I’ve been sitting here for some time watching this day as it unfolds. Spring colors radiate their brilliance and the light of awareness seems to brighten into this thought: As we age, we perceive the world with a greater capacity than we do when we are younger. We see mortality, we experience suffering and we imagine the end. Without this awareness, we may tend to shut down with fear, frustration and regret. However, we do have another option – to open to infinite possibility. Our diminishing eyes are being replaced by an expanding ability to see inward and into life itself. Our physical abilities, though limited, are steadier and flowing, allowing us to embrace subtlety. With age, we can open to the complexity of what it means to be human; embracing a trade-off between allowing our impulses to seek immediate fulfillment and an awareness of the soft flow of our vast capacity to experience pure possibility. When younger, we are driven to fill this capacity. With age and awareness, it is possible to simply hold open this capacity and experience the beauty of life as it reveals itself to us.

Look at your partner today. Spend time with a friend. Sit and observe, as the world you know unfolds before you. Notice what is seeking your attention and simply allow it to fill you.

“It is good to listen. If you listen carefully, without always passing judgment, you will enter into the very heart of the creature to whom you pay attention. You will begin to grow the flowers of your soul. Then all of nature will whisper to you her secrets.” (p. 161)

Michael, E.J. (1995).  Queen of the sun:  A modern revelation.  San Francisco:  Harper Collins.

A friend told me a story recently about his second date with his first wife. He decided he would cook a meal at her apartment and while at the market could not be sure if she would like the plain chicken or a nice juicy teriyakis chicken. So he bought both, along with all the fixings; rice, salad, vegetables, flowers and wine.

When he was unpacking the groceries, preparing to start the meal, she noticed the two chickens; “Why did you buy two…?” And before he could explain, she went off on a rant that was so familiar to him that he remembers to this day thinking, “Well, if I can survive growing up with my mother I can survive this.”

The script is always there, in each moment. Often, we know in the very beginning everything we need to know to predict the future. My friend Rob, we shall call him, entered into a 5 year marriage that had all the unresolved dynamics he had grown up with. It is such a cliché to simply explain that “we marry our mothers.” Rather, I think we are drawn to situations that are unresolved in our psyches out of an unconscious drive to seek resolution. And very simply, all that is seeking to be resolved is accomplished to the degree to which we are willing to feel what is happening in the moment. All the information we need to make better decision is right in front of us if we can remain open and acknowledge what it is that we are feeling and thinking, as life unfolds before us.

It is when we care-take or manage the situation in front of us so that we don’t have to feel, that things become complex. Our willingness to listen to what is occurring – trust how we feel, inquire into the nature of the other person’s motivation and respect life as is –  simplifies our life. Without this mindfulness, we are likely to move into our relationships like a rudderless boat adrift and vulnerable to the winds, currents and prevailing tides.

Stress, oxidative stress in particular, seems to increase in direct proportion to our loss of joy. We know we need more joy in our life, but most of us may not know how to find it. Particularly now, when so much is uncertain, life as we know it seems flimsy. Many of us have already had to face change and live with fear, doubt, and frustration that more change is coming and that there may not be much we can do about it. Finally, just considering any kind of change brings on more stress.

That simple fact is; most of us don’t know how to change. And even if we did, the measurable and immeasurable risks are simply too high. Most of us just wait…. We wait so long that circumstance, life itself, forces change upon us. And usually this does not bring joy.

We fear staying where we are and we fear trying to do something about it! We wait for another day or a better idea – with fantasies of help coming to us from afar. Sometimes we just wait with no idea of what we are waiting for. Change will find us, this is certain, but will it be the kind of change we want? Is there something else we can do besides wait?

Maybe there is a simple solution. Focus on all that is not changing, accept where you are, and open more fully to what you have established that is indisputable. Find joy in what you are doing right in this moment. Seek the core values that brought you to this current place in your life and amplify them.

Joy may not last very long. As the mind seeks the unexpected, it will have a tendency to contract. This allows joy to recede and invites doubt, fear and frustration. These feelings are important if for no other reason, they motivate us. Let these “negative” emotions motivate you to claim more fully the joy that is available to you right now: deepen your appreciation for the business you have created, find new value in your relationships, take more risks in opening new avenues of business development, follow more closely the impulses coming from your heart.

Latest Twitter – a commercial but a good reminder of the value of our relationships.

@tonyrobbins Hey Tony I thought you may like this comercial from Coca Cola Spain!!! http://tinyurl.com/dgx3n7

Leadership requires the capacity to open to and allow change. To accommodate change in the external world, the leader needs the “tools” to open to change internally. “Allowing Presence” is one of these tools. Rooted in Mindfulness, this ability to open to the life-that-is-seeking to reveal itself, requires the allowance of complex feelings and thoughts while externally settling into a place of equanimity and peace. Peter Senge, in his book Presence explains:

“When this happens, the field shifts, and the forces shaping a situation can move from re-creating the past to manifesting or realizing an emerging future. . . . In esoteric Christian traditions such shifts are associated with ‘grace’ or ‘revelation’ or the Holey Spirit.’ Taoist theory speaks of the transformation of vital energy (qing, pronounced ‘ching’) into subtle life force (qi, pronounced ‘chi’), and into spiritual energy (shin). This process involves an essential quieting of the mind that Buddhists call ‘cessation,’ wherein the normal flow of thoughts ceases and the normal boundaries between self and world dissolve. In Hindu traditions, this shift is called wholeness or oneness. In the mystic traditions of Islam, such as Sufism, it is known simply as ‘opening the heart.’ Each tradition describes this shift a little differently, but all recognize it as being central to personal cultivation or maturation.” (Senge, p. 14)

Effective leadership requires the capacity to access as much information as possible about the changes that are occurring in our life. However, this information is not limited to what goes on around us in our organizations, industry and the world. Managing change may very well require us to have equal presence in our internal environment where a quiet mind allows for insights and understanding that simply are not available when there is too much internal activity.

Senge, Peter, Scharmer, C. Otto, Jaworski, Joseph, Flowers, Betty Sue. (2004). Presence: An exploration of profound change in people, organizations, and society. New York: Currency, Doubleday.

These times call for leadership and clarity of mind. While most managers, employees and staff are struggling with fear, a leader steps forward and remains focused on opportunities and a way through the doubts.

I am reminded of a story:

 ”When I was a little boy growing up in Ohio, I would spend my weekends alone with my sister playing on the dusty stacks of packing boxes in my father’s factory. The four story WWII factory was empty and cold but for the whispers of two small children as we constructed our fantasies. We would make castles out of these boxes, grab snacks from the vending machines in the grimy break rooms of the employees, and wait for endless hours as my father worked in his office.

We would leave this exhaustive play, tired and hungry and nestle in the back of his Buick while we listened to Drag Net on the radio. I remember this one line from virtually every show. . . . But first, imagine two tired, hungry and dirty children on a bone-braking cold night . . . . in the plains of Ohio, just outside of Detroit and its sprawling auto-industry plants. . . . a lone car driving through the frigged snow covered corn fields on a dark and moonless night.

The line we would hear on the radio was something like: “Just the facts Ma’am, just the facts.” As a boy, I found this strangely comforting. That steady voice of whoever that actor was comforted me. I felt, perhaps, that somebody would be unaffected by the mystery and the drama of the story. He would sort it out and find a way to solve the problems.”

If you are a leader during these troubling times, who, better than you, is there to face the challenges in your life and find solutions? Can you use all of your resources to sort through the mystery and confusion and get to the “facts?” And as always, I encourage you to turn to your relationships as a primary resources for support, insight and the immediate value found in human connection.

© Tdukes, November, 2008

I had a great time at the BIF open house last night as we celebrated their Nursing Home of the Future Project. Viewing Stephanie’s photos documenting the life of the elders was both inspiring and humbling. (more photos)  As I understand it, her work not only documents the project but helped shape the process. This is a good example of what we call “co-determination:” success based on clear intention and the relational processes that actualize that intention.

Gary Kinder wrote a book about a team of adventurers who recover tons of gold from a sunken ship resting in the deepest part of the sea. The success, he recounts, is due to one man’s willingness to open to his dream and move through all of the associated obstacles:

“You just had to shed old ways of thinking and reexamine old assumptions and do it smart from the beginning. You had to keep diverging, even beyond the point where it all became difficult and confusing. That’s where [he] lives, and he made those around him live there, too, some for far longer than is comfortable for most people. Yet just on the other side of that juncture is where impossibility sometimes vanishes and the world can be seen in a new way. . . if you do that . . .  all kinds of things can blossom.” (Speaking of Tommy Thompson, pp. 506-507)

Do you have a dream? What will you do today to recover and embrace the “possibilities” that await you?

Kinder, Gary. (1998). Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea  . New York: Random House.

I am often fascinated by the idea that; our choices determine one life as they exclude another. We make choices throughout the day; to listen, to ignore, to inquire, or to close-off. These are subtle choices driven by forces beyond our recognition. We can be in a hurry and overlook the expression on a colleague’s face, ”was there something there to pay attention to?” We can leave our home in the morning having put off an opportunity to focus on a loved one, because we were trying to capture the last few fragments of a news report - Not good, not bad, just the choices we make, as we either drive or are driven through our day. What life goes unlived as we make these choices? The following story speaks to these moments and asks the question; “how many other things are we missing?”

A Violinist in the Metro
“A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
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