Tag: presence

Once

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

The other day, I was waiting for my dogs to finish their Very Important Search for Squirrels in the woods by our elementary school. I was passing the time by watching two kids being pushed on the swing by two dads.

For those of you not familiar with this activity, swing-pushing is a relentless job. Any kid under the age of 6 will happily be pushed on a swing 60 minutes or more, rain or shine, without any need to stop.

If you’re the parent, and if it’s cold or windy or sunny or hot, or if you just find 60 minutes of pushing to be a long time, it can be easy to get impatient, or even frustrated.

“I can’t believe I’m stuck doing this [repetitive, boring, whatever] thing again!”

It helps to remember that nearly everything only happens once.

Once in this context.

Once at this stage of my life.

Once with this set of people.

And so it goes outside the playground as well.

Having a hard time at work? Once.

Having challenges in a relationship? Once.

Having some great things happening in your life mixed in with things that are stressful, or distracting? Once.

One day, you stop going to the swings and never look back.

One day, a decade has passed—for you, for them—and you can hardly imagine what it would be like to be a dad who spent most of his free time pushing swings (or solving this particular problem, or working with this group of people on this hard but interesting thing…).

It’s so easy to forget that the here and now whips by us, that we can never step in the same river twice.

The reminder is to shift our perception from “I have to do this thing [seemingly] forever” to “I get to do this thing with these people in this way once and only once.”

Morning Walk

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Each day I see

One frame of the seasons unfolding.

A movie reel running so slowly I might miss it if I don’t pay attention.

Greens to yellows to reds

Leaves flitting down lazily

A gentle, one-time, kaleidoscope snowfall.

Trees become bare, preparing to stand stoically all winter.

To stop bending in the wind.

Each day the sun has a new angle, the light a new flavor.

Each day is a chance for quiet, for reflection, for breath, for presence

A chance I sometimes take and sometimes miss.

Each day I notice my body.

The little things that ache and, less often, the big things that don’t.

Each day I am the quiet before everyone else’s day has begun,

The rhythm of early morning before the school bells have rung.

Each day, near the end, I appreciate this time

Thankful to the canine whose fault it is I’m up so early.

Tomorrow morning, the alarm will ring, earlier than I’d like

And I will think, “Again?”

The lines between a chore, a discipline, a practice, and a blessing are blurry indeed.

 

Woods at sunrise Frost on the field Flowers first frost My shadow, and my shadow

Longitudinal Learning

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Our days are made up of repeating patterns.

The same walk we take, or transportation we ride in. The same elevators we stand in and lunch spots we frequent. The places we take our kids.

Try this: instead of going on auto-pilot in these spaces (or, worse, reflexively taking out your phone), stay present.

Use your eyes, your ears, your nose, to take in your surroundings.

If you do this, in time you’ll discover:

  1. Things you’ve literally never seen before, even if you’ve walked by them hundreds of time
  2. Subtle changes in a seemingly fixed landscape, changes that reveal surprising truths over time

Our brains are wired for pattern recognition, sense-making and storytelling.

This also means that we create shortcuts, losing the nuance of wherever and whenever we are, calling it “this elevator”, “that bus,” “that conference room” as if it’s fixed for eternity.

But our reality is not fixed, it is ever-changing, if only we take the time to notice.

Here’s an experiment: imagine each day in these “same places” is one frame in a movie that plays over time.

Then, imagine yourself watching that movie, with one frame from each day, over weeks, months or years.

What story would unfold?

What surprising changes would you witness?

And how much of what evolves comes from changes in the landscape versus changes in the viewer?

Just Listening

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Nearly every morning when I’m at home, I take my 55-pound rescue dog, Birdie, for a 45+ minute walk. We typically cover two to three miles.

This is not our typical morning walk, this is at 11,500 feet in Colorado. But you get the idea.

I don’t wear headphones, and I don’t listen to anything. It’s just time for us to walk together, with her on and off the leash searching for squirrels and bunnies, and me just walking.

Near the end of a recent walk, in a patch of woods near our local library, I took a moment to stop and listen.

I realized that the sound of crickets was as loud as it might be in the middle of the night. A few birds chirped. I could hear the hum of the occasional car driving my in the busy street nearby.

My experience of stopping, and noticing, was remarkable. It felt like someone had flipped a switch and turned on all of these sounds that had, of course, been there all along. They had been drowned out, this day and every day, by the endless chatter in my head.

The fact is that we regularly, habitually, separate ourselves from quiet and from being present.

We scan social media and our email. We reflexively pop in headphones whenever we walk anywhere. And, even when we have a chance to experience quiet, we let our heads be filled with an endless cycle of repetitive thoughts.

It can feel difficult to break this pattern, but intentionally listening is actually an easy door to walk through.

Listening gives us something specific to pay attention to, and that something is full of beauty and is ever-changing.

Why not try it, right now?

Wherever and whenever you’re reading this, try this: take 30 seconds, right now to listen.  Give yourself this moment.

[PAUSE, STOP READING, CLOSE YOUR EYES, AND LISTEN FOR 30 SECONDS]

 

 

 

Maybe you heard silence, maybe you heard the whir of air conditioning, maybe you heard the bustle around you, maybe you even heard a bird chirping.

This level of connection to the present is available to us every second of every day.

Try not to miss it.

Learning from Imperfect People

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We do it all the time. Ariana Huffington, Clayton Christensen, Nandan Nilekani, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala…we have something important to learn from each of them.

And yet, each of them may be flawed in some (or many) ways. This doesn’t mean they have nothing to teach.

And yet, when we encounter non-famous, also flawed people, we are often quick to judge. We instinctively treat them as people we have little to learn from.

They also have a lot to teach us.

There’s something they are great at, something that comes naturally to them, something that makes them special—if we’re open to it.

If nothing else, we can learn from how we find ourselves reacting to them—having a quick mind is one thing, being quick to judgment is something else entirely (and yet they often go together).

Generosity of spirit is a better way to go through the world for so many reasons. One of these reasons is that it helps remove our blinders, allowing us to learn from the person standing right in front of us.

The one who, despite his flaws, we haven’t written off.

Generosity Thresholds

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It’s understood in manufacturing that to be sure you hit a certain standard, your production quality needs to exceed that standard by the amount of the variability of your process.

This means that for processes with high degrees of variability, you need to be way above the standard, so that even when things get messy you’re still staying above the standard. For illustrative purposes, a typical control chart.

In assembly-line manufacturing, the goal is to exceed the standard and to decrease variability, since quality delivered beyond the spec is wasted resource.

I’ve been thinking about how this thinking applies to us as human beings, given how variable we are by nature. It’s true that part of our own deep work – in terms of groundedness, mindfulness, good habits for sleep, food, relationships and health – is to become less variable despite all the vagaries of day to day life.

At the same time, we are (and I certainly am) still, by our very nature, more variable than any manufacturing process. Variability—in our mood, attitude, hopefulness, tolerance, optimism, to name a few—is what makes us human.

And yet there are standards we must hit in terms of how we show up in the world: a minimum threshold for treating everyone with respect, staying fully present, always seeing the best in those around us, being patient, raising others up, being generous of spirit….

And all of this not just because it’s the right thing to do, but also because, for any of these core behaviors, that one time we fail to meet the mark on something so fundamental can, like one bad meal at a restaurant, destroy trust that’s taken years to build.

The only solution I see is to show up with an over-abundance of all the behaviors that matter. We show up with, and practice, excessive respect, presence, patience, raising others up, being generous of spirit and seeing the best of those around us. So that we are sure that, each and every moment of every day, we are above the emotional line.

This extra generosity, kindness, respect, patience, and care are the opposite of the “wasted” resource when we over-deliver on manufacturing quality—indeed they replicate and ripple out in positive ways that are impossible to imagine or quantify.

Plus, living above and beyond in how we show up to others is self-reinforcing. Over time, we  continually and effortlessly keep raising the bar.

The Forever Problem

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On the days I’m really sleep deprived everything seems impossible. White space is useless. My patience is low. I overreact.

And if I’m having a week or weeks with something that is physically wrong–an illness or an injury–my “impossible” stories get amplified. Especially in the case of illness, “What if I feel this way forever?” is a crushing thought that can spiral.

And then, if I’m lucky, I get better. Enough sleep or adjustment or medication or healing makes an ailment go away. My new “now” is replenished with possibility.

It’s the most human of reactions to over-attribute to our present “now.” We’re so confused about how time, and it’s passage, works that “now” often feels like forever.

So when we’re dealing with an unresolved problem, when we’re making sense of the “no way” that we thought would be a “sure!”, when a key decision maker is a long way from agreeing with our position, when ten potential investors all turned us down in a row…

…we jump, without noticing, to forever.

“What if this ‘no’ is forever? What if I will always be told ‘no’!?”

You won’t be.

You’ve just been told “no” now.

With some combination of good fortune, new information, different tactics, and the simple passage of time, forever things will shift.

Tomorrow’s now won’t be the same as today’s.

P-walking

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Twice in my life I’ve almost been hit by a car while crossing the street. Both times I was looking at my phone.

This is not a joke, I remember my heart pounding and how stupid and thankful I felt to have dodged a bullet, and how I swore never to do it again.

I noticed yesterday morning while biking to work what an epidemic this is, how many people are crossing New York City streets looking straight down into their screens. I’m not talking about listening to music or talking on the phone, I’m talking about reading the screen while you’re crossing the street, sometimes against the light.

99 times out of a 100, as you cross while checking your Facebook or Instagram feed or reading a text, nothing is going to happen. Maybe 999 out of 1,000.

What about that one time though?

It’s a dumb thing to do, an unnecessary risk that should be at least as bad as J-Walking or texting while driving.

Be safe out there.

Whatever it is you’re looking at can wait.

Spring

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Right here.

Right now.

At this moment.

I stand.

My feet are on the ground.

Breath enters my nose.

I hear.

Birds. So many of them, in wild conversation. As I keep walking, I notice more and more. Are they always there and I just don’t pay attention?

Cars. The sound of their tires humming against the pavement, each wave of sound a bit different from the last.

I see.

Branches swaying gently. Leaves emerging, daring to show themselves after a long, long winter.

I breathe. In. Out.

I feel.

My clothes on my body.

A first spring breeze on my face.

A hint of heat.

Look what happens when I stop, just for a second.

Look how much is around me.

This kind of moment is always here, available to me. This quality of attention is something I carry with me.

If only I remembered that more often.

I am. Here. Now.

It’s Easy When the End is Near

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For those of you who meditate, you’ll have noticed that it’s easy at the beginning and at the end. 

If I open my eyes and discover I only have one minute left before the timer goes off, I am SO Zen for that last minute. 

What this teaches us is that our challenge, often, isn’t that we don’t know how to do the actions we’d like to do. 

Our challenge is how easily we get distracted, how often we lose sight of our purpose or intention, how hard it is to stay grounded when we get triggered by someone’s words or actions. 

This means that the most important difference between the hacker and the expert isn’t the expert’s greater skill or technique, it is that the expert is able to practice her art regardless of the chaos and challenges of her surroundings.