Awareness Is

Awareness is a process, not a destination.

I felt even more aware of this reality this week, during a conversation among friends.  It is really never about arrival.

This discovery, of course, is a bit disappointing because we are highly conditioned to expect some benefits of arrival; like reversal, making something right, relief, or peace.  But, in the end, we only really achieve these ideas when we recognize that they are already with us and that awareness of them is, perhaps, the highest good about them.  This is it.  It is all we need.  And, it is far better than we've realized.

It is not over there.  It is right here.  The current moment is all that is.  And, that's perfect because the future is the next moment and we get to do it again.

So we're free to embrace this moment, becoming aware of IT, and ask our next version of the question...about the process of what is.

Oh, and metaphorically speaking, when would we ever be more aware of this reality than at a time after a day like Good Friday and before a day like Easter?  On a Saturday that can feel lost between devastation and more hope than ever...on a day when something like transformation would seem totally imperceptible.

Good Friday: What Dostoyevsky’s Prostitute Can Teach Us About the Cross

The cross of Christ has sometimes been compared to the electric chair or other forms of execution, meaning we are wise to remember that it was an instrument of death in the ancient world. The cross is also often used to prompt us to give ourselves sacrificially for him and others. But comparisons to other forms of execution can miss the deeper biblical teaching about the cross. And the cross is much more than an object lesson in how we should live. It’s very shape, it turns out, is not incidental to its deeper biblical meaning nor to the very nature of God who hung there.

To get at the deeper meaning, we can turn to the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, especially one scene in the middle of Crime and Punishment. The lead character Rodion Raskolnikov had brutally murdered an elderly pawnbroker and moneylender, Alyona Ivanovna. When Ivanovna’s half-sister, Lizaveta, stumbled upon the scene, he murdered her as well.

Raskolnikov later meets a young woman, Sonia, who has been compelled by poverty to become a prostitute to support her family. He is immediately drawn...continue here.

-- Mark Galli

Yes, there's a free lunch

Yes, there's a free lunch

In a physical economy in which scarcity is the fundamental driver, eating lunch means someone else gets less.

But in a society where ideas lead to trust and connection and productivity, where working together is better than working apart, where exchange creates value for both sides...

Then the efficient sharing of ideas is its own free lunch. 

All of us are smarter than any of us, so the value to all goes up when you share.

-- Seth Godin

Without Accepting It

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

-- Aristotle

More Than Advice

Instagram: bobgoff

Most people need love and acceptance
a lot more than advice.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Can't Replace

​As a leader, you just can't replace the value of directly listening to what the people you serve are saying.

Arrogance

​Arrogance is worse than ignorance.

-- Oleg Vishnepolsky


 ...because we treat people accordingly.

Ecstasy

​God’s ecstasy creates the world, and the world’s ecstasy realizes God.

-- Beatrice Bruteau

An example of God's ecstasy (definition:  an overwhelming feeling of great happiness or joyful excitement)!

Welcome: Grand-baby Graham Barrett Wilkins!

 

Hide and Seek

Poem for the week -- "Hide and Seek":

Haven’t found anyone
From the old gang.
They must be still in hiding,
Holding their breaths
And trying not to laugh.

Our street is down on its luck
With windows broken
Where on summer nights
One heard couples arguing,
Or saw them dancing to the radio.

The redhead we were
All in love with,
Who sat on the fire escape,
Smoking late into the night,
Must be in hiding too.

The skinny boy
On crutches
Who always carried a book,
May not have
Gotten very far.

Darkness comes early
This time of year
Making it hard
To recognize familiar faces
In those of strangers.

-- Charles Simic

Never Underestimate

Never underestimate the immense power of your imagination.

-- Mike Krzyzewski

This truth seems like it applies well beyond basketball. Though even there, it is a bit intriguing.  I hope I never stop wondering.

You might consider following the hyper-link chain on imagination, all the way back to June 2012.

Might Miss

Instagram: bobgoff

If we only do what we're familiar with,
we might miss what we've been made for.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Inclusion Is A Skill

​Diversity is a measure. Inclusion is a skill.

Ensure you are being inclusive in tough situations and, most importantly, when things are going wrong. People can feel most abandoned at times of stress. These situations are a true torture test for any leader. The higher the risk and the stakes, the bigger the temptation to revert to the people and decisions you are most at ease with. That’s when leaders need to make sure they lead by example and demonstrate passion for inclusive leadership through their attitudes and behaviors. Show people you are there for them and wanting their input, especially when disruption is at its greatest. 

It is our role as leaders to question the status quo and encourage everyone to do the same. Staying still in today`s world is not an option. Accessing diverse points of view is vital in creating optimum strategies and plans. An inclusive leader creates an environment where disagreement is viewed positively. I have learned from experience that the more diverse the team, the more debate and disagreement we have and the better the outcome. As leaders, we should create a culture in which the team can hear and understand other people`s points of views or ideas that are different to their own.  Continue here....

-- Geraldine Huse

Change Happens When...

I've noticed...change happens in me when I enter situations personally.

Cannot Be Activated

Our inner spiritual world cannot be activated without experience of the outer world of wonder for the mind, beauty for the imagination, and intimacy for the emotions. 

-- Thomas Berry

Why Sheryl Sandberg Believes This a Necessary Skill for Women Leaders

• Reject permanence
• Tap into your community
• Find some good in the hardship

...more here.

Desperation

The human imagination is not exclusively (or primarily) defined by desperation — it is not a constant, the only state of being.

Same Level of Thinking

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were on when we created them.

-- Albert Einstein

Avoiding

Instagram: bobgoff

Most of us spend our entire lives avoiding
the people Jesus spent His whole life engaging.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Closed To Ideas

When we are closed to ideas, what we hear is criticism. When we are open to criticism, what we get is advice.

-- Simon Sinek

Irritating

I've noticed...that it appears I am just irritating to some people.

There are likely many reasons (some may not even have much to do with me — although, the majority likely do!).  Further, as much as I might try to eliminate, or even just reduce, the possibility of this reality, it appears to simply be true, simply as a function of who I am, how I'm made, etc.

So, an interesting question — should this phenomenon only increase (rather than decrease), how do I more comfortably live with it myself?

Instead Of God

Principles are what people have instead of God.

-- Frederick Buechner

Practicing Mindfulness

That we have to practice mindfulness should tell us something.

Wheeling Motel

Poem for the week -- "Wheeling Motel":

The vast waters flow past its back-yard.
You can purchase a six-pack in bars!
Tammy Wynette’s on the marquee

a block down. It’s twenty-five years ago:
you went to death, I to life, and
which was luckier God only knows.

There’s this line in an unpublished poem of yours.
The river is like that,
a blind familiar.

The wind will die down when I say so;
the leaden and lessening light on
the current.

Then the moon will rise
like the word reconciliation,
like Walt Whitman examining the tear on a dead face.

-- Franz Wright

Have you ever read something and not felt like you understood why you liked it, or appreciated it.  Like it is something, but you're not sure what -- but, you can't disgard it either.  This poem is like that for me.

"Like the word reconciliaton,"

Give It Away

​The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

-- Pablo Picasso

Not Who They Were

Instagram: bobgoff

See people for who they're becoming
not for who they were.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Diversity, Inclusion Rider?

There are many characteristics of good leaders, so ranking them may not only be difficult, but also problematic.  I would then have to hazard this notion, that among the greater characteristics is respect for diversity.

A leader must not only acknowledge the need for diversity, but also put it in place and ensure it is working — like an inclusion rider? — not just by quota, but as evidence of genuine understanding of the value of different ideas.  It is our ideas that inform how we view people and leadership — our ideas affirm or betray us, not to mention others.

I remember the disgust people around me felt about the black panther movement in the 60s and 70s.  "Why can't they just behave and not be so disrespectful?"  Watching the recent movie, Black Panther, helps me see what that attitude was suppressing, what had been suppressed (for a deeper a look at that suppression — check this out) in terms of the value of a whole people group, what they could add to the beauty of all people.

And, diversity is not just about race.  It is about the acceptance of all people, even those with differences within the same tribe.

Good leaders respect diversity, a lot.

Convince Me: No Wait, Don't Bother

It is rare to convince someone of something they don't want to see.

Because there are reasons they don't want to see it.  So, don't bother — it may not be worth the effort to convince until those are identified.

I'm not that different.  I'm often only convinced when I'm willing to be or when I am open to it.  So, what causes this kind of opening?  Usually not argument — the pain of argument, maybe.  Usually, I become open to something when I need to be; sometimes when I want to be.  Then I can be convinced.

...and another feature of being convinced that seems to be a universal — after one feels heard.

Billy Graham, the Purple State Preacher

When we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of God.

-- Billy Graham

Leaders like Billy Graham could help heal this country.

Many of the conservative Evangelicals who are now hailing Billy Graham as Pastor to the Nation might be put off by my demographic profile: a northern, secular, liberal Democrat, living in a big city in a blue state, who reads the New York Times, watches MSNBC, and has a Harvard degree. But the Baptist preacher from the mountains of North Carolina did not flinch at working with me.

Without ever inquiring about my faith or lack thereof, he personally supported my authorship of a book about the stories of people who had known him, Billy Graham & Me, affording me the cooperation of his closest colleagues and eventually writing an afterword for the book. He was not naïve about the bitterness of the red and blue divide, yet he chose to focus on the purple in all of us.

Long before the alt-right fringe made inroads into the Republican party, Graham championed diversity and inclusion. His compassion was not transactional, his faith needing no affirmation from sophisticates and celebrities to prove its worth. For Graham, everyone was his equal; only God is above us. He didn’t serve people because they were Christians; he did it because he was Christian. He had taken up the cross to preach the Good News that his God loves you even if you don’t love Him back, encouraging instead of persecuting those deemed sinful by his theology.  Continue here....

-- Steve Posner

3 Brain Tricks

​

Is the noise in my head bothering you?

Is the noise in my head bothering you?

The monologue that runs in our brain is loud. It's heavy-metal loud compared to the quiet signals we get from the rest of the world.

All day, every day, that noise keeps going. It's the only voice that has seen everything we've seen, believes everything we believe. It's the noise that not only criticizes every action of every other person who disagrees with us, but it criticizes their motives as well. And, if we question it, it criticizes us as well.

Is it any wonder that projection is more powerful than empathy?

When we meet people, we either celebrate when they agree with us or plot to change or ignore them when they don't. There's not a lot of room for, "they might have a different experience of this moment than I do."

That noise in our head is selfish, afraid and angry. That noise is self-satisfied, self-important and certain. That noise pushes intimacy away and will do anything it can to degrade those that might challenge us.

But, against all odds, empathy is possible.

It's possible to amplify those too-quiet signals that others send us and to practice imagining, even for a moment, what it might be like to have their noise instead of our noise.

If we put in the effort and devote the time to practice this skill, we can get better at it. We merely have to begin

-- Seth Godin

Do What You Do

​Do what you do...because you believe it is right or good.

Consider feedback, but don't let feedback alone be the determiner of your good — while helpful, it can also be self-serving (to the giver of it) and distracting.

So, do what you do because you believe it is good to do.

...besides, it continues to surprise what people find valuable — which makes it pretty clear that what is true strikes people in different ways and at different times. Your job is not to do something that people will like. Your job is to do what you do and let the truth of doing so do its own work.