What Matters Most

Posted on April 9, 2013 by circleofpractice

What matters most?

When I was in college, my answer to that question was God, my mind, my friends and family, and my health, in that order. While in some ways I still like that answer, I’ve got to tell you that those priorities did not by themselves enable me to live well. In fact I was a pretty miserable person.

I suppose every person has to answer that question subjectively. Still science is beginning to be able to tell us objectively what it means to live well.

One of the founders of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, has come up with an acronym for five essentials to well being, PERMA: positive emotion, engagement (i.e., of our attention), positive relationships, meaning, and achievement.

Where is your practice taking you? What do you practice, and why?

From the time we begin our formal education till the time we’ve finished with it, the focus of our practice tends to be on the last piece of well being, that is, on accomplishment. We study hard to get good grades, to go to a good school, to get a good job. We run and lift weights to be stronger and faster, to be the best at our position on the team, etc.

Competition can make us better. It can make us beautiful, and it can make us ugly. It can lead to a win at all costs mentality epitomized by Lance Armstrong.

Remember your humanity. Your practice should in some way touch on all the five essentials. Take care of your emotions, pursue those ideas and skills you are passionate about, cultivate positive relationships, and build meaning from your faith into your work and community.

By so doing your practice will make you a blessing to those around you, and you in turn will be blessed as well. You will have transcended success, and discovered happiness and significance.

Open the Mail

Posted on April 3, 2013 by circleofpractice

It may seem strange to think of cleaning house as a practice, but I absolutely do.

For some of you, cleaning house is as easy and natural as falling out of bed in the morning. But for me it has always been a struggle. I can remember being a college student, and looking at my room knee deep in papers and trash, completely fed up with my life as a slob; yet having no idea where to begin.

One of my favorite books on practice is Steven Pressfield’s book, “The War of Art.” I love this passage from his book:

When I lived in the back of my Chevy van, I had to dig my typewriter out from beneath layers of tire tools, dirty laundry, and moldering paperbacks. My truck was a nest, a hive, a hellhole on wheels whose sleeping surface I had to clear each night just to carve out a foxhole to sleep in.

The professional cannot live like that. He is on a mission. He will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates disorder from his world in order to banish it from his mind. He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.

Every day I fight two battles. One is to write at least one essay. The other is to process the mail.

I hate the mail. It is pile of decisions that have to be made one after another. And each decision requires subsequent actions: recycle, shred, file, record, pay a bill, or write a letter.

And if you put it off, the pile quickly becomes a tower of Babel, a black hole of chaos and entropy. Just the sight of such a pile can immediately suck the life right out of my day.

Hence the keystone habit of my household practice is to process the mail every day, and don’t stop until every decision and action has been taken to its penultimate step.

The Enneagram as Practice

Posted on March 11, 2013 by circleofpractice

The enneagram of personality is a powerful means to self-discovery and self-acceptance. The practice takes time and discipline to bear fruit, but is worth the effort it takes to learn.

I first became acquainted with the enneagram about three years ago at a seminar on spiral dynamics. I asked the presenter whether focusing on the various memes wouldn’t lead to making comparisons of oneself with others, and hence to psychological dissonance. She replied that such might indeed be the case with me, and that I would do well to be aware of it.

Her reply really pissed me off. And try as I might, I couldn’t seem to shake this feeling of anger. I tried breathing through it. I tried to focus all my attention on what she was saying. But still I was positively glowing with anger.

At the lunch break she was sitting at a table with an open seat, so I sat down across from her and told her of my reaction. She asked me a few questions about myself, and then told me she thought I was a “4” on the enneagram. Turns out fours are driven by envy, or rather a sense of inadequacy. They focus on what is missing from their lives.

In spite of being aware of my jealousy since college, and thinking I’d overcome it, I immediately sensed the truth of what she was saying. The anger went out of me like water from a flushed toilet.

I began to learn about the enneagram, and something called shadow work, coming to terms with the least desirable aspects of myself.

There’s a saying in psychology that goes something like this, “Whatever gets repressed gets expressed,” or “if you don’t express it, you project it.”

Shadow work begins with being aware of what’s going on in your body. What emotion are you feeling and where is it in your body? As you become aware of this you can move into it and accept it, “Oh yeah, I’m feeling jealous,” or “I’m feeling inadequate.” And somehow that recognition and acknowledgement allows me to exhale.

That’s my ego’s defense mechanism engaging. But that’s not me. I am in that ineffable witness beyond labels that experiences these thoughts and feelings, and yet transcends them.

Falling Down Dream Steps

Posted on March 8, 2013 by circleofpractice

A big dream is a great leap from wherever you are now. If you try to clear that gap in one terrific long jump, chances are you’re going to take a big pratfall.

I want to write a book; a great leap from where I am now. A few weeks ago I read Stephen King’s On Writing, and decided to give up something that was working for me, namely this blog, in order to work on something that is at least two quantum leaps from where I am now, i.e., writing a novel.

So instead of writing a good 300 words a day, I had one day where I wrote 1000 words, and lots of days of nothing. My confidence went from about a six out of ten to zero.

I tend to bite off more than I can chew. Instead of eating the elephant one bite at a time, I make like a python and try to eat the whole thing at once. When it doesn’t work I don’t change my strategy, I look for another elephant.

That at least has been my modus operandi for the first half of my life. It hasn’t worked.

So I’m back to what was working for me: write one coherent 250 word essay each working day. And on top of that, I’m now going to add this “dream step:” write 250 words of dialogue each day. Once I can consistently achieve both, I’ll take another dream step.

The python strategy is for comics books, where Peter Parker can get bitten by an atomic spider and turn into Spiderman. Michael Phelps didn’t get bit by a spider, or struck by lightning. He just followed a careful plan of small wins that eventually led to 22 Olympic medals.

Dream steps are the stairway to heaven.

Optimal Conversation and Group Mitosis

Posted on February 15, 2013 by circleofpractice

How can we optimize the conversational experience of a group, and once the group gets too large, divide the group in such a way that the conversational quality of the two groups is maintained?

The quality of a conversation is directly proportional to the number of ideas presented and understood therein.

Ideas increase with both the number and diversity of participants.

Understanding requires dialectical inquiry, which in turn requires bandwidth.

I define bandwidth to be the number of minutes in one hour each person has to communicate her ideas to the others in the group in such a manner that each person has an equal opportunity to speak. For example, a conversation between two people shares one channel of communication and each has thirty minutes of bandwidth. A conversation between eight people shares 28 channels of communication and each person has about one minute of bandwidth.

When the group forms, members are familiarized with the ideas of talk dancing, bandwidth, and with the Occupy Wall Street Hand Signals. The group is responsible for the conversational flow, and those who do not respect the bandwidth of others should expect to be called to order by the “wrap it up” hand signal from others in the group.

My own experience suggests the optimal group size to be about 8 people. Eight people can have a lot of ideas. More than 8 people in a group imply less than a minute of bandwidth for each person. It’s hard to express an interesting idea in less than a minute. By the time you get to twelve in a group there is less than thirty seconds of bandwidth available.

I would suggest that a group divide in two when it reaches about ten people, and certainly no more than twelve. Let the group elect a ballot counter. Then each person write down their own name together with four (if there are 10 in the group) or five (if twelve) others they would like in their group. Then divide the groups so that everyone has at least one person they wanted in their group besides themselves.

If there are persons with less than five votes then there are those with more than five. Pair off the ones with the most votes with those with the least.

Seeking Feedback

Posted on February 14, 2013 by circleofpractice

The feedback we can give ourselves is limited by our perspective. The light of our own knowledge and understanding casts shadows that only the light from another consciousness can see into.

Even something as seemingly objective as “doing 21 pushups” might be seen differently in the eyes of a personal trainer than from our own perspective down on the floor counting them off.

Sometimes just getting a fresh pair of eyes to look at a problem, a process, or an impression of me can provide an immediate epiphany or insight.

So if we really want to improve our practice, we are going to want to seek out others to provide us with feedback on what we’re doing, hopefully from someone who has already mastered what we ourselves are trying to master.

Depending on the degree of technical expertise required this can be fairly hard to do. Do we go to school, hire ourselves a teacher, or seek out a mentor? Sometimes I find it more helpful to talk with another practitioner, some like myself who is on the practice path to mastery.

Particularly in the realm of interpersonal relationships, getting outside feedback is critical to improving our ability to listen, to speak, and to be empathic. In fact, relating to others is a hard thing to practice alone.

When you ask for feedback, expect a bitter draft. Others see our faults more readily than we do. And people speak more readily of things negative than they do the positive. Even so, accept it gratefully knowing you can improve your practice and your relationships thereby.

Don’t try to justify yourself, or take insult at faults found. Remember that you asked for it, and that the critic has blessed with feedback as well as criticism. Only let it reflect on your behavior and not on yourself. If you’ve performed poorly, it is behavior that can be changed and improved; it does not mean you are a bad person.

Listening to Bagger Vance

Posted on February 9, 2013 by circleofpractice

Bagger Vance spoke to me last night. I’m just not sure what he said.

I’ve been looking for my “authentic swing” all my life. I’ve felt broken inside without any memory of being fixed; with scars from a battle never fought; playing on a field littered with skills unmastered.

What does Bagger have to say to the likes of me? Does God visit the camps of losers, cowards, and incompetents?

I have to believe in a god of second chances. I have to believe that even if I lay down and slept for a thousand years he’d give me the chance to walk that quadrillion kilometers to heaven.

So maybe Bagger would say to me that a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. And though I’ve slept for fifty years, God’s been waiting patiently for me to awake, to take up my bed and walk.

See the field…what is my field of action? The things I care about: family, community, writing, and models.

A man’s grip on his club is like his grip on the world…what is my grip on the club? My discipline, my practice is my grip on the world; where my spirit, mind, and body come to grips with life.

What’s my battle, my game waged against the titans of golf? I take my place in the arena with the other gladiators; to dare to be measured against the likes Jones and Hagen, or be gutted on the floor of the coliseum to the delight of those who sit in the stands.

Dealing with Toxicity in a Group

Posted on February 4, 2013 by circleofpractice

Have you ever been in a group where one person in particular was having a toxic affect on the rest? Maybe that person is dominating the conversational flow, or perhaps radiates some toxic emotion like anger, or is a source of invidious gossip or backbiting.

What do you do? Do you do anything?

If you don’t do anything, then your experience and quite possibly that of everyone else in the group is going to be degraded. If the experience is bad enough, you may find the persons whose company you enjoy most are leaving the group. If you take your concerns to others in the group, then your comments may make their way back to the person in question, but probably not in the way you intended.

A couple of scriptures may help us out here. Proverbs 25:9, Debate your cause with your neighbor himself, and discover not a secret to another, and Matthew 18:15-17, ¹⁵“If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. ¹⁶But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. ¹⁷If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Then if he or she won’t accept the church’s decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector. (New Living Translation)

This is admittedly a difficult thing to do, to confront the offending person with the things that are bothering you. But in my experience it usually pays big dividends. The trick for me is to write a letter first that tries to describe my issue without giving offense. Then I’ll sleep on it for a night. I may ask someone I trust to read it and give me their impression of the letter and the reaction it might provoke. Then I’ll rewrite it if necessary.

After writing the letter I will share it with the person and ask if we can talk about it afterward. If the person disagrees with me, or thinks I’m the problem, I’ll then ask for a third person in the group to weigh in on the issue. Then lastly if there is still no resolution, I will bring it before the group and ask them to decide. If the group decides against the person, and the person is unwilling to change, then I think you need to resort to ostracism in order to preserve the integrity of the group.

Identifying with Work

Posted on February 1, 2013 by circleofpractice

The strangest thing happens when I identify with my work: I can’t do it. As soon as I start thinking, “I am a writer,” I lose the power to write.

If that’s who I am, then nothing’s ever good enough. “That’s not me. I can do better than that.” I can’t stop revising. I can’t even get past the title.

I’m not a writer. I just write. The power to write comes from writing; as long as I keep the words flowing onto the page, I know it’s going to be OK.

As soon as we identify with our work we lose sight of the work, and start thinking of how we’re perceived by our audience. Not who our audience is, but who we are in the eyes of our audience. We may need to know who our audience is if we want them to understand our work, but we can’t think about whom we are as perceived by them.

We’ll never get naked up there on the stage with all the eyes of the world watching us. But if that’s where our work takes us, then that’s where we need to go.

For our work to be genuine we need to be vulnerable.

That’s what the sports world means when they talk about having amnesia. The ones that have it are focused on the next pitch, the next pass, the next catch; they are focused on the work, and not on themselves in the eyes of the arena.

circleofpractice

Turning life into practice; practice into transformation

Category Archives: Domains of Practice