sermon over 20 years ago – I was delighted to find it on the dedication page of Roger H. Siminoff’s book,  The Luthier’s Handbook . I’m afraid I still don’t know the original source.

**nearly 37,250 as of February ’17; 54K in September ’22

Here’s a  2022 update on Linda Ervine’s work.-

I was delighted to read a recent blog post by “The Brazen Careerist” on “6 Ways to Build a Personal Brand and Get Hired for Your Dream Job”. 

His advice in a nutshell:

1. Act as if you have it right now-
2. Think of yourself as a company
3. Dress for the job you want
4. Build an online persona
5. Expand your network
6. Love your projects
7. Be yourself

Interestingly, this is the same advice uttered in recovery programs, 12 Step rooms and in work with “CBT” (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) practioners thousands of times, every day.

In layman’s terms “Fake it til you make it“.

“But Eve, you want me to lie to myself?”

“Not for a minute.”

Amy Cuddy, Power Poses – Feel more powerful with minor changes in your behavior.

What you believe is who you are.

Who you are is always evolving.

Who you are is the product of your self talk.

Ask yourself, is it undermining or supportive?

Remember, Darwin’s “theory” is not about survival of the fittest. It’s about survival of the most adaptable, the most resilient.

Resilience is a learned behavior. Survive a situation just once and you’re stronger for it.

Try Amy Cuddy’s “tweaks” to your non verbal messages for proof!

The emboldened, stronger version of you will take chances, embrace new things, imagine different outcomes.

Now surround yourself with supporters, champions and facilitators. People who believe in you.

Not sure where to find them?

Ask us how!

Starting with my own!

January 1981, I remember the moment vividly.

This was what I didn’t know I didn’t know!

I’d relocated and needed work. I took a recruitment job “placing” accountants and then “selling” for a temporary placement agency. “Salesmanship” was a skill I lacked. Utterly.

Today I understand it on a deeper and more nuanced level. “Salesmanship” is a way of life. Daniel Pink describes it brilliantly in To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Persuading, Convincing, and Influencing Others. “We’re all in sales now…”

The persuading, convincing and influencing begins every day as I arise. I am the “customer”. Today I will choose… it is the mantra that opens my day.

It doesn’t end as I leave for work. My practice is about supporting change. Trained in counseling, my credentials for this subspecialty are less about education and certifications than experience. Recovery is a a process, a way of life. It is not a destination. Every day involves overcoming objections.

My own objections and other peoples’.

Choosing a conscious, mindful  presence in the world, a world overmedicated with mood altering substances and practices isn’t easy.

“Change management” isn’t just for businesses any more. Everyday the question is:

What very small change will I make – or sustain, in order to move forward, personally, professionally or in community?

Begin with: “I will not do what I have always done”,

believe that you can choose to be the “master of (your) fate, the captain of (your) soul“.

It can be done. More easily in the company of others, in fellowship with likeminded people and with skills and tools to short-circuit any objections you encounter.

How? Well quite frankly -“it takes guts”.

Don’t go it alone . Get in touch!

More on Personal Change Management→

Never has it been easier! Resolve to be a “Digital Media Mensch“* in 2015.

It costs little and you’re out there anyway.

A great recipe for money management is saving 10% of what you earn. Some folks with a charitable mindset strive to contribute 10%. Seem steep? Give of yourself, give your time!

Even just one percent of your work week. Work an 8 hour day? That’s 480 minutes. Consider adding 5 minutes on line, 5 days a week. A gift of 1%.

Now:

• Recommend a business that served you well
• Congratulate a Startup, SME or Micro-business on whatever platform you favor
• Thank your tribe – tell your followers & connections what benefit they’ve brought – even if just a smile
• Introduce a service professional to a potential customer
• Like, favorite or comment on discussion – engagement helps everyone

Could give more? Up it to 2% -10 minutes and you’ll have time to ask folks what digital media support they could use. Be available to open doors.

• New menu at a local cafe you frequent? Tweet about it – help drive traffic
• Refurbished premises? Sale on the High Street, Award Winners? Spread the word
• Repost, retweet or recommend an event – help an organizer fill a room

Creating community begins with one relationship at a time. You don’t have to love your neighbor, you don’t even have to like them. If you like what they’re doing, and if they’re adding value to the community – help them along.

*In Yiddish, mentsh roughly means “a good person.” The word has migrated as a loanword into American English, where a mensch is a particularly good person, similar to a “stand-up guy”, a person with the qualities one would hope for in a friend or trusted colleague. (Wikipedia)

Neo Ireland is all about growing a dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystem regionally.  We do that by creating community.

We provide a physical and virtual space for curious and interested people who want to experiment with entrepreneurship and social enterprise. We inspire by telling the “good news” stories and letting entrepreneurs lead by example. It’s an incubator and a “launchpad”.

Our first outreach was BizCampNI since 2012, we’ve run in them Newry, Belfast & Craigavon.

BizCamp provides an entire day of inspiration and education as volunteer speakers, accomplished in some aspect of running an SME or microbusiness take to a podium to share their experience. It’s continuing education to teach what we didn’t know we didn’t know about marketing, PR, finance, innovation and business development.

Beyond that it has created a community of “BizCampers”. When you leave a BizCamp you don’t just have a pocket full of business cards. You have potential relationships.

We offer a microbusiness support group in Newry. Moms that Work and Women that Work were the original day and evening groups. Merged into one and meeting monthly, on line and now informally over the course of three years, relationships have been established and new businesses formed. More importantly the group now exists as a safe place to ask for help and advice, test new ideas and get the word out about new products, opportunities, craft fairs and available business development courses.

The Drone Academy and After School Coding Club are perhaps the best example of what happens when you simply make the space available. This ground up effort by a resident programmer with little more than his ambition to teach young folks to code – has resulted in about thirty people through the doors and 3 full time programmer/app developers added to the region.

Newry Creates is our latest endeavor. Re-united with BizCamp co-founder Chris McCabe we’re happy to support this bi-monthly, evening meeting at Amplified Bar. Chris is leading with his same passion for building community as when he helped introduce BizCamp 5 years ago. Local entrepreneurs, creatives and technologists are invited to give a 10 minute lightning talk on their success story. The ups & the downs.

We’re a dynamic and entrepreneurial region already – come find out who is making all that happen and how! Perhaps become inspired to take a leap yourself.

2015 promises to be a banner year continuing these endeavours and adding more. We’ve moved to smaller quarters, created a “hacker space” to invite more techies to hang out and share their wisdom. There’s a regular Coderdojo back on the roster. We’re taking the Women that Work group to a new level, rebranding as Microbuzz.biz in order to offer a crossborder reach to men and women.

Let us have your feedback, add your name to our mailing list, or just let us know how we can help you make 2015 a prosperous one.

Email: eve@neoireland.org

The solstice has passed, we’ve had our shortest day, and I look forward to longer daylight hours. Clearly our cultural and religious traditions support that desire.

In a 2010 post “Happy Chanukah, Ireland”, I reflected on the tradition of remembering the re-dedication of the temple defiled by the Greeks.

“The miracle celebrated is one of faith and light. The oil found there was only enough to light the ritual lamp for one day; it lasted eight. We recall this by lighting candles every night for eight nights. On the first night one, the second two and so on.

The holiday, at this darkest time of the year reminds us that with faith and a commitment to re-dedication every night brings an ever-increasing amount of light.”

No Christmas celebration is complete without festive lights, be they candles in sanctuaries, in crowns on the heads of young girls or bedecking a tree.

The Christmas story of the birth of the “light of the world” complete with wise men following a star, was likely imported to the solstice season. Whenever the actual birth, I am intrigued by this “Winter Solstice described in layman’s terms“:

“From the summer solstice to the winter solstice the days become shorter and colder and from the perspective of the Northern Hemisphere the sun appears to move south and get smaller and more scarce.

The shortening of the days and the expiration of the crops symbolized the process of death to the ancients. It was the death of the sun.

And by December 22 the sun’s demise was fully realized for the sun having moved south continually for 6 months makes it to it’s lowest point in the sky.

Here a curious thing occurs. The sun stops moving south.

At least perceiveably for three days. And during this three day pause the sun resides in the vicinity of the Southern Cross (or Crux) constellation and after December 25, the sun moves one degree , this time North – foreshadowing longer days, warmth and spring.

And thus it was said, the sun died on the cross, was dead for three days only to be resurrected or born again.”

I love the imagery. Third day of darkness since the Solstice – December 25th as the archetypal birth of the year!

Whatever your faith tradition, even absent one – these are universal stories.

The ancients coped with the darkness by celebrating with light. These traditions evolved in the myths created to explain what was fearsome, awe inspiring and confusing in the natural world.

Whether that light is literal or figurative, I’d encourage all of us to look within and not let the light go out.

Peter, Paul & Mary brought their passion for storytelling, peace and folk music together in “Light One Candle”.

When the breadth of suffering in the world overwhelms, we can remember that change comes, as with the return of the daylight, one degree at a time.

Consciously living in the light honoring “the terrible sacrifice justice and freedom demand”, seeking “the strength that we need to never become our own foe” and keeping faith with “those who are suffering pain we learned so long ago”, we can collectively bring an ever-increasing amount of light to the world.

Resolutions are one thing – execution quite another.

Take inspiration from the research showing that cigarette smokers increase their odds of quitting with every (even failed) attempt.

Instead of “resolving” – review. What did you resolve in 2014? 2010? 1999? My guess is something pretty close to what you’re planning to change in the future.

This year, skip the plan.

Want to be less disorganized, thinner, richer, healthier? In a new relationship, out of an old one? In a new job? A new house?

None of these things change unless you do. And it’s not just a behavioural change. It’s a fundamental one.

Alcoholics who get sober frequently become food or exercise addicts. Food addicts on a diet often overspend. Any real recovery requires uncovering the root of your problem.

Generally, it’s a need to self-medicate pain or dodge discomfort.

So why aren’t you comfortable in your own skin?

Resolve only to learn this:

How do I become “comfortable in my own skin”?

Try three questions:

How can I know what I don’t know?

Who holds the pain of my self-doubt?

How has failing to change served me or those around me?

Then make a plan to assemble a winning team; a coach and fellow players who will inspire & guide you while training by your side every step of the way.

There are some excellent self-help books to help you begin the process of unearthing your obstacles to change.

“Living Your Best Life” (Fortgang) is a great way to dive in. You’ll have no difficulty reading it over the holidays – and if you take the exercises seriously you will be well on your way.

Next step – choose a team!

Fellow travellers are critical. We need safe people in our lives, however, “familiar” is not necessarily “safe”.

Think about it. If you have surrounded yourself with the same people for years and you haven’t been able to make significant changes in your life – perhaps it is because in any system – we all return to the status quo.

There are networks, meetings and classes everywhere. Plan to take in at least one new event a month. Make a few of them classes.

Already going to yoga? Try a different class at a different time. You might meet a new best friend there. Like your gym? Take a session at another – you don’t know whom you might meet.

Ever hear of “laughter yoga” – no exercise involved – but be prepared to leave happily inspired.

Business network comfortably familiar? Other networks welcome visitors – don’t commit – just take a chance on a meeting.

Change is hard. Small steps matter!

Adopt a mantra for 2015: “I love and accept myself the way that I am today, I am enough”.

The miracle of acceptance is that as you come to believe this, by 2016 your life will have changed. For the better!