Most of you know how important I think our bodies are to our intuition and ability to express ourselves. Sometimes the mind just interferes with what we “know.” Overemphasis of the brain is often at the expense of other parts of our total consciousness.
I was watching an instructional video on canoe camping the other night. One part of the video was trying to explain paddling strokes. I watched and listened while sitting in my over-stuffed chair and noticed I was getting very confused. I knew I could execute all the draws, pulls and other strokes being demonstrated. I've been doing them for years with efficiency. But when I tried to watch and listen as the narrator broke down each stroke to its various parts in order to demonstrate execution, I was getting frustrated and confused. I felt that all this listening and watching was somehow undoing everything my body already knew about paddling a canoe. It pissed me off!
I realized that when I paddle, it's very much from the seat of my pants (my balance point during that activity), not intellectually or even visually. In fact, I best get into my paddling rhythm on long trips if I spend the first few minutes of each day paddling with my eyes closed.
So I turned off the video, closed my eyes, put my balance back where it belonged, and paddled that chair back to peace.
“A Zen abbot once set before an American aspirant two sets of small leg-less Japanese dolls, one pair weighted in the bottom part, the other in the head part. When the pair weighted in the head were pushed over, they remained on their sides; the ones weighted in the bottom bounced back at once. The abbot roared in laughter over this illustration of the plight of Western man, forever stressing the thinking at the expense of his totality.” From a very old book on my shelf, The World of Zen.
"I used to think the brain was the most important organ in the body, 'til I realized yeah, look what's telling me that." ~Emo Phillips
"The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it." ~Biologist P. B. Medawar
"People are adventurous in direct proportion to their shortness of memory." ~Ned Gillette
"Look at me! Look at me! Look at me now! It's fun to have fun, but you have to know how!" ~Dr. Seuss
"If the terrain and the map do not agree, follow the terrain." ~Swedish Army Manual
I'm in a fishing slump. I have been for about a month and a half. Here in Northern Michigan, the lakes have not safely frozen yet (as a couple of snowmobilers proved over the holidays). But there's too much snow and ice on the lakes to get the boat out. Besides, the trailer registration expired in December. Sigh. So what to do? The dogs have kept me busy with two walks a day but there's still a gap. This is the time of year I fill the gap with some extra reading and reflection. Nature is going deep and protecting her roots right now, I'm following suit. Over the holidays I read four books I want to share with you.
So, when folks ask me, "How was your holidays and what did you get?", here's what I say:
I got that my IQ, my cognitive intelligence, has less to do with my future than my emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman, in his book Emotional Intelligence, suggests that factors like self-awareness, self-discipline, and empathy “add far more to the qualities that make us more fully human.” Faced with a particular situation, it's our emotions in balance with reason that guide us through the situation better than our ability to use reason alone. In fact, Goleman states, “intellect cannot work at its best without emotional intelligence.” I see this all the time when coaching. I love it that someone is doing the research and writing about it. A word of warning, this is a research book and there's quite a bit of preliminary information on how the brain works. But the author gives you permission to skip that part. There's a whole section of the book devoted to developing emotional literacy in children. This is the book I recommended when my friend called to complain that she couldn't spend one more hour of Christmas break with her highly intelligent but emotionally charged 20-year-old daughter.
I got that any change we want to make comes in stages (precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance and termination) and we don't move through each stage consistently. Change is a spiral process rather than a linear one. For those of you making New Year's resolutions, this book, Changing for Good by James Prochaska, John Norcross and Carlo DiClemente, will increase your odds of success. The other great insight in this book is how little emphasis we put on the important preparation stage of change. Many of us skip right over preparation and go directly from contemplation to action. No wonder resolutions so often fail by February. So if I ever go back to making New Year's resolutions, my resolution will be to hit the preparation stage by the first of the year, not action. I love the idea of saving action for spring.
I got that Rule Number 6 is “don't take yourself so goddamn seriously” and that there are no other rules. I passed on that bit of wisdom from Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander’s book The Art of Possibility when one of my fishing buddies called to complain that there was nothing to do, no good ice and the love of his life was in the garage without her engine. Chapter One, It's All Invented, gets right to the heart and the point of this book. “It is through the evolved structure of the brain that we perceive the world. And the mind constructs. The meanings our minds construct may be widely shared and sustaining for us, but they may have little to do with the world itself. Furthermore, how would we know?” Thanks Patt Osborne, for suggesting this book!
I got that the very act of telling my emotional truth, changes my truth. I've been playing with this one and it happens almost as fast as the words come out of my mouth. I try to talk about how I'm feeling and before I've finished I often don't feel that way anymore. I'm a walking, talking contradiction and it's fun. In his book, Radical Honesty, Brad Blanton takes telling the truth to three levels; Revealing the Facts, Honesty about Current Thoughts and Feelings, and Exposing the Fiction. I caught the tail end of a short interview with Blanton on National Public Radio. I really can't remember much about what he said, it was his style of speaking that moved me to blindly buy his book. And I liked the title, Radical Honesty. Anyway, I've got to tell you this book may offend you and others around you. Blanton challenges you to take truth telling to a level that might be uncomfortable and even hurtful. He'll probably shock you with his liberal “cussing” and radical suggestions about telling the truth so don't say I didn't warn you. But he'll definitely provide you with some insights and make you laugh.
So there you have it. It's taken me awhile to put this newsletter together and I still can't fish. I'm off to take the dogs for a walk and then I'm heading to the library to pick up some good fiction. Yup, it's time for a nice long novel while I wait for “good ice”. Any suggestions?
“It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
“It is with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” ~Antoine De Saint-Exupery. The Little Prince
“For every complex problem there is an easy answer, and it is wrong.” ~H. L. Mencken
“How fascinating!” ~Benjamin Zander
I've been feeling lately like a change is coming. You know the feeling. It comes from deep inside and manifests itself in unease, restlessness, edginess, excitement and anticipation. It's that feeling that has prompted this article.
“Knowledge is power.” You've heard it said, I'm sure. Someone made this point to me just the other day. It made me think, given my current feeling, I'm really pretty powerless these days. Yes, there are many instances in our lives when the more facts/information we have, the better decisions we can make.
But what about not knowing? How powerful can that be? When I am feeling the discomfort of not knowing, it most often means an insightful transition is on its way. So, I think that one of the most powerful things we can do is step fully, freely and without hesitation into the unknown. To become comfortable with the unknown is to experience freedom and become powerful in a less traditional way.
I was talking with a great coach, Andrea Wistar, about this subject a couple of weeks ago. She said that stepping into the unknown is like navigating in a fog. You can't do a thing about the fog. But you can go inside and know who you are in order to know where you are. You trust yourself. And when you trust yourself to be who you are, no matter what happens, nothing can be taken away from you.
To make that leap without all the answers, to step into the darkness without expectation of what is to come, to embrace the unknown as not just a place to begin but as a place in which we wallow, rest and soak up our inner essence is incredibly powerful. A sense of generosity can then occur as you discover your core and from that core, you can act more spontaneously. Amazingly, the parts of you that require “the facts” are no longer needed.
Treating the unknown as something to figure out can promote helplessness. Acceptance of the unknown allows you to let go of frustrations, strife, struggle, anticipation, and disharmony and allows a full sense of self acceptance and gratitude. The unknown is where your imagination can take hold. And it's imagination that transcends time and place.
“The moment where you show up, in whatever form, no particular answer expected, you hear a dialogue with something other than yourself, a voice that is speaking out from the world.” ~David Whyte
“Sometimes you've just got to let go. We put our lives on hold to the unknown and all we do is lose more of our life.” ~Corey Geyman
The highest form of ignorance is to reject something you know nothing about. ~Wayne Dyer
Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle. ~Annie Besant
When we have a crucial decision, we often feel that we have to weigh our options, make a list of the pros and cons and then, based on the information gathered, make a decision. The temptation is to look first for formulas; if I do this, then…and if I do that, then…. But often, formulas just don't work.
There was a time when I thought making progress and developing myself meant finding the right formula and pushing through crucial decisions. Often, I would resist the push. I was tired, scared or unsure of what I needed/wanted to do next. But my mindset was that I could not make progress without quickly moving myself through the decision.
Now, for me, decision making is much like the yoga I've been practicing for 30 years. In a yoga pose, I inhale, exhale, and move deeper into the pose. Inhale, exhale and move deeper into the pose. Inhale, exhale and move deeper into the pose. At some point in the process, I will experience some pain from the stretch. At that point, I back off just enough to relieve the pain and hold the pose.
And in decision making, I am now much more apt to take a step/action towards what I want and check for discomfort. If there is none, I breathe, take another step and check for discomfort, breathe, take another step and check for discomfort. At some point in this process, discomfort will likely come as it often does with each new endeavor. At that point, I back off slightly and hold the pose.
I was recently visiting with my friend, Maggie Foley-Burgess. She came up north for the weekend and brought her famous banana bread. We were discussing this month's newsletter and she said it's often our “drive-thru” mentality that makes us feel we have to decide/act instantaneously in order to get satisfaction as quickly as possible. However, Maggie says, "this does not sustain us." I agree.
Often what we have when we are facing a large and crucial decision is a green banana. And in “green-banana” decisions, our option is not to make the decision but to let the whole thing ripen.
It's not the action we take, but the insight as we "hold the pose" that grows (evolves) us. Let it ripen.
“Banana bread is just no good with green bananas.” ~Maggie Foley-Burgess
“When you see geese heading north or south, depending on the season, you know that there is one part of the world that knows where it belongs and it's going there; it's on its way.” ~David Whyte
"An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions." ~Robert A. Humphrey
"It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back." ~Mick Jagger
Labels. They're just one word or a phrase we use to categorize ourselves. And they can have a huge impact on the way we interact with others and approach challenges.
We start acquiring our labels at birth. Some we choose to take on ourselves but many more are given to us. I, for instance, was called an independent child. In some ways, that label has served me well, but not always. It was many years later and through working with my coach that I discovered I was not independent, but I had a strong need to be unrestricted. A big difference in my opinion but easy to see how others would label me in childhood as independent. I am not independent. I do want and need people around me and in my life. I am a coach, you know! I do, however, not want to be restricted in any way by the important people in my life. Until I got that, my relationships were a bit of a struggle. I was using the old acquired term of independent to describe myself and it was no wonder that the important people in my life were confused when I requested help. And no wonder I was frustrated when those same people didn't come to my aid when it was so obvious to me that I needed them. “Oh, you're so independent, we knew you'd be all right.” Worse yet, because I believed I was independent, I rarely asked for help when I truly needed it. Independent was my brand, my trademark, my tagline, my niche.
Later, assessments most often labeled me an introvert. I was once told that I would not be a good educator (a degree I was pursuing at the time) because of this tendency. I continued to pursue the degree (probably because of my yet undiscovered need to be unrestricted—tell me I can’t do something and that's the very thing I want to do) and went on to be an excellent teacher.
I've taken the Myers-Briggs, the DISC, a coaching style assessment and endless others. I learned through the assessment in Elaine Aron’s book, The Highly Sensitive Person, that I'm an HSP. Now if you love taking assessments and/or you use assessments in your practice, bear with me. I still enjoy taking a good assessment myself. And most of the assessments support each other with remarkable consistency.
“So what's the problem, Deb?” you're probably saying. For me, it's that when you're done answering sometimes a hundred questions, the outcome is boiled down to just a few powerful words, your labels. But the power of assessments really lies in their inquiry, not in the results. Assessments, like a good coach, ask the great questions. But the labeling that comes after taking the assessment can impose limits on your development. Far better to answer the questions and then be intuitively honest with yourself about yourself.
“Once you label me, you negate me.” ~Kierkegaard
“The obscure we always see sooner or later; the obvious always seems to take a little longer.” ~Edward R. Murrow
“Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.” ~Robert Persig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
“Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.” ~Josh Billings
“One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you just can't utter.” ~James Earl Jones
“Human beings, for all their pretensions, have a remarkable propensity for lending themselves to classification somewhere within neatly labeled categories. Even the outrageous exceptions may be classified as outrageous exceptions!” ~W. J. Reichmann
“Opportunities are seldom labeled.” ~John H. Shield
