Hieidaira is a hidden secret of Kyoto.

For 10 years it was the home of my family.

Set on one of Japan’s most sacred mountains, it is the victim of a millennium prejudice in Kyoto that it is simply “too far away” to seriously make it home. Once that was true. A trek down the mountain was an event you planned weeks ahead - to-day it takes 10 minutes in a car to arrive at the bustling tourist area of Ginka-kuji.

These days our old home is rented to foreign tourists who care little for it’s so-called inaccessibility. Instead, their first question is most often: “Do you have internet access?” We used to answer “No” and that was it, they didn’t rent. It woke me up to a new way of thinking…

Internet is a utility, not a luxury. In modern informationalized society, it is important as having electricity or gas. It iss the amplification of our essential telephone.

Internet used to be a luxury, now it is considered essential. There’s even a few famous hold-outs like marketing guru Dan Kennedy who stakes his reputation on not having internet in his home. These days that sounds more stupid than it does smart - the internet is how business gets done.

Facebook has many more holdouts, but it is moving in the same direction of becoming an essential utility. Ignore everyone who says its days are numbered: they said that about the car too. You will also read articles that say “Facebook is finished, they are alienating the people who most support it” followed by a specific example of why that is true. What they write may be true, but Facebook has many heads - it can afford to lose some to make way for others.

The days when Facebook was just another website you visited are slowly fading - instead it is a new layer added to the functionality of the internet. How many of you have now succumbed to the ease of using Facebook as your login for multiple websites?

It is having a similar effect to the advance when Apple introduced us to GUI in computers, or how browsers changed the experience of the internet by creating a web. Facebook is in that class, it is another web.

The biggest transformation Facebook brought to the internet, is that it eliminated anonymity. For years before Facebook, everyone loved to hide their identity. I did it back then, without really knowing why. It was all new and I didn’t want to look goofy. Now I don’t bother - I am just me. I don’t have any “secret” identities.

Young people most indicate the truth of Facebook’s inevitable ubiquity in the long term. To them, Facebook is “old hat” - now it is Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Frengo, Kik but guess what? They still have a Facebook profile because (shrug) “you have too”.

That’s right, you have to.

How To Use FaceBook for Your Learning Community

Over this coming month, and throughout the year, I will be writing more about how Facebook can be utilized by you to develop an online learning community which will strengthen and grow your practise. I use it in coaching Alexander Technique teachers, and in developing the Music niche in Japan. Done correctly, it functions incredibly well. There are ways to use it, and ways to avoid - making sense of all that is my project for this month and onwards in my coaching group.

My plan is that those in my coaching group will learn from me and each other - in our Facebook group! - how to make this utility work in your practise. This will be an ongoing exploration. I don’t have all the answers - no-one does - so I invite you to join us in a learning environment which will be fuelled by a hunger to discover, to try new and different things, to plug this new utility into our practise to charge it up to another level.

Step One - Making A Plan

Facebook is a tool, not an end in itself. Do you know what you need the tool for?

[NOTE: This second half of my blog is a paid area describing practical ways to implement what has been described above in a Facebook group with 47 other teachers and students. You can join anytime to be part of their discussions.]

One thing that is common amongst us all is the wish to have more students. How to do that is the big question - you need a plan. Even better - you need a dream. You need something that wakes you up in the morning, fills you with joy and sets you earnestly doing all you can to make your dream happen.

That’s an epic scale, but I think it would serve us all well if we articulate to each other where we want to be in a year’s time.

What’s your vision for you?

Basically that’s the first homework: sit down with your Self and make a plan. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know - decide at least on your focus. Start with something that has a sense of direction to it, if not a tangible end. As Alexander said: “There is no such thing as a right position (plan), but there is such a thing as the right direction (focus).”

Tangible is good, but an intuitive sense of “I want to go this way…” is OK for now if that is all you get. The point is, how you use Facebook will depend on this. Without it, you could waste precious resources in the form of both time and money.

To gain value from this month, start first clarifying your dream (plan) for the year, based on your own unique circumstances. Let us know about that.

It is certainly my homework, especially since the closing of BCLA. I don’t expect in one day this will get clear for me - or you - but the point is to put some conscious, constructive thinking into creating some kind of framework.

What is your loose framework for 2014?

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