Trusting the good ...

It's a new year!  How about a Bold and Courageous Aspiration for 2015?Your vow to Trust the Good!  AND magic it happens, right?  Probably not!  Unless you are a magician.  Because it turns out that trusting the good" is NOT easy.  AND it is because your brain is hardwired to pay more attention to negative experiences than positive ones.  So, what to do?Rick Hanson, and Kristin Neff have done pioneering work on self compassion and self care, tell us that negativity is like velcro and sticks to our brains.  Positive experiences, "the good" are like teflon, they don't stick.  Research offers ratios like 3 to 1 and 5 to 1.  It takes 3/5 good thoughts to have an equal weight to one bad thought for each of us.  Hanson's response to this is to "install"  the good thoughts.  My favorite exercise of his is called "taking in the good".  I was stunned the first time I did it, at how quickly my brain wanted to dash off and not take in the good.  I was recalling a particularly peaceful, halcyon day at Amrita Island on Cape Cod ... but part of my brain was not at all interested in "installing" or deepening this experience.  That part of me thinks the idea of "trusting the good" might be the dumbest or most dangerous thing it has ever heard of, so thus my struggle through the exercise and why I am writing this post.  I believe this is the most important work we can do right now and that we must teach our children this too.  AND it will take practice.  But thank goodness it is a 15 second exercise... once you get your mind to settle down and stay focused on exploring and absorbing the good.  I will be writing more about this during the year. So why should you add this to your already full schedules?  

1. It makes you hopeful and happy, therefore the learning and creativity centers in your brain turn on.  It is fun.  
2. Nothing new or alive will find you if you are worried or busy "being prepared for a future you don't know will ever happen!"  Worry and negativity block out happiness, creativity and learning.  Lots of brain research on this too.
3. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Notice the good and you will feel the good.  Notice the bad and you feel bad.  Remember you can't come up with good strategy or new idea from a place that is fear based. 

I could go on and on.  It is good for your health etc. but really the most persuasive argument is your own experience.  So, at the start of 2015, will you join me in  committing  to take in the good?   I am doing this exercise once a day, five days a week.  For specific instructions on how to do this.  Check out Rick Hanson's website.  Watch Take in the good, to learn from a master.         

Are you in the "real" conversation?

This is truly the 64,000 question.  Most of us engage the conversation we know how to have but often that is not the "real" conversation.  The conversation that you don't know how to have, is typically a "real" conversation, it's  the conversation you MUST have to move forward.   Other questions that are related to this one are:

• Are you doing your top priority work first or do you tackle the things that you know how to do easily first?
• Are you majoring in minors?
• Who inside you determines the focus and the direction of your energy expenditure during a day?  Is it your protective and scarcity/anxiety/stressed based self or is it your aspirational self?

Since our organizational and our personal lives are  a series of conversations day in and day out, if we aren't having the conversations that are most important (even if  hard), we can expect the following:

1. Decreased passionate engagement and satisfaction in our work and life.
2. Decreased energy, efficiency and productivity.
3. Decreased positive personal and organizational results.

But when we do have the "real" conversations, the ones we MUST have, we can expect the following:

1. Increased engagement for ourselves and others.
2. Increased connection  to our colleagues and ourselves.
3. Increased sense of empowerment, for playing big and not small.
4. Increased efficiency, energy and productivity.
5. Increased positive personal and organizational results.

If you agree you want to have the "real" conversation, the one you MUST have, the first step is COURAGE.   And where do you find that courage?  For many of us it is found in reconnecting with our personal mission and purpose for our work and our lives.  We find it through our hearts and what matters to us.  Did you know that the root of the word Courage is Coeur for heart.  Ask yourself:

1. In my moments of "Flow" in my work and my personal life, what is it that excites and compels me?  What gives me energy?
2. Why  does my work matter to me?  To others?

The second step is COMMITMENT and action.  After you have brought to the forefront of your heart and mind the meaning and purpose of your life and your work, then make a list of the conversations you are avoiding, including any with yourself.  Rank order the list from easiest to most difficult. Then, make a commitment to go after them one at a time, until you have made it through the list.  Starting with the easiest allows you build on your successes and achieve positive momentum to continue to engage the "real" conversations that arise in all of our lives.The third step is to APPRECIATE and acknowledge yourself for shifting avoidance to positive forward moving action.   

"I am from ... "

Anthropologist and psychologist Mary Pipher gets credit for this exercise:   These “I am from” poems are an identity exercise.  They are poems that includes something about place, religion, and food that trace back to where/how you are “from.”  I chose to do this for my birthday this year, in honor of my mother whom I buried last year and all of the women and men I am from.  Also in honor of the midwest, particularly Wisconsin where I lived my first 30 years.  I am a woman who did not easily fit the land and people I am from.  I loved them but my latin soul, was a bit too expressive and wild for the natural vibe of Wisconsin.  I moved to Texas.  Now, at a distance I can truly see what I left behind in Wisconsin.  In Texas I could realize the positive side of the things that made me a "out of place".  My exuberant soul and affinity for loud, joyful laughter.  My tendency to always go for  "more" and for the "fun" option no matter the cost, liked Texas a bit better.  But in truth, I am both of these cultures.  Writing this poem made me so grateful for all of me, for all of my roots, Wisconsin and Texan.  I, like the skies of a Dallas sunset over Stevens Park Golf Course, dream big and believe anything is truly possible.  God Bless all of America and all aspects of our unique and wondrous selves.  The Exercise:Start each sentence with I am from...and write whatever comes to mind.  You might want to consider, place, food and religion...anything really that makes your roots distinct.I am from army blankets ...as forts...as  July 4th picnic blankets ...as warmth in Wisconsin winters.I am from Bob Wonders and Mary Skotske who recycled, resused and "made due".I am from prevent, control and tame.I am from Friday night lake perch tavern fish fries.I am from sheepshead, bar dice and bingo.I am from meat and potatoes ... chuck stew and mashed potatoes.I am from the place where ordinary and predictable are good and where wild and random are bad.I am from brooms, dust pans and carpet sweepers  in motion everyday but Sundays.I am from gray, low skies, gray homes, gray buildings and steel colored lakes and rivers.ANDI am from where miracles are believed to be real.  As real as daily rosaries.I am from damped down; cards held close the the vest.I am from ready help, if you ask for it.  Sometimes even when you don't but it is obvious you need it, and we wouldn't offend by the offering.I am from people who stop for strangers.I am from regular or whatever is the opposite of distinct and particular.I am from next door to Prairie Home Companion, which is a little too flashy for my people.I am from navy blue, gray and tan as colors not as neutrals.I am from "people are assumed to be good and decent until they prove otherwise".I am from the first state to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation...WISCONSIN!I am from a place where progress is slow on small things and fast on human rights ... on the things that endure.I am from love whispered not shouted.  Loyalty ever present but not on display.  And where prayer and religion were private affairs.I am from a land where people are trusted until proven otherwise. This poem is offered In honor of Bob and Mary Wonders and the family they created, the good they did and the values they passed on to their children.Nancy Claire Wonders  

"What will you do, God...?"

 From the great poet Ranier Maria Rilke...“What will you do, God, when I die?I am your pitcher (when I shatter?)I am your drink (when I go bitter?)I, your garment; I, your craft.Without me what reason have you?..."

It is true, for each of us.  We are a little piece of God.  A particular expression of the Infinite and if we pull back on that expression, when we judge that expression, we judge Divine, we doubt.  We think we know best, but the part of us that is doing that thinking is the protective system called the ego or strategic mind.  This part of us is on the defense.  But if,  instead of listening to it, we turn the other direction, we do and be what we love, we wholeheartedly move toward what we love, then we give God full reign.  AND we “feel” like God…big "G" not small.  Feeling like a small "g" god, is grandiosity and hubris.  It may feel good in the moment but it is what Jungians might call being caught in an "inflation".BUT if instead we  know, we actually experience ourselves as a particular expression of the divine, then we want to kneel and kiss the ground.  We do not feel certain or powerful.  We feel awe.  We feel wonder.   We feel humility.  We feel like,“really, really? I get to be and do this?  Oh goodness," or "'Beam me up Scottie'.   When what you love, loves you back!”What if that is the secret?  The really big well kept secret? What if that is God?   What you love?  Don’t settle for god, it’s like trying to live on only cake, or only adrenalin.  It ends up leaving you empty, literally and figuratively.  The ultimate high that drops you to the ultimate low.  BUT there is another path, literally that puts allows you to move to another level.Einstein said, “you can’t solve the problem at the level of thinking that created it”  so instead of HIGH and then LOW and then HIGH…etc. how about something that is not in between, or in the middle of those two, but rather of an entirely different order?   That order is akin to the wonder and joy we felt as children, or on Christmas morning, or when watching a doodle bug curl into itself, or the first time we realize we are riding our bike without training wheels.  That feeling the Infinite's way of giving us a green light to keep going in that direction.  The direction of what we love.  What if it is really that simply?  And those doubting and critical thoughts?  Well, they never enlarge us.  They never call us to become someone we can truly admire.  Instead they call us to play it safe.  To stay separate and to protect and cling to what we have.  They call us to distrust not only others but ourselves and ultimately our destinies.If like Rilke, above I truly trust the little piece of stardust that is me...well, then paradoxically I quit judging myself and focusing on myself and whether or not I am good enough. What I do instead, is simply go out and express my little piece of heaven.  Just like the old song said..."this little light of mine...I'm gonna let it shine..."[audio m4a="http://www.nancywonders.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/03-This-Little-Light-of-Mine.m4a"][/audio]   

They're really saying I love you...

They’re really saying “I love you”…Everyone who has heard this song loves it.  It is a song of wonder and joy.  A song of seeing deeply to the heart of what is happening.  Yes, on one level that person that just reached out and said “Hi” or “What’s up?”  or “How’s it going?” is following a customary greeting practice when we meet someone.  But what Louis Armstrong knew, is that this was only the surface of the interaction.  At the heart of the greeting was “I love you”,  a desire for connection and community; an example of caring and kindness.I can almost hear your smart minds going, “How can s/he know that?” Or maybe it is saying “That is a sweet idea but really? Come on.”   Here is what I know for sure:  we are all a mess of different feelings and motivations and intentions.  We are everything.  None of us purely good or bad.  That’s what makes us so interesting … and impossible to predict!  For me it doesn’t matter if the idea that someone is reaching out to me is accurate or not.  When I choose to see a greeting as a request for contact and connection, my better angels take over, I become someone I admire.  AND the world becomes a little  brighter, softer and filled with wonder!   Just like the song says.So, where can you shift your seeing and hearing just enough to hear "They're really saying "I love you"?  Often it is only those smart minds of ours that cover over our experiences of wonder and joy with the mind's need for predictability and control.  Predictability and control are fine for machines and schedules but they can hurt living things, like relationships.  The choice is ours moment by moment.  This new year, I apprentice myself to wonder and joy.   To turn my dial to the frequency of ..."they're really saying, I love you"  I so hope you will join me.