Doing My Part

An interesting week has just passed: following another eye surgery, I've holed up in a dark apartment, protecting my eye from painful light. I am someone who craves light, so this was a stretch. Furthermore, a woman of words, I could not read, and I could not write.

What was I to do? I recognized that my surgeon had done his part; now it was time for me to do mine.
I've slept a lot. I've prayed and meditated some. I've watched missed episodes of TV shows and movies. As often occurs, two themes emerged from them all. One was about timing: the Universe has it's own time schedule. The second was about knowing our part and doing it.

Knowing our part, however small, and doing that part is a concept I've addressed many times over the last 25 years. For that theme to come up this week shouldn't have been a surprise, and come up it did, over and again, perhaps most poignantly this afternoon.

Movie viewing this afternoon was the Oscar-nominated documentary, "20 Feet From Stardom," which profiles a handful of back-up singers who performed on many hit songs recorded by a wide range of groups and artists over 40 years. Although most of us couldn't name any of them, anyone who has listened to any popular music genre during those years knows their contributions.

Few have broken into their own stardom, notably Sheryl Crowe and Darlene Love. Their talent is a different one: support and blending is what the stars and producers for whom they performed described. That is a unique contribution to that of the lead singer.

Most of us can think of a number of people in our lives who support us in accomplishing our own roles. Similarly, we should probably be able to think of others for whom we have provided support. Each role is important, and knowing what role we are to play at any time, and performing it flawlessly, defines our success.

A play I saw last week featured half a dozen roles that most of the audience will recall. Yet, those actors comprised only a quarter of the cast. Without the whole cast, the performance would have been shallow and lacking the depth of the message the play was to deliver.

An orchestra which features only first-chair performers is no longer an orchestra: it is a quintet or ensemble. Without second and third-chair musicians and rhythm instruments, the richness of the symphony is erased. Those supporting parts add complexity and fullness.

Oscar season is upon us. A handful of stars will be recognized for spectacular performances, but without dozens of people who support them in getting to the screen, we may never have noticed.

Olympic season has just passed, and for each medal performance there are many others who supported getting the medalist to the platform.

Whether I am performing my role as either a coach or an organization development consultant, my role is a supporting one through which leaders and teams perform more perfectly because of what should be my almost-invisible role. There are times when the trainers get accolades (at performance and rewards season especially,) and my contribution is looked over, that I wish someone would notice what I had done. But that is not my role. My role is to help others succeed and look good.

Each and every role is important. Without each and every one of them working together to create a seamless whole, all others would be less effective.

I would like to think that the world could be a more loving place, and I wonder if each of us is playing our part, however small it may be. There is something magical in how things come together when we are pulling together to the same end. If all if us pull together, could something as daunting as world peace really be achievable? I'd like to think so, but I suspect that there are a lot more supporting roles to be performed to make it happen. If we can pull together to produce a symphony, a pop recording, a play, or an Olympic performance, why not work together for peace? We may not have center stage in global affairs but each of us can play a supporting role in our families, our communities, and in our nations.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

What Do You Want To Be Remembered For?

I was watching an old movie with friends this evening, and sandwiched in between some other dialogue, the question was posed, "What do you want to be remembered for?" Although the action of the movie hardly paused for the unanswered question, it penetrated me at my core.  What do I want to be remembered for?

In an almost instantaneously quick life review, I knew that how I've lived in recent years was not the answer to that question.  It's not that I've been doing anything so bad in recent years. I've survived in a world which focuses on surviving.  Almost as quickly, I felt that longing for the days when I made my decisions, based on thriving. I don't want to be remembered for racing through life like everyone else.  I want to be remembered as someone who was special.

I am mostly proud of my life until recent years.  I delight that I wrote several books that have changed people's lives around the world and especially their work lives. I am proud of the company I ran and the executive coaching work I did. I find satisfying the contribution I made to companies in which I consulted.  I am humbled by the contribution that I have made to humane globalization. I smile thinking of the young minds that I touched in both the classroom and one-on-one coaching as a university teacher.

But, I am reminded of the phrase, "What have you done for me lately?"  What have I done for my legacy in the last eight years? I've been so focused on paying the bills and refunding my depleted retirement that I've forgotten the two things that are most important.  What have I done to nurture a better world around me? What have I done to nurture my own soul?

I believe that those contributions are made in the moment-by-moment decisions that we make about how to live our lives, but what I've been leaving out of that calculus have been the questions, "What do I want to be remembered for?" It's not just about what is the right thing to do in this moment to survive, but if the act I am making in this moment were the headline on my tombstone, is it what I would want to be remembered for?

I want to be remembered for a generous heart--not just monetarily generous, but was I remembered for being generous with my time and attention? Were others able to feel my caring, not just hear caring words? Was the love I felt for others love that radiated from my heart and not just a thought from my head?

After my last post about giving, I compiled a daily gratitude list.  What stood out to me on both the "gifts received" list and the "gifts given" list was that I hadn't felt the gifts in the moment. I hadn't been a gracious receiver or an intentional giver. I was only intellectualizing them several hours later.

As I think about what I want to be remembered for, perhaps that is it: I want to be remembered for feeling my interactions with others. How can I have a generous heart if I don't feel what I am giving? How can I feel love, if I am not actually feeling? I want to be remembered for being a feeling person who was really present to the people and relationships around me. In my busy life, that will be a stretch, and if my legacy is to be the one I choose, if will be absolutely essential.

Paying It Forward

This afternoon I dutifully met with a friend of a friend, who was interested in talking about her job search.  I did so only as a courtesy to my friend. This week had been a killer at work, and I had scheduled something each evening after work.  By Friday afternoon, I was ready to head home and chill.
I wanted to go home, but I remembered how many people that I didn't know who had kindly met with me when I was new to Washington to talk to me about my job search. I really didn't want to do meet this woman.  However, I was richly rewarded with a delicious treat at the end of a hard week--a treat that perked me up dramatically and left me reaching my home feeling full of energy instead exhausted.

My delicious treat was an energetic conversation with a woman I hope will be a new friend and at the very least a professional colleague.  I find it interesting how I seem to "click" with some people so quickly.  Although the expressed intention of the meeting was to discuss a particular job for which she was applying, our conversation meandered all over the map.  It was fluid and lively.

There is a concept, known as "paying it forward," popularized by the 2000 movie of the same name.  It the movie instead of paying someone back for doing something nice for you, a youngster comes up with the idea that we should pay it forward--do something for someone else.  Actually, his idea was for every time someone does something nice for us, we should do three nice things for someone else.  In the movie, the ripple effect of paying it forward spreads across the country, each good deed tripling itself.

Today's meeting really started me thinking about that idea again.  When I thought about all the people who had helped me as I was settling in to the city, I should be meeting and talking to someone new every night for at least a couple of years.  Yet I have let my life get so busy that I don't do that.  I often remark about one of my work colleagues who has two children and seems always to be volunteering for this or that.  I don't know how she does it. Yet she always has lots of energy.

Perhaps tonight I had a glimmer of understanding. When I gave a very little, I was richly rewarded, not only with a delightful conversation, but literally with more energy. I had to question if I hadn't been so stingy in giving of myself if I might have as much energy as volunteering colleague.

Tomorrow I go to volunteer at a theatre here in Washington.  I go about once a month.  I do feel good when I do it, but honestly, I do it so that each month I can see a play for which I couldn't afford to purchase tickets.  That it is "pay it back" arrangement.  I give my time to the theatre, and the theatre gives me a seat in the performance.  Paying it forward is just giving to three strangers without allowing oneself to be paid back.  But, I was paid back today...by the conversation. Even when I didn't try, I was rewarded.

I recall again a gratitude practice that I wrote about some time ago, whereby a person attempts to give more gifts each day than they get.  "Gifts" might be letting someone in front of you in traffic, opening a door, or giving a compliment--anything which amounts to doing something for someone else. I've played this game before, and at the end of the day I make a list of gifts given and gifts received.  I am never able to give more gifts than I get.  I've have had days in which I set out with the express intention to see if I could actually do more than I would get: I believe it is impossible. When I gave more, I always got more.

This realization isn't a new discovery for me: I've discovered it many times, but I always seem to let this universal law of giving and receiving slip from my consciousness.  Then something happens to remind me again.  I am not sure how I get this in my psyche on a cellular level so that it will always  be in the front of my consciousness, but I really want to do that. I want to live from a place of giving and generosity. I will hold that intention, and I will reflect on how I can ensure that it doesn't slip away for yet another few months.

For now, I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Sir Winston Churchill: "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." I am ready to make a life.

Expecting the Unexpected

There is a corollary in physics that order is always implicit in chaos, and chaos is always implicit in order.  Most of us have probably had a time in our lives where things were going great, and all of the sudden something unexpected totally upended our lives: chaos being implicit in order. Most of us can probably also remember a time when things just seemed so crazy that they made no sense at all and then suddenly like pieces of a puzzle, everything fell into place, revealing a new reality that couldn't have been imagined just before.

My day started with almost back-to-back reports of massive protests and violence in the Ukraine and Venezuela. A report followed shortly thereafter that Mississippi seems to have reverted back 60 years with a noose incident on the statue of James Meredith, the first black student at the University of Mississippi.  Of course, the incident generated protests there as well. Violence continues in Syria, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan.

When I went to bed, I had been watching stories from the Winter Olympics where the Canadian son of a Chinese immigrant trains for men's figure skating in Detroit, while the winner of the gold in that event was a young Japanese man who trains in Toronto.  Then, of course, there was the Kazakhstani son of Korean parents, who has trained in Russia and now lives and trains in California.  I cannot neglect to mention the Russian hockey player, who is star of the Washington (DC) Capitals, who is competing for Russia, or the Russian snowboarder whose parents took jobs in Switzerland when he was young. In Vancouver, he competed for Russia; this time he wore Swiss colors.  Not only did the world seem orderly, but I felt the coming together, which I believe is our destiny to claim.

How my consciousness was jarred this morning with chaos on my clock radio even before I was out of my bed. Was this the same world that put me to bed? All day I've felt a sense of spiritual confusion.  Yet, I know that chaos has been the vehicle for a global outpouring of love before.  I recall the week in which we lost Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, and Sir George Schulte.  For a few days the world stilled, grieved, and loved. Millions wept together. And can anyone who was alive and over 10 forget the daily crumbling of the former Soviet Bloc.  That chaos, which preceded the order of new states emerging, has often been followed by more chaos, such as in the Ukraine today.

I cannot forget, personally, how the chaos of a spontaneously breaking neck led me to finally realize my passion for dance nearly 20 years ago.  I am most grateful for the pain that brought me to dance.

Maybe expecting the unexpected should be the order of the day every day.  If God is mystery, perhaps any time that we begin to think we know how things are is just the time God shows us that we really don't know. We are reminded to reach out. Certainly at times of change in either direction are times that we often utter prayers, either of gratitude or pleas for help and mercy. Tonight as I say my prayers, I will offer both: a prayer of gratitude for peace, order, and sanity in Sochi and another prayer for help and mercy in places plagued with violence all around the world.

Intention and Inspiration

I don't particularly like sports.  I rarely go to live sporting events.  I've taken in a Nationals game each of the last two summers, but before that it had been 23 years since I walked into a sports venue.  The time before that was another 20 years earlier. My alma mater played in the national championship football game a couple years ago before I even realized they had a winning season.  (That was a non-occurrence when I was there.)  I am personally active, although I've usually preferred solo sports--running, biking, hiking, and cross-country skiing--except for dance of course.

Yet there are two interesting curiosities about my relationship with sport: I love sports movies, and I love watching the Olympics, especially the Winter ones.  (This two weeks is nirvana.)  As I was hall-walking tonight, I played with those curiosities.  Why would someone who doesn't care about sports love sports movies and the Olympics?

I think the answer is that, at least to me, neither is really about sports.  Sports movies are inevitably either a David-and-Goliath story or about incredible obstacles that must be overcome--racial intolerance, gender bigotry, a poor, ill-equipped athletic department, or even an airplane disaster.  The team must totally focus their intention on what they know they can become, despite the odds. They not only face external obstacles but often self-doubt as well. Of course, they always win the big one, but then those who don't win the big one don't inspire movies. 

(I have to confess this passion for finding-your-passion-and-pursuing-it-against-all-odds stories is not limited to sport, unless you call spelling a sport: I loved "Akeelah and the Bee.")

Similarly, the Olympics are also hundreds of stories about personal passion, commitment, perseverance, and determination--intention turned to inspiration.   Once again, there are often incredible obstacles to be overcome. Speed skater Emily Scott's mother is "back" in prison. On food stamps, she couldn't afford to pursue her dream until she went to a crowd-funding site, where she found a bunch of strangers who believed in her dream enough to sponsor her. One skier wept openly remembering the recent death of his brother, while still another mourned the loss of his father--the man who got him into his sport. This is truly an inspirational lot of people.

Tonight, Lauryn Williams inspires me.  After the first two heats, she and her partner are in the top spot in women's two-person bobsled.  Williams already has a gold medal...from the summer Olympics in a track and field event--4 x 1000.  If she is successful in winning the gold in bobsled, she will be the first Olympian in 82 years to capture gold in both a winter and summer Olympics...and the first woman.

There are days when I think that I have persevered and have overcome incredible obstacles. Then I watch the Olympics or a sports movie, and that really puts things in perspective.  I wonder what my life could have been or maybe might still be if I had that kind of focus and fortitude. I like to tell myself that Olympians are cut from a different fabric, but are they? Or, are they just more willing to get up at 4 a.m. to train before the rest of their day or to train late at night after a day as a busy mom of two, like Noelle Pikus-Pace has done for the last two years? I don't want to diminish the natural talent that these athletes have, but talent alone would not have gotten them to the medals podium. Intention and hard work reveal that path. 

Think Outside the Box

The expression "think outside the box" is used a lot these days, but most of the time the thinking is only on the edge of the box and not really outside it.  Today, I thought outside the box, and I hope that I accomplished my goal.  But first a little back story.

As I was finishing graduate school 23 years ago, the deck on the back of our house decided it was almost time to collapse.  We hired a contractor, who informed us of code requirements, as we designed the replacement. The deck of our home was probably the most used room of our home if you count waking hours.  Making it just what we wanted was important. 

Because I am pretty short, I wanted to make sure that I could see over the rails, and the way the code is usually interpreted the top rail would have hit right at eye level for me.  That just wasn't going to cut if for me.  One nice spring Sunday afternoon, we sat on the deck, playing with the rules of the code.  Our goal was to find some combination that met all the rules, but allowed me to see over the deck.  Finally, we came up with an answer.  We consulted our contractor. He agreed that we met all the requirements. Eventually, the city inspector also agreed.  Our deck rails just looked different than most others.

The reason that I tell that story is that for two days every time I thought about a current dilemma, the picture of us on the deck, playing with the rules 23 years ago kept coming to mind.  Since I probably haven't thought about that endeavor for 22 years, it seemed odd to me--odd enough that I couldn't let go of it, but didn't really know what to do with it.

My current dilemma has to do with the rules of a writing contest that I've been preparing to enter.  About a week ago, I discovered a flap on the web about the rules of the contest.  They appeared to take the rights to publish and/or change and publish works that were not winners; not only that but entrants appeared to be giving up the right to publish their own work if it had been submitted.  Of course, the winner had the prize, but if an entrant lost, he or she would lose the rights to their work with no compensation. Two attorney friends advised against entering.

I was 95% of the way to deciding not to enter the contest, but when I was meditating this morning, I kept getting the picture of the deck-rail planning project and hearing "Read what's on other websites." I spent a couple hours this morning reading several websites where people were in a stew about the contest.  Several had "we could do this..." and "we could do that..." suggestions.  None of them seemed to be good solutions to me.

Literally falling backward on my couch at mid-day, I contemplated the right course of action, but every time I did so I thought about the two obvious choices: 1) enter and lose rights or 2) don't enter and lose the opportunity.  As I lay there, that picture of deck planning popped into my head yet again. "What does the deck rail have to do with anything?" I thought. Almost the second the question passed through my consciousness, I knew the answer.  I should do what we did with the rails: 1) know what I wanted in the end (enter without losing rights) rather than what I didn't want (either lose rights or lose opportunity) and 2) figure out how to meet the rules. 

Playing with the suggestions of several bloggers, each of whom had part of the answer, I think I figured out how to meet all of the rules without losing rights to something I might want to publish.  Then I wrote feverishly, working almost nine hours in the zone until I was bleary eyed, hungry and thirsty. Off my entry went.

I do not know if I will win.  As much interest as the contest has stirred, I expect I will have a lot of competition, and some of it appears to be from quite experienced professional writers.  What seems more important to me at this point is what I learned along the way, coming in the form of a memory about thinking outside the box.

In the short bit since I finished my submission, I've been contemplating where else in my life that I might be served by looking at rules in a new way.  One of the leaders with whom I have been working recently said to me , "Often rules are used to tell people what they can't do; I'd like to use them to tell us what we can do," emphasizing the "can." 

I think this is the lesson of thinking outside the box: let the constraints fall away and ask "What can we do?"

Peace

While not without a couple more computer bumps, this has been a good day. I slept until I awakened naturally, remembering several dreams. I wrote for several hours, and I took a walk in our beautiful 50+ degree day as our snow rapidly melted.  It felt good to move, and after a month of bitter cold, I loved being able to walk comfortably in a short jacket with the sun on my face. I ate a delicious healthy dinner, and then I watched the Winter Olympics.  I am an Olympics junkie, and I am particularly fond of the ice skating events in the winter games, part of tonight's program.

When I sat to write, I was totally still.  My mind, which races so much of the time, was quiet.  It was quite remarkable, as if I were ending a meditation rather than starting one. The white stillness is quite a gift, and while I truly relish the exquisiteness, I was also curious.  Why so still tonight?

I believe that just BEing all day opened the door.  I flowed effortlessly through the day without thinking or planning, just following my inspiration, moment to moment.  I was being me.  This seems to me how it should be all day, every day--the way we were meant to be.  I cannot think of anything more important to say than being at peace is truly heaven on earth, and today I am most grateful to be there.

Post script: The morning after I wrote this post, NPR reported on a new study done on "happiness."  Participants in the study were given an app to report when they felt most happy.  After reporting their happiness, they were asked what they had been doing.  Activities in which people were totally engaged generated the most happiness.  I called it "peace" but I sure was happy too.