Do you find that some people just rub you the wrong way, regardless of what they’re talking about, even if it’s a topic that matters to you? If so, you may experience only their “difficult presence,” missing the message entirely, taking things personally, or both. Why?

When we speak, we don’t just say what we intend to say. Our words come “wrapped in an envelope,” an unconsciously-generated package we deliver to others, made up of our life experiences and how we’ve therefore come to see the world. This “life story” often overshadows what we’re trying to say, and we end up failing to communicate well. If we could find a way to strip away the story, either as a speaker or as a listener, we’d have better conversations everywhere. How can we do this?

An analogy helps. Noise-canceling headsets for music “listen” for unwanted background noise (other voices, wind, coffee grinders in Starbucks, engine noise in airplanes), and then electronically “subtract” those noises out of the message that gets to your ears. This allows you to hear music (or just silence), unencumbered by whatever’s going on around you.

In my Constructive Conversations coaching programs, I help people “listen for story” in much the same way as these headphones work – not so they can attach to it (as we tend to do unconsciously), but so they can recognize it, then subtract it out of what they hear (as a headphone does), allowing the true message to come through more clearly.

It’s entirely possible to learn “noise-canceling listening.” When you “get” someone else’s story, you can let the story flow past you, so what’s left is “what they would have said if they could have said what they intended to say.” When you learn to listen in this way, almost nothing is personal anymore, and the potential for conflict in any conversation drops to zero (with any person, any situation, any topic.) Can you imagine the freedom you’d experience if you could communicate like this all the time?

There are as many stories out there as there are people. Listening for story, therefore, takes practice. Here are examples of a few common external behaviors people display, along with possible story lines that can explain them.

• Behavior: rough/angry. Life story: “I’ve had to fight for everything all my life, therefore this must be no exception.”
• Behavior: fake sweetness. Life story: “I’m so resentful for always having to be someone I’m not that all I can do now is pretend I’m happy.”
• Behavior: always being right. Life story: “Criticism from others has made me so unsure of myself that I have to ‘be right’ all the time so no one will discover my fears.”

Try it out. Next time you listen to someone you find difficult, see if you can trace the “difficulty” to a story they carry with them. When you do, you can see that it’s neither about the topic nor about you personally, so you can let the story drop, and hear them in a new way. Don’t worry about “guessing wrong” as to their story; your awareness alone will allow you to hear others more effectively. With practice, you’ll become a better listener. This works for you as a speaker, too. See if you can identify your story. As you let that go, others will hear you in new ways, too. Constructive Conversations.

“A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible.” Welsh proverb
 

Every now and then, our life’s journey is touched by the presence of another – someone simply walking their journey, yet in the process, changing ours forever. Rarely planned or anticipated, often unnoticed until after-the-fact, their presence one day leaves us aware that we’re somehow different.

This past weekend, I attended a retirement celebration for a man who uniquely made my world a better place. Tom has been a professor of Environmental Science at Antioch’s graduate school for the past 34 years. For two years of my journey, our paths crossed. I could write at length about Tom and about the impact he had on me, but here’s the snapshot view. Tom’s “everyday” work is teaching ecology – the study of systems and relationships in nature. In the process of teaching new ways of seeing the natural world, Tom actually taught me new ways of seeing my world – myself, others, my life, my work, “the” world. It’s easy to understand how learning something in one part of life can rub off onto other parts. But the unique thing about Tom is his ability to make this process “organic;” it happened on its own. He was able to do this, I believe, because he taught more through questions than through answers. Asking me to think about things was far more powerful than telling me about things. The remarkable by-product of this approach was that he left me believing I did it myself. His way of seeing nature has become core to the way I see my life, and in turn, to the way I work with my clients to help them see theirs, too.

It’s no wonder, then, that 250 people gathered to celebrate him. While this represents but a small fraction of those he has indelibly touched, either directly through his teaching, writing or friendship, or indirectly through how those people have touched others, the event was a beautiful expression of gratitude for one of the most gracious, humble and wonderful human beings I’ve ever known. Tom acknowledged dozens of accolades, largely by given credit for them back to those who’d offered them. Twenty years after the fact, I’m still touched. Thanking Tom this weekend made my life a bit richer; his turning the thanks back to me brought me to tears.

We live in a world that tells us we have to be tough and make everything happen on our own. Although we may think we actually do this, it’s never the case. We receive from others, depend on others, are touched and supported by others, often in ways we never realize or rarely acknowledge. As for me, I’ve found personal strength in coming to see how others have supported my journey. It may run counter to the “conventional wisdom” of doing it all alone, but realizing how all the threads of life are woven together into a network of mutual support is a gift all on its own. I cannot feel alone in that kind of world. Perhaps Tom would recognize this as ecology in its most pervasive form.

Exercise: Who has changed your world? Find a quiet place you love, a place free of distractions. Reflect for a while on the person you’ve become. Allow yourself to see without judgment, and acknowledge that, in many ways, you are a product of all that has touched you. Like rocks in a river, you’ve been polished by the flow of life, and by the connections you’ve experienced with others. Listen to whatever comes up for you. Eventually you’ll feel, then think about, the presence of those who have helped to mold you. You might choose to quietly name and remember them, and allow the energy of their presence to touch you once again. You might choose to find a way to thank them. (My way of saying thank-you was easy; they had a party for him and I showed up.) You may be surprised, as was I, at the “sense of self” this exercise offers you.

Those who touch our lives provide us with an invisible source of strength, a belief in ourselves, a sense of trust in a part of us that has always been there, but now feels free to come out and play in the world. By allowing ourselves to “be ourselves” in this way, we not only evoke what’s best inside us, but we also open ourselves to touch others in meaningful ways too. Authenticity is contagious.

A River Runs Through It  [Life lessons offered by nature]

Rumi wrote, “If you are irritated by every rub, how will you ever be polished?” The world of nature has had four billion years to polish life on Earth to elegant beauty. There’s no such thing as “done,” so nature keeps on polishing. It does so, we learn, by pushing things to their edge, and “allowing” them to mold themselves into something even better. “Better,” in nature’s way, means more resilient, more diverse, more cooperative. If we were to step back and examine the processes at work here, we’d see that nature creates value in three ways: through replication – making more of the same thing, during times that are “easy;” through improvement – making what already exists better, during times of stress; through innovation – creating something new, beyond earlier conception, during times of chaos. It’s a process that never ceases, a process that proceeds without judgment or complaint. Creativity is the process, and creation is its reward. It sounds so simple; why can’t we live like that? Oh yes, we can. Tom does (see article), and so can all of us. Where’s the edge of your comfort zone? What kind of “polishing” is there waiting to mold you? Are you up for the challenge of being polished? Can you trust your own innate creative genius to guide you through? It will.

Openings to New Possibility

An invitation to bold possibility: Transforming the perspective offered in this month’s article into your own way of being could be a rich program of individual coaching. In writing as I do, I am under no illusion that the vast majority will not, all on their own, integrate these ideas into their everyday lives. The power old beliefs hold to constrain thinking is phenomenal. Having a “guide for unexplored territory” is as important as would be having a guide for a journey into nature’s wilderness. I’m here to help. I’ll meet you wherever you may be on your journey. Together we’ll challenge the thinking that holds you back, discover what matters most to you, and chart a course into the territory of your potential. Contact me, and begin to shift forever your view of what’s possible.

The Road Not Taken website: Visit my website, www.RoadNotTaken.com. You can now gain access to more articles, blogs, and newsletters, so you’ll find “new stuff” on a regular basis. This newsletter will now also be found as a blog entry (under the category Purposeful Wanderings), along with several back issues. You can comment on anything you read; I see this kind of dialogue as an example of how we may all learn together. Coming soon: The Road Not Taken Community, a subscription offering free of charge, giving you the opportunity to stay connected, to be challenged, to interact, to learn and to grow. Stay tuned.

Book of the month – Mentoring: The Tao of Giving and Receiving Wisdom, by Chungliang Al Huang and Jerry Lynch. OK, on the surface, this is a book about coaching and mentoring. As such, it is one of my favorites. Yet it’s also so much more. Starting with its compelling look and feel (for me, always a sign of a great book), this is a very simple, yet elegantly written text on “ways of being” in the world so as to treat yourself, and others, with respect, reverence and compassion. From the way it integrates Eastern and Western thought and philosophy to the clarity of its teachings, this is a book anyone on a path to a meaningful life would enjoy reading and owning. A nice adjunct to the theme of this month’s article, too.

 Download May 2012 pdf

“It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”   — St. Francis of Assisi

When I travel, I’ve made it a practice to be more aware and present to what the world’s special places offer. Travel has become a way to explore time, place and myself more deeply. A few years ago, this practice became somewhat of a ritual when a friend gave me Phil Cousineau’s book, The Art of Pilgrimage, before one of my trips to Maui. I adopted many of its ideas during my stay, and can say that, even traveling to a place with a sacredness all its own, I found deeper connection with life’s energy, both the island’s and my own. Whether heading to Maui to “do nothing” or leading a nature tour into British Columbia’s majestic coastal wilderness, it has helped me reframe “trip” into “pilgrimage,” a journey with personal intention that reconnects me with my own soul and spirit. Adding this sense of “purpose” has changed the way I see and think … about travel, about Maui, about nature and about myself.

At some level, conscious or not, each of us longs for contact with the sacred – the felt experience of the breadth and depth of life beyond our everyday ability to comprehend. Yet because our lives are complex, chaotic and often overwhelming, we find little or none of the silence or personal awareness required for this experience of oneness to manifest. We’ve often relegated even the possibility of it to either that long-dreamt-about-but-never-taken personal retreat, or the once-a-year vacation that often falls far short of its promise.

In re-reading The Art of Pilgrimage this week on the eve of another Maui pilgrimage, it struck me how we might view life as a pilgrimage, too, and that perhaps we could learn to experience the sacred every day, not just during times set aside for special purposes. What if we could find the sacred where it really lives – right here, right now?

For sure, it would require a new way of seeing and thinking. Ordinary thinking can get us through an ordinary day, but we’ve got little experience with the kind of thinking needed to experience the extraordinary at all, say nothing of experiencing it in each [ordinary] moment. We may not be able to imagine that such a level of thinking even exists! But what if we could see our entire life as a journey with the explicit intention to experience its inherent sacredness? Viewed this way, we create the sacred with each step we take. Today’s failing, then, is that we simply don’t notice. Transforming how you see and think is a big shift, yet with even greater rewards. Instead of being overwhelmed by the idea, however, consider “baby steps.” Two exercises can open you to the magic and mystery of life, every day.

Exercise: Observe your thoughts: Ordinary thoughts create ordinary days. So ingrained is this process of “thinking” that we rarely see thinking as a driving force in how our days go. Only by interrupting this incessant flow of thoughts so you notice those thoughts can you reconstruct life’s meaning from fragments that have gone unobserved until now. The practice: Stop what you’re doing several times a day. During a simple moment of quiet reflection, notice the thought you’re having that very minute. Just name the thought, without judgment. While awkward at first, the practice teaches you to listen. You will hear. With time, you will come to experience the sacred longing inside you.

Exercise: Go for a walk: Bodies need exercise. Minds need clearing. Emotions need a break. Relationships need to include one with yourself. Souls need quiet time. Spirits need connection to nature. Walking does all these. There’s perhaps no better “activity” to connect you to your own inner truth than walking in nature. For a half hour or so, two or more times a week, wander in silence; honor the time as sacred and purposeful, resisting any temptation to solve problems or make to-do lists. Notice the sights and sounds of nature; tune out the rest. Listen to what comes up for you. You will hear. Nietzsche said, “Never trust a thought that didn’t come by walking.”

You find life’s meaning in the experience of the sacred; you find the sacred where it’s always been … inside you, not in the retreat or vacation you never get. And you discover it by noticing. Stop, look and listen … you’ll discover what you truly love. As Cousineau says, “What’s missing longs to be filled in.” In providing space for it to happen, it does.

A River Runs Through It  [Life lessons offered by nature]

We’re all living the “hero’s journey.” While neither your journey nor mine may offer intrigue or acclaim as did the journeys of the Buddha, Jesus, Odysseus, Gandhi, Thoreau, Mother Teresa, or even Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, every one of us is here to experience what’s deepest inside us. Those we hold in high regard for their journeys were neither richer nor smarter nor luckier than you or me; what distinguished them was the clarity and perspective they had about what mattered most to them. They knew their truth and lived it.

While we know it is true of many of them, and while we suspect it is true of all of them, time alone in nature offered them a direct connection with this, their source. Nature is perhaps life’s ultimate teacher. True, she has a resume with four billion years of experience here on earth, yet her magic is “right here, right now,” in each moment, waiting for our listening. Joseph Campbell, a well-known mythologist, likens our journeys through life to a walk through a labyrinth. I love his perspective: “Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.  And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.” How better might we experience this than to allow ourselves the simple gift of quiet time in nature? OK, perhaps walking a labyrinth in nature, but you get the idea.

Some of you, I know, cannot imagine not doing this. Others of you, and yes, I know, cannot imagine doing this. Regardless of your current viewpoint, time alone with your thoughts begins to empty the mind of its clutter. The space created lets life’s potential rush in, allowing us, as Louis Pasteur once said, “to see everywhere in the world the inevitable expression of the concept of infinity.” With no space for the new, however, the “same old same old” strengthens its grip on your old ways of thinking. It’s springtime. Nature is beginning to show her majestic colors.  Be there. Be here.

Openings to New Possibility

An invitation to bold possibility: Transforming the perspective offered in this month’s article into your own way of being could be a rich program of individual coaching. In writing as I do, I am under no illusion that the vast majority will not, all on their own, integrate these ideas into their everyday lives. The power old beliefs hold to constrain thinking is phenomenal. Having a “guide for unexplored territory” is as important as would be having a guide for a journey into nature’s wilderness. I’m here to help. I’ll meet you wherever you may be on your journey. Together we’ll challenge the thinking that holds you back, discover what matters most to you, and chart a course into the territory of your potential. Contact me, and begin to shift forever your view of what’s possible.

The Road Not Taken website: Visit my website, www.RoadNotTaken.com. You can now gain access to more articles, blogs, and newsletters, so you’ll find “new stuff” on a regular basis. This newsletter will now also be found as a blog entry (under the category Purposeful Wanderings), along with several back issues. You can comment on anything you read; I see this kind of dialogue as an example of how we may all learn together. Coming soon: The Road Not Taken Community, a subscription offering free of charge, giving you the opportunity to stay connected, to be challenged, to interact, to learn and to grow. Stay tuned.

Book of the month – The Art of Pilgrimage, by Phil Cousineau. This month’s article highlights several reasons to read this book, whether you are traveling or staying home. Cousineau suggests that we won’t find the core of our sacred longing in a time or place or event or plan, but in how we see and think and walk, every day. “Practice listening as if your life depended on it. It does.” I’ve found this book a great companion for travels away from home, and now see it as a companion for the “everyday journey” of life as well. A repeated bit of wisdom offered as your reward is the ability and the strength to “pass by that which you do not love.” What a freeing thought.

Download April 2012 pdf 

“Worrying does not take away tomorrow’s troubles. It takes away today’s peace.”

We put a lot of energy into thinking about the future. With imagination, we can plan, desire, fear, predict, avoid or dream a vast array of possibilities. Depending on how we see, we may imagine the best life can offer or try to minimize the chance of pain. To view the future in any of these ways, better or worse, stems from a perspective that the future is a time and place very distant from now. In my mind, this long-term view creates needless struggle. Here’s why I say this, along with a way to see and think about tomorrow that may free you from much of life’s struggle.

A Road Not Taken

First, we’re very bad at long-term planning or predicting, especially when it comes to things that are inherently uncertain. Stop for a moment and look at your jobs, relationships, health, finances, dreams or happiness. Are things going now just as you’d planned or predicted some time ago?  It’s kind of a problem, then, with ample evidence to the contrary, that we still believe we can control how it will all turn out – way out there.

Second, we seem to forget, or ignore, that to arrive at a future place and time, we must pass through today, and tomorrow, and the day after, etc. It’s almost as if our planning would have us “dropped into” some future world. (Everything will be OK when …)  By thinking that way, even unconsciously, we forget that what happens today matters.

Third, because the long term is a place we can’t impact directly right now, we tend to use the current moment mainly to worry our way to the next moment. This serves to deny us altogether of the meaningful experience or potential this moment offers. If we keep doing this, moment after moment, we never arrive at a place we love, because we keep missing the experience of love while lost in worry about what comes next. There is no future there.  

Here’s a new light you might shine on old thinking. You don’t predict or plan your future; you create it. The path to your future cannot be laid out ahead of time; you create it as you walk. I suggest that the walking is your future; it’s happening right now. Seeing life this way, the future becomes a set of “fully experienced present moments,” strung together one after another. It’s this experience that creates a life you love. How, then, do you experience the present in a way that creates a thriving future? You learn to see and think about the present in a new way.  Here’s how.

Exercise: Create a thriving future: Three ingredients, folded together through the practice of “becoming” each one, define the recipe for a remarkable future. (1) non-judgmental awareness of what’s going on right now; the present is the “seed” from which you grow tomorrow. Practice: quietly notice each present moment; awareness spawns deep personal experience; (2) your innate creative genius (who you truly are; what matters most to you); your essence is “fuel” to help the “seed” germinate. Practice: choose actions in this moment based on your own truth; that energy transforms this moment into the next moment; (3) the information flow (feedback) inherent in the experience of life that tells you how things are going; feedback “guides” your next steps. Practice: listen to what your experience in the present tells you about your next steps. That’s a very different approach than planning those next steps ahead of time, from a disconnected, far-away vantage point. These three ideas, cemented by the practice of being them, represent a huge shift of perspective for most people. Letting go of old beliefs is scary stuff, even if you never knew the beliefs were false. The courage to trust your own powers of awareness and creativity in each moment (which is what these three practices offer you) can have dramatic impact, both on how you experience today and on the quality and meaning of your future.

True, you may not know where this formula will lead you. After all, you’re inventing it as you go. Also true, you will never ‘arrive,’ but hey, there was never any ‘destination,’ either. You become this new thinking by the practice of doing it; you “practice” your future into being. Despite what you can’t control, there are a few things you can count on. You get to choose what matters to you. You get to observe and experience the present moment. You can change course based on the feedback you get. You can do all of these things independent of the world “out there,” including how others think. It’s your life; there’s not a lot to be gained by living someone else’s life instead.

A River Runs Through It  [Life lessons offered by nature]

In nature, everything happens in the now, with concern for neither the past nor the future. Whatever happened in the past may have brought things to this moment, yet it is still past; nature lets it go. Whatever is to come next has yet to be decided; nature is not anxious. The present is a wave of potential energy, vibrating with the infinite possibility of what could come next. Out of this potential, the next moment emerges, fueled by the natural essence of each living thing. What makes this so? The same three factors available to you in each moment. (1) what’s going on right now? (2) what’s the unique energy of each thing that wants to be expressed? (3) what does “life” tell us about how things are going? Look at the splendor and majesty created!

Here’s a simple example that even nature lovers may not have pondered. Consider a fly in mid-air. Out of an infinite number of possibilities for a flight path, the fly has arrived at where it is in this instant – right here right now. There are now (still) an infinite number of possibilities for where the fly may move in the next instant – pure potential. Based on (1) the present state, and (2) the essence of “what it means to be a fly,” it chooses a next step out of the myriad of future possibilities. Moment after moment this process repeats itself, infinite possibility emerging in each and every moment. Guided by feedback from its environment, the fly’s path is defined. If you think about all the choices the fly didn’t make, you get a glimpse of the potential here; and this is just one fly! You may even conclude (rightfully) that, given the erratic nature of the fly’s path, there was not “one right answer” made up ahead of time. 

This process has been going on for over 4 billion years on this planet, and some 14 billion years throughout the universe (ok, maybe there aren’t flies everywhere else, but …). There was no project plan for the Grand Canyon; no “spec sheet” for a mosquito, no “goal” that galaxies would most often look like spirals, yet each is uniquely its own creation, emerging into the uncertainty of the next moment out of its own essence.

Openings to New Possibility

An invitation to bold possibility: Transforming the perspective offered in this month’s article into your own way of being in life could be a solid, full-year program of individual coaching. In writing as I do, I am under no illusion that the vast majority of people cannot, all on their own, integrate these ideas into their everyday lives. The power of old beliefs to constrain thinking is phenomenal, so having a “guide for unexplored territory” is as important as would be having a guide for a journey into nature’s wilderness. I’m here to help. I’ll meet you wherever you may be on your journey. Together we’ll challenge the thinking that holds you back, discover what matters most to you, and chart a course into the territory of your potential. Contact me, and begin to shift forever your view of what’s possible.

The Road Not Taken website: Visit my website, www.RoadNotTaken.com. You can now gain access to more articles, blogs, and newsletters, so you’ll find “new stuff” on a regular basis. This newsletter will now also be found as a blog entry (under the category Purposeful Wanderings), along with several back issues. You can comment on anything you read; I love this kind of dialogue as an example of how we may all learn together.

Book of the month – The Universe Story, by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry. Subtitled, “From the primordial flaring flash to the ecozoic era, a celebration of the unfolding of the cosmos,” The Universe Story traces the history of the universe in a way that’s accessible to non-science people. It’s one of the only books I know that elegantly integrates both natural and human history “as one,” and describes “humanity’s evolving place in the cosmos and the boundless possibilities for our future. A nice accompaniment to this month’s ideas.

Download March 2012 pdf

“You can either have what you want or you can have the reasons why you can’t have what you want.”   —– Alberto Villoldo, in The Four Insights

My newer clients often speak of the contention and conflict they experience, at home and work. The contention may show up as complaint, argument, anger, stress, anxiety, frustration or worry. Given its pervasiveness, it would be easy to conclude that contention is simply an inherent part of life. It’s not. Whether you notice contention in others or feel it inside you, here’s a new view, one with the potential to eliminate most of the negativity in your life today.

The view is simple: Issues do not create contention; only how we see and think about issues does. Contention arises when we make things personal. If someone blames you for their problems, it’s probably not even about you; they’re blaming because that’s what they do all the time; it isn’t personal.  As you learn to see things from a less personal perspective, contention simply disappears. For example, when you stop seeing things as ‘happening to you’ and start seeing things as simply ‘happening,’ your entire relationship with those things changes, often instantly. If you doubt this, consider, for a moment, that your doubt could just be one of the old ways of seeing and thinking that serves to keep contention alive for you. If you’ve been down the same well-worn path of conflict for a long time, a new approach may help. Here’s a three step process you can adopt, starting right now, for any conflict you experience, either with others or with yourself. The model is adapted from this month’s book recommendation, The Four Insights.

1. Name the story you tell. For a specific source of contention bothering you today, create a simple, but honest, assessment of the way you see it. Speak it out loud; then allow the meaning of the words to impact you. Example: “Everything is so insane at work; the only thing people do is complain.”

2. See the story you tell as a story … then as your story. Now rephrase your story so it’s something you do, something you bring to the situation. This isn’t a way to deny the issue exists or to say you’re at fault, but a way for you to see your own thinking more clearly. Example: “When I dread being at work, everything appears as complaint.”

3. Write and tell a new story. You may have to ‘play pretend’ for a bit here because it may be new territory for you. Look at the polar opposite of the issue you’ve named. What if everything were completely different, if new potential could arise from an old situation? Example: “As I begin to see what’s possible instead of what’s wrong, opportunities emerge. Not only do I find new ways to do things, but others begin to follow.”

The power you have to make fundamental change in the way you experience life (yourself, others, work and world) is phenomenal. This kind of transformation comes from learning to see and think in new ways, not from waiting for the world to change. If you are waiting for the world to change, see the quote at the top of this article. The difficulty here lies not in changing how you see and think, for you are 100% free in each moment to choose how. The difficulty lies in the unconscious, yet life-constraining belief that you are powerless to do so. It is that belief that holds you from the freedom and peace you desire.

You might start right now by examining how you’ve reacted to what you’ve read here. I’ve offered clues along the way about where reactions might arise. For now, just get to know your reaction. Name what you see as nonsense. Name how this view is unique to you (not everyone reacts the same way, so you are unique in some way). Pretend the world or others were different, and that your reaction was unnecessary. Name how you would see things then.

As you become a student of your own ways of seeing – and yes, becoming that student is also a choice – you’ll find your ways of seeing and thinking change. Where you used to see contention, you’ll see possibility. Where you used to see problems, you’ll see potential. Where you used to believe life never gave you a break, you create the breaks.

A River Runs Through It  [Life lessons offered by nature]

There is no contention in nature. It’s all just “what is.” The problem we have is that we see contention in nature. We see contention that isn’t truly there, simply because we’ve been programmed to see that way. (That’s why the idea and exercises in this month’s article carry such potential … they break the unconscious, incessant stream of thought that sees the world as a problem.) When a river wears down rocks in a canyon, it’s not “doing it to the rocks.”  The rocks are not upset. When a hawk nabs a mouse in a meadow, there’s no vindictiveness going on. And when a deer narrowly escapes a wolf’s jaw and runs free, both just shake it off and go back to what they were doing before.

You might want to make two separate forays into nature this month. Sit for an hour or so in one spot, watching and hearing everything that happens. Notice the judgments you stir into your observations. Perhaps they are about good vs. bad, about blame, about right vs. wrong, etc. Just notice how you may ascribe thoughts that pervade your human world to the natural world, too.  On your second visit, ideally to the same place, notice sights and sounds with the intention or purpose of non-judgment. You may want to ask yourself, “if I saw no contention in nature, how would I tell this story?” Just notice what you discover. 

Sometime later on, recall both visits to nature and investigate the differences between the two. Because it was the same place both times, how did the differences come from your way of seeing and thinking? What have you learned about yourself from doing these exercises?

Openings to New Possibility

Reaching Your Life’s Greatest Potential: Consistent with many of my monthly articles, you may notice that exploring the edges of your own world – worries, unknowns, fears, hidden assumptions – is not something you can do very well alone. Like so many other adventures into the wilderness of our own uncharted territory, it helps to have a guide, one with a map and experience of the landscape, to make your own self-reflection and inquiry more meaningful and productive. After pondering this month’s article, and perhaps seeing my website, you might consider a coaching program for yourself, an investment in reaching your life’s greatest potential. There’s no cost or obligation to you for an exploratory conversation. Contact me, and begin to shift forever your view of what’s possible.  Perhaps the only block is one of your “thoughts.”

New Website: Check out my redesigned website, www.RoadNotTaken.com. You’ll notice that you can now gain access to more articles, blogs, and newsletters, so you’ll find “new stuff” on a regular basis. This newsletter will now also be found as a blog entry (under the category Purposeful Wanderings). Several back issues are also posted there. I’m creating a video that will be posted on the site as well.

Book of the month – The Four Insights, by Alberto Villoldo. My second recommendation by Villoldo and the fourth of his books I’ve read. Perhaps I’m hooked.  The Four Insights provides a model for making conscious and powerful shifts in your level of perception, the “way” in which you see what you see. In addition, it offers practices and exercises to help you make your new ways of seeing a “permanent” part of you, so you approach the world from higher and higher levels of thinking. With each shift upward, you connect more deeply with your true self, and you connect more deeply with the oneness energy of the universe. The world “works” on your behalf.

Download February 2012 pdf

“Fear is the interest paid on a debt you don’t owe.”    —– my fortune cookie this week at the local Asian restaurant 

There’s always something. No matter how much peace or freedom we may experience in our lives, it seems there’s always something to worry about. And as our lives become more complex, chaotic, and unpredictable, even more possibilities emerge as candidates for our worry. For most, this list of ‘somethings’ is long. The energy consumed on worry, therefore, can be a considerable fraction of the energy available in a given day. I don’t profess a cure for what has most certainly become “a culture of worry,” but I do invite you to consider a new relationship with your worries, one that can dramatically reduce the energy drain so commonly experienced. As always, it involves new ways of seeing and thinking.

Worry comes from fear, usually in the form of “fear of perceived negative consequences of things.” Test this out for yourself right now. Name something you worry about. Now see if you can name the perceived consequences that give rise to the worry. It probably looks like this: “I worry about ‘x’ because I’m afraid ‘y’ will happen.”

Here are two different, and perhaps new, ways of seeing your worry with new eyes:

• Examine the evidence you have for “y” actually occurring. In fact, there is none – because “y” lives in the future, which hasn’t happened; and evidence lives in the past, which is already behind you, even if only by 30 seconds.
• Examine the thought you have about “perceived negative consequences.” If you believe, as do I, that you are free to choose your thoughts, you’re forced to accept you’re choosing negative ones. (If you don’t believe you choose your thoughts, you might ask who’s choosing them for you; but that’s another topic altogether.)

While both these approaches may strike you as idealistic, especially if you’re attached to your worry, they are simply the product of conscious thinking. Herein lies the problem. We believe our worrying comes from rational thought, but we haven’t stopped for long enough for any rational thought to occur. Worry comes from unconscious thoughts; those are programmed responses from the past, responses that “do our thinking for us,” so much so that we may deny this statement as being true. Unconscious, programmed thoughts are actually held in place by not thinking. You can’t fight off unconscious thinking; it’s running 24/7. You can, however, replace it with conscious thinking; and you get there by becoming aware of your thoughts.

The practice of awareness – stopping for long enough to consciously notice your thinking – is, at the same time, both the most powerful single action you can take toward a life of peace & freedom (eliminating worry in the process), and the most difficult idea of all for readers and clients to accept. Why?  Our external world wants us not to think, because we go along with obsessive consumerism and herd mentality more easily if we don’t. Our unconscious mind wants us not to think, too, because it sees new possibility as a threat to our safety. Yet when we listen to those voices, we then complain that life is a struggle, fraught with worry and containing little possibility.

If life is a struggle, life is not the problem. Lack of thinking is the problem. It takes courage and practice to think for yourself. Yet the rewards are phenomenal, and include peace, freedom from worry, and limitless possibility. You find those things not from winning the lottery, but from clarity and perspective … new ways of seeing and thinking.

Exercise: Get to know your worries: You can prove all this to yourself; do this exercise a few times each day for a month. It takes less than two minutes each time. Stop what you are doing. Name your most pressing worry. Now name the perceived negative consequences your programmed thinking tells you to be so. Then name the evidence you have for the truth of that thought. Now, imagine the situation turns out amazingly well instead. Then name the evidence you have for that. Because neither thought has any evidence, you’re left with what kind of thinking you choose. If you need to, name a really good reason why you’d choose negative thoughts when you could choose thoughts that made you feel more empowered instead. After a month, notice what’s different in both your thinking and your worrying. Just notice.

A River Runs Through It  [Life lessons offered by nature]

Unlike us, nature doesn’t have to re-learn how to think. In fact, she never forgot how. She lives her purpose, naturally and without effort or worry.  For example, rivers meander all over their flood plains, continually changing course as they find the easiest path to the sea. It’s a process that derives from purpose and intention (what it means to be a river) and not from worry about what comes next.

Imagine for a moment, if you can, a river in a state of worry. It might just stop flowing, held by the thought that its next choice could lead to danger. “Oh shit. If I meander to the west, those rocks could dam my flow. And if I meander to the east, that other nasty river might consume me. I don’t know what to do next.” No, rivers “get it” in another way. Meandering is what they do. They can’t not meander; it’s simply part of the process of creativity that makes a river a river. In any one moment, rivers have an infinite number of choices. By allowing creative intention alone to guide them, they never become stuck. Being stuck means seeing only one choice, when in fact, many exist.

Openings to New Possibility

Reaching Your Life’s Greatest Potential: Consistent with many of my monthly articles, you may notice that exploring the edges of your own world – worries, unknowns, fears, hidden assumptions – is not something you can do very well alone. Like so many other adventures into the wilderness of our own uncharted territory, it helps to have a guide, one with a map and experience of the landscape, to make your own self-reflection and inquiry more meaningful and productive. After pondering this month’s article, and perhaps seeing my new website, you might consider a coaching program for yourself, an investment in reaching your life’s greatest potential. There’s no cost or obligation to you for an exploratory conversation. Contact me, and begin to shift forever your view of what’s possible.  Perhaps the only block is one of your “thoughts.”

New Website: Check out my redesigned website, www.RoadNotTaken.com. You’ll notice that you can now gain access to more articles, blogs, and newsletters, so you’ll find “new stuff” on a regular basis. This newsletter will now also be found as a blog entry (under the category Purposeful Wanderings). Several back issues are also posted there. I’m creating a video that will be posted on the site as well.

Book of the month – Courageous Dreaming, by Alberto Villoldo.  Subtitled “How Shamans Dream the World into Being,” this book might be a good accompaniment to this month’s article. It offers beautifully written perspective and insight into the power of our own consciousness to create the world we want to experience. Each of us has levels of consciousness far deeper than the level required to get through an ordinary day, but if we experience only the ordinary, we never tap these more powerful levels. In them, however, is the key to creating any world we can imagine. Given the unconscious slumber our world is in, it’s easy to reject his ideas. But that just ensures the slumber continues. As always, life is a choice, and it’s a choice based in the power of thought – to dream the world into being.

Download January 2012 pdf

“We all continually move on the edges of eternity, and are sometimes granted vistas through the fabric of illusion.”                                                                     —– Ansel Adams, Autobiography

There was a time when prevailing belief held that the earth was flat, and if you were to reach the edge, you’d fall off. Although the belief itself has long since been replaced by greater truths, the thinking that drives it is very much alive. Throughout human history, we’ve feared the unknown, and have responded by creating all kinds of “structures” to help protect us from our fears. These structures range all the way from religions to guard rails. All, however, seem to be driven by the idea that our creations will protect us, “once and for all.”

I don’t take issue with the desire to deal with fears. Faith in something bigger than ourselves, for example, offers a beautiful complement to the rigors of daily life. I do, however, take issue with the once-and-for-all aspect of our creations. We live our lives against a constantly changing backdrop. Nothing is “once and for all.” Yet once we believe it is, we forget about it, we stop thinking, and we then rely unconsciously on the structure we’ve created as protection. I mean, how can you fall if there’s a guard rail? It’s the “not thinking” that gets us in trouble. I suspect it may feel safer to think about what we invented to protect us than to think about the fear itself.

The image that comes to mind is similar to the flat earth model. As if to help us learn, life brings us to our edges many times a day. We know these as times of discomfort. Unconsciously, we withdraw from the edge, away from perceived threat and toward familiar territory of our comfort zone. That response comes from habit, not from thought. We don’t know there’s an edge, we don’t know we’ve reached it, and we don’t know we’re retreating. This explains why we often don’t learn or grow all that much; it’s uncomfortable. So, if we don’t know there’s an issue, why might we care?

Your comfort zone is what holds you to your past. It’s made up of old lessons about how life is supposed to be and about what you should be worried about, such as making money, losing friends, the opinions of others, being right, being good enough … or guard rails. All this is fine if you care more about following the rules than about creating new possibility. The problem, however, is that all new possibility lies just beyond the edge of today’s comfort zone, and by denying it, even unconsciously, you limit the very joy you want to experience in your life. 

Life has taught me that the path through this dilemma is simply to become conscious of edges, so you can learn from them instead of retreating from them. If you knew you’d arrived at your edge, you’d have three choices where today you have only one. The choices: (1) you can still retreat to the center, but consciously; (2) you can jump into the unknown without thinking, or (3) you can stop at the edge and get to know it. Choice #1 creates tomorrows that look like yesterday; #2 might work now and then, but without thinking, you often find trouble;  #3 opens your world. By stopping and getting to know your edges, you create your own new choices. Chances are good that if you knew you were holding yourself back in life, you’d want to make different choices.

Exercise: Get to know your edges: This practice does not ask you to change your behavior and become instantly courageous. Courage is a natural & effortless outcome of getting to know what inhibits your courage today. This practice asks only that you become aware and learn: Stop at the end of each day for a few moments of quiet reflection. Replay the day’s events, looking for places and times you felt discomfort. For each one, name the event, name the discomfort, name the action you took. Write these down. After you’ve made your list, review each item, asking new questions: how do I see that moment of discomfort now, some number of hours later? What does this teach me about my fears? about how I responded to my fears? Do I have evidence my fear is real, right now? If, at the time, I had been able to stop, and look just a bit in front of me (over the edge), what possibility would have been in view that was hidden to me at the time because of my unconscious response? Start a list of new possibilities you discover doing this exercise.

A River Runs Through It  [Life lessons offered by nature]

Nature loves edges. It’s where new things happen. Edges are nature’s “uncertain spaces.”  Wherever there are more choices, there are more possibilities for invention. A few of my favorite edges in nature:

• major disturbances – a result of either volcanic flow or glaciation, for example. Both provide new territory for nature’s creative essence. These are commonly “big” edges, for they often encompass huge areas of land. It’s truly amazing how lichen begin to grow on bare rock after glaciers recede, and how quickly plants take root in the cracks in new lava flows. In each case, the roots serve to break rock apart, eventually creating soil, so that less tolerant species can then take root. This is the beginning of a process naturalists call succession.
• fields and forests – the dividing line between field and forest is a rich source of new invention in nature. Some birds, like the cardinal or robin, seem to prefer these edges, while others live only in deeper forest or only in field. Poison ivy grows almost exclusively on edges; rarely would you poison ivy in the middle of the woods.

Next time you’re out for a walk, notice all the “edges” that come into view … between pond and shore, forest and field, hill and gulley, sun and shade, land and sea. Notice these same contrasts at different scales, too. The shade offered by a single rock affects which plants grow nearby. Just notice how nature “steps into” her edges. 

Openings to New Possibility

A comment I received from a woman on November’s newsletter:  Brad:  Loved this newsletter. I’ve been writing my life story and amazingly, had just written about my high school experience with The Prophet. I don’t recall how, at 15, I would ever have gotten my hands on it, but I got punished for having it.  Several nuns escorted me down to the “boiler room” and made me throw the book in the fire. I was told it was blasphemous, and I was going to end up in the fires of hell for reading false prophets, blah, blah, blah. The upshot of the whole thing for me was that I learned of this secret room, which had a door that led out to the back lot and allowed me to have a steady stream of ‘skip days.’ I’d get checked in for attendance, then after a class or two, shoot on down to the boiler room and out the door. Free! I also got friendly with the maintenance man, who drank down there; he taught me how to play poker. So, of course, between this memory of that book and your article I am re-reading it. Thank you.

New Website: Check out my redesigned website, www.RoadNotTaken.com. You’ll notice that you can now gain access to more articles, blogs, and newsletters, so you’ll find “new stuff” on a regular basis. As mentioned last month, this newsletter will now also be found as a blog entry (under the category Purposeful Wanderings). Several back issues are also posted there. I’m creating a video that will be posted on the site as well.

Reaching Your Life’s Greatest Potential: Consistent with this month’s article, you may notice that exploring the edges of your own world – unknowns, fears, hidden assumptions & beliefs – is not something you can do very well alone. Like so many other adventures into the wilderness of our own uncharted territory, it helps to have a guide, one with a map and experience of the landscape, to make your own self-reflection and inquiry more meaningful and productive. After pondering this month’s article, and perhaps seeing my new website, you might consider a coaching program for yourself, an investment in reaching your life’s greatest potential. There’s no cost or obligation to you for an exploratory conversation. Contact me, and begin to shift forever your view of what’s possible.  Perhaps the only block is that it’s one of your “edges.”

Book of the month – The Ringing Cedars Series, by Vladimir Megré. A nine-book series that chronicles the story of Anastasia, a rather unique woman living in the boreal forest (taiga) of Siberia. Through the eyes of a rare visitor (Vladimir), she unveils life’s mysteries and the potential for universal consciousness among all beings. It’s not my “usual” kind of book recommendation, but after reading the first pages of the first book, I’ve been hooked. Wondrous, fanciful, full of contrasts, real and surreal at the same time.

Most days, I walk 3 or 4 miles somewhere in nature. It’s exercise, it’s quiet time, and it reconnects me with the mystery and unity of all life. One of my local favorites here on Cape Cod is the Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge. It’s rather ordinary in some respects, but it’s also part of the original homeland of the earliest Americans here, the Wampanoag. Woodland trails follow a winding stream for a few miles, where I often see osprey, hawks, coyote and deer. 

Today was different. As I rounded a curve in the trail, the common rustle ahead of me revealed a surprise – a rather ample man in a bright orange vest, carrying a shotgun. I’ve never been quite sure what behavior “works” around hunters, but I stopped, said good morning, and noted my surprise that hunting might be allowed. He confirmed that it was, suggesting I see the sign when I returned to my car. In fact, there were many signs, all claiming shared dominion over this territory: National Wildlife Refuge, Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, Department of Conservation and Recreation, and a last indicating a local contact at a nearby national marine research reserve. Notably absent was a sign from the original claimants, the Wampanoag. 

It strikes me that this many government agencies could “cooperate” in the administration of this land. We rarely see that. On closer look however, let’s name the cooperation. We protect the wildlife here (the refuge part), so hunters have a near-guarantee there will be something to shoot. Hmmm. The cooperation is starting to sound like everyday politics, no? Good fortune came around the curve just after encountering the hunter. There, standing still in the trail right in front of me was a beautiful ring-necked pheasant. Needless to say, he flew immediately. But I feel as if I’d saved him, for the moment anyway, because it was I who saw him and not the hunter. After all, I was armed only with appreciative eyes and the GPS in my cell phone (in case I might ever be mistaken for a ring-necked pheasant). 

Dewitt Jones is perhaps my favorite nature photographer. It’s not just because his images are spectacular, which they are. It’s more because he brings to his images a deep insight about life, and about how our ways of seeing impact our experience of life. His words are simple, yet they touch me deeply. Each week he offers a new image, under the heading of Celebrate What’s Right. Check out his blog; you can sign up to receive a new image and thought each week. Of all the regular emails I receive, I look forward to this one the most. http://blog.celebratewhatsright.com