I watched Richard’s face squeeze into a painful expression of effort and struggle. He was triggered by the two attackers (Uke’s) who rushed at him swinging their arms and grabbing at him. He was moving backward in retreat and definitely becoming overwhelmed. Suddenly, Richard grabbed one of the attackers in a headlock and threw him roughly to the ground. As he did this he lost his balance and followed his uke to the mat. The second attacker stood over Richard surprised to find him in so vulnerable a position. Richard lay on his back and started kicking his foot at the standing attacker while the first recovered and took his place next to his fellow uke, clearly in charge of Richard’s fate.
For those of us looking on from the back of the mat, we had just seen an example of what not to do when under severe pressure. Richard had panicked. He reverted to his conditioned tendency which was to get overexcited, to work too hard, to get stiff and inflexible, and finally to loss his balance and ground.
In Aikido, the randori is an opportunity to practice calmness and groundedness under pressure. Two or more attackers create the pressure. There is no way to plan a randori, there is no way to think your way out of it, every strike or grab of your attacker is extemporaneous. In order to be successful you need to be totally present, totally grounded, and calm. How is this possible? It takes a commitment to training.
Each of us has our own way of handling pressure. Some of us run, some attack, and some of freeze up. This is just as true in life at it is in Aikido. We have deadlines, we have a colleague or a boss that is pressuring us, we have unexpected interruptions and emergencies that throw us off our game. We may shut the door and try to ignore the overwhelm (running from), we may snap at our colleague or boss (attacking), or we may just spin our wheels in anxiety and sleepless nights (freezing).
In order to deal with the randori’s of life we need to rewire our conditioned tendencies. If our tendency is to run away from discomfort, then we train ourselves to center and turn into the situation and experience it fully. If our tendency is to attack when triggered, then we train ourselves to center and stay present. If our tendency is to let our minds spin out of control in fear and anxiety so that we are paralyzed, we train ourselves to center and be totally present with the situation.
How do we train ourselves to center? We bring ourselves into the present moment. We follow our breath, we feel our bodies, we slow the endless chatter of our minds. Meditation is a great practice. So is Tai Chi and Yoga.
I like Aikido because it requires presence while working with others. You might call it meditation in the midst of action.
Of course none of this can be learned from books, although books can play a small part. It takes commitment and practice.
Life is a randori. We can fight it and resist it and end up losing our balance like Richard.
Or we can train ourselves to deal with the challenges, manifest our best selves, without fear, with clear heads and fully present to the possibilities.
What is the connection between our spiritual growth and our work? Most people keep them separate. It’s pretty common to feel that work is work and the spiritual stuff shouldn’t be mixed in with our professional lives. A contrary view of what it is to be a working professional and an effective leader is emerging.
Aren’t we most fulfilled when our life’s purpose and our work are aligned?
Robert Frost says it brilliantly in the last stanza of “Two Tramps in Mudtime”
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.
Aren’t leaders most effective when they inspire those around them to their best work?
Inspiring others isn’t something that comes from authority. Authority produces compliance. Inspiration is not something that we can fake or think through with our minds. It is the ability to access the deepest parts of ourselves; and in so doing touch the hearts, as well as the minds, of those around us. Accessing the peace of the heart, speaking from that sacred place, and touching the hearts of others is what makes great leaders. It is a spiritual journey that we take for ourselves and those we serve.
Aren’t we most effective when we can stay grounded and present during chaotic events at work?
This is more than just ’staying calm’, it is the ability to let our purpose guide us, to be totally present to what is happening, and to take appropriate action. The deeper we feel our purpose at work the easier it is to navigate chaos. Our purpose is our GPS system. The more we can stay present in the midst of chaos and not let our minds run away into judgments or worry, or thinking in general; the more we can see the situation clearly and the better the chances we will act appropriately.
If we connect with people and we are truly present with them, aren’t we more apt to build trust with them?
Being present means not thinking about what we are going to say next, nor is it having silent judgments about what they are saying, “That’s not right.” “That’s naive.” “That’s a great idea.” It is listening, actively and openly. Training our minds to be present is the underlying concept of meditation, a deeply spiritual endeavor
Perhaps the workplace is the best place for us to engage our spiritual selves. The connection between our spiritual journeys and the effectiveness of our work lives is impossible to sever. We may think we can compartmentalize our spirit from our work, but over time the artificial barriers break down. After all, we can’t help being who we are.
Aren’t we most effective and most fulfilled when we are fully human…even at work?
Here are three highlights from the last class that I thought were exceptional.
In the first clip Eckhart Tolle explores the idea that when the mind gets anxious and fearful the body reacts as if something was really happening. The body reacts by producing the emotions and contractions that it would if it were in the midst of a real situation.
In the second clip, Tolle tells the story of the ‘Duck with a Human Mind’. Two ducks get into a ’spat’ on a pond; since they don’t have egoic minds, getting over the incident is easy. What happens if it is two humans having the ’spat’?
In the final clip, Tolle speaks about two monks, one who carries a girl across muddy patch and sets her down and one who carries the incident in his mind for hours as they walk.
Note: This was cross posted on the Ed Tech Journeys blog.Kelly was a timid soul. She was a 7th grader in my English class more than 30 years ago. She sat silently in the front row over in the corner. None of the kids talked to her. She was a loner.I was a first year teacher, full of enthusiasm and the raw energy of inexperience. The homework assignment for that week was to write a composition on a family pet.
After they settled into their desks, I started moving from student to student pointing out things in their papers that I thought were important. My focus was on the mechanics of the writing because most of the kids’ grammar, punctuation, and spelling was horrid.
I leaned over Kelly’s desk and looked down at her paper. I started pointing out the mechanical errors in her composition.
“Here”, I said pointing to the paper, “This is a sentence fragment. It has no verb.”
I pointed to another part of her composition and began to correct another mistake when suddenly, on the paper next to my fingertip, a teardrop fell. It smeared the blue ink. Before I understood what was happening another teardrop splattered on her paper. Her head was down and she was crying silently.
A wave of awareness washed over me. Her composition was about her pet dog, who she loved very much, and who had recently passed away. In it, she was sharing her sense of loss and hurt with me. I had completely ignored her message and had only criticized the structure and punctuation.
Another tear fell, and another; I felt like a jerk. I placed my hand on her back and patted her, as if that could take away the hurt feelings and sadness.
Kelly’s tears taught me a lesson that I will never forget,
We are human beings first.
There is much more going on in our classrooms than grammar and spelling. We, as educators, have more influence than we can possibly know.
Sweet Kelly, I wonder where she is today? I wonder if she knows what an impact she has had on my life? I wonder if she remembers those tears, as I do, thirty years later?
I found Class 4 to be the most interesting of the series so far. Eckhart Tolle recommends to a caller that does a lot of centering, breathing, and presence work at home; but doesn’t sustain it when he is criticized be his boss; that the caller incorporate stillness and presence all through his day, not just at home.
In another part of the conversation, Tolle tells the story of a Zen master watching an archer try to win a contest. Because he wants to win so much he is drained of his power.
This is particularly interesting to me because I have always been driven to succeed. This has entailed a lot of stress and anxiety which I believe has taken away from my performance in the moment.
So one of the key messages from Monday night is that we can create tiny spaces for stillness and presence at work, or wherever we happen to be; and these spaces grow over time.
The other message is to be in the moment. Plan if we have to; but when we begin to execute the plan we must be totally in the present, or as athletes say, “In the Zone”. If we are thinking ahead or worrying, it takes away from our performance.
I was touched by the discussion of Eckhart Tolle’s quote:
“What you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself.”
When I first encountered this way of looking at things, I thought it was silly. If I am upset with you because you aren’t reliable, how does that reflect back to me? How can you say that I am unreliable? With the help of stillness, I began to see parts of myself where I sometimes do not follow up, and I am unreliable.
Somehow, the more I sit with this, the more it rings true for me.
So, when I get impatient with people who seem very structured and attached to their views of the world; the suggestion from Tolle is to use this as a mirror to see if this structure and desire for control lives in me. Once again, I see that it does. I’ve always striven to be in charge and for almost my whole professional life I have been the ‘boss’.
What a great tool to use to see ourselves in a new way. Tolle says that the strength of our reaction is an indication of how much the behavior may live in us.
The next time I feel a surge of negative judgment, I will use it to trigger some inward reflection; for I believe it is a mirror of something that is going on…in me.
One of the interesting points that was explored in this week’s class was the idea that there are two ways to complain. When we complain with our ego we bring emotion and judgments to the complaint. We personalize it. This is generally not effective because it causes the person to whom we are targeting the complaint to get defensive.
Does this mean that we can never speak up to change something that isn’t producing the results we want? No, it simply means that we state the “what is” of the situation or behavior, without our ego involved.
We can complain to the waiter that “MY SOUP IS COLD!” in frustration and indignation (our ego at work); or we can state to the waiter that “My soup is cold. Please take this back and bring me hot soup.” without the emotion.
I remember telling one of my subordinates who was not performing up to my standards that I did not trust them. The person completely lost their temper and began shouting at me. I see now that my ego was at work creating an ‘I’m better than you drama’.
I would have been much more successful if I had stated the behaviors and actions of this person that were not up to my standards, nor the organizations. I might have gotten some ‘pushback’; but not the ‘over the top’ emotional reaction that ensued.
There were several incredible moments with Eckhart Tolle and Oprah this Monday night. I’d like to focus on the recurring theme of Presence. The show began with 10 seconds of paying attention to breath. Watch the clip.
Throughout the evening Tolle referred back to the same practice over and over. At the end of the 10 seconds look at Oprah’s face. She is truly present, as are we, if we participated in the practice.
Later in the program, Tolle offers us another practice:
I have a suspicion that the next 8 classes will keep circling around to the same theme over and over. I don’t have a problem with that. It takes practice.
I guess the biggest challenge is maintaining presence in the midst of action and interaction. It’s one thing to close your eyes and feel your breath or your hands when you are alone. It’s quite another to be interacting with a team of people or to be in the center of a crisis and to be present to your breath, your hands, and your inner aliveness. It’s so easy to get carried away in a torrent of thoughts.
A great moment in Monday’s class came when a caller from Qatar asked whether Tolle thought people were ready to “waste time” being still if they were already successful.
Tolle answered the following way:
There is quite a bit of wisdom in his answer. When it comes to change we often make it abstract…”will other people do this or that…”
If you haven’t tuned into Oprah’s conversation with Eckhart Tolle and the worldwide discussion of his new book “A New Earth”; I highly recommend it.
The first live broadcast to a class of more than half a million people around the world took place Monday night. You can download the hour and half video from Oprah’s site or from iTunes. There will be (9) more Monday night classes.
I invite you to read the book, it is absolutely the best of this genre and is a genuine tool to help us awaken. Register for the class and download the workbook.
I look forward to sharing the energy and awareness of “A New Earth” on this blog.
