Mamisma. What a great word. 

It was coined by publisher Harriet Rubin, author of The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women and Soloing: Realizing Your Life’s Ambition, and can best be described as the energy a mother bear has when she senses her cubs are in danger – and action taken not out of vengeance but out of the urge to provide for and protect future generations.  According to Rubin, it is “femininity defined by mature and maternal qualities.”

Those maternal qualities need not mean bearing and raising children, or even being a woman for that matter.  They are generative and creative.  Women, and anyone else possessing this feminine strength, can continue to exercise this sort of power long after child-bearing years are over.  Those qualities can be utilized and developed throughout the lifespan.

Mamisma is not about ‘machisma,’ the feminine version of machismo.  It is not about having dominion over others – but using one’s heart and smarts to make things better in a sustainable, healthy, happy way.  Power is, after all, the “ability to do” and the more one can get done, now and for future generations, the more power-full.

To me, mamisma is about the strength to protect and restore, to make beautiful, and to be strong and confident in bringing more good to the world. It is about taking care of oneself as well as others. Beyond putting on your own oxygen mask first, it is about getting what you want and need so as not to feel one iota deprived or resentful in then assisting, promoting or supporting others. It is about being willing to win and let others win, too – and finding resolutions that allow for both, rather than compromising.

It is a word to describe feminine power wielded by either gender, but it is especially important to women.  Our ‘power-struggle’ – at least in the U.S.A. – has been going on since the 1960′s; though truly it has been going on seemingly for centuries.

Gloria Feldt argues that it is time that women embrace their power - so we move beyond “justify[ing] our lack of progress by pointing outward,” rather than taking responsibility to move things courageously forward; and so we can really get to a point where women lead both themselves and others with intention toward fulfilment of human potential for now and future generations.

When we as women can fully embrace the type of power with which we are naturally endowed, and its importance, the sooner we can shift the world in more nurturing, growing, developing, just and innovative ways. 

The world needs more of that.  How can we support you in your exercise of that power?

Cheers, Dolly

PBS has amazing programs!  We all really need to watch that channel more often!

In celebration of being on the air 30 years, PBS through its Nightly Business Report (NBR) program,  collaborated (one of my favorite words!) with the Wharton School of business at University of Pennsylvania and its Knowledge@Wharton website on innovation and entrepreneurship.  Their goal: to identify the 30 innovations that have changed life most dramatically during the past 30 years.

The resulting program, the Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years, is also featured on both the Wharton and PBS websites.   NBR program viewers in over 250 markets across the U.S. and Knowledge@Wharton readers from around the world submitted some 1200 suggestions for the best innovations they thought had shaped the world in that time.  A panel of eight judges from Wharton selected the top 30.  A fascinating list to check out — true legacies all.

This got me to thinking about my favorite teacher R. Buckminster Fuller, the man who coined the term “Spaceship Earth” and the phrase ”doing more with less.”  He encouraged people to create artifacts – very much a personal legacy concept.

Bucky’s stated intention – as a lifelong experiment with his own life, made as a conscious decision in his early 30′s - was “to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone.”

He answered the question of why there were humans in the universe, with the notion that we are basically local information gatherers and problem solvers.  While we are more complex than that, it is an accurate observation.

Bucky focused his life on solving complex problems through an approach he called “comprehensive anticipatory design science.” The approach emphasized individual initiative and integrity, whole systems thinking, scientific rigor and faithful reliance on nature’s underlying principles.

He thought it was not helpful to try to change people, but rather important to change the context in which they operate, by providing innovative solutions to the problems they face.  That way, ultimately no one would have to work to ‘earn a living’ (we are, after all, already alive), but we would each contribute what we’re good at to positively impact the world around us: gathering information about and solving the problems that presented themselves uniquely to us.

What if we did more of that?  What if you took a look at what you do well and easily and even take joy in doing, and looked around to see who you could assist by creating something that would benefit them in some way?

If your brain is already spinning with ideas, you are developing a legacy consciousness.  Building anything from that thinking would make the planet a bit better place.

If what you build happens to answer Bucky’s urgent call for a design science revolution to make the world work for all.  If it:

• “emphasizes a new design, material, process, service, tool, technology, or any combination”
• “is part of an integrated strategy dealing with key social, economic, environmental, and cultural issues”
• “present[s] a bold, visionary, tangible initiative that is focused on a well-defined need of critical importance [and is]
• regionally specific yet globally applicable, and backed up by a solid plan and the capability to move the solution forward”

Then you might even win the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, as stated on the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s (bfi.org) website.

My ultimate joy at Creating Legacy would be to work side by side with you in helping you do just that, or even some fraction of that, which, in your own unique way “makes a difference now that lasts for generations.”

I’d love to hear your ideas.