EXPERIENCING WHAT IS. Notice and feel what is actually going on in the present moment—in your body, your mind and your environment. Distinguish between what you actually experience from what your mind thinks, judges, expects or believes should be happening. Helps you communicate more accurately and honestly. Will keep you connected to energy of being alive, training you not to depend so much on external results, e.g. what others think of you, for your sense of well-being.
BEING TRANSPARENT. Self-disclosure; less apt to get caught up in illusion of control. Motive=self-expression, not trying to change others. Less likely to trigger defensive reaction in them. Going public helps you see yourself more honestly.
NOTICING YOUR INTENT. Communicating with the intent to control the outcome is ego-mind’s effort to protect you. Allow yourself to be open to possibilities of each moment—spontaneous and unrehearsed. Relate more and control less.
WELCOMING FEEDBACK. Another way to be present to what is. Be actively curious about how others are affected by your actions. “How are you with what I just said?” Keeps two way flow going, essential to relating. Allows you to learn from experience. See whether your behavior serves your needs, aims and values.
ASSERTING WHAT YOU WANT AND DON’T WANT. Affirms your right to want what you want—even if little chance of getting it. Helps you become less attached to getting everything you ask for since each request won’t carry such a heavy load.
Asking freely, instead of inhibiting, keeps your energy flowing. Saying yes to yourself, no matter how another responds. Also assert what you don’t want or won’t do. For authentic relationship, must be space for people to experience full range of feelings and be okay.
TAKING BACK PROJECTIONS. Becoming aware of projections supports you in seasoning your judgments with some humility. Helps you remember others’ judgments are as much or more about them as about you. Awareness can show you where your life energy is blocked or stuck in a pattern to get it flowing again.
REVISING AN EARLIER STATEMENT. “Going out and coming in again,” helps you deal with changing your mind, clearing up a misunderstanding, or making up after an argument. Gives you a way to forgive or seek forgiveness and begin again.
HOLDING DIFFERENCES. Have your own viewpoint while being open to differing views. Helps you see relationships between things that may appear separate or mutually exclusive (Either/or context). Allows mutual benefit in your relationships.
SHARING MIXED EMOTIONS. Teaches you to let go of your ideas and shoulds about being consistent so that you can experience whatever shows up in your awareness.
EMBRACING THE SILENCE. Let go of need to know how things will turn out. Place attention on what is happening now. Silence is your connection to the Source, the place from which new creation springs.
These are core practices I aspire to use myself and share with others. If you have ones you’d like to share with readers, pass them along to me through this blog.
Mending A History of Feeling Broken!
Turning Your Trials into Triumphs by Phoenix is an unforgettable self-improvement memoir that reflects one woman’s spiritual quest and journey toward healing. As a survivor of unspeakable abuse she passes along what has helped her not only survive and thrive but triumph over all of life’s challenges.
This book chronicles not only Phoenix’s own journey towards healing from multiple forms of abuse and emotional trauma—and becoming a bodyworker—but the recovery methods that have worked for others. In no way is this book merely a personal rant against a history of surviving “personal” violence. It is written as a universal story for anyone who has confronted spiritual abuse and freed themselves from its tenacious grip.
Phoenix gives her readers not only a profoundly moving story of personal courage, survival, and the transformative power of a loving spirituality, she gives them tools (in workbook form) to work through their own doubts, fears, obstacles, memories, failures and personal horrors. The book is full of Phoenix’s wit, hope, and honest foibles as well as her fresh (alongside tried and true) ideas for change.
Bodywork features strongly throughout this work but most thoroughly near the book’s end. Phoenix’s own experience of bodywork helped her not only recall and release horrific memories of childhood abuse, it helped her uncover her calling—something she believes was God’s particular wish for her. She writes, “My belief and faith in God and my understanding of [this book’s] principles gave me the courage to persevere in my trials. I believe they will give you inspiration to tackle your challenges.”
Turning Your Trials into Triumphs offers quite a bit of spiritual language: words of hope, forgiveness, compassion and understanding of why people (and especially children) suffer. And yet not one line of her faith-filled testimony is spoken as the final “Truth” (with a capital “T”). Rather, her Christian framework is very inclusive and sensitive to diverse religious, racial, sexual and ethnic groups.
As a scholar of religion, gender and violence myself, I found Phoenix’s vision for transforming violence through various self-improvement methods and skillful therapies to be a supportive complement to cultural and social understanding of violence in modern culture. Turning Your Trials into Triumphs teaches us more about love, spirituality, trauma, truth telling, and hope than all the self-help books combined. It is one of the bravest, most honest books I’ve read in years.
Most importantly, this book is written for her readers even as much as it is spiritual journey of the heart. I applaud Phoenix’s candidness and perseverance in her steadfast pursuit of the power of healing. Phoenix’s readers will be as helped as they will be blessed by her triumphs over her own trials.
Reviewed by Jennifer Manlowe, PhD, Psychology and World Religions, author of Faith Born of Seduction: Sexual Trauma, Body Image and Religion (NYU Press, 1995).
Order this book through her website.
Order this book through her website.
I've always loved Disney's Little Mermaid!
I’ve been doing a fair amount of reflecting on the role of social media in the lives of mid-life adults—the age group of my coaching clients. Though there are multiple online networking sites, the two biggest ones being Facebook and MySpace, I’m focusing on Facebook because “older people” are the fastest growing users of this particular social medium, whereas MySpace continues to be dominated by teens.
According to online journal, ITbusiness, in the first few months of 2009, “Facebook gained more Gen Xers and Baby Boomers to its membership ranks with working aged adults (26-59) seeing the biggest age demographic boost of any in North America….” And, according to Paul Briand of The National Examiner, even more staggering is that since the first of the year, “the 35-44 category grew by 51 percent and 45-54 grew by 47 percent.” Wasn’t this medium something that teens lived on like we use to live on the telephone? What could adults possibly want from this vehicle? Do we use it to monitor what our kids are doing or to make sure none of their Facebook “friends” look older than 16?
A complaint issued to me by email from one of my coaching clients was this, she writes, “My friends never share themselves on Facebook, they simply take those inane quizzes and invite me to do the same. I mean, don’t they have lives anymore, don’t they have something to share with me that’s relevant or at least personal?”
Taking these inane Facebook Quizzes – some created by FB members themselves – may be nothing more than a search for identity in a way that’s more fun than some traditional personality profiler like The Meyers-Briggs or the 1930’s mental health test The MMPI. From my experience, there’s nothing a midlifer wants more than a combination of more fun and more clarity about what’s to come in this next phase of life. It’s no wonder Facebook has so many people taking these quizzes; many of us are as unclear about what’s next as we were when we were teenagers.
The difference is that now we have so many more experiences to draw upon when deciding “what we might be when we grow up.”
If my hunch is right, these quizzes may not just be a fun way to “share” yourself on FB, they may be an impish way of inventing who you might be in a free-for-all forum where nobody gets hurt.
What I’ve discovered is that re-inventing yourself in a playful way has great appeal after a loss of some kind, i.e., the kids have left you with an empty nest, you’ve been asked for a divorce, were fired or are in desperate need for a different kind of work.
I’ve found there are at least seven key things that help you uncover “what’s next” in the second half of life and goofy Facebook quizzes can be an off-beat way to let your soulfulness guide you.
Lesson #1: Listen to Your Inner Guide. Take the quiz: “What are your five favorite ways to relax when you’re alone?”
My experiment with meditation began just after my husband left me, a doctoral student living in Princeton, in his newfound commitment to “find himself” on the other coast. I kept hearing this little voice inside my head say, “slow down and listen to what you really want.” Like most people, I ignored this seemingly impractical request. After all, I had five jobs and was trying to graduate with my doctorate by May—just four months away.
As that voice grew louder, it became clear that I was feeling depleted of having anything creative to say and I didn’t know how I was going to pull off my commitments with integrity. I eventually became willing to take a free introductory course in Mindfulness Meditation—a Buddhist practice that simply fosters insight and compassion for self and others.
Lesson #2: Put Your Wildest Desires Out There. Take the quiz: “If I could switch lives with any famous person, I’d pick these top five.”
Some people know what they’d love to do with their lives when in midlife transition but many more of us are afraid we’ll be a laughing stock if we share this with loved ones and friends. This may be hard to believe but the biggest naysayers in are lives are often those closest to us. They don’t even have to be jealous or mean spirited, they just have to care for us in an unhelpful way, the way that conveys, “I just don’t want you to humiliate yourself and then live a life of regret.”
When you take these little quizzes on Facebook, they can be one way, a harmless way, to “get out there.” As Opera Diva Beverly Sills warns us, “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”
Lesson #3: Be Selective When Sharing Your Desires. Take the quiz: “If I could ask advice of famous experts, I’d pick these top five.”
Picking people who will join you in seeing your greatness can be tricky. As I said above, don’t look to your inner circle—they’re way too close to you and your own self-doubt and may even have contributed to it, indirectly, due to their desires for security.
Take my ex-husband (please!): a superbly brilliant professor of International Relations, speaks four languages, publishes about a book a year, but tends to avoid risks that might make him “look foolish”—any sport, dancing or other form of playing in public or alone. When I told him that I wanted a to be an inspirational columnist and life coach like Martha Beck, a monthly essayist for Oprah Magazine, he said, “Oh my God, Jenn, you have got to be kidding me! You will never get another job in academia if you do that!”
Your experiences may be much different than mine—and I hope they are—but if not, reach for a mentor or life direction coach (like myself) if you want to really hear and follow your desires. Go to those who see your essence and believe in your ability to try, fail, try, fail and get up and try again. As the Japanese phrase nanakorobiyaoki says, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”
Lesson #4: Have Faith or Find Someone Who Does. Take the quiz: “Among the super powers in Marvel Comic Books, which one are you?”
Henry Ford once said, “If you think you can, or if you think you can’t, you’re right.” I believe you can, of course, but if you don’t believe this, please find someone who does and borrow their faith in your capacity for self-invention. My mentors, authors Valerie Young, Barbara Winter and Barbara Sher, all believe that isolation is a dream killer.
Barbara Sher in her recent book, Refuse to Choose!, believes we can simply guess what we want to be and feel it out in practice. She says, be an investigator. Dream of at least 10 possible ways of earning a living, gather more information at a library, volunteer, check out any profession by interviewing others.
Sher was speaking at a workshop recently and saying how deep down inside we all know what we want. “When someone says they don’t know what they want,” she said, “what they really mean is they don’t think that what they want is possible.” We all need allies who believe in us.
Lesson #5: Never Give Up! Take the Quiz: “Which Greek Mythical Hero/Heroine Would You Be?”
Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent book, Outliers, speaks of people who by a crystallization of circumstances became movers and shakers during their particular moment in history—people like Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Rosa Parks, Yo Yo Ma, and Tiger Woods. One thing these people have in common is their passion for mastery and, according to Gladwell’s findings, have given their particular love at least 10,000 hours of attention before they became famously proficient.
So where would you rather be, in your rut or onto what’s next? To step into the unknown it requires that you step outside your comfort zone. As my friend Patrick Snow says, “If you want what others have, you must do what others have done to get where they are.” Praying or believing in the “Law of Attraction” is fine but action is also necessary. If you are willing to take small steps, even try a new behavior that challenges you by just one degree, you’ll be building up what you want to see complete some day. I say, “Do things the way ants do things, one small gesture at a time.” Which leads us to our next lesson…
Lesson #6: Start Where You Are. Take the quiz: “What Does Your Birth Date and Time Say About You?”
My favorite teacher and Buddhist Abbess Pema Chodron wrote a book about 15 years ago called, Start Where You Are. After raising her kids, she felt bereft of purpose and confused by her husband’s newfound hobbies that often took him away from home. On one weekend, she came home only to find him in bed with a female friend of theirs. In shock and full of rage, Chodron threw a very expensive 14th-century Ming vase on the floor.
Within a few months she started studying with a Tibetan Lama Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He gave her techniques for cultivating compassion for herself and for her (now former) mate. He told her, “There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, nowhere to hide. Simply start where you are.” She responded by saying, “I just can’t wait for this transition period to pass!” He said with authority, “My dear, all life is transition.”
All compassion-centered meditation begins with the present—we breathe in that very thing we wish were not so. Befriending ourselves and actually feeling our emotions, versus just analyzing them, is the way through. Difficult or delightful emotions are always passing through us.
Finally, and perhaps said another way…
Lesson #7: Receive the Gift of the Present. Take the quiz: “If the end of the world were near, which five things would you appreciate the most?”
In 2005, when I was in between jobs and without the label of “professor” or “psychologist,” I was bereft of purpose and felt like an oyster without a shell. I had no idea just how reliant I was on my “white collar” title until I was without it. I suffered many sleepless nights worsened by isolation and self-pity. One night, I sat straight up around 2:00 a.m. with the gift of this particular awareness: “Jennifer, unless you can be grateful for the first half of life, the second half will not be an improvement.”
Sometimes gratitude is difficult to feel, but the good news is, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to feel grateful, you just need to practice appreciating what you have: life, friends, family, a working body, a roof and daily nourishment, etc. Gratitude is the gift that keeps on giving. Tallying up the gifts within your present experience will make any future success all the more profound.
These seven habits are core practices I use myself and share with others. If you have ones you’d like to share with readers, pass them along to me through this blog.
About the Author
Jennifer Manlowe is a speaker and an award winning author of seven helpful books—all available on her website. She is also a life direction counselor and certified book publishing coach working with individuals and groups online and in person. Become her fan on Facebook or follow her on Twitter!
To read more articles about how to find work that you love, go to Manlowe’s website.
Manlowe cheering on her favorite Mentor, Molly Gordon
How often do you celebrate progress made in any of your endeavors? Most of us would say that it’s easier to say, “Thank you!” to a police officer who has just given us a speeding ticket than to acknowledge our own strengths or past successes.
Acknowledging what others do comes more naturally to some of us but acknowledging ourselves for what we do is almost unheard of—even sacrilegious in most of the world’s traditions.
To go one step further in audaciousness, imagine acknowledging how you and others are being. This is virtually unheard of to all but those trained to offer such perspectives, i.e., ontological coaches, compassion-based therapists, Buddhist Lamas, etc.
In my training as a Life Direction Coach, I’ve learned:
“When we acknowledge the person, we are addressing who the person is being and not solely what they are doing. We address the person’s attitude, intention, presence, commitment, connection, ability, approach, vision, and way of being, rather than their action (e.g., they are passionate, determined, detailed, helpful, authentic, etc.)” ~ Accomplishment Coaching.
Consider that much of what we do with our time (sleep or work) is done with a secret desire to have our most cherished and life-long needs met. We dream to be seen, heard, understood, known and loved. Self-acknowledgement provides this experience. No need to be placed on hold for someone else to give us that message.
The price we pay in waiting for acknowledgement to come from OUTSIDE ourselves is infinite. For Buddhists, longing for happiness to come from “out there” or “through doing”—as if there were something fundamentally wrong here—is the precise practice of (and recipe for more) suffering.
“Among humans, you are not just auspicious, you are unique: Your behavior can neither increase nor diminish your value.” ~ Buddha
When I recall all the clients I’ve worked with since the beginning, I’ve noticed that feelings of success never come to those who are the most “Type A.” You know the ones I mean: those who are perfectionistic, acutely self-critical or anxiously driven to succeed (the way I used to be!).
What’s worse: if any achievement of a goal does arrive, it is just as quickly on its way out as if it were bustling through a revolving door. This soul-deadening routine (rut) is inevitable because achieving that which leads to praise (or blame) for our doing neither speaks to nor inspires our being.
“I met my goal? Great, what’s next?” Like an ambitious Olympic horse trainer, we skip the celebration of our unique expression and return our focus to training and doing whatever it takes for that next race to be won.
Too often we whip “the racehorse” and believe that such disciplining will produce measurable success and future satisfaction. Treating ourselves like dastardly “things” always backfires; perhaps not for the first 40 years, but our day will come.
If we only knew how much satisfaction would emerge if we were to speak to ourselves, our being, like horse-whisperers—bringing forth authentic capacity, offering tender affection, sending out compassion, building trust, affirming touch and generating faith in every creatures essential goodness, etc.—we would not waste one more moment using any kind of force as a motivational method.
More and more educational research shows that the relationship between acknowledgement and results is impossible to deny. And yet, what I’m speaking of here is acknowledgement that is used neither to motivate nor “to get the best performance” (this would be manipulation through praise). Rather, I’m referring to using acknowledgement to connect to the other, being-to-being.
“Inspiration comes forth from within. It is what the light burning within you is about, as opposed to motivation, which is doing it because if you don’t do it, there will be negative repercussions.” ~ Abraham-Hicks
My own practice of acknowledgement seems to ripple out from my center when I begin with myself. I notice that the more I practice offering it in specific ways as a coach, the more people genuinely connect to their essence, their purpose for being; they then more-naturally achieve and accomplish their desires by being motivated from within (not “to please”).
Acknowledgement also seems to improve my own ability to be self-directed. When I acknowledge or connect with my natural giftedness, I am inspired. When I’m inspired, I feel coming into view a clearer picture of what I am wanting, who and how I am and that is when I notice seemingly-magical forces come into play to positively affect outcomes.
Fundamentally, we all want to do good work and offer our best to the places and relationships in which we find ourselves. Experiment with acknowledging who and how you are being and watch the best emerge in yourself and those around you. Are you coming from your essence? How might you return to your authenticity—your greatest gift to the world?
When you practice celebrating your smallest steps of progress toward any creative risk you take, you’ll notice that you may feel uncomfortable, silly or even false. Keep at it, and you will ultimately come to feel the “rightness” of this truth and, just as important, you’ll see yourself extending this magic to all within three feet of you.
Don’t forget, acknowledgement is a viral practice; it is as contagious as it is eternal.
It never hurts to dream big!
“Getting stuck in the wrong career is like a horror movie where I’ve been buried and no one can hear my screams!” ~ Barbara Sher
I’m not sure which is worse hating the job you’re in, (perhaps sneaking time at work to find another job), or looking for a job, any job, just as long as it pay the bills.
Even though many people are feeling the pinch of living in an economic recession, including the thousands who’ve been laid off, there are more people than you would think actually deciding to make career changes. Women, three-to-one, are starting their own business and both men and women are choosing careers that feel more rewarding, more meaningful or at least more in sync with who they really are.
Few people these days are hankering to break into the corporate sector for happiness or job security. More often they feel “happiness” promises are marketing ploys and “job security” is an oxymoron. When we meet they often ask, “Can you help people who don’t know what it is they want to be when they grow up?” or they say, “I’ve been working so hard at keeping this lousy job – even my coworkers constantly complain – I can’t think straight about what I would do if I were to be laid off.”
One of my favorite questions to ask my career-coaching clients who feel lost but dying to do something different is this: “If you received 40 million dollars (tax free) every 12 months, from now until your death, what would you do with your days? What would you do with your time just for fun?”
Another question I ask is this: “If you were told you have 12 hours to live and it was midnight, what would you regret never having done?”
Not everyone believes you can make a living doing what you love to do for others. For instance, the authors of Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard, beat to death their message of “following the cheese (money?)” – as a metaphor for being willing to go with the flow of your times, follow the trends of your current cultural moment if you want to make a living. They wrote, “You’ll be wondering who moved YOUR cheese if you don’t keep following the scent of potential profit. Mice know how to do this.”
Perhaps these Blanchard and Johnson were operating from a “rat race” mentality. If profit comes before people, you’re more likely to be awfully lonely, unsatisfied and stuck in a horror movie of sorts—what Buddhists call a karmic hell realm (born of the seeds you’ve sewn by greedy choices).
Today’s happier income generators seems to be more willing to create a livelihood based on what energizes them. As my stand-up comic friend says, “If it ain’t fun, I’m not going to be doing it for long.” This sentiment seems to be the case more often than not when people take or keep a job because it pays well or well-enough. Truth be told, they are slowly dying inside and their loved ones can feel it. Is the pay off worth it?
Can you imagine thinking of your work as fun? Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, Inc. claims: “If earning our living is what we spend most of our time doing, don’t you think it’s worth finding the kind of work that feeds your soul? Keep searching, it’s worth it.” I often share with my clients the discovery that I’ve made over and over: “Entrepreneurs are the true creators of security—especially if the measurement is satisfaction for work well done.”
Do not think you’ll be able to uncover your “calling” in no time – especially if your family members are freaking out about your depleted bank account(s). What’s required is a willingness to stay open and in action about gathering data and experience. Jumping right into the pool is not only a must, it’s a plus to keep you feeling the momentum that comes when you experiment with what works and what feels like work.
Making a transition doesn’t always move in smooth or linear ways. It can feel like e-Harmony or Match.com – there is rarely a “just right” feel right from the start. Just like Goldilocks, you might have to try a lot more porridge than you’d prefer in order to uncover what feeds you in a satisfying way.
For many of my clients, an exploration phase simply consists of gathering information, networking with Biznik events, looking at what successful entrepreneurs do to create their success, and seeing what you have to offer that continues to be interesting.
A good thing to remember is what my friend and mentor Barbara Winter says, “The business an entrepreneur starts with is rarely the one she or he finishes with.” As James, one of my clients in International Technological Sales, said,
“After working at Smith Barney in International accounts, I was afraid I’d never be able to keep up our family’s lifestyle if I shifted gears. When I started out, I wanted something less burdensome, I was tired of working from seven in the morning to eleven at night, being on call due to time differences, and worrying about getting woken up in the middle of the night and having to work the next day. I mean, I couldn’t even have breakfast with my family or walk the girls to the bus stop as my wife could do.
“I felt I was missing out on the very family I worked so hard to support; what was the point? So I started looking into exploring other possibilities. One of the places I had liked in the past was in Dubai.
Though I hated my work at the time, I loved the cultural diversity and how well my family was treated. I figure if I’m skillful in sales and international relations, there are hundreds of other ways I can put that to work in my own business. I’m just scared and I need someone to support and encourage me as I experiment.”
As James experience foreshadows, the experimental method of finding a better fit in work doesn’t necessarily entail guarantees or a nice orderly sequence of steps in which one side project leads logically to the next. Real work is involved when one wants to make a transition.
Calling up past acquaintances, interviewing happy entrepreneurs, attending events that interest you, putting yourself around people you admire and would love to work with, can be ways of supporting your experiments. But the trend is clear, small wins may be scattered, but what really matters is that they move in the same general direction—away from the stifling situation in which we find ourselves wanting to escape.
So much of the “right fit” is born of lots of little actions that can move you into more rewarding relationships (financially and emotionally). Just like finding a wonderful companion can happen out of the blue or by dating lots of toads — but certainly won’t be likely if you stay in your familiar comfort zone (rut).
As George Eliot tells us, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” Why not start inventing where you might feel greater happiness. It can start with a guess. What helps me is to do that which brings me aliveness, because I believe that’s what the world needs, don’t you?
Jennifer Manlowe, founder of Life Design Unlimited<</b, is a life direction counselor and certified publishing coach helping people step out to authorize their lives. Her books can be found at AuthorizeU.com,
Learn more about the author, Jennifer Manlowe, PhD, CPC.
Sometimes I feel like it's all too much!
“If we are perfect and complete, exactly as we are, ‘lacking nothing,’ as the Buddha says, then why all this emphasis on mindfulness, storytelling and community? Mindfulness, storytelling, and community are where we realize our perfection.” ~ William Alexander
“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
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What do you do with your emotions? Do you feel them, analyze them, reject or ignore them?
When I worry about not having enough money to make ends meet, I often try the technique of “putting it out of my mind” in the hope that my tidal wave of anxiety will go away. After a few years—just after losing my grandfather to a fatal stroke—I began the technique of breathing in the very thing I was afraid of—impoverishment—and, via exhaling, releasing the notion that, “I have exactly what I need for now.”
One day, on my 70-mile commute to work to the University (for the whole ride), I “breathed in the fear” and “released the calm that I was seeking.” I found myself slipping into a warm “tub of peace” without escaping into fantasy or hyper-attending to my worst fears.
Two weeks later, my grandmother died. I was so grateful to have discovered a practice that helped me grieve the loss of both grandparents and that I could work with for the stress-filled months that followed. It was a first for me to find non-destructive ways to soothe myself through difficult feelings—something I had never been able to do prior to that point in time.
The name of this mindfulness practices is called Lojong or Tonglen and was first exposed to me through Tibetan teacher Pema Chodron, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s senior Dharma student, who is now head Abbess in Nova Scotia’s Gampo Abbey.
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[NOTE: Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (February 1939 – April 4, 1987) was a Buddhist meditation master, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and a Trungpa tülku (an incarnate Tibetan Lama). Widely recognized, both by Tibetan Buddhists and by other spiritual practitioners and scholars, as a preeminent teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, he was a major figure in the dissemination of Tibetan Buddhism to the West, founding Vajradhatu and Naropa University and establishing the Shambhala Training Method. He has also been a prolific translator of Tibetan].
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In this particular breathing practice called tonglen one uses “mindful” or “relaxed attention” given to the feelings that arise during meditation without getting overwhelmed by these emotional experiences.
It is precisely through working with this feeling-filled, mindfulness practice—carried on the wings of my breath—that I have found the greatest comfort and relief.
No need to rush out of uncomfortable feelings into anesthetizing with food, alcohol, spending, or hyper-fixating on the problems of others to find relief from an anxious mind. We can go into the feeling and witness its transience.
The thing we are each searching for is already within each of us. No drug, well-behaved children, perfect mate, or financial windfall can provide the calm we can create through nurturing it via our mindful breathing.
Breathing mindfully is like listening to waves on an ocean, always available to attend to—the ebb and the flow of our very own, breath-spirit (spiritus in Latin).
One thing that I’ve found over the years is that this practice takes practice. It’s like training a skittish, stray cat to “stay still” and trust that today will take care of itself. To begin this practice, experiment with focusing on what you are dreading right now and work with it in this exercise (below).
Making This Practice My Own:
The Practice of Tonglen
Each of us has a “soft spot”: the place in our experience where we feel vulnerable and tender. This soft spot is inherent in appreciation and love, and it is equally inherent in pain. Often, when we feel that soft spot, it’s quickly followed by a feeling of fear and an involuntary, habitual tendency to close down.
This is the tendency of all living things: to avoid pain and cling to pleasure. In practice, however, covering up the soft spot means shutting down against our life experience. Then we tend to narrow down into a solid feeling of self-against-other.
One very powerful and effective way to work with tendency to push away pain and hold onto pleasure is the practice of tonglen. Tonglen literally means “sending and taking.” The practice originated in
India and came to Tibet in the 11th century.
In tonglen practice, when we see or feel suffering, we breathe in with the notion of completely feeling it, accepting it and owning it. Then we breathe out, radiating compassion, loving-kindness, freshness; anything that encourages relaxation and openness.
In this practice, it’s not uncommon to find yourself blocked, because you come face to face with your own fear, resistance, or whatever your personal “stuckness” happens to be at that moment. At that point, you can change the focus and do tonglen for yourself, and for millions of others just like you, at that very moment, who are feeling exactly the same misery.
I particularly like to encourage tonglen, on the spot. For example, you’re walking down the street and you see the pain of another human being.
On-the-spot tonglen means that you just don’t rush by; you actually breathe in with the wish that this person can be free of suffering, and send them out some kind of good heart or well-being. If seeing another person’s pain brings up fear or anger or confusion, which often happens, just start doing tonglen for yourself and all the other people who are stuck in the very same way.
When you do tonglen on the spot, you simply breathe in and breathe out, taking in pain and sending out spaciousness and relief. When you do tonglen as a formal practice, it has four stages:
First, rest your mind briefly in a state of openness or stillness.
Second, work with texture. Breathe in a feeling of hot, dark, and heavy, and breathe out a feeling of cool, bright, and light. Breathe in and radiate completely, through all the pores of your body, until it feels synchronized with your in-and out-breathe.
Third, work with any painful personal situation that is real to you. Traditionally, you begin by doing tonglen for someone you care about. However, if you are stuck, do the practice for your pain and simultaneously for all those just like you who feel that kind of suffering.
Finally, make the taking in and the sending out larger. Whether you are doing tonglen for someone you love or for someone you see on television, do it for all the others in the same boat. You could even do tonglen for people you consider your enemies—those who have hurt you or others.
Do tonglen for them, thinking of them as having the same confusion and stuckness as you find or yourself.
This is to say that tonglen can extend indefinitely. As you do the practice, gradually, over time, your compassion naturally expands—and so does your realization that things are not as solid as you thought. As you do this practice, at your own pace, you’ll be surprised to find yourself more and more able to be there for others, even in what seemed like impossible situations.
[See more meditation exercises from Pema Chodron in her book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times].
For another groovy book on the subject of emotions, addictions and mindfulness, see my book Loving Life As It Is!
India and came to Tibet in the 11th century.
“Lavish [love] on others, receive it gratefully when it comes to you.
Cultivate friendship like a garden. It is the best love of all.” ~ Sister Helen Prejean
Putting together a wedding can be an exhilarating experience as well as a somewhat taxing one. After all, there are no “do-overs” for your big day! One thing you want to be sure of is your wedding officiant. There’s nothing worse than one who is not a good match for the two of you. Authenticity is at the heart of lasting relationships and good memories launched on this important day.
Your ceremony truly reflects who you are as people, to each other as well as to all your loved ones. The wedding-day celebration is the public declaration of your feelings for each other and for your community of support. Make sure it celebrates your love and feels true to you.
More and more couples are choosing a Wedding Officiant-led service over traditional (church or synagogue) clergy or a justice of the peace. Why? Because a wedding officiant can be dependable in offering a creative ceremony that respects your preferences and values. I have been a wedding officiant for over a decade and I offer a wide range of frameworks that can draw on any one of the traditions below (or none but your own):
*Secular
*Religious
*Spiritual
*Humanist
*Interfaith
*Traditional
*Nondenominational
*Contemporary
or any combination of the above!
I’ll work one-on-one with the two of you as your wedding officiant. Though I received my doctorate in psychology (PhD) and religion and my masters of divinity (MDiv) at Princeton Seminary, I obtained my minister credentials solely for the purpose of legally performing weddings. I come from a background that includes public speaking, teaching, counseling, writing and design. My gifts stem from passion, experience, innate creativity and open-mindedness.
Learn more by contacting me: Jennifer Manlowe, MDiv, PhD
Life Design Unlimited
jlmanlowe@comcast.net
206.617-8832
Life Design Unlimited
jlmanlowe@comcast.net
206.617-8832
Time Is Just An Invention!
“Today, like every other day, I wake up empty and frightened. Don’t go to the door of the study and read a book. Instead take down the dulcimer, let the beauty of what you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground, there are a thousand ways to go home again.” ~ Rumi
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
~ Socrates
Little by little, I realize that nobody ever finds time—time is not lost. Time is actually related to the word “tide” (in Old English tima). It’s not a thing, but something that we experience with our senses. Time is something that we carve out of the rocky schedule or impenetrable wall of activity in which we live.
I’m coming to accept that time must be attended to, like a garden, or one will surely pay via its drying up; neglect produces parchedness. Time must be nurtured, it must be coddled and affirmed—doing so will ensure it will give back ten-fold.
So many Americans live lives that are frantically busy, driven by sense of lack, and without reflection. Socrates would roll over in his grave with our general lack of rigorous self-examination. “There’s no time,” we all snap back. “Who has time to examine their choices, their habits, their ways of being with others, their ways of being alone?” Do we ever think about what our busy-ness gives or promises us? Can we afford to live such unexamined lives?
What would Socrates say? Is this lifestyle of frantic activity (multi-tasking, multi-texting, even while driving) making our lives worth living? “Time is money,” they say. The truth is, time is what we make it to be. It’s like an ordinary piece of fabric—we can make with it a mat to rest upon or a noose to hang ourselves with…it’s up to us.
At this particular time in my life, I’m making time to write—“just three pages a day,” as The Artist’s Way author Julia Cameron suggests. She calls them “morning pages” because they can start the flow of creativity the first thing in the morning, just like meditation. I’ve called them “mourning pages” because even as a kid they were a kind of lamentation of my half-lived life. If I hang in there with the writing, it usually unearths the shadowy parts of myself that often experience sadness, fear, anger or loss of some kind.
If you were willing to take responsibility for making time for your reflection, what would you discover? Do you hope to get somewhere else by moving faster through life? Such unexpressed feeling often turns into depression or general moodiness. Everyone benefits when I use my “mourning pages.”
Making This Practice My Own:
I commit to writing three pages a day this week, right after I get up in the morning.
I commit to move my pen on paper—without criticism for what I see during this time. I will not edit my words or thoughts, I will let my imagination run wild with thick description for what I’m feeling, seeing, noticing this moment.
During this time, I will let my brain drain out onto the page. I will let myself “let it rip” if I want to complain. I will let myself rant if I want to rant. I will let myself be full of self-pity if I want to be full of self-pity—accounting for all the wrongs done to me in my lifetime. If I want to moan, I’ll moan while I do this. If I want to imagine myself in a horror movie, I’ll spell out the details in my morning writing. If I want to imagine myself in some tawdry affair, I’ll not miss one drop of saucy description. If I want to make this one long wish list, for seven whole days, that’s just great.
How does using time to listen to your unexpressed feelings feel? What’s it like to carve out space for yourself to just exhale—no resistance, no holding back to what you’ve been feeling? Can you bring more of your plucky self (what Buddhist’s call your “original nature”) to what you do in work and love?
Do you need support in sticking with this commitment? I hope to hear from you! Contact me through my this blog or my home website!
~ Socrates
Is the right brain truly a site for invention?
To assess your individual or corporate viability in the current economy, ask yourself three questions:
1. Can what I do be done cheaper overseas?
2. Can what I do be done faster by a computer?
3. Am I offering something that satisfies the nonmaterial wants of an abundant age?
If your answer is anything other than “no”, invest some time in Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind. Even those who can answer “No” will extract value from the stories, methodology and commentary of a broad range of innovative people and organizations including GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, product innovation and design consultancy IDEO, MIT’s Nicolas Negroponte, writer and social commentator Pat Kane and designer Karim Rashid. Although the causal premises are well established, Pink’s research and perspective is both uniquely personal and broadly applicable.
True to our times, A Whole New Mind is a bad news-good news story. The bad news for analytical types including accountants, engineers, lawyers and MBAs is that the primacy of the knowledge worker is a thing of the past. The Industrial Age is history; our challenge is to how to thrive in what Pink terms the Conceptual Age. From a marketability standpoint, there has been a shift in valuation from left-brain or systematic thought to right brain or empathetic thought. What is currently in demand is an integrative perspective that is “high concept” (integrative) and “high-touch” (empathetic).
The good news is that the high-value abilities of the 21st century are not necessarily a function of one’s IQ. They are fundamentally human attributes that can be cultivated. The essence of this book is the why and how of cultivating A Whole New Mind.
To put this shift in context, Pink documents how three socioeconomic factors–abundance, Asia and automation–are transforming both the nature of work and society. Abundance has enabled a shift in the hierarchy of needs from material accumulation to higher criteria such as beauty, emotion and meaning. Asia is a generic reference to outsourcing and off-shoring knowledge work to high-aptitude/low-cost countries including China, Hungary, India, the Philippines, Russia–anywhere but Europe and North America. A 2003 Reuters report noted that “one out of ten jobs in the U.S. computer, software and information technology industry will move overseas in the next two years [by 2008].
One in four IT jobs will be off-shored by 2010. Finally, technology has rendered those activities reducible to a series of processes virtually obsolete. These factors are driving a transformation of the entire value creation process. To quote Pink, “In an age of abundance, appealing only to rational, logical and functional needs is woefully insufficient–mastery of design, empathy, play and other seemingly soft aptitudes is now the main way for individuals and firms to stand out in a crowded marketplace.”
According to Pink, achieving professional success and personal satisfaction in the Conceptual Age is dependant on our ability to deploy six essential aptitudes or “senses”: design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning. For maximum impact, we will need to complement L-Directed reasoning with the six essential R-Directed aptitudes to yield a holistic mind.
To highlight the difference in the two perspectives, Pink poses the dynamic this way: “Not just function but also DESIGN. Not just argument but also STORY. Not just focus but also SYMPHONY. Not just logic but also EMPATHY. Not just seriousness but also PLAY. Not just accumulation but also MEANING.” Karim Rashid captures the essence of this sensibility in his exhortation to “Think extensively, not intensively.”
This is not a theoretical book; it’s a call to action. The emphasis throughout is on maximizing your personal impact. The Portfolio sections at the end of each of the “six senses” chapters provide multiple options for assessment and application. References range from texts to tests, hands-on exercises to meditative explorations–in short, something for everyone regardless of brain dominance.
For example, the “Channel Your Annoyance” exercise in the Design section is an effective creative outlet for venting frustration with everything from ads to web site usability. Pink’s participation in a “Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain” class is proof of effectiveness: the difference between his before and after portraits is astonishing. For a common sense approach to empathy, apply IDEO’s Learn, Look, Ask and Try methodology.
Finally, as an acid test, the 20/10 test in the Meaning section is spot-on: if you had $20 million in the bank or only 10 years to live, would you live your life differently? That is, indeed, the pivotal question. If you would live your life differently, this book is a kick-start. The final point in Rashid’s 50-point guide to life is “Here and now is all we got.” A Whole New Mind helps you make the most of what you got.
Find Nina Burokas online!
And, if you want a supportive and empathic kick-start on creating a more satisfying life and livelihood, checkout my website!
2. Can what I do be done faster by a computer?
3. Am I offering something that satisfies the nonmaterial wants of an abundant age?
And, if you want a supportive and empathic kick-start on creating a more satisfying life and livelihood, checkout my website!
