Get Happy with Jessica
I have several posts on this blog about the power of gratitude but no words have the impact of this short video.
I climbed onto the bathroom counter today and did my own “inverse rant.” It felt great!
Why work for nothing?
Much too often, business owners and salespeople eagerly run off to complete assignments given to us by employees, prospects, or clients. We are asked for something, we feel like we should know how to provide it, and we eagerly set to work trying to produce something that might please them.
My experience is that it pays big dividends to slow things down by asking many clarifying questions. Exactly what information will satisfy a prospect who is looking for a reference? Or comparable experience? Or assurance of financial stability? How much ownership or participation in an eventual sale will satisfy a key employee? What commission, recognition, or work/life adjustment will motivate our best salesperson?
My CEO executive coaching group members have learned that (more…)
What Makes a Great Teacher? Leadership
I noticed something interesting about executive effectiveness while reading an article in The Atlantic Monthly titled, What Makes a Great Teacher? The researchers identified specific traits of the most effective teachers, traits that I immediately recognized as characteristic of exceptional business leaders. Try reading the following excerpt from the article while substituting “manager” for “teacher” and “employees” for “students.”
First, great teachers tended to set big goals for their students. They were also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness. For example, when Farr called up teachers who were making remarkable gains and asked to visit their classrooms, he noticed he’d get a similar response from all of them: “They’d say, ‘You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you—I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure and changing my reading workshop because I think it’s not working as well as it could.’ When you hear that over and over, and you don’t hear that from other teachers, you start to form a hypothesis.” Great teachers, he concluded, constantly (more…)
Meditation Builds the Brain
Brain regions associated with attention, interoception and sensory processing were thicker in meditation participants than matched controls, including the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula, areas shown to be involved in the integration of emotion and cognition. Meditators may be able to use this self-awareness to more successfully navigate through potentially stressful encounters that arise throughout the day.
Between-group differences in prefrontal cortical thickness were most pronounced in older participants, suggesting that meditation might offset age-related cortical thinning. Finally, the thickness of two regions correlated with meditation experience. Connections between sensory cortices and emotion cortices play a crucial role in processing of emotionally salient material and adaptive decision making.
The main focus of Insight meditation is the cultivation of attention and a mental capacity termed ‘mindfulness’, which is a specific nonjudgemental awareness of present-moment stimuli without cognitive elaboration. This form of meditation does not utilize mantra or chanting. Participants were not monks, but rather typical Western meditation practitioners who … meditated an average of once a day for 40 minutes, while pursuing traditional careers in fields such as healthcare and law [some were meditation or yoga teachers].
—Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness
by Sara W. Lazar, Massachusetts General Hospital
Catherine E. Kerr, Harvard Medical School
Rachel H. Wasserman, Yale University and others.
See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.
Create More Time by Tracking Your Goals
The research suggests that the brain has more control over its own perception of passing time than people may know. For example, many people have the defeated sense that it was just yesterday that they made last year’s resolutions; the year snapped shut, and they didn’t start writing that novel or attend even one Pilates class. But it is precisely because they didn’t act on their plan that the time seemed to have flown away.
By contrast, the new research suggests, focusing instead on goals or challenges that were in fact engaged during the year — whether or not they were labeled as “resolutions” — gives the brain the opportunity to fill out the past year with memories, and perceived time.
Finally, the mind is perfectly capable of interpreting a fast-forward year, or decade, as something other than a frittering away of opportunities for self-improvement. In another series of experiments published in Psychological Science, psychologists found that when people were tricked into believing that more time had passed than was really the case, they assumed they must have been having more fun. The perception heightened their enjoyment of music and eased their annoyance at doing menial tasks.
The mind is a wonderful sense-making device: it takes ambiguous or confusing information and simplifies it according to rules of thumb.
–Aaron M. Sackett
Psychologist
University of St. Thomas
How the Brain Perceives Time
New York Times
Learn how to set goals: click here.
I am me because you are you
A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.
…
One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity.
We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.
i am he as you are he as
you are me and we are all together!–John Lennon
I am the walrus
Philosopher John Searle Created Foundations of Executive Coaching
“How is it that when I make these noises I succeed in performing speech acts or communication?” he asks. “That’s the philosophy of language.” That investigation led to an exploration of consciousness. “How is it possible that the stuff inside my skull can cause consciousness, and I can direct thoughts?” he asks.
That pursuit led to considerations about society. “We create society with language. We use language to create marriage and cocktail parties and money and so on,” says Searle. “These things all exist, but only because we think they exist.”
—Philosopher John Searle
Reflects on Half Century at Berkeley
College of Letters & Science
STUDY: Mindful Meditation Reduces Stress and Anxiety
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) consists of multiple forms of mindfulness practice, including formal and informal meditation practice, as well as hatha yoga.
Although there is no explicit instruction in changing the nature of thinking, or emotional reactivity, MBSR has been shown to:
- diminish the habitual tendency to emotionally react to and
ruminate about transitory thoughts and physical sensations;- reduce stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms;
- modify distorted patterns of self-view;
- amplify immune functioning;
- enhance behavioral self-regulation; and
- improve volitional orienting of attention.
Recent functional neuroimaging studies of MBSR have provided evidence of reduced narrative and conceptual and increased experiential and sensory self-focus at post-MBSR and decreased conceptual–linguistic self-referential processing from pre- to post-MBSR.
The formal practice consists of:
- breath-focused attention,
- body scan-based attention to the transient nature of sensory experience, (more…)
Tony’s contribution to my growth
I recently had the privilege of providing executive coaching to a dynamic global entrepreneur selected by the TED Foundation for one of their distinguished fellowships. He shares, below, some of his experience with my executive coaching.
Tony combines entrepreneurial advice and Eastern wisdom to deliver a holistic coaching experience. He is a keen listener; often, I would begin a session talking about my weekend or some other topic that felt like small talk–and I would be stunned by Tony’s ability to draw out patterns and lessons from the tiniest details of my life.
Within a few weeks of working with Tony, I accomplished the following:
- Committed to a series of improvements in my sales process and marketing strategy, that eventually lead to one million dollars in leads.
- Recommitted to a meditation practice, which I have continued.
- I was able to see clearly how my personal and work lives were one and the same; that I manifested the same behavior regardless of the situation.
I will always be grateful for Tony’s contribution to my growth; I can think of few ways to start 2010 that would have been more powerful than working with him.
—Sandeep Sood, Executive Director
Monsoon Company
Meditation for empathy and insight
…integrating thinking and feeling is a desirable mental state, but many people have a hard time reasoning clearly when they’re upset, or bringing emotion into conceptual activities like planning.
Researchers have recently found that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is very involved with weaving thought and feeling together. They’ve also shown that the conscious control of attention is centered in the ACC, which is measurably strengthened by activities that train attention such as meditation. In another example, studies have shown that tuning into the emotional states of others–a central component of empathy–depends on the activity of the insula. The insula also handles interoception, the sensing of the internal state of the body, so mental activities such as sensory awareness activate and eventually thicken the insula, and thereby increase empathy.
In effect, investigators have found that a method used for one purpose (meditation, or sensory awareness) can stimulate and strengthen brain regions that are also involved with another purpose (integrating thinking and feeling, or empathy).
—Rick Hanson, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, author, and teacher with
a great interest in the intersection of psychology, neurology, and Buddhism.He has written and taught extensively about the essential inner skills of personal well-being,psychological growth, and contemplative practice–as well as about relationships,family life, and raising children. A summa cum laude graduate of UCLA,Rick did management consulting before earning his Ph.D.
See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.
Status, Stress, and Disease
Lab rats can teach us a lot about the rat race at the office.
I had the great privilege of talking with eminent psychoneuroimmunologist Dr. Lydia Temoshok last night in Reston, at a Chez Nous event. Dr. Temoshok has been a pioneer in the scientific study of stress on our immune systems and its impact on the progress of diseases, especially HIV/AIDS.
She reviewed for us the classic result published in Science in 1983. Three groups of rats were studied. One group was subjected to shocks administered from the floor of their cage but they also had a lever that, when pressed by a rat, would stop the shock. A separate group felt exactly the same shocks as the first group but had no relief lever to press. The third group of rats had no shocks. The rats subjected to uncontrollable shocks suffered suppressed immune systems. The rats subjected to shocks with some control over their environmental stress, group one, not only did better than the rats without control but–by at least one measure–had a better immune response than the control group of rats with no shocks at all. The conclusions of the study have been repeated and extended by many other experiments, including some that showed this change in immune system response affected the speed at which cancer tumors grew.
I asked Dr. Temoshok if it was sensible to compare these conclusions with the famous Whitehall Studies of British civil servants. These long-term studies (more…)
Answering a Cry for Help With a Touch of Humanity
This is a wonderful short article by a friend of mine, published in The Washington Post.
I turned to look and saw three store employees around a sobbing middle-aged woman. I returned to the checkout.
…
I thought to myself, we lose something by being afraid of each other.
–Read the story here:
Answering a Cry for Help With a Touch of Humanity
By Margaret Cary, MD
How to Conduct a “Customer Listening Session”
From the moment I could talk,
I was told that I should listen.–Cat Stevens
Father and Son
I assume that you already know and do not need to be convinced that:
- Your most profitable sales and easiest growth come from existing clients.1
- Unhappy customers are 5-20 times more likely to tell others about their bad experience than satisfied customers are to spread good news.2
A simple, high-return method of learning from your happy and unhappy customers, of knowing your customers better while making them more loyal to you is to listen to them. Customers are people and people love being listened to.
If you listen closely enough, your customers will explain your business to you.
— Peter Schutz
Porsche CEO
1981-1987
There are many ways to do this. I hope your (more…)
Positions Ponder. People Purchase.
I hesitate to share the details of my first breakthrough in selling because I once thought I was the only salesperson with this problem and, to put it bluntly, the reason for the problem makes me look like a jerk. What follows may be of no use to you because you’re probably one of the people who learned this in kindergarten or before.
Years ago, my business was deteriorating fast for lack of customers. One of my suppliers offered to become my sales coach to get me through the slump. She was a very effective salesperson, so I eagerly agreed. She had me demonstrate my pitch (I was still doing pitches in those days, but that’s another story.). She then tried repeatedly to alter my approach. I kept missing the point and she kept trying to make it simpler and more basic, searching for some fundamental, common ground where we could meet and communicate. She was running out of ideas and we were both low on patience.
I sensed a shift as she willed herself back from the brink of exasperation. Phyllis relaxed her shoulders, leaned toward me, and said, brightly, in her most charming southern accent, “Tony, do you like people?”
I knew the right answer, but it is foolish to lie to your coach, so I replied, “No, Phyllis, mostly I don’t.”
She was astonished into a rare silence. She sank back into her chair for support and appraised me cautiously, as if confronting a strange and dangerous beast. “Tony,” she asked, “why (more…)
What About Me?
Mesmerizing and provocative meditation to modern music from “The Sakyong, Jamgön Mipham Rinpoche, one of Tibet’s highest and most respected incarnate lamas.”
Sakyong Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche, Jampal Trinley Dradul (born Osel Rangdrol Mukpo in 1962) is the head of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage and Shambhala International, a worldwide network of urban Buddhist meditation centers, retreat centers, monasteries, a university, and other enterprises.
See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.
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