In praise of erring

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Guiding Light

I was hang­ing out at Sip yes­ter­day, doing my usual thing: Get­ting a lit­tle writ­ing done, drink­ing a lot of coffee.

But as I worked (and sipped) I found myself dis­tracted by two young women a few tables away. It’s not that they were loud, it’s that they were inter­est­ing.  At first, I just thought (as I often do) what a great town this is!  From there, it was a quick leap to “You know what? I’d like to meet them.”

A quick leap in my mind, but an awk­ward one to enact. This is what I thought as I fin­gered two busi­ness cards I’d pulled from my bag and con­tem­plated next steps. For a few min­utes more, I went back and forth. And then: I just did it.

I approached their table, smil­ing. Cau­tious smiles in response. I blath­ered some­thing about how I couldn’t help but overhear—and I knew that this must seem sort of strange—but that they just sounded so inter­est­ing that I’d decided to say Hi!

And you know what? They were lovely. Exactly like they’d sounded.

Not sur­pris­ingly, this being the town that it is, we already shared friends. Kate co-owns the vibrant Imp­ish, a “mis­chie­vously play­ful” Northamp­ton children’s store that I’ve vis­ited with my friend Sarah, whom Kate also knows.  Fran is a for­mer busi­ness law stu­dent of my pro­fes­sor friend Jen­nifer and about to begin a new job on Maine’s  same-sex mar­riage cam­paign. (I knew they were interesting!)

My friend Naomi quotes her mother as say­ing “Always err on the side of gen­eros­ity.” This encounter got me to think­ing how the same could just as well be said about human connection.

There are many times when the “right” course of action isn’t totally clear. If we’re going to over-steer, in which direc­tion should we risk erring?

Always steer­ing towards human con­nec­tion strikes me as a good default rule.  And I say this not just because it sounds good but for very prac­ti­cal reasons.

Look­ing back, I see that, time and again, the choice to con­nect has enriched my life in many and var­i­ous ways. No, not each and every time but more often than you might think.

A cou­ple of recent exam­ples relat­ing to this blog:

After writ­ing about celebrity blog­ger Pene­lope Trunk, I tweeted the post to her on a lark. To my sur­prise (and delight) she read it and left a lovely com­ment, which lifted my spir­its on a day that my spir­its needed lifting.

More recently, I wrote the (tongue-in-cheek) post “I Should Be You” about The Flu­ent Self’s mag­i­cal Havi Brooks, and once again, sent it on with no real expec­ta­tion of response. When she linked to the post, it resulted in my blog’s high­est traffic-ever day—and, in the process, con­nected me with a bunch of really won­der­ful people.

I’ve also gained a lot from being on the other side of the equation–the per­son being con­nected to rather than the con­nec­tor. The fact that I’m liv­ing in this town at all is largely due to the fact that the afore­men­tioned Jen­nifer (my law school class­mate) wrote me a warm con­grat­u­la­tory note after my first novel came out. We’d been friendly but not really “friends” before—and out of touch for years. Today, much of the good in my life can be traced to that out-of-the-blue email.

Another reminder came this week via writer Car­olyn Nash (a pen name), who’d read that I work with fos­ter kids and left a com­ment on my blog offer­ing to send a copy of Rais­ing Abel, her fos­ter care mem­oir. As it hap­pened, I’d already heard about the book on Work­stew and been mean­ing to find it. (“A woman of remark­able resource­ful­ness single-handedly raises a trou­bled child all the way to man­hood in this inti­mate and inspir­ing blog-to-book mem­oir,” is how Kirkus Reviews describes it.)  I told her I was eager to read it. And I’m already writ­ing about it.

Of course, not all attempts to con­nect will yield the hoped-for con­nec­tions. In another life, when I was writ­ing thrillers, I mus­tered up my courage, and placed a call to some­one I’d been friendly with in col­lege, who some­times reviewed books. I caught her at a bad time. She was icy. The call ended quickly. I felt terrible.

Think­ing about this phone call now—still clear in my mind after all this years—it occurs to me that it’s an excel­lent exam­ple of the human “neg­a­tiv­ity bias.”  As described by Buddha’s Brain author Rick Han­son, our brains are “Vel­cro for neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences but Teflon for pos­i­tive ones.” This is because our brains evolved to keep us from get­ting eaten, not with the goal of assur­ing that we live happy and pleas­ant lives. As Han­son sees it, we need to do what we can to push back this tendency.

For me, choos­ing con­nec­tion is one way to do this. Life is full of risks, and the choices we make on any given day won’t always leave us delighted. But by erring on the side of human con­nec­tion, I’m pretty sure we raise our odds.

Hello, Life Experiment #3 (plus an update).

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12

laser cut cubes

In this Year of Exper­i­ments, the past month was about Cre­at­ing Order, and in fact, some order has been cre­ated, though–as The Orga­nizer warned me there might be, lots remains to be done.

Here’s what my base­ment looked like then.

The Orga­nizer takes stock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s what it looks like now:

As they say in 12-step pro­grams, it’s about progress not perfection.

That being said, here is what I’ve found: Order is calm­ing. Order is free­ing. Order is some­thing I want. Order is also, as one friend noted, always a work-in-progress. It’s a habit, not a goal.

As it hap­pens, the same is also true of the act of forg­ing human connections–the focus of Life Exper­i­ment #1, where I con­nected (or re-connected) with 30 peo­ple over the course of Jan­u­ary. Much more to be said about that, but for now, just to note that this prac­tice also under­scored for me the impor­tance of habit.

So here’s the bot­tom line: where I started envi­sion­ing this Year of Exper­i­ments as con­sec­u­tive, I’m increas­ingly start­ing to see it as cumu­la­tive.  Spend­ing some time–in this case, a month–consciously focus­ing on a qual­ity that enriches my life is sort of like plant­ing a seed.

♦

And now for Life Exper­i­ment #3, which is about see­ing more (and see­ing dif­fer­ently) and fram­ing (and re-framing).  Or to put it in con­crete terms, dur­ing this month, I’ll be tak­ing at least one pho­to­graph each day.

There are a bunch of rea­sons I set­tled on this par­tic­u­lar Life Experiment.

For one thing, I got a new cam­era a few months back, and I’ve yet to really use it. For another–and this is a big one–I’ve just started co-teaching a photo and writ­ing work­shop for fos­ter kids and am awed by what I’m read­ing and see­ing. I won’t say much more about that–their sto­ries are theirs–but this is another way to con­nect with what they’re doing.

I also know from past expe­ri­ence that using a cam­era opens up the world in new and unex­pected ways. Years ago, I spent some sum­mer weeks at the Maine Pho­to­graphic Work­shops (now Maine Media Work­shops), and I recall a per­va­sive sense of height­ened aware­ness. Thought it occurs to me that this may not be say­ing much–I am some­one whose boyfriend once shaved his mus­tache for her as a birth­day gift (It was not my favorite look) and I failed to notice. That is until he told me that the mys­te­ri­ous gift he’d been hint­ing at for hours was “right under your nose–or rather under my nose.”

So clearly, I can use some prac­tice with this see­ing thing. As always, you’re wel­come to join me. I hope that you will.

The Dog Days of Plan B Nation

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I met Jan on Face­book through our friend Betsy, and the three of us planned a din­ner together, but then Betsy stood us up.

So we sat there in a cozy booth at Casablanca, a Har­vard Square restau­rant, exchang­ing ten­ta­tive smiles and cast­ing about for conversation.

“This is sort of like a blind date!” Jan said, offi­cially break­ing the ice. Soon the words were flow­ing. By the end of the meal, we were friends.

While our lives are quite dif­fer­ent in many ways—I’m sin­gle, she’s mar­ried with three kids, among other things—we also have much in com­mon, includ­ing lit­er­ary tastes, curios­ity, and a dry sense of humor. Dur­ing the past year or so, we’ve also been fel­low trav­el­ers in Plan B Nation. Here, Jan shares some thoughts on her journey—and a furry guy who’s help­ing her through it.  

 

 

 

 

By Jan Dev­ereux

This Valentine’s Day I sent my 23-year-old son a card with a photo of a young man and his dog sit­ting side-by-side, wear­ing iden­ti­cal frizzy red wigs: “May you never grow to look like the one you love,” the card teased. With nei­ther a sweet­heart nor a pooch, my son is in no immi­nent dan­ger of this roman­tic peril. The joke was on me, as it’s cer­tainly no secret that his old lady has been crush­ing on her puppy lately.

I’ll let you be the judge of whether I’ve yet begun to resem­ble my dog, phys­i­cally, but I have begun to rec­og­nize, and even embrace, a few emo­tional par­al­lels. If you’ve ever lived with a dog, I don’t have to tell you that change stresses them out. Dogs thrive with a pre­dictable rou­tine, well-defined expec­ta­tions and lim­its, and con­sis­tent, pos­i­tive rein­force­ment. As dog train­ers know only too well, many “prob­lem” dogs are merely react­ing to chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances cre­ated by humans.

Fel­low cit­i­zens of Plan B Nation, is this start­ing to sound familiar?

The chal­lenge of being between jobs in today’s econ­omy is stress­ful enough to make us all behave like this dog:

Photo credit: Taste­fully Offensive.com’s Tumblr

Now, if I actu­ally were a dog, I’d prob­a­bly be a Bor­der col­lie. Bright, hard-working and a quick study, I like to be busy and to get things done. A straight-A stu­dent straight through grad­u­ate school, I was the (admit­tedly annoy­ing) girl who always did all the assigned read­ing before class and fin­ished her term papers before the due date. Laser-focused on my stud­ies and too much of a wor­ry­wart to pro­cras­ti­nate, I man­aged to earn two Ivy League diplo­mas with hon­ors and with­out ever pulling an all-nighter. I’m still punc­tual to a fault, the party guest who habit­u­ally arrives unfash­ion­ably early.

I’ve always worked—being a stay-at-home mother for a few years doesn’t count as “not work­ing” unless you think meet­ing the 24/7 demands of three young chil­dren is a walk in the park. I went back to paid office work when my youngest child, now 17, started preschool. Most nights, I went to bed dog-tired, but I usu­ally awoke excited to tackle what­ever the next day might bring.

When I left my most recent job, as direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at an inde­pen­dent school, I expe­ri­enced an ini­tial rush of exhil­a­ra­tion, like a dog unleashed. There were so many avenues I wanted to explore, both pro­fes­sion­ally and per­son­ally, so many paths beck­oned that it seemed as if it might even be hard to choose among them! After a few months, how­ever, it grad­u­ally dawned on me that, espe­cially in this econ­omy, the choos­ing was not entirely up to me. With­out a job to pro­vide the scaf­fold­ing for my days, a clear pur­pose to guide my actions, and the reward for a job well done, I felt like a dog cut loose from the pack.

Worse, by focus­ing all my energy on find­ing the right job, I’d inad­ver­tently cre­ated a dynamic that was bound to frus­trate a goal-oriented per­son, at least in the short-term. Pic­ture the Bor­der col­lie faced with a field full of plas­tic lawn sheep: I even­tu­ally real­ized I could exhaust myself try­ing to herd inan­i­mate objects, or I could reframe the problem.

I needed an interim project with a more cer­tain pay­off. So, nat­u­rally, get­ting a puppy seemed like the solu­tion! There were plenty of good rea­sons not to add the dis­trac­tion of rais­ing a puppy while I was sup­posed to be fig­ur­ing out my next act, pro­fes­sion­ally. But, the fact is, get­ting Eddie was the one of the smartest deci­sions I’ve could have made.

Train­ing and bond­ing with Eddie these past months, I’ve re-discovered the restora­tive power of friend­ship, canine and human. Now I orga­nize my day around our walks with friends who have dogs. If you’ve read Gail Caldwell’s poignant mem­oir of walk­ing with her best friend, the late Car­o­line Knapp, and their dogs, then you’ll be able to pic­ture us fol­low­ing in their foot­steps at Fresh Pond. Its title, Let’s Take the Long Way Home, is what one of my friends always says when we reach the point where the path loops around a wild­flower meadow. Hav­ing a ready excuse to get away from my com­puter and out in the fresh air has been a lifesaver.

Eddie has also been my inspi­ra­tion for a new cre­ative project, a blog called Cam­bridge Canine. I’d been look­ing for a focus for my writ­ing and found plenty of fresh mate­r­ial right at the other end of the leash. They say, “write what you know” –well, dogs are what I know best right now. The blog may never claim a huge fol­low­ing, but the posts are fun to write, and the occa­sional encour­ag­ing com­ment or Face­book “like” is reward enough to keep me in the hunt.

A recent health scare under­scored that we can never be cer­tain what will hap­pen next; like play­ers in a game of Whac-a-Mole, we slap down one stres­sor only to see another pop up. Watch­ing my dog cavort with his friends is a daily reminder that life is lived most fully in the moment. My pro­fes­sional future is still in limbo, but when I’m out walk­ing Eddie, I try to stop wor­ry­ing so much about where I’m head­ing and focus instead on enjoy­ing the jour­ney as much as he does.

Recently, a friend remarked, “My dog is my san­ity.” I couldn’t agree more.

How to get out of bed

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Day 7

Morn­ings have been hard for me lately. I’m not exactly sure why. My life hasn’t really changed much. The same things are dif­fi­cult. The same things are good. If any­thing, some of the good things have got­ten a bit more good. So why have I been wak­ing up in a state of despon­dent gloom? And, more to the point, what can I do to make things a lit­tle bit lighter?

Mulling over these ques­tions the last few days, it hit me that I’d failed to note per­haps the most salient clue: The fact that, how­ever I feel, I am indeed get­ting up!

What is it, I won­dered, that gets me mov­ing on days I could eas­ily bur­row in? Could the answer be to fig­ure that out—and then do more of it?

In that spirit, I asked myself: “Self? What gets you out of bed on those morn­ings when noth­ing seems worth the effort?”

The answer came imme­di­ately. “I get up for the coffee.”

A year or so back, I received a fancy cof­fee maker as a gift, and it’s this primo coffee—not just any coffee—that’s been mak­ing all the dif­fer­ence. Some­times I con­tem­plate return­ing to my pre­vi­ous caf­feine habits. The cap­sules for the new machine are pricey, and I’m try­ing to con­serve. But for now, the expense is worth it. The cof­fee is some­thing I look for­ward to, and that means a lot.

And right then, it hit me. I was onto some­thing. This idea of “look­ing for­ward to”—what role did it have in my life? It occurred to me that per­haps I’ve grown looking-forward-to deprived.

The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Life in Plan B Nation tends to be focused on get­ting things done, on keep­ing the nose to the prover­bial grind­stone, on being respon­si­ble, plug­ging ahead, and keep­ing emo­tions in check. It’s easy to feel that we don’t deserve spe­cial rewards and treats—not when we’re so far behind where think we ought to be.

The prob­lem with this approach: We. Get. Tired. The fact that suc­cess is in short sup­ply doesn’t mean we haven’t been work­ing, often way harder than we did when our careers were thriving.

Which got me to think­ing about Bud­dhist teacher Cheri Huber’s spot-on descrip­tion of how exact­ing we tend to be with ourselves—and because it’s so great and because I have the book right here, I might as well share it with you:

You go along in life and you do what you’re sup­posed to do. And every time you do some­thing you’re sup­posed to do, you put a dol­lar in the bank. Okay. Every time you’re kind, patient, or you do the thing you’re sup­posed to do—whatever it is (you know what those things are for your)—every time you put a dol­lar in the bank, a dol­lar in the bank, a dol­lar in the bank .…

Finally, you feel like you’re just kind of worn out. You feel like you need a lit­tle plea­sure in your life, a lit­tle time on the beach or some­thing. And so you think “I’m going to go to the bank, and I’m going to take out some money, and I’m going to do some­thing nice for myself.”

So you go to the bank and you say, “Here I am. I want to take out some of the money I’ve saved so that I can do some­thing nice for myself.”

And the response is, “Oh no. You haven’t earned nearly enough to get any­thing for your­self. Oh, you have to work much harder—you have to put much, much more money in before you can get any­thing for yourself.”

And, of course, if this were First National you were deal­ing with, you would say, “No, this is not the way this is going to work. This is my money. You can’t tell me when and where and how I can spend it.” And yet, with this sys­tem of self-hate that’s exactly what’s going on!

She con­cludes: “THERE’S NO MYSTERY IN THIS FOLKS! … [T]he per­son at the bank DOES NOT LIKE YOU! *It’s impor­tant to get that*.… THIS PERSON IS NEVER GOING TO GIVE YOU A DIME! YOU WILL WORK YOURSELF TO DEATH, AND YOU’LL NEVER GET A THING FOR IT. IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THAT!”

So.

Here is what I am going to do: First, I am going to incline my mind (as the Bud­dhists say) towards things on the hori­zon to which I’m look­ing for­ward. The work­shop for fos­ter kids that I’m co-facilitating. Watch­ing a TV show I refuse to name with my friend Wendy.  Hot­dogs and a movie at Pop­corn Noir in East­hamp­ton (not to be con­fused with East Hampton).

Next: I am going to give some thought to other things I might look for­ward to and how I can make them hap­pen. Tango lessons? A day trip? The specifics are up for grabs.  And while I don’t know what I’ll come up with, I look for­ward to find­ing out.

Note: The quoted pas­sage is taken from Cheri Huber’s There Is Noth­ing Wrong with You (Keep It Sim­ple Books, 1993). It also has pic­tures that will make you smile.

Pattern recognition

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701 - Puzzle - Seamless Pattern

I gen­er­ally tend to think I know myself pretty well. Apart from hav­ing lived with me, lo these many years, I’ve spent a good bit of time explor­ing what I do and why I do it. Between 12-step pro­grams and Vipas­sana and ther­apy and lots of read­ing, I’ve pretty much come to see myself as the #1 Expert in Me.

Which is why it was sur­pris­ing the other day when I espied an entirely new pat­tern. (Not that the pat­tern was new—it’s not—but it was new for me to see it.)  Sur­pris­ing and also excit­ing, because see­ing is always the first step towards relat­ing differently.

So here it is, the thing I real­ized: I have spent a huge part of my life try­ing to get peo­ple to give me things they don’t want to give me. I don’t have to keep doing this.

Like most trans­for­ma­tive insights, this one sounds obvi­ous. And sim­ple. What makes it sig­nif­i­cant is the way it reordered my inter­nal land­scape. I felt it as a vis­ceral shift. A relax­ing. An ahhh, ah hah.

The best part is the aware­ness that I don’t have to work so hard. My life is quite chal­leng­ing enough, with­out this added pres­sure. Also, that mas­sive energy I’ve invested in try­ing to wrench things loose? It’s free to be deployed in other far more fun and pro­duc­tive ways.

There are likely lots of rea­sons that this pat­tern took root, many of which no doubt wend back to my tee­ni­est tini­est child­hood. On the one hand, it strikes me as impor­tant to rec­og­nize this—to see that the pat­tern is not my fault, that there are causes and effects. On the other hand, you know what? It doesn’t really mat­ter why. What mat­ters is how I act on this new know­ing and how it acts on me.

I don’t expect this pat­tern to dis­ap­pear in a day or even a year. But I do expect that it will slowly fade, become qui­eter and less demand­ing. What I have now is the per­mis­sion to let go of a tremen­dous weight. Already I feel lighter, if not entirely free.

I should be you

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140/365 Envy

The mind gets a lot of crazy ideas.  (Well at least mine does, and I sus­pect if you pay atten­tion, you’ll find that yours does too.)

In recent weeks, it’s taken to sug­gest­ing that I should be some­one else. Now who this per­son is varies, depend­ing on the day, my mood, and what I’ve been read­ing or think­ing about.  And the fact is, if you lined up all the peo­ple my mind tells me I should be, you’d find that their behav­iors and beliefs are often quite clearly at odds. But my mind doesn’t care about that. It’s quite con­vinced that it’s entirely right—and it’s out to con­vince me too.

My mind has been espe­cially insis­tent since dis­cov­er­ing The Flu­ent Self, a blog-cum-transformational play­space cre­ated by Havi Brooks.  “You should be Havi,” my mind clam­ors. “She is doing such inter­est­ing things, and she talks about them in such inter­est­ing ways. You should be her not you! I can help you do that.”

It’s taken some time, but I am finally get­ting my mind to accept that this is not going to hap­pen. A major break­through came when I showed my mind this video of Havi doing her Shiva Nata yoga prac­tice wear­ing a pink wig.

“You see that?” I said to my mind. “That is Havi. That is not us. We can learn from her. But we are never ever ever going to be her.”

On hear­ing this, my mind became a bit dis­con­so­late, though after watch­ing the video twice, it allowed that it was likely true.

As is often—if not always—the case, the trick is to find some­thing between the all and the noth­ing. What does my mind’s crush on Havi have to tell me? For one thing, it’s about my need to be more play­ful. It’s about doing more to find my tribe and build­ing a com­mu­nity. And maybe it even means trav­el­ing to Port­land to attend Rally (Rally!)

It also helps to remind myself that how­ever crazy in love my mind may be with some­one else’s life or work, there are oth­ers to whom my own life and work speak in sim­i­lar ways. This came home to me a few months back, when I became friendly with a writer I’ve long admired. I was thrilled when she told me she liked some­thing I’d writ­ten but then rushed to send her an essay that I thought was way better—one of my all-time favorites penned by another writer.

Some days later, I got this care­ful response:  “As for X’s piece…honestly? Between us? It’s not really my thing .… I hope it’s okay to say that—she’s clearly a smart writer.” The fact that this writer I so admired could pre­fer my piece to the one I’d just sent came as a revelation.

As it hap­pens, my mind is still not entirely con­vinced that I shouldn’t aspire to Havi. But I’m pre­pared to wait. Soon it will be on to some­thing else. (And if not, I still have the video.)

And vs. Or

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Resurrection

Shortly after I launched this blog, a friend sug­gested that I fea­ture sto­ries about peo­ple who lost their jobs but ended up tri­umphant, which got me to think­ing about this seduc­tive and increas­ingly iconic Great Reces­sion storyline.

The appetite for such sto­ries is easy to under­stand. They’re a wel­come anti­dote to the anx­ious uncer­tainty that per­vades our times. They fuel our opti­mism, calm our fears. They tell us that no mat­ter how bleak things may seem they’re still likely to end well. “This is a series about peo­ple who stared down the Great Recession—and rein­vented them­selves along the way,” is how the online mag­a­zine Salon describes its series “My Bril­liant Sec­ond Career.”

But for all this narrative’s com­pelling appeal, I’ve found myself balk­ing at it, uneasy with the vision of a fan­tasy future squared off against the past. In par­tic­u­lar, I worry that in our eager rush towards hap­pier times, we risk los­ing sight of what these years have had to teach us—that we’ll come to view this era’s dif­fi­cul­ties as things that “shouldn’t  have hap­pened to me” rather than as a shared expe­ri­ence that shaped and trans­formed our lives.

Our indi­vid­u­al­ist cul­ture thrives on hier­ar­chies and dichotomies. Good vs. Bad. Suc­cess vs. Fail­ure. Win­ner vs. Loser.  It’s easy to fix­ate on secur­ing a spot on the right side of the divide. When we come to the end of a chal­leng­ing stretch, we often heave a sigh of relief and do our best to for­get.  That was then. This is now. I am not that per­son any­more. (Thank God, I am not that person!)

But there’s another way through such tran­si­tions, one that involves expand­ing to encom­pass even the hard­est parts of our pasts. I thought of this recently when read­ing my friend Alle­gra Jordan’s beau­ti­ful guest post on how the abrupt end of her mar­riage, which also coin­cided with a job loss, led her to launch her public-spirited Inno­va­tion Abbey con­sult­ing firm. What I espe­cially loved about his piece was its recognition—and acceptance—of the ways in which past and present nec­es­sar­ily coex­ist.  As William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Why does this mat­ter? Because once we accept that our lives are inher­ently messy, imper­fect, and informed by a past we didn’t choose, we can start to let go of the futile notion that life should be an end­less pro­gres­sion upwards.  We can be kinder to ourselves—and kinder to each other. We can start to understand—really understand—that we are not good or bad, suc­cesses or fail­ures, win­ners or losers. We are all of these things, many times over, and many more besides.

When goals collide

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scream and shout

A friend’s two-year-old once pitched a tantrum on a stair­way land­ing between two floors of the fam­ily home.

What pro­voked the melt­down? Once the furi­ous howls sub­sided, he choked out the fol­low­ing expla­na­tion: He wanted to be upstairs with his dad and down­stairs with his mom. He wanted both, at the same time. He didn’t want to choose.

I don’t know about you, but I can really relate. Espe­cially, dur­ing the past few weeks, as I’ve got­ten increas­ingly busy.  At any given moment, I’m con­flicted about what I should be doing—and doing next. There are so many things that need to be done, all vying for my attention.

Such con­flicts are espe­cially com­mon in times of tran­si­tion, at least that’s true for me. Right now, I’m jug­gling free­lance writ­ing with blog­ging, lead­ing a writ­ing work­shop for fos­ter kids, and look­ing for more pay­ing work. I’m also try­ing to orga­nize my home—a task that’s espe­cially press­ing since my lease is up in a cou­ple of months, at which point I’ll need to move. (Speak­ing of which, I’ll also need to find another place to live.) Also: resolve legal mat­ters relat­ing to the Plan B Nation trade­mark, pre­pare my 2011 taxes, help out a friend with cat care, and pack for a trip to Boston. Plus: Be hap­pier!

Not sur­pris­ingly, such inter­nal con­flicts are fer­tile breed­ing grounds for dis­sat­is­fac­tion. In her mega-bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, Eliz­a­beth Gilbert notes that Rumi once advised his stu­dents to write down the three things they most want in life.  If any item clashed with another, he warned them, they were des­tined for unhappiness.

But while this may be a sound obser­va­tion, it doesn’t tell us how to deal with such con­flicts when they arise in the course of daily life.  How do we best move for­ward while engaged in an inter­nal tug of war?

While I don’t have a magic bul­let (sorry!), I do have a few strate­gies that have helped me in the past, and to which I’m now resort­ing.  As is so often the case with this blog, I’m shar­ing what I need to remember.

1. There’s no “right” decision

Con­sider the sit­u­a­tion. Decide on next steps. Once you’ve made an informed deci­sion, do your best to ignore that voice that’s second-guessing you. That nag­ging sense that what­ever you’re doing isn’t the “right” thing? It’s just not true.

2. Keep mov­ing forwards

Some years back, at a sim­i­lar point of over­whelm, I remarked to a wildly effi­cient friend that I was tempted to give in and sim­ply do noth­ing at all.  He gave me a hor­ri­fied look: “No, no,” he said. “That way lies mad­ness!”  Which made me laugh, which is always a good thing. And besides, the point’s a good one.  A jour­ney of 1,000 miles begins with a sin­gle step, as the old say­ing goes.  For me, track­ing progress is an essen­tial strat­egy here.

3. Exer­cise

Sadly, I’m not one of those peo­ple who enjoys the actual expe­ri­ence of exer­cise, so I often let this one slide.  That being said, I always feel so much bet­ter after I’ve got­ten mov­ing that I’m deter­mined to do bet­ter in mak­ing it a reg­u­lar part of my life. In the mean­time, as they say in 12-step pro­grams: “Take my advice. I’m not using it.”

4. Say No

This is no time to add to your to-do list. Be ruth­less (or as ruth­less as you can be) about say­ing No. Need help? Read this.

5. Self-compassion

Sim­ply put, give your­self a break. Recent research sug­gests that self-compassion is more effec­tive than self-esteem in fos­ter­ing con­tent­ment. Rec­og­nize that you’re in a tough sit­u­a­tion and doing the best you can.  If you need some help in fig­ur­ing out how to go about this, Bud­dhist teacher and psy­chol­o­gist Tara Brach’s Rad­i­cal Accep­tance is a great start­ing point.

♦

As I look ahead to the rest of the day, I still have that anx­ious feel­ing. Then I remind myself I’ve writ­ten this post. And that’s, at least, a start.

A Valentine’s date with Leonardo da Vinci

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Every now and then you have a chance encounter that turns into some­thing far more. That’s what hap­pened to me with Alle­gra Jor­dan, whom I first met back in 2006 at a women’s pro­gram at Har­vard Busi­ness School.

Some­how we got to talk­ing. One thing led to another, and we made plans to meet for din­ner that evening at a restau­rant in Har­vard Square. Over upscale New Eng­land home cook­ing, we traded life sto­ries, find­ing many over­lap­ping inter­ests. Along with our Har­vard pro­fes­sional degrees (mine a J.D., hers an M.B.A.), we shared ties to the south­ern United States (she’d grown up in Alabama, while I’d spent years work­ing in Ten­nessee and Mis­sis­sippi). But most impor­tant of all was our shared con­cern with find­ing ways to bridge our sec­u­lar and spir­i­tual lives, whether they be devoutly Chris­t­ian (hers) or Bud­dhist eclec­tic (mine).

Flash for­ward five-plus years, and both of us have been through seis­mic changes—jobs, rela­tion­ships, geo­graphic moves.  At the same time, the com­mit­ments that brought us together remain very much the same, and what began as a sin­gle meal is now a solid friendship.

In this guest post, Alle­gra describes how her own Plan B Nation story led her to launch Inno­va­tion Abbey, a social justice-oriented con­sult­ing firm with projects around the world (and with which I’m now hon­ored to be affiliated). 

By Alle­gra Jordan

Feb­ru­ary 13, 2010. Snow is falling as my dog Belvedere and I pull out of my Chapel Hill dri­ve­way and begin the drive to Atlanta. By the time we reach the North Car­olina bor­der, traf­fic is at a stand­still. Eigh­teen wheel­ers slide pre­car­i­ously close to us along the rolling hills. The six-hour trip ends up tak­ing three times that long.

If this had been an ordi­nary trip, I would have turned around and waited for the roads to clear. But it was Valentine’s week­end, a bru­tal anniver­sary. One year before, I’d received a pink slip from my then-husband, fol­lowed by the same at work. The descent was so stun­ning it became intro­duc­tory mate­r­ial for a forth­com­ing book with the tongue-in-cheek work­ing title Is Fem­i­nism in Bad Shape? Check out Alle­gra. The story: our plucky hon­ors Har­vard Busi­ness School grad­u­ate mar­ries, pur­sues a career in inno­va­tion, sac­ri­fices, and ulti­mately becomes a cau­tion­ary tale for others.

Stick around for the week­end anniver­sary? No way.

Instead, I got tick­ets to the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit at the High Museum in Atlanta. My goal: To rest my eyes on con­se­quen­tial, centuries-old beauty. I hoped this expe­ri­ence would soothe and heal my heart. I was going to show up to life, show up to beauty, and show up to excel­lence. If I had to drive 18 hours, I would gladly do so.

But there was no “a-ha” moment for me on that bleak win­ter day. Tense from the drive, pro­tect­ing a badly wounded heart, I searched in vain for what I was seek­ing. I saw noth­ing that moved me, noth­ing that seemed to jus­tify the long and exhaust­ing trip.

Valentine’s Day dawned in Atlanta to below-freezing tem­per­a­tures. The sun had yet to rise when I embarked on my return trip over black-ice slicked roads. As I care­fully started the long drive back, my spir­its were low. It would have made sense to wait a while, but I didn’t have that lux­ury: I needed to make it back in time to pick up my sons at their father’s.

And then, just a few hours later, every­thing sud­denly shifted.

As I crossed the bor­der into South Car­olina around 10 a.m., the sun peeked into view. As if on cue, the air seemed to warm. My ten­sion and anx­i­ety drained away, leav­ing a feel­ing of calm. For the first time in three days, I finally relaxed. It was then the bless­ing came.

I can only describe it as an epiphany. And epipha­nies or day­dreams are funny, inex­plic­a­ble things. Neu­ro­log­i­cally, I can spec­u­late that after I finally relaxed the exec­u­tive cen­ter of my brain, I opened the door to a series of neuro-tonal images. It was a bit like being awake and dream­ing at the same time.

I saw Leonardo sit­ting on a lad­der. I drew closer.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“I can help you,” he said.

“How? There’s no place for me.”

“There was no place for me either—I did so many dif­fer­ent things and few of them fit with each other. Even Michelan­gelo made fun of me for that big horse I tried. But if I could make it in the 1500s, then per­haps you can too.”

“But my work sit­u­a­tion, my home life—I’ve been so betrayed.”

“Have you ever worked for a Sforza?”

I laughed. The Sforza coat of arms includes a viper eat­ing a child. It’s hard to think of a more threat­en­ing boss than that.

“If I could do it, per­haps you can too,” the mas­ter said. “I’ll help.”

That was it. The epiphany was over.

♦

Nobel Prize win­ner Toni Mor­ri­son writes that a true and good friend is some­one who takes the pieces of “who I am” and gives them “back to me in all the right order.” In that sense, this epiphany helped me see the path for­ward. In those moments, I found my tribe.

One year later I started Inno­va­tion Abbey, recruit­ing a first-class team that shares my ded­i­ca­tion to evidence-based inno­va­tion steeped in deep wis­dom about how peo­ple really work. Since our launch, we’ve worked in 10 coun­tries in Asia and two in Africa, as well as in the United States. Our projects are start­ing to bear fruit, though the work of inno­va­tion— inno­vare or renewal in Latin—is the work of a lifetime.

Our com­pet­i­tive edge? We believe that human beings, not data or processes, are the root cause of inno­va­tion. Yes, peo­ple of faith need peo­ple of spread­sheets, and I have been a per­son of spread­sheets. But it also works the other way: data and processes need the human spirit.

Our name hear­kens back to the ancient abbey sys­tem of Europe and Asia, which man­aged to com­bine oper­a­tions and deep knowl­edge of peo­ple to show a bet­ter way for­ward. While far from per­fect, the 1,400 Cluny abbeys nev­er­the­less helped bring Europe out of chaos, war, and dis­ease 1,100 years ago­—and with­out a sin­gle mobile phone.

I’ll close with a humble—but telling—story from a project we com­pleted in Laos late last year.

In the Lao cul­ture, there isn’t a word for inno­va­tion. But there is a word for love.

We were invited to work with a pub­lic health admin­is­tra­tor work­ing to teach her team about innovation.

She gath­ered her whole team—including her driver—to talk about inno­va­tion, using the mate­ri­als we had pro­vided as a jump­ing off point. The first dis­cus­sion caused con­fu­sion. But the team did not give up. “We don’t know what this is but we love our regional man­ager who tells us this is impor­tant. We will do it for this man­ager whom we respect,” was the gen­eral consensus.

The tide finally began to turn when the Lao team con­nected in Thai with another group study­ing inno­va­tion with us. After this, the Lao team began to feel more com­fort­able with the inno­va­tion process and related con­cepts, the team leader told us. How did she know? Here’s what she said:

“I got in my car. Usu­ally you tell the dri­ver where to go street by street and they drive you that way. But this time the dri­ver turned to me and said, ‘I’ve been think­ing. For two years we’ve dri­ven that way. I know a shorter route. May we try it?’”

When I heard this, my heart lifted. Think of the time value in money! How much time had two years of the direc­tive mind­set cost the team? And how much time might be saved going for­ward? Not to men­tion the larger changes likely to fol­low as the inno­va­tion mind­set begins to take root and flour­ish.  And sig­nif­i­cantly, the break­through stemmed from love—from the feel­ings of respect and con­nec­tion that bound team mem­bers to their regional manager.

♦

I see inno­va­tion as the response of human­ity strug­gling to renew in the midst of a com­pet­i­tive and dys­func­tional world where there are amaz­ing things yet to be dis­cov­ered. I’ve had to give up almost every­thing to gain this wis­dom. It’s becom­ing slowly appar­ent to me that it is worth it.

It’s our chal­lenge to build a beau­ti­ful future together on the cold embers of a past that did not work. We have the spirit of a genius engi­neer, painter, drafts­man, sculp­tor, and inven­tor that can meet us, even today. As I walk into this unknown, and poten­tially beau­ti­ful, unbounded future, I do so with a new con­fi­dence that I’m not alone. I’m search­ing for—and start­ing to find—the mem­bers of my lost tribe, the bril­liant, vision­ary, heart-centered tribe of Leonardo da Vinci.

Note: To learn more about Inno­va­tion Abbey and its projects, email Alle­gra with ques­tions or to request an inau­gural set of white papers: “The Devil in Inno­va­tion,” “Redis­cov­er­ing Ancient Wis­dom about Mod­ern Inno­va­tion,” and “What We Learn about Inno­va­tion with the Bot­tom Bil­lion.” Read­ers are also warmly invited to attend a Tedx event on the theme “Beloved Com­mu­nity” in Chapel Hill on March 3, 2012.

Awakening Joy in Plan B Nation

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Joyful Runway

Much has been writ­ten about the psy­cho­log­i­cal costs of job loss and other fall-out of the Great Reces­sion, but far less ink has been spilled over how we can best address them.

“The worst things in life start show­ing up when peo­ple expe­ri­ence extended unem­ploy­ment,” asserts Gallup Chair­man and CEO Jim Clifton in his chill­ing man­i­festo The Com­ing Jobs War, which paints a dire pic­ture of a global job short­age. “Those wounded will prob­a­bly never fully recover.”

In a sim­i­lar vein, Atlantic jour­nal­ist Don Peck cites a trou­bling litany of con­se­quences stem­ming from long-term job­less­ness, includ­ing “grow­ing iso­la­tion, warp­ing of fam­ily dynam­ics, and a slow sep­a­ra­tion from main­stream soci­ety,” as he fur­ther details in Pinched: How the Great Reces­sion Has Nar­rowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It.

My reac­tion to such obser­va­tions is mixed.

On the one hand, I wel­come the acknowl­edg­ment that the Great Reces­sion has exerted unprece­dented stress on mil­lions of Amer­i­cans. It strikes me as a much-needed anti­dote to the view that the job­less, foreclosed-upons, and other casu­al­ties of these new hard times just need to buck up, to opt for the sort of relent­less cheer skew­ered by cul­tural critic Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich in Bright-Sided: How Pos­i­tive Think­ing is Under­min­ing Amer­ica.

On the other hand, it strikes me as unnec­es­sar­ily dis­em­pow­er­ing to sim­ply give in, to believe that there’s noth­ing we can do to change our rela­tion­ship to the bad things that come our way.

It’s in this spirit that I’m embark­ing on med­i­ta­tion teacher James Baraz’s 10-month online class Awak­en­ing Joy. I first heard about the pro­gram from some like-minded friends (read: friends not prone to the afore­men­tioned relent­less pos­i­tive think­ing) and decided to give it a try. My ini­tial skep­ti­cism largely faded when I learned that no one is turned away for finan­cial rea­sons. (I myself opted to pay a small frac­tion of the total cost.)

Baraz—a found­ing teacher at the Spirit Rock Med­i­ta­tion Cen­ter in Woodacre, California—draws heav­ily on the Bud­dhist tra­di­tion, but as he makes clear in the first class, the pro­gram is in no way lim­ited to any par­tic­u­lar reli­gious faith.

So is it pos­si­ble to “awaken joy” when we’re fac­ing huge chal­lenges?  Baraz says Yes. Where his approach dif­fers sig­nif­i­cantly from many other pro­po­nents of pos­i­tive think­ing is that he—like the Buddha—is focused on the prac­ti­cal strate­gies that allow us to do this.  Rather than say­ing  “just do it,” his focus is on how to do it.

The first step? Sim­ply cul­ti­vat­ing the inten­tion to be happy. To this end, Baraz and his teach­ing team pro­vide a num­ber of exer­cises and prac­tices, includ­ing the act of remind­ing our­selves again and again of our inten­tion. Another sug­ges­tion: Mak­ing a con­scious deci­sion to rec­og­nize and rel­ish moments of well-being. (Pos­i­tive psy­chol­ogy acolytes refer to this as “savor­ing.”) The the­ory is that where we choose to place our mind goes far to  deter­mine how happy we are.

“More than 2,000 peo­ple have tested it, so it’s not some airy-fairy idea,” Baraz said of the class, in a 2008 O mag­a­zine inter­view. “I’ve learned that it’s pos­si­ble to change, no mat­ter what your his­tory or the lim­it­ing beliefs you’ve held on to. If you have the inten­tion to be happy and you do the prac­tices, if you give it your best shot and are very patient, it works.”

That being said, the Bud­dha told his stu­dents to not take any­thing on faith—rather to “see for your­self.” That’s exactly what I’ll be doing, and I’m curi­ous to explore what hap­pens. Inter­ested in join­ing me? Click here for sign-up infor­ma­tion.