Think, Think, Think

Posted on by

No problem can be solved [Or nation renewed] from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Einstein

 

Robert Greenleaf asked in Servant Leadership:

Who is the enemy? Who is holding back more rapid movement to the better society that is reasonable and possible with available resources? Who is responsible for the mediocre performance of so many of our institutions? Who is standing in the way of a larger consensus on the definition of the better society and paths to reaching it?

The good people who look the other way–not the evil, stupid and apathetic people who have so much power and influence today–are the enemy. The good people—at all socioeconomic levels–who have been lazy, asleep or afraid for a long time need to wake-up, courage-up and get energized and engaged with the future of their country.

They can begin by making a considered decision on their choice for the next President of the United States.

Progress has been made: Millions of people awakened this presidential election cycle as pent-up anger finally surfaced. Many millions more need to rouse themselves. Some on the left call for political revolution; some on the right call for a return to a romanticized past. Many are clueless.

For the newly awakened, now and in the months ahead, furious worship and hooting and hollering fall short of what is required. The roused have additional responsibilities: They must see the reality of America today through clear eyes so they can understand her needs—not just their wants and needs. Many suffer, I believe, fuzzy thinking. All of us must use discernment as we go deeper than our first emotional reactions to evaluate the candidates and their visions for America.

In Ethics For The New Millennium, The Dalai Lama wrote of wise discernment: “…involves constantly checking our outlook and asking ourselves whether we are being broad-minded or narrow-minded. Have we taken into account the overall situation or are we considering only specifics? Is our view short-term or long-term? Are we being short-sighted or clear-eyed, we need to think, think, think.”

Be aware of self-righteousness: “Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one [Friedrich Nietzsche].” Observe those who demonize, scapegoat and marginalize others to justify bad behavior contrary to American values. We die for our values. If we cast them aside for personal gain, we are lost.

Political rallies are not rock concerts to thrill or entertain us, or manipulate us and energize our more sordid sides. Going to a rally and supporting a candidate because he or she made you feel good or is the hot topic trending on Twitter today is not thinking straight. Rallies are but one element of a long, exhaustive and rigorous process. Keep the twists and turns of the daily campaign grind in perspective. Not every big deal is a big deal.

We need to listen, observe and learn the positions of the candidates and how they differ with one another—it doesn’t take long. Then we need to “think, think, think” about the character, experience and temperament of each aspirant along with the practicality of their visions and the specificity of how they would make their aspirations for America real. We should check out our assumptions about candidates: are they based on fact, fiction or opinion? How do our values line up with those of the contenders?

On November 8, 2016, the United States will get the president and the future of America that the majority of voters deserve. Will the voters choose to move forward or backward?

If America ever needed divine intervention it might be now.

Eudaimonic Happiness

Posted on by

So we are coming to a conception of happiness that differs fundamentally from the storybook version. The storybook conception tells of desires fulfilled; the truer version involves striving toward meaningful goals. Storybook happiness involves a bland idleness; the truer conception involves seeking and purposeful effort. Storybook happiness involves every form of pleasant thumb-twiddling; true happiness involves the full use of one’s powers and talents. John W. Gardner in Self-Renewal

 

From: Life Reimagined: The Science, Art and Opportunity of Midlife by Barbara Bradley Hagerty:

The highest of all human good is the realization of our own true potential.

Thus was born eudaimonic happiness. It is about striving, working hard, purposeful engagement, the kind of effort that may be stressful or even painful in the short run but over the long run brings meaning and a wildly profitable return on investment.

A life of meaning can be kind of a drag: It involves sacrifice, stress, sleepless nights to feed the baby, working long hours to put your child through college, sitting by your wife’s side through the last stages of cancer, visiting your father even though Alzheimer’s has stolen his capacity for a shared memory, a joke, and gentle word.

So what’s the point of meaning, of eudaimonia, anyway? As it turns out, both our minds and our bodies prefer it. Researchers at the University of Rochester tracked some 150 recent graduates, dividing them into those who were seeking intrinsic goals (valuing “deep, lasting relationships” or “helping others improve their lives”) or extrinsic goals, such as wealth, looks, fame. The researchers checked back two years later and found that the young people who achieved their extrinsic, image-related goals fared poorly: They reported more negative emotions like shame and anger, and more physical symptoms like headaches, stomachaches, and loss of energy. The intrinsic set, which valued relationships and personal growth, reported more positive feelings toward themselves and others, and fewer physical signs of stress.

Let’s drill down a little further, into our biology. Our bodies prefer selfless happiness to self-centeredness, and will reward eudaimonia with a longer life. Scientists have discovered that people who pursue eudaimonic well-being also have lower particular biomarkers for inflammation that have been linked to a number of health problems, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s disease. These purposeful people even had lower cholesterol.

Drill down deeper still, and we find that even our DNA rewards eudaimonic meaning and punishes hedonism…. Those who pursued pleasure more than meaning had the bad genomic fingerprint profile, the one with the dangerous immune response. But those whose dispositions tipped toward eudaimonic well-being had the opposite response to stress: they were protected at a cellular level.

It is better to be good than happy.

Time Alone in the Desert

Posted on by

Aloneness is a vital part of any spiritual path. Tom Brown Jr. in Grandfather

 

Casey (my American Eskimo) and I had two weeks alone in the Sonoran desert. I decided to make the time my personal spiritual retreat—a time for my soul: I got up at 6:00 am, walked in the desert for five miles, exercised under the rising sun as it warmed the air, meditated for 45 minutes twice a day, read three excellent books on consciousness, journaled, studied, ate healthy foods and took some peaceful photographs.

The books I read were: Life Reimagined: The Science, Art and Opportunities at Midlife by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness by Barry Magid and A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle. Each book added to my knowledge. The Tolle book was especially powerful to me. Many pages spoke to me and my life. I would read and study more of Tolle’s work.

In 2001 I lived on the side of a mountain near Ouray, Colorado for 14 months. I read, wrote essays on life and leadership, grieved some losses and pondered life in the natural hot springs. I consulted enough to pay my bills. I often spent weeks with little human contact. I came face to face with many demons. I felt lonely at times. But I knew the time alone would not last forever and sometimes I have to sacrifice something in order to experience something else. A powerful new vision—now real–evolved from that time alone.

My time in the desert was not all peaceful: I tossed and turned in my bed at night, often woke long before my 6:00 am wake up time and wrestled with ideas and insights from the books I read and my meditations. Once I jumped up: I had to write the ideas that came to me when reading Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. I felt excited when his words provided context for issues I had been struggling to understand for a year or longer. This was a time of inner expansion.

I worked hard to be present. I am a novice at meditation. I began to meditate about 1 ½ years ago. First I sat for 20 minutes a day. Then 45 minutes. At the end of my retreat, I committed to 60 minutes a day. As I meditated, I focused on my breathing. I observed the feelings and thoughts that passed through me. I often asked: “What am I resisting?” I concentrated on my senses while I walked. I admired the blooming flowers—new ones each day—in the Sonoran Desert. I listened to the doves and the quail sing their morning songs. I watched the roadrunners scurry among the cacti. A couple of nights, I sat patiently waiting for the beautiful sun to set below the horizon.

Soon it was time to clean the house and pack our SUV. I was ready to head for home. Casey was ready to come with me wherever I went. My mind was filled with ideas for projects, books to read, blog posts to write and things to do back home. My purpose renewed, I felt alive after a dormant period (See my blog post: Purpose Renewed).

I transitioned with several days in Canyon de Chelly and Canyonlands National Park for some photography. I loved the intensity of my travels and early mornings out in the natural world and days filled with new places and new images. I like contemplation and I like action.

We live better and longer lives with healthy relationships. We do need people. We also need time alone where we can reconnect with ourselves and the natural world, ponder our interconnection with all of life and renew our spirits.

 

Birds Flying into the Sun

Posted on by

I was photographing the sunset over the Sonoran Desert when I heard the roar of propeller blades behind me as two low-flying helicopters came over the mountain and flew off into the sun.

(click on image to enlarge)

26621089561_c098b1ea00_k

Purpose Renewed

Posted on by

Purpose in life is more important than education or wealth in determining long-term health and happiness.

Life Reimagined: The Science, Art and Opportunity of Midlife by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

 

My month in a tough alcohol treatment center (1974) was a painful, high anxiety and profound time of spiritual awakenings, moments of metanoia and akin to turning from the shadows to the sun in many Plato’s Caves. I left the hospital a scared, hopeful and humbled young man and began my life of often muddling conscious evolution. My purpose was to stay sober, live true to my values and care for my family.

I next thought of my purpose for my life about 16 years later.

In the early 1990’s, I had a leadership experience that awakened me to the vast dormant and untapped human potential in most organizations. I felt alive as we transformed a major business unit. Results were phenomenal. This experience was the second great expansion of awareness in my life. Treatment had saved my life and this leadership experience changed my life forever. As successes multiplied, so did the fear in others and resistance to us grew. I sensed our work would be destroyed by the dominant culture. I began preparations for my departure.

“I don’t want to leave because I am angry,” I said to Diane Olson, Ph.D. my consultant. “I want a new vision to go toward.” I spent two years working with Diane and consultant John Johnson to develop a new vision for my life, a purpose statement and my core values. The work was hard. I read, pondered and talked with John and Diane frequently.

My purpose:

I live my life as a series of emotional, spiritual and intellectual adventures and I share what I learn with others.

This purpose aligned with my new vision for my life: to complete a Ph.D., to begin to write and to consult with organizations.

I left the company in early 1994. I set out to use myself as my own learning laboratory—that was scary.

I had many emotional, spiritual and intellectual adventures over the next 20 years. I changed my life dramatically. I felt alive and had many peak experiences. I shared my experiences and insights as a writer, coach and consultant.

For the past decade, I’ve had three core strategies in my life:

  • To optimize my physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual health,
  • To partner with Melanie to keep our love alive always and
  • To have meaning and creativity in my life

I am fit and healthy. Melanie and I have a wonderful life together. We feel grateful. But I was aware of an angst in me the last couple of years that I didn’t understand. My feeling of aliveness had dissipated. I felt my life contracting: Retirement had shrunk my involvement in the world and didn’t feel as meaningful as robust work had. People I cared about were dying more regularly. Children were grown and didn’t want or need my experience or guidance. I experienced foreshadowing of physical decline and, as I approached 70 years of age (the entry to old age), I was well aware of where the contraction ultimately led.

Last summer (2015), my older brother got sick and died quickly. This unexpected loss affected me deeply–more than I expected it might. I felt that part of my foundation had cracked. Other losses added to the pain I felt. I wanted to feel differently. I wanted to feel alive again. My third strategy needed renewal.

Trying to repeat the past was the wrong solution. To do nothing would mean I had stopped learning and would lead to the resentment and bitterness that some feel in retirement. I needed something new to learn that would engage my spirit and create positive energy that I could creatively give back to life. I stumbled along seeking what would bring meaning and aliveness back. I needed a new emotional, spiritual and intellectual adventure.

My friend Heather gave me a trial subscription to HeadSpace.com. I decided to try meditation. I began with 20 minutes a day. I had tried meditation over the preceding decades. Unable to sit still, I soon quit. Now I could sit and begin to slow my mind.

I read the book, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by John Kabat-Zinn. The book inspired me to expand and deepen my meditation experience. I had a feeling that meditation and consciousness were what I sought to bring meaning and aliveness back in this part of my life. I began to meditate 60 minutes a day. I realized new things about my inner world. I understood that constant, unmanaged and compulsive thought may be as insane as alcoholism. I realized that I had lived much of my life in the past and the future, not in the present moment. I needed to ponder my identity and my attachments. Meditation is much more than I had thought it was. I had much to learn.

In A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Eckhart Tolle wrote that we each have an inner and an outer purpose. We share an inner purpose: to become awakened (a gradual shift in consciousness). This aligns with my purpose of living a life of inner adventures. Our outer purpose–unique to each of us–is how we live out our inner purpose in the world. Almost every page of this book spoke to me powerfully. I know the feeling from past transformative experiences: I had found a new adventure.  I enter the organic, mysterious and potential-filled world of contemplation and consciousness.

I am a novice again.

I feel alive in the uncertainty of the unknown.

This experience reminded me of something that I knew during my career: My happiness came from the pursuit of noble goals—goals I might never achieve. I felt alive striving for objectives that mattered to me. During those years, I never thought about happiness. I thought about what I would do the next day to move closer to the top of the mountain I was climbing at the time. I realized that in retirement I need that same sense of dedication as a part of my life. All of us do and we will live longer, happier and healthier lives if we have a vibrant sense of purpose.

Nature Photography Challenge

Posted on by

The photos I put on Face Book as part of this challenge:

The Monarch Butterfly. My favorite image: the symbol of transformation.

Monarch Butterfly–my favorite image.

Sunset in the Grand Tetons--a place of many spiritual settings.

Sunset in the Grand Tetons

14026889609_52af2c04e3_o

Black Bear near Grand Marais, MN

12677204005_67cffa1380_o

The road to Monument Valley

12677681164_2fe430ccf5_o

Wauweap Marina and Lake Powell near Page, AZ

12748584605_b787282a59_o

White Sands National Monument. New Mexico.

14715065094_b0f27baf3c_o

Arches National Park, Moab, Utah.

 

Accountability: Rare in Organizations

Posted on by

The employee delivered newspapers full-time. He tried to organize the other adult employee carriers into a union. I managed the region the man worked in and spearheaded the effort to defeat the union. We won at great cost to the company.

After the vote, I continued to document the man’s chronically poor performance. I knew the company would not fire him absent extreme provocation. The lawyers feared he would claim retaliation—as if attacking our motives was evidence–and sue the company if they held him accountable with documented facts. I continued to document his performance issues because it was the right thing to do.

Can we do what is right and win cases too? I believe we can. Disciplined employees can challenge our facts and attack our motives but evidence and documentation speak for themselves. I was never sued or lost an arbitration because I did professional work correctly.

I was promoted and encouraged the employee’s direct supervisor to continue to document the man’s performance issues. I told him the company would not let him fire the man but if he got a massive amount of documentation, I would go with him and empty the box of memos and letters on the desk of the company general counsel.

About two years later, we did exactly that. We walked into the general counsel’s office with a cardboard box filled with written warnings. I turned the box over on his desk and dumped out a hundred or more written reprimands. We embarrassed him. The general counsel allowed us to fire the man, which was done with no repercussions.

I believe many of the best employees, at all levels, burn-out and leave organizations because they can’t use their values and power to effect right changes, including discipline. And the bad employees stay forever–a cancer on the organization.

Organizations are mostly mediocre; leaders and employees often middling or less. But some of us try to lead from our values and be excellent in what we do. We believe in holding people accountable for their performance via a fair process that gives employees a chance to change. Too often our efforts and good work get frustrated by higher-ups and attorneys terrified of being sued or complained about.

Whatever happened to standing up for ideals—win or lose? At least once in a while in especially egregious cases.

I left the newspaper and spent 13 years as a consultant. I tried to teach leaders how to lead transformation of their organizations. I focused on employee engagement, empowerment and involvement as key strategies. I also believed in a tough-love approach and taught managers how to hold people accountable. Many began–few followed through. They feared conflict and they feared they would not be supported by higher-management.

In a workshop I led on giving feedback, a manager asked what patterns I saw that cut across all organizations. That was easy: “the lack of accountability,” I said. I saw but one organization over those years that routinely held people accountable for their behavior and performance.

I retired from consulting after 13 years. I had tried every day with every client to influence leaders, managers and supervisors to use their power to bring about changes good for employees, executives, customers and the organization and changes that had huge positive impacts on the bottom-line. Accountability was one of many core issues I asked them to deal with.

Leaders professed to want “great organizations” but most lacked the right stuff needed to lead organizations from mediocrity to greatness—including accountability. They wanted quick-fixes—easy, quick, cheap and painless–and imagined magical changes in people. With rare exception, after realizing that real transformation required hard work, most stuck with mediocrity.

I still encourage people with power to do what they can to hold the mediocre, dishonest, immature and those who drain the life from others accountable. It’s the right thing to do. Just don’t expect any certain outcome for your efforts from timid decision-makers. What you do matters even if it doesn’t seem that way. Who knows, maybe someday you can dump your own box of documentation on the desk of an anxious lawyer or executives and embarrass them into action.