We're Always Standing Somewhere

How we see others determines our experience of them. Whether it’s students, colleagues, spouses, kids, parents, or anyone else, our interactions with others are guided by how we see them.

How we see others is so much less about who they are than it is about what we think of them. Our judgments, expectations, insecurities, fears, and memories - these are the things we engage with when we think we’re engaging with another person.

This is a really good mechanism that we’ve evolved! As an effective strategy to be safe, we judge others, we judge ourselves, and we judge situations.

But we live in a time where most of us don’t need to be on guard nearly as much as we are. Consequently, we’re not as happy, fulfilled, or effective in our relationships as we could be.

I’m a more positive and understanding teacher when I let down the guards and trust myself in the moment. I’m a more generous and compassionate father when I let loose the defenses. I’m a more loving and supporting spouse when I relax into trust. And I’m able to do all those things when I take as truth that there’s dignity, beauty, wholeness, and light within each of my students, colleagues, family members, and others.

Here is a process available to help us open up even in those times where the defenses cloud our vision and put space between us and others. It’s starts when we’re in a place of calm relaxation:

1. First, get committed. Get committed to being present and engaged with the people actually in front of us. Get committed to honoring the light within others just as we’d like them to honor the light within us. Without a commitment or an intention, we’re leaving our being up to chance or our momentary and conditioned emotions and thoughts.

2. Second, pick a place to stand - compassion, support, generosity, ease, creativity, fun, or whatever. Pick a couple words that will remind you of the profound opportunity it is to engage with another. Pick a couple words that will be a gift to you and others.

3. Third, trust your insight. Trust that the intelligence that guided you to pick these particular words won’t let you down. Trust that you’ll thrive in the face of anything that arises, so long as you continue to stand where you’ve chosen to stand out of inspiration, creativity, and generosity.

4. Finally, check in with a friend or coach. Reflect on your experiences with curiosity. Notice where the safety mechanism caught you or where you successfully navigated challenging thoughts or feelings. Acknowledge the wins, the setbacks, and the growth.

You see, we’re always standing somewhere. If it’s not a place that we’ve consciously picked for ourselves, then it’s a default place selected unconsciously by our powerful mechanism to survive.

Our survival mechanisms are great, but they limit our capacity to experience love, joy, and insight. Additionally, the people in our lives are deserving of so much more than we give them when we’re mostly looking out for ourselves.

Let’s live intentionally, give our attention generously, and love creatively in our relationships.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

The Business of Making Magic

I’m in the business of making magic.

In the classrooms and hallways at school, teachers daily engage students in conversations that expand awareness and understanding of ourselves and the universe. People and the world look a little different by the end of class, and that means our experience of life has altered. That’s magical.

Magic also happens in coaching. I have an hour-long conversation with a client and my only job is to remain fully present and point and poke wherever insight moves me to do so. By the end of the conversation both my client and I are in a magical space, one where new openings for being and acting, enjoyment and effectiveness, ease and insight have arisen.

The same is true in my workshops - like stepping into a Disney theme park for the first time, workshop participants (and me!) often leave our conversations seeing life with clearer vision and a greater connection and access to what’s possible.

When we expand our awareness outside of our own default and conditioned thinking, we experience magic. The magic of nature, the magic of love, the magic of creativity, the magic of self-expression, and so on.

While I’m in the business of making magic, you’re also in a business where magic can be made.

Magic can be made in conversation.

The phrase “talk is cheap” comes to mind, but talk isn’t cheap: we cheapen talk. (Thanks to the Landmark Forum for this distinction.) We know when we’re playing it safe, when we’re dishonoring our commitments and word we’ve given. We also know when we’re unwilling to share deeply or vulnerably, or when we’re unwilling to poke and point to offer a friend, a colleague, or ourselves a broader perspective.

And it’s 100% okay to continue to communicate descriptively, to talk about things.

However, the possibility is nearly always present in a conversation to access insight and new ways of being and acting in our lives. That's making magic.

This blog continues to be an opportunity for me to make magic, and I’m so grateful to have an audience. Thank you for reading. ❤️

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. ❤️