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Excerpt from "The Mindful Leader" by Michael Carroll

Enjoy this excerpt from a recording that stresses the importance of mindfulness in the workplace, particularly among those in position of authority, from Michael Carroll's The Mindful Leader: 10 Principles for Bringing Out the Best in Ourselves and Others.

Part One Introduction: Inspiring the Best in Ourselves and Others

As workplace leader, it seems that we are always trying to grow the business, meet the deadline, close the deal, and finish the project. And the speed and pace can be intense - getting it done faster, better, cheaper, and smarter. Such a style of leadership with all its ambition and energy has its benefits no doubt, but it also has a profound blind spot: in our relentless pursuit of “success,” we too often forget to live our lives. When we lead a career that is sharply focused on being more successful, more admired, or just more comfortable, we can deceive ourselves into neglecting the world around us. We end up managing our lives like projects rather than actually living them. Consequently, for mindful leaders, cultivating this ability to be at work and throughout our lives is not just a nice idea or an interesting thing to do. Rather, by learning to be at work we discover how to stop kidding ourselves and respect the world around us. In the next several chapters we will explore the importance of learning to open respectfully and realistically to our workplace as it unfolds in the present moment.

 

Chapter One: Opening Up to Workplace Realities

The kinds of leaders we encounter at work are generally what we call “top-down” leaders. We are all pretty familiar with this approach. There is the boss who has the “top” job and tries to get others “down” in the organization to do things. Small organizations such as medical teams and big organizations such as governments all have a leader at the top and others down below who are expected to follow. All of us at times are the leader and at other times the follower, and when it’s our turn to lead, we work hard to get results. Surprisingly, becoming the boss at the top is usually more distressing than we expect, but nonetheless, we do our best to get the job done. While overly simplistic, this is the kind of leadership we normally encounter at work, and we tend to take such an approach pretty much for granted. This kind of “top-down” leadership can be quite effective for managing organizations. Setting priorities, allocating resources, directing strategy – these and much more can best be done when we, as leaders, have a wide view from atop an organization. And when top-down leadership works, we all feel pretty good. We know what’s expected of us, we have a clear sense of purpose, and we all pull in the same direction. But things don’t always go so smoothly at work, and instead of pulling in the same direction, we can sometimes feel as if we have lost our way: we can feel “misled” and a bit discouraged, as if a burdensome and limiting “lid” were placed on top of us and our workplace. Lids are common at work: unreasonable deadlines, rude colleagues, careless managers, onerous bureaucracy, frivolous demands – unfortunately, the list is long and familiar. Such lids are permitted to cover organizations when we, as leaders, lose our perspective and become out of touch with the realities of getting the job done. Instead of taking a wide, realistic view of work, we mistakenly hurry through our circumstances, overlooking advice, chasing deadlines, ignoring business facts, and frantically pursuing success. And despite all our good intentions, such a narrow, determined view derives us to put lids of pointless pressure on ourselves and others – demanding results rather than inspiring them, chasing opportunities rather than inviting them, insisting on respect rather than earning it. In the end, when lids are placed on organizations, we can find ourselves losing patience with our lives and in turn trying to conquer or dominate our work rather than accomplish it.

Seth Godin - The Linchpin Session free audio download.

We are honored to offer this Bonus Free Title from Business Guru Seth Godin.  This Linchpin Session recording is 45 minutes of inspired listening, learning and living.

Seth challenges us to think and live outside of the box.

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Excerpt from "Boomer Yoga" by Beryl Bender Birch - Part 1 of 3

Beryl Bender Birch, the renowned yoga instructor who developed "Power Yoga", now brings us "Boomer Yoga" for practitioners "of a certain age."  Following is an excerpt from the introduction from her book Boomer Yoga: Energizing the Years Ahead for Men & Women.

The whole idea for Boomer Yoga started when I realized that I couldn’t exactly do what I used to do in terms of physical activity. My body is changing. Oh my God. That was one hell of a realization. I mean, I wasn’t exactly geriatric but there were subtle alterations. And it wasn’t about discovering a gray hair or a wrinkle. Those things don’t seem to bother me. Since my primary physical activity was a pretty athletic form of the yoga asanas (the practice of the yoga postures) that I had been doing  since l980 and that had inspired my first book, Power Yoga, it was in my yoga practice that I first began to notice changes to my body.

Those subtle changes had probably been going on for some time. And now they had become a little less subtle. In the past, I resisted change like mad and went ballistic when unfortunate things happened. I found that that really didn’t get me too far. After years of practicing being with what is, as yoga directs us to do, I sat down, face to face, with change. One day, just after coming out of rest at the end of my yoga practice, I sat up  laughing. My right hip was really bothering me and restricting my range of motion. I thought to myself, Oh boy, I’ll have to start teaching boomer yoga, a practice for all of us whose bodies are changing. Boom, there ya go — that’s how it happens, a bolt fromthe blue — “boomer yoga.“ I’m a couple of years ahead of the first boomers, but as I sat there still chuckling to myself, it occurred to me that if this was happening to me, there were a whole bunch of folks out there, part of the most successful and prosperous generation ever, who were going to be coming up on some big changes. And all their money and “stuff,” their apparent security, was not going to bring them the satisfaction they had hoped it would. That satisfaction would only come from knowing who they are, and what really matters in their lives. And ultimately, that’s what yoga teaches. 

Beryl Bender Birch Bio and Links

Excerpt from "Like This: More Poetry of Rumi". Translation by Coleman Barks

Jalaluddin Rumi is recognized as one of the greatest poets of all time. Through his rendering of Rumi’s poems and stories, Coleman Barks has established himself as one of the leading voices for Rumi’s work today.  Enjoy this excerpt of beautiful Rumi poetry from "Like This: More Poetry of Rumi", translated and read by Coleman Barks.

There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of spirit on the body. 

Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell, and the lily, how passionately it needs some wild darling. 

At night, I open the window and ask the moon to come and press its face against mine. 

Breathe into me. 

Close the language door and open the love window. The moon won’t use the door, only the window. 

Watch the dust grains moving in the light near the window. Their dance is our dance. 

We rarely hear that inward music but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless. 

There is a passion in me that doesn’t long for anything from another human being. 

I was given something else, a cap to wear in both worlds. It fell off. 

No matter. 

One morning I went to a place beyond dawn, a source of sweetness that flows and is never less. 

I have been shown a beauty that would confuse both worlds, but I won’t cause that uproar. 

I am nothing but a head set on the ground as a gift for Shams.

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Coleman Barks Bio and Links

Excerpt from "From Out of the Blue" from the Marianne Williamson Lecture Series

We are pleased to present another excerpt from the Marianne Williamson Lecture Series. This talk, titled "From Out of the Blue", was recorded in February 2010 in Los Angeles.

I want to talk tonight about what happens when we look at anything in our own lives  and we recognize that our power to look at what’s happening differently is what transforms it. The Course In Miracles talks about the difference between magic and the miraculous, and there is a lot of magic in the air these days. And magic is just where you use your mental power to bring something to bear. You can do that. I’m not even saying it’s bad, but whatever neuroses are entrenched within your behavioral patterns, the truth of the matter is even if you use magic, i.e. your mental power, to bring forth something good, if once you bring it forth, if it’s not aligned with where you’re really sitting within yourself, you’ll blow it anyway. Are you with me? And so, it’s much better to work from the inside out, to work the miraculous. 

Now, magic is when you basically are taking universal forces and making them your errand boy, you know, I want this, I want this, I want this, I want this, I’m going to concentrate on this, I going to focus on this, I’m going to write that one down, whatever, right? That’s magic. That, once again, is not bad, but spiritually it’s immature. The miraculous is not where you’re coming from a place of I can have this, I can have this, I can have this.   Magic is, “Dear God please do this for me, please do that for me.” The miraculous is, “How can I serve you?” Right, it’s a devotional way. It’s a reverential way. It’s a higher level of spiritual vibration. And what it means is the recognition that as you find within yourself, in a way, that you cannot heal yourself. Because what happens with our neurotic patterns is sometimes it’s as simple as an “aha” moment. Sometimes it’s as simple as, “Oh I get that I do that. I won’t do that anymore.” But if you’re here, you know, and you’ve been here before, you know we’re having a deeper conversation than “Oh I get that I do that. I know I won’t do that anymore.” 

The real despair in life is when not only did you blow it, but you blew it in the same way you’ve blown it before, and you thought you got that about yourself and you thought you had exited the zone of that pattern. Are you with me? And that’s when a neurotic pattern…  that happens also as we get older, because it’s just like anything else -- it becomes kind of entrenched, right? And so it becomes a pattern that’s not so easy to change. 

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Marianne Williamson Bio and Links 

Excerpt from "A Brief History of Everything" by Ken Wilber

We are delighted to offer this excerpt from the recording of A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber.  Wilber is one of the most compelling philosophical thinkers of our times and credited with developing a unified field of consciousness synthesizing the world's great spiritual, psychological, and philosophical traditions.  A Brief History of Everything is part of BetterListen's Shambhala Collection.

Question: Now we were discussing the interior transformations that occur on the way to the global and all of the problems that can prevent the emergence of this global awareness. 

 

Ken Wilber:  That’s right. And we had reached the point where there is a paradigm shift from preconventional to conventional or pre-personal to personal modes of awareness, from fulcrum3 to fulcrum4. Which is especially evidenced in the capacity to take the role of “other,” and in this shift, we see a continuing decrease in egocentrism. In fact, the overall direction of development in humans, the telos of human development is toward less and less egocentric states, but this is true in general. The arch battle in the universe is always evolution versus egocentrism. The evolutionary drive to produce greater depth is synonymous with the drive to overcome egocentrism. To find wider and deeper holes. To unfold greater and greater unions. A molecule overcomes the egocentrism of an atom. A cell overcomes the egocentrism of a molecule. And nowhere is this trend more obvious than in human development itself. 

 

Question:  So one way of looking at evolution is that it’s a continual decline in egocentrism.

 

Ken Wilber:  That’s right, yes, a continual decentering. Howard Gardner gives a perfect summary of the research in this area, and I want to read a short quote from him because it pretty much says it all. He begins by pointing out that development in general is marked by “The decline of egocentrism.” He reports “The young child is totally egocentric. Meaning not that he thinks selfishly only about himself, but to the contrary, that he is incapable of thinking about himself. The egocentric child is unable to differentiate himself from the rest of the world. He hasn’t separated himself out from others or from objects. Thus he feels that others share his pain or his pleasure. That his mumblings will inevitably be understood, that his perspective is shared by all persons, that even animals and plants partake of his consciousness. In playing hide-and-seek, he will hide in broad view of other persons because his egocentrism prevents him from recognizing that others are aware of his location. The whole course of human development can be viewed as a continuing decline in egocentrism.”

 

Question:  So egocentrism or narcissism is greatest at fulcrum 1 and then steadily declines?

 

Ken Wilber:  Yes, exactly. Because at fulcrum 1 differentiation is at its least. Narcissism is at its worst. This self-centrism lessens some, but as the infant’s identity switches from physio centric to bio centric, from fulcrum 1 to fulcrum 2, that is, the child does not treat the physical world as an extension of itself because physical self and physical world are now differentiated. But the emotional self and the emotional world are not yet differentiated. And so the entire emotional world is an extension of the self. Emotional narcissism is at its peak. The bio centric or ecological self of fulcrum 2 is thus still profoundly egocentric. What it’s feeling, the world is feeling. This narcissism is lessened or declines once again with the emergence of the conceptual self, that’s fulcrum 3. The self is now a conceptual ego, but that ego still cannot yet take the role of other. So the early ego is still largely a narcissistic, preconventional egocentric. This declining narcissism can be summarized as going from physio centric to bio centric to egocentric. All three are egocentric in the general sense but less and less so. And the whole egocentric perspective undergoes yet another radical shift with the emergence of the capacity to take the role of other. At which point egocentric shifts to sociocentric. 

 

Question:  In other words fulcrum 4? 

 

Ken Wilber:  That’s right. At this stage, what becomes crucially important for me is not how I fit with my biological impulses, but how I fit with my social roles. My group, my peer group, or a bit wider, how I fit with my country, my state, my people. I’m now taking the role of other, and how I fit with the other is crucially important. I have decentered once again, differentiated once again, transcended once again. My ego is not the only ego in the universe. So this sociocentric stance is a major transformation or paradigm shift from the previous and especially egocentric stances of the first 3 fulcrums. But notice, with fulcrum 4, care and concern are expended from me to the group, but no further. If you’re a member of the group, a member of my tribe, my mythology, my ideology, then you are saved as well. But if you belong to a different culture, a different group, a different mythology, a different God, then you’re damned. So this sociocentric or conventional stance tends to be very ethnocentric. Care and concern are expanded from me to my group and there it stops. So I also call this conventional or sociocentric stance by the term, mythic membership. The world view of fulcrum4 is still mythological and so care and concern are extended to believers in the same mythology, the same ideology, the same race, the same creed, the same culture, but no further. If you’re a member of the myth, you are my brother, my sister, if not, you go to hell. In other words, I can decenter from my ego to my group but I cannot not yet decenter my group. My group is the only group in the universe. I cannot yet move from sociocentric and ethnocentric to a truly world centric or universal or global stance. A decentered universal pluralistic stance, but I am getting there slowly.  

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