Turning My Spiritual Journey Upside Down

My normal sequence is to write, meditate, and go to bed, so I get the privilege of meditating and  "sleeping on" whatever bubbled up in my writing.  So it was last night after having written that I'd like "at the very least to allow the spiritual lesson to be to learn to enjoy these wondrous moments."

I really unleashed something. When I was meditating, I "got" that there are spiritual lessons in the good stuff...and I really need to learn them.  A whole list of potential lessons spilled out:  learn to

• Be conscious of all the choices I make during the day
• Be fully present
• Have fun
• Be in joy: enjoy life more
• Find peace in whatever is occurring
• Laugh
• Find humor 
• Love
• Receive love
• Be grateful
• Appreciate

....There were many more. I clearly have a lot of work to do. But, as I continued to meditate, I kept coming back to the first two.  I cannot be conscious of all the choices I make during the day if I am not fully present.  If I am fully present, I will be conscious of all the things I normally do on autopilot and start making those choices consciously. I expect that if I do those two things, the others will take care of themselves.  And, that concept has turned my spiritual journey upside down...in a good way.

Always Be Ready

If you've been reading this blog for any time at all, you know that I watch for "spiritual trends" that are sending me a message.  Over the last five hours, I've been bombarded with the message "Always be ready."

The Old Testament reading in church this morning was from Isaiah, and the prophet was saying to the Jewish people to be ready because they never knew when the "savior" would appear.

A few minutes later The New Testament lesson was to early Christians to always be ready because they never knew when their savior would return. A further admonition from the passage was that you couldn't wait until you thought the time was imminent to change behavior because there wouldn't be that opportunity. We had to always be ready.

I awakened this morning with a raspy throat.  I've been fighting a cold for several days, and my initial instinct was to curl up in bed and get some extra rest before leaving on a business trip.  Almost as quickly as I had the thought, I remembered what I'd written in my last post about consulting my inner compass before making decisions.  When I did, I clearly knew I was to go to church.  If I hadn't, I would have missed those lessons.

As I returned from church and started to make lunch, I thought my mind darted to habit.  Since I was out with friends last evening, I was going to flip on the replay of the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" presentation that I'd missed.  In my last post I wrote that I planned to spend my Sunday afternoon in a meditation on the floor of my bedroom closet, consciously choosing what would be part of my future and what I need to leave behind by December 21.  I thought I was hedging on my commitment to watch a television program that I know will be replayed a number of times in December.

One thing that became very clear to me when writing Choice Point, my as-yet-unpublished book about life as a meditation, was that everything, every thing, is connected.  There truly are no accidents or coincidences if we are listening: we will be led.

The gathering last night was a somewhat impromptu one, or I would have watched the program on its first broadcast.  That is important because, without the scripture lessons this morning, I might have missed that the theme of this television play was also "always be ready" or more precisely to "live your life like there's no tomorrow." Could I have guessed that the gathering was contrived by the Universe to help me "get it"?

Fortunately, when I checked in, it became clear to me that I was to watch the Hallmark program.  I thought to myself that I could bring some of the boxes into the living room and sort while viewing, but again a very clear message: the sorting was to be a meditation, and I couldn't watch TV and meditate.  So I ate and watched, and then I just watched.

The protagonist in the movie was a woman who worked too much.  (Anyone I know fill that bill?) As a consequence to a happy accident, she learns that she has been neglecting what is really important while giving every aspect of her life away to work, which we might say is pretty much what I've been doing over the last 16 years....maybe longer.  Of course, since there are no original story lines in Hallmark movies, I won't be giving anything away when I stay she does get a second chance, and this time she remembers what is important to her and to those around her.

So it is that in five short hours, the Universe has bombarded me to remember what is important in my life, an important lesson any time, but especially as I've been looking at my overly busy December over several days and struggling to find a time to put up my Christmas tree.

I got a headache about two-thirds of the way through the movie.  What is important?  I have known for a long time that I've squandered my relationships, and I've struggled to know how to intentionally choose to build a different life. I am sure that quandary is what gave me the headache, which lingers even as I write.

I truly do not know the answer, but as I wrote in Choice Point, I don't need to know.  I just need to consciously choose my path, and I will be led.  That is all I need to know, and I will "always be ready."

Digital Detox

There is an expression, maybe from the I Ching, "when the student is ready the teacher will appear." My last post on "Digital Addiction" was hardly stalled in my iPhone, when it seemed that everywhere I turned, I was encountering something about the deleterious effects of digital addiction.  I hadn't even realized that there even was such a thing as digital addiction until about six weeks ago.  Now I am bumping into it everywhere.

First, though, I owe a report about how well I did, or more precisely didn't do, during my effort to walk away from my devices for one day.  I found that every few minutes I would start to do something that involved one or another device. I would catch myself at least half the time, but that suggests that half of the time I mindlessly turned to the radio, iPhone, notebook, or television.  Most of the time, I noticed within seconds, but at 5 p.m., I abandoned the experiment and decided that I would wait until my staycation.  My little experiment has been a good lesson in not being present.

I am now six days into my annual vacation at home, and I realized two things going into my leave. First, I really needed to be off devices more. Second, going cold turkey was not going to work for me since I did want to arrange lunches, coffee, or drinks and other outings with friends, and doing so would require one or more of my devices. So, rather than shutting down all devices for 10 days, I took an approach we might call mini-withdrawals.

With my mini-withdrawals, I have brought more conscious to my use of electronics. That allowed me to actually choose when I wanted/needed to use by devices and be aware of how much of the time I was turning to them out of pure habit...and addiction.  It has also allowed me to choose more consciously what I will watch or listen to.  I quickly discovered that I often had something mindless on in the background just to fill space rather than because I really wanted to watch or listen.

How has this actually worked? When I was cooking for a dinner party Friday night and Saturday, I normally have had NPR, a podcast, Spanish lesson, or audiobook in the background.  I made the decision to cook in silence.  My cooking became a meditation.  I was able to really be present. My guests arrived and I was relaxed and present to them.

This evening I walked about 20 minutes to the hardware store to pick up some things, and again normally, I would have been listening to something.  I made the conscious decision to just leave the iPhone in the charger.  I ended up having a leisurely shopping trip during which I was able to just enjoy looking...and a little buying.

I took a book to read on my commute to a lunchtime concert at the Library of Congress rather than my usual practice of catching up with email and reading The Washington Post on my phone, while listening to podcasts or TuneIn Radio.  I was enjoying the book so much that I just left my phone in my purse until I got home, and when I was present, I decided to have a lingering lunch rather than putting myself on autopilot and jumping on the Metro to return home.

When sitting by the pool yesterday, I didn't check anything on my iPhone, but I do confess to loving the "Ocean Waves" soundtrack in the background while I read.  I was able to actually get into the book I was reading and with which I had been struggling for two weeks while reading a couple paragraphs before checking some device.

While I do find the level of my descension into this addiction distressing, given the number of places I've been bumping into media coverage of the problem, I am not alone.  Last night on the shuttle from the Metro to the Kennedy Center, where we can safely assume everyone is going to enjoy a live performance, a woman was totally freaking out that she'd forgotten her iPhone.  I was glad that I'd decided to turn mine off until I was headed home.  It ended up that I was so relaxed from not looking all evening, that I didn't even look at the phone until I was home.

In the last two weeks, I've discovered a Digital Detox Boot Camp in the jungles of Costa Rica, where they take people's devices and lock them up for a week, while providing lots of physical activity to distract participants during withdrawal.  In the coverage about the event, I learned that the average American looks as his/her smartphone every 4 minutes!  Given that I do often go hours without looking at mine, I felt some righteous relief with that data point.

During a conference that I attended last week, I learned that there is actually a name for what happens to people who spend too much time on their devices: Cognitive Capacity Overload.  The symptoms are the same as ADHD--Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, including inability to focus and really be present to what one is doing.

Just this evening on a Freakonomics Podcast--yes, I am still listening, but I have been much more judicious and have deleted about 3/4 of the podcasts to which I would normally have listened. Anyway, the podcast was exploring the health concerns related to lack of sleep, and you guessed, it all of our screens contribute to difficulty falling asleep and the quality of sleep once we do.

I love my iPhone, and it does provide me with efficiencies and effectiveness that I otherwise couldn't enjoy.  (Thank you, Google Maps.) I am sure even those who will sojourn to Costa Rica for serious cold turkey withdrawal will pick their devices up again when they return. However, I have learned enough from my little experiment into mini-withdrawals to know that I will do them more frequently. The quality of my relaxation and the relaxation in my work is dramatically improved.  And, I am able to embrace that most difficult of spiritual lessons: being present...in the present.

Death of a Dream

During my vacation in September, I read The Pilgrimage, a novel by best-selling author Paulo Coehlo's.  It had a number of several exercises that I thought might be helpful in my upcoming retreat, which I dog-eared, as well as a some passages that I wanted to note.  (When I have finished with a book, it is well-marked with lots of pages turned down.)

The night before I started my retreat, I pulled it out and looked over some of the passages, and one which spanned several pages was about the death of a dream.  Now clearly I had not just read this passage but had read it carefully enough that I'd marked it for a return visit, but I really didn't remember it.  Yet as I read it on Thursday evening, I did so with great attention.  In the almost month since my retreat, I have continued to "chew" on the passages.

The passage is a conversation between a spiritual teacher/guide and his student on the Compostelo de Santiago pilgrimage in northern Spain.  The teacher is telling his student how/why our dreams die.  "The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams," the teacher says, "is our lack of time." Those who have read this blog for awhile will know that this immediately grabbed my interest.  My dream of writing regularly, even for this blog, has seemed to be gobbled up by lack of time.*

As I reread this passage, I looked at it differently.  The teacher doesn't say the dream dies from lack of time.  He said that we kill our dreams because of our failure to make them priorities--to make time for them.  Suddenly, the lack of time for writing has moved from a passive thing that is out of my control to the deliberate and active action of killing my own dream.  I am keenly aware of the choices that I make at this busy time of the year.

"The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties.  Because we don't want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life...we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those engaged in battle.  For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what's important is only that they are fighting the good fight."

Hmmm. Fighting for our dreams. Sir Winston Churchill once admonished: "Never give in. Never give in.  Never, never, never, never..."  I know that fighting the never-give-up fight for all of our dreams is not possible or even wise, which means that we have to choose the ones that we really fight for and which we allow to languish.  Yet, more often than not, I do not make conscious decision to let go of one dream so that I can consciously put more energy--more fight, if you will--into a more important dream.

"The third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace..."** I am passionate about using my special talents and gifts.  Doing so may be seen as a "dream."  But I do have more than one gift.  I like to think writing is a gift.  So are dance, gardening, and cooking.  When I do any of those things, I do fall into what approximates a peaceful meditation.  I lose track of time.

When I write, I also lose track of time, but I also wrestle with angels as I struggle to find the truth of what I want to say.  When I was younger, I was much more certain what was true.  Now, not so much.  I am reminded best-selling writer and psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's work The Four Stages of Faith in which he described those who were most dogmatic as having a lower level of faith than those who have gone through a period of questioning and understand that faith is almost never black and white.  My writing dream may have succumbed to the more peaceful passions of dance, gardening and cooking. Questioning is work, often hard work.

What bothered me most as I first read, and continues to annoy me when I reread Coehlo's description of the death of a dream is what happens when we allow a dream to die.  "...Dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being.  We become cruel to those around us..., and one day the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death."***

I am not suicidal, nor do I expect to be.  However, I have from time to time begun to feel the rot of dead dreams within me...before slipping back into the peace of auto-piloting through life rather than fighting for them.  I don't believe I've been cruel, but I certainly do become irritable from time to time.  Some days I just don't like myself much, and I believe those to be the days when I feel the rot of abandoned dreams most strongly.

In five weeks I am supposed to leave the temporary assignment I've enjoyed so much and return to my regular job.  Over the last two weeks, I have occasionally felt physically ill thinking about going back, even though I am returning to an almost completely new leadership team.  My new boss is someone I've worked with from another location, and I liked working with him a lot.  There is some toxicity left among staff that I dread, but as I've pondered, in my heart of hearts I am certain that my nausea is about going back into a situation in which I fear that my dreams will once again succumb to the fast pace of day to day work that doesn't inspire me.  What The Upanishads call "The sleeping state that men call waking."

I will write more on another day about consciously choosing to let go of a dream, but, for today, my learning is to just keep my dreams conscious until I intentionally let go of them, rather than letting them rot and making me a person I don't like very much.



*Coehlo, The Pilgrimage, P. 57
**Coehlo, The Pilgrimage, P. 58
***Coehlo, The Pilgrimage, P. 59

The Accelerator is Stuck!

This afternoon I went into the kitchen at work to toss together the ingredients for the lunch salad that I'd prepared the night before. As I was racing around, I man said something to me that just totally shocked me into consciousness.  He said, "You have no where to be and nothing to do.  Take your time."

Since sometime in late 2000 or early 2001, I've been racing.  In the early years, the dot.com bust had tanked my business, and I was attempting to right it before it sank. I raced. When I failed at that, I started teaching.  To earn a living as an adjunct college instructor requires teaching a lot of classes. That means lots of class preparation, paper grading, test making, and office hours. Up at 4 a.m. most days, my evening classes usually ended at 9 p.m. I raced all day.  Then when I got a consulting job that paid a normal salary, the expectation was that I'd work almost every waking hour to justify the salary.  I raced. I often fell asleep over my computer.

You get the gist.

I've been racing so long, and I think my accelerator has been stuck in overdrive.  When Thomas said to me, "You have no where to be and nothing to do,"  you could have knocked me over with a feather. For years there have always been five other things I should be doing and back-to-back meetings.  But, not now.  Of course, I had no where to be, and nothing I had to do. For a few seconds, I didn't know what to make of that.

When I finally got my head around it, I went into the lunchroom table, and I did something I've rarely done in the last 15 years. First, I breathed.  Then, I sat down, ate my lunch, and chewed my food. I tried to see if I could make my food last for 20 minutes. I had conversations with two interesting new coworkers.  With one, I shared Italian food/cooking stories.  My creativity kicked into gear as I thought about things I haven't cooked for a while, and mentally, I played with variations I might make.  I took a full 40 minutes for lunch.

I've been "loaned" by my employer to work for the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) for 4-1/2 months.  I needed a break from the pace of work I've been keeping for years and from the toxic work environment in which I have found myself, which increasingly seems to be spinning completely out of control. I applied for the opportunity and was accepted.  Tomorrow I will have been there for a week.

There are times when we are very busy, but on each end of most days, there is time to catch my breath and to do paperwork, return email, make calls, and even to do analysis about how to improve campaign performance.  Such a luxury.

Today when Thomas made his life-changing comment to me, I'd been in overdrive for about four hours.  In my "regular" job, that wouldn't have slowed down for another seven or eight hours, and when it did, I'd be looking at a ton of email and prep for the next day.  Today, my four hours of overdrive was followed by delicious sanity...and lunch, of course.

I've read a number of different estimates of how many days it takes to develop a new habit.  Some say 30 days, and others report 21. Some longer, others shorter.  But, I have 4-1/2 months to practice breathing, walking at a normal pace, eating lunch, being creative, talking to coworkers, and just generally enjoying myself at work.  Surely I can form a useful habit in 4-1/2 months that I can take back to my "real job" with me.  That will definitely be my intention, and taking a new habit back to work with me will certainly be a wonderful investment in my life.

The What and How of Mindfulness

Last week I  coached and co-facilitated an agency-wide leadership program that I had helped design 15 months ago.  I shouldn't be surprised then at the content, but to a certain extent I was.  Major themes of mindfulness kept emerging throughout the five days.  While I recall the team talking about mindfulness, I think my mild surprise came more from where I am in my life than the content.

There is a Buddhist quote, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."  Last week I think I was ready for the teacher to appear.

Mindfulness has been described as "being here now."  In other words, our minds aren't darting off to what we will do tomorrow or next week, nor are they ruminating on what happened last week, last month or last year.  They are here, empty of expectation, ready for what will present itself in the next moment.

One of my most important paths to mindfulness has come in my relationship with food.  There are others to be sure, but food  just seems to always be "in my face." That journey began early in life for me--at the age of 10.  My father was diagnosed with a hereditary disease, which my brother and I would almost certainly inherit if we didn't take steps early and consistently to avoid it.

As our friends were choosing foods, based on what they wanted to eat, we learned to choose what would keep us healthy, long before either of us probably understood the implications.  That does not mean that we never ate what our peers did, but at least for me, the pizzas, hamburgers, and hot dogs and other ubiquitous teen foods that my friends regularly scarfed down were occasional treats to be savored.  While the appreciation was about "what" we were eating, the rarity of the treats resulted in appreciation of each bite in a way that I think my peers didn't delight in quite as I did.

In my 40s when I discovered that I had a wheat allergy, I added another layer of consciousness of about what I would, or safely could, eat. I continue to be surprised that upon learning of my allergy how many people will say, "Isn't there something you can take for that?"  Of course, there is.  I took allergy medicines for decades, but I always felt tired.  When I stopped eating wheat, it was like being shot full of energy.  If I could experience that aliveness by just being mindful of what I was eating, why would I want a pharmaceutical solution?

Regular readers of this blog know that in recent years, my struggle with mindfulness in my eating has come with my relationship with sugar, as I give it up each year for Lent, and then usually I have found myself quickly slip-sliding back into that addiction.  I am pleased to say that, although I have eaten sugar since Lent this year, I have been able to do so mindfully and very rarely.  This has been a huge step in mindfulness for me.

In Cleveland this week, however, I was graced with a presentation by Dr. Susan Albers. Her book, Eat.Q., is about the "how" of mindful eating more than the "what."  Although I wouldn't consider myself a master of the "what" of eating, I am light years ahead on the "what" than I am the "how."

What Albers encouraged us to do was "be here now" with our food.  While I wasn't aware of what I was doing at the time, I can now reflect back on relishing those foods that I knew I should avoid as a teen and young adult and know that I was very mindful of being totally present to each wonderful treat.  Once or twice a year on a special occasion, I will eat a small amount of something with wheat in it.  (I wasn't going to be in Italy and not eat any pasta.)  I am completely mindful of both the experience...and the potential risks...even as I value that moment intensely.

In her talk, Albers encouraged us to bring that level of consciousness to everything we ate--the how of eating.  She reminded us of how often we eat at our desks or in front of the TV or computer, while doing three or four other things and end the meal without remembering or even tasting a bite of it.  There are countless other ways that we mindlessly exit our meals.

I live alone, and, as an introvert, mostly I get along OK with that.  However, eating alone is one of my challenges.  My routine has been to come home, make a large salad, and sit down and watch the previous evening's "The Daily Show."  Jon Stewart and I have dinner together.  (I will miss my frequent dinner companion terribly come August.)

As Albers talked about the "how" of eating mindfully, I recalled a few years ago when for Lent, I gave up doing anything else when I was eating.  It had been an exercise in the kind of eating she described.  The entree salads that I make almost always fill a dinner plate, and most of the time, I finish them.  During my Lenten exercise, I found that, when I ate mindfully, almost every day I realized that I was full by the time I was halfway through the plate.  I'd scrape what was left into a container and have it for lunch the next day.  Day in, day out.  When I was present, I could actually be aware when I was full.

There are other things that we do mindlessly.  Probably 25 years ago I became aware that when I stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work, I was still in my rush mode from the day.
As I grabbed the cart, I would notice that, by just shifting my mind into the moment, my breathing relaxed, my shoulders dropped, and I was present.  I didn't move any more slowly; I just noticed how I was moving.

I've begun how often people will ask "How are you?" and then upon being asked the same question of themselves, they will repeat the same question without realizing they've already asked it. There are times when I am tired, and I don't go to bed because it is too early, and other days I am not tired, but I do go to bed "because it is time."  I find myself going to a job that doesn't nourish me spiritually almost every day.

So, last week in Cleveland shook me from my complacence about mindfulness.  This student is ready.  I know as with any spiritual discipline, mindfulness is a practice, and I will need to practice over and again.  I am happy that the teacher, in the person of Albers and the lessons built into the leadership program, appeared last week.

The Real Cost of Things

During the last week, countless stories have flooded the media, relating tales of heroism during the D-Day invasion of Normandy by the Allied Troops in World War II.  The dwindling veterans of the invasion grow smaller each year as their ages increase.  Now the teenage boys that made their way onto the French beaches approach 90, and their remaining older compatriots are well into their 90s. 

Last weekend I heard one of these nonagenarians sharing brave stories of his role as part of the lead party, conducting reconnaissance for the massive invasion, as they dodge bullets and stepped over bodies of their friends.  Another--a medic--told of stealing bandages from the dead warriors because they were the only ones remaining after the boat with medical supplies had been sunk.

One of these men related, "My wife says I've never been the same."  The words cut through me like a cold kitchen knife. 

My father was among the brave men who invaded Normandy 70 years ago this week.  I don't know what he was like before the war, but I am pretty confident that he as never the same either. 

There has never been a doubt in my mind that my father loved me totally and completely.  He was the only dad that took off work from his blue-collar job to come to special events at school.  He was there to cheer my every endeavor.  He convinced me I could be anything I wanted to be, even though I was too young to be the first woman on the Supreme Court.  Yet, just as surely as I know he loved me, I also know that there was always a distance.

My father left his heart on the beaches of Normandy, at the liberation of Paris, or  on other battlefields, just as I suspect had happened with the man in the news report on the radio.  The pain, fear, loss, anguish, or anger of the battle were too intense to deal with, so he tucked his heart away.  I doubt that it ever came out again.  He substituted other things, like attending school events on a weekday, for emotion to communicate love. 

In my mid-thirties when my husband had left me to run off with his work colleague, and I was a heap of emotion, my father was clearly distressed, but he just didn't know what to say or do.  He asked if I needed money.  I think that was the adult equivalent of attending school events on a weekday.

I don't think that we ever calculate the cost of war, and maybe that is a good thing.  It was important to stop the Nazis in World War II, and if we had really considered the costs, maybe we wouldn't have jumped in.  Most of a generation of men divorced themselves of emotion.  The man I adopted as a dad after my own father died told me of still being haunted by the war well into his 80s.  Many of them were never able to be emotionally available to their children, who became a generation to play with sex and drugs to experience a substitute feeling.

It wasn't just emotions that didn't come home.  Some left limbs on the battlefield.  A man at our church was so badly scarred from a wartime explosion that it was hard to tell what he looked like.  In whispers people said he used to be very handsome. 

But World War II wasn't our most costly war. During the Civil War, 620,000 people died.  Many more lost limbs, hearing and sight. 

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is the new name for what was called shell shock in World War I.  Men, who for the first time were victims of modern warfare, had no way to have prepared for that horror.  My grandfather spent 25 years in a mental institution from his war's PTSD. 

The most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have seen men and women, who probably would have died in an earlier time, come home without limbs...or the dreaded PTSD or traumatic head injuries from Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs.) Had we really calculated these costs, would we not have been able to predict the impact on our Veterans Administration health system. 

War takes other tolls, too.  Whole generations of young men die. Beautiful masterpieces of architecture lie in rubble.  Looters take off with museum pieces that have been cared for lovingly for millennia.  Perhaps a collective amnesia cripples our thinking as we contemplate war. 

There are a lot of things that we don't calculate the real cost of.  War is just one of them.  Do people carrying an extra 30 pounds really calculate the costs of those extra pounds, in both years lost and additional medical costs incurred?  Do people who get that bargain shirt for $10 at Wal-Mart calculate the real cost of that garment? Do those who smoke a pack a day realize the costs of their habits? Do people who choose factory-farmed beef for dinner realize the cost to our environment?

It seems to me that the real cost of things is rarely reflected on the price tag.  If it were, we would probably all choose to spend differently for things so dear.

Listening to Their Wisdom

I have noticed over the years that coaching clients often "present" to me issues which I need to look at in my own life.  When I find myself having similar conversations, especially in back-to-back sessions, I figure I should pay attention myself.  That happened today.  Interestingly enough, I've been involved in several conversations over the last two weeks when the same topic bubbled up. Something similar came up on a class I am taking last night.  The Universe is sending people into my life to help me learn. In their answers, I find wisdom.

Each of these clients led me to draw a model for further exploration--the same model. The concept is that we have three levels of "being" in our lives.  A colleague of mine draws it with three concentric circles. The innermost is "DNA."  That part of us is what it is, and we aren't likely to change it. My brown eyes are not going to become blue because I choose that.  The next circle is labeled "Personality," and it is likely to change little.  The bigger outside circle is entitled, "Behavior."  Now "behavior" is something we can work with. 

I think about the difference between personality and behavior as being like an actor or an actress, who plays a role.  The role doesn't change the actor's personality, but they behave in the play or movie in a way that can be contrary to their natural personality.  Our jobs often require us to behave in ways that are contrary to our natural personality. For instance, I am a strong introvert, who has a job that requires me to extravert about 75% of the time.  It is exhausting, but I can and have done it...for decades.

So it is that conversations with two coaching clients today explored their needs to choose behaviors that are not naturally easy to them in order be more effective leaders.  As I helped them discover how they could allow themselves to slip into a role, it didn't seem all that difficult.  We were able to identify times in their lives during which they'd learned a new role that had by now become so familiar to them that they could hardly remember what it was like before they chose it.

This ability to transcend who we might naturally be and step into a much bigger role opens countless doors. I call it leadership, but maybe it is "just" conscious living. The ability in a moment to be conscious of who we are, what our tendencies are, the stories we've told ourselves about what we can and can't do, and then to choose the behavior we want brings intention to life in our lives. We step into the life that we would have rather than the life we inherited.  Consciousness, intention, and action.

I used to struggle with this a bit.  "If we choose to act contrary to who we are, is that 'authentic?' I have wondered. But after much reflection, I believe it is much more authentic.  If we just act with what comes naturally, we are doing so without thought.  Reflecting--even soul-searching--and then choosing what is in integrity with who we choose to be: that is authentic.

I would like to say that I do that all the time.  I know there have been times when I acted that authenticity much more than I do now.  The pace of my life has lulled me into this trancelike state--the sleeping state that men call waking--where I forget to remember that above all else, we have free will.  I can choose who I will become by the behaviors I demonstrate in large and small ways...every day, every hour, every minute.

As I listened to the wisdom spill across my clients' lips, I knew that on some level they were advising me.  Wake up and become who you choose to be!

My Amazing Machine

This weekend I've been reading a book about my body.* I read a book about how my body works and what it needs at least once a year. I watch TV programs and read articles about health, nutrition, and exercise. I am always struck by what an amazing machine my body is. Of course, it's not just my body: we all have one, and they are truly remarkable.

When I was 10, my father almost died. He was 39. He almost died because of body neglect and abuse. He rarely exercised, and he consumed all matter of unhealthy fats and sugar.  He was significantly overweight at that point in his life. He had a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit. A team of surgeons, experimenting with what was a new technique back then, put him together. His task was to keep himself healthy.

My maternal grandmother, who had always been interested in how we create health, took his health on as a mission. She read everything she could get her hands on, and she did a lot of research. My grandfather had been an organic gardener long before it had a name, primarily because he had limited financial resources, and his compost pile was less expensive than buying fertilizers. As Grandma read about creating health, his gardening took on new purpose. For almost as long as I can remember, I have understood that what goes into our bodies determines how healthy we are.

After almost a lifetime reading about my body, I have learned almost nothing new from this book. It is comprehensive, but so is my knowledge bank. Why, then, did I buy the book and spend most of my weekend reading it? And, why do I do so at least once a year with one new body book or another? Reinforcement and discipline.  Each author packages the information I know differently, so every time I read, there is a slightly different twist to what I know.  But there is more.

A friend once said to someone joining us for a meal for the first time, "Eating with Kay is an exercise in consciousness."  I don't think she meant it in a bad way. I don't have expectations that others will eat the way I choose, and I rarely talk about it unless I know someone shares an interest.  Most, who have eaten at my home, find what I serve delicious and satisfying, and many, if not most, would have no clue that I am serving "healthy" fare.  I think what she meant is that I really give thought to what I prepare, what I eat, and how I treat my amazing machine.  (She did ask if I'd leave her my recipes when I die.)

I read because, as conscious as I am, I slip into unconscious patterns.  I find something new I like, which is healthy, and I begin preparing that dish a lot.  I forget certain nutrients that were in dishes that dropped off my radar when I replaced them with the new recipe. Reading helps me remember.

For example, for much of the last dozen years, dinner has been some kind of spinach salad several times each week. I know that the dark green vegetables have remarkable healing powers, but about 18 months ago, I discovered a different, healthy salad with which I've been obsessed. I didn't even realize it until I read this book, spinach has taken a back burner in my eating.  That will change this afternoon.

This time I am also reminded of water.  I used to take a gallon jug to my desk with me each morning when I had a home office. I would drink the whole jug every day. My office away from home provides me access to filtered water, but I have to walk for it. I am sure I don't drink as much now as I should.  Besides having to walk to my water, I discovered a great new decaf coffee roasted locally, and I've been making and drinking more coffee instead of water.  If nothing more, this reading will bring me back to water.

I hope this reading will also get me back to regular exercise.  Since I don't have a car, I walk a lot, so I am not without exercise.  However, I exercised an hour a day, seven days a week, for much of my adult life.  As regular readers of this blog have heard before, the demands of my current and recent jobs have that number down to two or three times a week, and sometimes less, in addition to my necessity walking.  I make excuses, but the truth is that they are just excuses.  In my heart, I know they are just excuses.  I will make time for exercise.

My intention is to live a healthy life, and I know that is fully within my control.  My father, who almost died at 39, lived to be 65. I got an extra 26 years with him because of what went into his body--and more importantly, what didn't go in his body. I am sure if he had been able to break the cigarette habit, we would have had him much longer.  I have a deeply personal lesson in front of me.

Whether it is creating physical health or maintaining my spiritual practice, living with intention is a matter of constantly assessing how I am doing and what adjustments I need to make to bring me back to my target. (The example of this being at least the third time since I began writing this blog that I have refocused on regular exercise.)  So, at least once a year, I read a book about my amazing body, figure out what adjustments I need to make and make them. I am living with intention. The annual (or more frequent) aiming over process is one way that I respect the amazing machine that enables me to do all the things I love doing.



*The Body Book by Cameron Diaz (Harper Wave 2014.)


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Living Consciously

I was working with a group today, and since it had been over a year since they'd had a retreat during which they'd developed values and norms, we started with reflection on how they'd done at living them.

At one point a participant said, "We may not get it every time, but most of the time we stop and think."

Over the years, I've heard many people say something similar. I believe that stopping to think is the first step and most major hurdle cleared to living consciously. The moment we can break free from automatic thinking, or what I call putting our lives on autopilot, we are 3/4 of the way to making the right decision. If we know our intentions and are conscious, then most of the time we can act in accordance with them. It is only when we don't recognize that we are even making a decision that we have lost the battle.




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Remembering to Pray

When I finish this blog at the end of most days and then head to bed, I find I often have an Aha! moment.  So it was last night, as the night before.  As I was writing my gratitude list--things that I have to be grateful for at the end of each day--there were two things for which I was most thankful.  First, I was grateful for having spoken truth to power.  Almost as I had that thought, I remembered early in the day I had prayed for courage to do so, and then I had promptly forgotten about the prayer.  I am sure it was why I finally said what I should have said a year ago.

As I reflected about this little miracle (or maybe not so little,) I "got" on a deeper level than before about prayers being answered.  I tend to pray gratitude and for guidance.  I rarely pray for help.  Now, I know that just by simply asking in the morning, and then "letting it go," made a huge difference to me. 

Why then have I rarely asked for help? It is a good question. Maybe it feels selfish to ask for something for me.  Perhaps, as the author of a book on courage, I think I should be able to muster my own courage without help.  The truth is that I don't think I am very good about asking for help in anything from anyone--human or divine. 

I could blame my reticence on events of my childhood that made me fiercely independent, since asking for help just doesn't seem very independent.  I might say that all those years of education trained me to take care of myself. Even that my generation of women thought they had to be superwomen to claim our place in the work world. However, I think more likely is that I am terrified that if I surrendered even a chink in my armor of independence that I might just not exist.

Many years ago I heard an essay which proposed that the four most powerful words in any language were, "I need your help."  At all of 5'1" tall, I often find myself looking for tall shoppers in the grocery store to reach items on top shelves that are far higher than my fingers can stretch.  Over the years when I've needed assistance, I find people are often genuinely happy to help. I asked a friend to pick me up after a recent surgery because the surgery center wouldn't let me leave on my own.  How silly!  My friend was happy to help and good enough to tuck me in before I drifted back to sleep. Asking for help out of anything except sheer necessity has mostly been absent in my life. Why? I have no idea.

Dear God, I do need your help: I need your help remembering to pray.  I need your help to just allow myself to collapse in the warmth of your love and to know that you will be there with me and for me.
Always!

Celebrating little successes

A pilot once explained to me what happens when I fly from one major city to another, say from New York to San Francisco.  Although the pictures in the airline magazines draw the route as a nice arc from one city to the other, the journey is really anything but a perfect arc.  Imagine a zigzag arc, like it was cut with pinking shears. While the aviator is going east to west, there are many north and south adjustments to keep the plane on course.

After yesterday's post, I headed to bed thinking about how hard I am on myself sometimes for not getting "it"--whatever it is--perfectly.  Sometimes I miss my target a little in one direction.  Then I adjust and miss it a little in the other.  All in all, I like to think that similar to the course of the airplane, I know where I want to go but doing so on an arc that looks a bit like it was cut with the pinking shears.

What I hope is most important is that I am attempting to live a conscious life.  I sincerely want to connect with others, heart to heart.  I yearn to have this planet be a more loving place.  Whether I go on autopilot for part of each day and miss opportunities to connect with others is less crucial than that I actually did so three times today.  Today, I celebrate the little successes and know that most of the time, I am headed in the direction of love.