by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches, Recommended Books, Stress Management
One of my favorite radio programs and podcasts is the non-denominational, non-doctrinaire Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett. Krista interviews deep thinkers with important ideas about the essential human experiences of awe, eternity, and community. Every show leads me to reflect deeply and, very often, to live a happier, more involved life. I consider it one of the most nurturing practices of my continual development as an executive coach.
A recent guest was Esther Sternberg, Ph.D., an expert on immunology and stress. She relates the remarkable history of stress’s role in health and healing. It seems that every culture has always known that emotional and physical stressors contribute to (more…)
by Tony Mayo | Recommended Books, Stress Management
The Relaxation Response
by Herbert Benson, M.D.
with Miriam Z. Klipper
Reading and using The Relaxation Response may have saved my life in 1989. It may also have destroyed my life, for it turned out to be the first paving stone on a spiritual path which led away from much of what was accepted and familiar. I left behind the person I had known myself to be and became a person I could not have predicted. The path brought me to most of what I treasure today.
I was a thoroughly Western, rational, mechanist, Ayn Rand Objectivist, John-Wayne-style “I’ll do it myself” individualist whose life was thoroughly unsatisfying. Each day I came home from a thankless, stressful job to a cold and chaotic home. I would sit on the couch and feel as though worries and disappointments were (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches, Stress Management
Reason is what tells us to ignore the present and live in the future. So all we do is make plans. We think that somewhere there are going to be greener pastures. It’s crazy. Heaven is nothing but a grand, monumental instance of the future.
Listen, now is good. Now is wonderful.
–Mel Brooks
A wonderful–and apparently unique–skill we humans have is the ability to weave the recalled events of the past and the imagined events of the future into a meaningful story. Tragically, we are often the victims of this skill though we could be its master. Most of us spend more time in this story of memory and speculation than we do in our present experience. We overlook “now” as we endlessly evade the present by engaging in regret, worry, or hope.
I saw a small example of this recently in my CEO executive coaching group. One member mentioned that (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches, Quotes and Aphorisms, Recommended Books, Stress Management
Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
widely attributed to Nathaniel Hawthorne
Don’t aim at success–the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run–in the long run, I say–success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.
Viktor Frankl (1905 – 1997) in
Man’s Search for Meaning
by Tony Mayo | Quotes and Aphorisms, Stress Management
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us — it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
–Marianne Williamson
Return to Love
Widely mis-attributed to Nelson Mandela
by Tony Mayo | Quotes and Aphorisms, Stress Management
“When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde
by Tony Mayo | Recommended Books, Stress Management
The Dilbert Principle
by Scott Adams
My wife gave me this book when it first came out in hardcover. At the time I worked in a cubicle for a large international corporation and had a boss we all called “Meathead.” I told my wife, “Thanks, but I don’t want to read this book. It looks too cynical and depressing. Please, return it.”
I now run my own company from an office with a view of trees and deer. A few weeks ago a vendor trying to get my business gave me a free copy of this book, so I read it.
Suddenly, I recognized that The Dilbert Principle is hilarious and insightful.
by Scott Adams
To purchase through Amazon.com, click here.
See other recommended books.
_____________________
See the Dilbert archive. click here.
by Tony Mayo | Quotes and Aphorisms, Stress Management
“Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intention to hurl it at your enemy; you are the one burned and harmed.”
Attributed to the Buddha.
Recent Comments