At the outset of my work as a hospice volunteer, there were things that put me off. I don’t necessarily recall what my emotional responses were those many years ago, because I have learned to live with them. One category of offense that I have learned to live with stems from olfactory responses to conditions such as feces, stale urine, vomit and necrotic tissue. Smell triggers ancient fear responses. I have learned no way to overcome them, except to carry a small supply of Vick’s VapoRub or other ointment, which I apply to my nasal passages. This allows me time to deal with the immediate situation, which usually is cleaned up in relatively short order. I imagine that this is enough to turn many of you off. But let me put it in context. Keep Reading »
Posts Tagged ‘Meditation’
The Working Brain, Part 2
We continue with our examination of Your Brain At Work by David Rock. Utilizing Rock’s metaphor of the prefrontal cortex as a small, energy-hungry stage, a number of principles follow concerning overwhelm and multiple tasking, and in succeeding chapters, Rock enumerates them:
The less you hold in mind at once, the better; new ideas take up more space on the stage than what you already know; memory degrades as you hold more than one idea in mind; the optimal number of items to compare in decision-making is two; the optimal number of different ideas to hold in mind is no more than 3 or 4; focus on only one conscious task at a time; switching between tasks uses energy and increases error; performing multiple conscious tasks results in drop-off in accuracy and performance; multitasking only should be done with routine tasks. Keep Reading »
Awareness and Parenting, Part 8 – Integral Intelligence & Wrap Up
Integral Intelligence (II) refers to that state of being in which you are concurrently aware of and able to utilize your other intelligences synergistically. Moreover, II allows you to overcome the compartmentalization, limitations and distortion which may arise from allowing one intelligence or another to dominate from time to time or in certain situations. Here are some simple examples. You may not function well intellectually, emotionally or socially when you are hungry or verging on illness. An astute somatic awareness will alert you to the risks of certain undertakings, such that you either proceed with caution or postpone them to another day. Or, you recently have experienced a death in the family and are grieving your loss. You recognize that your emotional state will impede your somatic intelligence, so this is not the time to go rock climbing. You choose to go for a hike, instead. Or, you’ve worked for twelve days straight, without a break, and are invited to an evening of socializing with friends. You recognize that you lack the physical energy as well as the mental acuity to effectively engage a social situation. So, instead, you take your partner out for a quiet meal. The permutations are limitless. But the higher functioning to be realized from acknowledging the interdependencies of the various intelligences and working with them integrally cannot be overlooked. II is an intelligence not much recognized beyond a small circle of psychologists, philosophers, educators and coaches. It is not been the subject of protracted study, although various authors such as Ken Wilber, Ervin Laszlo, Peter Senge, Robert Sternberg, and others have been building a framework for its definition and wider acceptance. Many have begun to equate effective leadership with high II, all though I know of no metric for its measurement that been established. Keep Reading »
Awareness and Parenting, Part 6 – Social
Social intelligence refers to your competency to successfully engage others, leading to mutually satisfying relationships. It includes the ability to listen deeply and communicate profoundly with widely diverse individuals and groups. It involves seeing the world from others’ perspectives, the ability to collaborate on problems and co-create outcomes, as well as the ability to effectively compromise, allowing your desires to be subsumed for the benefit of the relationship, all without sacrificing your worth or dignity. Social intelligence generally is not a fixed attribute. Rather, it is an ever evolving complex of information processing skills, which can be modified to alter attitudes and behavior. Social intelligence should not be conflated with social skills, which constitute only a subset.
According to Daniel Goleman, in Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships, parent-child responsiveness creates the path for parents to help their children “learn the ground rules for relationships — how to attend to another person, how to pace an interaction, how to engage in conversation, how to tune in to the other person’s feelings, and how to manage your own feelings while you are engaged with someone else.” These rules form the foundation for competent social living. According to Goleman, children lacking synchronous parenting are at risk of growing up with disturbed attachment patterns. Children raised by attuned parents tend to be secure; while anxious parenting yields anxious children and aloof parenting produces avoidant children. The attachment style of a parent predicts the child’s social style with about 70% accuracy. Keep Reading »
Sounds of Silence
I thought that I would take a little break from our conversations about parenting. But, as I sit here thinking about what I’m about to write, I discover that it is not much of a break at all. The next installment in the parenting series concerns relational or social intelligence. What we are about to review here is an obscure, but very interesting little book, Listening Below the Noise: The Transformative Power of Silence, written by writer and novelist Anne D. LeClaire (2009). And, the connection is this — those qualities which arise in the socially intelligent, such as empathy, compassion, generosity, and kindness, often manifest to others through their powers of listening. And at its heart, listening rests upon a foundation of ego-less silence and focused attention on, and connection with, another.
Almost 20 years ago, Anne LeClaire found that she was mistaking a busy life for a rich one. Then beginning in January 1992, she decided to set aside the 1st and 3rd Monday of each month for silence. And, for those 24 hours she did not speak. In her words, Keep Reading »
Awareness and Parenting, Part 5 – Somatic
Somatic intelligence refers to your ability to observe what is happening in your body. Furthermore, it includes your ability to include what your body is telling you into your understanding of what is happening in the moment and how best to respond to it. This intelligence may reveal something very different about what’s happening (alternative perceptions) and appropriate responses to them than either your intellect or your emotions. By the end of this conversation, I hope you come to see how important this intelligence is in contributing to your parenting efforts.
I want to separate out somatic intelligence from certain human habits or manifestations, which may appear to reflect somatic intelligence but do not. First, there are those who are impeccably dressed and coiffed, based on an understanding that appearance creates a favorable impression on others. This may be accompanied by practiced body movements, voice training and demeanor reinforcing that initial impression. Second are the bodybuilders whose every muscle has been driven, with or without chemical assistance, to optimal massing. Third are the indefatigable trainees, ceaselessly running, biking, swimming, climbing, rowing and so on. If you’ll note, each of the above seeks to develop the body for some particular manifestation or outcome. That may, or may not, include understanding of body, its temperament,well-being and status for their own sakes. I was once coaching an individual who ran long distances on a regular basis, but used the running time to “solve” work and personal problems. I asked him whether or not he occasionally fell owing to the distraction of his problem-solving. He admitted, with some embarrassment, that he frequently did, tripping over objects, changes in elevation or his own feet. His body was on autopilot and clearly not the subject of awareness. Keep Reading »
Veg or No Veg, Part 3
Most coaching clients come to me because they find themselves “stuck” in some aspect of their lives. My work, as a coach, is to identify the ineffective behaviors; trace their source to the client’s underlying beliefs and judgments that support the behaviors; help the client to find alternative ways to perceive the situation giving rise to the inappropriate habitual behavior; and explore alternative behaviors, based on new perspectives of the situation. Over the course of the coaching program, it is my design to leave the client in a position to carry out this process on his/her own as new “blockages” arise. Coaching is not designed to give the client a fish, but to teach the client how to fish.
Part of our training as coaches involve submitting ourselves, as clients, to a year-long coaching program. From that experience, I learned the intimate relationship amongst awareness, perception, curiosity and discovery. Through practices such as meditation, yoga and qi gong, I began to acquire the ability to slow down and become more attentive to the present moment. That expanded awareness exposed opportunities for alternative perceptions on what might be transpiring. Those alternative perceptions disrupted my egocentric notions of there being only one “right way” to overcome difficulties or expand opportunities and made me curious to explore the alternatives. From those explorations, I was rewarded with many new discoveries, allowing me to adapt to changing circumstances, with new behaviors. I recognize that the foregoing is an oversimplified recital of a much more complicated process. But, I wanted to frame the conversation we’ve been having about my recent trip to Spain and Morocco and my renewed exploration into the issue of vegetarianism. Keep Reading »
What’s Your Core Message?
In connection with my pursuit of a speaking career, I engaged the services of Juanell Teague, who works with speakers to develop their content and market position in the speaking industry. Juanell is a delightful lady, who lives in a Dallas suburb, along a street populated by more diverse religious establishments than I ever have witnessed elsewhere in my travels. She is a very proper and Christian lady. And she has been around the speaking industry for many years, going back to the days of promoting events for Zig Ziglar, an early and renowned motivational speaker. Juanell transmitted to me a workbook designed to elicit my background, interests, prior speaking experience, my personal views, values and perspectives. We had several preparatory telephone conversations, designed to build rapport and mutual understanding, before I traveled to Dallas for a 2- day intensive session on developing my core message and, what is known in the speaking industry, as a “one sheet”- designed to drive meeting planners, corporate leaders and industry association big-wigs to your door for speaking engagements.
After completing the preparatory material, I flew to Dallas in early June for my 2 day, one on one session. For Juanell, speaking is not a career, it is a manifestation of your passion. If you can find that passion, embody it in content that solves someone’s real problem, deliver that content authentically, you will become successful, engaged and empowered speaker. Our work for those 2 days was to identify that passion, uniquely “brand” it and create a “one sheet” that effectively communicated the promise of the unique content that I had to offer. Keep Reading »
Continuous Partial Attention
Psychologist Linda Stone (lindastone.net) has been researching the phenomenon of Continuous Partial Attention (CPA), which sounds a great deal like Fear of Missing Something (FOMS) that I described in my last post. She describes CPA as a dominant form of attention giving in modern society. She distinguishes CPA from multitasking, which is driven by different motivation. When you multitask, you are seeking to be more productive and efficient. Multitasking generally is given over to behavior that is automatic, requiring little cognitive processing. Things like scanning e-mail while talking on the phone or meeting with a colleague over lunch are typical. You are trying to get as many things done at one time as possible, presumably to make more time available for more meaningful pursuits. My grave reservations of multitasking are (1) it is more difficult to carry out each individual task right, during multitasking, than if it were done as a single task and (2) people have difficulty in assessing what activities are appropriate for multitasking behavior. Whoever dreamed that you could text on a handheld device while driving or even scroll through an address list while jogging, probably isn’t who I want as my surgeon, lawyer or accountant. Keep Reading »
Fear of Missing Something
The first time I recall identifying this peculiar phenomenon was when I began attending California Coast Music Camp in 1991, after my original cancer diagnosis. CCMC offered more than 20 classes of instruction on such wildly diverse subjects as “bluegrass flatpicking guitar”, “fingerstyle blues guitar”, “playing African polyrhythms”, “beginning bossa nova guitar”, “jazz band” and the like. Roughly 7 concurrent courses in 3 designated timeslots. What to study? All of these great teachers and such intriguing courses! We were told that it was acceptable to switch classes, if one wasn’t to your liking. So, I did. Not ever because the class wasn’t to my liking, but because there was something more or different that I wanted to experience. Keep Reading »
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