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1. BREATHING ACHIEVERS
One meaning of “anthropos”, or human being, is “to look up”.
Looking up is something I suggest to the driven achievers I coach. Too often Strategists, Activators and Dot-Connectors, people who have a personal standard for how they like getting stuff done, forget or override themselves -and not in the good way. Rather than being in the productive flow of self-forgetting, they’re a bit too at home with the punishing kind.
I like telling such talents to recall, during the day or night, whether blue sky or gray, the evening darkness or moonlight, to look up every now and then from what they may have tunnel vision about. Paradoxically, this same RX applies to times when you find yourself captured by confusion. Not as a needless interruption, but to sustain yourself.
Any creative process worth its salt has interludes where we gain and lose perspective. Meditation practice can streamline a gentle return to your vantage point.
When it’s time to befriend the intensity of your inner life, to integrate yourself into your daily experiences and encounters in a more intentional way or taste self-kindness, meditation is an option. As a longtime practitioner, I am a fan.
2. FRIENDSHIP
Secreted in every confusion, self-doubt or unmanaged strength is the opportunity to train the mind. A nice place to begin is by considering your mindset as the inner friend, even though it can feel more like an inner elf/diva/dictator/dominatrix.
A client from six years ago, recently returned for a refresher. Greg had jumped ship from successfully managing a UX team to entrepreneurship; he now ran his own agency. Calling his business building adventure intense, is putting it mildly.
Greg hoped our session would help “Make sense of the spaghetti mymind currently is!” Indeed, I knew him to be a busy being with a beautifullyoveractive mindset he was learning to befriend. Years ago, I suggested hecarry a book of haiku to glance at for a dollop of replenishing interferencethrough his day. I had mentioned Matsuo Basho (1644 – 1694).
Asking him about this, it was a sweet surprise to learn he had! Without missing a beat, Greg recited a favorite of his:
image by Elle Linda Yaven
tsunu mo oshi
tsumano mo oshiki
sumire kana.
I regret picking
and not picking
violets.
Anonymous from 1600's
And yet. Too often, otherwise smart people consider pausing midstream for a replenishing timeout as extra. A client noticed how no matter how maxed out we are, people measure each other by boasting how busy they are.
A client said “My goal is to take one deep breath a week”. I respected that she said this.
Another client, at the close of our session, was beaming. When I asked why, she said “I haven’t looked at my phone once in 40 minutes." We are all doing so much, taking care of so much, overextended and in overdrive too often. Given days immersed in a ton of input/output, you deserve to refresh, restore and replenish. It’s like the message on an airplane to put your air mask on first, to be able to help others.
Leading team workshops in the accelerated pressure-cabins of work, I open each session with a short meditation I named “Just Arrive”. My graduate students and I begin class this way too.
Good reverie helps the soul
take advantage of its rest and of an easy unity.
- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie (1884 - 1962)
Practicing this as an ensemble moves us from a clenched, message delivery stance to unclenching, unencumbering and to generative unknowing. For a few minutes, we let the benevolent light of quiet in.
A client insightfully shared a reluctance to meditate saying “I love my thoughts; I don’t want to get rid of them”. I loved her sharing this because I agree. Meditation is not about denying your thoughts, as much as befriending their endless rainbow variety -muddy ones included!
Real beauty is activated with the courage to still for a moment or two to find out what is going on upstairs. You allow the invaluable future scenario-building to unfold more organically. Will you do it perfectly the first time out? Nope, cut yourself slack! The main point is to get started! ...Just Arrive to beginning 🙂
I knew Greg had a dog. Rain or shine, he walks Tank every day. As with dogs, so it is with restless mindsets -constantly chewing on the gristle of inventing, catalyzing, implementing, strategizing, designing -and feeling! The raw churning of powerhouse minds requires a daily walk too. Literally and figuratively.
The fear & beauty of meditating is you
are the only other guest at the party.
- Linda Yaven
One night I had a simple dream of how the most important thing is to think fresh thoughts every day.
The beauty is how your mindset is willing to meet you where you are, and then, with some consistent attention, open doors to new scenarios. In addition to the reprieve, relief and relaxation mediation offers, you are birthing fresh, only imagined aspects of yourself.
nor·mal·ize
ˈnôrmə,līz
verb
bring or return to a normal or standard condition or state.
They realized normalizing the care of their life as a communicator was ultimate self-care
mid 17th century (in the sense ‘right-angled’): from Latin normalis, from norma ‘carpenter's square’. Current senses date from the early 19th century.
3. THE GEOGRAPHY OF BREATHING ROOM
All of humanity’s problems stem
from the inability of one human to sit
quietly in a room alone.
- Blaise Pascal, Mathematician & Physicist (1623 – 1662)
Seated next to an insightful CFO at a friend’s birthday bash, they mentioned exploring meditation.
I hear this often in coaching and have nothing but respect for the desire to embed a recurrent respite within your life. Whether savoring a haiku, developing a five minute meditation practice or attending a 10 day silent retreat, learning to rebalance yourself by peeling off from the pressures of our VUCAP (velocity, urgency, complexity, ambiguity, polarity) times for a replenishing dollop of unplugging /meditating/catching your breath is invaluable. .
No matter how grubby, fragile, scattered, crappy, unflattering, confusing or flustered -Just Arrive to where you find yourself in this moment. Just Arrive to the unaltered present. Just a radical acceptance of how things are. To all there is to be done, to all you haven’t quite done and to all that won’t get done. In so doing fresh vistas open, that's a promise!
There is nothing to do but inhale/exhale. In this one breath we let everything be as it is. Closing our eyes, we may listen to ambient sound – a dog, a car, a bell - as we allow the possibility of ourselves, the scruffy work-in-progress we are, to simply bob to the surface.
How to begin? Be imperfect!
Get comfortable.
Just sitting. Closing our devices and our eyes. Unplugging. Allowing for any nervousness or annoyance. Allow the lush disengagement from speech to wash over you. Enjoy the everyday miracle of allowing yourself to glimpse an inner quiet, tranquility, buoyancy. Melt for a few minutes.
For now there is nothing to accomplish. Just Arrive.
Your very own impromptu “Come As You Are” party!
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Speaking of Just Arrive,
my MBA students baked me this pie!
