Today I promised you I'd talk about the second great resilience activity I undertook last week.
From the start, I knew last week would be tough - there was lots of work to do in the office, most of it intellectual and a significant drain on my time and creative juices. So when I realized how preoccupied I was with the workload, and especially with one particular upcoming project, I knew it was time for the distraction strategy.
"Distraction" in this case meant finding some other challenge to take me out of my head, give me more energy and "steal" some of my focus and attention, all with the aim of making me more effective at the intellectual work.
Why Take On Another Challenge? Isn't One Enough??
You might think so, and this is where we often delude ourselves. If I had allowed myself to think, "Oh, so much work... I'd better make sure I have lots of veg time with my favorite TV shows," the week would have been so much harder!!
That's right... I would have found myself with even less energy and working less efficiently. So here's what I did instead...
I set the ambitious physical goal of doing 1500 push-ups and 500 squats within 5 days - about triple my usual number. And here's what I found:
Some joint pain in my hips, one knee and one shoulder went way down and virtually disappeared!
My energy level went through the roof (interesting since, as you know, I was on a cleanse at the same time and therefore operating on less and lighter food)
Mentally and emotionally I felt fantastic in every way. Only experience will really convince you what this kind of challenge does for how you feel about yourself and your body.
My daughter found out I was doing this about half way through the week. She was totally gobsmacked, as they say, and asked, "Aren't your legs and butt killing you??" Truth was, I was in no pain at all, which surprised even me ;-)
Some of the lessons that come out of this are:
If you've swallowed all the propaganda about the dangers of over-training (which people often interpret as "you shouldn't do the same exercise two days in a row"), be assured it's just that - propaganda. The vast majority of people who exercise are nowhere near their limit and are no more in danger of "over-training" than I am of winning the Boston Marathon ;-)
It was the best "distraction" possible - For whatever reason, focusing on the physical goal left me feeling a lot more in control of the mountain of work and supplied a ton of motivation on all fronts.
Those 1500 push-ups and 500 squats took almost NO extra time! Since I did them in sets of 50 for the push-ups and 25 for the squats, it was easy to squeeze them in whenever I had a few minutes here or there throughout the day.
Do something like this and you'll feel physically like solid steel, mentally you'll experience crystal clarity and emotionally you'll be on top of the world
A Word of Caution:
Yes, as always I have to tell you not to try something like this without the approval of your physician. In addition, though, you need to pick targets that are doable for you. I picked these particular exercises only because my body is very familiar with them and because I do them regularly to a certain level. If you've never done these exercises before, they'll damn near kill you, even if you're a decent athlete.
On the other hand, you might pick, say, 25 laps of the front crawl in the pool daily. I sure wouldn't do that for myself, only because I haven't swum laps in years. If you have, then that might be a target for you. So it all depends on how in-shape you are and what your body is used to doing. And the possibilities are endless: walking, running, cycling, weight training, body weight exercises (the ones I used are "body-weight" exercises), calesthenics, Pilates, Yoga, circuit training, swimming...
Remember, you don't need to imitate a tri-athlete to get amazing results. You just have to pick an exercise appropriate for you and a target that's doable, but a bit of a stretch.
Try this some time and I'll pretty much guarantee you'll never look back!
Just so you don't think I'm all hot air, that I write about all these great practices without ever doing them...
...Last week I was into two phenomenal resilience-building activities. It was an amazing week, a week of challenges, of pain and finally of sweet victory. Today, though, I'll just cover the first of those activities - a comprehensive internal cleanse or detoxification.
If you're reading this blog, you probably already know how important periodic cleanses are. Your body is packed with a dizzying array of toxins and parasites absorbed from food, water, air pollution, toxic substances used in building interiors and more. And by all accounts, this toxic load is considerably worse than it was even two or three decades ago. Yet a good cleanse is almost guaranteed to get your blood pesticide levels down to FDA standards ;-) Even more amazing is that a good cleanse can eliminate the after-effects of previous emotional and even physical traumas.
In fact, some of the greatest "miracle" stories of healing and longevity have been based on cleansing, such as those of Victor Irons, Dr. Bernard Jensen and many more.
The Cleanse I Used:
Over the years, I've used a number of different cleanses, and most of them have been incredibly positive experiences. The cleanse I just started was recommended by my business associate, Kathy, about two years ago and I had wanted to try it ever since. It's produced by a US company called Blessed Herbs and Kathy's naturopath was very impressed with the contents.
If you know how confusing a cleanse can be, with a zillion different capsules to swallow or potions to drink at specific times of day, you'll really appreciate the Blessed Herbs approach. Yeah, they have the pills and potions, but the layout is SO user-friendly you can't possibly get confused.
This cleanse is, as the name implies, based largely on herbs, and runs for three stages of seven days each, so three weeks in all. Right now I'm on Day 6 of Stage 2, or a bit more than half way through (which is good, since I'm developing a serious craving for cheese ;-)
That brings up the whole question of diet, since some cleanses are based on fasting of various types. For this cleanse, it's up to you - if you eat burgers and fries every night, you'll pretty much torpedo any benefit from your investment in all those amazing herbs. On the other hand, if you eat light, vegan meals and drink lots of filtered water, you'll get fantastic results.
My Results (Knock Wood...):
So far, I haven't experienced any kind of healing crisis - a healing crisis happens when you have a lot of toxins and the cleanse starts moving them out of your body at a rapid rate. The symptoms are pretty unpleasant and mimic real illness, even though they're actually a good sign.
For me, however, it's all been the opposite so far. Well, a bit of intestinal pain one afternoon, but who's to complain? All in all, I've noticed:
Lots more energy throughout the day
Improved mental clarity
No more joint pain (a miracle, considering my other resilience-builder last week...)
This cleanse targets the colon (absolutely the most important place to start) and then moves on to all the major organs of toxin eliminations: your liver, gall bladder, lungs, kidneys, bladder and skin.
So far, so good. I'll keep you posted. Cleanses are highly recommended at least twice a year. Remember, you should only undertake a cleanse with the approval of your physician and / or a licensed and qualified health care provider.
Next time, I'll fill you in on my other big activity of last week ;-)
Last time, we talked about the health benefits of Normal Abdominal Breathing and how to practice it. We also said that breathing this way will greatly calm your emotions over time, especially if you meditate regularly and make this kind of breathing your "default setting".
However, you can breathe abdominally and still miss the ultimate point. How so? Let's start at the beginning...
As you know, chest breathing - i.e., the unhealthy way most people in our culture breathe - is linked to negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, anger and the rest. But chest breathing is just a symptom of a bigger problem - captivity to your ego. This tormenting ego captivity that's so pervasive in the West is a direct result of our rationalistic culture. It's linked to a whole complex of things, including the "me against the world" mentality, the feeling that the human being is totally separate from the "hostile" world around him, which he has to dominate by force.
Even though Normal Abdominal Breathing creates better health, if you practice it without dislodging these mentalities and the emotional complexes beneath them, your gains will only be marginal. You see, the ultimate purpose of your breath work is to take you beyond ego captivity!
Ego captivity is what Hara expert Karlfried Durckheim called a "fundamental lack of trust in life itself". On a deep level, the chest breather is afraid to surrender to the natural process of breathing. He feels he has to breathe on his own or he'll cease to exist. He can't seem to let himself surrender to his breath and "be breathed" instead of breathing by force.
So here's the paradox: even though we abdominal breathers consciously watch our breath, our purpose is to surrender to it. The chest breathers, on the other hand, ignore their breath, yet can't surrender to it.
You can feel this for yourself, even doing abdominal breathing. It's an emotional / spiritual tension that manifests itself most strongly as you transition from inhaling to exhaling. It's as if something hesitates, something in you tightens up. An expert can verify these hidden emotional / spiritual tensions in his or her students by checking their posture, since almost every hidden tension is stored in the posture and knocks the posture out of alignment.
Breathing only reveals its full significance to the extent you are able to surrender to it, to life and to the greater life force within you. And you can only do that to the extent you've gone beyond the ego-centric fear for bodily welfare. So we have even more paradoxes here! Many people will say they trust in God, yet their breathing reveals something very different...
How can you go beyond your ego-captivity and enter into the real mystery of breathing? The first step is simply to keep practicing. Sit and breath properly, and pay attention to what your body reveals to you. Did you find some hidden emotional / spiritual tensions you weren't aware of? That's okay, just acknowledge them and continue. Practice and time overcome all obstacles!
For more information on mastering breathing, meditation and movement, click here. ~ Dr. Symeon Rodger
You can learn a lot about a person just by observing how they breathe...
When they're relaxed, whether standing or sitting, can you hear their breathing?
Do their shoulders and chest rise when they inhale?
Does their lower abdomen move at all?
Are they inhaling or exhaling through their mouth or their nose?
All these are key questions that can tell you volumes about their physical health and, for that matter, their emotional health and how they relate to their body.
Compelling Reasons for Breathing Right:
Simply put, your body-mind organism has been designed to breathe in a particular way, and if you knock that natural breathing out of whack, you'll eventually reap the consequences. The breathing that's natural to the human person is what's sometimes called "Normal Abdominal Breathing". Why should you bother with it? As Bill Nye the Science Guy loves to say, "consider the following";
It enhances the circulation of blood, lymph fluid and energy (chest breathing restricts all of them)
It takes the burden off the heart (chest breathing makes your heart work harder)
It massages your lower digestive tract, leading to more efficient elimination of toxins (chest breathing leaves your lower digestive tract stagnant and sluggish, leading to auto-intoxication)
It calms the emotions and reduces the energy-sapping "inner dialogue" (chest breathing tends to increase negative emotional content)
Practicing Basic Normal Abdominal Breathing:
Getting started is super-simple. You can start with the following exercise while sitting or standing, and later graduate to doing it while walking:
Keeping your chest and shoulders relatively stationary, expand your lower abdomen outward as you inhale through your nose
Contract your lower abdomen as you exhale through your nose
With each breath, use your mental attention to feel the breath sink down to your lower abdomen
Breath at whatever pace is comfortable for you - this should feel completely gentle, natural and unforced, even if it seems a bit awkward at first ;-)
Once you've got the hang of that, you can experiment with these auxilliary practices (NOTE: If you have high blood pressure, please consult your physician first):
As you inhale, instead of just expanding your abdomen to the front, allow your waist to expand all the way around, as if it were a big inner tube
As you inhale, relax your perineum completely and feel the breath move all the way down to it and push against it. Then, when you exhale, pull up on the perineum, more or less as you would doing a Kegel exercise (the Kegel or PC muscle exercises have lots of other health benefits I don't have time to get into here).
Breathing and Your Personal Resilience:
Proper breathing can dramatically increase your physical health on all levels, balance your emotions, reduce your stress and, over time, utterly transform your relationship with your body. It's pretty hard to overstate the benefits of paying attention to your breathing.
Of course, its real value comes when you transition from doing Normal Abdominal Breathing as an exercise for a few minutes a day to making it the "default setting" for how you breathe all day long.
To get the whole story on how to do that, go to this website:
You'll remember from last time that we said the biggest advantages to living each day as your last are:
1. If you live each day as your last, you'll never succumb to petty emotional reactions
2. You'll do nothing carelessly ever again - your actions will be increasingly filled with power
3. And because you're increasingly conscious of the eternal consequences of your choices, you'll stop wasting this precious life and start making spiritual progress
You may have noticed there's a big difference between "remembering your death" and "living each day as if it were your last". It's easy to remember intellectually that your time in this world is limited. Everyone of us 6+ billion people is aware of that fact. But that's a far cry from the power that comes from living each day as your last.
To harvest the benefits of "living each day as your last", you have to commit to training yourself to do just that. There are no short-cuts here. This means focusing all your efforts on living deliberately, on disengaging the autopilot of habit and taking full responsibility for even the smallest decision you make.
Spiritual traditions, like Orthodox Christianity or Tibetan Buddhism teach this principle so that people will avoid self-destructive actions and use their limited time for spiritual advancement. Martial traditions, like the Samurai, promoted it because this practice gives you greatly heightened situational awareness, and in the Samurai's world, situational awareness was just about the only thing standing between you and your last day.
The bottom line, though, is this practice is central to developing your resilience. Back in 1982, a certain British soldier on the remote Falkland Islands watched in horror as a massive Argentinian force invaded. As he tells the story, his initial reaction was sheer terror. Then, for some reason, he experienced a sudden inner shift. He accepted the fact he was about to die, and from that moment on he was able to take positive action. Of course, he ended up surviving the war, but having learned a priceless lesson that no classroon could ever teach.
Some lessons in life can't be taught; they can only be learned. And living each day as your last is just such a lesson. For more information, go have a look at pages 247-8 of The 5 Pillars of Life. Great info? Yes. However it's nothing more than an interesting read unless you put it into practice.
So go try it out and have some fun. Fun?? Yes, fun! Make a game out of it. The same way you change your physical diet to see if your stomach feels better, you can change your mental diet to see how adopting a different focus, like "living each day as your last", makes you feel. At first it'll be hard to stay focused, of course, so don't beat yourself up. Just have fun with it and see what happens.
They say only two things in life are absolute certainties - death and taxes. Despite the fact it's tax time, my mind was more on the other thing yesterday. You see...
...that Polish aircrash over the weekend, where dozens of people in the higher echelons of the Polish government lost their lives trying to land in western Russia, well... turns out a friend of mine was one of the fatalities.
He was a young bishop in the Polish Orthodox Church, Bishop Miron. Despite being Orthodox and not Roman Catholic, he was a top official in his country's military chaplaincy program and actually held the rank of Brigadier General. We met three years ago when he came to Canada for a military chaplains' conference. We celebrated a Sunday liturgy together at church and I had the honor of translating for him (from Russian, not Polish) in a Q & A session afterwards. He was a very kind, unpretentious man interested in everyone and a joy to be with. He will be missed.
As one of my kids always says, you can never say someone's middle aged because you don't know when they'll die. And the tragic and far too early departure of Bishop Miron is just one reminder that we don't know how much time we have.
Most people in our society would probably consider that a morbid thought and try to push it out of their minds. Big mistake! Authentic Ancient Traditions knew a huge advantage and tremendous RESILIENCE is hidden within this mysterious "remembrance of death". How so?
1. If you live each day as your last, you'll never succumb to petty emotional reactions
How seriously would you take your own emotional ups and downs if you suddenly found yourself in a life and death situation? Not at all. So when you start to live each day as your last, the emotional grip the world has on you begins to lose its power.
2. You'll do nothing carelessly ever again - your actions will be increasingly filled with power
You start to realize there are no unimportant decisions. Every decision you make is now made in the face of life and death, so everything is important. All your actions become deliberate actions and take on a powerful quality.
3. And because you're increasingly conscious of the eternal consequences of your choices, you'll stop wasting this precious life and start making spiritual progress
All Authentic Ancient Traditions tell us that our whole life is merely a preparation for what comes next. Once you live each day as your last, you begin to realize that you don't know when that "next" phase of your existence will begin.
As to exactly how you can leverage the awsome power of the "remembrance of death", we'll get to that next time ;-)
First, because you need to preserve your own resilience and sanity, and second, because of your moral obligation to the people around you.
If you're stuck with a boss who's making your life miserable, chances are he's making at least some other people feel that way too. Typically, the results are increased illness and absenteeism, declining productivity, and greater staff turnover, to name just a few.
Unfortunately, incompetent and / or self-serving leadership is something we've been trained to accept at all levels in our society. If you want to change this, then start where you are and make it perfectly clear that you'll accept nothing but competent, inspired and, above all, honest leaders.
The following strategy will work for nearly any scenario, whether the boss is a cynical manipulator, a mentally ill person (such as the narcissist we discussed last time) or just plain incompetent. The reason for focusing on the narcissist last time is that these people head for positions of authority faster than fleas head for s_ _ t. That's because they have a driving emotional need to be the center of attention, praise and admiration. The corridors of power are full of them.
The Strategy for Resilience in the Face of Poor Leadership:
Look at the big picture. You have decide whether to a) endure the situation or b) eliminate your boss. Enduring is a good strategy if the person will be moving on before long and you can put up with it until then. "Eliminating" means getting the boss removed. Yes, in most cases that means he'll become someone else's problem, but there's nothing you can do about that.
The "Endure" Checklist:
1. Make the boss look good and provide ego support. Yes, it goes against the grain, but it will make your life easier. If your boss is a narcissist, this a an absolute prerequisite. The narcissist whose ego you don't stroke will see you as an enemy or at least as irrelevant. Always remember, you may need your boss to sign your leave form, approve funds for the conference you want to attend or something else. So don't burn your bridges just yet.
2. Be a good listener. The more you listen, the more the boss will consider you useful. Also, this will enable you to gather more information, should you ever have to switch to the "Elimination" strategy.
3. Maintain your boundaries. Narcissists and some other personality types will readily invade your personal space and your free time. Don't let them. Be firm. Enduring does not mean putting up with just anything. Likewise, don't tolerate verbal abuse of yourself or others. Many of these personality types have bullying characteristics and all bullies are intimidated by people who stand up to them. If your annoying boss is rational, he may respect your for taking a stand. Remember that narcissists and the like can never respect you, but the can FEAR you, and that's very useful.
4. Build your support network. Find others you trust who see the boss for what he is. Keep your communications with these people open. This group will provide emotional support for you, as well as preparing the groundwork in case you need to move to the Elimination strategy.
The "Eliminate" Checklist:
Make sure you've already put in place all elements of the "Endure" Checklist first.
1. Using the support network you've built, make sure everyone starts to document immediately and then create some method of pulling together everyone's documentation. Document all your interactions with the boss, complete with date, time and who said what. Documentation is king and without it you'll get nowhere.
Likely you'll find people haven't started to do that. Explain the importance so that people will go back and start putting their documentation in order. Document the results of your boss's mismanagement too.
2. Based on the documentation and checklists like the one in the previous post describing a boss with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (and others for the psychopath, the sociopath, Anti-social Personality Disorder and other conditions) come to a best guess on where your boss may fit in. Remember, he may be simply incompetent or someone who does bad things just because he can.
3. If you have a strong feeling you may be dealing with someone who's not rational, such as a narcissist, make a clean copy of your documentation and remove his name. Then take the facts to a reputable psychologist who would be willing to read it. If the psychologist says you're probably correct, great. Even better if he or she is willing to write a letter to that effect.
4. Bring others into the discussion. These could include your boss's boss, your union, your organization's employee assistance program, the HR folks or others. Essentially, you're surrounding your boss totally.
5. Assess your next step. The essential question here is where do you take your information to get your boss fired or otherwise removed? Do you go to the CEO, the Board of Directors, the media, the internet? This depends on your specific situation.
-----------
If you follow these steps, you'll keep yourself sane, healthy and resilient no matter how bad the situation is. Do not allow yourself to be abused and manipulated by these people - life is too short. Take responsibility for your own resilience and you'll never regret it.
Over the last few posts, we've talked about some of the traits of an excellent leader, including personal honor / integrity, a strong sense of duty - which entails a desire to serve - and "fanatical" loyalty to the people he or she works with.
Unfortunately, as you've probably noticed, true leaders are very few and far between. In fact, chances are that your current boss falls far short of that. Worse still, there's a good chance you're working for someone who's making your life miserable. And if you've spent just ten years in the work force, it's almost impossible that you've never worked for such a person.
Part of building your personal resilience is learning how to handle these people decisively and effectively. The alternative is wasting a lot of emotional energy, staying miserable and having little to show for it in the end, except maybe lots of stress and ill health.
One reason why most people do waste so much emotional energy dealing ineffectively with a bad boss is they make one critical false assumption. They assume the boss is fundamentally a rational, sane person who is choosing to do bad things, either through inexperience or through "malice aforethought". And yes, that's sometimes true. There are lots of bad bosses who know the difference between right and wrong and consciously choose the latter.
In a large percentage of cases, though, that's just not the case. Instead, you're often dealing with someone who's clinically ill with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Anti-social Personality Disorder or something similar. How can you spot the difference?
Let's focus on Narcissism for the moment. Your boss may very well be a narcissist if:
He (I'll use the male pronoun here, although there are lots of female narcissists in positions of power) is charming and has considerable acting skills
He's arrogant and abusive when he thinks he can get away with it
He's got an inflated self-image
In his eyes, your company is really all about him, not about the official mission statement
He's really good at manipulating people emotionally
If at any time he has taken credit for YOUR work, you know how it feels!
He has zero EMPATHY with others and isn't emotionally capable of anything except feigned empathy and emotional intimacy
He's a control freak and a micro-manager
He requires a lot of ego stroking
He surrounds himself with "yes-men"
He constantly invades your personal space and free time, since he has no sense of personal boundaries (you are, after all, just an extension of him, a tool)
Sound like anyone you've worked for? If not, count yourself lucky!
Think of fictional characters like Cruella Deville, Anna on the series "V", or Ben from "Lost" and you'll get the general idea. Just keep in mind that not all narcissists are outwardly cruel or abusive. Worst of all, narcissists are such excellent actors and manipulators that they're really hard to spot.
In one organization I worked for, there was one ladder-climbing manager who was demonstrably incompetent, thoroughly disliked and whose decisions were just short of ruinous to the overall mission... yet he ended up in the number 2 position! That's how good these people are at acting and how poorly equipped most people are to recognize and combat them.
Some among them are so adept at making others feel good that few suspect their real agenda. And those few have a really hard time making themselves heard. After all, how can something that feels so good be SO wrong?
Next time, I'll share with you some concrete strategies for maintaining your personal resilience in the face of ANY kind of bad boss, including the narcissist.
Continuing with our series on the three key virtues of the Warrior, the three that make for an exceptionally resilient life, we arrive at honor.
Anyone familiar with Star Trek's Klingon Empire will have heard that word thrown around a lot. Unfortunately, not all of Star Trek's writers knew anything about Warrior cultures and how they function, so the ideas of honor they sometimes wrote into scripts for their Klingon characters were terribly misleading. Fortunately, General Chang is one Klingon who hits the nail on the head:
As I said, the concept of honor has been perverted just as often as duty has, and not just in the Klingon Empire, but in real human cultures. The Samurai fell into the trap of equating defeat with dishonor and with an unbearable shame on an entire family. Some religious perversions talk about honor killing to avenge a perceived slight. And, most common of all, the totally false notion that honor, like duty, involves blindly following orders - the infamous defense of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. Of course, we're not interested in those false ideas of honor.
Establishing Your Honor
Before you can guard your honor, you have to establish it. You can't protect what you don't have. Establishing your honor comes through a determination to do the right thing, even under the most difficult circumstances. That's why Chang calls it, "the absolute, unselfish dedication to all virtues; to truth, to courage, to forthrightness. It encompasses all these, and yet it is greater."
So, if you want to have honor, then:
1. Speak the truth... and demand that the whole truth be told, boldly and bluntly
2. Do your duty to the utmost of your ability
3. Do not allow yourself to be dragged into the disgraceful conduct of others
In our public life we're now living in a time when honor seems to be vanishing. Despite the many fine, unselfish people we have the good fortune of knowing in our personal lives, our public life is increasingly marked by lies, deceit and manipulation. It's a shadowy world of half-truths designed for the advantage of the unworthy and the unscrupulous. Yet without a commitment to honor as individuals and as a civilization, we cannot survive... nor would we deserve to.
So part of honor is to oppose the lies of public life, to speak the truth and demand that the whole truth be spoken. Not an easy task, and one that's sure to get you into trouble. Do you have the guts for that? Every Warrior must. Kapla!
Rather than repeat my official bio, I thought I'd write something more personal here.
Simply put, my whole life has been taken up with the search for how life is really meant to work; in other words, RESILIENCE.
And in that 35 year search I've been very blessed to make some amazing discoveries and meet some of the most remarkable people alive - most of whom are happily anonymous to the world at large.
You really CAN have tranquility, control, health, love and security - the 5 things everyone wants and seldom has. Of course, you have to be willing to pay the cost of acquiring them - and that's life's grand adventure.
This blog deals with applying the most effective RESILIENCE strategies to YOUR life... and then enjoying the amazing results!
