Marc Lesser's Blog, page 26

Connect to the Pain of Others

When leading trainings in the business world, or really anywhere, I’m often reminded that being a human being is a tough gig! Perhaps never more so than when I teach the practice: Connect to the Pain of Others.

When we engage this practice, we create the space to experience challenges, to become more aware of our inner critics, of loneliness and longing, and of change, impermanence, sickness, old age, and death. We become more aware and awake to the reality of this human life – not in a morbid way, but by not avoiding what is true.

I’m reminded of the famous quote often attributed to Plato:

Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle.

At work, connecting to another’s humanity or another’s pain creates bonds and builds trust, and fosters more real and open communication, and greater creativity. Beyond the workplace, connecting with the pain of others is a crucial practice for creating a more peaceful world and quite possibly the only way we will stand a chance of surviving and even thriving on this fragile planet that we share.

Once people begin to drop beneath the surface of their feelings they can connect to the depth and pain of others on the level of a shared common humanity. It’s beautiful and moving to witness this – even in more formal corporate settings. I feel so fortunate and lucky to do the work that I do!

Connect To The Pain of Others is the fifth practice from my new book, Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons From Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen. Below you’ll find an excerpt from Chapter 5, I hope you find it useful.

This practice may be one of the most important competencies in the art of stellar leadership as well as in creating a more peaceful world.

I’ve experienced often the transformation that can occur in a short amount of time when people deeply see one another and open to our shared humanity: to the universal desire to be happy and connected and to the universal experience of pain when we are not.

The potent practice, Connect to the Pain of Others, is key for leaders as they cultivate a group’s sense of purpose and as they foster the personal development and inner strength of each member.

Like Practice #4, Connect to Your Pain, the “pain” referred to in this practice is really the universal human experience of discomfort and loss. While it includes physical pain and each person’s individual circumstances, the deeper focus is recognizing the type of emotional pain everyone shares: of impermanence, of change, of disconnection, and of the awareness of impending loss, old age, sickness, and death. And it includes the pain that is particular to our sense of self — feeling like a separate individual and yet aspiring to be connected within a community.

From the perspective of evolutionary biology, we evolved and are built to feel the emotions of others. This is the definition of empathy, and it includes all feeling states, both physical and emotional. Indeed, we are connected to others beyond what we usually realize or imagine, which a host of scientific research has shown. We are influenced by the hormones and body chemistry of others, to the extent that women who live together tend to have synchronized menstrual cycles. It’s proven that positive and negative emotions can be contagious. These things reflect our common, shared experience so much that it almost goes without saying that our feelings and emotions are powerfully interconnected.

A mistake we can make is thinking we don’t have to share the pain of others.

This is particularly true for leaders, and there is some evidence that greater leadership authority is correlated with a decrease in empathy. Somehow, though humans are built to recognize emotion in one another, we sometimes think we can remain separate from it. Why do we do this? I’m not sure, but there are several likely reasons. One is that separation can seem to free us from obligation: If you are separate from me, and your pain is not my pain, then I don’t have to do anything about it. Another common reason is probably that we don’t want to feel our own pain. We may go to great lengths not to experience or share someone else ’s pain, such as their loneliness or grief, since that means admitting to our own. This is why being an empathic ape is easier when others are happy and much harder when they are not.

Yet empathy is a core competency of leadership, a vital part of being human, and part of our common humanity. As I hope you’ll find, learning to skillfully connect with the pain of others actually, and paradoxically, supports and increases our ability to feel a deep sense of safety and satisfaction; it fosters a profound feeling of belonging. It ultimately enables our freedom to express our deepest truths and help others express theirs. This practice is aimed at training your mind and heart to connect more deeply with others by acknowledging and experiencing other people ’s experience and perspectives, to see and feel our human similarities, and to cultivate compassion, or the practice of offering kindness.

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Published on September 11, 2019 00:00

Why you should always be in the business of identifying needs

I had a teacher at New York University’s Stern Business School who was fierce, intimidating, and a sweetheart. Ian McMillan is a wiry South African with a quick wit and a quick temper. He taught one of my favorite and perhaps most valuable classes entitled “Entrepreneurship.” This class included a weekly assignment where we were instructed to find and describe a business opportunity that came from our own experience. We had to spot a need that could be met by forming a business. Then, on one page we were to describe the need, how our business idea or business offer would meet this need, and the general business and financial proposition.

I remember that we all received C’s or D’s on the first week’s assignments. As Professor McMillan handed them back he emphasized, dramatically, that our efforts and our papers were complete trash. He said we weren’t really looking for needs, for real problems, and that our business ideas stunk. He announced that we needed to be focused, even obsessed with seeking out needs and with finding solutions and that we needed to offer proof that our idea had the potential to become a viable business. Week after week this assignment continued. By the fourth and fifth week of the semester, there were a few B’s, and by the twelfth week, the grades were primarily A’s and B’s.

Looking for what’s needed

Having this assignment each week forced me, and trained me to look everywhere for needs. I was indeed obsessed, looking at the world in a different way.

Wherever I was — while riding on the subway, in my home, or taking the elevator to class — I was always looking at what was needed and thinking about how these needs could be met through creating a business. I began to see needs everywhere. On the subway, there was a need for better maps of the subway system, a need for a place to store wet umbrellas, a need for a system of letting people on and off the trains. While caring for my infant son I thought about the need for more information about child-rearing, about better car seats, and things that were needed to help him (and me) get a good night’s sleep.

I started my first company, Brush Dance with the intention of meeting people’s need to help the environment by using recycled paper products. At that time it was nearly impossible to find products made from recycled materials. It soon became apparent that we were inadvertently meeting another need — the need for sending greeting cards that combined meaningful words and beautiful, unique artwork. At that time very few companies were making cards that had quotes on the front, and few cards had much depth. We began licensing the words of the Dalia Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, the poetry of Rumi, and even Yogi Berra and we worked with a number of terrific artists to create products that combined inspiring words with beautiful artwork.

To this day, I find the training of looking for what’s needed and getting clear about what I can offer to meet those needs to be practical and valuable. I am regularly evaluating what needs my business meets and experimenting with a variety of business models.

When I was CEO of Brush Dance, the retail market became more and more difficult to reach. We began exploring meeting needs and making offers in other areas; such as partnering with schools and nonprofits that were looking for ways to raise funds by selling cards and calendars. In the late 1990’s this wild and new thing called “the internet” emerged and we were an early player in this space.

Now, the need that I’m meeting is helping people to create more trust and greater clarity in their work and lives. My offer is teaching and training others in the areas of mindfulness and emotional intelligence, through speaking, coaching, training, and writing.

Businesses exist to meet the needs of people. The larger and more technologically-driven business becomes, the easier it is to lose sight of this simple truth. This truth seems so old fashioned in our complex society, but if we look closely, the model remains the same — businesses provide goods and services to meet the needs of people.

Try this

A core aspect of leadership and of growing a business is seeing needs and crafting your offer. I find that in my coaching practice people often get stuck by asking themselves questions about how to make money. Instead, I find that the most useful and powerful questions are: What needs are there that are not being met? What can I offer to help meet those needs? This is often where businesses begin, and where businesses and lives flourish.

What needs does your work or business meet?
What needs do you see as unfulfilled in your life or work environment?
How might your current business or offer meet these unfulfilled needs?
What new product or service might could you offer to satisfy those unmet needs?

As a way of following up and expanding your answers to these questions, you might take on the exercise from my MBA class. Once you’ve identified a need, what exactly will you be offering to meet this need? What actions will you take and what are some of the financial models? The key point is to keep coming back to the questions: What needs are you meeting and what are you offering?

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Published on September 08, 2019 07:10

3 Ways to Be More Mindful at Work

Some time ago I had dinner at a restaurant in San Francisco with a good friend of mine. She was the original manager of this restaurant and later acted as a consultant, helping to guide the management team.

Walking into this restaurant with my friend was a lesson for me in the practice of mindfulness in a business setting. Though we were merely going out for a casual dinner, I could see her carefully looking at details. As soon as we entered, my friend turned to me and pointed out that the shades above the large windows that look out on the San Francisco Bay were pulled down at different lengths. She was not happy about this.

She also felt that the way we were greeted by the hostess was not nearly as friendly and welcoming as it should have been in this setting. She went on to tell me about the critical role the hostess plays, both as the first contact that people have in entering the restaurant and in controlling the flow of seating (and thus how this person directly affects the restaurant’s revenue). I could see her rating each of the waiters and busboys on their level of professionalism and friendliness, by their presentation, and by how they provided service while staying out of the customers’ way. When dessert was served my friend was not happy with the size of the portions, explaining that portions this large are unnecessary and drive up costs. (I had a very different perspective on the size of the desserts…) As a mentor of mine often says, “Take care of the details, and the big picture will take care of itself.”

The word mindfulness literally means “remembering.” It is the practice of paying attention to what keeps you present and aware, while actively “tuning out” distractions. Mindfulness can be practiced any time during your workday, whether you are alone, with others, or in the midst of an intense discussion or negotiation. There are several aspects to mindfulness practice – attention to body and mind, mindfulness of others, and nourishing others through attention, understanding, and transformation.

Attention to Body and Mind

Mindfulness begins when you pay attention to your breathing, your thoughts and emotions, and your entire body. You can do this in meditation practice, with your family, or while working. Notice your breathing while talking on the phone. Notice your chest and back while in a business meeting. When walking, try paying attention to your feet contacting the floor. When sitting at the computer pay attention to your posture, to your lower back, to your shoulders. Notice how your breathing affects your posture. Sometimes just sitting up straight, putting energy into your posture, can alter your breathing and shift the way you feel.

Mindfulness of Others

When we are mindful of others, we are focused on helping them to be fully present by being fully present ourselves. Watch the body language of the people you work with. Working as a team requires that we understand how other members of the team function – this involves developing an awareness of the jobs and skills, as well as the emotional and spiritual strengths and weaknesses of others.

In the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray is stuck in a day that repeats over and over. I’ve always felt that this is a movie about the practice of mindfulness. At first the character played by Murray is completely self-centered. He reacts to the experience of each day repeating in annoyance and anger. In particular, he gets angry with people who keep doing the exact same things, repeating their mistakes and habits. At some point he begins just to notice what people do, without becoming impatient. He comes to realize that by paying attention to the people around him he can understand and make real connections with them. By connecting with others he develops a renewed appreciation of his own life and begins to achieve many of the things that had eluded him previously.

Nourishing Others through Attention, Understanding, and Transformation

Expressing your appreciation for others can have a major impact on the well-being and performance of your business. Many studies have shown that one of the key motivators for people at work is feeling appreciated and having a clear understanding of how each person’s actions contribute to the overall results of the company. By giving other people our attention we can help them to discover their own ease and vibrancy. At my former company, Brush Dance, we began giving a monthly “above and beyond” award to an employee whose actions were above and beyond what is expected. Just paying attention to people in this way can help build trust and improve performance.

In addition, by paying close attention to ourselves, to others, and to each situation, we increase our understanding. Mindfulness practice and understanding are closely linked. The more we pay attention to our bodies and minds, the more we pay attention to others, the more we develop understanding. With mindfulness practice you begin to become less self-centered and more centered on seeing yourself and the world just as they are.

Finally, when we pay attention in this way, actively deepening our understanding, we can transform our thinking and how we approach situations. Problems can be transformed into opportunities. When you think about it, is there really any difference between a problem and an opportunity? Who decides? What influences how we see and label our situation?

Mindfulness practice teaches us that all fear and anxiety comes from not seeing things as they are. We usually don’t see that we add our own needs and desires to the situations we come in contact with. We often don’t see how impermanent and interrelated everything is.

When we look deeply and practice mindfulness in our businesses we can see the essence of our business – what is unique about our particular offering and what’s not so unique. We can see the cycle of our business from its inception to its demise. We can also see more clearly what steps we need to take to grow, as well as how to pull back when necessary. With mindfulness we can feel our true satisfaction and help others to be happy. We can take actions that relieve our suffering and the suffering of others, foster letting go of habits that do not help us, and become freer and more authentic. As a result we can be more effective in the way we work with others and in guiding our business toward meeting our customers’ needs.

To explore :

Experiment with some regular mindfulness exercises at work. When the telephone rings, use this as an opportunity to take a breath. Know that there is someone on the other end of the line also breathing. Each time you turn your computer on or off, stop and take a deep breath. While sitting at your desk, notice how your body feels – the sensation of your feet touching the floor, the feeling of your back against your chair. Try relaxing your shoulders and your neck.
Pay attention to your body and breath and notice how your mood and your energy are influenced.
What sensations arise in your body as you’re sitting, talking, walking?

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Published on September 05, 2019 00:00

What Are You Thinking?

When my mother became ill and it appeared that she was not going to live much longer, she sold her home in Florida and came to live with me and my family in Northern California. After many weeks of seeing a variety of doctors, we learned that she had developed a lung infection and did not have long to live. A specialist suggested a variety of emergency measures and surgeries that might extend her life. I asked the doctor, “If it was your mother, what would you do?” He responded, “I’d bring her home and make her comfortable.” I spoke with my mother about her choices and told her what the doctor suggested. Hearing this news, my mother was both sad and relieved and made the decision to give herself over to the process of dying.

My wife and I gave my mother our bedroom, thinking that she would want to stay in a quiet space, away from the activity of our two young children. Instead, she gravitated to the center of activity, and we found that she wanted to stay on our living room couch. She became the center of attention, and my wife and children all took part in taking care of her.

One afternoon I prepared one of her favorite treats – a milkshake made with fresh fruit. When I brought it to her she had a puzzled, uncomfortable expression on her face. “What are you thinking?” she asked. “I’m trying to die, and you are bringing me milkshakes!” “It’s fine with me if you die, Mom,” I answered. “I just want you to die healthy.”

Issues of life and death, in our personal and business lives, can help to clarify, sharpen, and sometimes allow our thinking to become both more spacious and focused. When we are able to get out of our own way, our thinking can bubble up from deep and mysterious places. Our thoughts may surprise us. We may think of things and respond to situations in ways that are new and imaginative.

Thinking is our internal speech. Our minds are extremely skillful at this art. Observing and paying attention to our thinking is very important at work. Our thinking can either allow our speech and our actions to be clear, or it can get in the way.

There are several ways to apply the practice of right thinking (the second of the Buddhist teachings of the 8-fold path) to your work (and your life). You might explore asking yourself these questions:

What am I sure of? Say you see that someone in your office is unhappy, and you think it may be related to something you have done or said, but you’re not sure – how can you know without asking? As a CEO, I had agreements with my key managers that we wouldn’t make assumptions about how we were feeling in relation to one another. If I noticed that a manager seemed unhappy or was short-tempered, I expressed what I was seeing and feeling, and inquired about what was happening. I’ve learned that making assumptions about others’ experiences and feelings is almost always counterproductive and can lead to a lack of fluid communication.

Are you sure that your new product idea serves a need? Are you sure that your strategy plays into the existing strengths of your team? Asking these questions doesn’t mean constantly doubting yourself; rather it is a regular reminder to be clear about what you think, about the assumptions you are making. This question is a tool to help you pay attention.

In today’s rapidly changing work environment there is not much we can be sure of. Through practicing with this question we simultaneously sharpen our own consciousness and focus our awareness on changes in our environment. In all businesses our leaders and workers change, technology constantly changes, our competition changes, and the needs of our customers change. In the midst of this constant change, aim to continuously ask yourself what you are sure of.

What am I really doing? This question can clarify the purpose of your activity and help keep you focused and present. What am I really doing with my life? What am I really doing in my work? What is really important to me? How does this activity connect to my larger purpose? What is at the heart of this strategy? What am I really doing today at work?

This can be a powerful practice, again with applications to your internal development and to the development of your work focus and performance. This question and practice require that you keep coming back to the central question of your activity, your thinking, and your life.

Is this kind of thinking a habit? Much of our thinking is the same old story, over and over. Notice the story. Notice the things you think over and over that may actually have little to do with the situation. Habitual thinking can act as a drag in our lives and our work. This question helps you pay attention to your thinking. If the patterns of your thought tend to stay the same, with only the players and the situations changing, then you might be stuck in habitual thinking.
Is this thinking cultivating understanding? Explore paying more attention to your thinking. Are your thoughts causing confusion and anxiety, or are they helping you to feel clearer, more loving, and more compassionate? Through choices about your thinking, can you water the seeds of clarity and love rather than the seeds of anxiety? Can you water the seeds of creativity and energy instead of doubt and confusion?

Similarly, consider how well you understand your customers and your business. How do you think about meeting the needs of your customers? Do you actually pay attention to your own thinking and give yourself and others the time to appreciate and examine your thoughts?

Our minds often want to attach names and labels to things. We tend to judge everything as good or bad, rich or poor, weak or strong, honest or dishonest, successful or unsuccessful. In business we are taught to quantify everything. When I was enrolled in the New York University MBA program I had a marketing class the thrust of which was that everything needs to be quantified – everything! Once I figured out that this was the basic assumption of this class, I had an easy time succeeding. I discovered that it was easy to quantify everything. It was quite useful, and at the same time I was aware of the limitations of this approach.

Even in Zen practice our minds want to quantify and judge: How is my meditation practice? Where do I stand in relation to others? How am I doing following my breath? And on, and on. We are all in the same lot as human beings – our bodies and minds are very fragile, we live in an unexplainable world in which most things are beyond our control, and we will all succumb to old age, sickness, and death. Our ideas about good and bad are a flimsy way to try to make sense of the world, to have at least a sense of control.

A critical aim of mindfulness practice and of business practice is to develop a flexible mind, a mind that can hold a variety of views – completely accepting of who we are and our abilities while at the same time working to grow and change, feeling complete and comfortable with circumstances just as they are and simultaneously working to make improvements. We can learn to hold what appear to be opposing traits: simultaneously being confident and open to change; being strong and being vulnerable; trusting ourselves and trusting others. We also learn to feel accepting and comfortable with our own incompleteness and lack of comfort. Instead of wanting things to be different, we understand that things are what they are. And, of course, we continue to strive for a deeper understanding of our lives, our business, and our practice.

Try this:

See if you can pay attention to your thinking at different times of your workday.
Notice how your thinking affects how you feel.
Notice how the way you feel and the way you look at things affects your thinking.
Get to know your thinking; become friends with it.
Notice how your thinking affects your energy and your work, and how your energy and your work influences your thinking.

What is there to learn from these observations?

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Published on September 04, 2019 00:00

In what ways do contradiction and inconsistency show up in your life?

A paradox is something that appears to be contradictory, unbelievable, or absurd but may in fact be true. Do less – accomplish more.

These statements present a paradox. Acknowledging, owning, and embracing the paradoxical nature of our lives, the lives of others, and the world can lessen our resistance to change and increase our effectiveness. At its most basic it makes us less tense and more open to happiness.

When I look at my own life and self, I see that I embody a number of paradoxes. Here are a few:

I am shy and solitary, and I love speaking in front of people.
At work, I am completely myself, and I play a role.
I am firm and decisive, and I am cautious and conservative.
I am a businessman, and I am a Zen teacher.
I can concentrate for long periods of time, and I’m easily distracted.
I am confident, and extremely vulnerable.

Each of us contains similar paradoxes. The more we look for them, the more we see paradoxes everywhere – in the world of the heart, in the world of work, and in society.

Acknowledging and understanding this basic truth can be freeing.

What a relief to not have to make ourselves, others and life fit neatly into some limited idea or framework! Intuitively we know that all humans are complex and contradictory. Embracing our paradoxes not only provides real insights into ourselves and allows for more self-acceptance, but it also increases our appreciation of everyone else’s surprising quirks and contradictions.

Sometimes we get caught up trying to resolve internal contradictions, thinking that if we can, we will solve our busyness and live with more meaning and simplicity. Instead, this effort can itself becomes the cause of our busyness and our scrambled bewilderment. Our complex minds, emotions, and personality traits are simply a rather wonderful fact of human existence. Accepting that can lighten and expand our self-image, making it more fluid. In a strange way, it is a more accurate view of life. Embrace paradox and you increase self-acceptance, tolerance of others, and your own possibilities.

Ask yourself: what are your Paradoxes

At a leadership workshop for a group of engineering managers, I gave everyone the assignment to describe himself or herself as a paradox. Here is what one had to say:

I strive hard to be lazy.
I’m selfishly compassionate.
I desire to not want.
Sometimes, I’m not myself.
Often, I’m not here, where I am.
I actively engage in non-activity.
I feel spiritual about my earthly desires.
I sometimes fail at failing.
I make careless mistakes carefully.
Sometimes, my mind is full of nothing.
My own arrogance humbles me.

Now it is your turn, try to list the paradoxes that describe yourself. In what ways do you embody contradiction and inconsistency?

Next, explore each of these paradoxes in writing. Choose one of your paradoxes and describe it more fully. How does it express itself in your actions and emotions?

If you have trouble coming up with paradoxes, here is a list to get you started. To one degree or another, we all embody these paradoxes. Take one at a time and explore how they apply to you:

I make precise observations, and I act with abandon and with care.
I like to have clear plans, and I like to forget my plans.
I am predictable, and I am unpredictable.
I love structure and clarity, and I love flexibility.
I like to study myself, and I like to go beyond myself.
I am strong, and I am flexible.
I don’t take anything personally, and I take everything personally.
I see my work as sacred and mundane.
I am organized and disciplined, and I am creative and innovative.
I am strong and decisive, and I am vulnerable.
I am young, and I am old.

If we can embrace and digest the truth of paradox, it can increase tolerance, respect, and understanding, aid conflict resolution, and act as a bridge for solving all sorts of personal, interpersonal, and global differences and problems.

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Published on September 02, 2019 05:13

Are You Trying Too Hard?

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants.

The question is: what are we busy about.

—Henry David Thoreau

There is a Zen story about two teachers that goes back to seventh-century China. One teacher is sweeping some stone steps inside the temple with a wooden broom. He is approached by the other teacher, who looks at him and remarks, “Too busy.” (This is a way of saying, “Why are you sweeping when you should be meditating or undertaking some type of contemplative practice?”) The first teacher, holding his broom, responds by saying, “You should know that there is one who is not busy.”

Though we often associate busyness with activity and speed, and lack of busyness with stopping or slowing down, this is not always the case. It is possible to be actively engaged and not be busy. Not being busy does not require that you stop, slow down, or step out of the activity of your life. Most of the time, we have the opportunity to learn, to adjust, to find our composure, right in the midst of the activity and intensity of our lives. We can’t slow down or stop, sometimes.

Effort and Effortlessness

In the book Extraordinary Golf, Fred Shoemaker describes a study comparing the golf swings of top professional golfers with the swings of average golfers that provides some useful lessons about doing, effort, and effortlessness.

The study shows three different rows of golfers, detailing their various golf swings. In the top row is a professional golfer. In the second row is an average golfer hitting a golf ball. In the third row is an average golfer swinging when there is no ball. The study found that when an average golfer is not trying to hit a golf ball, his or her swing more closely resembles the swing of a professional golfer. When an average golfer is actually hitting a golf ball, his or her swing changes for the worse.

It appears that when a golfer is not aiming for any result, the golfer can replicate the better, more professional swing. Put a ball on the tee, and the golfer tries too hard or exerts unnecessary effort, which gets in the way of the natural, effective knowledge that is resident within the mind and body.

Lack of striving by itself does not lead to an effective golf swing (nor does it make you more focused, more emotionally present, or a better leader). Being effective requires study, practice, and skill-building, which at the point of performance combines with effortlessness. It’s particularly significant that this study of golf swings highlights the negative impact of extra effort, of trying too hard.

I cite this study not to improve your golf game (though for some it could be a useful unintended consequence), but to offer a quantifiable example of a lesson that can be applied to anything and everything in your life.

Tension, anxiety, extra effort, an overly busy mind, our inner critic, any negative inner voice: these all can interfere with a calm, composed mind and affect our performance.

In this golf study, we see a perfect illustration of the central theme of how less extra effort can result in greater effectiveness. Less striving, less trying, less racing, less pushing can lead to surprisingly better results. At the same time, the work we do becomes less exhausting, less emotionally taxing. In a very real way, when we reduce busyness, the productivity of our business improves – whether it’s our personal business or the profit-oriented kind.

Try this:

One way to explore “finding the one who is not busy” is to ask yourself: What am I doing that is extra?

Then, for a few hours during the day, pay attention to simple everyday physical activities like walking or sitting. Do you hold your shoulders tightly or are they relaxed and comfortable? Is your walking fluid and flowing or is there effort and strain in your gait? Notice where you carry tension in your muscles, and when you notice it, relax.

Similarly, investigate if your attitude and approach to situations, things, other people feels relaxed. Can you reduce or release any extra effort?

Try playing with effort and effortlessness on a regular basis and see if your “swing” doesn’t improve.

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Published on August 26, 2019 04:55

Walking the Path of Right View

My cousin Gary is a successful businessman living on the East Coast. He works hard and with intensity, is prone to high blood pressure, and feels concerned about his heart and overall health. He asked me if I thought that meditation practice might be useful in improving his health, and I told him I thought it might. He decided to fly out to spend a weekend at San Francisco Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm.

A good friend of mine, Norman Fischer, was abbot at the Zen Center at that time. I asked Norman to look out for Gary and to say hello if they happened to cross paths. Gary told me that when he first arrived at Green Gulch he met Norman in the parking lot, and found him to be very friendly and welcoming, until Norman said: “If you think that being at Green Gulch for the weekend is going to help you, you are wasting your time.” Gary told me later (in a very funny letter) that he was not very encouraged by this statement. Norman had gone on to say: “Zen practice is about changing your life, changing how you view yourself and the world, and requires much more then a weekend.”

The practice of “right view” is the first of eight core teachings from Buddhism – collectively referred to as the Eightfold Path – that offer specific ways and practices to bring the principles and values of mindfulness into your work. Each of us approach our work lives with a variety of essential motivations and from different perspectives. You may be passionate about a particular activity or feel that you have a talent that needs expression. You might be driven by the fear of failure or the fear of not being able to provide for your family. You might be motivated by a strong desire to succeed, to achieve certain goals. You may want to make positive change in your community. Your work may reflect your sense of identity and how you perceive yourself and your environment. You might feel a gap between what you want to do and what you are actually doing. You may feel a gap between how you experience your work activity and your image of what you want your work activity to be.

Mindfulness practice provides a container that is wide enough to contain all these possible motivations and to place them in a larger framework – the framework of practice or of awakening. From this perspective our work becomes a vehicle for working on our lives. All our passions, desires, and fears provide information and can be used in understanding and developing all aspects of our lives, inside and outside our jobs.

Right view means paying attention to the activities, people, and situations that bring out the best in us and the activities that bring out our worst. In mindfulness practice, right view is sometimes described as the act of watering the seeds of wholesomeness, while foregoing seeds that are unwholesome. (Wholesome is defined as activities that lead us to peace, freedom, and awakening; unwholesome activities lead to suffering and craving and take us away from our true nature.)

Right view is seeing how we hold onto perceptions and attitudes when they are no longer accurate or useful. It involves developing our understanding of how we create suffering. Sometimes we unintentionally build walls around ourselves, either for protection or just out of habit. Sometimes we don’t see things as they are but rather as we want them to be or through the distortion of our needs or habits. Right view helps us to identify when this is happening.

Business, when deconstructed, can be very simple: pay attention to and move toward what works and meets the needs of your customers; identify a need and find a way to meet this need. My former publishing company Brush Dance, for example, was a very simple business. We made greeting cards, and we sold them to stores. We needed to sell enough cards, at a price higher than they cost to produce, to support the overhead of running a business – what could be simpler?

From another perspective Brush Dance was an extremely complicated affair, requiring hiring and managing employees, developing licensing agreements with artists and authors, managing cash flow and inventory, building channels of distribution, using software, accounting, and fulfillment systems, and on and on. Brush Dance took products from the conception stage and orchestrated the production, warehousing, sales, and fulfillment of hundreds of products, which were produced in China, Korea, and throughout the United States. Our customers ranged from individuals purchasing on the Internet to major retail chains.

A major turning point for Brush Dance was seeing that from a critical point of view, it was not a greeting card or gift company at all. Though we made greeting cards and gifts, what distinguished Brush Dance from other card companies was that all our products combined words and images; and even more precisely, all our products contained spiritual or inspirational content. Realizing that we were a spiritual products company and not just a card company transformed the way we created products and how we viewed our channels of distribution. Operating a spiritual products business was very different from running a greeting card business.

The practice of right view means going beyond ideas to the heart of things – to the heart of your life and to the heart of your work. It is paying attention to what is most important at this moment. It is asking and being aware of the question: What does this moment ask of me?

Many of us have ideas about what we need, and what is needed, in our business. Often many of these ideas are based on habits and patterns that have little to do with the situation at hand, resulting in a narrow or self-centered perspective, and lack of clarity. We have to learn, through our experience, which views nourish us and which ones take us further away from what is truly beneficial (or wholesome).

It is no accident that the practice of right view was the first of the Eightfold Path as taught by the Buddha. It is the practice of assessing our own starting point, investigating the complexity of our motivations, and exploring the depths of our intentions. It requires looking directly and clearly into our habits and patterns, of seeing where we are stuck. Our own worldview shapes our reality, how we see ourselves, how we see others, how we see our work and our life. A famous Zen saying is “Complete awakening is easy, just stop picking and choosing; give up labeling right and wrong, good and bad.”

Right view is not being influenced by preconceived ideas – that is, being able to see and feel clearly, without being stuck or attached to a particular opinion. This requires being fully present. When we develop this kind of awareness, it can sharpen our focus and allow us to make decisions and choices with greater clarity and authority. The right view, of not being attached to our own ideas, gives us some distance from the situation at hand, providing a unique and powerful perspective.

At the same time, we must acknowledge that we live in the relative, human world. Of course we have views! And these views, passions, and opinions are important. How do we pay attention to and understand our views without becoming stuck to a particular way of seeing the world? How can we express our views in such a way that we are not being one-sided but rather helping others to understand and loosen their ideas that might be harmful or be getting in the way? How can we be fully present and fully respond to whatever situation might confront us? There is a great quote by Nietzsche, which Brush Dance published as a greeting card: “It is hard enough to remember my opinions without also having to remember my reasons for them.”

You could say that the essence of right view is paying attention. Noticing how your body feels when you arrive at work, when you talk on the phone, when you are in meetings. Noticing your state of mind as you prepare to work, as you engage in the activities of your day.

Practicing with right view:

Notice how your state of mind, your view of things, affects what you do and how you do it.
Pay attention to how what you do affects your state of mind.
Bring a sense of curiosity to the work activities that give you energy.
Bring a sense of curiosity to the work activities that drain your energy.
Notice what situations and people encourage you to feel constricted and what situations and people encourage you to feel open.

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Published on August 21, 2019 07:33

The Practice of Right View