More to Life at Work

It's been a long time - but here I am again!

I have discovered that when you stop blogging, it's similar to when you stop exercising! It's so hard to get back and begin again. Why that should be, I don't really know, but hey - I am back. It's been a long time since I was in New Hampshire - no more Innkeeping for me!

I was nudged along the way when I was sent an offer for a free blogging course from Mark Joyner and the folks at Simpology, that I am sending along to you:

Since I believe that things happen for a reason, I decided that the reason I found the offer for Mark Joyner's free blogging course was that I needed to get back on the virtual page! And, Mark always provides great value.

I have been traveling through a life/career/spiritual transition for quite a while now and here is where I am now:

• I have returned to the Mid Hudson Valley of New York. The mountains, open sky, and calmer pace do my heart good!
• Upon my return, I decided that I needed an anchor to ground myself during this time of change and so...
• I am now the Executive Director of Jewish Family Services of Ulster County - a part time role in a small non-profit social work agency that services people of all faiths - with a special focus on the "mature" adults in our community as well as caregivers.  It has been quite rewarding to return to my social work roots and to be engaged in community building as well as in capacity buiding for the agency.  It uses all my years of business experience, organizational development,coaching and networking plus my clincial social work skills. It is rewarding work.
• I continue to coach people who are in Transition themselves. My clients tend to be  "seekers" who want to engage in their lives and work in deeper and more meaningful ways. The portal to more meaning and depth can be through their personal lives, their work, or their relationships - all paths lead home!
• I am in the midst of writing 2 books! Like writing one is not enough! As the cover of my book states, one is called, "More to Life at Work: 4 Pathways for Deeper Meaning & Joy in Your Livelihood" and the other is Hiring Intelligence: A Proven System to Make Brilliant Hires.
• And...I am still seeking!

Please send along some comments and tell me what you are up to!

Create Success by Choice - Not by Chance!

Leslie

I want things to feel better, but...

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.  Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Steve Jobs, CEO Apple Computer, Pixar Animation Stanford University Commencement Address June, 2005

Our yearnings are pretty much the same – even if what fulfills them is different. Each of us yearns to be successful and happier. Sounds right, doesn’t it? But, here’s the snag, many of us want increased success and happiness as long as we don’t have to change very much or to tolerate too much discomfort to achieve our desire.  We want things to be better; we just don’t relish the price we may have to pay to get there.

While you earnestly want to experience more success, caring, self-worth or

self-confidence, you also want to leapfrog over the messiness and awkwardness of creating something new in your life. You want "it, they and them", to shape up and change – but not you.

So, before we move on, I want to be really honest with you. To create the work, career, life and relationships you want, it’s you who must change first.

While this is more than possible, it is not for the faint-hearted, the self-absorbed or the self-righteous. Changing is a humbling experience.  It is not all skyrockets in flight, it’s often shoveling, well - you know what I mean.

If you want your work and life to be more fulfilling, more exciting, more lucrative, and more meaningful then you must work to release your ways of being that get in the way of your success. You must become more response-able in your relationships with family, friends, work colleagues, customers and others.

This book is about finding your Self.  It is about discovering who you are and can become when you face your fears, fight the negative self-talk; open to not knowing and find your courage to go for the life you really crave.

Finding meaning only happens when we for compassion, gratitude, generosity,integrity and openness to learning from others. We also must become willing to consider the greater good over personal aggrandizement. Commit to discovering "what's in it for all of us” and you can reap the rewards of the wonderful things that are in it for you.

Attachment and Suffering

All unhappiness is caused by attachment.

The Buddha

 

If this book that I am writing is about anything - it is about our attachments and how they cause suffering in the form of self-accusation, blame, denial, aggressiveness or passivity in "just giving up". "There is nothing I can do about this. I'm a victim. I have to pay the mortgage. What else can I do, I'm over fifty and praying not to get fired."

 

In an article I read by Robert Ringer in Early to Rise (www.earlytorise.com) he quotes the Dalai Lama:

""The Dalai Lama explains that Buddhism sees the major dividing line between sentience (consciousness) and non-sentience as the interest in the alleviation of suffering and the quest for happiness. This phenomenon is tied to the Four Noble Truths that Buddha taught in his initial sermon:

Noble Truth No. 1: There is suffering.
Noble Truth No. 2: Suffering has an origin.
Noble Truth No. 3: The cessation of suffering is possible.
Noble Truth No. 4: There is a path to the cessation of suffering. "

 

Let's start with Noble Truth No. 1: There is suffering

Now, the fact that there is suffering is self-evident, right? Yet, most of us feel that it is unjust when we are made to suffer. Somehow, we believe that we are entitled to a life of non-suffering and we feel angry, betrayed, bereft, or devastated when we feel suffering. "It's not FAIR!" our minds scream, "After all, I am a good person, I work hard, I am honest…" And, no where have I heard that lament more than in reference to work and our places of work, and our bosses at work, and our co-workers, and our customers…" .

Have you sat at your desk, or stared into your coffee, or lamented to your friends that "it isn't fair", or "what is my purpose?", or "is this as good as it gets?". Sure you have – because at some time or another we all have.

Now to Noble Truth No.2: Suffering has an origin.

It does have an origin and the place of its beginnings is not outside of us and our control, but inside of us and within our control. Until we assume responsibility for the actions we take, the choices we make, and the paths we avoid because of fear and anxiety we will suffer. Yes, awful tragedies occur, malignant illnesses strike, tsunamis devastate, and we can lose our friends, loved ones, livelihood and more overnight. That's life. But what we can work towards changing is the way in which we react to these situations and to focus on how we can learn more, become wiser , and respond with compassion to ourselves first and then outwards towards others. And, finally stop rolling about in the muck of our victim-hood.

Perhaps you have read Paulo Coelho (one of my favorites), the author of the Alchemist, The Fifth Mountain and many other internationally renown books and articles. In the Fifth Mountain, and I am paraphrasing, he writes of an interaction. One man asks another, "What is the difference between the temporary and the everlasting?" And the response was, "The unavoidable is temporary". "And the everlasting?" the other asked, "The everlasting are the lessons we learn from facing the unavoidable." Now, I love that.

Noble Truth No. 3: The cessation of suffering is possible.

All the tragedies and sorrows of life are unavoidable, but they pass. We then have the choice of either clinging to them or making them an ongoing and never-ending part of our sorrowful history or, we can look for the lessons they hold for us, we can gently and honestly look at our real feelings, fears, beliefs and demands and learn to let go of our attachment to all of them. And, most importantly I think, of our attachment to our belief that we are in charge and all-powerful, that change doesn't occur unless we concur and that life is supposed to be fair and have happy endings. And if the current movie of our life doesn't seem to be heading for a happy ending then we are entitled to our disengagement, our lack of will, our complaints and our staying stuck.

Meeting Yourself on the Way to Work is about meeting your suffering, despair, boredom, apathy, grandiosity, greed, selfishness and acting-out at work and turning them around.

Until you meet those parts of yourself - really embrace that they belong to you, and are a product of your thoughts and beliefs can you learn to engage in work and your life in creative, responsible, conscious and empowering ways despite the "unavoidables". And, once you begin to let go you begin to cease suffering.

Now, in all honesty, I can't tell you that I don't ever suffer. That would be a lie and absurd. What I can tell you is that through much suffering, bemoaning, failures and disappointments that I am getting a little better at letting go of the false beliefs I have about myself and about how my life and work should behave. Little by little I have taken more responsibility for my creation of some of those events and my intention is to seek the lessons and finally to learn the lessons, because as Coelho so rightly saw, the lessons are everlasting. 

Noble Truth No. 4: There is a path to the cessation of suffering. "

Since I am not a confirmed Buddhist and am challenged to sit on that cushion, I am not proposing that that is the only route to ceasing to suffer. But, I am a student of many schools of thought – archetypal, Native American, Jungian, psychoanalytic, Jewish, and transcendental and my route is to take from all these wisdom traditions learning that help me become more honest than not, more responsible than defeated and more growing than shrinking. And, for me that path has opened new vistas, shown me more mirrors that I didn't want to but forced myself to look into; and offered more compassion for myself and others than I had before.

So, I am not telling you that I possess the knowledge that can keep suffering from your work and your life. What I want to share are ways of being, thinking, visioning and doing that can lessen the pain and bring in more light.

And, so we begin our journey together.

 

First Step On the Way

I sit here writing to you with trepidation, excitement, fear and grand expectation.  I'd call that a mixed bag, wouldn't you?

Why this blog?  I have set myself the goal of finishing the first draft of Meeting Yourself on the Way to Work: Finding Meaning from 9 to 5 within the next 120 days. As today is Tuesday, September 5th 2006 (and my daughter's birthday, too!) my hoped for completion date is January 2, 2007. I originally wrote this in July (hence the post date) but get waylaid My goal, with your help, is to complete this first draft manuscript!  If my math if off, which is entirely possible, please advise.

Why am I writing this and what for?  Good questions.

This book has been rumbling around in my head for a few years.  After doing public speaking on the topic, writing and delivering a series of teleclasses and creating a workshop, I decided enough all ready - get down to writing the book ! I started writing this book a year ago and - well, you can guess, because here I am trying it another way.

For over 25 years I have been counseling, mentoring, training and helping develop people's abilities, vision and courage in their work as well as their lives. 

From my early days as a psychotherapist, I have worked with what I call, "the walking wounded" of corporate life.  They walk, they talk, they show up at work, they even are successful, sometimes VERY successful by traditional standards. But, and this is a big But - they have left their souls at the door.  Somewhere along the way, they lost the way; or their way was dismissed, devalued or, perhaps, felt too dangerous to openly pursue. What comes, over time, when you are off course are often deep feelings of disengagement, loss, anger, frustration, blaming, busy idleness, loss of authenticity, assaults on your integrity, and emptiness - deep, searing, and scary. And, guess what? I have been there myself and know first hand how damaging, draining and alone it can feel.

I also passionately believe that it is our responsibility - not that of our employers, or the organization or the work/corporate culture to turn this disengagement around.  I believe that we are the authors of our own lives and that we can re-write the script if we think deep, consider new ways of being (not doing), and grow up and acknowledge that life and work are neither fair nor easy.

You can change your experience by changing how you choose to engage in your work, in your workplace, with your peers, direct reports, customers, vendors and a host of others.

Meeting Yourself on the Way to Work - is meant to be to be used as a compass pointing out 4 transcultural archetypal directions that can take you, your work and your life into new and profound territory. With great honor and appreciation, Angeles Arrien, a miraculous woman of deep wisdom, has allowed me to use the four archetypal patterns that she writes about in The Four Fold Way. This slim book of great depth provided me with a structured context within which I could explore how we can find, recapture, and extend the energies of our hearts, minds, spirit, and vision.  Thank you Angie, I hope this effort of mine is a small ray emanating from your shining vision of what is possible.

I will post parts of chapters, articles, quotations from others that have an impact on me in no particular order than what has passion and meaning for me in the moment.  I earnestly invite your reactions, your stories, your questions, your feedback, your critique and hopefully your support. In 90 days I hope I can announce success with my goal and my deep gratitude to all who have contributed to my learning.

I recently wrote an article entitled, "Success is Not a One-Person Sport", and I believe the same about this book.  If you find this interesting and intriguing enough, together we can make a contribution to others who are thinking about and struggling with the same challenges, desires, despair and hope.

This book will come alive with your involvement - so, please come and visit often, write about what's important to you and let's see what we can create.

In gratitude,

Leslie