“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood, and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Over the last few days, I’ve been reflecting on how to rally a community around an idea that has not yet taken root in popular culture. I’ve been thinking about revolution, a revolution of consciousness.
It doesn’t get started with tactics, project plans, and the divvying up of roles and responsibilities. And it doesn’t get accomplished that way either. Each individual has to feel a personal sense responsibility for seeing that vision through to fruition. They have to want it from the very depths of their souls for their own reasons.
Corporate executive who say stupid things are making it easy for us to set sail on our own venture adventures. While I am angered by their behavior, I’m thankful for our ability to turn the situation around and invest in our own business ideas. When things are falling apart (corporate culture), pieces are often falling into place (new start-ups.)
However, my latest example of corporate idiocy is worth a detailed explanation for the lesson it teaches us about where and with whom to spend out time. This is a story that has to be told. Just when I thought I had seen and heard it all when it comes to the idiotic behavior of some (though certainly not all) corporate executives, another one comes along and delivers another shocking display of poor behavior. Women of the world, brace yourselves for this one.
I recently had the opportunity to hear Jennifer Hyman, Co-Founder of Rent the Runway, on a panel of entrepreneurs. Rent the Runway rents the latest women’s special occasion fashions for a fraction of the purchase price. A passionate, intelligent, and creative woman, Jennifer explained that her company is about more than fashion. It’s about empowering women to create extraordinary lives while looking and feeling their best. She explained that the mission of Rent the Runway was so compelling that she and her co-founder were the first female entrepreneurs funded by Bain Capital.
The corporate executive moderating the panel saw this incredible accomplishment as an opportunity to put his ignorance on display for all to see. His response to Jennifer’s story?“Was that Bain pre- or post-Romney?”
And the entire audience (made up largely of the corporate executive’s employees) went silent. No one knew what to say, where to look, nor how to feel. Everyone’s face just dropped. Was he trying to funny? Was he using humor to veil his own insecurities about female entrepreneurs? After spending 30 minutes prior to the panel discussing the value of a growth mind-set to large corporations, why would he insult a guest he invited to speak on the topic? Did he feel threatened by her confidence and ingenuity? (Incidentally, Jennifer was the only female on the panel and the only one to receive this kind of comment from the moderator.)
Jennifer handled the situation with grace, the way I believe she must handle every business situation she faces. Still, my anger was up, way up, until I realized the tremendous gift that this corporate executive delivered to everyone in the audience. Why would anyone continue to work hard for him every day? Why would anyone pledge their loyalty to someone whose ignorance causes him to behave so poorly?
You could see everyone’s wheels turning with the idea, “I need to get out of here and follow the lead of the entrepreneurs on the panel.” And all I could think in response was, “Yes. Yes you do. Give your own business ideas a fair shot at success. Leap!”
This executive is already getting the result he deserves – a complete loss of loyalty from his team; he just doesn’t know it yet. But he will. It won’t be the first time a suit, stuck in his ways, totally misjudged the future of our economy and I have a feeling it won’t be the last. Investors, place your bets. I know which way I’m going. Do you?
I absolutely love this post today from A Charmed Yogi. The wisdom of Erma Bombeck and a cute dog picture relating to yoga. What else does a good blog post need? Enjoy!
For those of you under the age of 40 (yea, I can say that now), you may not know who Erma Bombeck is. She was a humorist and newspaper columnist from the 1960s through the 1990s. She wrote a column after she found out that she had cancer entitled, “If I Had My Life to Live Over.”
In the piece, she talks about all of the little things that she took for granted that she would embrace if she had to do it over. Two of my favorite lines are, “I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage,” and, “I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains.” Well, my children have four legs and fur, but I still love how she articulates “seizing the moment.”
“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.”~ Mahatma Gandhi
Yesterday someone asked me what situation in the world bothers me the most. My answer rose up immediately – I hate to see people give up on their dreams before they even try to make them come true. It’s an answer with a very personal angle. Prior to my decision to take a leap and work for myself, I epitomized exactly the situation that bothers me the most. If I wanted to see a change in the world, I needed to be that change, too. I had to set the wheels in motion to leap, for myself and for others.
We are our greatest creation. The lives we build are works of art that should be constructed thoughtfully, passionately, and purposefully. We are not depots that accept any and every train that pulls into the station. Our days and the people, places, and events that fill them are choices. Our choices.
Right now I am deeply engaged in the process of transformation. While I’ve been thinking of this time as something special and finite, Gandhi’s quote reminds me that every day we are remaking who we are – physically, mentally, and emotionally. I know that we each have the power to transform the world, but that process begins internally, not externally. We need to embrace personal change before we can generate societal change.
So have a look around. What is it about the world that really bugs you? Now take a look at your own life and see if in some small way the thing in the world that you detest actually resides within you. Root it out. Once you commit to personal change, change will begin to happen all around you. When you take up the act of personal transformation, everyone who comes into contact with you will begin to transform, too. That’s how we start a revolution, a revolution of consciousness. Light it up!
The New York Times ran a story over the weekend about Google’s efforts to increase mindfulness among its employees. The story, Ok, Google, Take a Deep Breath, featured Chade-Meng Tan (Meng), an engineer at Google and the creator of the Google team course, “Search Inside Yourself.” I clicked the link to watch a sample class on YouTube and I was both disappointed and annoyed.
Meng explains that he wanted to see a dramatic shift in world towards peace. Given the company’s policy to let all employees work on personal areas of research for a certain percentage of their work hours, Meng decided that the best investment of his time would come from figuring out how to generate world peace. It’s an insightful idea. What I hated about it was his conclusion that to get individuals and companies to care about world peace, we have to help them understand what’s in it for them. Meng went on to explain that no one is going to create peace just because it’s a good thing for society. They have to get something out of it on a personal level before they care about peace. We need to tap into people’s individual needs that make the objective of world peace an inevitable by-product.
Gross.
I hate that conclusion. Is that what we’ve amounted to? A collection of 6 billion bodies who only care about themselves? I stewed on that as I ate my lunch, determined to prove that though Meng may be a very bright engineer, his conclusion on how to bring about peace was unfounded.
I couldn’t. I got more annoyed.
Thankfully, my post from yesterday on the value of having our personal philosophies unsettled was still top of mind. Why did Meng’s conclusion, one that I had a hard time refuting, bother me so much and what could I learn from it? Could I apply it to my own work? Was I already subconsciously already applying it to my own work?
A New York Times column that Thomas Friedman wrote for after 9/11. In it he explained that, “If you don’t visit a bad neighborhood, it will visit you. “ In other words, get out there and do something that’s good for you and good for others. The trick we have to benefit individually as much as we do collectively in order to get community efforts and acts of goodwill to be sustainable.
Environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility really took off when companies realized they could benefit financially and in terms of customer and employee loyalty. In these efforts, the win-win is what tipped the scales. We are beginning to see these same seeds planted in healthcare. Our current healthcare system is no longer sustainable, so we are beginning to see more emphasis on preventative health measures that give people a way to be well before they ever get sick. The same is true in education. We are beginning to see a proliferation of new channels for learning because entrepreneurs realized that they could profit from disrupting the traditional education system.
In all these examples, the answer to the question “what’s in it for me?” came into balance with the answer to the question “why is this good for society?” We need both side of the equation to really make an impact. Thanks, Meng, for stating the cold, hard facts, for not letting us let ourselves off the hook, and for showing us that we can make a positive impact on humanity by truly understanding humanity.
“My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer.” ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson via DailyGood.org
Are you annoyed? Be thankful for the object of your irritation.
Having a naturally constitution that some describe as “spicy” and “fire-y”, I often find my annoyance barometer rising. At least as my initial reaction. New York presents some hefty challenges in every day living. From just trying to get coffee to getting on the subway to get to work during rush hour, New York can be a relentless button-pusher.It can also be an incredible partner on the path to transformation. This city is Darwin’s perfect test case for his theory of evolution – in this place, we have the grim choice to “change or die”, at least metaphorically. In reality, it’s closer to the idea “adjust or be constantly irritated”. I choose to adjust, and it’s been a blessing to master that skill.
Contrary to some recent research, I don’t believe we can change our natural reactions. It’s a much more efficient use of our energy to change our actions that are caused by our reactions. Recently I’ve deployed a new way of dealing with my initial reactions of irritation. I take the SBNRR train – stop, breathe, notice, reflect, and respond. And though that process seems like it may take more than a split second to execute, we can actually do this in the moment once we consciously and consistently practice it for a short period of time. I’ve found my recent responses to obstacles to be much more graceful and thoughtful than ever before thanks to SBNRR.
The Universe has a lot of knowledge to offer and some of the deepest lessons are served up in moments of great risk and change. Risk and change can feel unsettling at the outset but don’t back down. Soak it up, let it sink in, and then take it for what it’s worth – a great chance to learn and grow.
If we consider the unbelievable fact that all that we are and all that we will become originated in one tiny cell, we cannot help but be in awe of life. The greatest science fiction stories have nothing on the development of the human body. We are what we come from and if each one of us originates from a miracle, then why would we ever think that our lives deserve to be anything less than extraordinary? Harness that miracle of you and spread it far and wide out in the world. It’s what you were born to do.
“What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.” ~ Rumi
Yoga asks us to find the balance between effort and ease, to seek our edge without going over it. This is the challenge on the mat and the challenge of our lives. We have to dream big to find that edge. We have to play, experiment, and envision a life without boundaries to open ourselves to our true potential.
We don’t know how far we can go until we set out on the greatest adventure we can imagine. Find those boundaries and then seek to transcend them – this is the only rule for extraordinary living. Everything else is up to us.
Yesterday Mom and I saw the Shuttle Enterprise move into her new home by way of the air space outside my apartment. She was a beautiful sight!
After snapping some photos, I wanted to learn more about the plans for her new home on the Intrepid. Over on the Intrepid website for the Shuttle, they’ve cataloged information about the Shuttle’s past, present, and future, complete with futuristic renderings of what they expect the new exhibit to look like later this summer.
If the final frontier gets your heart pumping, head on over and have a look at the site. Though the federal shuttle program has come to an unfortunate end, I’m hopeful that creative exhibits like this will inspire private funders to take up the cause to continue to go where none of us have gone before, to inspire us to seek out new boundaries.
“Why set the stage without having the show?” ~ Alan Finger, Founder of ISHTA Yoga, on the importance of meditation
This week ISHTA Yoga and my teacher, Alan Finger, were featured in the New York Times. The article shed some light on a recent trend at yoga studios – an increase in the demand for and attendance in meditation classes. Considering that yoga is a very physical practice here in the U.S., this recent increase of interest in meditation is causing some many people to rethink the reason we head to the mat.
In India, the birthplace of yoga, the physical and breath practices were a means to an end, and the end was samadhi, or the bliss state, achieved through meditation. The physical and breath practices were used as important components to get the body and mind quiet. In Alan’s words, they set the stage for the main show – the meditation.
This recent uptick in meditation interest has caused me to consider re-formatting my own classes and my personal practice. Maybe more quiet time is needed by all of us, now more than ever. The eye alone use 80% of the body’s sensory energy, so by closing the eyes in meditation we take all of that energy back inside and direct it toward strengthening the mind. It’s a reallocation of our most precious resource. Imagine the possibilities.
I’m excited for the revolution of consciousness that awaits us on the meditation cushion.
Christa Avampato 