Aliveworld is pleased to announce the availability of our second beta release at http://www.aliveworld.com/. We've worked hard to listen to your feedback and make Aliveworld the place you need to help you change your future. We believe beta 2 brings you a long step towards that goal. Please remember when you visit to clear your browser cache, otherwise your PC will show you its memory of the old site not what's now there! Instructions on how to do this are at the bottom of this email.

Here are a few of the highlights:

• New dashboard. Now every member lands on a personalized dashboard when they log in.  It has direct access to what matters most in Aliveworld: your change projects and practices. It also provides you a customized news feed from your friends and communities, so you are always in touch with your friends, supporters and mentors.
• New change projects. We have completely redesigned the change project pages, reducing them to a single page and focusing them on sharing. All the basic functionality remains, but we have streamlined the ability to share your change project with supporters and use Aliveworld to keep them involved. Supporters can now leave you messages in your change project and Aliveworld can monitor your progress and ask your supporters for help when you need it or for cheers when you deserve it.
• New change project graphs. Change projects now have status indicators to let you know how you're doing at a glance, just like practices. There's also a new graph that shows your progress though any Aliveguides associated with the change project.
• Better support for coaches. Aliveworld has been optimized for coaches who may be supporting many people at once. It monitors all your clients at once for you and picks out the ones who most need your help at any time. It balances support between the coach and client's friends so the coach can set the level of involvement they want without sacrificing the support a client needs.
• Images in change projects and blogs. Now a personal image can be associated with all blog posts and change project items that appears wherever they are displayed. If a picture's worth a thousand words, that will sure cut down on typing!
• Comment practices. Sometimes you need to write a brief journal entry whenever you practice. We have now added a new practice type that lets you record your thoughts whenever you practice.
• Use your own calendar. We have added iCal support to our calendar. This means you can use the calendar and task manager you already have to keep track of your Aliveworld appointments and tasks. Outlook 2007, Windows Calendar, Mac iCalendar and Google Calendar are some of the many supported calendar applications.
• Easy reading fonts. We've made the text larger and darkened the fonts to make the site easier to read. No more fumbling for the reading glasses whenever you visit us!

And much, much more. In total, we've made 387 enhancements on the outside and under the hood since beta 1. We hope you find Aliveword a better place to be, and as always, welcome your feedback. 

Please note: the help files are not yet fully up to date, however you can check the FAQs for updates and feel free to log a support call or email support@aliveworld.com with any issues or queries.

To clear your cache, in Firefox, go to "Clear Private Data" in the Tools menu and empty the cache. In Internet Explorer 7, go to "Delete Browsing History" from the Tools menu and get rid of your temporary internet files.

Thanks for taking this journey with us,

In gratitude,

The Aliveworld Team

by Tom Lane

We've got several launches coming up in the next couple of months. I think of these as the second wave of Aliveworld offerings, the first new partners to come online since we went live at the beginning of May. I'm quite excited by our partnership with best-selling author and life guide Guy Finley, whose Secrets of being Unstoppable Aliveguide is slated to appear June 10, at the same time as publication of his new book The Essential Lessons of Fearless Living.

Secrets of being Unstoppable is an "Aliveguide original" that pulls together Guy's essential teachings from a variety of sources into this entirely new format. The Aliveguide's purpose is to accelerate the "process of self-discovery and teach you bold new actions that can change your relationship with life forever." Having worked closely with this material for several months, I can honestly say this is no idle claim. I'm most impressed with the clarity and impact with which Guy expresses truths we often lose sight and need to be reminded of.

Guy is a renegade from the music business who is now best known as the author of the number one best-seller The Secret of Letting Go. His new book is poised for similar renown, and this Aliveguide is a great opportunity to put his "secrets" into action.

Mark Feenstra, Aliveworld CEO, has recently recorded a new conversation with Michael Toms of New Dimensions Media. This interview will be available to listen to from Wednesday, May 7.

Mark talks about his personal view of the world and how it developed, as well as the genesis and purpose of Aliveworld and where its future may lie.

If you'd like to listen please visit the New Dimensions website, www.newdimensions.org, and click on Where to Listen in the left-hand menu, or scroll down the homepage and look for Programs of the Week - Free Listening. Look for Making and Sustaining Lasting Change, Program 3236.

I'm really excited about a partnership we've formed with a group at Stanford University Medical School headed by Dr. Barr Taylor. Barr is a professor of psychiatry and director of Stanford's psychiatry residency program. I've had a great working experience with him in the past, and am delighted to be collaborating with him and his group of students (including post-doctoral fellows and psychiatry residents) again.

We'll be doing three programs with Barr. First up is Student Bodies, aimed at helping college-aged women deal with eating disorders and body image issues. The project is going to be piloted next month and will be the focus of a controlled research study in the fall, as part of a full-scale roll-out. The second project is Breathe -stress management for college men and women - and the third is Keeping Cool, which applies the same principles to a younger, high-school-aged population.

Barr is convinced that the public's need for these sorts of treatments can only be filled online. Face-to-face therapy, aside from being costly, severely limits the number of patients who can be seen. The interventions take a cognitive/behavioral approach, which modifies thoughts and behavior in a highly structured manner well supported by the Aliveguide interactive, multimedia format.

Tom Lane

If change is so hard to make, what can we do to make it easier? One answer might be "up the stakes". Would you want to put a whole heap of effort into some change project for some long-term goal? While you might answer "yes" the evidence tells us that most people's answer is actually no!

Conventional wisdom says start out with a small simple win. Go for the "low hanging fruit" so you have a good chance of succeeding rather than getting discouraged. Makes a lot of sense much of the time. However, this way we bump up against one basic problem - motivation. Given the reality that changing behavior is not easy, is it worth the effort to achieve something relatively small?

Interesting research in the mid-1990s by Dr. Dean Ornish, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco and founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, found that major, fundamental changes are actually easier to implement and stick to than minor, incremental changes. This research has had ongoing impact in the area of heart disease. It seems that quick big wins are far more motivating than either quick small ones or the promise of long-term big gains. If a person can feel the practical benefits of the changes they are trying to make really quickly, this reinforces the motivation to change and does indeed make it all feel worthwhile.

It's this "feeling" that Ornish reckons is key to the whole process. Knowing a change is going to be good for you is nowhere near as powerful as feeling its effects. In order to fully engage the will to change we need to work not just with the mind but also with the psychological, emotional and spiritual aspects of change.

Ivan Sokolov

Change must start within took on a whole new meaning for me recently when I was sent a link to an incredibly disturbing video. This is a video of the clubbing and arrest of Tibetans at a demonstration outside of the United Nations on March 14. http://gothamist.com/2008/03/27/free_tibet.php

It is hard to hold the moral high ground in the world, and ask or demand that China change its policies when at home in the United States our police can respond to peaceful protest in the manner depicted here. I am really vitally interested to understand how any of us who practice developing peace in our own lives and actions might be able to influence the explosion of aggressive behavior which is currently epidemic worldwide. Can we have an effect? What should we be doing? What do you think??

Gayle Van Gils

I've often been asked this question in workshops I've run or by individuals I've been working with. It's such a fundamental issue for so many people who want to break an old pattern that no longer works for them or instill a new one that would serve them better, that it deserves some significant exploration - something I'll come back to several times in the weeks ahead.

The first reason behavior change is difficult relates to the way we learn behavior. All the cognitive instruction in the world is pretty much a waste of time unless we put it into practice over and over again until the new behavior becomes familiar enough to stick. We've developed our existing patterns of behavior through constant repetition. So it's unrealistic to think that we can unlearn it in an instant, let alone replace it with new behavior without regular practice. Seeking to substitute one desired new behavior for one undesired old behavior is actually a double process. It requires us to repeat the new behavior to pattern it and constantly block the old one to break the habit. For both aspects of a change, practice is the key. Any tools, management systems and commitments shared with others that help us stick to our practice regime can be immensely valuable.

There's a four step learning process associated with any behavioral change. Before we realize we need to change we're in the enviable condition of being unconsciously unskilled - we're unaware of the need to change and so it doesn't matter that we don't know how to do bring it about. The process of realizing change is required shifts us to the next stage of being consciously unskilled - we know we need to change yet still probably don't really know how. This is the trickiest stage to work through - maintaining motivation and commitment can sometimes be just too hard.

Assuming constant practice helps us push through this, we reach the third stage where we become consciously skilled - we know what we are doing now. Maintaining regular practice becomes much easier and we make good progress.

The final stage is when we shift to becoming unconsciously skilled. Our new behavior is sufficiently instilled in us that we routinely exhibit it and barely even need to practice consciously. Our practice has become a habit that will serve us well. When it stops doing so we'll again become aware of a need to change and then move into another cycle.

Ivan Sokolov

I was recently fortunate to be in Costa Rica attending the Human Forum 2008: A Symphony of Transformation, a gathering sponsored by the Alliance for a New Humanity. One of the founders of this organization is Oscar Arias, 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner and current President of Costa Rica. Fifty-nine years ago, Costa Rica declared peace on the world, abolishing its armed forces, and turning its barracks into classrooms for its children. Twenty years ago, Oscar Arias was at the center of the accord that helped all of Central America lay down its arms, earning him the Nobel Prize. Currently, President Arias, once again at the helm of his country has issued a powerful commitment to the future of Costa Rica; a Peace with Nature initiative. This initiative commits Costa Rica to become carbon neutral by the year 2021; to carry out an expanded program of tree planting that will make it the country with the most trees per square kilometer in the world; and to promote a curriculum of sustainable development and environmental education in its elementary and high schools.

The money freed from supporting armed forces has also been dedicated to the education of the youth of that country. At least ninety-three percent of the people can read and write, meaning that they can feel partner to events taking place in their country and throughout the world, and can make intelligent, educated decisions regarding responsibilities to their nation and to our Earth. All of this was described in a moving speech delivered on the opening night of the gathering on the grounds of the National Museum which had once been the Army headquarters

The most stunning result that I experienced from the emphasis on youth is from the money spent on youth musical education. The Costa Rica Youth Symphony played for our assembly, and I was really impressed by their confidence and professionalism. It seemed evident that a society is truly uplifted by choosing to support the arts in place of military capacity. That is a change that truly makes a difference.

Gayle Van Gils

Today is a historic day for us at Aliveworld! We open the doors for the first time to a few hundred invited users at the start of our private beta test. We have been working towards this moment for more than 7 years, though when we started, we didn't envisage anything quite like what we have now. Indeed, Aliveworld as a web application only started to be conceptualized fully 18 months ago, so we have come a long way very quickly.

We hope you our first users will enjoy your pioneering status and find much of value here in Aliveworld. We know we and the site will benefit enormously from your feedback and contributions. So please, join us, jump in, have a good look around, join one of our communuties and play with the tools and resources on offer here.

If you are joining to support one of our Partners with their new Aliveguides and Communities, thank you for your help in making this a success for them.

If you are joining to get started on a change of your own and our launch Partners' offerings don't fit your immediate needs, we recommend you use our introductory Aliveguide Change Your Future to help you on your way and join us in the Members Community.

Our public beta launch will follow in a few weeks time. 

May Aliveworld help you start to change your future today!