The Puppet Strings of Achievement

A friend graduated from Stanford University in Computer Science. She was raised in a family and culture that highly valued academic and professional achievement, and she followed that path for years.

At her recent 20 year college reunion, she saw how successful so many of her peers had continued to be - high-paying jobs and all the great status symbols and common measures of success. She also saw the common drawbacks of an achievement-focused life: stress, depression, sadness, overworking, and hopelessness.

This is achievement without insight.

As my friend pointed out, even if their resumé is impeccable, the best of the best often don't actually feel good about life.

Whether it’s academic, financial, sexual, or otherwise, achievement without insight is living life guided by the invisible strings of a puppeteer.

That puppeteer is cultural, familial, religious, peer, and even self-imposed conditioning. When we’re unaware of the hidden, conditioned values behind our actions, we are likely living at the effect of achievement without insight.

I’m not suggesting that academic, financial, and other achievements are unworthy goals to strive for. I’m suggesting we be clear and intentional about our values and the goals we choose to measure achievement by. And our values and goals must support our well-being and the well-being of others - this is what we constantly crave anyway.

In other words, I’m suggesting that we live intentionally from values and goals chosen from the inside-out.

Though it may not feel like it, one positive outcome of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the growing awareness of the well-being gap for educators - it's not enough for educators to be expected to get the job done; we must get the job done AND maintain our well-being.

The challenge we will eventually come to face as a society is that simply treating the symptoms of this well-being gap is insufficient: we need to begin guiding our children and adults to reliable access to well-being from the inside-out, and we need to start now.

That’s not possible as long as we’re living life guided by the puppet strings of invisible achievement values and goals. As long as we’re living life guided by these puppet strings, well-being and love for life may remain a distant hope.

What are a few goals that would support your sense of physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being? I suggest that you prioritize these goals now.

Thank you so much for reading. ❤️

Peace of Mind in the Heart of the Storm

“Have you ever figured anything out with this type of thinking before?”

My client was exhausted from a stressful week of work. Like many educators, he is able to get into the zone when working with students and colleagues, but outside those interactions, he sometimes falls into the trap of self-criticism, imposter-syndrome, and other fear-based thought patterns.

When I asked him that question - “Have you ever figured anything out with this type of thinking before?” - he laughed and said no. Yet we try and we try and we try and we try to figure it all out with that frenetic and stressed thinking!

This type of thinking isn’t comfortable. We hang out in it in hopes that it’ll give us clarity, but it never really helps! In fact, what we really want in those moments is peace of mind, and it’s these thought patterns themselves that keep us from experiencing that peace of mind.

In a post from July 5th, Trusting Our Inner Genius, I briefly described our two ways of thinking, focused and diffuse. Insight nearly always arises from the diffuse thinking that comes to us, not the focused thinking that we do.

In those times of high mental energy when we’re desperately searching for insight to help us with a challenge, the best thing for us to do is actually relax our bodies and minds and allow diffuse thinking to handle it; in other words, allow insight to arise.

Our inner wisdom has access to all that we know - the conscious thinking, the unconscious thinking, the conditioned thinking, and the creative thinking. Relaxing our mind allows that inner wisdom to do its job, and it does its job much much better than our focused thinking.

Here’s my favorite part of my conversation with that client this week. Despite his previous clear and valid perspective that he’d had a stressful week and that his state of mind was definitely at the effect of it all, once he saw the insight into the nature of his own thinking, he was able to relax and get his work done more enjoyably. Apparently his stressed state of mind wasn't about the week he'd had at all - it was about the quality of his thinking in the moment.

Now it’s on him and on each of us to discover ways of finding peace of mind in the midst of a thought-storm. Peace of mind is settling into a physical and mental state of well-being that allows that hyper-focused thinking to dissipate. I've got lots of options to offer, but we each have to find the ways that work best for us.

Recommended exercise: explore ways to access peace of mind regardless of the storm seemingly raging around and within us. Pro-tip: it’s nearly always the stories and narratives that we wrap ourselves up in and try to solve that lead to the stress, not the other way around.

The best way to weather the storm is with peace of mind.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

Love Isn't Something We "Catch"

“Mick and Amy, your superpower is Acknowledgment.”

At our outgoing meeting as the lead couple on a board of directors, my wife and I were thanked for reliably bringing our “acknowledgment superpower” to our work with the organization.

Acknowledgment is a creative expression of gratitude for what another brings or has brought; not what they've brought as a thing, but what they've brought as a way of being. Acknowledgment is also a gift and an opportunity to both giver and the receiver.

This Thanksgiving holiday, however, I want to share the source of our acknowledgment superpower: Presence, Gratitude, and Love.

Love and Gratitude are two sides of the same hand - if you Love, you’re Grateful; if you’re Grateful, you Love. In all of the following statements, you can replace Love with Gratitude.

Though Love seems like a feeling we “catch” from our circumstances or external conditions, Love actually flares up from within.

Love doesn’t need a target; we can Love for the sake of the feeling itself.

Like learning to create music with an instrument, scenes with a brush, or language with a pen, we can learn to create Love with our body and create Love with our mind.

Fear is designed to protect something we Love; seeing the Love behind the fear helps dissolve the fear and connect us with Love. We can foster Gratitude for the gift of fear.

Our Love is a gift to others, and it’s also a gift to ourselves.

Love is our destination, our vehicle, and our road.

All we ever need to do is find something in this moment to Love. There’s always something present that’s worthy of our Love.

Love only ever exists in this present moment.

Thank you so much for joining me on this blog journey each week. I’m grateful to get to do something I love and to share it with interested people. Thank you. ❤️