ThePracticeofYourLife

An old coach of mine, Paul Dominguez, once taught me to pay attention to my environment; that my environment actually “calls forth” certain behavior.  You might notice this clearly in a living room that’s organized around the TV.  With the chairs, table and sofa all arranged around the TV you’ll find it perfectly natural to reach for the remote the moment you sit down.   I think this is one of the main reasons that people have difficulty around honoring their commitments.  They make a commitment that calls for a massive change in behavior, like quitting smoking or watching less TV and taking up exercising, yet there surroundings - including their daily routines - call forth the old patterns of behavior.

Your old buddies continue to call you to come down to the club to watch “the game”, or you continue to find the remote in your hand every time you sit down in your living room.  What’s particularly sad about this is that many people beat themselves up about these breakdowns because they are blind to the pull that is coming from their environments.

If you really want to stick to your commitments for 2009 take a look at your environments; not just at home and at work, but in every single room of those environments.  Take a look at your routines and what you are drawn into as you engage in your routines.  If you often get pulled into the local bar on your way to or from the grocery store, then consider changing the time you go for groceries, or exchange that routine with your wife for something else that she does.  Unless of course she gets pulled into the bars.

I’m looking at my environment here in Trinidad for the hidden stimulations that call forth wanted and unwanted behaviors.  I’m also being honest about some of those “unwanted” behaviors.

I wish you a Feng Shui 2009.

Whoever said, “Into every life a little rain must fall,” knew what she was talking about; but this is ridiculous.  It’s rained almost every day since I’ve been here in Trinidad and yesterday it rained all day - much of it torrential.  On the narrow congested road to where my parents live, there were parts of the road under two to three feet of water.  What’s up with that?   So much for sunny Trinidad and getting away from the frigid New York weather. For the first time I can recall I stayed at home in Trinidad because of the weather.  Roads were covered in mud and bridges in mud and debris.  Also my friend who was having a Christmas party had no electricity.

This gives an opportunity to observe how people cope with inconvenience. Especially me.  For let’s face it, this stuff is only inconvenient.   So what if you can’t go sit outside in shorts or go to the beach? There are many places where this is impossible for most of the year, either because of the weather or gunfire. So what if there is no water, we’ve got water to drink and we know it’s temporary.  The water will come back in a day or two.  There are places where people never have running water and must walk for hours to get just enough water to live.  And so what if I don’t go out and hang with friends with great food and drink?  I’m here for awhile and there will be plenty of opportunities to eat and drink in great company.  There are people who are starving in the world.

I’m lucky to be around two individuals who get swept up in the drama of the inconvenience and make an empty water main mean the end of the world.  I’m one of the two, and I’m lucky because the other person serves as a reminder that I tend to go there also.  Go to irritation and make wrong, and I catch it very quickly now, thanks to my lucky amigo who is close by and serve as my canary in the coal mine.  I see where it’s going and I take a deep breath before I over-react.  I’ve gotten so good now that to another observer I would appear the picture of calm.  What’s going on though is I do get triggered, I notice it and then I let it go.

The mark of a master maybe?   Do you think I can leave the temple yet?  There’s still the rice-paper dammit. 

In their Law of Attraction books, Esther and Jerry Hicks talk about segmenting. The idea is you break your day into discrete portions of time or “segments” as a means to focus your attention during that time on something that you want done.

This is a brilliant concept.  Why?  Because my biggest challenge is managing my Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) - see post on 17 April 2008.  I can get distracted at a frightening pace.  In going to write this post, I think of three other ideas and start writing them first. I happen to glance at my left and see an article that catches my eye and I read it, and while reading it I remember to respond to someone regarding some semi-urgent matter, and so I go to my email and read four or five mails before it occurs to me that I was supposed to be doing something else, except I can’t remember what.  Wish I could blame this on age, but I don’t have that excuse plus I do remember always being like this.

If I’m not careful I can be the prima donna in the chaos ballet, plie (ing), pirouette (ing) and fouette (ing) my way across the cluttered stage of my life.  Not graceful and a tad painful, but at least it’s not as bad as I portray …, at least not anymore.

The idea of segmenting is a great and simple practice to incorporate in your life practice.  All you do is stop and ask yourself what will I focus on now. Choose something and do that to the extent that you intend or until its done, and then stop, and ask yourself the question again.  Give yourself a time period - no more than 2 hours - and then stop. It can also be a very useful form of meditation.  You could say for example, that in the next 30 minutes I’m going to wash the dishes.  Giving the dishes your full and undivided attention can be very calming and can be a very powerful form of meditation.

This is a great way to give yourself some direction and focus.  Be careful though.  This is no substitute for planning.  If you don’t cultivate a practice of planning then you’ll find that this practice will have limited value.   A practice of planning will give some purpose to the things that you choose in your segments.  Without an overall context of planning you will find yourself still very stressed even though you’ve been VEEEERY busy.

If productivity is your challenge make sure to read David Allen’s books especially the classic “Getting things done.”

I wrote this 7 Sept 2006 a couple days after his death.  Thought I would post it here as a tribute to a true life practitioner.

Don’t know why the passing of someone I’ve never met could affect me this way, - last time I felt like this was the passing of Princess Diana - but I am really saddened by the sudden passing of Steve Irwin.

What is it that could cause me to feel this way, and I know it’s not just me. The emotion felt by thousands of people the world over is being expressed in newspapers, TV, the internet in homes and bars. For me I think it was the joy he felt and projected in doing what he loved. Steve projected a child like wonder and excitement in what he did, a joy and wonder that most of us lost as a child, but that we remember when we see it in kids. The fact that Steve was an adult may have triggered a bit of awe or jealousy in some. For me I look back on him and I think I may have been kind of envious of, not him, but what he had.

I feel sad at his passing, like someone I knew, a really good friend who, whenever he stopped by would bring joy laughter and amazement to my home. He was the one guy you always wanted at your party. Always entertaining, full of stories, and – I have no way of knowing this – completely accepting of you no matter who you were, what you looked like or what you did for a living.

Khalil Gibran said that sorrow is merely the other side of the cup – not exactly, but close enough. You miss what was there when it was filled and now we look at the empty cup.

Steve’s passing is particularly curious. For a guy that did the crazy stuff he did, we would not have been surprised if he was killed by a croc, or trampled while facing down a bull African elephant. But he was killed by a stingray. A dangerous creature no doubt, but one unlikely to kill someone so experienced as Steve. The stinging barb right to the chest/heart is about as improbable as being hit by lightning while sitting in your living room. Seems to me that Steve’s number was up. His work was done.

There will be no more Crocodile Hunter and crazy stunts, but Steve … thanks for showing us how to live your life with passion and enthusiasm.   You did what you loved, the way you wanted, fully self-expressed, with wonder and purpose. You used your life as a creative expression of who you really are. I wish your family strength and courage through this time. I expect that Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” will be apropos at your funeral. I play it now in honor of you.

Click here for a tribute to Steve

Well I’m no Thomas Friedman and no, I am not a communist. Look at my picture (click on “About”) – does that look like the face of a communist? The reason I’m writing this post is because I wonder if two famous communist rallying cries are actually coming to pass in our world today.

(1) “Workers of the world unite.” (Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels)

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx believed that communism would arise from a revolution of the international (my italics) working class. He believed that each person’s work, and how they worked was entirely personal and individual, and that the capitalist mode of production necessarily alienated the worker class because it forced the worker to essentially give up his inherent creativity to produce in his own fashion. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx#Philosophy). This for Marx was tantamount to being alienated from one’s own nature – a spiritual loss.

Look around at the daily frustrations and anxiety of modern life. Doesn’t this indeed seem to be the case? People medicate, or distract themselves with TV, drugs or sex to relieve the frustration and anxiety they feel from this alienation Marx was referring to. Marx understood work as a social activity, and that it was the social relationships that people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production, that shape history. The tensions produced by any particular mode of production would lead naturally – depends on whether you think of revolution as natural – to another mode of production. So for Marx, it went from feudalism to capitalism to communism.

Look at our world today. Are we in the midst of an international revolution? A case could be made that we are, and like most revolutions people will and are getting hurt emotionally and financially, and things will be radically different after it’s done. At least in this case there has been no bloodshed.

The means of production are now accessible to everyone.  Everyone can manufacture, market, produce and sell products and services.   And that’s no exaggeration.  All they need is the will to acquire and use knowledge. (And a computer with a high speed internet connection.) Whether you like it or not, workers of the world are uniting, and they’re calling it globalization. Read “the World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman, and “The four-hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferris if you are to have any chance of participating in the revolution rather than have the revolution be done to you.

(2) “From each according to his ability, and to each according to his need.” Karl Marx

Probably no statement chills the heart of the free market capitalist more than this one. Who knows what one’s true ability is, and who decides what any single person needs? A totalitarian system of government was the Soviet answer, and we know how that worked out. No argument there. What intrigues me though is there seems to be a naturally occurring form of this happening all around us; due to the rise of the personal computer and the internet.

There are open source software platforms where extremely talented people from all over the world collaborate and give of their time and knowledge to produce software platforms and applications that are shared for free with anyone that “needs” them.

There are also little applications that you can download for free to your Smartphone or computer. People are writing content and sharing information for free all over the internet. I’m well aware that there are still economic engines driving a lot of this freeness or sharing, but not all of them, and you are seeing more and more that people are producing value to be shared with anyone that “needs” them.

This phenomenon more than anything is what made me think that communism, not the totalitarian, central-controlled, religion-excluding, Soviet-style communism, but a kinder, gentler, sustainable and bourgeois-friendly communism is coming back. Communism 2.0.

Something is happening to the way we collaborate and coordinate our actions in the living and working of our lives and it is occurring naturally – no bloody revolutions - in a distinctly “social” context. From the “sharing” of digital content that can now be produced by anyone without the need of major entertainment studios, to the sharing of renewable energy for the security of the free world and survival of our planet.

I don’t know what is coming next – how all this will play out - but I don’t think we can call it Capitalism. People will no longer be driven to consume for consumption sake because the new system will be driven by genuine social and environmental concerns. Profits will be alive and well for the foreseeable future but they will not be the sole driver of business behavior.

Perhaps Marx was just ahead of his time.

If Communism 2.0 won’t catch on, what would you call it?   Capitalism 2.0?  Fine with me.  Thomas Friedman where are you when I need you? There’s another best seller here.

I have noticed something about many people who have found success in their true calling. Before they found their passion, or became famous they had already either excelled in business success, or they hit the dregs of existence and were homeless addicts on the verge of suicide, (or heading in that direction).  Wayne Dyer the famous author was an orphan and an alcoholic, Rhonda Byrne the producer of the Secret claims to have been bankrupt and suicidal. Eckhart Tolle was suicidal when he had the experience that led him to write the power of now. Louise Hey almost died of cancer. On the other end of the scale we have people like Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Bob Parsons, Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban – people that seemed to have lived lives being outliers even before they became famous or successful. My point is that these people weren’t normal to begin with. In the degree of their prior success or failure they were two or three standard deviations away from the average.

Makes me wonder:  What about the rest of us?  Those of us who haven’t, and will probably never excel at the heights of corporate success, and who have never and likely will never sink to the depths of despair, wandering the streets homeless or suicidal. Who speaks for those secretly suffering within the crowded confines of averageness, trapped in the bounds of normalcy … languishing within the limits of mediocrity?   Who will be our hero?

Those of us living lives of quiet desperation, who will represent us?

Yes, I do include myself amongst the middling masses - at least for this post.    It’s odd to admit to being ordinary.  Many people would prefer to lie, rather than say how they really feel about this. It would truly be extra-ordinary to hear someone boast, “Yes Sir, I put the bell in the bell curve.  If it wasn’t for people like me, people like you couldn’t stand out.”

If we want true evidence that it is possible for anyone to achieve what they want in life, don’t we need some examples, some breakaways from the height of that bell curve?   If our only examples come from the outliers, one, two, even three standard deviations from the norm … then what makes me believe that it’s possible for someone like me to have the life of my dreams, what evidence do I have that I can have what I want?

Downright depressing indeed.  For I don’t believe that at this point in my life that it’s realistic for me to become a captain of industry.   No, there is little chance of me becoming a Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet etc. at this point in my life.

So what options do I have?   If the route to my greatness is not through a life history of the Midas touch, does this mean that at this point of my life, my only course to greatness is an unpleasant detour through homelessness and addiction? To let things get so bad that I attempt suicide?  What if I succeed?   That would be the icing on the cake wouldn’t it?

Here he lays a testament to the irony of his ability. The first thing he really put his mind to he succeeded at. Imagine what he could have achieved if only he put the clarity, focus and determination he put into his suicide into his life - imagine what Peter Anthony could have achieved. As it stands, here he lays: the ultimate non-starter; procrastinator extraordinaire. A martyr to mediocrity.

I think it’s necessary for some new deviants, some real life “Joe the plumbers”, that really invent themselves not through the near death breakdowns of hopelessness and despair, but from an invented breakdown of mediocrity and an epiphany. What I mean by an invented breakdown is that you create a breakdown, or declare a breakdown that may not physically exist before you declare it.  The italicized paragraph above is an example.

I want some heroes to begin his/her story with, “I was average. Not the top of my class; don’t have a slew of successful companies or business successes behind me, nor was I ever psychological road kill. What made the difference for me was I saw the impact of my mediocrity ten, twenty, thirty years down the road. I projected myself into the future I was living into and saw myself unable to retire, broken relationships and not being able to say I had left any positive impact on the world. And that was enough to scare me off the curve.”

Yes, I know that crisis is the necessary medium of change, but does it have to be an actual crisis? Is it possible to act out of the anticipation of the oncoming train wreck that may be twenty or thirty years away? Wouldn’t it be great if we could teach people to think that way? Wouldn’t the country, the world be in a lot better shape if this type of thinking was more the norm than the exception?

Until we are able to teach our young people the skill of assessing the present value of future consequences, the skill to see long-distant consequences of their current choices, today’s flock of the mediocre can only hope to escape via an epiphany of an invented breakdown.

Then again, maybe I should just head down to the local bar.

Know the song?   I remember the Doris Day original, and lately it seems the song is making a comeback by someone or a band called Pink Martini.   I’ve heard it quite a few times in Starbucks and it brings back memories of a time gone by when things were easy, sweet and innocent.  And as I sat listening to the song today it occurred to me - I hate this song.

“When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother
What will I be?
Will I be pretty?
Will I be rich?
Here’s what she said to me:

Que sera, sera.
Whatever will be, will be.
The future’s not ours to see.
Que sera, sera.
What will be, will be.”

No seizing the day or climbing the corporate ladder for this young lass.   She’ll be living her life waiting for it (life) to happen to her.

Living your life as a practice requires completely the opposite perspective.  A carpe diem approach where you invent your future and spend your days in the pursuit of making it happen.  The song of course has a very peaceful and even helpful message of acceptance for what occurs, and this is fine.   Sung as an unconscious refrain though, it comes across as complete and final, like there is nothing else to it, and I think that’s why I find it irritating.

I could practice acceptance for this song and let go of my irritation - I could, but I won’t.  I don’t like it.  So there.  ;-)   I never said I was perfect.

“The future is not someplace we’re going, but someplace we’re creating, and the paths to it are not found, but made; and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.”   Peter Ellyard.

… shouted a black man in a car driving past me on Times Square last night.   “And a white man”, I said out loud to my friend.   She laughed.  “He’s like that Michael Jackson song.”  She laughed some more.

We had come from Rockefeller center a bit in shock at the speed of Obama’ victory.  Quite in keeping with the “shock and awe” of a political campaign on a scale never before seen in American history.

As we walked along the streets of New York everyone seemed jubilant.  Everyone … not just black people.  And I thought how strange that I don’t think of Barack as a black man, but as a transformational charismatic leader.  I think for many people this is indeed the case.  The fact that he is black was just icing on the cake; a chance to really give a gigantic middle finger to an establishment that is perceived as corrupt and rotting from the inside out.

And I wonder … do we owe George W. Bush a debt of gratitude for this truly historic occasion?  In a strange way I would say yes.  Perhaps through lack of accountability, secrecy, arrogance, go-it-aloneness/my way or the highway, closed mindedness, and fear, the resulting financial meltdown, international disdain, and assault on the very freedom that defines America, George W. created fertile ground for a leader like Barack Hussein Obama to emerge.

George W. created a listening that was not there before.  A listening among the American people that allowed them to take a leap across a chasm of broken dreams, a leap that allowed their country to reclaim or perhaps earn its place as leader of the free word.  A leap that demonstrated America’s acknowledgment of the dire global situation it helped create, and of it’s commitment to leading the world out of it.  America elected a man that has the listening of the world as their leader.

I think most Americans have no idea of what this election means to the world.  Even before the news verified this to be he case, most internationals knew that Barack’s victory would be celebrated in their home countries.  All over Europe, Africa and Latin America champagne corks popped and there was much drinking and dancing.  With absolutely no research data to back me up I speculate that no other election in the history of elections was greeted with as much rejoicing as the election of Barack Obama on Nov 4th, 2008.  Read the news reports over the next few days and you’ll see this verified.  In my home country of Trinidad people were shouting for joy and I’m sure we’ll have several songs written about Barack Obama and America for the Carnival season in 2009.

In a way, I feel a little afraid for Barack.  The level of expectation is way high.  On the other hand, he’s inheriting such a mess that there is no place to go, but up.  Overall though, I’m very excited. I’m excited about a President that will usher in an era of service, not shopping, a President that will usher in an era of co-operation among people and countries that now have a demonstration of magic, that all things are possible, even peace in the Middle East … hell, a black man was elected President of the United States of America.

So I’m writing a book, and after explaining what the book is about to a good friend, he asks me why am I writing it?  I gave the obvious answer of course, “Because I’ve always wanted to write a book.”  And then comes the predictable question, “Why?”

And then my mind produces a deluge of possible answers:

Because I have something to say, that is important?  Because I want to be famous/rich/acknowledged?  Because I want people to get how smart I am?

Note the question marks.  It’s just amazing to me that I had not thought of why I wanted to do this.  I then began really thinking and writing about the purpose of the book.  What would it mean to me, my readers, to people that I would mention in the book, to the world?  What value would it provide?   This it turns out has become quite a revealing and productive exercise.  Because in thinking about the why I wanted to write the book, it is affecting what I want to say in the book and how I’m going to say it.   The thinking about the why, to what purpose should I undertake this effort has created an entirely new space for the “doing” of the book.

I was reminded of this at a business workshop I attended this last weekend where an organization got it’s employees and customers together to share their thinking about the why and what of their enterprise.  What an exercise.  Instead of mindlessly going about the doing of their existing business until a crisis hit, they were asking themselves very tough questions about why they exist, and in answering that question coming up with new possibilities for the business.

And this got me thinking.  Every day people do a whole slew of activities that they don’t think about.  No idea as to the purpose or the history of the activity.  They watch certain TV shows, read certain magazines, go to work, argue with their kids or tuck them into beds, all with no purpose in mind. They just do them.   I wonder how many of the activities you would stop doing or modify if you were to stop and ask why you were doing them?  How many of your current activities would you continue if you became present to the consequence of continuing those activities?

Kind of heavy eh?  Some people may find that asking questions like these will lead to the really big question: What is my life for?

Happy trails. 

The other day I was having a drink with a good friend of mine and he began to relate his impression of one of the political candidates in the upcoming election.  To say that his view was completely at odds with my own is to put it mildly.   What was really interesting though was that I noticed the initial feeling that got triggered by his words.  The feeling that came up was anger, or more like an extreme irritation and it was completely reactive.  The thoughts that immediately popped up were your garden variety of “How could you be so stupid?, “Can’t you see how you’re being manipulated?”, “My God, you’re talking about a candidate for the top office …”

And then a miracle happened!

I let it go.

I don’t like to blow my own horn … at least when I can find willing participants to do that for me, but since no-one was there to observe this as the breakthrough that it was, permit me to congratulate myself.

This was one helluva breakthrough.  I was able to grant another person’s completely different point-of-view as valid.   Every fiber of my reactive human self wanted to reach over and shake this other person to get them to see what I saw, because my point-of-view is - doncha know - the right one.   Sigh, if only the world recognized this; that I have the right take on the situation, and if you could only see from my point of view you would get how silly yours is.  Wouldn’t the world just work, wouldn’t the world be a nice place if everyone got that I have it right, that I have the exclusive front and center seat to the truth?

And I let it go.

In fact, I was so amazed at this that I could hear the voice in my head switch from “This guy’s an idiot,” to “Did you just let that go?” “Wow!  You might really be able to leave the temple soon, Grasshopper!”

Thoughts that show that I still have a ways to go - God, please don’t let transformation mean no sense of humor - but thoughts that acknowledged a breakthrough albeit in a non-transformed way.

This is not the first time I’ve been able to grant another’s being even though it opposed some view that I had, but sadly enough it is not yet my default setting.  I’m getting there though.  After all, it’s a practice.