Active listening
February 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
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You have a choice. Will you listen?
You cannot grow as a human being if you cannot listen to others. It cannot be done.
Active listening is a form of listening that involves the entire body. It asks of group members to listen to one another with their bodies and not just their ears. Listening with the ear is active enough when done with intent and purpose. But in group of people who have meditated for a long a time or have done other types of work to develop listening as a practice, listening with the ear allows to much room for wandering.
Listening is a major problem in this country. So fed have we become with media images of politicians and news anchors shouting, that we have become adjusted to it. But this continual violence keeps harming this country in many important ways.
Those we disagree with on fundamental issues are serious about wanting this country to be a better place and most of what they have to contribute is for the good of all. It isn’t that we refuse to see that; we are literally incapable of seeing that. The violence of language has made us all so fear stricken that the only thing we can do when faced with disagreement is to shout back or to walk away. But to really listen is a lost art of civility. This problem exists for everybody, those on my side and those on the opposite side. There is a thorough lack of listening capacity in this country and an abundance of shouting at each other. What is it going to do? Make someone start to agree with you? Very doubtful. Are you going to understand why someone else thinks the way they do? Very scary, for some reason.
I really understand why someone wants to propose waterboarding suspected terrorists. I really do. It is awful and I disagree, but I really do understand it. What I cannot stomach is the lack of concern that the proponents of this torture display. “It’s a no-brainer” Dick Cheney says. That is awful. I want the vice-president to lay awake at night pondering the enormity of these kinds of decisions. But the moment he considers this a no-brainer, he has given up on all civility. He is no longer a fully human being, because he lacks the fundamental capacity for empathy. And without empathy, this world is truly doomed. I really believe that.
Four easy steps to change your habits
February 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I recently wrote about the power habits have in our lives. Now the question is how do you change your habits. Of course, Leo Babauta at Zen Habits has written extensively about this. This article about getting into an exercise habit has influenced me profoundly.
I want to offer a simple four steps solution to habit changing. Much of this you can read at zenhabits, but I think I have simplified the method even further. I have one surprise for you at the end, so keep reading.
First, change one habit at a time. This is important and critical for your success in changing habits. If you try to do too many, you will fail because you will be overwhelmed by the shear number of things to keep track of all the time. You changing habits requires awareness, but to have to walk around all day as if everything is a new habit will exhaust you quickly.
You can take actually take on two habits at a time, provided they are in very different areas of your life. For instance, I think it is totally feasible to start an exercise habit for your home life and a new habit at work. You might want to get into the habit of planning tomorrow at the end of today. I am at my most productive when I start working and the plan has been made. If I start the day and still have to think about what I will do, I start with a backlog.
Second, get ready for practice. For at least 30 days you have to practice your new habit. Like an actor studying her lines, you must have your script ready with you. Oh, you didn’t write down your intention to form a new habit? Journal! Get ready to practice. This is essentially the reason you can only take on one habit at a time. Your life cannot be all practice all the time. You don’t have a script, but you can put post-it notes everywhere. Find whatever means you have to remind you.
Sometimes you can put a totally nonsensical silly thing in an obvious place. Say, you have an old teddy bear. Put the bear in front of your bedroom door. Every time you walk by your door, the bear will remind you of your new habit. It sounds silly but it works. The object has to be completely strange and not be part of your normal household to work.
Three, create triggers and arrange your space to help you form your new habit. If you want to work out in the morning upon waking up, you should hang your workout clothes in our bathroom so that you will put them on after you have relieved yourself. If you got up earlier to work out and there is still someone asleep in the bedroom, you will hesitate to go back and get the clothes and your habit will fail. Have your clothes ready. Similarly, if you are always looking for your cellphone, create a landing space in your house near your front door. Put your cellphone charger there and you will always have it ready to go.
Arrange your space to support your habits. If you think you don’t have a green thumb, perhaps you should look where you put the watering can. Do you have it have stacked away underneath the sink? Do you have to move several items out of the way before you can get to the can and the plant food? No wonder you don’t have a green thumb, it is too hard to get into the habit of watering your plants. You get my drift, this applies to many areas of our lives.
Fourth and finally, be accountable. First of all, be accountable to yourself. Write down your habit, and review how you are doing on a daily basis. Perhaps that means that the first habit you have to form is to write in your journal, formulate your goals and review them routinely, daily for habit changes.
Your partner or spouse, a good friend or other family member can be a terrific source of accountability. The first important step here is that you express your intention to change a habit to someone else. Shame is a powerful motivator, so don’t choose someone who will let you get away with anything in this area. Someone who will understand too much is of no use to you right now.
Of course, a coach might be an excellent partner for you in this area.
I suspect that one of the reasons you don’t commit to habit change is the fact that you can only change one habit at a time. Perhaps you say to yourself that you have many habits that you should change. Let me reassure you that changing one habit will change many parts of your life. It has a ripple effect that is very power.
Cheri Huber wrote a great book, titled: How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything. That is a strong message. What that means for habit changing is this. The awareness you bring to changing one habit in your life will spill over into other areas of your life. You thought at one point you needed a whole series of habit changes, but you find that one change has lead to many changes already. This was not the goal initially, but a powerful unintended consequence of creating greater awareness in your life. Let me give you three examples.
- If you created a space near your front door where you charge your cellphone, you might find that you now also have a place for incoming and outgoing mail. You will never walk out of the house without that important folder that you need for work the next day.
- If you water your plants more regularly and have created an accessible place for your watering can and plant food, you might find that you are relating to your entire house differently, because of the attention you give it. Plants don’t just need water, they need to have light and a space to thrive in. Perhaps you all of a sudden find yourself clearing away the mess that accumulated around your plants, simply after you have just watered the plants.
- I used to start my day by going online and seeing what would come my way through email and rss feeds. Now that I have written down my plan for today yesterday, I start with my work immediately, because the first item on the list is not ”check email and news reader.”
So, be encouraged to change your habits and let me know how you do.
Technorati Tags: goals, habit, change, leadership, health
Would you do it if you were sick?
February 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Would you do it for free? That is a question some people ask to see how motivated you are to do some work. Good question. Let me ask another one. Would you do it if you are sick, and would you do it better when you are sick?
Surprised? I friend of mine told the story of her dance teacher. Her dance teacher was technically very skilled to the point where others were jealous of her. But she risked reaching a limit to her dance career. She so relied on her technical skills that she did not express herself in the dance. And then one day she had to audition for an important part. Wouldn’t you know it, but that day she was sick as a dog. She ran a fever, her nose ran, and her joints ached. She had the flu. But the part was important and she didn’t want to miss the opportunity so she auditioned anyway. When she finished everybody said that she danced the best dance of her life that day. Not being able to use her technical skill, she had to rely on herself, she expressed true feeling, emotion in her dance, more than ever before.
Another example. A young women worked in a high powered environment and it took her a while to feel free to express herself. Her breakthrough moment came one day when she was in a meeting, sad, because her lover moved to another part of the country, and sick with a serious cold. She felt she was crabby and short, rude even. After the meeting, her supervisory came into her office and thanked her for her contributions. She had been more authentic than before. Being sad and sick, she could not rely on her good graces and good manners, which she possesses in abundance. She cut through the chase, came right to the point and said exactly what she thought. She now knows what to do.
That is why I ask, would you do it if you were sick and would you do it better when you are sick. Sick leave is a major problem in business. It is very expensive and it disrupts workflow. What if all workers did work that they would do better if they were sick? Can you imagine the incredible boost in a company’s performance that would give?
Technorati Tags: performance, illness, sick-leave, love, motivation, skill, excellence
Al Gore comes out in favor of Marriage Equality
January 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I have it on some authority that Al Gore has always had this view. Now he makes it clear. Watch is here.
Technorati Tags: Gore, marriage, gay, current
The Story of Stuff
December 12, 2007 | Leave a Comment
This is a film to see. Take twenty minutes and see in the best explanation yet, why our economic system does NOT work.
This reminds of a story I read about Gillette. You know they make that fabulous razor called Mach 3. It cost them 700 Million dollars to develop. That is right, 700 million. Now, do you think that for so much money they could have developed a razor that you can use safely more than five times? I think so. I imagine that Gillette spent 10 million to develop a good razor and another 690 million to make sure that we have to throw it away again.
Technorati Tags: stuff, capitalism, environment, waste, economy, dollars, gillette, video
What would it look like if you were really you?
November 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Leo Babauta, of Zen Habits, asks his readers today about an interesting tension between two philosophical systems. On the one hand there is zen buddhism which suggests that you give up all desires, and on the other hand there is the desire to improve.
I have several reactions, but my first one is that zen practice itself is driven by a certain desire. If not, why go through the practice. Sitting motionless for sometime is hard work, hurts your legs. You have to overcome resistance from time to time, to actually go and sit early in the morning. Why do this? Because you desire a better life, where the turmoils of the world disturb you less and less. It is a good reason and a good practice, driven by a reasonable desire.
Most importantly however, I think that this is a question that lives in a consumerist world, where our failures are pointed out, over and over again. And if we didn’t think there were any failures, marketers will let us know that we overlooked something.
Take working out for instance. Why do we work out? If you believe the marketers, you work out because you have flabby abs that are just not sexy. You are overweight and that is bad, didn’t you realize it? In other words, pointing out what is wrong sells.
It takes effort to turn this around. Work out because you love your body. Now that is a radical concept. We have learned to think of working out as a hard labor punishment that we bravely confront. Look at horses in the wild. Let them loose and they will run. It is in their nature. My dog picks up the biggest stick she can find. That is in her nature. Children play in the street (if they can) and they run around like mad. That is in their nature.
Adult humans however lost their sense of their nature. And so the idea of self improvement was born. You see, if you don’t know who you are, then you can think about improvement. But it is not self improvement. That is the deception. We improve precisely because we don’t know ourselves anymore. If we really knew ourselves, the idea of self improvement would disappear. We would simply express ourselves all the time. We wold not work out, but be physically active in a way that works for us. I was told that running was good, and tried to like to run. In the end though, I hate to run. I just hate it.
I love to work out with kettlebells. That is what I do.
Zen practice is not a practice to learn to be quite and minimalist. Zen practice teaches you who you really are. The moment you think about self improvement, sit. Who are you really. What would it look like if you are really you? That is a much harder question.
Technorati Tags: improvement, zen, sitting, kettlebells, running
Love someone to love yourself, pray for someone else.
October 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment
I received an email this morning. The United Church of Christ is telling everybody for a month that it is good to give and to give liberally. I love these readings. This morning I read again the following advice, well worn in some ways and true as ever.
Without loving ourselves we cannot love others. “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” (Luke 10:27b) Which of us doesn’t know that it’s hard to care well about others when we’re weak or down on ourselves? What makes us selfish is doubt about our own value and strength: we seek rather than share love and assurance.
But I wonder sometimes. There are those days when it is very hard to love yourself. You know those days. You get up in the morning and the feeling just isn’t there.
What to do? Try this. Love someone else. As my pastor reminds us, love is a do word. That means that you cannot love someone without doing something about it. I mean, you can, but that defeats the purpose. Love isn’t all about feeling inside, it is about action as well.
Love someone and the action of loving someone will end up making you feel better about yourself. It is true, you have to try it to know it. Praying for someone else brings you closer to God, and it is therefore as if you are praying for yourself. It is a similar process. So if you are alone and not likely to meet someone in the day, someone you can love on, pray for someone. You can learn to love yourself, by praying for someone else.
Environmental leadership
October 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment
There are two environmental movements in this country that don’t come together very well. The distinction is one of class. Basically this is the difference. One group of people consume too much and threaten the environment. They have a decent life and can painlessly decrease their impact on the environment by becoming smarter consumers. That is the gist of Leo Babauta’s post on 50 quick painless ways you can help the environment today.
And then there is a class of people who suffer because the waist gets dumped where they live. They don’t have the money too make consumer choice and they don’t have the political power to force clean up of garbage dumps, toxic waste in their backyards and other health threats. And as this is the US, class shows its face in race. That is the warning of this important article about Eco-Apartheid. If the title scares you, the article does have a positive point to make:
More importantly, they could begin a complete realignment of American politics. The idea of “social uplift environmentalism” could serve as the cornerstone for an unprecedented “Green Growth Alliance.” Imagine a coalition that unites the best of labor, business, racial justice activists, environmentalists, intellectuals, students and more. That combination would rival the last century’s New Deal and New Right coalitions.
The point about eco-apartheid was terrificly made by Majora Carter at the TED conference. I love TED and the ideas that come from it, but I am struck and horrified by the extremely white color of all the faces that are on the stage. Majora Carter is an exception, highlighting my point about race and class. Watch this talk. She address Al Gore and shows that he didn’t get what she was offering him: a movement that joins his consumer based version of environmentalism with her social justice, anti-racism based activism for a better environment.
Is takes leadership to develop a vision beyond yourself. Majora Carter, winner of a MacArthur genius grant, showed more of it that Al Gore, who stuck with what he knew. The environmental movement is getting to cosy and self congratulatory already. Ignoring racism will get the movement stuck. That is what it means to live in the US. Get used to it.
Technorati Tags: leadership, environment, class, race, racism, eco-apartheid, consumption
leadership
Ten ways to a better night sleep
October 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Sleeping is crucial and I love it. But regularly I get excited and I wake up in the middle of the night. Pure enthusiasm, but I have to pay the next day. Here are ten tips for a better night sleep.
For me to wake up, I have grown to love the Zen Clock. It wakes you up with a gentle chime that repeats itself at pi-related intervals. I have never woken up better. If you like, you can order one and if you use this code, they will send you a little gift: registration number: 11111. Check it out at their website.
Blog action day
October 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
This blog will participate in the Blog Action Day for the environment. Focused attention on one topic that day will hopefully shift people’s attention. What would make a day like this successful? Fundraising for sure and you can go to their website to make a donation to a number of important environmental activist groups. Blog action day is on October 15. Check back in then.
Technorati Tags: blog, action, environment, leadership, health, life
