Marc Lesser's Blog, page 24

What Does Joy Have To Do With It?

I was recently sitting in the office of a senior executive of a major corporation in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was a coaching client and we were meeting for the first time.  His eyes looked pained, and his shoulders were slightly hunched when he said, “How did I get so busy and yet manage to feel so uninspired? Why does my life feel stale? Why do I have a gnawing sense of defeat much of the time? Internally I am either churning or numb. What happened to the enthusiasm and excitement I had for life when I was young, just setting out in my career and marriage? When did my life get so out of balance?”

Behind him, I noticed a nearly life-size wooden cutout of a rhinoceros. How odd, I thought. What was this large creature doing lurking in the office of this senior executive? “What is that?” I asked. 

The man smiled for the first time during our meeting. “Oh, that was from an event that we held about fifteen years ago. Since there was no place to store it and I didn’t want it thrown out, this rhino has been living in my office ever since.” 

“That image reminds me of a story,” I told him. Then I shared old Zen story that goes like this: 

A teacher says to his attendant, “Bring me my fan, the rhinoceros horn fan.” Apparently, the teacher had a special fan that either had a painting of a rhinoceros or perhaps was made with some sliver of rhinoceros horn. The attendant responds, “I’m afraid your rhinoceros horn fan is broken.” 

I stopped and asked my client, “What do you think the teacher said?” 

He responded with a shrug; he didn’t know. 

I told him, “The teacher stated sternly, ‘Then bring me the rhinoceros!’” 

We both chuckled. It’s a silly, preposterous story that made about as much apparent sense as the rhinoceros that was in the room. 

I asked my client to look at his rhinoceros. I suggested that he remember what he felt like when he brought it into his office many years ago. I imagined that it must have felt lighthearted, risky, surprising, and I shared this with him. 

“Yes,” he acknowledged and smiled. “I was new to my job – excited and nervous.” 

“Well, let’s see if we can bring back some of that surprise, and that energy, into your work and life right now,” I responded. “Some of that rhinoceros energy!” 

The Zen story is about joy, surprise, and creative energy. The teacher is saying to his attendant, “Wake up! Don’t take your life, and life in general, for granted. Don’t take anything for granted. Think, consider, and live outside of your habitual ways.” I explained this to my client and we spent the rest of the session exploring ways to bring a new perspective to things.  

No matter how you feel about your current situation, be it at home or at work, your whole life is right here, right now. Have you recently paid conscious attention to the simple and obvious parts of your life that you may be overlooking? Have you considered what is working, what brings you joy, as well as what you avoid, what annoys and angers you? This is not about avoiding or ignoring all that is challenging and painful. It’s a way of including what’s working and what is possible. Just as the teacher used what was directly in front of him, how do you work with what is right in front of you?

For me, that “rhinoceros energy” is seeing that I have a choice about how I respond in situations, and noticing that each choice impacts my state of mind and my actions. This is true in all parts of my life. I now have an 8-month old baby living in my house. Hearing the sound of a baby crying can be annoying or it can be beautiful, and it’s just a sound. I can choose my response, when I’m paying attention. Working with my consulting clients can be challenging and stressful, or challenging and an opportunity to learn and grow. It all depends on how I attend to the energy I’m experiencing, and how I choose to channel it.

Some practices:

How do you choose (or not choose) your response – to sounds, to events, and conversations?
Write about or reflect on what brings you joy; what makes you most alive.  
Describe a particular event or situation that made you smile, laugh, and that surprised you. 

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Why Must It Be This Way?

It’s the New Year. Happy New Year!  There is much to be grateful for.

And there is much suffering, confusion, change, impeachment, and a possible war. Fires raging in Australia, earthquakes, and no signs of moving toward solutions or even recognizing the problem of climate change. Clearly, time for a Zen story.

A monk was walking with a Zen teacher when they came across a crow eating a dead frog. The monk asks, “Why must it be this way?” The teacher responds: “It’s for your benefit, and you caused it.”

I love this question. It is so direct and primal. Why? Why must it be this way? It applies so pointedly and beautifully to our politics, financial systems, health care, climate change, and everything else that appears somewhere between challenging, flawed, broken, or corrupt. The question can be applied to aging, conflict, change, death, and all of life’s pains and mysteries. 

Why must it be this way? Why are relationships, at work and outside of work, so difficult? Why are our leaders ushering in the New Year by sabre rattling and tossing out understanding and diplomacy, and threatening the world’s safety and perhaps human existence? Why are we not taking urgent action toward caring for each other and our planet? Why are there nuclear weapons, poverty, inequality, and lack of any signs of wisdom regarding finding solutions or even recognizing the problems. Why? 

The answer by the Zen teacher, in this case Dongshan, the founder of Soto Zen Buddhism in 9th century China, is surprising, paradoxical, and mysterious. The answer isn’t necessarily the right answer (or the wrong answer.) Since it’s a Zen story the answer is intended to challenge our usual thinking and is meant to wake us up from our often patterned assumptions and stories, and shallow ways of thinking.

The first part of the answer is generous, perhaps to a fault. It’s for our benefit, really? How could such insanity, confusion, and pain be for our benefit? And, how could it not be? From the widest, and perhaps wisest, perspective everything, even horrific events can be seen as for our benefit.  It’s hard to know. We can learn, grow, develop, and build character, create bonds from what looks difficult, unfair, and impossible. Hearing these words – that it’s for our benefit – definitely gets my attention, whether I agree or not. These words help me look more deeply, rather than react, and wonder, is it true: in what way is it for my benefit, our benefit?

The second part of the answer – “and you caused it” – might be more difficult to accept. It triggers reactions like anger, reeling, blaming – how could you/he/she/they! There certainly is a place for anger, for understanding causes and conditions. And, this old Zen teacher is taking the position that we are not separate from the problems. For example, in what way have we caused climate change or inequality? Through our actions or lack of them?

The second part of this answer, you caused it, reminds me of an expression from the Zen tradition that says, “it’s not your fault but it’s your responsibility.” I think this is what Dongshan is getting at when he says that we caused it. What happens when we stop looking to place blame and fault and take some (perhaps even radical*) responsibility?

* Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas is a book about taking radical responsibility by looking squarely and unflinchingly at how broken and corrupt our financial system is. I highly recommend it. 

Why must it be this way, is a great question for leaders and for mindful leadership. How might it be different? In what way do you benefit from  everything, from being alive, from the wonderful things that happen, as well as the terrible things? 

For the New Year I wish us all great wonder, great questions, and open hearts.  I wish us great benefit and great responsibility. 

Happy New Year all!

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Cultivating Clarity

Harry Roberts was a friend and teacher of mine while I lived at Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm. He was trained as a medicine man in the Yurok Indian tradition, had been a cowboy and a farmer, and was a PhD agronomist who designed the gardens at the University of California, Berkeley. Harry used to say that a key difference between American Indian culture and Western culture is that Indians believed that each person is born with a particular skill and strength, that there is a primary reason for each person to be on the planet. The responsibility of parents is to provide opportunities for each child to discover his or her purpose and mission, to discover the kind of talents he or she was born to express. Indians believed that by careful observation, you could usually see by age three what a person’s lifelong work was likely to be. Harry often said that it was vital for each person not only to discover their song, but also to sing it.

Harry was also fond of saying that being a human being is very simple — all you have to do is ask and answer three questions: 

1) What do you want? 

2) What do you have to do to get it? 

3) Are you willing to pay the price? 

After stating these questions he would usually laugh heartily, saying, “Yeah, real simple; most people don’t ever ask themselves the first question.” 

What do you want? This is the simplest question, and perhaps the most difficult. Asking this question can help us live with greater clarity but it’s difficult to conjure up an answer without deeper reflection. To help you uncover your answer to “what do you want?” consider these additional questions: 

What is really important to you? 

What kind of work do you love doing? 

What do you have to offer?

What kind of impact do you want to have?

Spending time with any one of these questions can be life-changing. There don’t need to be answers. There is power in simply asking the questions – at work, in relationships, in all parts of life.

What do you have to do to get it? If there is an answer to the first question, it is time to determine what you need to do to get what you want. What skills do you need, what training or schooling is required? What steps do you need to take? What do you already have, and what is needed?

These questions make me think of a woman who tells her friend that she really wants to be a lawyer, but she is forty-two years old. Because of her age, she doesn’t think she can fulfill this goal. She says it will take her two years to finish her undergraduate degree and three years to complete law school and that she would be forty-seven by the time she finishes. Her friend asks her, “How old will you be in five years if you don’t go to school?”

Are you willing to pay the price? Harry used to say that everything comes with a price. Choosing something means not choosing something else. Choosing what you want and laying out a plan requires that you then take the steps needed, do the work, and go through whatever difficulties you are likely to confront. Every choice comes with a price that begins with risks. This question puts your resolve to the test — once you know what you want and what you have to do to get it, are you willing to risk failure, and are you willing to give up other paths?

Explore writing the questions and your responses to the following questions, and see what appears: 

What do you want? 
What do you have to do to get it? 
Are you willing to pay the price?
What obstacles and barriers might be getting in the way of gaining more clarity around these questions?

I’ve also created a 7-minute guided meditation, called Cultivating Clarity, to help you focus on whatever might be most important for you, now and in the New Year. I hope you find it helpful. 

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The Power of Intention

Beings are numberless. I vow to save them.

Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.

These vows, which are chanted regularly at Zen practice centers, express the fundamental intentions of mindfulness practice – becoming more aware, cutting through our own delusions, and helping others. When stated with some awareness and intention they can elevate our day-to-day activities and provide a larger context in which to live. Though these statements appear lofty and impossible, they act as a target, a set of goals to strive for, a direction in which to point our intentions. Though mindfulness is very practical by nature, it also has a way of challenging us to aim very high and not to be limited by conventional ideas of what is possible. Expressing these intentions makes ordinary activity extraordinary.

 Everywhere we look there are problems, pain, and suffering. At each moment we have the chance to be present, to practice at work, and to be fully ourselves. Nothing is stopping us from being open, honest, and vulnerable at work and from meeting others at a deep and intimate level.

 There is no end to what we can discover about ourselves. Our bodies, minds, and spirit have no boundaries. Our work provides endless opportunities for self-discovery and growth and for inspiring others. By deeply touching the people we come into contact with at work we can help the world become a place of generosity and peace and move it away from greed and conflict.

The concept of making a vow, or holding a very deep intention, can be foreign to most business environments. This practice seems heavy and serious, especially in contrast to the usual commitments people have regarding their work. Generally, making money to support ourselves and our families is a key motivator, usually followed by our desire to do a good job or to do something useful and fulfilling.

The idea and intention of these vows is to reframe our lives – to live by vow – by intention and aspiration and awareness, instead of living on auto-pilot and habit.

Here is a five minute guided meditation, meant to support your intention to develop your awareness and to help others; essentially to Step Into Your Life.

I’m looking forward to beginning the New Year with a 1-day retreat, called Step Into Your Life on Sunday, January 5th in Mill Valley.

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Audio: Cultivating Clarity (7-Minute Meditation)

A 7-minute guided meditation to help you focus on whatever might be most important for you, now and in the New Year.

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Wisdom is Knowing What to Do

Brush Dance, the publishing company I began many years ago, once published a greeting card that says, “Wisdom is knowing what to do next.” Wisdom, in relationship, business, and life may be as simple or as complex as knowing whether to act or not act, to step in or out, to make tremendous effort or let go – all with an abiding awareness, and with consideration of what actions might have the best possible outcome for others, for the environment, and the planet as a whole. Knowing what to do next gets to the heart of decision-making, problem solving, and taking effective action.

Having the presence to consider what words or actions might have the best net result is especially useful when there is conflict or strong emotions involved. Practice #7 – Keep Making It Simpler – in my book, Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader, reminds us to consider what is most important in any given situation. When we shift from acting on autopilot to a more mindful way of being we avoid taking our own stories and viewpoints too seriously, and can relax our tendencies to label things as “right” or “wrong.”

When you view your work in terms of goals, achievements, money, and ambition, though essential and important, you are only looking at one side. The other side, one to not lose sight of, involves viewing your work as a place to build awareness, connections, and understanding – a place to solve real problems, for people, your business, and beyond. Similarly, if you view your work only from the aspect of developing understanding, you’ve left out the other side, the side of getting things done. Wisdom is embracing the mundane and the sacred, getting things done and developing character, and understanding that they are not different, and also not the same.

There is an Irish Prayer that says:

            Take time to work.
            It is the price of success.
            Take time to meditate.
            It is the source of power.
            Take time to play.
            It is the secret of perpetual youth.
            Take time to read.
            It is the way to knowledge.
            Take time to be friendly.
            It is the road to happiness.
            Take time to laugh.
            It is the music of the soul.
            And take time to love,
            And be loved.

The Irish know a great deal about wisdom.

Practices:

When faced with a decision at work, try to approach it by asking: What action might be best for all involved?
Make a commitment to begin and end each workday with the question: What’s  most important , right now?

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Audio: Stepping Into Your Life (5 Minute Meditation)

This 5-minute guided meditation is meant to support your intention to develop your awareness and to help others; essentially to Step Into Your Life.

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Interview: Bringing Mindfulness into the Workplace | Rick Hanson

Marc Lesser speaks with Rick Hanson on Being Well Podcast about the importance of bringing mindfulness into the workplace and his book Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader.

The conversation focuses on:

Why large organizations should care about mindfulness specifically, and personal growth generally.
The competitive advantages of mindfulness.
The ways that mindfulness practices could be misused in the workplace.

You can listen to the conversation below.

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Seeing Ourselves and the World With Fresh Eyes

Living at Tassajara, Zen Mountain Center in the middle of a wilderness area provided me with numerous lessons on giving up what I thought was supposed to happen on any given day. During my first winter in the valley, a week of winter rainstorms transformed the creek that flows through Tassajara into a raging river. As the water came close to overflowing its banks, I, along with the sixty residents, evacuated the meditation hall, perched just above the creek, and quickly walked to higher ground. We stood together, wearing black meditation robes in the pouring rain, holding our open umbrellas, wondering if the meditation hall would be washed away. (It wasn’t.)

The following summer an enormous forest fire surrounded Tassajara, and all the residents were forced to evacuate. I remember driving out on the dirt road, looking to the west, and seeing a tremendous wall of fire coming our way. Forest Service fire-fighters set forth from the Tassajara valley outward, saving all of the building. Just a few months later, in the fall that year, the one-hundred-year-old meditation hall burned to the ground during a ceremony. It is not known if it was started by a kerosene lamp left burning, or a faulty propane refrigerator.

Meditation practice is the practice of letting go. It is the practice of sitting still, not going anywhere, being completely present to whatever arises. It is the practice of giving up the quest for fame and fortune, giving up your ordinary view of yourself and the need to be, think, or appear in any particular way. It is the practice of giving up assumptions about who you are and what you are supposed to be or do. Meditation is the practice of openheartedness, of complete and utter honesty, of purifying your character and developing integrity. It is the practice of compassion, and of loving-kindness.

Seeing ourselves and the world as fresh is the starting point for integrating mindfulness practice and work practice. We ask ourselves, what is needed? How can I best respond to these needs? These are the questions, over and over, deeper and deeper, that we have to address in our work lives. Meditation practice provides the framework for opening ourselves to truly asking these questions and to being present for the answers.

Meditation practice and business practice is recognizing the illusion that we can control what happens. When there’s a real downpour, it floods. When buildings burn, they will often burn down. Sometimes we face cash-flow shortages, or we don’t have enough sales, or we find that our business has too much staff or not enough staff. Our challenge, and our practice, is to completely give ourselves to the situation at hand.

When I first began as CEO of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI) the assumption was that our main business was offering trainings inside of corporations. At the end of our first year of operations we did our first public program, a two-day training, with the intention of attracting business leaders who might bring our trainings inside their companies.  We were surprised to see who attended the first training – a large percentage of attendees were from small companies, or were coaches, consultants, doctors, and lawyers. We needed to let go of our assumptions and be open to seeing the possibility that offering public programs could be a central business offering. Today SIYLI offers more than 30 public programs per year.

Practices:

During meditation practice, explore letting go with each exhale. Experiment with counting to three as you inhale and to seven with each exhale, supporting the practice of letting go.
At work, or in any conversation, practice letting go, by listening and being curious – letting go of being right or impressive – just listening fully.

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Manage Your Energy Like Your Life Depended on It

Right now my life is just one learning experience after another. By the end of the week I should be a genius.

– author unknown (once published as a Brush Dance greeting card)

When I was a full-time student at New York University’s Graduate School of Business, I commuted to school five days a week, one and a half hours each way — a half-hour walk to the train station, a half-hour train ride to Manhattan, and half-hour on the subway. I also worked twenty hours a week for a management consulting company, and I spent four to eight hours every day taking care of my infant son while my wife worked or went to graduate school. I read and studied early in the mornings or late at night. I sat meditation each morning and also began a newsletter called From the Marketplace, pulling together stories from friends who had left the San Francisco Zen Center and were engaged in the world outside the Center. I was highly motivated in my quest to learn about business and to integrate mindfulness experience with the business world.

Later in my career, while CEO of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, I was constantly stretched to find the energy it took to engage fully with myself and everyone in the organization. My life very much felt like “rocks in a tumbler”: hard boulders hitting each other, again and again, constantly becoming smoother and smoother, the edges being worn down. Each day I would bump into my own habits and patterns, as well as the habits, patterns, and pain of those working around me. While striving for clarity I would at times create confusion. It struck me at times that the life of a mindfulness student or teacher, and the life of a businessperson or leader could perhaps be described as “one mistake following another.”

Mindfulness practice is often thought of as easygoing and contemplative however it requires tremendous energy and effort to stay focused on outer and inner transformation. There is an expression in Zen encouraging students to “practice as though your head were on fire.” Looking at ourselves, recognizing our habits and patterns and then having the skill and courage to work with them is a deep, visceral process. Looking outward, working to transform the confusion, pain, and suffering in the workplace and in the world takes a great deal of energy and focus.

The expression, working as though your head is on fire, means to work with intensity, with your full energy. Working with intensity does not mean that you need to act quickly or be in a rush. The combination of focus and intensity can often expand or shift our usual concepts of time. Intensity is a combination of focus, resolve, energy, and tenacity — focusing on the issue and not being distracted; working with resolve and determination; using your full energy, sometimes pacing yourself and sometimes moving quickly, much like a long-distance runner; and working with tenacity to go after a solution despite the difficulties and roadblocks.

One of the points I often raise in Company Time Workshops (a series of weekend retreats that combine mindfulness and business) is that, not only is it useful to look at ways mindfulness practice can inform business, it is also important to look at ways that practices and values developed in business can benefit and inform mindfulness practice. An important value that the world of business has to offer to the world of mindfulness practice is working with energy and a sense of urgency. In business, success and failure matter. Meeting goals matters. Meeting deadlines and delivering when agreed matter. When something is urgent in business, everything else takes a back seat to the matter at hand. This kind of energy can help to keep communication and actions crisp and clear, cutting through confusion and entanglements, distinguishing what really matters from what doesn’t.

In Zen temples a wooden mallet is used to hit a wooden block to announce when it is time for meditation. Written on the back of the wooden block are characters that say, “Life and death are the great matters. Don’t waste time.” None of us knows when we will die. Zen teachers sometimes describe our lives as like being in a boat on an ocean, floating out to sea, knowing that someday our boat will sink — but having no idea when this will happen. Since we don’t know when we will die, we should make our best effort right now. There is no reason to hold back, nothing to wait for. This kind of realization and acknowledgment of the shortness of our lives can help to provide the kind of visceral energy required to transform our businesses and/or our lives.

Practices:

Try working at different paces. For half a day, work at a slow and steady pace. For another half day, try working with increased energy and intensity. Notice the difference.
Notice what activities give you energy. When do you feel most engaged? Try to do more of these.
Notice what activities drain your energy. When do you feel disengaged? Try to do less of these.

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