On Knowing You Can Bear It (In the Time of Coronavirus)

There is a story in Jack Kornfield’s wonderful book, The Wise Heart, that reminds us of what kindness and compassion can do for us in the immediacy of illness, uncertainty and fear,  as individuals and collectively as a human family:

JK: On one occasion I was sick with what was probably malaria, lying in my hut, feverish and wretched.  I had received medicine but it was slow in taking effect. Ajahn Chah came to visit me.  “Sick and feverish, huh?” he asked.  “Yes,” I replied weakly.  “It’s painful all over, isn’t it?” I nodded.  “Yes, it’s suffering alright.”  He paused.  “Here. This is where we have to practice.  Not just sitting in the meditation hall.  It’s hard. All the body and mind torments.” He waited for a while, then he looked at me with the warmth of a kind grandfather.  “You can bear it, you know.  You can do it.”  I felt that he was fully there with me, that he knew my pain from his own hard struggles.  It took some time for the sickness to pass, but his simple kindness made the situation bearable.  His compassion gave me courage and helped me find my own freedom in the midst of hardship.

Much of my own teaching centers around guided meditations, the application of mindfulness, practices of personal development, all towards the aims of optimal well-being, increased focus and performance at work and reducing our day to day stress. These are all honorable and important intentions for the quality of our lives.  I feel privileged to be able to do it.

AND what drew me to mindfulness so very long ago was its powerful antidote to fear and suffering and trauma, moments like these- when any escape is a mirage and avoiding reality for something more palatable is not only dangerous but sometimes lethal.

Mindfulness as part of an overarching philosophy of our human suffering and how to ease that suffering has its underpinnings in the teaching of compassion as our very human nature. Mindfulness without embodied kindness  lacks the power to sustain our spirit when it tires.

As the poet Naomi Shihab Nye writes: “Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things/feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.  What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the the regions of kindness…then it is only kindness that makes sense any more.

The answer say the sages and those who have fought the hard fight (as Paulo Coehlo likes to call it) is kindness. Kindness is a tender quality of being with unbreakable roots. You can bear it. You are being held in your own heart, cared for by the stranger who is here to make you well and sharing the fear among us with friends and family, dividing it up and breaking it into more manageable bites.

Kindness is the ‘com’ part of compassion.  Being with the suffering- your own and that of others, with gentleness and a sincere desire to help reminds us of our resilient nature and the indomitability of the human spirit.

THE BUSIER YOU ARE, THE MORE YOU NEED QUIET

In an interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein, journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates argued that serious thinkers and writers should get off Twitter. It wasn’t a critique of the 140-character medium or even the quality of the social media discourse in the age of fake news.

It was a call to get beyond the noise.

Coates, a 2015 recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation’ “Genius” grant, a National Book Award winner and contributor to The Atlantic, believes that generating good ideas and quality work products requires something all too rare in modern life: quiet.

He’s in good company.  Author JK Rowling, biographer Walter Isaacson, and psychiatrist Carl Jung have all had disciplined practices for managing the information flow and cultivating periods of deep silence. Ray Dalio, Bill George, CA Governor Jerry Brown and Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan have also described structured periods of silence as important factors in their success.

Recent studies are showing that taking time for silence restores the nervous system, helps sustain energy, and conditions our minds to be more adaptive and responsive to the complex environments in which so many of us now live, work, and lead. Duke Medical School’s Imke Kirste recently found that silence is associated with the development of new cells in the hippocampus, the key brain region associated with learning and memory.

Physician Luciano Bernardi found that two-minutes of silence inserted between musical pieces proved more stabilizing to cardiovascular and respiratory systems than even the music categorized as “relaxing.” And a 2013 study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, based on a survey of 43,000 workers, concluded that the disadvantages of noise and distraction associated with open office plans outweighed anticipated, but still unproven, benefits like increasing morale and productivity boosts from unplanned interactions.

But cultivating silence isn’t just about getting respite from the distractions of office chatter or tweets.  Real sustained silence, the kind that facilitates clear and creative thinking, quiets inner chatter as well as outer.

It’s about taking a temporary break from one of life’s most basic responsibilities: Having to think of what to say.

Cultivating silence increases your chances of encountering novel ideas and information. When we’re constantly fixated on the verbal agenda—what to say next, what to write next, what to tweet next—it’s tough to make room for truly different perspectives or radically new ideas. It’s hard to drop into deeper modes of listening and attention. And it’s in those deeper modes of attention that truly novel ideas are found.

Even incredibly busy people can cultivate periods of sustained quiet time. Here are 3 practical suggestions:

1) Punctuate meetings with five minutes of quiet time. If you’re able to close the office door, retreat to a park bench, or find another quiet hideaway, it’s possible to hit reset by engaging in a silent practice of meditation or reflection.

2) Take a silent afternoon in nature. You need not be a rugged outdoors type to ditch the phone and go for a simple two-or-three-hour jaunt in nature. Immersion in nature can be the clearest option for improving creative thinking capacities. Henry David Thoreau went to the woods for a reason.

3) Go on a media fast. Turn off your email for several hours or even a full day, or try “fasting” from news and entertainment. While there may still be plenty of noise around—family, conversation, city sounds—you can enjoy real benefits by resting the parts of your mind associated with unending work obligations and tracking social media or current events.

The world is getting louder.  But silence is still accessible—it just takes commitment and creativity to cultivate it.

 

 

A Primer for Letting It Go: When People Get “On Your Last Nerve”

During the course of our daily life, we inevitably push each other’s buttons and pull one another’s triggers. Mostly unintentionally, people can, at times, get “on our last nerve.” We’re human. And most of the time, with the little stuff AND if we’re taking good care of ourselves, it can be easy to just brush it off.

Yet it is also true that when you’ve been hurt (or even annoyed) by someone, at work or in any other part of your life, the path to letting it so is not always so simple.  We know that holding on to a grudge or nursing a slight will only make us feel worse- and not just emotionally.  Resentments and pent-up irritations can cause our blood pressure to spike and activate stress chemicals that can make us physically sick.  And the truth is: it doesn’t really do any good anyway.  Any satisfaction in being right or having the last word is short lived and ultimately a misuse of our imagination.

 

Here are some steps to help you let go when you feel angry, sad or plain indignant:

 

  1. Name It-Whether you’ve hurt yourself or have been hurt by another, allow yourself to simply name the feelings that are there.  They might include guilt, shame, sorrow, confusion, or anger.  A study at UCLA found that when you name your emotional experience it turns the volume down on your amygdala, the emotion center of the brain, and brings resources back to your pre-frontal cortex, the rational part of your brain.  By naming the feeling, you create some space around it and not become overwhelmed.
  2. Feel It- Forcing yourself to let go is an oxymoron.    Keeping hard feelings bottled up only cause additional stress to your mind and body.  Talking it out is helpful- to a point.  Sharing helps you expand your perspective, and perhaps even see what happened through a different lens. It’s not about telling everyone your side of a story.  It’s about letting out your frustration so you can move on. This could also mean writing about it. The practice below can also help you to pause and sense what you’re feeling.
  3. Flip Your Focus. If possible, see if you shift your focus from being the victim to seeing the other person as being distracted in their own inner world of worries, who are, like so many of us, stuck in reactivity.  People lash out and speak before thinking, sometimes. Have we ever done this?  This is difficult to do, but remember, you’re not condoning any action.  It’s just about trying to see how each of us are deeply impacted by our life experiences, which informs how we show up in the world.  Researcher Brene Brown, author of Rising Strong, says, “Blaming is a way to discharge pain and discomfort.”  However, it gives us a false sense of control inevitably keeping the negativity kicking around in our minds, increasing our stress and eroding our relationships. Compassion tends to flow a more understanding perspective.

 

  1. Bring Awareness Practices into your daily life.  In two recent studies in both the Journal of American College Health and The Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology with several hundred participants that found a direct link that a consistent mindfulness practice supports our ability to forgive.

 

  1. Have patience: Forgiving and letting things go isn’t always a one and done.  It’s not always a quick fix.  It’s a process, so be patient with yourself.  With smaller transgressions, forgiveness can happen pretty quickly, but with the larger ones, it can take longer.

 

A Mini Forgiveness Practice to Try (1x Day):

 

Think of someone who has caused you angst (to start, it’s not advisable a person who has deeply hurt you).  Visualize the person and even feel the tightness in your unwillingness to let go.  Now, observe what emotion is present.  Is it anger, resentment, sadness?  Use your body as a barometer and notice physically what you feel?  Are you tense anywhere, or do you feel heavy?  Next, bring awareness to your thoughts; are they spiteful, sad, or something else? If you feel like you have carried this burden long enough, silently repeat: “Breathing in, I acknowledge the hurt.  Breathing out, I am forgiving and releasing this burden from my heart and mind.”  Continue this process for as long as it feels supportive to you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What it Means to Live Authentically


Leading an Authentic Life 
doesn’t mean spouting your ‘truth’ every time there appears an opening. It’s not the wisest move to be habitually giving your opinions at work or anywhere else for that matter. Yes, honesty matters. And what we are thinking may or may not be the arbiter of truth-ours or anyone else’s.  Living with authenticity is different than this. It means to live a life that is genuine and principled.

Consider the following characteristics of living genuinely:

 

  • Being open to your moment to moment experience without distortions, denial, or  invalidating yourself in some way or another.
  • Enjoying a sense of dynamism and not feeling stuck or stagnant.
  • Having a deep trust in your own intuition and ability to self-direct your own course in life.
  • Knowing the responsibility and the freedom in responding to life with our full attention, rather than reacting impulsively or habitually to people or events as they occur.
  • Adopting a creative approach to life, demonstrating flexibility rather than rigidity and closed-mindedness.


Of course, we may possess more of certain qualities than others. Embodying these qualities are certainly fluid on any given day. What’s vital is that they all can be cultivated by practicing these 5 suggestions:

  1. Be deliberate.  Roy Baumeister, PhD (Univ. of Florida), states that “authenticity consists in being aware that you have choices and consciously choosing what you do.” A large part of living an authentic life involves being aware of your ability to chart your own course, choosing wisely the activities of your day to mirror your intentions and goals. While many things happen each day that we cannot control- we can choose our actions.
  2. Don’t be too deliberate.  Without this seeming like a completely contradictory message, consider how you can be intentional in your behaviors without over analyzing and over thinking everything. Too much opinion polling and second guessing in our lives is sometimes called “analysis paralysis.” Deep down, there is an intuitive understanding of who you are as a person.  Trust yourself.
    Often good decisions are made when we don’t think about them too intensely.  Go with your gut.  Authenticity resides, in part, at the gut level.

 

  1. Practice mindfulness. (Of course) Deep attention creates moments of happiness not contingent on outcomes or external factors or manipulation of the environment.  Mindfulness meditation enables you to become a curious, accepting, and nonjudgmental observer of your own experience.  When you are truly connected to the present moment, there is less attachment to needing certain outcomes or trying to control the way things are. It puts things in perspective and increases connection with the whole of life.

 

4. Cultivating Solitude.  Peter Kramer, a researcher at Brown University notes that “quiet and time for the self are a big plus.  If you’re worried about inauthenticity, there’s nothing like shutting the door.” While people differ on their individual needs for more or less quiet time to relax and recharge, there are significant benefits to taking a bit of quiet reflective time on a regular basis.

5. But Stay Connected. While it is always wise to check inwardly with ourselves, we can be positively informed and inspired by external factors and forces in our life too. Relationships are a vital part of living genuinely. We humans need each other. You can learn a great deal about yourself and your strengths through examining your interactions. Try noticing how you show up in relationship with others.The idea is to find the right balance between reflective solitude and connection with others that is healthy for you.

 

 

 

As Shakespeare penned in Hamlet:

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man (or woman or person).”

 

 

 

 

 

RESPONDING TO THE CERTAINTY OF UNCERTAINTY

These are uncertain times. Of course, this is always true, but collectively, there is a palpable sense of shifting sands and rapid change. Our challenge is to respond to these changes and attending uncertainty (e.g. national and global crises, work and family concerns, or an unwelcome diagnosis) with our fundamental values intact-and lived.  

How do we do this?

The first step is to acknowledge how uncomfortable we feel.  Usually, we attempt to bury this fact of uncomfortableness in all kinds of escape hatches.   Rabbit holes of stress eating, excessive talking, social media, drinking- you can fill this in with a million other not so sly schemes.

So, today, try just acknowledging the truth of how you’re feeling.  Acknowledge, and if you can, name what you’re feeling. Fear, anxiety, anger, powerlessness, worry- these are all natural responses to uncertainty. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with any of these responses or with you.

And then, allow yourself to actually feel it.  I don’t mean think it; the tendency we all have to reactively spin stories in our head about how horrible a situation is, how we “can’t stand it” another minute. These narratives ramp up our experience of these feelings, guaranteed, but they (the thoughts) are not our feelings. If it’s fear or anxiety- where do you feel in your body?  Is in your chest, perhaps feeling a tightness? Or is your heart racing? Is there a restless energy throughout your body?  The same goes for anger – these feelings have specific patterns in our human bodies.

If we don’t keep adding more story (more fuel for the flame), the feelings pass. Neuroscientist Jill Bolte-Taylor, in her book My Stroke of Insight, notes that the physiological lifespan of an emotion in the body and brain is 90 seconds. The sensations—adrenalin, heat in the face, tightness in the throat, rapid heartbeat—arise, peak and dissipate on their own…if we let them.

Go easy; try not to judge yourself. When experiencing strong emotions, become aware of the current stream of thoughts without judging whether you should be having these thoughts or not. Be curious about them, but not necessarily true in any real way.

We don’t need to act on our feelings or thoughts before it’s time. When we are uncertain as to the outcome of a situation at work or home, we often feel the strong urge to push things to a conclusion before they’re ready. It feels like it will just be a relief to know, one way or the other, to have some sort of an answer instead of this not knowing. It is human to crave certainty and to want to know. But don’t push- answers will come.  Start small.  Here is a practice to begin:

 

Awareness of bodily sensations, thoughts, and emotions

Settle into a relaxed posture.  Feel your feet on the floor and your body being supported by the chair.

Now, taking three full breaths, as deeply and slowly as feels comfortable for you.  Then, turning attention to the energy in the body. Pausing and breathing and feeling the energy. What’s here? Does the energy shift from moment to moment?   Does the intensity of any particular sensation peak and then soften?

As you continue to breath, lean in to your experience. If agitation or uneasiness is here, see if you can put out the welcome mat for these feelings.  Move closer, even if just a moment, treating these sensations as an invited guest.

Begin working with little uncertainties (whether it’s the possibility that an important meeting may get cancelled or how a colleague may respond to a change in plans). This increases your ability to wisely respond to whatever shows up in the future.

5 PIECES OF ADVICE

Today’s Post is the kind of wisdom you want to tape to your fridge, have folded in your wallet so you see it everyday.  You might want to safety-pin it  to your jacket.  You get the picture. It’s short, sweet and oh so good for you.

The 5 Pieces of Advice by Amercian Buddhist nun rockstar Pema Chodron are reminders to help us stay on the path of growth and vitality:

  1. The mundane details of our life eat us up. Therefore it is important to keep asking ourselves again and again: What is the most important thing? Since death is certain and the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing? Let that perspective be your guide.

 

  1. Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself. At the gut level, you might want to go for the most comfortable thing. Always go for the stretch. Sometimes the stretch is to stay, sometimes to go. Sometimes to say, Yes, sometimes to say, No. You don’t always know. The key is to be willing to go through the shedding and unmasking process.

  1.  Rest in the insecurity. Remember that when we lose ground we habitually panic and look for something solid to hold onto: that’s a description of samsara. Go at your own pace. And don’t push it. But continue to train in resting with insecurity.

 

 

4. Don’t believe everything you think. If you can follow this advice, you will be in good shape.

 

  1. And take exactly what appears as your path.

 

 

 

 

 

One Essential for Cultivating Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman’s seminal work, Emotional Intelligence has made universally recognizable the acronyms EI and EQ (referring to Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Quotient). We all seem to have an intuitive grasp of what these terms mean. When referring to a coworker, boss, or a potential employ, we nod our heads approvingly when someone tells us, “She is one of those people with a high EQ” or shake them in sympathy when we hear, “It’s just that he is completely un self-aware, you know, low EQ.” This capacity of individuals to recognize their own, and other people’s emotions, to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately, and to use that emotional information to guide thinking and behavior is at the core of leadership competency. 

 Today’s inspiration explores the four competencies of EI: self-awareness, emotional self-regulation, social awareness, and relationship management, and their connection with the role of mindfulness:

By consistently practicing mindfulnessnot only do individuals develop deeper self-awareness, one of the major tenets of EI, they also develop greater insight into others, into human nature and along with an easing of ego-based concerns, mindfulness encourages a more compassionate concern for others.” Dr. Richie Davidson, neuroscientist, author of The Emotional Life of your Brain and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at UWISC- Madison.

The creator of Google’s Search Inside Yourself program, Chade-Meng Tan, also makes strong the link between EI and mindfulness. Tan wanted to help people find a way to align mindfulness practice with what they wanted to achieve in life, so they can create peace and happiness in themselves, and at the same time create world peace.”  This was predicated on the belief that all empathy and kindness come from cultivating a sense of inner calm, which can be achieved through mindfulness. For Tan the key moment came while reading Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence“I had found my vehicle for aligning meditation with real life, and that vehicle is emotional intelligence. A very good way (and I suspect the only way) to truly develop EI is with contemplative practices starting with Mindfulness Meditation.”

We begin training emotional intelligence by training attention…a strong, stable and perceptive attention affords you calmness and clarity, the foundation on which emotional intelligence is built. Mindfulness is a quality of awareness that is strong both in clarity and stability.  This allows us to perceive emotion with high vividness and resolution.  We can then begin to respond, in the best possible way, to ourselves, to other people and the changing situations of our lives. Being aware and deliberate sure beats reacting in ways that are habitual but don’t really serve us much. In fact, developing emotional intelligence is an ultimately practical endeavor.

And the research is compelling. Research at Harvard and Northeastern have shown that participants in mindfulness training are better able to articulate their emotions and score higher on overall empathy scales than the placebo.  Their conclusion: people who regularly practice mindful meditation can more easily develop the ability to detect and understand the emotions of others. And this greater empathy is circular. The continually flowing loop is from self to others back to self. Knowing yourself lies at the core of EQ, and that the best mental app for this can be found in the mind-training method called mindfulness and meditations that strengthen it.

To enhance your EQ, start with a link to a Three Minute Breathing Space Practice with Zindel Segal, PhD, co-founder of MBCT (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy):

 

https://youtu.be/amX1IuYFv8A

 

 

 

Living Authentically: The Genuine You

It is the unique combination of talents, personality and experience that make each of us vital to the whole. We sometimes cover up the “real” us; maybe someone once said we were “a bit too much” when we were little or we’re worried that we won’t be accepted if we show up fully ourselves. Of course, these are just notions that don’t serve any good purpose for us or the world. And while it’s true, that we can’t just let it “all hang out” during a workday, we can show up for work with our most authentic self in place. Read more

SIX STEPS FOR EVERYDAY LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

“We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.”- John Dewey

1.Leadership is not simply a title given to those with a supervisory role or hold a job title that sounds leader-like. Leadership is about influencing people and processes in service of accomplishing a collective aim or goal. Such influence can be performed by any member of a group or organization. This notion of leadership is a fundamental state that we can enter and exit when called upon. It’s about focusing on collective needs and goals and influencing the group towards results that benefit the whole. Read more

Minding the Questions

dreamstime_13130519 (1)

Much of skillful leadership involves asking great questions…and really wanting to know the answer. Today’s question involves a disciplined awareness and an inquisitiveness on your part:

What’s Needed Most Right Now, at a Time like This?

This is a worthwhile question; worthy of bringing your attention to- a refrain to ask yourself with curiosity from time to time throughout each day. You could choose to even make it a practice. Read more