Living Well Journal

An Examined Life

"An unexamined life is not worth living."  Socrates 
"The unexamined life is destined to repeat itself."  Thomas a Kempis

 

Every leader I coach wants to grow, improve and "make a difference."  But few know how to escape the frenetic pace of busy-ness to realize that ambition, so life quickly slips through their fingers like sand.

PAYING ATTENTION is the key to an Examined Life.  Yet you and I live in a world of Attention Atrophy.

Have you noticed how your smart phone has shortened your attention span?  How do you feel when you see a Facebook post that requires your attention more than a moment?  [For that matter, how are you feeling at this moment about how long it'll take to digest this blog?]

When was the last time you sat down to spend an extended period of quiet, reflective, contemplative reading?  Did you capture your last "Ah-Ha" moment of clarity and insight somewhere?

 

"Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity,
and where there is no continuity there is no growth."  C. S. Lewis

 

I deal in the world of sustainable change in the lives of leaders.  Author Sibyl Towner in her blog An Examined Life offers a brilliant insight based upon C. S. Lewis' comment:  "Lasting change occurs in the context of continuity  -- the provision of regular events at regular times, with consistent expectations and consequences.  In the context of continuity, you can periodically introduce change in a way that the person has to reevaluate their life with God, themselves and others.  They can make new commitments and live out those change decisions in the context of continuity."

I try to make the case to leaders for slowing down in order to go fast.  Neuroscientific research brings fresh validation to an "old school" technique with the power to grow through the synthesis of change and continuity.  It's called Journaling.

 

"All of humanity's problems come
from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."  Blaise Pacal

 

In the July 7, 2017 edition of the Harvard Business Review, Dan Ciampa makes the case that The More Senior Your Job Title, the More You Need to Keep a Journal.  "The best thinking comes from structured reflection - - and the best ways to do that is keeping a personal journal."  "There's strong evidence that replaying events in our brain is essential to learning.  While the brain records and holds what takes place in the moment, the learning from what one has gone through - - that is, determining what is important and what lessons should be learned - - happens after the fact during periods of quiet reflection."

"Writing it down brings a certain clarity that puts things in perspective," he continues. "Journals can also be the best way to think through big-bet decisions and test one's logic... Notes should be made as soon as possible after an event from which one wants to learn - - ideally the same day."

The old school benefits of handwritten journaling actually have a basis in neuroscience as well.  "Brain scans show that handwriting engages more sections of the brain than typing [and] it's easier to remember something once you've written it down on paper."  Handwriting is slower and less efficient than typing, and that is exactly the point: it allows your brain to ponder, chew upon and rephrase ideas into your own words.

My physician leader clients see how journaling parallels the concept of "lab notes" that every scientist uses to discover the hidden threads connecting numerous data points in the experimental lab.

The obstacles to this time-proven leadership tool really boil down to one thing: Do I believe the investment of a few minutes daily in structured, purposeful reflection will provide a harvest of wisdom from the experiences in my daily life?  The experience of the most effective leaders I know is Yes!

 

 

 

 

 

Resilient Leaders Make Their Beds

"Today, sheltered from the hardships of hunger, disease, heat and cold that stalked human life for centuries, some people have lost their capacity to deal with real difficulty.  Growing up in a protected palace of comfort, they have lost their ability to walk through pain."  

Former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens' book, Resilience: Wisdom For Living A Better Life, speaks to the need for leaders to cultivate the inner strength to repetitively try, fail and always start over.  

I found this commencement speech -- Make Your Bed - - by another Navy SEAL, Adm. William H. McRaven, ninth commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, to be an EXCELLENT refresher for any tired leader entering the New Year.

 

Saying "Yes" Means Saying "No"

 

A recent HBR Blog by Ed Batista, entitled "The Most Productive People Know Who to Ignore" got me thinking about a leading cause of the stress we encounter every day: getting stuck between saying NO in order to say Yes.

Most productive leaders have some form of To Do system - - a way to keep track of what they intend to do.  It exists in the realm of discretionary time, where we get to decide what and when to do what we choose.

Real life doesn't respect our discretionary time.  It brings a constant stream of interruptions via email, text, phone calls, flat tires, flight delays, etc.  We feel this disconnect as stress.

Triage is the art of saying "No" in order to say "YES."  The result is less stress.

Emergency responders at the scene of an accident learn to make initial judgements, based upon incomplete information, to say "no" to one patient in order to direct their attention to the patient with the greatest chance of survival.  

The greatest obstacle to triage lies within the heart of the responder: the emotional weight of reckoning with what we cannot do.  I believe a key to successful triage is to turn this around, refocusing upon what we CAN do.  

It starts with a reality check:  you and I have only about 120 hours of "life" every week.  When the week ends, another one starts;  you can't carry any of those hours forward.  So we should purpose to maximize the number of those hours that we invest in doing what we really want to do.  Being intentional rather than reactive.

By focusing on what we really want, we can better triage the distractions that flow through our day.  It's easy to say No to an urgent-but-not-important request when I am choosing to say YES instead to a much more important choice - - because I have a much bigger YES on the other side of the No!

Look Down on Others

Grateful people are happy people.  But when I compare myself to others, it destroys my ability to be grateful and happy.

Why is that?  I believe it's because I never compare myself to people who are worse off than I am.  I only compare myself to those who appear to be better off.

It takes no effort to compare myself to others who look better off than I am.  It's as automatic as breathing. I see what they have - - talent, money, possessions, etc. -- and in comparison I'm always left feeling shortchanged, and not very happy about it.

But here's an interesting question:  What would happen if I chose instead to intentionally compare myself to people who have less than I do?

I did that today.  I turned my attention to people around me - - friends, family, acquaintances and the guy holding a cardboard sign at the intersection downtown - - and I pondered the difference between their lives and mine.

My first impression was guilt. Why ahould I be doing so well when so many others are not?  The friend fighting cancer.  The family who lost a child in a car accident.  The family whose finances are in shambles.  By comparison, my life is literally amazing.

But if I dwell upon guilt, I won't choose to think this way.  (Maybe that's why I don't make eye contact with the guy holding the cardboard sign at the intersection?)  

All it takes for me to be grateful is to pay attention to just how fortunate, how blessed, I am in the every day matters of life.  If something aweful isn't happening to me today, my life is awesome and deserving of my gratefulness!  Trials and tribulations are normal life for all of us, so any day that is free of them is awesome and deserving of my gratitude.

Happy people are grateful people who appreciate what they have instead of what they don't!

 

Reduce Your Stress in 2 Minutes A Day

In my work with healthcare executives around the country, one very common experience for each and every one is stress - - a low-grade fever of pressure, hurry, and worry that robs them of their productivity, sleep and health.

I loved one executive's metaphor for his life:  "My life is like driving a dynamite truck 100 miles an hour, down a winding mountain road, with bad brakes!"

The solution I offer each one I meet is simply this: take time to stop, sit down, breathe and think.

That's why I offer this link to a blog by a former West Point grad and Microsoft exec who learned how to deal with the overwhelming stress in his life through simple techniques for slowing down and thinking.

Reduce Your Stress in 2 Minutes a Day

Living in Day-Tight Compartments

Dale Carnegie was born in 1888 as a poor farmer's boy from Missouri.  Over the course of his life, through persistence and hard work, he became a world-renowned speaker, author and motivator of people.

Dale Carnegie is best known for his massive best-seller, "How to Win Friends and Influence People," a book with continued relevance for today.  Yet he wrote another powerful book that changed my life.

"How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" starts with a chapter called, "Living in Day-Tight Compartments."

Think of the old WW II movies of submarines in battle.  The first thing the captain calls for is to close all the water-tight doors between the compartments of the ship - - those big, oval doors with a big steering wheel to make them air tight.  If the sub sprang a leak in one compartment, the rest of the ship could keep on fighting.

That's the picture Dale Carnegie shares about living worry-free:  the best way to prepare for tomorrow is to do the work at hand TODAY!  Focus on the task at hand. In fact, it isn't possible to do anything more to prepare for tomorrow than what you can do today.

Worry is the most non-productive way to invest your time.  It accomplishes nothing other than to germinate fear.  The human mind literally cannot think clearly in the presence of fear.

I think this is a piece of age-old wisdom that was first captured 2000 years ago. As Jesus said to his disciples, "Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.  Sufficient for the day is its own troubles." Matthew 6:34

So the take-away is this:  Focus your attention on what you can do Today to move toward your goals.  Live in a Day-Tight Compartment so as to resist the temptation to be anxious about what may or may not happen tomorrow: you can do nothing more than today's work.  If you keep your focus on doing today's work, and tomorrow you do tomorrow's work, you will reach your goals!

Ideal Performance for Corporate Athletes

In my work with executives, one theme always come to the forefront early in our work together:  the need to slow down, think, and recover energy.  The following excerpts come from "The Making of a Corporate Athlete" by Loehr and Schwartz in The Harvard Business Review, January 2001.

"To bring mind, body and spirit to peak condition, executives need to learn what world-class athletes already know:  recovering energy is as important as expending it." 

"Extensive research in sports science has confirmed that the capacity to mobilize energy on demand is the foundation of Ideal Performance State (IPS).... effective energy management has two key components.  The first is the rhythmic movement between energy expenditure (stress) and energy renewal (recovery), which we term "oscillation."  In the living laboratory of sports, we learned that the real enemy of high performance is not stress, which, paradoxical as it may seem, is actually the stimulus for growth.  Rather, the problem is the absence of disciplined, intermittent recovery. Chronic stress without recovery depletes energy reserves, leads to burnout and breakdown, and ultimately undermines performance.  Rituals that promote oscillation - - rhythic stress and recovery -- are the the second component of high performance. Repeated regularly, these highly precise, consciously developed routines become automatic over time."

The recent achievement by Diana Nyad, swimming 103 miles from Cuba to Key West, was capped by an interview where she shared the secret to her accomplishment:  Swim until night time, then reset the goal to swim until dawn ... and repeat the cycle 3 times.  Even in an event designed to test the outer limits of physical exhaustion, the mind must recycle its energy to keep going. I highly recommend this article for anyone who wants to balance the stress of work with ideal performance in all aspects of their life.

Lessons for a Corporate Athlete

This morning the world is watching 64-year old extreme marathon swimmer Diana Nyad finally accomplish a feat she has tried 4 times before: a swim through the shark-infested waters from Cuba to Key West.

The physical feat itself is beyond my comprehension.  But the mental experience Diana describes just might be within my grasp.

James W. Pipkin, in his book, "Sporting Lives: Metaphor and Myth in American Sports Autobiographies", describes Nyads ability to "dissociate" during her marathon swims:  

"Unlike what happens in any other sports, the sensory deprivation in marathon swimming is almost absolute.  Nyad participated in scientific experiments of sensory deprivation in which she floated in a isolation tank, but she claims that marathon swimming magnifies a hundredfold the effect created by the tank and that the physical exhaustion during a race adds even more to the effect... Her crew communicated with her by blowing a police whistle; but they usually had to blow it twelve or more times before it broke through into her consciousness..."

"She says her superior, pinpoint focus released her mind to travel, remember, and imagine...The peace she felt had its counterpart in a joy that lifted her up, a 'mental exhilaration' she calls it."

You and I may never reach the extreme experience that Nyad describes, but the opportunity to enhance our focus and performance is well-within our reach.

Pipkin compares Nyad to Bill Bradley, the All American basketball player of the 1960s.  Bradley once scored 58 points in a final four game against Witchita State, describing it as "being in the flow."  

"[S]ports is particularly conducive to such moments, if the athlete is open and willing... because the right and left sides of [the] brain open simultaneously... confirming Bradley's notion about the wholeness of being that athletes achieve in these moments... The athlete's laser-like focus allows the body to act freely and intuitively as you have devotedly taught it, without interferences from the conscious mind, and the sensation that follows  is like, "zooming away."

Lest you come away from this blog thinking it's about sports, realize that this sense of "flow" is common to anyone who routinely trains his or her brain to connect its Left (conscious) and Right (intuitive) dimensions. 

To understand how this phenomenon can be part of your business tool kit, check out this TED Talk by renowned researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of FLOW.

What Matters Most?

What's the most important thing you can have?

Is it money? Is it love? Is it happiness? Or is it something else?

 has the answer.

This 5 minute video by best-selling author and nationally syndicated radio host Dennis Prager may change the way you Live life Well!

What Matters Most?

Honor and Happiness

It has been said that happy people are invariably grateful people.  

Gratefulness must have an object.  For example, we can be grateful to those who paved the way for us.

That's why I was arrested by this quote by Anthony Esolen, Professor of English at Providence College, speaking on the brilliant achievements of people in the Middle Ages - - an era now commonly written off as The Dark Ages:  "In one crucial way we are less civilized than those who enhanced human existence over a 1000 years ago(through spectacular works of art, music, science and architecture that are unequalled to this day).We dismiss the achievements of our ancestors, and fall short of them.  They honored their ancestors, and surpassed them."