Saturday, March 23, 2013
Complexity,Thy Name is Woman
" The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple." Alice Munroe
"I do not wish for women to have power over men; but over themselves." Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
"God gave women intuition and femininity. Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I've ever met." Farrah Fawcett
"Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants." Coco Channel
"I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing." Gloria Steinem
"After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough.'" Anna Quindlen
With all due respect to Shakespeare's Hamlet, I feel that somehow in today's culture, complexity rather than fraility describes better the condition of woman. I have been dancing around this topic ever since I saw Sheryl Sandberg resplendent in a red dress on the cover of the March 12, 2013 issue of Time Magazine with the caption, "Don't Hate Her Because She is Successful." Maybe as an older woman, I should hate her because she looks so good in that dress?? Or maybe as an older woman who witnessed first hand the heyday of the feminist movement of the 60s/early 70s, I should have more sense than to wade into these roiled waters and mind my own business. The complexity of trying to define women is evidenced in the above quotes. And the festering emotions are reflected in the opprobrium that highly visible successful women draw like Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, when she returned to work just two weeks after having a baby. My squeamishness at even attempting to get a handle on this is apparent as I have gladly seized on any excuse not to write this blog. It was started before the one on International Pi Day. Even plumbing the depths of math and science was not as terrifying as trying to get a handle on this feminine stew that is brewing these days.
So, what is going on? We have the "mommy wars" - women squabbling about working vs. staying home with children - we have an article in the The Wall Street Journal, about "Queen Bees acting mean at the office" by Peggy Dexler - where 40% of the office bullies are women who direct most of their ill will towards other women 80% of the time. So Girls, if I may use that term, what is the burr under our saddle? We have come a very long way since women were jailed and force fed because they wanted to vote or a married woman wasn't permitted to own property or even since women didn't occupy corner offices or sit on boards of corporations. Admittedly, those numbers are still quite small, only 4% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women and only 17% of board seats are held by women and these numbers are growing at a snail pace. But honestly, we do have more options than my mother's generation did back in the 40s/50s and my daughter has more than I did back in the 60s/70s. Where is the missing piece of the puzzle? Why all of the ill will? Could it be that one size does not fit all and now that we have at least cracked open the door to the outside world that was denied to us for so long, we have found that it is not all that we thought it was going to be? Perhaps it is time, we grow up, define for ourselves what would really work for us and find our own power as the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley said instead of trying to stuff ourselves into the hand me down clothes of men.
There is so much buried detritus in our collective psyche, what Quindlen referred to as "not...enough," that to expect women to embrace these new opportunities without the weight of the past is an almost impossible dream. What we see happening on the public stage is the burning off of the dross of centuries of the cultural overlay of what it meant to be a woman. I have often wondered what a woman's true clear voice would sound like if she had been permitted to sing solo without the accompaniment of so strong a male dominated chorus. Who are we really and what would a world that we set up to meet our deep needs look like? I dare say that its landscape would be much different from what our world view is today. This is not to deify women. Because as we all have witnessed - hell, hath no fury like a woman scorned* or even one who thinks that just maybe she might be scorned. We can be vicious.
I do not wish to give much space to a recitation of the past and its defining of the four virtues of womanhood - piety, purity, submission and domesticity - or of the sacredness of the home that women were to lovingly preserve or to the fact that it was considered unseemly for a woman to work for money especially if she were married. What I do wish to emphasize is that since the burden of virtue was the woman's to bear, that left her male counterpart free to unleash all the unsavory beasts of the human spirit in the workplace. To protect his open hearth furnaces at the Homestead Works, industrialist Henry Clay Frick felt no restraint in calling in the Pinkerton guards to break up the 1892 steel strike because his hearth at home was guarded by his wife and children whom he called his angels at home. How much of what passes today for business as usual is predicated on this Victorian schism between the public face of society that men dominated and the sanctity of the home that was women's domain? I think we continue to live in the fallout from the fact that women were excluded from the public dialogue for so long and muted as agents for social change. All social change came from the men who were already in charge of the culture. Now, isn't that a cosy little picture? Because history is retold ad nauseum from the male perspective and women are virtually invisible in that story, each generation of women has been left to start from scratch in attempting to get a grip on the outside world without benefit of role models from the past.
While this is not as true today as it has been in the past, I do feel this is a salient point especially as women make their way in the business world. All we have as models for the most part are what men have done and been. And quite frankly, that model is more reflective of bottom line than human values. According to the Economic Policy Institute between 1978 - 2011 CEO pay increased 725% while workers only went up by 5.7% and the minimum wage actually declined by over 20%. William Falk in the March 15, 2013 issue of The Week, reports that "Corporate profits are soaring, and companies have piled up a record $1.4 trillion in available cash." He goes on to write that workers' "raises have become.... unnecessary. Since 2008, corporate earnings have risen 20% a year while worker salaries have been flat." Downsizing is still the corporate motto, expecting those who still have jobs to be grateful and to be productive, meaning working 11 hour days and weekends, and by the way - a good team member skips vacations as well. According to the American Psychological Association, "more than half the U.S workforce feels underpaid and unappreciated, and a third suffers symptoms of chronic, work-induced stress" with women reporting higher levels of work stress than their male counterparts. Feeling a little cranky?? Perhaps, it really isn't the woman in the next cubicle who is the culprit. It just could be the whole sordid conditions of business as usual.
And another thing, I am no longer buying the old adage that in order to make a profit that this is the way business needs to operate. There have been way too many studies that prove otherwise. Plus from first hand experience, the business opportunity that I am involved with is blowing the competition away with a collaborative, cooperative model that puts people at the head of the business equation. It is time to move beyond 19th century values. There really are win, win solutions out there if we choose to look beyond the status quo. Isn't that what extraordinary is all about?
Sandberg wants women to "lean in." So do I. I think it is now time since women comprise almost half of the workforce, 49% to 51% and in the 25 to 34 age group, more women than men have college degrees that we lean into our hearts and figure out just what kind of workplace we want to work in. When we were new to the game, we had to fit in but we are way past that stage at this point. And anyways, where we are at this point is not sustainable so what have we got to loose? Not only are these conditions not good for us, they are not good for any living being. No wonder there is such ambivalence on the parts of women as to how much of their lives they really want to commit to such a poor quality of life. Surely to goodness there has to be more to life than these statistics suggest. And that doesn't even begin to address the larger question if this is even the best environment for women to use their intelligence and talents. This is a question Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, who runs 20-first, a global management consultancy, raised in the Time article on Sandberg: "Are we going to spend another 20 years trying to make women adapt to a system that doesn't fit them?" She takes exception to Sandberg's theory that women have to step up and be more assertive, "It is insulting to women to say they need to become more like men to succeed."
Because, we have had to survive on the fringes of the culture and because we are wired differently, women have always pioneered new ways of doing things. The Winter, 2013 issue of Pitt Magazine, cites new University of Pittsburgh Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor, Patricia Beeson's "keen ability to transform challenges into opportunities" while crediting her leadership style - "listening, gathering opinions, questioning, and then taking decisive action" - to making "the best decisions for the institution." In the same issue, Edna Beatrice Chappell McKenzie, pioneering journalist, activist and educator is quoted as saying that "African American women were the 'keepers of the culture' and she was one of them." In its "10 Questions" section of the March 25, 2013 issue, Time Magazine interviewed Nobel Peace Prize winner and activist, Jody Williams on how she thought that female activists differed from male activists. She said, "Shirin Ebadi, who received the Peace Prize in 2003, said there are seven women alive who have received the Peace Prize; shouldn't we try to think about a project we can do together? And the Nobel Women's Initiative was born." Williams continues, "Male Peace Prize winners have never come together to use their access and influence to support building sustainable peace. Get a critical mass of women and it was the first thing we thought of."
The world needs to hear mature women voices, not just in business - although data from McKinsey shows that companies with more women on their boards are more profitable - but in every aspect of contemporary life. Women need to lean in to our true voices and become culture changers. We are reaching critical mass and we need to speak up not just for our good but for the larger good as well.
The times they are a changing. Former Venezuelan cabinet member, now part of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Moises Naim, writes in "The End of Power" that hierarchies of power are breaking down. He believes that companies are more fragile, people with power are more vulnerable citing the fluctuation in the top 1% as the reigns are constantly changing. He credits the anti-power revolution evidenced in Occupy Wall Street and Tea Partiers for helping to change the power landscape. People in power are more visible than ever before; they are only a Google search away from exposure. Ordinary people have access to the same data bank of knowledge and that is the new currency to opportunity.
So what do you think, women? Has the time come for us to put aside our cattiness (come on you all know what I am talking about) and our self-serving antics for petty power and start pulling together and empowering ourselves and each other? Instead of taking the lemons that occur during the day and squirting the acid all over each other, use it instead to make the Immune Support Tea recipe at the bottom of the blog. (I know you were wondering how I was going to work in the lemon thing.) If anyone is going to change the corporate culture and in turn the larger culture into a place that at least meets some of our human needs, it is going to have to be the women because the men are being even more damaged by it than we. By working together, we can create an environment that fulfills Sofia Vergara quote, "I guess at the end of the day, all women like to be treated with respect and kindness." Isn't that the way that we all, male and female, like to be treated? Phew, I do feel better having said all that but I do have to admit, I am still having a hard time with how good Sandberg looks in that dress. Meow.
Immune Support Tea
This diaphoretic tea is recommended by MediHerb speaker Berris Burgoyne, BHSc, ND, Dip Herb. She is a renowned herbal clinician with more than 20 years of experience and runs a highly successful clinic in Brisbane, Australia. Give yourself a break and a boost with this tea. One of the side benefits is it will raise your body temperature slightly and may cause you to sweat out some toxins.
Juice one lemon
1-2 cloves garlic crushed
1 teaspoon finely chopped or grated ginger or 1/4 teaspoon dried ginger
pinch of chili powder
1-2 teaspoons of honey
Place all ingredients in a mug. Add boiling water. Cover and let steep for 10 minutes.
Enjoy
* William Congreve, The Mourning Bride
When all else fails, nothing beats a good laugh. So go ahead and laugh at the folly of men and women and how our brains work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKveOsIieHg
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Pi(e) the Circle of Life
"It's the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the circle
The Circle of Life" The Lion King
I am a little late in recognizing last Thursday, March 14 (3.14) as International Pi Day. In addition to sharing the numerical symbol that represents the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, it is also Albert Einstein's birthday - March 14, 1879. There were just too many creative fun twists to this for me to let it slip away without playing with it. After all, even pie that is a few days old is still tasty especially when it is reheated. The inherent caution in this blog is that I am no mathematician or scientist. So please take note of the yellow caution tape. As a writer, the symbolism was just too juicy. I plead Einstein's quote: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. " So here goes.....
Pi is an irrational number, meaning that it cannot be represented as a repeating or terminating decimal, as well as being a transcendental number, a number that is not the root of any polynomial with rational coefficients. I have no clue what any of that means but I love the fact that it is both irrational and transcendent and that its digits appear to be randomly distributed. Somehow because of all of this, it is impossible to square the circle. And almost all real and complex numbers are transcendental numbers.
Are you beginning to get the drift as to why I could not let this day pass without blogging about it. Journeying from the status quo to the extraordinary is really about choosing the irrational over the predictable rational and transcending the apparent for the reality beyond the everyday mundane. And just what is life but unpredictable? Because we are rational beings, we love to think that there are patterns and causes and effects and that we can control our little sphere of influence. Good luck with that - to be totally alive is to live on the edge where nothing is predictable and all is random. Eckhart Tolle wrote, "All the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind." We must transcend the rational boundaries of our minds if we are ever to move to extraordinary.
As if that was not enough metaphors for life, there is Albert Einstein's birthday thrown in for good measure. Einstein, indisputably a man of science, was also a man of the spirit. As a student, he challenged his professor of philosophy who was making a case that God did not exist. Proving to the professor that darkness and cold did not exist in and of themselves but were merely the lack of light and heat, Einstein then made the point, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. He went on to explain, "God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light." In 1921, he wrote a book titled: God vs. Science. He said, "I want to know God's thoughts. The rest are details."
Today, the schism between spirituality and science is closing and the two are moving closer together and becoming one as scientists become more informed as to the true nature of the universe. Chaos Theory relies upon two main components that no matter how complex systems may be, there is an underlying order to them and very small or simple systems and events can cause very complex behaviors or events. The discovery of the fact that the slightest difference in initial conditions, so small as to be unmeasurable, can make predictions of past or future outcomes impossible. This has shaken the predictable world of physics. As physicist, Richard Feynman says, "Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next?"
So what does the fact that pi is randomly distributed, irrational, and transcendental and the evidence of the Chaos Theory of unpredictability and the impossibility of squaring the circle have to do with our journey to extraordinary? Well for one, I think that it explains the appearance of lemons in our well ordered lives. We put in motion what we think are the right variables and instead of getting the expected results, here is a lemon. Science and Spirituality grapple with the big picture of life and both are saying that there is an underlying order and we are not in control. So the best extrapolation is to let go and trust the process, check your intentions because that is what is going to influence the outcome and exhale. As Einstein said, "The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and sense in which he has attained liberation from the self."
Summing it up perfectly is this saying I saw recently on a wooden wall sign: "Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in and no one can stop it. When the doctor slaps your behind, he's ripping your ticket and away you go. As the years go by, sometimes you will put your arms up and scream, sometimes you will just hang onto that bar in front of you, but the ride is the thing. I think the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair is messed up, you're out of breath and you didn't throw up."
Here's a pi(e) use for your lemons, completing the circle.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/bill-clintons-lemon-chess-pie/detail.aspx
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the circle
The Circle of Life" The Lion King
I am a little late in recognizing last Thursday, March 14 (3.14) as International Pi Day. In addition to sharing the numerical symbol that represents the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, it is also Albert Einstein's birthday - March 14, 1879. There were just too many creative fun twists to this for me to let it slip away without playing with it. After all, even pie that is a few days old is still tasty especially when it is reheated. The inherent caution in this blog is that I am no mathematician or scientist. So please take note of the yellow caution tape. As a writer, the symbolism was just too juicy. I plead Einstein's quote: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. " So here goes.....
Pi is an irrational number, meaning that it cannot be represented as a repeating or terminating decimal, as well as being a transcendental number, a number that is not the root of any polynomial with rational coefficients. I have no clue what any of that means but I love the fact that it is both irrational and transcendent and that its digits appear to be randomly distributed. Somehow because of all of this, it is impossible to square the circle. And almost all real and complex numbers are transcendental numbers.
Are you beginning to get the drift as to why I could not let this day pass without blogging about it. Journeying from the status quo to the extraordinary is really about choosing the irrational over the predictable rational and transcending the apparent for the reality beyond the everyday mundane. And just what is life but unpredictable? Because we are rational beings, we love to think that there are patterns and causes and effects and that we can control our little sphere of influence. Good luck with that - to be totally alive is to live on the edge where nothing is predictable and all is random. Eckhart Tolle wrote, "All the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind." We must transcend the rational boundaries of our minds if we are ever to move to extraordinary.
As if that was not enough metaphors for life, there is Albert Einstein's birthday thrown in for good measure. Einstein, indisputably a man of science, was also a man of the spirit. As a student, he challenged his professor of philosophy who was making a case that God did not exist. Proving to the professor that darkness and cold did not exist in and of themselves but were merely the lack of light and heat, Einstein then made the point, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. He went on to explain, "God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light." In 1921, he wrote a book titled: God vs. Science. He said, "I want to know God's thoughts. The rest are details."
Today, the schism between spirituality and science is closing and the two are moving closer together and becoming one as scientists become more informed as to the true nature of the universe. Chaos Theory relies upon two main components that no matter how complex systems may be, there is an underlying order to them and very small or simple systems and events can cause very complex behaviors or events. The discovery of the fact that the slightest difference in initial conditions, so small as to be unmeasurable, can make predictions of past or future outcomes impossible. This has shaken the predictable world of physics. As physicist, Richard Feynman says, "Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next?"
So what does the fact that pi is randomly distributed, irrational, and transcendental and the evidence of the Chaos Theory of unpredictability and the impossibility of squaring the circle have to do with our journey to extraordinary? Well for one, I think that it explains the appearance of lemons in our well ordered lives. We put in motion what we think are the right variables and instead of getting the expected results, here is a lemon. Science and Spirituality grapple with the big picture of life and both are saying that there is an underlying order and we are not in control. So the best extrapolation is to let go and trust the process, check your intentions because that is what is going to influence the outcome and exhale. As Einstein said, "The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and sense in which he has attained liberation from the self."
Summing it up perfectly is this saying I saw recently on a wooden wall sign: "Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in and no one can stop it. When the doctor slaps your behind, he's ripping your ticket and away you go. As the years go by, sometimes you will put your arms up and scream, sometimes you will just hang onto that bar in front of you, but the ride is the thing. I think the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair is messed up, you're out of breath and you didn't throw up."
Here's a pi(e) use for your lemons, completing the circle.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/bill-clintons-lemon-chess-pie/detail.aspx
Friday, March 15, 2013
The Gamble
"One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes." Benjamin Disraeli
"You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away and know when to run. You never count your money when you're sitting at the table. There'll be time enough for counting when the dealin's done." Kenny Rogers
Life is a gamble; life is an opportunity. And we hold all the cards. So it is all up to us and where we chose to focus. While Lady Luck may appear to play a part in our cards, when the dealing is done all the players wear our face. If you have been following this blog, then you will be familiar with the part that lemons play in our life quest. How they give us clues as to what is really going on beneath the surface. How they blow our excuses as to why such and such or so and so is really responsible and we are just the innocent victims of whatever. If winning is your game and extraordinary is your destination, then ya gotta walk away and run from that kind of thinking. While Lady Luck may seem fickle, she can be wooed.
Our intention is everything. With our intention, we can and do shape the hand life deals us. Sounds simple enough so how does it really work? What does extraordinary look like to you? If this is to be your year, what will the hand you are holding look like December 31? Go ahead be audacious, be bold, be daring - gamble with that image. Be specific, the more specific the better.
Now while you are imagining, go do something as mundane as write down those cards that you want to be holding come year's end. Yeah that's right, paper and pencil and write them down, be specific. I know you have heard this before and probably just decided that you could keep your goals in your head. No need to get so hard core about it to actually have to write them down. You know that all depends on if you are just "a wishing and a hoping" or if you are playing to win. This time, if you are truly serious about playing a winning hand that you control, write down what those winning cards look like. Lee Iacocca said: "The discipline of writing something down is the first step towards making it happen."
Then get even more serious with yourself and break these goals down into doable baby steps that you can and will do everyday towards making them a reality. Be realistic, if the leap you are looking to make is a mighty one, then be gentle with yourself and factor in success by breaking it into smaller jumps that you can attain and have several smaller celebrations along the way to keep you moving forward. While it is important to have specific goals, don't adhere to a rigid specific path to get there. Hold the cards loosely and let the process you have set in motion morph along the way and take you where you need to go. Exhale, this is suppose to be fun.
Use the skills we have been exploring in these blogs on our journey to extraordinary to make sure that the cards you are working towards will really bring you what you think they will. This is vital. If you are traveling to a specific place, then you need the correct map to get you there and that is what goal setting is - writing a blueprint or map for your destination. Jim Rohn really captures the essence of the lemonade skills we have been exploring in the various blogs - discipline, impeccability, service to others, humility, personal growth, gratitude, true success - in this quote: "Set a goal to become a millionaire for what it makes of you to achieve it. Do it for the skills you have to learn and the person you have to become." Money as an end in itself will never truly bring satisfaction, contentment and is not true wealth. Money as a means to an end will allow you to partake of the true wealth of life. At the end of the journey, you will have the satisfaction of having lived a balanced full life, of having taken the trip to extraordinary. When aiming for particular outcomes, keep in mind that they will change you in the process. Use discernment and wisdom to make sure that is where your happiness lies.
Let's demystify this process so we understand the method behind becoming a card shark of life. Every moment of everyday, we are bombarded by more stimuli than we can even fathom. To survive, we have learned in our lives to filter out what we consider to be important - pay attention now - and what can be ignored. When my children were small, I trained myself to filter out all the messy noisy unimportant stimuli so that I could read. It was only certain "danger-check-in-now" signals that could pull me out of a good book. This is probably why mothers get the reputation of having eyes in the back of their heads. We subconsciously train ourselves to ignore most of the overwhelming stimuli that children produce and focus on what is necessary. While that can be a good thing, it can also work against us depending upon how we have chosen to label the good, the bad and the ugly.
Least you think that this is all hearsay, we actually have a filtering system built into our brains called the reticular activating system or "ras." This group of nerves at the base of our skulls senses stimuli and sorts it out as to what we have focused on in the past as important or not important. This is like a personal assistant who sits at the gateway to our brain and only admits what we have programmed it to in the past. So the old adage that to change your life, you have to change your thinking has validity and this is the way that it works. American philosopher and psychologist, William James said: "The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude of mind!" That is why writing down your goals and then focusing on them everyday and working towards them is so important. You are reprogramming your "ras" personal assistant to allow in the stimuli that is necessary for you to reach your new goals. The more radical the changes that you wish to effect in your life, the more disciplined you are going to have to be in reprogramming your "ras" personal assistant. If you want to reach extraordinary, then no more junk thoughts or negative whining thinking. Sharpen your intention and will and focus on what that winning hand looks like.
We have all had the experience of discovering some new thing like a friend of mine who got interested in carousal horses and was astonished to find the depth of books, information, groups that were already involved with this subject. Because she had not been interested previously, her "ras" personal assistant had filtered out all that stimuli. It was only after she gave the go ahead to let this information in by her new focus on the subject that she became aware of this whole new world.
Makes me wonder how much of the life I want I have filtered out because of preconceived notions or erroneous ideas or not being serious enough with my objectives. Not to overdo the lemon thing, that is why when it started pelting lemons in my life, remember I am the hesitant saint and not the most open of learners, I had to learn to be thankful for them and look beyond the dissolution of my life and make lemonade. What I discovered was a whole new world of opportunity and life that awaited me. When my husband was downsized, a new business opportunity that we could do together surfaced with a company that allows us to build substantial residual income in a cooperative collaborative environment. While there are still residues of the old life that remain and the transition to extraordinary is not totally complete - nor will it ever really be -we are on our way. Now that I understand my "ras" personal assistant better and how it works, I am going to be more actively programming it to draw the energy into my life that I want. While Kenny Rogers song "The Gambler" has long been a life traveling song of mine, I am finally understanding how to determine what cards to hold, fold, walk away or run from. I have every intention that this is my year to be holding the hand that I want on December 31. No more wishing for Lady Luck to shine on me, I have my new "ras" personal assistant.
As I said in my "Welcome" blog, travel with me to extraordinary as we discover new ways of thinking, living and doing business. If you are looking for a new opportunity in your life, then let's explore what is out there together. There are some really exciting new concepts of work emerging where by working together we all benefit. I am excited about the hand that I will be holding come December 31 now that I finally understand the power of my "ras" personal assistant to let in the extraordinary amazement of life. It was there all the time but somehow I just did not believe it was possible. By disciplining myself to write down my goals and to daily work towards them, I'll be staying for the counting when this year's dealin's done.
"You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away and know when to run. You never count your money when you're sitting at the table. There'll be time enough for counting when the dealin's done." Kenny Rogers
Life is a gamble; life is an opportunity. And we hold all the cards. So it is all up to us and where we chose to focus. While Lady Luck may appear to play a part in our cards, when the dealing is done all the players wear our face. If you have been following this blog, then you will be familiar with the part that lemons play in our life quest. How they give us clues as to what is really going on beneath the surface. How they blow our excuses as to why such and such or so and so is really responsible and we are just the innocent victims of whatever. If winning is your game and extraordinary is your destination, then ya gotta walk away and run from that kind of thinking. While Lady Luck may seem fickle, she can be wooed.
Our intention is everything. With our intention, we can and do shape the hand life deals us. Sounds simple enough so how does it really work? What does extraordinary look like to you? If this is to be your year, what will the hand you are holding look like December 31? Go ahead be audacious, be bold, be daring - gamble with that image. Be specific, the more specific the better.
Now while you are imagining, go do something as mundane as write down those cards that you want to be holding come year's end. Yeah that's right, paper and pencil and write them down, be specific. I know you have heard this before and probably just decided that you could keep your goals in your head. No need to get so hard core about it to actually have to write them down. You know that all depends on if you are just "a wishing and a hoping" or if you are playing to win. This time, if you are truly serious about playing a winning hand that you control, write down what those winning cards look like. Lee Iacocca said: "The discipline of writing something down is the first step towards making it happen."
Then get even more serious with yourself and break these goals down into doable baby steps that you can and will do everyday towards making them a reality. Be realistic, if the leap you are looking to make is a mighty one, then be gentle with yourself and factor in success by breaking it into smaller jumps that you can attain and have several smaller celebrations along the way to keep you moving forward. While it is important to have specific goals, don't adhere to a rigid specific path to get there. Hold the cards loosely and let the process you have set in motion morph along the way and take you where you need to go. Exhale, this is suppose to be fun.
Use the skills we have been exploring in these blogs on our journey to extraordinary to make sure that the cards you are working towards will really bring you what you think they will. This is vital. If you are traveling to a specific place, then you need the correct map to get you there and that is what goal setting is - writing a blueprint or map for your destination. Jim Rohn really captures the essence of the lemonade skills we have been exploring in the various blogs - discipline, impeccability, service to others, humility, personal growth, gratitude, true success - in this quote: "Set a goal to become a millionaire for what it makes of you to achieve it. Do it for the skills you have to learn and the person you have to become." Money as an end in itself will never truly bring satisfaction, contentment and is not true wealth. Money as a means to an end will allow you to partake of the true wealth of life. At the end of the journey, you will have the satisfaction of having lived a balanced full life, of having taken the trip to extraordinary. When aiming for particular outcomes, keep in mind that they will change you in the process. Use discernment and wisdom to make sure that is where your happiness lies.
Let's demystify this process so we understand the method behind becoming a card shark of life. Every moment of everyday, we are bombarded by more stimuli than we can even fathom. To survive, we have learned in our lives to filter out what we consider to be important - pay attention now - and what can be ignored. When my children were small, I trained myself to filter out all the messy noisy unimportant stimuli so that I could read. It was only certain "danger-check-in-now" signals that could pull me out of a good book. This is probably why mothers get the reputation of having eyes in the back of their heads. We subconsciously train ourselves to ignore most of the overwhelming stimuli that children produce and focus on what is necessary. While that can be a good thing, it can also work against us depending upon how we have chosen to label the good, the bad and the ugly.
Least you think that this is all hearsay, we actually have a filtering system built into our brains called the reticular activating system or "ras." This group of nerves at the base of our skulls senses stimuli and sorts it out as to what we have focused on in the past as important or not important. This is like a personal assistant who sits at the gateway to our brain and only admits what we have programmed it to in the past. So the old adage that to change your life, you have to change your thinking has validity and this is the way that it works. American philosopher and psychologist, William James said: "The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude of mind!" That is why writing down your goals and then focusing on them everyday and working towards them is so important. You are reprogramming your "ras" personal assistant to allow in the stimuli that is necessary for you to reach your new goals. The more radical the changes that you wish to effect in your life, the more disciplined you are going to have to be in reprogramming your "ras" personal assistant. If you want to reach extraordinary, then no more junk thoughts or negative whining thinking. Sharpen your intention and will and focus on what that winning hand looks like.
We have all had the experience of discovering some new thing like a friend of mine who got interested in carousal horses and was astonished to find the depth of books, information, groups that were already involved with this subject. Because she had not been interested previously, her "ras" personal assistant had filtered out all that stimuli. It was only after she gave the go ahead to let this information in by her new focus on the subject that she became aware of this whole new world.
Makes me wonder how much of the life I want I have filtered out because of preconceived notions or erroneous ideas or not being serious enough with my objectives. Not to overdo the lemon thing, that is why when it started pelting lemons in my life, remember I am the hesitant saint and not the most open of learners, I had to learn to be thankful for them and look beyond the dissolution of my life and make lemonade. What I discovered was a whole new world of opportunity and life that awaited me. When my husband was downsized, a new business opportunity that we could do together surfaced with a company that allows us to build substantial residual income in a cooperative collaborative environment. While there are still residues of the old life that remain and the transition to extraordinary is not totally complete - nor will it ever really be -we are on our way. Now that I understand my "ras" personal assistant better and how it works, I am going to be more actively programming it to draw the energy into my life that I want. While Kenny Rogers song "The Gambler" has long been a life traveling song of mine, I am finally understanding how to determine what cards to hold, fold, walk away or run from. I have every intention that this is my year to be holding the hand that I want on December 31. No more wishing for Lady Luck to shine on me, I have my new "ras" personal assistant.
As I said in my "Welcome" blog, travel with me to extraordinary as we discover new ways of thinking, living and doing business. If you are looking for a new opportunity in your life, then let's explore what is out there together. There are some really exciting new concepts of work emerging where by working together we all benefit. I am excited about the hand that I will be holding come December 31 now that I finally understand the power of my "ras" personal assistant to let in the extraordinary amazement of life. It was there all the time but somehow I just did not believe it was possible. By disciplining myself to write down my goals and to daily work towards them, I'll be staying for the counting when this year's dealin's done.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Impeccability
"A warrior must learn to make every act count, since he is going to be here in the world for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it." Carlos Castaneda
Impeccability, a clean crisp word with no pretense. Being a writer, words have energies to me and impeccability vibrates in a frequency all its own. It is more than truth or integrity. It truly is above reproach, faultless in both meaning and as a sound. Don Juan Matus, the Yaqui Indian whose teachings Castaneda details in his books put impeccability as the work of life. Only by conscious choice and total awareness of our personal powers which are formidable, boundless, can we hope to be truly alive and free ourselves from our fears and self-imposed limitations, which enslave us.
Impeccability to the Yaquis is about utilizing our personal power efficiently. By reclaiming our power and storing it instead of expending it on all of the frivolous thoughts, emotions, opinions, positionalities, etc with which we consume ourselves, we are then able to focus our will and direct it towards extraordinary acts. The art of the warrior is the ability to balance terror and wonder, to experience both unflinchingly, knowing that we are neither. We are the creator, the awareness, not the solid boundaries that we erroneously use to define our lives. All that stuff that is on our resumes is just that, stuff, and has nothing at all to do with who we really are. While it may give us "currency" in the world of the everyday, it has no more actual validity than monopoly money in the true reality of our energy being.
Buddha expresses the same concept when he states that rebirth as a human is extraordinarily precious because with its unique balance of pleasure and pain, it allows us the chance to develop virtue and wisdom to the degree needed to free us from endless cycles of rebirth.
Impeccability comes from being ruthless with ourselves by shutting off the constant internal dialogue. Our infatuation with what we think we are thinking keeps us bound to the false stories that we constantly tell ourselves about what we think is real and who we think we are. "A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, accepts it in utter humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge."* When we with an act of our will shut off the internal dialogue, our puny constructed "world collapses and extraordinary facets of ourselves surface, as though they had been carefully guarded by our words." * With our thoughts and then our words, we construct our world. We are the way that we are because we tell ourselves over and over again that that is the way we are. Only by ruthlessly holding ourselves to impeccable standards can we stop the merry-go-round of nonsensical self-hypnotism. E. Jean in Elle Magazine has two profound questions to ask ourselves: "Is this idea I'm acting on even true? What would happen if everyone in the world believed this idea and behaved as I'm behaving now?"+ Good advice and profound questions to cut through our self-delusion. Another excellent indicator of how much delusion we are operating under is the number of lemons that pop up in our lives. As we carefully make lemonade out of them, we are engaging in the impeccability process of reclaiming more of our personal power.
"The self-confidence of a warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence."* To seek certainty from others is truly the blind leading the blind. "The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow man, while a warrior is hooked only to himself. The difference between the two is remarkable."*
When we are able to hold ourselves in impeccability, we are able to operate from an incredible power position. Eternity surrounds us. When we stand in the silence of our minds, we are able to turn our will into a functioning unit. We are luminous beings and the only thing that really matters is personal power because the more we are able to harness our power by directing our will, the more extraordinary the results we can achieve.
Andrew Carnegie glimpsed this phenomenon as he harnessed his personal power in his rise from abject poverty to vast riches: " The average person puts only 25% of his energy into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%." The secret to extraordinary results lies not in working harder or putting in more hours of blood, sweat and tears. The true secret lies in working impeccably with our personal power by getting rid of all the draining thoughts, attitudes and counter productive postures that we employ as we delude ourselves into believing the nonsense in our heads. "If one is to succeed in anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but without stress or obsession."* The effort that needs to be expended is to keep the internal dialogue switch turned off so that all of our thoughts and actions flow from the true core of who we really are and not from some false fabrication of who we think we need to be. Impeccability is the only path to extraordinary; all others lead down a distorted side road that results in disappointment and delusion.
* Carlos Castaneda
+ October 12, 2010 issue of Elle Magazine
Impeccability, a clean crisp word with no pretense. Being a writer, words have energies to me and impeccability vibrates in a frequency all its own. It is more than truth or integrity. It truly is above reproach, faultless in both meaning and as a sound. Don Juan Matus, the Yaqui Indian whose teachings Castaneda details in his books put impeccability as the work of life. Only by conscious choice and total awareness of our personal powers which are formidable, boundless, can we hope to be truly alive and free ourselves from our fears and self-imposed limitations, which enslave us.
Impeccability to the Yaquis is about utilizing our personal power efficiently. By reclaiming our power and storing it instead of expending it on all of the frivolous thoughts, emotions, opinions, positionalities, etc with which we consume ourselves, we are then able to focus our will and direct it towards extraordinary acts. The art of the warrior is the ability to balance terror and wonder, to experience both unflinchingly, knowing that we are neither. We are the creator, the awareness, not the solid boundaries that we erroneously use to define our lives. All that stuff that is on our resumes is just that, stuff, and has nothing at all to do with who we really are. While it may give us "currency" in the world of the everyday, it has no more actual validity than monopoly money in the true reality of our energy being.
Buddha expresses the same concept when he states that rebirth as a human is extraordinarily precious because with its unique balance of pleasure and pain, it allows us the chance to develop virtue and wisdom to the degree needed to free us from endless cycles of rebirth.
Impeccability comes from being ruthless with ourselves by shutting off the constant internal dialogue. Our infatuation with what we think we are thinking keeps us bound to the false stories that we constantly tell ourselves about what we think is real and who we think we are. "A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, accepts it in utter humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge."* When we with an act of our will shut off the internal dialogue, our puny constructed "world collapses and extraordinary facets of ourselves surface, as though they had been carefully guarded by our words." * With our thoughts and then our words, we construct our world. We are the way that we are because we tell ourselves over and over again that that is the way we are. Only by ruthlessly holding ourselves to impeccable standards can we stop the merry-go-round of nonsensical self-hypnotism. E. Jean in Elle Magazine has two profound questions to ask ourselves: "Is this idea I'm acting on even true? What would happen if everyone in the world believed this idea and behaved as I'm behaving now?"+ Good advice and profound questions to cut through our self-delusion. Another excellent indicator of how much delusion we are operating under is the number of lemons that pop up in our lives. As we carefully make lemonade out of them, we are engaging in the impeccability process of reclaiming more of our personal power.
"The self-confidence of a warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence."* To seek certainty from others is truly the blind leading the blind. "The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow man, while a warrior is hooked only to himself. The difference between the two is remarkable."*
When we are able to hold ourselves in impeccability, we are able to operate from an incredible power position. Eternity surrounds us. When we stand in the silence of our minds, we are able to turn our will into a functioning unit. We are luminous beings and the only thing that really matters is personal power because the more we are able to harness our power by directing our will, the more extraordinary the results we can achieve.
Andrew Carnegie glimpsed this phenomenon as he harnessed his personal power in his rise from abject poverty to vast riches: " The average person puts only 25% of his energy into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%." The secret to extraordinary results lies not in working harder or putting in more hours of blood, sweat and tears. The true secret lies in working impeccably with our personal power by getting rid of all the draining thoughts, attitudes and counter productive postures that we employ as we delude ourselves into believing the nonsense in our heads. "If one is to succeed in anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but without stress or obsession."* The effort that needs to be expended is to keep the internal dialogue switch turned off so that all of our thoughts and actions flow from the true core of who we really are and not from some false fabrication of who we think we need to be. Impeccability is the only path to extraordinary; all others lead down a distorted side road that results in disappointment and delusion.
* Carlos Castaneda
+ October 12, 2010 issue of Elle Magazine
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