"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity." Martin Luther King, Jr.
Boundaries, where does one stop and the other begin? It is the paradox of life that we are all separate entities created with "certain unalienable Rights"* and at the same time all interconnected beings of one substance. How to resolve these diametrically opposed energies is the true work of life. I am my brother's keeper but I am also my own keeper. How we honor both of these positions will determine how supportive and satisfying as well as effective our relationships are.
Arthur Schopenhauer likened this struggle we humans have between individual and collective rights to the one porcupines face on a cold winter's night - how to get close enough together to share the collective heat and how to stay far enough apart so as to not prick each other. It is a tricky balancing act and one that we have all experienced in attempting to establish caring relationships. Too close - ouch, too far apart and we freeze.
While this porcupine dilemma happens in our personal relationships, it also prevails on the public stage as well. The current raging debate over gun control is a case in point. My goal here is not to pick a side but to encourage an open ongoing dialogue between the various viewpoints so that we may come to a resolution that takes into account all sides of this equation to reach a balancing point. Life really does come down to finding that balancing point, a fulcrum sturdy enough to support the disparate sides, bringing them into harmony. Balance is that point when all the pieces have a place and there is order. This is what I refer to as the exhale point or to use the analogy that runs through these blogs - when all the lemons have successfully been made into lemonade.
Life is a paradox - a situation that has inconsistencies that resists easy simple logical answers so that all the variables can be taken into account before real truth emerges. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. sums up this condition neatly, "I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity." The initial easy knee jerk reaction to any situation is not necessarily the wisest or best answer. To dogmatically defend a narrow perspective because that is what we have always thought/believed is not healthy for our own development individually and it certainly stymies us collectively. When any system including a culture is monochromatic in thought, word, deed, action, appearance, it requires little effort on anyone's part to fit in and get along because we are all singing the same song. It also has little resilience, depth, color or vitality. The litmus test of any organization is how well it is able to assimilate the dissimilar. That which is not like us always kicks up anxiety because it disrupts our status quo. This is true in group situations as it is in individual ones. How many marriages have been founded on the premise - I will convert the other spouse to my way of thinking.
The "lemons" in relationships occur because these are areas where we still need to grow. The divisiveness that is prevalent upon the current U.S. public stage is indicative that we as a people and nation need to grow beyond the restrictive thinking of the past while remaining loyal to the principles upon which this country was founded. This is true of any nation, community, organization or personal relationship. As the world moves to embrace greater diversity and allow more voices into the collective dialogue, there is bound to be dissension and great anxiety as we collectively dismantle the sacred cows of the past that have served us so well. It is necessary and noble work that we do in this age because we are laying the foundation for a future where everyone, regardless of creed, race or political persuasion, can add their part of the equation towards creating a strong collective community where everyone can be a productive contributing member.
Just as children learn life skills in the nest of family, we also gain the necessary skills needed to be constructive positive members of that larger collaborative community in our family relationships. All those "lemons" that continually pop up in family relationships are there for a reason to get us to move beyond our narrow individual self-centered perspectives. While it always appears best in the first "simple" as Holmes called it to change the rest of the group to our "right" way of thinking, we really need to take a big breath and plunge into the scary depths of complexity to find out the real truths and growth that are waiting for us in there. There is no other way to extraordinary than through the murky unknown depths of complexity. By keeping an open mind and using active listening, we will learn a thing or two from all those other voices. Even in the darkest corners of complexity, there is always a way through. Remember we are not alone. The universe is set up to honor life. The light continues to lead us on as we seek to arrive on that other shore where the true simplicity of harmony reigns. All we have to supply to this journey of growth is a willingness to grow beyond our set boundaries and perspectives. It is quite liberating to ditch outmoded behaviors and thoughts that have kept us tethered too long to marching in place and not moving forward into the amazing new landscape that exists in the far simplicity.
So the next time the bitterness of relationships pricks you like a porcupine who has gotten too close for comfort, instead of getting your back up and preparing to exchange prickly spines of your own, pause, and let the bitterness run through you. All those painful places that this encounter has highlighted are the areas that only you can allow the light of the true simplicity - the far side of complexity - to enter and cleanse you. In the process, you will free yourself and others from the tyranny of the knee jerk simplicity that keeps all of us puppets to ideologies that no longer serve any of us well. Thank goodness that life is a paradox and that we are relationship beings - individual and collective - and thank goodness for all the "bitterness" in our relationships because it give us occasion after occasion to get over self-created selves and find our true voice in the process. Now there is a real paradox for you - finding our true, who we really are at our core, individual voice while being open and listening to the larger diverse voice of the collective whole.
* United States Declaration of Independence
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
How Fertile is your dirt?
"Every failure to cope with a life situation must be laid, in the end, to a restriction of consciousness. Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late."
Joseph Campbell
"Trouble, oh we got trouble, right here in River City......trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble..." Robert Preston sang in the Music Man. A sign on a local hot dog shop reads: "Flowers grow through dirt." It would seem that we are all well acquainted with problems or as I like to see them "lemons." How we choose to deal with them makes the difference between whether they help us to grow and bloom like the flowers or whether we end up in the desert of regret. Problems, like weeds, pop up to cause us to focus and pay attention so that we deal with them before they take over our entire garden of life.
M. Scott Peck, M.D. in his landmark 1978 book, The Road Less Traveled, begins with a simple yet profound three word sentence: "Life is difficult." That pretty much sums it up. He then spends the rest of the book explaining from a psychotherapeutic viewpoint how we can grow through the "dirt" and bloom. While we all have problems, only by addressing them can we make the "dirt" fertile and nurturing instead of an arid wasteland. But to do that, we need "tools" to cultivate them into a useful learning situation.
After declaring that "life is difficult," a variation on the first of the "Four Noble Truths" of Buddha that "life is suffering," Peck goes on to write: "This is a great truth....because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. " He continues, "Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult." As hard as that may be to grasp, what follows is even more revealing: "Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters." Okay.
This seems to me to fly in the face of all the surface feel good advice/counsel that is prevalent today. A lot of the "how-tos" of our culture allow us to continue in the myth that "if only" we do such and such, then it will be smooth sailing. Not only will it be smooth sailing but that somehow we are entitled to it. And that if we are not living the dream in a Disney World existence that somehow we have been short changed. Instead, here is Peck coming right out and saying, "Life is a series of problems." Reminds me of my youngest brother at 14 one day declaring at the breakfast table, "Has it ever occurred to you that life is just one mess after another?" He was a sage and we didn't realize it.
Peck acknowledges the painfulness of problems because they cause us grave discomfort - "frustration or grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair." Yuck,who wants to wade through that? Much better to eat, drink and be merry and put a surface bandage on the issue and pretend on and on until the bottom falls out. And yet still, Peck persists and calls us hither with "it is in the whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure." So in his reasoning these "lemons" are good for us because they strengthen us in both courage and wisdom. According to Peck, they actually create both our courage and wisdom and cause us to grow mentally and spiritually. Even the flowers have to grow through dirt.
If that is so, then how do we best meet the "lemons" and their challenges? Peck sums up that in one word - discipline. Yet another unpopular concept in our overly self-indulgent, feel good for the moment culture. The components that make up this required discipline are "delay of gratification, assumption of responsibility, dedication to truth or reality and balancing."
All of these qualities sound way too grown-up for our narcissistic I-want-it-now culture. Makes me pause and wonder how popular this book would have been if it were being published today and not thirty-five years ago when it topped the best-sellers list. This is a whole new generation - one that has grown up amid the proliferation of instant knowledge through the Internet; constant entertainment through electronics; fast food, ad nauseum; child focused education; myriad of activities and sports as well as creature comforts to ease any physical suffering and easy credit -buy now, pay later or not at all. The paradox in all of this easy instant gratification is that while our culture has made it so convenient for us to not discipline ourselves, we need to be even more vigilant because there is nothing to keep us from sliding over the edge. In times past, credit was not so easy to come by and so by the very structure of society, we were disciplined. That is not so today.
To be honest, I'm not all that content anymore to be inconvenienced. Discipline takes work. Recently, because we are downsizing and our house is not ready, my husband and I have moved temporarily back into his childhood home where his parents raised five children. Frequently, I have marvelled at the fact that at one time seven people occupied the small space in which my husband and I now find ourselves tripping over each other. And yet in that age before "McMansion," that house was big enough to contain a family of seven and shelter them. We've come along way baby - as the Virgina Slims commercial informed us. While that is true, the real questions are what have we lost along the way and are we really any better off? Has the quality of our lives improved? And are we better people, mentally and spiritually? And has all this instant stuff made us any more content or happy or like instant mashed potatoes just left us unsatisfied and craving something of substance?
These are questions that we each must ponder for ourselves. As with most of life's questions, my answers are a mixture of yes and no. While I would be loath to give up any of my modern luxuries, I do need to develop more discipline muscle. By not holding ourselves accountable to the four tenets of discipline, we grow soft and lazy. The bigger issue is that the problem doesn't just go away because we have chosen to ignore it. Like the weed in the garden, its roots just keep going deeper and deeper, making it ever harder to dislodge. More elaborate are the techniques that we need to develop to dodge the issue and the weaker and less able to really enjoy and deal with life, we become. The more out of control we are causes more of those discomforting feelings that we initially tried to avoid by not taking care of the problem when it first arose. Discipline is hard work but as Peck so wisely advocated, it is the necessary ingredient that makes us grow-up. And unlike Peter Pan, grow up we must if our intention is to truly live and live extraordinarily.
To truly be extraordinary, we need to discipline ourselves and see each problem for the value that it brings to our lives. Just as a successful gardener nourishes the soil and carefully tends his flowers to make sure that they bloom optimally, we need to make sure that we are using the four tools of discipline - delay of gratification, assumption of responsibility, dedication to truth or reality and balancing - to create the richest soil for our lives that we can so that we may "bloom" extraordinarily. This is a gift that we give ourselves, no one else can do it for us. So the next time, you get that unsettled feeling about something, stop and take a look. It is just a problem/lemon that has appeared to help you become the person that you are truly able to be. Square your shoulders and greet it head on armed with your four tools to transform it into courage and wisdom. In so doing, you will be preparing yourself for the next and the next and the next. This way you will be cutting edge, as Peck wrote, on the path of success. Who knew that discipline could be so fashionable?
Joseph Campbell
"Trouble, oh we got trouble, right here in River City......trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble..." Robert Preston sang in the Music Man. A sign on a local hot dog shop reads: "Flowers grow through dirt." It would seem that we are all well acquainted with problems or as I like to see them "lemons." How we choose to deal with them makes the difference between whether they help us to grow and bloom like the flowers or whether we end up in the desert of regret. Problems, like weeds, pop up to cause us to focus and pay attention so that we deal with them before they take over our entire garden of life.
M. Scott Peck, M.D. in his landmark 1978 book, The Road Less Traveled, begins with a simple yet profound three word sentence: "Life is difficult." That pretty much sums it up. He then spends the rest of the book explaining from a psychotherapeutic viewpoint how we can grow through the "dirt" and bloom. While we all have problems, only by addressing them can we make the "dirt" fertile and nurturing instead of an arid wasteland. But to do that, we need "tools" to cultivate them into a useful learning situation.
After declaring that "life is difficult," a variation on the first of the "Four Noble Truths" of Buddha that "life is suffering," Peck goes on to write: "This is a great truth....because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. " He continues, "Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult." As hard as that may be to grasp, what follows is even more revealing: "Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters." Okay.
This seems to me to fly in the face of all the surface feel good advice/counsel that is prevalent today. A lot of the "how-tos" of our culture allow us to continue in the myth that "if only" we do such and such, then it will be smooth sailing. Not only will it be smooth sailing but that somehow we are entitled to it. And that if we are not living the dream in a Disney World existence that somehow we have been short changed. Instead, here is Peck coming right out and saying, "Life is a series of problems." Reminds me of my youngest brother at 14 one day declaring at the breakfast table, "Has it ever occurred to you that life is just one mess after another?" He was a sage and we didn't realize it.
Peck acknowledges the painfulness of problems because they cause us grave discomfort - "frustration or grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair." Yuck,who wants to wade through that? Much better to eat, drink and be merry and put a surface bandage on the issue and pretend on and on until the bottom falls out. And yet still, Peck persists and calls us hither with "it is in the whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure." So in his reasoning these "lemons" are good for us because they strengthen us in both courage and wisdom. According to Peck, they actually create both our courage and wisdom and cause us to grow mentally and spiritually. Even the flowers have to grow through dirt.
If that is so, then how do we best meet the "lemons" and their challenges? Peck sums up that in one word - discipline. Yet another unpopular concept in our overly self-indulgent, feel good for the moment culture. The components that make up this required discipline are "delay of gratification, assumption of responsibility, dedication to truth or reality and balancing."
All of these qualities sound way too grown-up for our narcissistic I-want-it-now culture. Makes me pause and wonder how popular this book would have been if it were being published today and not thirty-five years ago when it topped the best-sellers list. This is a whole new generation - one that has grown up amid the proliferation of instant knowledge through the Internet; constant entertainment through electronics; fast food, ad nauseum; child focused education; myriad of activities and sports as well as creature comforts to ease any physical suffering and easy credit -buy now, pay later or not at all. The paradox in all of this easy instant gratification is that while our culture has made it so convenient for us to not discipline ourselves, we need to be even more vigilant because there is nothing to keep us from sliding over the edge. In times past, credit was not so easy to come by and so by the very structure of society, we were disciplined. That is not so today.
To be honest, I'm not all that content anymore to be inconvenienced. Discipline takes work. Recently, because we are downsizing and our house is not ready, my husband and I have moved temporarily back into his childhood home where his parents raised five children. Frequently, I have marvelled at the fact that at one time seven people occupied the small space in which my husband and I now find ourselves tripping over each other. And yet in that age before "McMansion," that house was big enough to contain a family of seven and shelter them. We've come along way baby - as the Virgina Slims commercial informed us. While that is true, the real questions are what have we lost along the way and are we really any better off? Has the quality of our lives improved? And are we better people, mentally and spiritually? And has all this instant stuff made us any more content or happy or like instant mashed potatoes just left us unsatisfied and craving something of substance?
These are questions that we each must ponder for ourselves. As with most of life's questions, my answers are a mixture of yes and no. While I would be loath to give up any of my modern luxuries, I do need to develop more discipline muscle. By not holding ourselves accountable to the four tenets of discipline, we grow soft and lazy. The bigger issue is that the problem doesn't just go away because we have chosen to ignore it. Like the weed in the garden, its roots just keep going deeper and deeper, making it ever harder to dislodge. More elaborate are the techniques that we need to develop to dodge the issue and the weaker and less able to really enjoy and deal with life, we become. The more out of control we are causes more of those discomforting feelings that we initially tried to avoid by not taking care of the problem when it first arose. Discipline is hard work but as Peck so wisely advocated, it is the necessary ingredient that makes us grow-up. And unlike Peter Pan, grow up we must if our intention is to truly live and live extraordinarily.
To truly be extraordinary, we need to discipline ourselves and see each problem for the value that it brings to our lives. Just as a successful gardener nourishes the soil and carefully tends his flowers to make sure that they bloom optimally, we need to make sure that we are using the four tools of discipline - delay of gratification, assumption of responsibility, dedication to truth or reality and balancing - to create the richest soil for our lives that we can so that we may "bloom" extraordinarily. This is a gift that we give ourselves, no one else can do it for us. So the next time, you get that unsettled feeling about something, stop and take a look. It is just a problem/lemon that has appeared to help you become the person that you are truly able to be. Square your shoulders and greet it head on armed with your four tools to transform it into courage and wisdom. In so doing, you will be preparing yourself for the next and the next and the next. This way you will be cutting edge, as Peck wrote, on the path of success. Who knew that discipline could be so fashionable?
Friday, February 15, 2013
Happily Ever After?
“When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”
George Bernard Shaw
Perhaps it is perverse of me to broach this subject while the scent of Valentine's Day chocolate lingers in the air and the bloom is still on the roses; but then again, I am the hesitant saint and not cupid. Plus all the hearts and lace just beg for the sardonic wit and uber rationalism of Shaw, the man who brought us one of the great love stories between Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle in "Pygmalion." I love that old Irish curmudgeon for his blunt insight into this most sacred of human conditions. We have been marching hard on our way to extraordinary, let's take a break and have a laugh or two at our own expense as we examine the follies of that most vulnerable of all human conditions - romantic love.
At first glance, Shaw may seem an unlikely spokesman on the attributes of love and marriage. Having endured his parents less than idyllic match, he was not one to delve too deeply into relationships himself. He did marry only when he thought that he was dying and this relationship was more a business partnership than a romantic attachment. Still much can be gleaned from his acerbic tongue and jaundiced eye. I bet you were wondering how I was going to work lemons into this blog. Well after all of the cloying sweetness of Valentine's Day, a good palate cleansing will be refreshing. So, I say bring on the lemons. There is much wisdom to be had in his quotes. I offer the following for your enjoyment. Whether you are new to this game of love or an old timer, married, dating or hopeful; whether your expectations were met or your hopes dashed or whether you could care less, Shaw's wit and total lack of concern for convention will provide a chuckle or two and a few truths to tuck into your pocket for later mulling.
"Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the windows shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open." Let the negotiations begin. And you thought that corporate mergers were tough.
"Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience."
"Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chains were broken and the prisoner left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?"
"A love affair should always be a honeymoon, and the only way to make sure of that is to keep changing the man, for the same man could never keep it up."
"Women upset everything. When you let them into you life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another."
"A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth."
"A woman chooses a man who needs her the most over who loves her the most."
"There are only two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."
As Bugs Bunny would say - "That's all folks!"
I leave you with one last thought....Shaw the curmudgeon did leave us seekers with a clue to a fulfilling relationship. He called his play "Pygmalion."* The pygmalion effect is when great expectations are placed on someone, they tend to perform better. By internalizing positive images of themselves, it results in a self-fulfilling prophecy, like Eliza Doolittle. In whatever relationship we find ourselves, this is good advice. As we see our partners in a positive nurturing light, we enable them to see themselves that way as well. Shaw, "I know of only one duty and that is to love." With that as my parting thought, I guess today was not a total vacation from our journey to extraordinary.
VIVE L'AMOUR!
* "My Fair Lady" is the Broadway musical version
George Bernard Shaw
Perhaps it is perverse of me to broach this subject while the scent of Valentine's Day chocolate lingers in the air and the bloom is still on the roses; but then again, I am the hesitant saint and not cupid. Plus all the hearts and lace just beg for the sardonic wit and uber rationalism of Shaw, the man who brought us one of the great love stories between Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle in "Pygmalion." I love that old Irish curmudgeon for his blunt insight into this most sacred of human conditions. We have been marching hard on our way to extraordinary, let's take a break and have a laugh or two at our own expense as we examine the follies of that most vulnerable of all human conditions - romantic love.
At first glance, Shaw may seem an unlikely spokesman on the attributes of love and marriage. Having endured his parents less than idyllic match, he was not one to delve too deeply into relationships himself. He did marry only when he thought that he was dying and this relationship was more a business partnership than a romantic attachment. Still much can be gleaned from his acerbic tongue and jaundiced eye. I bet you were wondering how I was going to work lemons into this blog. Well after all of the cloying sweetness of Valentine's Day, a good palate cleansing will be refreshing. So, I say bring on the lemons. There is much wisdom to be had in his quotes. I offer the following for your enjoyment. Whether you are new to this game of love or an old timer, married, dating or hopeful; whether your expectations were met or your hopes dashed or whether you could care less, Shaw's wit and total lack of concern for convention will provide a chuckle or two and a few truths to tuck into your pocket for later mulling.
"Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the windows shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open." Let the negotiations begin. And you thought that corporate mergers were tough.
"Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience."
"Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chains were broken and the prisoner left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?"
"A love affair should always be a honeymoon, and the only way to make sure of that is to keep changing the man, for the same man could never keep it up."
"Women upset everything. When you let them into you life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another."
"A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth."
"A woman chooses a man who needs her the most over who loves her the most."
"There are only two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."
As Bugs Bunny would say - "That's all folks!"
I leave you with one last thought....Shaw the curmudgeon did leave us seekers with a clue to a fulfilling relationship. He called his play "Pygmalion."* The pygmalion effect is when great expectations are placed on someone, they tend to perform better. By internalizing positive images of themselves, it results in a self-fulfilling prophecy, like Eliza Doolittle. In whatever relationship we find ourselves, this is good advice. As we see our partners in a positive nurturing light, we enable them to see themselves that way as well. Shaw, "I know of only one duty and that is to love." With that as my parting thought, I guess today was not a total vacation from our journey to extraordinary.
VIVE L'AMOUR!
* "My Fair Lady" is the Broadway musical version
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Calling all Leaders
"I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man."
"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder."
"I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent."
George Washington
An old rule of thumb is that any organization is a reflection of the leadership that it is given with a corollary of any organization gets the leadership that it deserves. Reading the quotes from the first President of the United States gives insight into the foundation of greatness upon which this country was founded. Washington's character shines through his words while their echo hints at the character of the times. His humble understanding of his position as leader is in contrast to the coercive power hungry controlling behavior prevalent today, not just on the political scene but in all aspects of our culture. His desire was to serve; too often today, it is to be served.
In the 1940s, Sir Winston Churchill said, "In the course of my life I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet." Again, a self-aware humility runs through his words. No one would question the contributions that these two men made to the world of their times - certainly each was a great leader. While each had a privileged background and opportunities not readily available to most men of their times, I personally think it was their ability to hold themselves in perspective that gave them the edge to rise to the demands of their perilous times.
Humility to me is the ability to unflinchingly know both your strengths and your weaknesses and to make no apology for either, to be comfortable with each. Both Washington and Churchill had their "Waterloo" moment. Washington was just 22 when a tactical error at Fort Necessity caused the massacre of his men forcing him to surrender, his only time, to the French. After serving in various govenment capacities, Churchill was dismissed from British politics for most of the 1930s and was forced to watch the rise of the Nazis from the sidelines. Difficult "lemons" for these men of action to swallow but from their bitterness important lessons were learned and character traits gained that would prove to serve each well when their time on the stage of leadership came.
Robert Greenleaf, who during his career worked for various corporations during the first half of the twentieth century, believed that institutions should serve people. To him, leadership "begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then the conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead." He got his idea from Hermann Hesse's book, Journey to the East, where the central character Leo first appears as the servant of the group sustaining the travellers and in the end is revealed to be the leader of the place that they are journeying to. This led him to write Servant Leadership, a Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Greenleaf's litmus test for leader effectiveness is - are the people being served by the leader growing, are they healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous?
I don't know about you but I do have to wonder how many of our current institutions whether public or private could pass that kind of scrutiny. It speaks to a utopian concept that personally I am not sure how many of us followers would be able to sustain with our current sense of whiny entitlement and aversion to menial tasks. We should all keep in mind the corollary that we get the leadership that we deserve the next time that we feel like griping about our current lot. Nevertheless, I do feel that the ten characteristics of a leader that Larry Spears culled from Greenleaf's philosophy are worthy attributes for any of us - regardless of position from community leaders, parents, volunteers to CEOs - who wish to be extraordinary: listening, healing, persuasive, empathy, awareness, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to growth of people, building community.
The greater the success of a leader, the more trust that individual is given, this increased trust leads to greater scrunity, which in turn leads to higher expectations and higher standards, which in the end can only be met with impeccability. And this is not just on the leader's part but on each of ours in the organization. Very few leaders are able to meet the ongoing requirements of being a successful leader unless these high standards are part of who they have intrinsically become in the process of living. Once again, the corollary comes into play. These standards have to be part of the community the leader is serving and more importantly the group has to support and uphold these standards themselves.
If we want better leadership, we need to be better followers; better communities, better citizens; better bosses, better employees .... Don't wait for the change to extraordinary to trickle down, become the change that you wish to see. In that way, the paradigm begins to flip and the led begin to lead by example. Each of us is called to account for our part in the equation. By doing our part extraordinarily, we can and do effect change. And in that process, we can begin to regain the greatness that it took not just on our leaders' parts but also on the part of individuals to build our cultural foundation of freedom and excellence. In 1961, John F. Kennedy in his Inaugural Address made the statement, "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." This rings as true today as it did then, not just for our country but for any group that we are a part of especially if we wish to be extraordinary.
"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder."
"I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent."
George Washington
An old rule of thumb is that any organization is a reflection of the leadership that it is given with a corollary of any organization gets the leadership that it deserves. Reading the quotes from the first President of the United States gives insight into the foundation of greatness upon which this country was founded. Washington's character shines through his words while their echo hints at the character of the times. His humble understanding of his position as leader is in contrast to the coercive power hungry controlling behavior prevalent today, not just on the political scene but in all aspects of our culture. His desire was to serve; too often today, it is to be served.
In the 1940s, Sir Winston Churchill said, "In the course of my life I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet." Again, a self-aware humility runs through his words. No one would question the contributions that these two men made to the world of their times - certainly each was a great leader. While each had a privileged background and opportunities not readily available to most men of their times, I personally think it was their ability to hold themselves in perspective that gave them the edge to rise to the demands of their perilous times.
Humility to me is the ability to unflinchingly know both your strengths and your weaknesses and to make no apology for either, to be comfortable with each. Both Washington and Churchill had their "Waterloo" moment. Washington was just 22 when a tactical error at Fort Necessity caused the massacre of his men forcing him to surrender, his only time, to the French. After serving in various govenment capacities, Churchill was dismissed from British politics for most of the 1930s and was forced to watch the rise of the Nazis from the sidelines. Difficult "lemons" for these men of action to swallow but from their bitterness important lessons were learned and character traits gained that would prove to serve each well when their time on the stage of leadership came.
Robert Greenleaf, who during his career worked for various corporations during the first half of the twentieth century, believed that institutions should serve people. To him, leadership "begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then the conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead." He got his idea from Hermann Hesse's book, Journey to the East, where the central character Leo first appears as the servant of the group sustaining the travellers and in the end is revealed to be the leader of the place that they are journeying to. This led him to write Servant Leadership, a Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Greenleaf's litmus test for leader effectiveness is - are the people being served by the leader growing, are they healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous?
I don't know about you but I do have to wonder how many of our current institutions whether public or private could pass that kind of scrutiny. It speaks to a utopian concept that personally I am not sure how many of us followers would be able to sustain with our current sense of whiny entitlement and aversion to menial tasks. We should all keep in mind the corollary that we get the leadership that we deserve the next time that we feel like griping about our current lot. Nevertheless, I do feel that the ten characteristics of a leader that Larry Spears culled from Greenleaf's philosophy are worthy attributes for any of us - regardless of position from community leaders, parents, volunteers to CEOs - who wish to be extraordinary: listening, healing, persuasive, empathy, awareness, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to growth of people, building community.
The greater the success of a leader, the more trust that individual is given, this increased trust leads to greater scrunity, which in turn leads to higher expectations and higher standards, which in the end can only be met with impeccability. And this is not just on the leader's part but on each of ours in the organization. Very few leaders are able to meet the ongoing requirements of being a successful leader unless these high standards are part of who they have intrinsically become in the process of living. Once again, the corollary comes into play. These standards have to be part of the community the leader is serving and more importantly the group has to support and uphold these standards themselves.
If we want better leadership, we need to be better followers; better communities, better citizens; better bosses, better employees .... Don't wait for the change to extraordinary to trickle down, become the change that you wish to see. In that way, the paradigm begins to flip and the led begin to lead by example. Each of us is called to account for our part in the equation. By doing our part extraordinarily, we can and do effect change. And in that process, we can begin to regain the greatness that it took not just on our leaders' parts but also on the part of individuals to build our cultural foundation of freedom and excellence. In 1961, John F. Kennedy in his Inaugural Address made the statement, "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." This rings as true today as it did then, not just for our country but for any group that we are a part of especially if we wish to be extraordinary.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Success and/or Fulfillment
"To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson's nineteenth century concept of success is a bit different than our twenty-first one, nowhere is having a lot of money mentioned or your own reality TV show or having the biggest house or driving the fanciest car. The quality of his success appears to have more intrinsic qualities than our current culture with its extrinsic neon light variety. Both are necessary aspects that have value. I just can't help thinking that his intrinsic ones seem so much more fulfilling than what we chase as success today. Plus, it seems to me that these intrinsic qualities have the added bonus of building character in the process of acquisition, something that is not really all that necessary in attaining modern success. In fact, sometimes having too much character today can be an impediment to reaching the top rung.
In a recent article in The Economist, Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School, is reported to have said that he is "struck, at alumni reunions, by how many of his fellow HBS graduates and Rhodes scholars had made a mess of their lives." * To see the truth in these words, we don't have to look any further than Jeff Skilling former Enron bigwig who made $100 million a year and now is in prison for his "success." The lesson to be taken is to choose wisely our goals as we move from status quo to the extraordinary and not to forget to add in the intrinsic values of character along the way.
Corporate culture because of its emphasis on results over human qualities breeds a dark shadow where in order to advance our softer connection sides need to be suppressed. To the victor and swiftest go the reward, everyone else is just an also ran. Because of their hierarchical structure, work places prove the theme of Shakespeare's Macbeth - power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. To add to this boiling cauldron worthy of the three witches in Macbeth is the practice of rewarding for job performance. Sounds good in theory but it can and does bring out our ruthless competive streak as well as prompting ethic over- rides in judgement. This chase to the bottom line may prove profitable dollarwise but it bankrupts us as human beings.
Since the purpose of "serving lemonade"is to become extraordinary and not just successful, I wanted to put some caveats in place after the last blog on "Can/Can't." The techniques discussed there if put into practice will lead to reaching your goals. What needs to be pondered is if those goals are worthy of who you really are. Why chase the superficial glitter of success if with more internal digging, you can become all that you can be to borrow from the U.S. Army slogan? This added effort may very well revolutionize your life and dreams in the process as well as giving you the intestinal fortitude necessary to carry your success once you attain it.
Henry David Thoreau, Emerson's protege, wrote, " If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours." To become extraordinary to me means to have it all, the external success of whatever that means to each of us and to have developed the internal character traits along the way that leads to true fulfillment. To be extraordinary is to live at that place where the miraculous occurs. Why settle for anything less? It does require more soul searching and honesty with ourselves but the end result is so much more worthwhile than going from the top of the heap earning $100 million a year to prison because your success was a false one built upon the sifting sands of time and not on integrity. The choice as always is ours.
* The Economist February 9th, 2013, Schumpeter, "Of Businessmen and ballerinas, Lessons from the Bolshoi brouhaha"
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson's nineteenth century concept of success is a bit different than our twenty-first one, nowhere is having a lot of money mentioned or your own reality TV show or having the biggest house or driving the fanciest car. The quality of his success appears to have more intrinsic qualities than our current culture with its extrinsic neon light variety. Both are necessary aspects that have value. I just can't help thinking that his intrinsic ones seem so much more fulfilling than what we chase as success today. Plus, it seems to me that these intrinsic qualities have the added bonus of building character in the process of acquisition, something that is not really all that necessary in attaining modern success. In fact, sometimes having too much character today can be an impediment to reaching the top rung.
In a recent article in The Economist, Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School, is reported to have said that he is "struck, at alumni reunions, by how many of his fellow HBS graduates and Rhodes scholars had made a mess of their lives." * To see the truth in these words, we don't have to look any further than Jeff Skilling former Enron bigwig who made $100 million a year and now is in prison for his "success." The lesson to be taken is to choose wisely our goals as we move from status quo to the extraordinary and not to forget to add in the intrinsic values of character along the way.
Corporate culture because of its emphasis on results over human qualities breeds a dark shadow where in order to advance our softer connection sides need to be suppressed. To the victor and swiftest go the reward, everyone else is just an also ran. Because of their hierarchical structure, work places prove the theme of Shakespeare's Macbeth - power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. To add to this boiling cauldron worthy of the three witches in Macbeth is the practice of rewarding for job performance. Sounds good in theory but it can and does bring out our ruthless competive streak as well as prompting ethic over- rides in judgement. This chase to the bottom line may prove profitable dollarwise but it bankrupts us as human beings.
Since the purpose of "serving lemonade"is to become extraordinary and not just successful, I wanted to put some caveats in place after the last blog on "Can/Can't." The techniques discussed there if put into practice will lead to reaching your goals. What needs to be pondered is if those goals are worthy of who you really are. Why chase the superficial glitter of success if with more internal digging, you can become all that you can be to borrow from the U.S. Army slogan? This added effort may very well revolutionize your life and dreams in the process as well as giving you the intestinal fortitude necessary to carry your success once you attain it.
Henry David Thoreau, Emerson's protege, wrote, " If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours." To become extraordinary to me means to have it all, the external success of whatever that means to each of us and to have developed the internal character traits along the way that leads to true fulfillment. To be extraordinary is to live at that place where the miraculous occurs. Why settle for anything less? It does require more soul searching and honesty with ourselves but the end result is so much more worthwhile than going from the top of the heap earning $100 million a year to prison because your success was a false one built upon the sifting sands of time and not on integrity. The choice as always is ours.
* The Economist February 9th, 2013, Schumpeter, "Of Businessmen and ballerinas, Lessons from the Bolshoi brouhaha"
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Can, Can't, Which Is It?
"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't -- you're right"
Henry Ford
Our thoughts do play a major role in determining how successful we are in attaining our dreams. But it is more complex than just thinking happy thoughts and wishing and hoping for the best. As Tony Robbins puts forth in the first video with his RPM (results, purpose and massive action plan,) we need a specific result oriented plan fueled with a strong purpose. Even then, "can't" can be a wiley "lemon" at times proving to be more complex than what appears on the surface. Winter is a good time to do a self-check on all the "can'ts" that lie beneath our surface and clean them out in this dormant stage of the year so that we are ready for the spring sowing of new goals and dreams. If this really is your year to move beyond the ordinary to the extraordinary, here is the game plan.
One way that I have found effective to unearthing my "can'ts" is to pay attention to the "lemons" that have popped up in my path. When I have put forth effort towards getting a certain result and something else is the outcome, then I know that I have stumbled upon a buried "can't" that will have to be dug out before I will be able to realize the desired result. If I am not careful, I can at times misperceive the "lemon" as a limitation; and rather than digging out the "can't," I will reinforce my perception that I am unable to achieve what I wanted. This is especially true when I am growing in a new direction and am uncertain of my footing in this different terrain.
"Can'ts" are self-constructed emotional limitations that detonate when we get too far out of our estabished comfort zones derailing us from reaching our well planned out goals. Since we are the creators of these emotional bombs, we can dismantle them once we are aware of them. This sounds easier to do than it is but with a powerful enough goal and discipline (Robbins RPM,) we can face each of the "can'ts" in our path and move beyond them.
Some helpful tools in maximizing these "lemons" are first not to take them personally. If the desired result has resulted in a rejection, don't get hung up on it. Instead use it as an opportunity to re-evaluate your goal, your approach and your sincerity. Is this a goal that resonates with your passion or is it just a manufactured "shouldda," "have ta," "need to?" If our motivation stems from any of those three step-sisters, then we have to step back and seriously consider if we are better off NOT reaching our self-imposed goal. No sense jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Exhale and see what other directions are available or how can the set goal be tweaked to better suit our real purpose.
Another powerful "lemon" is an effort that results in criticism. Again a position of neutrality rather than hurt or defensiveness is far more effective in unearthing what the blockage is. Determine the motivation of the criticism before taking it to heart. Does it stem from sincere desire on the other person's part to give you honest feedback, come from a place of wanting to hurt you out of jealousy or is it a lack of vision on the other's part designed to pull you back into the pot with the other crabs in that stiffling "crab psychology" of maintaining the status quo? Once you are able to see the motivation, you are able to dissect the salient points and put them to good use in moving you closer to your desired results.
Sometimes in our excitement of attaining our goal, we bite off more than we can chew at the moment. Failure to reach our "mother may I take one giant step" towards success is not a no but merely a caution to slow down and take it "one baby step" at a time. This is especially true if the goal that we have set for ourselves is a huge change from where we are. Ben Carson, who tells his amazing life story in, Gifted Hands, writes "Success is determined not by whether or not you face obstacles, but by your reaction to them. And if you see these obstacles as a containing fence, they become your excuse for failure. If you look at them as a hurdle, each one strengthens you for the next." Big goals and changes require major muscle to attain and to live with once you have realized them. Each of the smaller so called obstacles or "lemons" in the path merely help us to build the necessary muscle to sustain our goal once we get there.
Never, never think for one second that you do not get results when you put forth effort towards moving in a new direction. It is an interactive universe - remember the blog on grace - that will always move with us to help us manifest our goal. Our dreams and goals are too precious not to be seen and heard and REALIZED. The result at the moment may not be the one that you thought that you were going to get but do not reject it because it is the clue to the next step on the path. Keep an open mind, allow yourself to be creative in looking at this unexpected response to your goal. Don't get so stuck in what you are expecting that you fail to see what is manifesting at the moment.
This is paradigm paralysis when our expectations keep us from seeing the true data that is emerging. This approach will only slow us down and may possibly cause us to abandon our goal altogether or it can even limit our goal from being all that it can be by not allowing it to grow and expand along the way. You may not be aware of it but as you work towards your goal, you are being changed. What started out as being a tailor made result may become two sizes too small as you grow with the effort of attaining it. So don't limit yourself. Keep a firm hand and focus on where you are heading but allow some slack in the reins for unexpected changes and adaptations along the way.
If your present circumstances appear hopeless, this is your year to move from ordinary to extraordinary. YES YOU CAN! Remember, we are doing this together. So if you are sick and tired of being stuck, seek inspiration from the links below. Go ahead and get fired up with the practical doable advice of Tony Robbins and then see how Athur and the Hoyts changed their lives and became extraordinary in the process. It took incredible courage, will and self-discipline for them to achieve their desired results. It did not matter because where they were headed was so much better than where they were. Watch Arthur fall time and again and pick himself up undaunted. Look at how many people rejected his efforts to walk again and yet somehow something deep within kept him going. Read the story of the Hoyts and see how two lives were changed as each of them inspired the other to keep going. And finally if that is not enough to move beyond the looming "can'ts," I offer the following encouragement:
I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam-I-am.
Try them, try them and you may!
Try them and you may, I say.....
I do so like green eggs and ham! Thank you, thank you Sam-I-am
.
Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham
Tony Robbins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7yyhuLd_ZE
Henry Ford
Our thoughts do play a major role in determining how successful we are in attaining our dreams. But it is more complex than just thinking happy thoughts and wishing and hoping for the best. As Tony Robbins puts forth in the first video with his RPM (results, purpose and massive action plan,) we need a specific result oriented plan fueled with a strong purpose. Even then, "can't" can be a wiley "lemon" at times proving to be more complex than what appears on the surface. Winter is a good time to do a self-check on all the "can'ts" that lie beneath our surface and clean them out in this dormant stage of the year so that we are ready for the spring sowing of new goals and dreams. If this really is your year to move beyond the ordinary to the extraordinary, here is the game plan.
One way that I have found effective to unearthing my "can'ts" is to pay attention to the "lemons" that have popped up in my path. When I have put forth effort towards getting a certain result and something else is the outcome, then I know that I have stumbled upon a buried "can't" that will have to be dug out before I will be able to realize the desired result. If I am not careful, I can at times misperceive the "lemon" as a limitation; and rather than digging out the "can't," I will reinforce my perception that I am unable to achieve what I wanted. This is especially true when I am growing in a new direction and am uncertain of my footing in this different terrain.
"Can'ts" are self-constructed emotional limitations that detonate when we get too far out of our estabished comfort zones derailing us from reaching our well planned out goals. Since we are the creators of these emotional bombs, we can dismantle them once we are aware of them. This sounds easier to do than it is but with a powerful enough goal and discipline (Robbins RPM,) we can face each of the "can'ts" in our path and move beyond them.
Some helpful tools in maximizing these "lemons" are first not to take them personally. If the desired result has resulted in a rejection, don't get hung up on it. Instead use it as an opportunity to re-evaluate your goal, your approach and your sincerity. Is this a goal that resonates with your passion or is it just a manufactured "shouldda," "have ta," "need to?" If our motivation stems from any of those three step-sisters, then we have to step back and seriously consider if we are better off NOT reaching our self-imposed goal. No sense jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Exhale and see what other directions are available or how can the set goal be tweaked to better suit our real purpose.
Another powerful "lemon" is an effort that results in criticism. Again a position of neutrality rather than hurt or defensiveness is far more effective in unearthing what the blockage is. Determine the motivation of the criticism before taking it to heart. Does it stem from sincere desire on the other person's part to give you honest feedback, come from a place of wanting to hurt you out of jealousy or is it a lack of vision on the other's part designed to pull you back into the pot with the other crabs in that stiffling "crab psychology" of maintaining the status quo? Once you are able to see the motivation, you are able to dissect the salient points and put them to good use in moving you closer to your desired results.
Sometimes in our excitement of attaining our goal, we bite off more than we can chew at the moment. Failure to reach our "mother may I take one giant step" towards success is not a no but merely a caution to slow down and take it "one baby step" at a time. This is especially true if the goal that we have set for ourselves is a huge change from where we are. Ben Carson, who tells his amazing life story in, Gifted Hands, writes "Success is determined not by whether or not you face obstacles, but by your reaction to them. And if you see these obstacles as a containing fence, they become your excuse for failure. If you look at them as a hurdle, each one strengthens you for the next." Big goals and changes require major muscle to attain and to live with once you have realized them. Each of the smaller so called obstacles or "lemons" in the path merely help us to build the necessary muscle to sustain our goal once we get there.
Never, never think for one second that you do not get results when you put forth effort towards moving in a new direction. It is an interactive universe - remember the blog on grace - that will always move with us to help us manifest our goal. Our dreams and goals are too precious not to be seen and heard and REALIZED. The result at the moment may not be the one that you thought that you were going to get but do not reject it because it is the clue to the next step on the path. Keep an open mind, allow yourself to be creative in looking at this unexpected response to your goal. Don't get so stuck in what you are expecting that you fail to see what is manifesting at the moment.
This is paradigm paralysis when our expectations keep us from seeing the true data that is emerging. This approach will only slow us down and may possibly cause us to abandon our goal altogether or it can even limit our goal from being all that it can be by not allowing it to grow and expand along the way. You may not be aware of it but as you work towards your goal, you are being changed. What started out as being a tailor made result may become two sizes too small as you grow with the effort of attaining it. So don't limit yourself. Keep a firm hand and focus on where you are heading but allow some slack in the reins for unexpected changes and adaptations along the way.
If your present circumstances appear hopeless, this is your year to move from ordinary to extraordinary. YES YOU CAN! Remember, we are doing this together. So if you are sick and tired of being stuck, seek inspiration from the links below. Go ahead and get fired up with the practical doable advice of Tony Robbins and then see how Athur and the Hoyts changed their lives and became extraordinary in the process. It took incredible courage, will and self-discipline for them to achieve their desired results. It did not matter because where they were headed was so much better than where they were. Watch Arthur fall time and again and pick himself up undaunted. Look at how many people rejected his efforts to walk again and yet somehow something deep within kept him going. Read the story of the Hoyts and see how two lives were changed as each of them inspired the other to keep going. And finally if that is not enough to move beyond the looming "can'ts," I offer the following encouragement:
I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam-I-am.
Try them, try them and you may!
Try them and you may, I say.....
I do so like green eggs and ham! Thank you, thank you Sam-I-am
.
Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham
Tony Robbins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7yyhuLd_ZE
Never, Ever Give Up. Arthur's Inspirational Transformation!
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Secret Agent Grace
"Let nothing disturb you,
Nothing frighten you.
All things are passing
God never changes.
Patient endurance attains all things.
Whoever possesses God lacks nothing,
God alone is sufficient."
St. Teresa of Avila
Do not be fooled by the simplicity of these words of St. Teresa. They pack a wallop and call into play the power of the universe. The secret service agents that guarded President Obama during his second inauguration pale in comparison to the force that we have at our disposal. And grace is ours without merit; we do not have to earn or win it. It is the never ending mercy that sees us through.
If you blew through the prayer, I would urge you to go back and meditate on the power of those simple words. We have been journeying from the ordinary to the extraordinary in this blog and before we got any further along the path, I thought that we needed to rest a spell and consider by whose power we are making this journey. "Whoever possesses God lacks nothing." I do not care by what name we know the divine power of the universe; what I do wish is that we stop at this point and acknowlege that we are not alone and that there is no way that we make this journey in our own strength. Carl Jung inscribed over the front door of his house as well as on his tombstone: "Bidden or not bidden, God is present."
Not sure about you, but I like to be invited. So I'm bidding.....because I believe that secret agent grace is the difference between making it or not. Rudy Ruettiger, whose life's dream to play football for Notre Dame was depicted in the movie, "Rudy," asked the question: "What would you do if you knew that you could not fail?" Grace is the quiet assurance that gives us the edge to keep going. "Patient endurance attains all things."
All of us have the potential that we need to accomplish our dreams. Some of us believe enough in those dreams to take action. When the results aren't quite what we had hoped, we start to waffle and doubt our potential. This in turn causes us to take less action which leads to less results fueling a downward spiral. If we take the time to ask for grace, little "helpers" in the form of "lemons" appear. Grace gives us the ability to see these "lemons" for what they are - little nudges to get us back on track towards fulfilling our dreams. "God alone is sufficient."
In her book, My Beloved World, Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor details her journey as a Puerto Rican immigrant growing up in South Bronx public housing to a Princeton college graduate and Yale law graduate to a partnership in a New York law firm, through a series of judgeships to the highest court in the land. "The challenges I faced are not uncommon, but neither have they kept me from uncommon achievements" she states. There was nothing in her early life to predict such great accomplishments - her father was an alcoholic who died early; her mother worked as a nurse to provide a meager living; Sotomayor developed juvenile diabetes and at age eight, she had to learn to give herself her own shots. All of these "lemons" made her self-sufficient, a trait that would serve her well as a minority student in elite ivy league schools. Grace had already helped her break down many obstacles in her life by the time she had to face the prejudice of her wealthier classmates. This hard won resilience also conditioned her to succeed.*
In his book, I, Reality and Subjectivity, David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. lays out the direness of the human condition: "...the human entity has to contend not only with conscious data that could be put into a computer, but it also has to deal with unconscious data and energy fields of which they have no comprehension, as well as unknown individual or group karmic propensities; thus, no computer could possibly be programmed since a major portion of the most significant data is missing." Gives a whole new meaning to having a bad day, doesn't it?. He goes on to write, "Of its own, the personal self cannot really survive, much less prosper......life is supported by the nonlinear dimension of spirit. It is the over-riding guidance of the spirit that enables survival."
"Bidden or not bidden, God is present" Sotomayor in her book's prologue writes, "My purpose in writing is to make my hopeful example accessible. People who live in difficult circumstances need to know that happy endings are possible." Grace will see us through.
* The Economist, February 2, 2013
Nothing frighten you.
All things are passing
God never changes.
Patient endurance attains all things.
Whoever possesses God lacks nothing,
God alone is sufficient."
St. Teresa of Avila
Do not be fooled by the simplicity of these words of St. Teresa. They pack a wallop and call into play the power of the universe. The secret service agents that guarded President Obama during his second inauguration pale in comparison to the force that we have at our disposal. And grace is ours without merit; we do not have to earn or win it. It is the never ending mercy that sees us through.
If you blew through the prayer, I would urge you to go back and meditate on the power of those simple words. We have been journeying from the ordinary to the extraordinary in this blog and before we got any further along the path, I thought that we needed to rest a spell and consider by whose power we are making this journey. "Whoever possesses God lacks nothing." I do not care by what name we know the divine power of the universe; what I do wish is that we stop at this point and acknowlege that we are not alone and that there is no way that we make this journey in our own strength. Carl Jung inscribed over the front door of his house as well as on his tombstone: "Bidden or not bidden, God is present."
Not sure about you, but I like to be invited. So I'm bidding.....because I believe that secret agent grace is the difference between making it or not. Rudy Ruettiger, whose life's dream to play football for Notre Dame was depicted in the movie, "Rudy," asked the question: "What would you do if you knew that you could not fail?" Grace is the quiet assurance that gives us the edge to keep going. "Patient endurance attains all things."
All of us have the potential that we need to accomplish our dreams. Some of us believe enough in those dreams to take action. When the results aren't quite what we had hoped, we start to waffle and doubt our potential. This in turn causes us to take less action which leads to less results fueling a downward spiral. If we take the time to ask for grace, little "helpers" in the form of "lemons" appear. Grace gives us the ability to see these "lemons" for what they are - little nudges to get us back on track towards fulfilling our dreams. "God alone is sufficient."
In her book, My Beloved World, Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor details her journey as a Puerto Rican immigrant growing up in South Bronx public housing to a Princeton college graduate and Yale law graduate to a partnership in a New York law firm, through a series of judgeships to the highest court in the land. "The challenges I faced are not uncommon, but neither have they kept me from uncommon achievements" she states. There was nothing in her early life to predict such great accomplishments - her father was an alcoholic who died early; her mother worked as a nurse to provide a meager living; Sotomayor developed juvenile diabetes and at age eight, she had to learn to give herself her own shots. All of these "lemons" made her self-sufficient, a trait that would serve her well as a minority student in elite ivy league schools. Grace had already helped her break down many obstacles in her life by the time she had to face the prejudice of her wealthier classmates. This hard won resilience also conditioned her to succeed.*
In his book, I, Reality and Subjectivity, David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. lays out the direness of the human condition: "...the human entity has to contend not only with conscious data that could be put into a computer, but it also has to deal with unconscious data and energy fields of which they have no comprehension, as well as unknown individual or group karmic propensities; thus, no computer could possibly be programmed since a major portion of the most significant data is missing." Gives a whole new meaning to having a bad day, doesn't it?. He goes on to write, "Of its own, the personal self cannot really survive, much less prosper......life is supported by the nonlinear dimension of spirit. It is the over-riding guidance of the spirit that enables survival."
"Bidden or not bidden, God is present" Sotomayor in her book's prologue writes, "My purpose in writing is to make my hopeful example accessible. People who live in difficult circumstances need to know that happy endings are possible." Grace will see us through.
* The Economist, February 2, 2013
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Are We Even Real??
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
Albert Einstein
The problem with reality, as I see it, is that it varies from person to person. So what is really real? Studies have shown that eyewitness accounts are extremely unreliable. While between four and five hundred people were eyewitnesses to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that fatal day in Dallas, November 22, 1963, we still have no consensus as to what actually took place. Studies have been made with people who have multiple personalities and one of the personalities will have a disease and the others won't. So what is really real, a fact, and what is just an illusion?
Perception is everything. And perception is based upon all the life conditioning that we have absorbed so far which makes perception/reality really slippery tricky stuff because each of us experiences life's phenomena differently. Before we get too far into this mind bending business, let's define some of the terms that are being tossed around. Perception: organization, indentification and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment. Observation: act of regarding attentively or watching; the habit of noticing. Paradigm: philosophical or theorectical framework; distinct concept or thought patterns; set of assumptions, concepts; values; practices that constitute a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them.
Okay even after defining these terms, it still appears that a lot of subjective variables get mixed into the reality stew. How then are we to move beyond the filtering screen of perception to find out what really is real and what is the illusion that we are creating based upon faulty programming? And once we discover the answer to that riddle, how do we go about cleaning off that screen of faulty perception to have a clearer view of the reality that we are capable of living?
To me of the three defined concepts, observation seems the cleanest of value judgements and cultural overlays. Both perception - how we have been taught to organize our world - and paradigm are loaded with outside emotional data and interpretation. Observation, the act of noticing. To notice means that we have to be aware and not on auto-pilot, hypnotized by the on-going story that we tell ourselves. To notice implies a lack of value judgement. To notice something requires that there is a connection of some sort that has been made which needs a certain amount of being present. Noticing is to have a still mind.
Each time we judge or take a positionality, we put another nail into our perceptual coffin making a tighter box that limits our view of life and its possiblities. How do we know what we are actually seeing, believing if we have never allowed ourselves to see or believe anything outside of our box? Each absolute dogmatic position that we adhere to limits us. And to make matters worse the more vigorously we defend our positionalities, the more it becomes cemented as "our" reality and the less energy we have to entertain anything else. This to me is the value of lemons. These tart blips on our status quo radar give us a nudge towards seeing things differently, to make different choices that can propel us on a different trajectory and hopefully expand our perception beyond our narrow horizons. They are the cleansing agent on our perceptual lens.
Thinking outside our boxes and trying to perceive our reality differently is really hard work. Yikes, let's be honest, it can really be mind bending. While it is a simple concept, change your perceptual thinking, change your life, it requires absolute focus at all times. If we are ever to move beyond ordinary to extraordinary, we need to know by whose reality we are operating.
And if somebody is going to write the script of my life, then I want to be the one. I don't know about you but I am tired of allowing others carte blanche to muck about in my life. To subscribe to the status quo is to adhere to "crab psychology" where the captured crabs in the bucket will continually pull any escaping crab back into their communal prison of certain death.
We are the projector heads projecting our story on the screen of life and then wondering why life is so limiting. By carefully guarding the intake valve, I can change the images on my screen of life. This will take due diligence on my part but even slight changes in my perceptual reality will pay huge dividends. I intend to slay some of my sacred cows that I have been feeding all my life.
By no stretch of the imagination am I a physicist but I did find intriguing the conversation on the following link. What captured my imagination is that as scientists move beyond Newton's concept of a solid law governed universe, they are finding more and more that there is far more randomness and space than ever suspected. So if there is all this space and all these options, why are we still adhering to so narrow a reality? No limitation living, here we come.
http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2012/dec/31/solid-rock/
Albert Einstein
“Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.”
Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
The problem with reality, as I see it, is that it varies from person to person. So what is really real? Studies have shown that eyewitness accounts are extremely unreliable. While between four and five hundred people were eyewitnesses to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that fatal day in Dallas, November 22, 1963, we still have no consensus as to what actually took place. Studies have been made with people who have multiple personalities and one of the personalities will have a disease and the others won't. So what is really real, a fact, and what is just an illusion?
Perception is everything. And perception is based upon all the life conditioning that we have absorbed so far which makes perception/reality really slippery tricky stuff because each of us experiences life's phenomena differently. Before we get too far into this mind bending business, let's define some of the terms that are being tossed around. Perception: organization, indentification and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment. Observation: act of regarding attentively or watching; the habit of noticing. Paradigm: philosophical or theorectical framework; distinct concept or thought patterns; set of assumptions, concepts; values; practices that constitute a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them.
Okay even after defining these terms, it still appears that a lot of subjective variables get mixed into the reality stew. How then are we to move beyond the filtering screen of perception to find out what really is real and what is the illusion that we are creating based upon faulty programming? And once we discover the answer to that riddle, how do we go about cleaning off that screen of faulty perception to have a clearer view of the reality that we are capable of living?
To me of the three defined concepts, observation seems the cleanest of value judgements and cultural overlays. Both perception - how we have been taught to organize our world - and paradigm are loaded with outside emotional data and interpretation. Observation, the act of noticing. To notice means that we have to be aware and not on auto-pilot, hypnotized by the on-going story that we tell ourselves. To notice implies a lack of value judgement. To notice something requires that there is a connection of some sort that has been made which needs a certain amount of being present. Noticing is to have a still mind.
Each time we judge or take a positionality, we put another nail into our perceptual coffin making a tighter box that limits our view of life and its possiblities. How do we know what we are actually seeing, believing if we have never allowed ourselves to see or believe anything outside of our box? Each absolute dogmatic position that we adhere to limits us. And to make matters worse the more vigorously we defend our positionalities, the more it becomes cemented as "our" reality and the less energy we have to entertain anything else. This to me is the value of lemons. These tart blips on our status quo radar give us a nudge towards seeing things differently, to make different choices that can propel us on a different trajectory and hopefully expand our perception beyond our narrow horizons. They are the cleansing agent on our perceptual lens.
Thinking outside our boxes and trying to perceive our reality differently is really hard work. Yikes, let's be honest, it can really be mind bending. While it is a simple concept, change your perceptual thinking, change your life, it requires absolute focus at all times. If we are ever to move beyond ordinary to extraordinary, we need to know by whose reality we are operating.
And if somebody is going to write the script of my life, then I want to be the one. I don't know about you but I am tired of allowing others carte blanche to muck about in my life. To subscribe to the status quo is to adhere to "crab psychology" where the captured crabs in the bucket will continually pull any escaping crab back into their communal prison of certain death.
We are the projector heads projecting our story on the screen of life and then wondering why life is so limiting. By carefully guarding the intake valve, I can change the images on my screen of life. This will take due diligence on my part but even slight changes in my perceptual reality will pay huge dividends. I intend to slay some of my sacred cows that I have been feeding all my life.
By no stretch of the imagination am I a physicist but I did find intriguing the conversation on the following link. What captured my imagination is that as scientists move beyond Newton's concept of a solid law governed universe, they are finding more and more that there is far more randomness and space than ever suspected. So if there is all this space and all these options, why are we still adhering to so narrow a reality? No limitation living, here we come.
http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2012/dec/31/solid-rock/
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Groundhog Day - the Shadow Knows
"What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today."
'Groundhog Day' movie
"The groundhog is like most prophets; it delivers its prediction and then disappears."
Bill Vaughn
This has been the week for celebrations - Tuesday was Curmudgeon Day and today, February 2 is Groundhog Day, the day that little rodent casts our winter/spring fate. Notice I refrained from using one of Jimmy Cagney's lines and calling him a "dirty rat." Is there any wisdom to be gleaned from this German custom or does it just help to break the dead of winter, which as I read someplace recently is approximately from mid-January to mid-February when the temperature continues to fall in spite of the fact that the days are getting longer?
The groundhog uses whether or not he sees his shadow as an indicator for stormy weather or fair sailing. Interesting, very interesting. Could this be a clue to those "lemons" in our lives?
Carl Jung wrote: "Everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is."* He felt that because of the shadow's irrational nature, it makes it more susceptible to being projected, meaning that those undesirable parts of ourselves that we have failed to reconcile with, we project onto someone else. "The projection-making factor (the Shadow archetype) then has a free hand and can realize its object...if it has one... or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power."* This may not sound too harmful but what happens is that these projections further hinder us by creating a denser layer of illusion between us and reality. The longer we operate by blaming others for our shortcomings, the more fog of unreality we build up around ourselves that further prevents us from taking responsible action for our lives. We become crippled, thinking that we are effectively doing something and it is others who are hindering us. This makes us powerless because others have all the control. This is just nosense - sort of like Don Quixote jousting with windmills thinking he was slaying dragons. That kind of wasted behavior will keep us mired in the status quo and not move us any further towards extraordinary.
While that is the negative aspect of the shadow, Jung also saw this dark aspect of us as the "seat of creativity."* In spite of it being our Mr Hyde to our Dr Jekyll, Jung believed it to be our saving grace, "the true spirit of life,"* as opposed to the arid land of the scholar. This fact alone makes reconciling with our dark side imperative. The purpose of life is to become more conscious of our totality - the good, the bad and the ugly - so that we can be totally alive, not to stuff more of ourselves in the darkness and hide.
It would appear that our shadow is very much like the groundhog's. It can bode fair weather or foul depending upon whether we see it or not. The dead of winter provides us with the perfect time for a little introspection. Traditionally, before the advent of artificial light and central heating, it was a time to hibernate and drowse and rest up for the more active time of the year when there would be little time for such activities. Might not be such a bad practice for us moderns to spend some quiet down time and to throw a few more hours of sleep a night into the bargain as well. Studies are showing that by sleeping nine plus hours a night in the cold dark time of the year, we can combat depression as well as a host of other conditions: heart issues, cancer, Type II diabetes and obesity.+ Just easing that darkness would go a long way towards helping us to deal with some of our unloveable characteristics more positively.
So regardless of whether old man winter or the maid of spring wins the tug-a-war of the seasons this year, by looking at our own shadow selves, we will be moving closer to extraordinary and out of the ho hum of the status quo and the dead of winter blahs.
* http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_psychology
+ Lights Out, Sleep, Sugar, and Survival, T. S. Wiley with Bent Formby, Ph.D.
'Groundhog Day' movie
"The groundhog is like most prophets; it delivers its prediction and then disappears."
Bill Vaughn
This has been the week for celebrations - Tuesday was Curmudgeon Day and today, February 2 is Groundhog Day, the day that little rodent casts our winter/spring fate. Notice I refrained from using one of Jimmy Cagney's lines and calling him a "dirty rat." Is there any wisdom to be gleaned from this German custom or does it just help to break the dead of winter, which as I read someplace recently is approximately from mid-January to mid-February when the temperature continues to fall in spite of the fact that the days are getting longer?
The groundhog uses whether or not he sees his shadow as an indicator for stormy weather or fair sailing. Interesting, very interesting. Could this be a clue to those "lemons" in our lives?
Carl Jung wrote: "Everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is."* He felt that because of the shadow's irrational nature, it makes it more susceptible to being projected, meaning that those undesirable parts of ourselves that we have failed to reconcile with, we project onto someone else. "The projection-making factor (the Shadow archetype) then has a free hand and can realize its object...if it has one... or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power."* This may not sound too harmful but what happens is that these projections further hinder us by creating a denser layer of illusion between us and reality. The longer we operate by blaming others for our shortcomings, the more fog of unreality we build up around ourselves that further prevents us from taking responsible action for our lives. We become crippled, thinking that we are effectively doing something and it is others who are hindering us. This makes us powerless because others have all the control. This is just nosense - sort of like Don Quixote jousting with windmills thinking he was slaying dragons. That kind of wasted behavior will keep us mired in the status quo and not move us any further towards extraordinary.
While that is the negative aspect of the shadow, Jung also saw this dark aspect of us as the "seat of creativity."* In spite of it being our Mr Hyde to our Dr Jekyll, Jung believed it to be our saving grace, "the true spirit of life,"* as opposed to the arid land of the scholar. This fact alone makes reconciling with our dark side imperative. The purpose of life is to become more conscious of our totality - the good, the bad and the ugly - so that we can be totally alive, not to stuff more of ourselves in the darkness and hide.
It would appear that our shadow is very much like the groundhog's. It can bode fair weather or foul depending upon whether we see it or not. The dead of winter provides us with the perfect time for a little introspection. Traditionally, before the advent of artificial light and central heating, it was a time to hibernate and drowse and rest up for the more active time of the year when there would be little time for such activities. Might not be such a bad practice for us moderns to spend some quiet down time and to throw a few more hours of sleep a night into the bargain as well. Studies are showing that by sleeping nine plus hours a night in the cold dark time of the year, we can combat depression as well as a host of other conditions: heart issues, cancer, Type II diabetes and obesity.+ Just easing that darkness would go a long way towards helping us to deal with some of our unloveable characteristics more positively.
So regardless of whether old man winter or the maid of spring wins the tug-a-war of the seasons this year, by looking at our own shadow selves, we will be moving closer to extraordinary and out of the ho hum of the status quo and the dead of winter blahs.
* http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_psychology
+ Lights Out, Sleep, Sugar, and Survival, T. S. Wiley with Bent Formby, Ph.D.
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