February 19, 2021
Succesful collaboration is built on a high level of emotional literacy. Without the capacity to generate and sustain certain feelings, our ability to collaborate with others is not possible. By the time we reach adulthood and enter the workplace, our emotional repertoire has become habituated. Emotional habits are then fueled by our thinking process which is often fixed into patterns. […]
February 10, 2020
People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.” St. Augustine Becoming more self-aware is on its way to gaining the social stamp of approval […]
January 7, 2020
In how much of our communication with others are we fully there? If you ask what people want from most of their communication, many will say more clarity, better understanding, greater honesty – maybe even love? Underneath it all, what we really long for are deeper, more meaningful connections with others. Even when we’re not aware of consciously seeking it, […]
August 11, 2019
I’m a believer. Living more mindfully has changed my perspective on life. I practice (and practice) and I support others, whenever possible, to find the ways that work for them to be more mindful. My motivation, of course, is deeply personal – as everyone’s should be. But I have another “agenda.” When I look around at the state of the […]
October 29, 2018
“Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.” Henry David Thoreau We’re a long way from Walden Pond; even Thoreau’s contemporaries rarely lived such a contemplative life, but let’s take some time now to ponder two […]
February 14, 2017
I continue to be surprised by the lack of understanding we have about what we humans need to thrive. Of course, we know this. Modern psychology has studied and confirmed that without social connection, humans simply cannot thrive, They may, in certain cases, even die. Yet, many of us do not live as if we truly know this. This, I’ve […]
January 1, 2017
The ancients knew there were many times of the year – and in our lives, that signaled a time to slow down. These were the hours and days for quiet reflection. Clearly, those days are over in “modern times.” The reality of life today is the amount of time reserved for rest has diminished dramatically. Another “casualty” of modern life […]
August 18, 2016
“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas Is kindness “compassion in action?” While there are distinctions made between kindness, empathy, compassion and altruism, most people experience kindness as action. With kindness we take our cognitive experience of […]
June 17, 2016
Ask me what is most important. And I will reply, It is people, It is people, It is people Maori Proverb You read a lot these days about the need for new workplace models. There is a growing consensus that decades of rigid, bottom line, often authoritarian management structures kill the culture necessary for real collaborative relationships. The old models […]
June 12, 2016
Peace has become a priority for me. When it moved to the top of my list, I can’t say. In the spirit of questioning priorities, (something we’d all benefit from) I’ve been asking myself some basic questions about the often elusive state I call peace. Since, like many of you, I am not practiced in peace as a way of […]
February 1, 2016
“If we are lucky, we mourn our losses.” Miriam Greenspan Language and culture shape how we interpret and define our emotions. We tend to forget that, but it is particularly enlightening when it comes to understanding more about grief. All emotions are experienced through the lens of culture, and grief is a feeling many cultures dread or are, at […]
December 3, 2015
If we are living in a so-called Age of Empathy – what does that mean? What does it mean for an individual, a co-worker, an employer, a neighbor, a city or a world society to live with empathy in the face of such harsh daily realities? What will we do differently in our personal and social lives? What kind of […]
November 20, 2015
“Fear does not predict the future: it only tells you that you are afraid. The trick is to recognize the emotion when it emerges, accept it, discover its source and decide what to do with it.” Jay Uhler, Organizational Psychologist Needless to say, fear is a common emotion in these times. This is a natural reaction, especially in light […]
October 12, 2015
Why is so little self-knowledge taught in most schools? Sure, there’s the Life Sciences curriculum where you’ll get some information on anatomy and communicable diseases, but mostly what we learn in school is focused on the externals. With rare exceptions, most children graduate high school with little information about how their bodies, minds and especially their emotions, work. Most of […]
September 24, 2015
Developing more patience has been a long-time personal pursuit. There’s no formula I can recommend. It takes diligence. It takes commitment. It takes attention. Mostly it takes remembering. Lately, I noticed I’ve been sliding back into some old habits of impatience. On closer examination, they’re predictable. I’ve often written about the power of patience because I have experienced that impatience […]
September 3, 2015
“Realize that you are in there. You must first come to realize that you are in there. From deep inside, you are experiencing the world. You are experiencing your physical body, your thoughts and your emotions. You are conscious and you are experiencing what it is like to be human.” Michael Singer An article in the New Yorker grabbed my […]
August 11, 2015
“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.” Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times The problem is – we suffer alone. There isn’t a human being that does […]
July 9, 2015
Nothing is precious except that part of you which is in other people, and that part of others which is in you. — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin It should be self-evident to all of us that the choices earlier generations made resulted in the quality of life we’re living now. The past is prologue. Since the vast impact of the […]
June 11, 2015
Since this piece was first published, it’s been in the top 5 of viewed articles every day. Clearly – the head vs. heart conflict is very much alive. There is little disagreement that effective decision-making is one of the most important tasks we have in every part of life. If we were to take a survey in the average workplace […]
May 28, 2015
“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” ~ Mary Oliver The Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hahn, captures the essence of paying attention – deep, sustained, perceptive attention – when he reminds us, “You have an appointment with life – you should not miss it.” Lately I’ve been keenly aware that life today is filled with endless distractions. […]
May 22, 2015
“I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.” Pablo Casals The more I see others from my heart and not my judgment, the more compassion I have for my fellow human beings. Admittedly, this is a work in progress. There’s something poignant about pilots reporting their final passenger count as having a […]
March 26, 2015
This article was inspired by the work of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn’s book, Work: How to Find Joy and Meaning Each Hour of the Day. For those of you unfamiliar with the work of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen master, poet, peace and human rights activist was exiled from his homeland of Vietnam in 1966. In the early 60’s […]
February 26, 2015
Resiliency. The ability to spring back from and successfully adapt to adversity. A return to balance. Emotional Buoyancy. Flexibility. Are we what we feel? While that may be a rhetorical question, there is truth behind it. Because advancing emotional understanding is a central theme in my work, these pages have often explored many facets of expanding emotional awareness. First […]
February 13, 2015
I spent a lot of time in Part 1 talking about the state of the economy and the ways that we work. Some readers may have wondered – what’s this got to do with simplicity? “Work” consumes more time for the average person (especially in the U.S.) than ever – the highest numbers, in fact, since statistics began to measure […]
January 29, 2015
Simplifying in a time of seeming chaos may feel counterintuitive. Who’s got time for the sweet and simple? Don’t we need to work harder, “up our game” and become tougher than ever to survive? Most people I speak to these days feel a sense of overwhelm. Their lives are filled with pressures and demands. “Busy” has become a socially accepted […]
January 15, 2015
When did the world stop needing deeper and more beautiful things? When did we stop believing it was important to create beauty? Perhaps, “beauty” is the wrong word necessary to focus our highly distracted attention. Maybe the right word is transcendence? “Transcendence,” existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level. You know, the kind of experience that stays with […]
January 8, 2015
How about 5 minutes a day of deep rest? 10 minutes of peace? 15 minutes of renewal? 20 minutes of rejuvenation? Yes, you can. Meditation can change the way you work – and change the way you feel about life in the process. Knowledge about the benefits of meditation isn’t new. Pioneers like Jon Kabat-Zinn began to mainstream meditation into […]
December 4, 2014
Which world view dominates our collective mindset – one of scarcity or abundance? Which world view dominates your personal mindset? It’s an important question because this core world view is easily the mother-ship of most of the beliefs that shape our existence. What you believe; what we believe, determines much of how we act. The world we inhabit today is […]
November 20, 2014
Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas Is kindness “compassion in action?” While there are distinctions made between kindness, empathy, compassion and altruism, most people experience kindness as action. With kindness we take our cognitive experience of […]
October 30, 2014
It strikes me that this is an era of pressing choices – personal and collective. Conditioned and habituated thinking cannot address the complexities we face. We’re caught up in old, polarized, binary thinking that is not only an impediment to our growth – but regressive and potentially dangerous. How do we make complex decisions in the face of such pressure? […]
September 25, 2014
Recently my lack of empathy for someone really surprised me. No matter how I cognitively reframed the subject, I was stuck. It wasn’t until I became more consciously present to the other feelings I had about this person that I was able to soften the picture. I felt uncomfortable with my lack of kindness in this situation and wanted to […]
September 11, 2014
Looking around the news of the world, I see three basic “camps.” I’m thinking of these “camps” as ways of reacting/responding to the fast-changing world we all face today. The first I’ll call the “Stand Your Ground” camp. This camp is generally uninterested in change. It’s mainly reactive to the world as it unfolds, always strategizing how to maintain the […]
September 4, 2014
Lately I’ve been reflecting on this question. It’s an important one. Maybe less important when you’re 25 (though I wish I had kept it in the forefront of my mind at that age) but I can’t think how asking it doesn’t reveal what we are hiding, avoiding or displacing at any age. Nearly everywhere I look online I see references […]
July 25, 2014
In earlier writings on self-compassion, I asked what I consider to be a core question, Have I loved my life enough? Another way of asking this is – Have I loved myself enough? Either question takes you down the same path. All of life is driven by needs. Needs energize our life, generate motivation and shape the meaning of our experiences. […]
July 3, 2014
“Emotions like grief, fear and despair are as much a part of the human condition as love, awe and joy. Each of these emotions is purposeful and useful-if we know how to listen to them.” Miriam Greenspan Intellectually, I know that emotions live in the body. The research demonstrating the mind-body relationship becomes more definitive each year. But, […]
June 26, 2014
Diego Rivera’s The Worker Isn’t it time to change the dominant stories we’ve been taught about workplace relationships? They’re old, exhausted and defeating. They’re based on models of thinking about human motivation and dynamics that have been discredited by modern science. These old stories are steeped in mistrust. They’re hierarchical and parental in nature and based on a belief that […]
June 5, 2014
Now that we’re in the era of praise, hyperbole and misconception about what mindfulness (meditation) is all about – let’s step back and take a look at what we know. While I’ve often written about mindfulness and personally and professionally endorse its benefits, I’m concerned that the essence of the practice is being co-opted. Business media coverage of a practice […]
May 29, 2014
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. Dorothy Parker I was a really curious kid. How about you? They say all kids (and apparently cats) are curious. Of course that’s true (I mean about the kids, I don’t know enough about cats to make that claim) but I was a very curious kid. I always […]
May 8, 2014
We’re living in an age of liminality. Some of us are aware of it, already feeling its weight and disorientation. The signs are everywhere – if you look. Liminality is that period of being in-between – the old stories we told ourselves about the future – especially about success – are being challenged, some fading into irrelevancy. The fugue-like state […]
April 22, 2014
It’s Earth Day – A perfect time to reconsider and renew your relationship with the natural world. Think about your connection to nature – how often do you spend time outdoors? Not commuting or running errands, but with the deliberate intent to be with nature. Even though studies show that even 30 minutes outdoors can boost vitality levels and curb […]
October 20, 2022
More and more people are talking about living in “uncertain” times. It’s now called, “the new normal.” The anxiety over our predicament of uncertainty appears to be a new discovery. Our long-held assumptions about the future are being quickly rearranged. Collectively, our cultures are shifting so fast that we expect to live in an era of uncertainty. Along with the […]
December 20, 2021
Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash I wanted to share a poem about silence and peace. Not only because of the season, but because we’re all in need of more of both. In this beautiful (regardless of your season or hemisphere) scene one can feel the solace of deep peace. In searching for words I come back to an old metaphorical friend, the […]
November 11, 2021
Looking around it’s common to see the signs of an increasingly weary and anxious world. There appears to be little room left for the joys of wonder. Asked to identify the “malaise of the moment,” a prominent New York psychiatrist declared, “Generalized anxiety. That is by far the most common complaint voiced by my clients.” The antidote? Well, that’s a […]
October 11, 2021
I’ve often written about the slow death of command and control leadership – envisioning the demise of that mindset as the prevailing force in organizational life. It is slow going – isn’t it? At least it feels that way to me – even as an “observer” in my role as a consultant. The power issue hangs over us. Although there […]
August 1, 2021
“The beliefs we have about anger and the interpretation we give to the experience are as important to its understanding as anything intrinsic to the emotion itself.” Carol Tavris Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion Anger has been called the “misunderstood emotion.” Why is that? Seems like we know everything there is to know about anger, don’t we? While there still is […]
February 5, 2021
Since Part 1 of this article was published it has consistently remained in the blog’s top 10. I’m grateful for the response and I’ve been inspired to write more about the fascinating, emergent world of neuroscience. While I am a very informal student of the science, what I’ve learned has reshaped the way I approach my work. As I wrote […]