Stand tall and proud

Sink your roots deeply into the Earth

Reflect the light of your true nature

—Ivan Shamir, Advice from a Tree

Today on my nearly daily walk at a local wildflower preserve, I was struck by the profusion of native flowers:  violets, skunk cabbage, red bud all in bloom.  The whole experience left me thinking about not only the beauty of the place, but also the perfect order of the natural world, and what I can learn from my environment this Earth Day 2013.

A core leadership skill is ‘being present’, and for me that is living with an awareness of the moment.  To be in the moment requires awareness, flexibility and connection all aspects of grounded leadership.  As leaders we cultivate the ability to stay present to what is happening now and open enough to handle the unexpected with flexibility.

I had an important lesson on this yesterday in leading a retreat.  I was stretching myself to lead a Circle of Trust group in a movement exercise, a body sculpture.  As I began the group process, I clung to my notes, almost hoping they would give me a sense of groundedness and courage.  As the group process evolved, I saw myself fling the notes to a corner of the room as I joined into spontaneous group movement.  We moved together, and alone.   We came together and then apart.  We moved forward and backward, sometimes as a river flowing and then sometimes as a solitary raindrop.  We toned together and laughed together.  When the movement was complete, I’m not sure whether the process took ten minutes or a half-hour.  I do know that I learned a lot about myself, and this feeling of groundedness.

I planned for one thing, but opened to the flexibility of the moment, to pivot in a new and unchartered direction, and in doing so, I discovered that by staying open to what was happening inside me, and by paying attention to what was happening around me, I got my cues from the group.  I knew what to do and did not need the notes to ‘tell’ me where to go next.

Feeling connected to the group, to the Earth, to myself, this was a lesson in leadership presence.

“…When love came to the door of India, that door was opened wide.”

—Rabindranath Tagore

Early morning, on the Indian Railways, the world’s largest, the sun rose, a golden rose-hued globe over the haze and fields of wild mustard, on our way to the Taj Mahal. We were a group of 17 women from all across the USA on an inter-faith pilgrimage to India, a journey that I co-led and organized under the auspices of Kirkridge Retreat & Study Center.  On the road, through the streets, we enter the city of Agra.   The Taj towers above the treetops, glowing like an illuminated jewel.  Despite having seen it many times, over many years, the first glimpse of it stops my breath.  Completed in 1653, by ruler Shah Jahan for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, this Islamic-style tomb is not just a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the Seven Wonders of the World, it is a tribute to love and beauty., and yet it is a tomb.  It is said that the cool whiteness of the Taj’s marble changes moment to moment, harmonizing with the light, with the heat or coolness of the day, even with women’s saris in colors of sage, burnt orange, cinnabar and crimson.   Crowds come to the Taj out of devotion, curiosity, national pride.  They leave differentiy.

Slowly we make our way back downhill, past the vendors selling minature replicas of the Taj, key chains and postcards.  We are largely silent, absorbing what we have seen, what we have heard, feeling differently.  And then he approaches, a young man whose body is deformed into a knot.  His lower half sits on a wooden board with coasters for wheels.  His left foot is clubbed, misshapen and pencil sharp, which he drags behind him.  He wants rupees, but more than rupees, I sense that he wants to be seen, to be known not as a curiosity or eccentric, but for his humanness.  Still love drunk, from the Taj’s beauty, I look into his dark, almond-shaped eyes.  I see him.  He sees me. There is a moment of recognition:  we are both seekers, we are here, fully present in this moment.   Like the Taj, he is here before me and this is a moment of breathlessness.  I stoop down into a squat to whisper to him:  “Thank you, Namaste.”

Back on the bus, the women approach me.  “What just happened there?”

The beggar and the beauty of the Taj stand side by side as a paradox.  These seeming opposites open me to know the wholeness, of life a living example of stretching myself to understand, to respect, to connect with ‘the light and the darkness’, with the mystery of the moment.  The pilgrimage lesson that day:  Can I open my heart to what is before, to be open to the wholeness of all things?

Valerie Brown is a Courage & Renewal Facilitator and the author of The Road that Teaches:  Lessons in Transformation through Travel (QuakerBridge Media 2012) and Heartfulness:  Renewing Heart, Mind and Spirit on Retreat and Beyond, published in Febraury by Pendle Hill.  To join her next pilgrimage scheduled for October 2014, the extraordinary pilgrimage in Spain, El Camino de Santiago, contact Valerie at www.leadsmartcoaching.com

-–Mary Oliver from The Summer Day

Mary Oliver points to a critical question.  This is a professional question, a geographical question, a moral question, a spiritual question.  How we spend our moments affect how we spend out lives.

There is something impressive too about a new year, a new beginning, a white canvas and a second chance.  At the start of this new year, we invite in important questions:

• What has meaning?
• What do I value?
• What am I avoiding?
• What is my legacy?

Take time at the start of this new year to explore these big questions, and rather than rush into the ready answer, allow these questions to rest in your mind and heart.  Take time to reflect in writing about these questions.  Talk with a trusted friend.  Take a walk and allow these questions to accompany you.

Notice what happens.

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in weakened broth….

—Naomi Shihab Nye, from Kindness

As we enter the season of kindness, I can find myself lost in a sea of self-imposed obligations, getting into the frenzy of shopping for unwanted gifts out of a sense of obligation or duty.   It’s at those times that I try to remember the true spirit of the holiday season:  to give and receive not gifts but kindness.  It’s a false notion that what we have to give is limited to store-bought gifts.  Ask someone who really longs to be heard what would be the greatest gift she could receive.  It is not going to be another toaster oven, but rather the gift of our true presence, our true self, without trying to save, fix or advise.

This season, resist the impulse to hoard the good stuff for yourself or your friends or to save something good for a later time.  There is no better time to show kindness that right now, in this conversation, at this moment. There are many models of  this kind of self-giving.  Consider people in your own neighborhoods, and closer still people in your own home as role models of kindness.  Kindness is contagious, and the science of the brain makes clear that acts of kindness toward ourself and others actually creates new neural pathways in the brain, and being kind feels good.

Try these kindness practices:

• Really give your full attention to the conversation you have with a stranger or a friend.
• Invite a friend you have not seen in awhile for a walk.
• Check in on an elderly neighbor.

Notice how you feel before, during and after these practices.

Gratitude is an essential  social skill and an important component of emotional intelligence, and it feels good.  As leaders we want to move people in a direction, but to do so with friendliness and purpose.  The smart leader knows that nothing gets done alone.  These leaders have the capacity to build rapport and to express sincere gratitude.

Try these three mindfulness practices on gratitude:

1. Notice a friend, family member or work colleague.  Offer a few words of sincere appreciation.  Notice how you feel and how the other person responds.
2. Offer a smile to a stranger—the parking lot attendant, someone in the elevator with you—again notice how you feel and how the other person responds.
3. Listen to one conversation with a sense of gratitude instead of judgment or criticism.  Again, notice how you feel, how you respond, and how the other person responds.

The 113th Congress will have a record-breaking 19 female senators, including the first openly gay senator.  New Hampshire likewise made history, electing the first all-women delegation in the House, the Senate and the Governor’s office. Fifty-three percent of votes in yesterday’s election were cast by women, higher than our actual proportion of the population.  We know too that Latinos, the  nation’s fastest growing ethnic group, played a key factor in this election. The partisan composition of the US Congress remains unchanged with the Republicans controlling the House and the Democrats controlling the Senate.

All this aside, President Obama will face daunting challenges in his second term, including a one trillion dollar budget deficit.

What can we as Americans do to support our elected leaders and to grow the country we want?   And how does this relate to mindfulness?

We each have an innate capacity for mindfulness—the ability to stop, to observe deeply what is happening in the present moment.  If we are able to do this, we understand what to do and how we to act.  This  gives rise to insight and understanding which are the building blocks to personal and societal transformation.  Mindful awareness, lived in daily life, promotes a nation of people at peace within themselves and  a more just and equitable America.

The Beloved Community begins with us, one breath, one step in awareness, one conversation at a time.

Mindfulness meditation, the practice of nonjudgmental awareness of what is happening inside and around us in the present moment, is innate to every person, and may be the key to helping legal services lawyers regain greater balance, resilience, and happiness.  The 2500 year old practice of mindfulness, a central element of Buddhism, was developed to enhance awareness and wisdom to help people live each day with greater ease.  Today, decades of clinical research supports the use of mindfulness practices, which have been widely adapted across disciplines:  education, business, medicine.

Mindfulness goes deeper than simply generating feelings of relaxation and calm, or developing a toolbox of mind techniques, it is an embodied practice that creates an inner balance that allows for greater emotional stability, with clarity to act and respond with greater understanding.    While mindfulness is innate, it requires practice, incorporating elements of mindfulness in daily life: eating mindfully, sitting mindfully, walking mindfully, speaking and listening mindfully, even resting mindfully.  In other words, our daily, routine and habitual activity take on a quality of awareness and acceptance that is infused with greater concentration, which leads to a greater capacity for wise action.  Further, the capacity to accept our afflictive emotions, like jealousy, resentment or anger, moves us from the self-referential mindset that keeps us constantly second guessing ourselves, holding ourselves to punishingly high standards, or berating ourselves and into greater ease and peace of mind.

Try this practice:

Pause Practice—How to Practice

• Find a comfortable place to sit and sit in a relaxed manner
• Allow your eyes to be opened or closed
• Bring your awareness to the fact that you are breathing
• Follow the breath as it comes in and goes out of the body
• As thoughts arise, notice them, and notice the nature of your thinking, whether the thought is a thought about planning, judgment, anxiety, or calm, and  bring your attention back to the sensation of breathing in and out

Practice in this way for 2-5 minutes

          —Wendell Berry

As children we learn to explore, to savor curiosity.  Play as a tool of exploration can take us deep into imagination:  we become an astronaut, a baker, a dancer.  This inclination toward wonder, toward curiosity as a child can petrify into harsh judgment, into the inner critic as adults, and yet we know that great ideas begin first with a curious mind.  It seems to be a paradox that we train through college and graduate school to become ‘experts’ in our chosen fields, and in the process lose that natural curiosity we had as children.  Our minds become narrow and fixed.  We have all the ‘right’ answers and end up self-sabotaged and straight-jacketed.  We spend our lives gathering information to give advice to others, to make appropriate recommendations that others will find useful and important.  In our quest, we ignore what is plain sight:  our own birthright gifts:  our capacity to listen and reflect, to trust our own body intelligence.  We stay locked in our heads, trying to think our way out of a box.

Rick Hanson, in his book The Practical Neuroscience of Buddha’s Brain (New Harbinger Publications, 2009), examines the new and rapidly emerging science of the brain that makes clear that what happens in the mind affects how we think and makes changes in the brain that are both temporary and lasting.  And what happens in the brain changes the mind since the two are a single, integrated system.  The good news of this research is that our brain, our mind is constantly shaped by the forces around us, and our everyday encounters.  This means in part that we can intentionally take responsibility for our own happiness and growth by cultivating positive states of mind, like curiosity.    We are not fixed.  The wiring in the brain is not fixed  and our brains are adaptable.  We can change how we respond and take more responsibility by intentionally engaging in attitudes of kindness and compassion toward ourself and others.

In the context of our work life, our new job description as leaders is to cultivate curiosity to shift our way  of thinking from the status quo to possibility.  When we stay open and curious to new pathways, we live in transformation and enliven ourselves and our work in the world. As leaders, we need to be aware of rigid thinking to turn and keep turning to our fullest potential.  This is not  a once-and-done proposition but a work in progress that invites risk taking and new learning.

Practice Lesson of Curiosity:  The next time you notice yourself engaging in rigid, black and white, all-or- nothing thinking.  Pause.  Invite in these questions:  ”Am I sure?”  ”What do I want to have happen?”  ”Is there another perspective?”

]]> http://leadsmartcoaching.com/2012/10/curiosity-new-learning-for-leaders/feed/ 0 http://leadsmartcoaching.com/2012/09/getting-unstuck-with-new-domains-of-learning/ http://leadsmartcoaching.com/2012/09/getting-unstuck-with-new-domains-of-learning/#comments Mon, 03 Sep 2012 21:14:12 +0000 ValerieBrown http://leadsmartcoaching.com/?p=437 Written by Valerie Brown, JD,MA

Lead Smart Coaching, LLC

www.leadsmartcoaching.com

Beginnings are Powerful

There is power in beginnings.  Before you begin there is a gestation period where you mull things over.  There is hesitation, procrastination.  You can talk yourself out of beginning.  Still, there is something impressive about a new beginning –  a fresh start, a second wind – and even before you have arrived at a new beginning is knowing that you have committed yourself.  With this commitment, unforeseen things can emerge, things that we could not plan or know were there, waiting for us.

It’s easy to get caught in the mindless trap of over thinking the ‘next step’, the ‘right action’.  At those times,  rather than seeing new beginnings as moments of exciting possibility, we are caught in second guessing ourselves and confusion.  Learning a new domain helps us move from thinking about action and from clarifying intention to doing, acting.  We put into practice our deep aspiration.  We move even with doubt and hesitation by our side.

New Domains of Learning

A domain is an activity or interest.  A new domain is one of the most powerful ways of getting unstuck.  Say you are feeling stressed because you were passed over for a promotion, or you are consumed with loneliness and anger because of a divorce, or you are facing retirement confused about ‘what is next’.  Most people cope with these scenerios by working even harder, withdrawing, lashing out, or dozens of other coping strategies.

Leadership experts recommend that instead of these strategies, move into a new domain which opens the way to new possibility.   New domains may include:

• meditation
• painting/drawing
• dancing
• music

Reflect on where you devote your time and energy:

• Are you working too many hours?
• Are you caught in rumination about a relationship?
• Are you overly focused on a particular role:  mother, daughter, son, boss?

What might you not be paying attention to?  These unexplored places may hold the answer to the way out of a stuckness or  breakdown and give you a fresh start, a new perspective.