Finding Stillness Through Staying Fluid

As biological creatures we are always in a state of change. Our cells turn over, our viewpoints adjust to accommodate new data, our expressions become colored with idioms as words take on new cultural implications - we change internally and in response to external stimuli.

Sometimes we feel like everything is in a state of flux and we are tempted to shout "stop the world, I want to get off." We want to just be still, to take a break from change.

Have you ever tried to be perfectly motionless?

In yoga practice it is often suggested that we "find our way to stillness." Even in the simplest poses, finding your way to stillness requires subtle adjustments to the posture. The body says "flex this, shift that" and if we ignore those requests for movement we will experience pain or we will fall out of the pose. Ignoring the need to make adjustments creates traumatic alternations.

So we heed these suggestions, make those minute modifications, but even when we come to a place where we can be still our bodies are not motionless. Our chests rise and fall with our breathing. Our gaze may be soft and steady on a distant or internal focus point, but our eyes still move slightly in their sockets. Our hearts still beat and our blood still flows. Only in death are we completely without motion.

And when we have brought ourselves to stillness, to the closest state to motionless that a living organism can create, it is a temporary state. The time will come for movement. It will either be a mindful, controlled release of the pose and a flowing into the next posture or a collapse as the body demands that its need for motion be fulfilled.

I have observed that it is much the same in our lives and in our businesses - which are, of course, only one aspect of our lives.

How often, when a traumatic shift happens, is it because you resisted making the more subtle adjustments when they were requested? How often have you avoided change, discounted the signs that you were becoming uncomfortable, even weak, and stubbornly held to your patterns and beliefs only to have them fail you in the end?

We strive to find our way to stillness, to find a place and pattern that suits us, that feels natural, right, even easy. Then, all too often, we ignore the signs that the time has come to shift. We hold that place through the little discomforts. We discount the strain, the weariness, even the weakness while we stubbornly hold to the pose.

As time goes by, we begin to believe that the sensations of discomfort and weakness are our own shortcomings. That pose felt so right when we first discovered it, surely if it doesn't feel right now we must be doing something wrong. We continue striving to "be still."

Inevitably we "fail" to hold the pose. Sometimes the collapse is dramatic and sometimes we use our last vestige of control to release ourselves from that rigidity. But we are worn out from the effort, we are robbed of the energy to move into our next position.

We are programmed to fear both change and failure. But denying change ensures failure.

In yoga, we stay fluid even in stillness by staying connected to our core strength and being aware of what our bodies are telling us. That connection is the consistent "sameness" or foundation that supports us whether we are holding one pose or transitioning to a new one. We may come back to a pose many times but we know it is never exactly the same because we have changed.

In life we can find the security and dependability we seek; that "stillness," by staying connected and self aware. Being true to our values and our personal truths adds to the stillness. Being true to our core competencies adds to the stillness. Those connections keep us rooted no matter how much in flux everything else appears to be. Any changes or choices that pull us away from those values, truths and competencies will pull us off balance. But, so long as we stay rooted, we can move fluidly from one "pose" to the next with strength, flexibility and confidence that we will not fall.

That's How the Light Gets In (and out)

Robert Merton, who is credited with coining the phrase "self-fulfilling prophecy" said "The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves."

Isn't that how we all wish to be loved? Not perfectly as someone we are trying to be, not perfectly as an ideal, but perfectly as what WE were designed to be. Webster's offers this definition of perfect - "being complete of its kind without defect or blemish." Call me an idealist, but I do believe that each and every person is complete in their unique perfection and that personal perfection is something we allow in ourselves, not something we strive toward. Because we are all complete "of our kind" - there IS no one like us!

I will bet that your mind went one of two places - you are either thinking of the people you wish could love you as perfectly YOURSELF or you are thinking of the people you love and asking yourself if you are loving them as perfectly THEMSELVES.

But what about how you love yourself?

Are you able to love yourself as the perfect being you ARE?

Ah, I heard that. The little whisper that says "but I am NOT a perfect being, far from it."

In Leonard Cohen's "Anthem" there is a line that says "Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in."

Then there is the story told to me by friend, peace advocate and proponent of radical trust, Annette Karr, about an athlete who was diagnosed with cancer and had to have a leg amputated above the knee. He spent his recovery time at a cancer center where they offered psychiatric therapy as part of the post-treatment care and the first time he saw the therapist she asked him to draw a picture to represent himself. He drew a crude vase with jagged lines crossing it. When the therapist asked what the lines represented he told her those were cracks - he said he had once been a perfect vessel, but now he was irreparably flawed.

Time went on and this man began to heal. He took an interest in other patients, helped with their ongoing recoveries and even met and married another patient at the center. Some time later he visited with the therapist again. She asked him again to draw a picture. He drew the same crude vase and the same jagged cracks, but this time he drew lines radiating from the cracks. When the therapist asked what they represented he said, "that is the light that pours out of me, it could not be shared before because I was too perfect."

Does the light get in or does it pour out?

Yes, it does - both.

But only when we love ourselves as perfectly ourselves; when we accept our "cracks" as the blessings that they are.

Accountability, Responsibility and Joyful Contributions

Recently, my good friend and continual source of inspiration, Bob Burg, challenged us to reconcile a couple of well-known and generally accepted idioms.

“If it is to be it’s up to me.”

And

“No one does it alone”

So which is it? Are you Atlas with the weight of the world on your shoulders or are you part of a team effort?

Does your individual success rest on you or on your team?

Why does it have to be either/or? Let’s start with who is accountable. That one is easy, we are accountable for our actions, our behavior and our personal performance. It is up to us to take initiative, we are in the driver’s seat and that means ultimately that vehicle only goes forward when WE put it in gear and it only goes where WE steer it to go. It is up to us to do our best under any circumstances.

But that doesn’t mean we make the journey alone. We can delegate tasks that are essential to our success, we can build a team. Notice I said “delegate” not “abdicate.” We can make other people responsible for tasks by an exchange of value, hiring, outsourcing, bartering, etc… They do not take on being accountable for our success, only responsible for the tasks they take on. It is still up to us to make sure those tasks are being completed to standard and in a timely manner. So it is also up to us to surround ourselves with team members who accept responsibility and perform to our standards.

It is also up to us to surround ourselves with people who will support us in reaching our chosen destination and who will challenge us to dream of destinations we could not imagine without them. It is up to us to communicate clearly and openly, first with ourselves and then with others, about where we want to go and what we need to get there. And it is up to us to support others in their journeys as well.

Another cliche that happens to be true – “no man is an island” – we do not go through our lives in isolation. That is part of the “if it is to be” – that doesn’t just refer to our achievements but to the outcomes of the community, the society, the world!

We all have the opportunity to make joyful contributions to the journeys taking place along side of our own. We can lend a hand to a fellow traveler, or an ear or an encouraging word. Sometimes it is the joyful contributions that propel us forward the most powerfully because they are not offered from a sense of obligation; out of accountability or responsibility, but from a sense of companionship and camaraderie.

It is up to me, and up to you, and up to everyone else. We begin it, we commit to it, and we invite others to join us because “no one does it alone.”

Got a burning question about something in this post? Email it to me at Dixie@PureSynchrony.com and I’ll send you a personal response.

Mister, Do You Pray?

I don’t know what the weather was like in your part of the world last night, but here in St. Louis it rained.

That is an understatement – it blew water out of the sky so hard and fast that, looking out the big front window of Sub Zero Vodka Bar, you just saw sheets of silver moving horizontal to the sidewalk.

Thank goodness I was in good company, the aftermath of a “tweetup” of St. Louis folks who use twitter to make connections - yes we do occasionally prefer to see each other in person - so I decided just to sit it out. But driving home an hour or so later in the still gusting winds I was reminded of why my father refused to fly if he had the option of driving.

It seems that he was traveling in a company plane during similar weather conditions. Just him and the pilot, circling above the landing field, unable to land because of the wind and running out of fuel. The way my father tells the story, the pilot turned to him and said, “Mister, do you pray?” Of course, the way my father tells the story, he not only knew how, he’d been praying constantly and fervently for some time. But due to that experience, I traveled to most of the 50 states before I was 18 but never had the opportunity to fly until I was 23 years old.

Now it isn’t important to me what you call your act of prayer. Think of it as time spent in mentally, emotionally and yes, spiritually, focusing on desired outcomes and appreciation for the blessings and privileges you have. It might be your meditation time, your dream time, your future journaling time, or your religious time. It might be directed at an outside force, it might be internally focused. But it is time you are giving 110% to the forces that shape your life and your future.

When do you engage in that activity? Every day, once in a while when you have time, or only in times of crisis? You’ll notice that pilot didn’t ask “can you pray?” or “will you pray?” He was looking for someone who did it on a regular basis because that’s what it takes to get results.

Right now we’re looking at the economic future - certainly there are other problems, but let’s just stick with topic of the day – and we see the equivalent of gale force winds and torrential rains. It’s blowing a lot of people off course. It’s easy to lose sight of your destination and become focused strictly on survival.

I contend it will be those people who “pray” who will still be aloft when the sun comes out. The people who have created a practice of focusing on outcomes and giving thanks for blessings. And more than that, the people who have created a fellowship of people who “pray” with them, who give them encouragement and keep them firmly on course.

Because those people will continue to fly, they’ll keep moving toward their destination regardless of the weather and, when the weather dictates a little time out, they’ll be surrounded by good company with whom they can sit out the worst of the gale until they’re ready to take flight again.

What storm has made you afraid to fly?

Who’s on your flight team?

What are you doing to build a practice of strong “prayer” of a focus so powerful that nothing can blow you off course?

Want some tips for creating that practice in your life and career? Send me an email at dixie@puresynchrony.com and I’ll send you a list of 25 elements of creating a “storm proof” flight plan.

Overcoming Programmed Responses - Or How to Not Lead With Your Knee

Since when does our mental/emotional programming affect our knees? Well, think about what we often refer to as a “knee jerk reaction” – that “no-time-to-involve-the-reasoning-mind” response that we often fall back on when we are cornered, pressured, stressed, attacked or when we even think that we are any of those things.

Knee jerk reactions are the human equivalent of “if then” statements in our programming. Our experience tells us “if someone says or does _____________ then it means _________ and you should immediately do __________ about it.”

Those reactions are based on programming that was entered by SOMEONE ELSE in some other situation. They are one of the reasons we repeat patterns – we experienced that pattern once and, even though we didn’t like the outcome, we learned that one thing will lead to another and we react accordingly. Like driving the same route every day and having one point where two lanes merge into one – at one time, or maybe two times, the car in the other lane zoomed up and tried to cut in front of you. You think “CHEATER, the nerve of that guy” and so from that point on you speed up at that point to keep anyone from cutting in. The road gods had better be watching over any poor out-of-towner who realizes at the last moment his lane is ending and tries to get in front of you, he’s likely to lose his bumper at the very least.

If you want to be in control of your future and break the patterns that don’t move you closer to your goals you have to recognize the programming and when it does not apply to new data and new situations. You have to become aware of when you are repeating patterns, when your responses are based, not on the current situation, but on expectations that were established during another situation which may, or may not, apply. So when you have a knee jerk response you want to ask “is this an old program trying to run or is this a valid response to the situation?” Another good question is “is there another way to look at this?”

The ultimate question is “what response can I make that will resolve this conflict in a way that is most beneficial for ALL parties?” Even though that resolution may not provide as much emotional satisfaction in the short run, it will earn you tremendous kudos in the long run for grace under pressure, for acting with integrity, for being equitable and for being the “bigger man” regardless of your gender. I’ll bet you’ll even like yourself a little better when you lead with your heart and mind, not your knees.