mindfulness

The other day I got my student feedback from a course I teach each semester on Managing without Authority for a local university. I opened it up, excited to see what the students said, and my eyes were drawn to the one respondent that disagreed the course was valuable, and also disagreed I was knowledgeable.  In the free form feedback it said: “Too much reliance on students and not the teacher. We spent more time talking in groups than being provided real insight on managing without authority. If we asked a question, it was not answered and instead thrown on the class to answer.” My heart sank.  And the mind monkey took off.  I’d been outed.  Because when I look deep at my own inner saboteurs, the one that screams the most is “You don’t know enough.” We Fixate on the Negative Feedback So that comment really stung.  I’ve often noticed this tendency in life, where we humble human beings fall into negative confirmation bias.  We look for the things that confirm our worst fears.  Our worst fears are then confirmed, and we fixate on it.  Never mind the 18 other people that strongly agreed that the course was valuable.  Never mind the copious comments on how engaging the course was, how much they liked the case studies, my humor, the breakout groups.  Never mind that these 18 thought I was knowledgeable.  In that moment none of it mattered.  This one individual in the six years I’d been teaching for this institution had finally seen the truth of me.  The game was up. Unfortunately, I had opened this email in the middle of an important 3 day meeting I was participating in.  And then I cursed myself for opening something that could be potentially triggering at a moment I needed to concentrate most.  It took some effort, but I managed to steer myself back into the meeting and reground myself.  Yay for mindfulness techniques!  I spent a few moments practicing some deep breathing, focusing with my eyes on a few objects in my office that bring me joy and are beautiful to look at.  Slowly but surely the dissonance faded away and I regained my composure. When will we be enough? But it got me thinking…it’s interesting this tendency we have to need to prove ourselves.  We obsess about the big presentation that’s coming up, how we must be prepared and have the answer to every potential question under the sun that might be asked.  We stress about the quality of our work.  Is it good enough?  Will people think that I’m credible and I know what I’m talking about?  We stress about the quarterly performance review; will I be rated above average or exceptional?  And what does it mean if I’m not? But here’s the bottom line – When do we get to enjoy things?  When we know enough?  Because that’s a fool’s game.  Enough is never enough because there’s always something new to prove, someone new to impress, […]

  At the end of yoga class yesterday, my teacher Erikka came up to me and said, “Your practice looks really nice.”  Quite a compliment, coming from her, a graceful swanlike woman, I’ve often watched her move seamlessly out of one posture to another, balancing on one foot in warrior three without a care in the world. Effort without Intention It reminds me of when I first started my yoga practice.  I was anything but.  There, in the sweaty confines of the hot room, I was swearing under my breath as I struggled to lift my crooked back up one inch off the floor in cobra.  I didn’t know what I didn’t know.  I came back to class, day after day because I knew I felt better, but I looked at the postures as difficult mountains to climb, never acknowledged any progress I made and certainly never thought my practice was “good enough.”  I muddled through year after year and somehow found the willpower to never give up. Lately I’ve been talking a lot in these blogs about the body, and particularly our connection to it.  I’ve been realizing how frequently we get triggered by something, have that feeling that we’re out of control or overwhelmed, and then move about our day, only half really being in this wonderful bag of skin and bones we call home.  We lose touch with the sensation of really “being” in our body, how miraculous that experience is.  We become, for lack of a better word, “ungrounded” and float our way through life living almost exclusively in our head, in the neurotic diatribe that is almost always occurring in our monkey-like mind. The Power of Intentions So yesterday, I did set an intention in class.  For many years I’d roll my eyes when teachers would say that.  When I taught yoga, I’d often tell students to do it as well, but I really didn’t grasp what the words meant.  I thought it sounded cool and zen like. My intention was to ground myself in my body during my practice.  I’d had a tough week, I’d been triggered many times teaching a new course to a group of participants.  My mind was on hyperdrive, “Was I good enough?  What kind of feedback am I going to get?  Was I too honest and harsh in the group coaching circles?  Do the participants think I’m some sort of hack?  I should have said this.  I should have said that.  I’m not sure they got all that much out of the experience.  Maybe I upset them.  I’m never going to be called back to do any work for this client again!”  But I digress… So my intention was to look at the yoga not just as an interesting challenge, but a tool for connecting my body to my mind and spirit.  I focused deeply on my breathing and recall hearing myself breathe in and out.  In mountain I reached my arms up to the sky, to salute the […]

Today I took a couple of calls, one with my IT guy regarding my new website we’re working on, and another with my coaching supervisor.  She recommended the book, True Yoga, and I decided a bit of spiritual enlightenment was in order. Put down the to do list I stopped what I was doing, put down my to do list and started reading the book.  As I read, I’m sitting out on my balcony, which overlooks a greenbelt here in Austin.  I’m hearing the gentle hum of my next-door neighbor’s air conditioner and it’s so soothing, I’m rocked in my chair like a baby.  My cats Bijoux and Beaux are lying at my feet, and the birds in the trees watch them ever so carefully.  They chirp their nervous warning chirps, and the kitties silently watch on.  I just heard a boat pass by on lake Austin, and even see a few patches of the blue lake through the copious leaves of the oak trees in the greenbelt. What do you notice? I notice the fig tree which we initially thought was dormant is in full swing, its fruit is ripening in the hot Texas sun.  I notice my breath, in and out, slow, and steady, and my body relaxing after the stresses of the week. I notice the wind on my skin, somehow cool and refreshing as I sit in the shade in the dirty white sundress I’ve donned, I feel the lightness of the material as it rests peacefully and lightly atop my tan skin.  I think about how I should wear white more often.  I notice the plants on my balcony are growing more than I wished them to.  And I marvel I didn’t notice it earlier. I hear a dog barking somewhere in the greenbelt.  I feel the beating of my heart in my chest.  I notice how beautiful the sunlight is as it streams through the treetops and warms and radiates energy in the plants in my yard, the flavor of my herbs: rosemary, oregano, sage, mint, basil, more pungent and sweet for its strong rays. I notice the pink ping pong ball shaped flowers of a plant I bought outside HEB the other day and hastily threw into a planter.  The bees dive gleefully and the butterflies swarm, attracted to its peppermint pink fauna. I feel the joy of resting peacefully in my body, as I read about the true meaning of yoga, the yoga sutras, the point that less is more.  The fact that the simple things in life are the things most worth experiencing.  The joy of boredom and the creativity it inspires if we just allow ourselves to rest blissfully in it.  The simple pleasure of sitting peacefully in this vessel of a body. resting in the sheer joy of being And so here I rest blissfully, in the sheer joy of being.  I write this blog post, quickly, carelessly, one word after another onto the page, not caring about the […]

The other day I woke up with an ache in my neck.  It was a familiar pain, I’d experienced it in the past when I hadn’t been practicing proper ergonomics and I ended up having to do 4 months of physical therapy to get it to subside. And there it was again.  Despite the fact I know better, I’d been doing all the things I shouldn’t.  Sitting hunched over at my computer in bed or on the couch because I was too lazy to go to my office.  And forget the maintenance exercises I’m supposed to do each morning.  Who has time for that? Well, it came back this time with a vengeance.  Pain like I’d never felt before.  So painful I couldn’t sleep at night.  There I was, lying in bed on a girl’s weekend to Marfa, Texas with my best friend, awake in agony for the better part of 3 nights. The spiral loop of doom It was the last night of the trip that I really started to think myself into jail.  My friend had left me alone in the hotel room so I could go to bed early and get some rest.  Except rest was not to be had.  My mind was spinning. I knew I had to calm myself down, but I was off to the races… The day after we get back I start teaching a new leadership program for a client.   What if I’m running on no sleep to do that?  What if the pain doesn’t go away?  What if I’m not firing on all cylinders and have difficult participants?  What if they think I’m an idiot?  And then that will just set off a chain reaction to affect every other session I have with these people, who will now just view me as some kind of overpaid talentless hack who knows nothing about leadership?  Why does this kind of thing always happen to me?  I’m cursed!  It’s amazing where one’s mind will go when it has the opportunity to run free.  Mine is typically off the cliff in 10 seconds or less.  My mind was caught in what I call a spiral loop of doom – you keep replaying worst case scenario over and over again, and your anxiety rises and rises.  Eventually you end up in a state beyond fight or flight, where you literally freeze, start to dissociate and shut down. I started opening all the tools I have in my mindfulness toolkit.  I tried meditation.  No dice.  I tried breathing techniques, but again, nada.  The loop of doom had grown too strong.  And then I remembered a little phrase that my cousin Margaret had mentioned years ago when she was trying to quit smoking.  “This will pass.”  Her trick was to repeat it out loud to herself when she would get the compulsion to light up a cancer stick.  “This craving will pass.  This moment will pass.” The calming beauty of a simple phrase The beauty of that […]

Quite often in my line of work, I get asked to give a presentation.  And I’m always perfectly happy to comply.  I’m one of those rare mutants of a human who actually enjoys public speaking.  Perhaps I missed my calling as a c-list celebrity actress on a soap opera or my chance to make it big yodeling on America’s got talent.  But give me a microphone, a happy audience and a deck of powerpoint slides and I’m off to the races. So the other day there I was, right in my element, with a happy audience of fifteen HR directors of the top Austin hotel chains.  I had been asked to speak about mindfulness and the link to customer service, and was super excited to have the opportunity to connect so directly with potential clients. Attack of the presentation jitters The jokes were landing, the information was resonating, I was in my happy place.  No presentation jitters here!  And then about halfway through the presentation I zeroed in on one participant, who had the look on his face. The look? You know the look. We’ve all seen the look. It’s the look that says, “You’re an idiot.  This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.  There is no way I am taking this seriously.  Get off the stage before I get my big hook and drag you off.” That look. I tried to focus on the other participants.  “Okay Shelley, find more friendly faces in the crowd.  Focus your attention elsewhere.  You know you could be misinterpreting this.”  But it was to no avail.  I couldn’t escape that sly smile, those narrowed eyes, the smug mouth.  And I’m sure at one point he even rolled his eyes.  The look was controlling me now.  I was no longer free. I sensed my body tensing up.  The pace of my speech grew quicker and quicker.  I was asking fewer questions, engaging the audience less and less.  I was skipping over sections of slides.  I finished early and with a sigh of relief asked my attentive audience what questions they had. Silence. At that point the HR director who had invited me threw out a token question, which I eagerly jumped on like manna from heaven to a dying soul. I was desperate for their approval.  Desperate for their validation. I told myself that maybe they were just shy and that I’m sure a few will approach me afterwards to ask for more information.  That always happens. No one did. I gathered up my belongings and left the room with my tail between my legs. Now being a trained and skilled facilitator, I’ve dealt with these things before, but they tended to affect me earlier on in my training days, when I was a newbie facilitator with a lot of passion and not a lot of practice. Was that man really giving me the look?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Even if he was, the rest of the group was actively engaged up to the […]

“So how are you doing?” I asked an old friend the other day. “Busy!  I’m just so busy at the moment.  It’s crazy trying to find enough time in the day to get everything done.  I don’t know where the time goes.  How about you?” “Oh, keeping busy too I guess.” I vaguely hear myself mouthing the boilerplate response. The land of the crazy busy people I often feel as if I went to bed one night and woke up foggy headed and disoriented in the land of the busy people.  You know the kind.  Outwardly they appear as if in a perpetual rush.  They’re surrounded by an aura of nervous, chaotic energy as they go about their daily business of running red lights, texting while driving, tapping their foot impatiently in the checkout line, intently replying to that next super urgent email on their smartphone, so focused they barely look up to mumble “Venti Iced Skinny Hazelnut Macchiato, Sugar-Free Syrup, Extra Shot, Light Ice, No Whip” to the bemused Starbucks barista. They tell you how much they meant to call you, but they’ve been running around like a chicken with their head cut off.  Work has been insane.  They promise to call soon, once their meditation class finally finishes.  They say that it’s such a shame they don’t see you more often.  Let’s make a date for coffee soon. I’m always left bewildered by these interactions.  Is this crazy busy routine is just a clever ploy to avoid me? The second thing that crosses my mind is, “Why is the simple business of going about your life so damn complicated?”  Because as far as I’m aware, none of these folks are busy solving the problems of the world or a front runner for the Nobel peace prize (present company included). Of course, there are things I could be doing but don’t (which I regularly beat myself up about) like working on yet another marketing campaign for my business or writing a new training course or perhaps even writing a fabulous new blog.  But despite these things, I sometimes find myself bored. But bored is taboo these days.  We’re not supposed to be bored.  If we’re bored, something’s obviously wrong, because our Facebook statuses and Instagram pictures would indicate we’re all leading highly exciting, fast paced, idyllic lives full of meaning and purpose and god only knows what else. I’ve often thought about answering the “How are you” question honestly when I’m having an off day.  I wonder what reaction I’ll get from the other party if I tell them I’m “bored and uninspired.”  It may be similar to the look I got the other day at the liquor store when I was restocking the bar and mentioned to the cashier I was just picking a few things up to get me through the weekend. I often wonder, “How did crazy busy become our new normal?”  As a child, I recall those moments of boredom that inspire you to light […]