Mindfulness Practice – Page 3

On Death and Dying

Elise Esther Hearst, in her novel exposing the day-to-day reality of people experiencing inter-generational trauma, makes the unequivocal statement in the title of her book, One day we’re all going to die. This is an undeniable aspect of the human condition. Buddhists remind us of the impermanence of everything and the need to prepare ourselves for the inevitable reality of our dying and death. They strongly urge us to savour the preciousness of life and nature and to meditate on death.

The recent Death and Wisdom Summit offered free recently is now available on a paid, upgrade basis. During the Summit, a number of presenters addressed the issue of preparing for dying and death. They shared the lessons from their own research and work in the hospice arena and in providing grief counselling. One of the keynote speakers Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discover What Death Can Teach Us About Living Life Fully, spoke of the similarities between dying and meditation.

Similarities between the dying process and meditation

In an interview with Steve Heilig, Frank shared his lessons about living from accompanying over 1,000 people in the dying process. In the Death and Wisdom Summit, he focused on sharing his personal insights into the similarities between the dying process and meditation or other spiritual practices such as retreats. Frank, himself, had been a meditation practitioner over many years.

Frank identified the following aspects as similarities between the dying process and meditation:

Withdrawal from daily life – there is a peeling back of identity and a re-focus on the present moment and experience. Roles and ego identity are stripped away – the face we present to the world is no longer needed or relevant. In dying, as with meditation, distractions are reduced, habituated responses removed and other parts of our life are left behind, including our wide circle of friends. We are either left alone or engage, sometimes silently, with an intimate few.
Breaking down of conventional boundaries – there is a move away from duality towards wholeness. Elements previously experienced as separate are gradually integrated – such as mind and body, I and others. On a different level, the barrier between persona (projected or perceived ideal image) and the shadow (the unconscious, emotional blind spot) is broken down. So someone who is normally gentle and soft-spoken can suddenly appear as aggressive and loud (or vice versa). The shadow can emerge from behind the mask as the unconscious seeps into conscious life.
Increasing silence and appreciation of being silent – there is new-found comfort with, and valuing of, silence. People can experience a coma-like state before dying and, as a result, savour the silence. Frank noted, for example, that one person who emerged from a brief coma before dying stated, “If I had known that quiet was so beautiful, I would have spent a lot more time in silence”. There is a gradual process of “turning down the noise” – both the external interactions and the internal dialogue. There is an emergent clarity about our inner landscape.
The realisation of ordinariness – the progressive acceptance that we are all subject to the human condition, there is awareness that there is a naturally occurring “unfolding” of causes and conditions. This leads to humility and a sense that we are “no better or worse than anyone else” – we are all conditioned by our humanity and its fragility, its foibles and its impermanence. It can lead to the breaking down of “constructed protection” that results in “self-limiting identity”, thus allowing a fuller, more humane identity to emerge.
Emergence of a state of “not knowing” – a recognition that our fixed ideas about ourself, other people and the world around us are limited and limiting. Not knowing frees us to embrace the unknown and the uncertainty of death. Frank notes that “we all carry stories about our death” and these not only “shape the way we die” but also can shape how we live and love. Self-stories can blind us and their progressive release in meditation and dying can create openness to emergent possibilities.
Surrender – flows from “not knowing” and often follows a state of exhaustion. Frank describes it as a form of expansion, moving beyond our limiting self-stories to a “kind of spaciousness”. It is beyond struggling, beyond fighting with ourselves and our death and beyond acceptance.

Frank was adamant that “surrender” was not the same as “acceptance” and was “infinitely deeper than acceptance”. He explained that having been mentored by Elisabeth Kubler Ross he was convinced that many people, including those working with the dying, misunderstood what she was talking about in her book, On Death and Dying, when she identified the “five states of dying” – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. He maintained, that contrary to popular belief, Elisabeth never saw the stages as linear or sequential, but sought to identify some of the defence mechanisms employed by people who were dying. Frank also explained that later in her life, Elisabeth mentioned to him that she had come to realise that the “five stages” did not represent the full picture of the dying process. Part of Frank’s unique contribution to our understanding of the dying process is his elaboration of the stage of “surrender”.

According to Frank, “acceptance” is a conscious act of “letting go” – removing attachment to, or constraint by, objects, people or false ideas. He suggests that, in contrast, surrender is an “effortless, easeful, non-doing” state that enables realisation of our basic nature without internal or external interference. He likens it to the experience of “time standing still” that some people experience in a car accident situation. In grappling to find the words to describe “surrender” fully, Frank resorted to telling the story of his near-death experience in a whirlpool while rafting in the Grand Canyon and how surrender followed exhaustion. He provides further elucidation of this elusive concept in his podcast, Surrendering to Death.

Frank maintained that we could develop qualities that enable us to be more ready to achieve the state of “surrender’ when dying. He suggests, for example, that a sense of wonder and awe, religious conviction, love or confidence in our acquired wisdom (achieved through mindfulness), can “engender surrender”. He further likens “surrender” to an initiation process involving prioritising the essential over the dispensable. Frank stated that our natural reaction is to resist and fight death through fear, but that “the essential is so magnetising, the surrender so compelling, that fear does not stop us”.

Reflection

Frank provides a very strong exhortation. He maintains that it is a “ridiculous gamble’ to assume that when dying “we will have the physical strength, emotional stability, the mental clarity to do the work of a lifetime”. He argues that NOW is the time for personal transformation – to grow in mindfulness through meditation, silence, developing wonder and awe, cultivating love and compassionate action and strengthening belief.

In the process we can let go of limiting self-stories, misconceptions about death and dying, attachment to externalities, and fear of losing control. We can develop a “not knowing” state, realise the reality of our human condition and our own ordinariness and increase our sense of connectedness to nature and others.

Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach provide a Power of Awareness Course online with 21 hours of teaching. The Course helps you to develop a daily practice of mindfulness mediation and provides ways for you to sustain this practice. It enables you to live life more fully, break free of self-limiting thoughts, increase your sense of wonder and joy and enrich your relationships at home and at work.

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Image by Nicky from Pixabay.com

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Death, Dying and Grief

The Death, Love and Wisdom Summit was offered free from 12-16 October 2023 by Lions Roar and is now offered as an paid, upgrade option. The Summit brought together 16 key leaders and teachers in the field of caring for the dying, handling grief and facing the reality of our own death. The offerings included lessons learned from the dying, meditations and transformative processes. Many of the presenters are also accomplished authors in how to deal with the end-of-life transition, our own death and that of others close to us. Keynote addresses were provided by Joan Halifax, PhD, and Frank Ostaseski, Co-Founder of the Zen Hospice Project.

A perspective on death, dying and grief based on personal experience and academic research

The Summit provided a range of perspectives on end-of-life issues and offered insights from various hospice settings and research undertaken by the presenters. Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, a bereaved mother and tenured Professor, spoke about traumatic grief arising from an unexpected event with catastrophic consequences. She detailed the spiritual, emotional and somatic/physical symptoms of traumatic grief. Joanne talked about the “grief umbrella” with each spoke representing a different feeling, e.g., anxiety, regret, anger, guilt, despair, or abandonment. She explained, too, that grief can manifest in many forms on the physical level as inflammation and inhibited immune response, breathing and sleep disruption, trembling and headaches, or unpredictable, bottomless pain.

Having experienced the death of Cheyenne (her fourth child who was still-born) and the associated totally, debilitating traumatic grief, Joanne established the MISS (Mothers in Sympathy and Support) Foundation that provides a wide range of support for those “grieving the death, or the impending death, of a child” – offering advocacy, counselling, research, education for caregivers and resources. This initiative was motivated by the lack of support available for her own grieving process, the lack of understanding and empathy of the medical community who viewed grief as “pathological” and what she describes as “the social constraints on grief”.

In a YouTube interview, Bearing the Unbearable, Joanne cites research that shows that social constraints are the “greatest predictor of poor psychological and physical outcomes” of the grieving process. These constraints are reflected in implicit and explicit messaging such as “move on”, “don’t talk about it”, “get over it” or “go back to work”. Another aspect of negative social influence is what Joanne describes as “toxic positivity” where people are encouraged to always choose happiness or joy (rather than face the reality and pain of the challenging emotions of grief).

Selah Model of Grief

Joanne promotes the Selah model of grief – which involves “fully inhabiting grief” by “being with” our grief, surrendering to our grief and transforming our grief into compassionate action. In her video interview, Joanne indicated that she was able to be with her grief through frequent crying and commented that her 3 year old daughter showed more grief wisdom than many medical practitioners when she said. “It’s okay to cry Mummy because babies are not supposed to die”.

Joanne likened embracing grief to the progressive undertaking of a new yoga pose – where initially you have to reduce the time spent in the pose because of the pain experienced when challenging the muscles with a new position, but persistent practice gradually builds capacity to hold the pose longer and more capably.

Human-Animal Connection in the grieving process

Based on her own grieving experience and research from her studies, Joanne also advocated for the human-animal connection as a means of healing for grieving families after seeing the effect a horse rescued from abuse had on a grieving client. After a fortuitous meeting with Dr. Rich Gorman, who was studying the idea of “therapeutic spaces” and the mutual therapeutic effects of bringing together humans and animals, Joanne established the Selah Carefarm, which today is home to more than 50 rescued animals and also a mixed “community” of support for grieving families and individuals who travel from all around the world to be part of the mutuality of the Carefarm.

The healing processes for grief

Joanne is the author of Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss and Heartbreaking, and she maintains that where there is love, grief is inevitable in the event of the loss of a loved one. In the book, Joanne offers a process for creating the space ‘to integrate and honour our grief”. Her follow-up book, Grieving is Loving: Compassionate Words for Bearing the Unbearable, provides quotations from the previous book together with new prose and poems from Joanne.

Joanne encourages movement as part of the healing process for grief, e.g., dance, bare-foot hiking, running and yoga. She maintains that there is a need to transform the energy of grief and this can be achieved through movement and creative outlets such as art and writing. Joanne is a strong advocate, and daily practitioner, of meditating and expressing gratitude. She offers more advice on How to Navigate the Path of Grief in a recent podcast interview.

Reflection

The Death, Love and Wisdom Summit provides a wide range of resources for dealing with grief. The advice given by the experienced teachers and grief counsellors is very practical and readily implementable.

The Summit presentations reinforced the view that as we grow in mindfulness through meditation and other mindfulness practices, we can build our resilience and our compassion, and increase our ability to manage the challenging emotions and physical impairment that accompanies the grieving process.

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Image by 3345408 from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Developing Mindfulness through Nature

Sylvie Rokab recently presented a Zoom workshop as a teaser for her 8-week online course, Discover the Power of Nature-Inspired Mindfulness. The course is designed to help us relieve anxiety and release our natural power. Sylvie is a multi-talented nature lover who inspires others to appreciate nature through her talks, filmmaking, forest bathing experiences and mindfulness workshops and courses. In a TEDx talk, she spoke of the healing power of nature and described nature as medicine. A highpoint in Sylvie’s life and work is the making of the award-winning film, Love Thy Nature, as Director, with Liam Neeson as Narrator.

In the Zoom workshop, Sylvie used a visualisation exercise to help participants get in touch with nature by envisaging walking beside water flowing in a river and immersing themselves in the related sensory experiences. Participants reported a sense of calm, relaxation and peacefulness as they became immersed in this mindfulness experience.

Negativity bias contributes to anxiety

Sylvie argues that the “negativity bias” that we have inherited from Mother Nature is designed to ensure our survival as individuals and as a species – the fight/flight/freeze response mechanism enables self-protection. As Tara Brach points out in her Power of Awareness Course, the negative bias of our genetic make-up can feed anxiety and deprive us of happiness. Mindfulness, in contrast, can nurture the seeds of happiness by building awareness of everything that is positive in our life, including awe-inspiring nature.

Sylvie also explained that the culture that we live in today induces anxiety and unhappiness. The negative dynamics of our society are reflected in colonisation, mineral extraction, and the greed of invasion and land grabbing. Sylvie maintained that this “dysfunctional living” leads to a sense of disconnection and isolation as we lose sight of our connectedness. Social media and advertising, too, are biased towards messaging that emphasises our deficits – not being good enough, and how to become smarter, cool, or sexier. Tara Brach discusses the resultant “trance of separation and unworthiness” in an insightful article that focuses on “awakening” from the trance through honouring our interconnectedness with all living things, including our own bodies and nature.

Valuing our interconnectedness

Sylvie highlighted our interconnectedness with nature by stating that “nature is breathing you” and “calming your brain”. She talked of the need for a “nature fix” to enable us to relax and unwind from the busyness of life and the concurrent negative messaging. Sylvie reminded us that the definition of mindfulness proposed by Jon Kabat-Zinn emphasises adopting a non-judgmental stance. Our society, however, encourages judgment, comparison and envy which act as blocks to kindness, compassion and happiness.

Sylvie reminded us that Quantum Physics has provided evidence of the interconnectedness of everything. She encouraged us to become amazed that we are part of something that is much bigger than ourself – just viewing the images and videos of the Hubble Space Telescope can expand our horizons enormously and cultivate our sense of wonder. She suggests that the more we can remind ourselves to observe nature (e.g., the sky, trees) and imagine the earth going around the sun, the better we will be able to achieve “calm showing up in the world and in our relationships”. Sylvie quoted Rumi’s comment that we are not just a drop in the ocean but “the entire ocean in a drop” – a theme that is embraced in Lulu & Mischka’s mantra meditation, “Stillness in Motion”.

Mindfulness practices to cultivate awareness

During the Zoom workshop, Sylvie encouraged us to explore mindfulness practices to cultivate awareness. A starting point could be observing silence for 10 minutes on a daily basis – observing silence and stillness in nature is a pathway to self-awareness and resilience. Sylvie reminded us of the neuroscience supporting the value of mindfulness in altering our mind and brain.

Another mindfulness practice that Sylvie encouraged is a practice called S.T.O.P. – promoted by Tara Brach. The practice involves pausing (Stop), deep breathing (Taking a breath), noticing our emotions and bodily sensations (Observing) and responding with self-regulation (Proceeding). This practice cultivates self-awareness, emotional regulation and calmness.

Sylvie maintained that mindfulness practices designed to commune with nature awaken the senses and enable us to connect with “nature beings”. She especially encouraged nature therapy through “forest bathing” which is scientifically proven to have healing effects both mentally and physically. She also recommended that we engage with, and attract, people who are committed to, and consciously pursuing, mindfulness – arguing that “many drops of water” can make a river or ocean of support and change.

Reflection

There are many ways that we can engage with nature. Sylvie’s presentation made me more aware of the ways that I attempt to connect with nature on a daily basis – growing plants, composting and worm farming, watering our herbs and native trees, observing and listening to birds (Rainbow Lorikeets, Kookaburras, Noisy Minors, Magpies, fish-eating birds and various nectar-eaters), walking along the esplanade beside the bay and marina, and cultivating natural awareness while standing on our deck (that overlooks our back garden with a view of the Bay and islands in the background). I am often amazed by, and savour, the stunning sunrises and sunsets reflected in the water of a morning or evening.

Sylvie maintained that her course on nature-inspired mindfulness enables participants to overcome confusion and distractions caused by information overload and to revitalize their purpose while developing “a sense of community” and connectedness with nature. She encourages us to explore contemplative practices to achieve clarity about our values, vison and life purpose. These practices can enable us to be true to ourselves and live in a way that is aligned to our purpose and values. She suggested, for example, going into nature and asking questions that are potentially empowering:

What is the lesson to be learnt here?
How do I grow from my connection to nature?
How am I sharing my gifts and passion for the benefit of others?
What would my life be like if I was fully aligned to my vision, values and purpose?

As we grow in mindfulness by connecting with nature, engaging in nature-inspired contemplative practices and savour our natural environment, we can deepen our awareness, heighten our connectedness and cultivate appreciation, gratitude and compassion.

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Image by Penny from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

A Mindful Approach to Memoir Writing

Hay House Publishing recently provided a Book Writer’s Bootcamp which was held over 4 days with two hour Zoom sessions each day conducted by Reid Tracy CEO and Kelly Notaras (a 20 year veteran of the publishing industry – including a role as VP and Editorial Director for Sounds True which specialises in spirituality publishing). Reid and Kelly covered a wide range of topics associated with book writing including identifying your audience, deciding the genre of your book, the “hook” for your book, basic research, developing an outline, the roles of editors, deciding your perspective (first, second or third person or a combination) and getting published.

Both Reid and Kelly make the point that once you get started as a writer, you never know where your writing will take you. Kelly is a very experienced editor and she eventually started her own business, KN Literary Arts, where she offers book coaching, writing support, editing and assisted self-publishing. Through her website and YouTube channel, she offers free, ongoing advice and encouragement for authors. Kelly is also the author of The Book You Were Born to Write: Everything You Need to (Finally) Get Your Wisdom onto the Page and into the World.

Adopting a mindful approach to writing your memoir

Memoir writing requires mindfulness – being conscious of what you are doing in the moment and why you are doing it. It entails dealing with your thoughts and feelings as they occur (rather than pushing them aside). You have to be mindful of your audience, understand their needs and distil the wisdom of your life for their benefit. Throughout, you need to be patient, be prepared to be immersed in your focus and allow time for the book to germinate (after developing fertile ground through mindfulness). Writing will demand openness to the lessons learned in your life and in the act of reflecting and writing. Below are some things you can do to develop a mindful approach to writing your memoir.

Dealing with your own negative messaging: Seth Godin, multi-award bestseller and expert marketer, reminds us that you have to quiet your lizard brain when attempting something new. You naturally tend (through fear) to identify all the objections and potential problems. You might think that “I am not good enough”, “I am going over old ground” or that “I am not good at writing”. Mindfulness practices can help us overcome negative thinking and remove this barrier to progress. Reid and Kelly remind you that no one has had your unique life experiences or been in your position to experiment with your insights or ideas. You can bring your own “mindset and methodology” to existing knowledge areas (such as raising children, handling grief, overcoming setbacks). In relation to writing skill, one of my Professors always said that to learn to write, you need to “write, write, write!” Writing begets writing skill and I have seen this in children in primary school – by beginning with something that is achievable in the first instance and then progressively expanding their capacity. In the early days (2016) of this particular blog with its special focus on mindfulness, I was struggling to write 300-word posts; now, after more than 700 posts, I have trouble restricting my writing to around 1,000 words (my desired length).

Identify your audience: It takes discipline and considerable thinking time to understand who specifically you are writing for. Kelly reminds us that writing a memoir is “80% thinking time” and the rest actually writing and doing related tasks. The more specific you can make your audience (even just focusing on someone you know or a particular small group you have had experiences with), the easier it will be to decide what to include or exclude. If you try to write “for everybody”, you will tend to ramble and this has no appeal for, or traction with, the reader. Kelly maintains that “the more niche, the greater the success” – the more you can target your message to a specific audience “who needs what you have to share”, the more likely you are to be successful.

Know your genre: According to Kelly and Reid, memoirs tend to fall into three categories – (1) Narrative Memoir, (2) Prescriptive Non-Fiction or (3) Teaching Memoir. A narrative memoir focuses on a particular period of your life (a story) and a related theme; prescriptive non-fiction focuses on “how-to-do” something, for example, writing, meditation, cooking or managing time; and the teaching memoir melds storytelling with “lessons” (e.g. through exercises or guides). Kelly helps you to delineate these different genres by providing a free download to subscribers in the form of Three Classic Book Outlines – outlines that cover each of the three types of memoirs mentioned above. An outline is critical for structuring your writing and determining your outline is typically an iterative process as you begin to write and understand your audience and your theme/focus. Kelly also talks about the differences between memoirs and autobiographies in one of her many YouTube videos.

Check whether your book has resonance with your audience: Both Hay House and KN Literary Arts focus on transformational non-fiction – this is where someone who has experienced some form of “transformation” wants to share their acquired insights and wisdom by writing a self-help book, an inspirational memoir, or focusing their book on personal growth or spiritual development. In one of her videos, Kelly provides the Three Keys for effectively undertaking transformational non-fiction. Besides focusing on your own wisdom (not that of someone else you admire), Kelly encourages you to take the time necessary to distil your wisdom from your own experience and to identify what will have resonance with your audience. She suggests “teaching before you write your book” is a good way to undertake what she calls “resonance and development” – through research, identifying more completely what your audience needs. Kelly argues that “books tend to germinate slowly” and will develop according to their own schedule, not yours. She maintains that you need to take the time necessary to build greater resonance with your audience and to develop the insight to discern the connections amongst seemingly discrete events/experiences. Too often, intending writers have failed to achieve the necessary immersion in their topic/theme to achieve the required level of clarity to facilitate effective writing. Lack of immersion will be reflected in “poor digestion” of the issues/problems being addressed and leave the reader confused and uncertain and unwilling to recommend your book.

Overcoming writer’s block: There are numerous suggestions on the Internet for overcoming writer’s block. Some people encourage mindful walking to clear your mind and develop self-awareness. Other suggestions include journalling (and naming your feelings about writing), speed writing or writing poetry. Nancy Levin, author of Writing for My Life…Reclaiming the Lost Pieces of Me: A Poetic Journey, offers insights into how to explore your own vulnerability and connect with others through poetry. Reading memoirs of others can also act as a stimulus to free up your thinking and writing (Kelly and Reid suggest that this reading research is a necessary component for effective memoir writing anyway).

Consciously overcoming the tendency to perfectionism: Both Reid and Kelly maintain that you should write your first draft of your book before you begin editing. This avoids the tendency to perfectionism – a tendency that can create a severe blockage in your writing. If you don’t hold off editing until you finish your first draft, you can end up in a process of continuous writing and rewriting without achieving any substantial progress on your manuscript. The same principle applies to your efforts to write a hook for your memoir or an initial outline. Start with a tentative hook and outline and refine them as you go – you will gain greater clarity for both as your write.

Reflection

What is very clear from the Hay House Bootcamp and related writing and videos is that in writing a memoir you are processing yourself as well as providing a resource for others. As Kelly points out, your book itself can actually be a milestone in your own learning (or spiritual) journey. Elsewhere, I have written about the Healing Power of Storytelling. Creating a reflective blog can also help you to discover your inner author and develop the mindfulness necessary to produce a successful memoir.

In participating in the Bootcamp, I became aware of a number of options that I have for advancing my own writing. One is a teaching memoir based on my varied life experiences as a contemplative monk, academic, consultant, manager, father and writer. The other is a form of prescriptive non-fiction focused on my action learning experiences. With the former, the teaching memoir, I need to do considerably more research to fill in the gaps in my life history and decide a particular focus or theme to write about (I view this as an iterative process). The prescriptive non-fiction option is something that I can start immediately because I have already completed the requisite “resonance and development” having conducted numerous workshops with my audience over more than a decade, undertaken PhD studies in the area, conducted participative presentations, written book chapters and articles on the topic and used this blog as a form of reflective journal. Reid and Kelly maintain that these kinds of activities along with the use of social media provide a “platform” for your book launch.

As I grow in mindfulness by adopting different mindfulness practices, I look forward to gaining greater self-awareness, consolidating my message (in both genres) and developing my concentration and writing processes. At the moment, I am exploring self-publishing options through the resources and guidance provided by Kelly’s KN Literary Arts and Balboa Press (a division of Hay House).

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Image by Anna from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Healing Through Creative Storytelling

I have previously written about the Health Story Collaborative created by Dr. Annie Brewster M.D. The Collaborative provides an online platform for individuals to share their story (through any medium) about their health challenges and their road to recovery. The stories provide healing for the storyteller and ongoing inspiration for others to overcome the challenge of ill-health in whatever form it takes. Annie Brewster is the author of The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma and Loss.

Creative Meetups

One of the programs offered by the Health Story Collaborative is Creative Meetups that are designed to cultivate “writing for expression and connection”. They are based on the firm belief that artistic expression of a person’s story can help them “find hope and healing”. These free workshops are offered every second Wednesday via the Zoom platform – they only require prior registration through the website.

The Creative Meetups are currently facilitated by Annie Robinson, who has completed a Masters in Narrative Medicine and is a qualified meditation, mindfulness and yoga teacher. In her private practice, Annie helps health professionals, including nurses and doctors, by training them in wellbeing, reflection and resilience. She also assists individuals in various life transitions and is co-curator of the podcast for health professionals, Thriving in Scrubs.

My experience of a Creative Meetup

I recently participated in my first Creative Meetup – initially with some uncertainty, not knowing what would be involved and how vulnerable I would feel. The Meetup facilitated by Annie had about 12 participants, both male and female. The process usually involves Annie providing some form of stimulus for reflection followed by a period for individual creative writing that can take any form a participant desires, e.g., a poem, picture, narrative or dot points.

Annie explained at the outset that she was departing from her usual practice of having two participants read out a piece of writing, e.g. a poem, that can act as a stimulus to reflection. On this occasion, she shared an abstract painting that featured a number of colours with a pattern that suggested “reflection” to me.

Our Meetup process involved an initial two minute writing task where we reflected on what the painting meant for us as individuals, there being “no right answer”. This was followed by a brief sharing by some people who wished to share with the larger group. We were then assigned the task of taking a sentence from our earlier reflection and expanding on this over a period of 20 minutes of individual creative writing (with no restrictions on form or length).

When we had completed our creative writing, Annie placed us into Zoom “rooms” of three or four people to share at another level. Participants were encouraged to share only what they felt comfortable sharing with no pressure for full disclosure. The small group environment enabled rapid rapport building and a degree of openness that was disarmingly honest (destroying any erroneous first impressions that may have been formed).

As one participant commented in the larger group, there was a common bond amongst participants in that we were all dealing with a health challenge (however varied in nature and complexity) and were seeking healing through writing and sharing. Reg Revans, the Father of Action Learning, would describe us as “Comrades in Adversity” (or as others put it, “Comrades in Opportunity”).

The environment created through the Creative Writeup process was one of trust that facilitated openness and vulnerability by participants. There was a shared sense of journeying towards healing with the aid of the understanding, empathy and mutual support offered by fellow participants. Annie’s low-key facilitation style and active listening modelled appropriate behaviour for participants.

I was blown away in the small group by the creative writing that was shared. In one case, this involved a poem that expressed the meaning for the participant of each of the colours in the painting – an insightful and revealing piece of writing that we asked the storyteller to read a second time because it was so rich. Another involved an allegorical story that was emotive and self-disclosing and left us all feeling loving kindness towards the person who shared so vulnerably.

One of the features of the small group was the way that one person’s shared reflection stimulated reflection by another person and achieved a deeper level of self-disclosure. Participants could relate to some aspect of a shared situation, response or recovery approach. We were each able to learn from the storytelling.

Reflection

During the small group sharing, I was able to share with others how expressing gratitude for what I am able to have and do was a recovery mechanism for me following my diagnosis of multi-level spinal degeneration. It also empowered me to seek alternative medical assistance in the form of an exercise physiologist who helped me return to tennis when my doctors told me that I would never play again.

The painting that Annie shared reminded me of the art of reflection – having spent most of my working life in studying, teaching and practicing action learning. Reflection underpinned the way I played tennis, conducted workshops, managed people and interacted with others.

More recently, through reflection, I came to understand that one of my personal barriers to active listening was my need to come from an “I know” perspective rather than what Frank Ostaseski recommends as a “don’t know mind”. The “don’t know” approach is foundational to action learning, so my listening behaviour was not congruent with what I espoused about action learning. Reg Revans reminds us that, ”If you think you fully understand something, you are not only going to get yourself in trouble but others as well.” Reg encourages us to “ask fresh questions” and to develop “questioning insight”. He frequently quoted Isaac Newton’s comment about studying some interesting shells and pebbles in his lifetime “whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me”.

At the time, I attributed this personal barrier to active listening to my many years as an academic. I realised, too, that the “I know” perspective accounts in part why I had so much resistance when trying to introduce action learning into my university. It also explains why in the first year of an action learning program that I was facilitating in another university, the hierarchy insisted on removing “become a learning organisation” from the vision statement for the program (they re-inserted it after their experience of the first year of the program and its outcomes).

As I grow in mindfulness through reflection and activities such as the Creative Meetups, I am better able to develop resilience to deal with life’s challenges, gain increased self-awareness and cultivate deep listening to enrich my relationships.

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Image by Peter H from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Our Friend Kay: A Life of Openness and Curiosity

Recently we lost a long-standing friend with the death of Kay Dickie on 3 August 2023. My wife and I have known Kay for forty years – from both a work and a personal perspective. Her career was interlaced with both our work lives during her many interludes in the world of work. More recently, Kay has shared her love of music with us in the wonderful setting of Stradbroke Island. Her life was lived with a mindful curiosity that manifested her inquisitee mind and her deep appreciation of everything in life – life’s mysteries, nature, her friends and beloved dog, .

Exploring the world of work with Kay

I first met Kay when she was Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Coordinator in the Federal Department of Social Security and I was Director, Corporate Services reporting to the State Director. One particular case of sexual harassment stands out in my mind because it illustrates Kay’s commitment, compassion and dogged perseverance. She had been blocked by multiple levels of management when trying to investigate what proved to be a serious case of sexual harassment. Kay, through my agency, was able to act to unearth the issue, circumvent the power politics and prevent the harassment from continuing.

Kay’s inquisitive mind was not easily fobbed off by managerial intransigence – it only encouraged her to explore deeper and exhaust all avenues for a resolution. My current consulting colleague, Julie Cork, who was EEO Director at the Commonwealth Public Service Board in Brisbane at the time, commented that Kay had a profound understanding of the EEO Coordinator role and was able to articulate it clearly within her Department and in the broader Coordinator network.

Kay was a strong advocate of action learning and in her work and personal life she epitomised supportive challenge and asking fresh questions as encouraged by Reg Revans, the Father of Action Learning. From 1991 – 1994, Kay was the Project Manager for the University of Queensland Action Learning Program (ALP) which was judged Best Practice by the Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education. Kay and I wrote a report on the first two years of the Program which was published by the Tertiary Education Institute at the University of Queensland in 1993.

I was External Consultant and Mentor for the Program Team in the first five years of the ALP Program which eventually ran for 9 years. The program – its philosophy, processes and outcomes – was the subject of my PhD published in 1996, Action Learning for Professional and Organisation Development: An Action Research Case Study in Higher Education. The PALS Model developed as part of my PhD research was published in an article I wrote for The Learning Organisation Journal 2002, Creating innovation and synergy through a parallel action learning structure.

Kay was also Project Manager for the 1995 National Research Project, Action Learning in Vocational Education and Training. The project involved 9 researchers, including myself, and produced four major reports which became the foundation documentation for the nationally accredited Certificate 4 in Change Management – Action learning. As part of the project, Kay and I undertook a series of interviews of managers who had introduced action learning into their organisations. This research included an interview with the CEO of Kinney Shoes (Australia) that had nearly 500 stores throughout Australia. Kay and I collaborated with a number of other researchers on the project to produce Volume 3: Applied Principles for the national project. This volume incorporated cases studies developed through our interviews.

Curiosity about energy and consciousness

Kay was a prime mover in organising the ALAR National Conference in 1996, Energy Switch: the possibilities offered by action learning, action research, and process oriented methods. Dr. Bert Cunnington provided the plenary presentation on the topic, All you need is love: the loving, learning organisation. Bert maintained that organisations needed to move from “the negative energy of fear, doubt, and competition” to the “positive energy of love, faith, collaboration and creativity.” Bert referred to the research that highlighted the high incidence of illness and the related job dissatisfaction in organisations. He contended that the solution to dealing with the stresses of current organisational life lay in the 4 C’s – challenge, commitment, control and connection. The emphasis here is on stimulation through challenge, commitment to meaningful work, individual self-efficacy and agency and connection through social support (within and outside work and family). Bert’s presentation is documented in the ALAR Journal under the title, Dedication- to Dr. Bert Cunnington (Vol 2 No 2 – pages 3-17).

Kay was fascinated by consciousness and the relevant insights from quantum physics and frequently referred to energy as a key element of life. She cited Albert Einstein’s perspective, “What we call matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses”. Einstein’s perception that “everything is energy” that can only be changed, not destroyed, opened up Kay’s horizon on consciousness and spirituality. She agreed with Einstein’s statement, “We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us”. Kay reflected what Einstein said of himself, “I’m passionately curious”. On her 76^th birthday, three months before she died, Kay reflected, “the older I get, seeking is the only game in town”.

Reflection

Kay began exploring quantum physics and energy when she was undertaking a Masters Degree. Like Margaret Wheatley she was keen to learn what quantum physics meant for organisations and her own personal life. Margaret explored the writers in the area in her ground-breaking 1992 book, Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organizations from an Orderly Universe. Margaret’s quest and challenging questions, mirrored Kay’s search for understanding.

Cliff Bunning, Kay’s supervisor, explored in depth how quantum physics relates to developing our spiritual life. In his 2011 book, The Direct Path to Self-Realisation and Beyond, he maintained that “all feelings good and bad are basically the same energy…flowing in the opposite direction”. He suggests that positive energy can be generated by expressing gratitude, being forgiving, giving positive vibes, having a pet, feeding your mind with positive information, connecting with nature regularly and “following your heart”.

Global leadership coach and biophysicist, Ginny Whitelaw, contends that leadership in organisations is about resonance. In her book, Resonate: Zen and the Way of Making a Difference, she maintains that the role of a leader is that of an “energy concentrator”, achieving “synchronous vibration” with followers through listening, mindfulness practices such as Tai Chi, connecting with the energy of nature and accessing our positive energy force through deep breathing.

Kay exhibited positive energy derived from her deep love of nature, her extended social network, and her positive outlook on life. She drew energy from everything around her and especially the waters and trees of Stradbroke Island. She once commented, “I need to be near water, otherwise I shrivel up”. Her life was a simple life that made a difference in the lives of the people she interacted with.

Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), defines mindfulness as paying attention to our present moment experiences with openness and curiosity and a willingness to be with what is. Kay epitomised mindful living. As we grow in mindfulness through our own connection with nature and all that is positive in our lives, we can also make a real difference through the positive energy and vibration that we emit.

While composing this blog post, I came across a song, Curiosity Abounds, by Modus Operandi. Their instrumental album that this song is drawn from, Organic Exploratorium, involves “Discovery backdrops and positive soundtracks filled with the promises of education, research, the future”. The album includes other songs like Curiosity in Planets, Inquisitive Minds, Reality Beckons, Explore the Unknown, Another Day to Explore – all of which resonate strongly with Kay’s outlook on life.

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Image by Sven Lachmann from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Consolidating a Career: Establishing a Career Identity

Angela Duckworth, in her book, Grit: Why passion and perseverance are the secrets to success, describes George E. Vaillant, Professor of Psychology (Harvard Medical School), as an exemplar of “grit”. George was Director of Harvard’s Study of Adult Development for more than 30 years and persisted in data collection and interpretation over those years – mining the “gold” within the longitudinal study undertaken over 75 years. He was particularly enamoured by the richness of such a prospective study which enabled data collection and interpretation as both the circumstances and characteristics of study participants changed over time – information being captured at different age points in their life (such as thirty, fifty, sixty and eighty).

George readily acknowledges that not only did the study participants change over time, but the interpretive framework, including his own evolving understanding, changed as well. He was very conscious of the biological mindset of the early investigators on the research project and his own latter bias towards psychological frameworks. His third book about the study, Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study, illustrates very clearly his personal evolution as well as that of the people undertaking the study – he often acknowledges how his assumptions about an individual’s potential proved to be wrong (based on his prior erroneous reasoning).

Consolidating a career – an evolutionary concept

George was strongly influenced by the adult development framework of Erik Erikson presented in his book, Childhood and Society. In his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Erik identified 8 stages of psychological development, including Stage 5 – Identity Versus Confusion. George attempted to fit the data on the psychological development of his study participants to this stage as described by Erik Erikson. However, George found that while study participants were able to establish a personal identity, they often had not developed a “career identity”. He decided to divide Erik’s “Identity versus Confusion stage” into two separate stages – “Identity” (versus “Identity Diffusion”) and “Career Consolidation” (versus “Role Diffusion”). Identity in George’s terms means “to separate from social, economic, and ecological dependence upon one’s parents”. Career consolidation, on the other hand, leads to “Career Identity” (a state he contrasts with experiencing role diffusion – an inability to commit to a “work” role that provides both personal enjoyment and social contribution).

Career Identity

The outcome of George’s “Career Consolidation” stage is “Career Identity”. He maintains that this stage of adult development involves four key tasks – commitment, compensation, contentment, and competence. George suggests that if all four are not present, then what is often involved is a job, not a career. The tasks of commitment and contentment reflect the perseverance and passion that I discussed as core elements of “grit”. Compensation often reflects competence but George points out that it can be a misleading concept where women’s compensation is involved (because of a lack of equal pay) and also for househusbands who he considered to have a “consolidated career” if commitment, contentment and competence are present (despite the lack of adequate compensation). Effectively, “compensation” is the more flexible element of his Carrer Identity stage.

George also argues that Career Identity involves a basic paradox in that commitment to a career that is sufficiently contributory beyond the self to warrant compensation, is also a “selfish” pursuit in that it requires the self-absorption necessary to develop the requisite competence. He suggests that society is tolerant of both men and women as they attempt to develop the “sense of competence” that underpins Career Identity.

Reflection

When I look at George’s concept of Career Identify, I reflect on my own work life as an academic. I can see that my academic career spanning more than thirty years had each of the four elements present – commitment, contentment, compensation and competence (the latter reinforced by the award of Emeritus Professor on retirement). While many elements of this career and associated identification were personally rewarding, some aspects were not. I enjoyed teaching students, examining Masters and Doctoral Theses and the researching/learning that such a career entailed; however, I did not appreciate the politics of academia that diverted my energy and attention away from my core role(s).

As I grow in mindfulness, through reflection and other mindfulness practices, I have come to value my career and its highlights, to be grateful for the opportunities that it provided (including overseas travel) and for the mentors and supporters (including my parents) who made my progression possible. Without their guidance and belief in my capacity, I would not have been able to achieve this aspect of the Identity Stage of adult development.

One of my mentors, Professor David Limerick, died recently after leading an exemplary life encompassing Career Consolidation, robust self-esteem, love of family, generosity towards others and an enduring love of nature and music. I can readily feel the imprint of his life on my own mindset and personal development, my love of nature and music, and my perspective on organisation change and development. To this day, I appreciate the time and effort he took to enable us to co-author an award-winning article – Transformation Change: Towards an Action Learning Organization (1995 Award for Excellence, The Learning Organization Journal).

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Changing How We Deal with Emotions

Hilary Jacobs Kendel, psychotherapist, author and activist, contends that we learn many things in school that we never use but do not learn about emotions that affect every aspect of our daily lives. She strongly advocates for education about emotions though her videos, blog posts, presentations, interviews, newspaper articles and clinical practice. Hilary is the author of It’s Not Always About Depression: Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions and Rediscover Your Authentic Self.

The Change Triangle®

Hilary educates people about emotions and how to change the way we deal with them through what she calls the Change Triangle®. This is a visual representation in the form of an inverted triangle of the different types of emotions we all experience. At the base are what Hilary calls the core emotions that are calls to action designed to help us negotiate our environment. To the right at the top are inhibiting emotions which impede us experiencing core emotions in their true form. These, in turn, often lead us to adopt defenses which we employ to avoid being aware of, or experiencing, our feelings.

Hilary acknowledges that her own understanding of emotions was developed through attending a presentation by Dr. Diana Fosha, Director and Founder of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)™ which is a treatment model adopted by Hilary that was developed to help adults experiencing difficulties as a result of childhood attachment trauma and abuse. This transformational model focuses on healing and flourishing despite the experience of emotional suffering and draws heavily on neuroscience, brain plasticity and research on mother-infant development. Diana advocates strongly for a healing approach (transformation) instead of the traditional psychotherapy approach of a focus on pathology. In this respect, she addresses the question What Happened to You?, not What’s Wrong With You? – a healing approach also adopted in the book by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry. Diana wrote the Forward for Hilary’s book.

Core Emotions

Core emotions have been identified as early as Charles Darwin and their impact on the brain is now able to be identified through brain imaging. Hilary identifies the core emotions as fear, joy, anger, excitement, sadness, sexual excitement and disgust. These emotions are beyond conscious control as they are triggered by our everyday experience and serve as a survival mechanism, activating our flight or fight response, our approach or avoidance stance. Where real danger exists, this can be life-saving. Fear, for example, can make us aware of a real, impending danger, e.g., a house fire. However, through trauma and adverse childhood experiences, the core emotions can be triggered by seemingly harmless activities or events, such as conscious breathing, a smell or a sound. The core emotions “ready our body for action” as they appear with a lot of biological energy – ready for activation.

Inhibiting Emotions

Hilary identifies three emotions that she describes as “inhibiting emotions” – anxiety, shame and guilt. These emotions often arise from the “shoulds” “and “should-not” messaging that we are all exposed to, especially in our childhood. Deborah Feldman illustrates this very well in her book, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. She talks of the shame she felt in reading books written in English rather than Yiddish (because of the constant paternal messaging) and the guilt she experienced eating cakes when she felt hungry from the very restrictive traditional diet. Hilary explains that “shame” is designed to inhibit out impulses and ensure conformity to the norms of our reference group – e.g., family, community or religion. She differentiates healthy shame from toxic shame – the former brings us safety through inclusion, protection and support. The latter generates a toxic environment in that it is built on negative self-talk that reinforces negative beliefs about oneself generated by bullying (online or offline), abuse, neglect or alcoholic parents. Hilary explains that the road to healing is employing the Change Triangle® to unearth the core emotions that lie underneath the shame. She provides a roadmap through her blog post, 5 Ways to Work the Change Triangle as a Beginner, and offers multiple examples of this transformation process in operation within her book, It’s Not Always About Depression.

Defenses

Hilary explains that defenses are a form of emotional protection in that they are multiple ways “we all avoid painful, uncomfortable or conflicting emotions”. She identifies the more common ways to avoid emotions in one of her blog posts, including sarcasm, superior conceit, constant apologizing, procrastination, eating disorders and addiction. She describes some of the more surface level defenses as moving away, rolling your eyes or judging others. Defenses can be healthy and serve our needs in particular situations such as in a professional environment. However, unhealthy defenses prevent us from experiencing either inhibiting or core emotions and effectively lead to disconnection from our authentic self. We hide away from the pain of our deepest feelings by finding a way to deflect them.

In a New York Times Article, It’s Not Always Depression, Sometimes its Shame, Hilary describes her AEDP therapeutic work with a client named Brain. He had presented with what appeared to be chronic depression and had failed to respond to multiple forms of therapy and medication. He appeared to be in a comatose state – unable to connect, express his feelings or communicate effectively. His defenses, in the form of withdrawal enabled him to protect himself form the pain of “emotional aloneness” and toxic shame – induced by a lack of emotional bonding from his parents. His father was preoccupied with earning a living and his mother drank to excess – resulting in “emotional neglect” for Brian.

Hilary employed a range of techniques over the four years of her therapeutic intervention, including throwing cushions to Brian just to engage him in some way. In his second year of treatment, he learned to name his emotions, validate them and “safely connect to the emotion he felt in his body”. On the conclusion of his therapy Brian “felt alive again”, developed more friends, undertook meaningful work and learned to assert his needs. In the process, he dissipated the toxic shame he had been experiencing.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness we gain increased self-awareness and are better able to identify our triggers, our habituated defenses, the inhibiting emotions and our underlying core emotions (often, there is more than one at play). We can also learn to access our emotions through our bodily sensations – a major focus of Hilary’s approach.

In her video presentation of the Change Triangle® to a group, Hilary begins with a meditation – participants are asked to close their eyes, become grounded, get in touch with their breath, and undertake a body scan. The first part of the scan focuses in on a place in the body where we can feel calm and warmth. The second part of the scan involves identifying a place of tension or pain in the body. This is followed by a process of breathing into that place and imagining that we are able to move it aside even for a little bit to locate the emotion that is under there, “pushing up for experiencing and validation”.

As Bessel van der Kolk maintains, The Body Keeps the Score. In this book, he explains the role of the brain and body in the transformation of trauma. As Hilary points out, through her Change Triangle®, healing and transformation ultimately lead us to our Authentic Self which enables us to achieve clarity, calm, courage, creativity, compassion and connectedness.

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Image by Ronald Plett from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Grit: Realizing our Potential

Angela Duckworth describes “grit” as the “combination of passion and perseverance”. According to Angela, high performers are separated from under-performers (as measured against natural talent) because they not only have determination but a direction inspired by a passion. In her book, Grit: Why passion and persistence are the secrets to success, she provides substantial research and multiple examples that underpin her perspective on “the psychology of achievement”. She argues exhaustively that talent is not the determinant of success – despite “the global war for talent”.

Talent is misleading

There are many people in numerous areas of endeavour who have what we call “natural talent” but who fail to realise their potential. Angela argues that we often resort to the word “talent” as a way to explain high performance or what we see as exceptional achievement beyond what is perceived as the norm. As I read this, I remembered an incident when I played social tennis recently – I had produced a winning running, cross-court forehand shot which elicited the unexpected comment from my tennis partner, “That’s just natural talent”. Little did he realise that I had been playing tennis for more than 65 years and that my brothers and I used to spend hours each week doing tennis drills, including practising endless cross-court shots.

Angela suggests that high performance or achievement is often described as “magical” because it serves to protect a person’s self-esteem and offers an excuse for not competing or attempting to match the seemingly unattainable level achieved by others. She contends that more often than not, exceptional performance or achievement is the result of grit – the combination of consistent hard work and persistence in the face of setbacks. She maintains that labelling high performance as “natural talent” can mislead us into not making an effort. She gives the example from her own teaching career where she was mislead into thinking that effort had to go into the seemingly talented at the expense of the “strugglers”. This absolved her and the strugglers from making the extra effort required to bring them up to speed.

Perseverance: the hard work behind exceptional performance or achievement

Angela gives many examples of people lacking natural talent who nonetheless are exceptional performers/achievers. For example, she writes about John Irving, author of 12 exceptional books (half of which have been turned into movies) and his struggle with dyslexia. In his school days, John was described as “lazy and stupid”. He overcame his disability by reading with his finger slowly which resulted in his ability to pay attention to an exceptional degree and to realise that repeating something over and over enabled him to understand that through such repletion “something that was never natural becomes almost second nature”. John indicated that his greatest ability as a writer is ”reworking” – having the willingness and stamina to do multiple redrafts of his novels.

Angela also highlighted the “work ethic” of Will Smith who claimed that he was “not to be outworked” – he would go so far as “to die on the treadmill”. He claimed that he lacked the smarts, talent and sexual appeal of other actors, but understood that effort, not talent, determines results. As Angela points out, there are many people who have a precocious level of talent who under-perform because they are not prepared “to put the work in” – it all comes too easy for them so they quickly plateau.

People often drop out before they realise their potential, whether they are attempting to achieve elite performance or just using their exercise bike, running track, weights or tennis practice. The defining personal quality for excellence is “stick-to-itness” which is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the ability or capacity to see a course of action through to its completion” – which translates into “dogged perseverance”. According to Angela’s research on excellent performance and achievement, “the highly accomplished were paragons of persistence”. She maintains that we can overlook the persistent, consistent hard work involved because we “see the performance but not the training”.

There is a certain mundanity about the hard work involved – repetition of seemingly boring tasks done daily over an extended period. Angela cites Dan Chambliss who studied Olympic Swimmers and wrote a report titled, The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers. Dan concludes, after three years of research, “Excellence is achieved by the doing of actions, ordinary in themselves, consistently and carefully.” The actions are done with care to ensure they are “correct” but are repeated ad nauseum to enable them to become “habituated” and combined in performance to achieve excellence. He stated that “superb performance is really a confluence of small skills or activities”.

Passion: the driver of perseverance

Angela describes high performers and achievers in her research as people “chasing something of unparalleled interest and importance”. Passion drives persistence. A singular focus maintained over time requires an underlying passion. I used to tell my PhD students not to start a thesis unless they are passionate about the topic – without the passion they will inevitably “run out of steam”. As Dan points out in his report, ‘a dissertation is a mundane piece of work” and the real test is whether you can complete it to the point of submission (which explains why some doctoral attrition rates [dropping out] reach 50% or higher).

Angela cites the work of Francis Galton who undertook a longitudinal study of high achievement in fields such as law, science athletics and the arts. He concluded that exceptional zeal and “the capacity for hard work” enabled the “outliers” to “demonstrate exceptional ability”. Angela also notes that Charles Darwin, Francis’ cousin, agreed that zeal and hard work are “the eminently important difference” in high achievement, not intellect. Darwin claimed that he was not so remarkably clever but his “industry” (application to observation and understanding) were exceptional. He indicated that what drove this persistence and perseverance was a “love of natural science” that has been “steady and ardent”. As Angela points out, it’s not just a love of, or passion for, an area of endeavour but the ability “to stay in love” with it that counts in the final analysis.

Angela describes the work of George Vaillant who persisted with following the Harvard Medical School’s Study of Adult Development (which was undertaken over 75 years). George who was the director of the study for more than 30 years published key insights from the study in three books, the latter of which was Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study. He claimed that he was “not naturally persistent” but undertook the Harvard study on a consistent and persistent basis. He maintained that he was “totally fascinated by the Study” and stated that “there is nothing more interesting than watching people grow”. His passion drove his perseverance.

Effort – the determinant of skill level and achievement

Angela contends that talent can determine how quickly skill is improved if you put in the effort. However, effort builds skill and also enables us to make that skill productive. As skill develops through hard work, we are better able and more willing to use our acquired skills. Angela illustrates this theory of skill development and achievement through effort, with the work of Master potter Warren MacKenzie (considered an American Treasure). Warren initially attempted with his wife Alix (Alixandra Kolesky) to try different arts such as jewellery and textile design and decided to focus on pottery. He thought that excelling at one thing would be much more satisfying than being amateurish at many things. So together he and his wife concentrated on ceramic work “because that was where we felt our true interest lay”.

Warren invested effort in making about fifty pots a day and indicated that the first ten thousand pots were difficult. Each day his skill grew and his achievement in terms of what he considered good pots grew. Looking back on his early pots he viewed them in hindsight as not very good, lacking the richness that he was looking for. Being a potter for most of his adult life (he died at age 94) he was able to apply his expertise and insight to teach ceramic arts at the University of Minnesota over a period of 37 years.

Warren showed that his hard work and application – making pots every day and trying to improve his art – led to skill mastery and enabled him to apply his skill to not only excel in his chosen art form but also to become an esteemed Professor and teacher.

Reflection

Angela cites William James, American psychologist and philosopher, who maintained that people very often failed to actualize their potential – “we are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources”. The gap in actualization, according to Angela, often comes down to a lack of willingness to persevere with the hard work that is required to turn passion and interest into skill, mastery and application. She encourages everyone to put the work in to pursue their passion – an exhortation echoed by Naomi Simpson in her book, Live What You Love: When Passion and Purpose Change Your life.

I found by applying myself to writing this blog (over 700 posts) that writing has become easier – I can more readily focus on a topic, integrate material from multiple sources (podcasts, novels, videos, articles, blogs) and create an original post. The act of writing has become easier as I have refined my writing process through perseverance (despite many setbacks and distractions) and pursued my passion to grow mindfulness. I continue to learn about being mindful in everyday life and have learnt to adapt my mindfulness practices to changing circumstances. I am always on the lookout for mindfulness exemplars.

When I look back on my tennis experience over more than 60 years, I can see how Angela’s theory of skill acquisition and application through hard work bears fruit in terms of high performance. I have played over 1,000 sets of tennis and practised individual shots over numerous hours over my lifetime. Even when no one else was available to play a game of tennis with me, I would take a bucket of balls to a tennis court and practise my serves and shots up and down the forehand and backhand sidelines as well as crosscourt. Even today in my seventies, I can complete tennis shots that surprise the people I am playing with (such as a backhand half-volley drop shot or a backhand half-volley lob). I find that mindfulness, especially Tai Chi, improves my game.

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Image by Shahid Abdullah from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Deep Listening: A Lost Managerial Art

Managers report that many things act as barriers preventing them from listening effectively in the workplace. Distractions from external sources such as endless emails, busyness at work, noise from “open office environments” and time pressures, are high on the list as impediments. Managers also identify what can be described as internal barriers to listening – preconceptions about an individual staff member, assumptions about what the individual wants to talk about, anxiety when the speaker is sharing difficult emotions, and absorption with their own personal issues. Managers report, too, that they tend to try to solve problems before they really know what the employee’s problem is, interrupt people to tell their own stories and have difficulty maintaining their focus on a speaker when they are perceived to be “rambling on”.

Added to these difficulties experienced by managers is what Johann Hari describes as our “lost focus” – an ongoing decline in our ability to pay attention for any length of time because of the “fire hose” of information flooding our minds through emails, social media and news broadcasts. In his book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, he highlights our inability to stay-on-topic, be truly present and achieve flow. Research shows that our attention span is diminishing rapidly, making it all the more difficult for managers to engage in “deep listening”. In a recent podcast, Gloria Monk PhD drew on this research to explain “Why our attention spans are shrinking”.

The essence of deep listening

Joan Halifax, in her book, Standing at the Edge, describes deep listening as truly listening in the present moment with openness and curiosity. She explains that this requires us “to step out of self-absorption, self-deception, distractions” and move away “from the trance of our technological devices”. Joan maintains that deep listening involves “really hearing” someone else by listening “with body, heart, and mind”. In her words, it also involves being able to “listen past the filters of our personal history and our memories” – it involves self-lessness. Too often, we have to tell our stories to legitimate ourselves in the eyes of the other person.

Larissa Behrendt, in her novel After Story, has one of her characters describe deep listening as “listening with respect” – not trying to hurry the other person to finish, paying full attention without interrupting the speaker. She reinforces the need to be “ready to listen” – “to prepare the space and listen” so that you can take in the wisdom of the speaker and the story they have to tell. Larissa, Distinguished Professor of Indigenous Studies and Research at UTS, maintains that deep listening has its origins in the ancient cultural ways known as Winanga-Li, where “the silences are as powerful as the words”.

Deep listening for Richard Wolf, author of In Tune: Music as a Bridge to Mindfulness, occurs when we “not only hear music but feel it”. This involves feeling the music “with your body and soul”. For Richard, music can help the listener/musician overcome internal barriers to listening by “filtering out” distorting elements such as biases, prejudices, blind-spots and false assumptions.

Benefits of deep listening

There are many benefits from deep listening that accrue to the listener as well as the person being listened to. I have summarised some of the key benefits that are identified in literature that I have been reading lately:

Facilitating the healing power of storytelling: deep listening enables a person to share their story of pain, suffering and trauma. Annie Brewster details the way this can happen in her book, The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma and Loss. It is because of the healing power of storytelling that Annie has established the Health Story Collaborative. Jana Pittman, in her biography Enough: accept yourself just the way you are, highlights the destructive impact of keeping painful things bottled up – you can lose yourself. As someone who has experienced deep pain and suffering – through three miscarriages, a marriage breakdown, media taunting and bullying, “a cervical cancer scare”, multiple injuries destroying her Olympic Dream, battling with financial difficulties and an eating disorder – Jana can readily attest to the healing power that facing her pain and sharing her story has provided her. She maintains that running away from pain can be a “heavy burden” because “bottling it up” is like “carrying it round like a ball and chain”. By facing her pain, embracing it and sharing it, she has found a new release to achieve even greater goals; the alternative, avoidance strategy, “leaves you with a whole lot of defensive walls and only a short ladder”. Larissa Behrendt, in her After Story novel, has one of her characters comment that there is “strength in saying things” because “it’s like a curtain being lifted”.
Achieving resonance: `Ginny Whitelaw, innovator in leadership development, contends that leadership is about achieving resonance with followers, and that it is through listening that leaders capture the energy of followers and thus focus and amplify the collective energy of a team. She explains her underlying principles, and supporting neuroscience, in her book, Resonate: Zen and the Way of Making a Difference. Deep listening for Ginny involves getting on the “same wavelength”, instead of “talking past” the other person. This means, in effect, that energy vibrations of the leader and follower become aligned and therefore amplified. The sensitivity involved in such deep listening changes the listener and enables healing of the storyteller.
Developing empathy: Joan Halifax contends that deep listening develops empathy, motivates compassionate action and obviates self-absorption. She provides examples of deep listening in her book, Standing at the Edge, while recognising that empathy is an “Edge State” – that can lead to significant personal and social contributions, but potentially lead to “empathic distress”. This latter downside of deep listening and the attendant empathic feelings can arise where a person is unable to separate themselves from the sufferer – they effectively “own” the other’s suffering. In her book, Joan describes situations where she has experienced empathic distress, however momentarily, and offers ways to overcome this other-absorption, including her G.R.A.C.E. technique.

Ways to develop deep listening

There are multiple ways to develop deep listening and, like any art, “practise makes perfect”. However, we each have our personal and historical impediments to achieving deep listening at any point in time. Actively working to cultivate deep listening can be very beneficial for ourselves and others we interact with on a daily basis. Several authors suggest different ways to develop deep listening (apart from consciously practising it in the present moment):

Sounds as an anchor in meditation: meditation often involves choosing an anchor that can enable us to re-focus once we experience distractions during meditation. While our breath is often used as an anchor, sounds can be an alternative. Richard Wolf suggests that focusing in on the sounds of our breath along with the gap between breaths, can effectively cultivate deep listening. We can also tune into our environment, including what he describes as the “room tone”. Richard also encourages the development of “dual awareness” where we not only focus on the sounds of our breath but also become consciously aware of our associated bodily sensations.
Music to quiet the “inner voice”: Richard maintains that playing a musical instrument or listening to music can cultivate deep listening because of the sustained concentration required. You are effectively training yourself to tune into the music (by fully attending to the sounds) and experiencing the music emotionally and bodily. Richard argues that the concentration required quiets the self-critical inner voice and prevents contamination by our “cognitive limitations”. He contends that music enables us to achieve an alignment of mind, body and emotion. Richard suggests that playing an instrument for others not only develops deep listening for the musician but also provides a “stunning variety of sonic, emotional and musical elements” for a discerning audience – a catalyst for deep listening on their part. One can readily picture a young child dancing in a totally uninhibited way to music played by a street performer who is totally absorbed in his or her art.
Tuning into nature: nature provides silence and unique sounds that enable us to experience our interconnectedness to everything, including people who are attempting to gain a “hearing”. Gordon Hempton reminds us that silence in nature does not mean the absence of sounds but “an acoustic state, free of intrusions of modern, man-made noise”. Gordon has recorded his journey as an activist for nature’s “silence” in his book, One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet. Through his work as a sound recordist and an acoustic ecologist, he has encouraged people to heighten their auditory awareness of the unique “soundtracks” that surround us in nature and to observe “the quiet between the notes” (so that we can better appreciate the value of silence and stillness). Gordon’s crusade for silence and listening to nature is mirrored in the work of Christine Jackman, author of Turning Down the Noise: The Quiet Power of Silence in a Busy World. In a chapter on nature, she highlights the healing power of nature and the need to tune into nature to reduce our “emotional inflammation” and regain our capacity to be quiet and listen. Like Gordon, she contends that when we listen to nature “our listening horizon extends”. Polar photographer, Camille Seaman, maintains that spending time in the stillness and silence of nature “dissolves the veil of separateness” and increases our understanding of, and respect for, our connectedness.
Adopting a “not Knowing” mindset: Joan Halifax recommends cultivating a “beginner’s mind” – the stance of “not knowing”. She maintains that we can never really know and understand the complex mix of emotions another person is experiencing, or the precursor events at different points in their life, or the unique interplay of triggers that were the catalyst for their current psychosomatic state. This perspective accords with the advice of Frank Ostaseski to cultivate a don’t know mind. Robert Wilder discusses the challenges and benefits of living a “not knowing” life in his podcast, The Not-Know-It-All: The Struggle of Not Knowing.
Reflective practice: reflection on our communication experiences can help us to gain insight into the barriers we put in the way of deep listening. If we are honest in our reflections, we can improve our awareness of our habituated behaviours (such as interrupting others) that act as blockages to our deep listening. I have posted a sample of questions for reflection on personal interactions in a previous post.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness by spending time observing and listening in nature, reflecting on our interactions, meditating on internal and external sounds and undertaking other mindfulness practices, we can gain awareness of our personal impediments to developing the art of deep listening. For me, some of these impediments are a tendency to deflect the conversation when emotions become intense (on either side of the conversation), to divert the conversation to my own story or to demonstrate knowledge and experience to prop up my sense of self-worth or external credibility.

A further reflection (25 August 2023)

Reflecting on my behaviour when interrupting somenone’s conversation, I realise that sometimes I come from an “I know” position, not a “don’t know” perspective. I feel I have to explain that I have experienced (directly or indirectly) what they are talking about, read about it or heard someone else talking about it. The net effect is that I don’t reflect back the communicated emotions and divert the conversation onto my issue and away from challenging emotions. I wonder whether this habituated behaviour has resulted from my academic background (the need to be seen to know).

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Image by Monika Iris from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

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