Akshay Kapur

Park it

2014-05-05T11:20:00.000-04:00

Park the anger, the guilt, the judgment to deal with later, or not, it's up to you. You're not ignoring it, you're letting it be. Acknowledging it, not allowing it to take you over because you know well in advance that nothing good will come of it. So you park it and see what happens and move on with the real problem at hand, the now, whatever is in front of you.

How to redefine and reduce risk

2014-01-21T10:02:00.001-05:00

Risk is a mentality. Instead of a threat, treat it like a challenge.

When people say they are risk-averse - in finance, love, life - they are really saying they are not ready to jump in. There is a mental bridge they need to cross to get them from point A to point B. You can run across the bridge anytime you want, it's your own self-judgment that holds you back.

Redefining risk is very personal. When it's a threat, we fight, flight, freeze or faint. When it's a challenge, we come alive, our hearts beat faster, we're more alert and motivated to do what's necessary.

All of a sudden, we're leaping across the bridge. Better yet, the bridge isn't even there. It never was, was it? Point A and point B were always the same. We just had to allow ourselves to shift perspective.

Eliminating risk does not have to be so abstract, it can also be tangible. Some can write their fears and uncertainties on paper and crumple it up, throw it away. Others prefer voicing their thoughts in conversation with a loved one, a mentor or a guide.

Crossing the bridge that risk creates in one's mind is a mental change. A perspective change. When you're ready, you'll wonder what all the fuss was about.

What does it mean to "Just be"?

2014-01-13T09:03:00.001-05:00

"Just the sense of being-ness, not being this or being that, but consciousness generally." - Nisargadatta Maharaj

The literal interpretation of a word is important. When we assume the implication behind a word, we can miss its direct meaning.

For example, in the above quote, "being this or that" can imply you are something specific. Either "this" or "that." Let's say you were being "silly" or "moody" a few days ago. That may have been true at the time, but that does not translate to how you are being right now. It's not that you are that way or will be that way in another moment in time. That assumption is false, carried over from a past occurrence into the present, either by others or yourself.

Just think about how many people say or assume, "oh he's quiet" or "she's always upbeat." And then, a few days later, when those very same people show the opposite characteristic, it's "oh that's not like him" or "what's wrong with her?" Being one way or another is not a fixed state, though we often mistakenly assume it is.

Going back to the original example, you were in fact being "silly" or "moody" for a span of time. The word "being" literally means that emotional state is part of a moving target. You can only be something in a span of time and then as time passes you may be happy or be sad or be bored, what have you. It does not mean you are any of those things, which implies a fixed state of being (an oxymoron if you look at the literal definitions of "fixed" and "being").

You can not be something in a moment, because a "moment" is unlimited in time. It is always moving, occurring, happening. A moment is gone the moment you attempt to capture it. A moment is continuous, not instantaneous.

Momentariness is what "just the sense of being-ness" is about. It's why "consciousness generally" can be known or observed. Because you are following it as it moves. Witnessing it as it continues. You are "not being this or being that," you are only being for a span of time.

Now, as you are reading this, you are being a certain way; attentive, confused, curious, what have you, and that's all you are now, in the very present moving moment.

Having a "sense of being-ness" means you are moving with how you are being. Moving with the moment, continuous in time, not constant instantaneously, but occurring spontaneously. Just be.

See a thing as it is

2013-12-17T11:48:00.000-05:00

A challenge can invoke fear and uncertainty, and you can meet it with stillness. It can be difficult and complex, and be reduced to simple steps. It can take over your life, and you can choose to give it the attention it deserves. It can color your experiences, and you can give it perspective.

It's not the characteristic of the challenge that makes it hard or unclear or burdensome, it's how you approach it. The difference between reaction and action is a subtle shift in how you take in the moment. The subtlety does not go unnoticed though, because the success of getting through the challenge at hand relies on it. Resolution is not a matter of time, but of viewpoint.

Why the best bosses are sometimes bossy

2013-12-16T15:00:00.000-05:00

The word "boss" literally means "a person who exercises control or authority", but how do we often interpret it? Does the word itself give them control or authority? For example, in the case of a colleague getting promoted to be the boss. Does she or he now have control or authority over your work? Perhaps, if you view her as capable. If you don't, there's angst.

What mental model do we apply to a boss? Some people like being told what to do. Others prefer a facilitator. And others only require rare oversight. The control or authority we attribute to a boss is the control that she or he has over us.

What if you are the one that gets promoted to being the boss? Knowing how others perceive you matters. You can set the tone, but not everyone is listening to it from the same frame of mind.

As a leader, you have to know when to put on the right hat. A boss must exercise control or authority over oneself, one's emotions, one's reactions, one's judgments. It's not just a position of responsibility but also one of accountability, because all of sudden you get to make decisions others don't. Respect that others give you that respect.

Why change is good

2013-12-10T11:30:00.000-05:00

I and others just keep on living with the momentum of high school, college and graduate school behind us, accepting the decently-paid jobs that come our way to solve problems we're trained for, but don't necessarily question.

It's when we start questioning the problems themselves that the reasoning starts to falter. Why do we practice law and sell real estate and go to a 9-5 the way we do? Why are we such avid consumers and upholders of individual freedom? So much of it is cultural conditioning that we become self-aware of when we travel to another country, sometimes another state. It becomes clear that norms can be very different and we're surprised by the strange nature of other cultures. What a self-aggrandizing idea! I bet people visiting from other cultures have exactly the same reaction. So there's another layer to combat, the inherent ethnocentrism that emerges when we encounter not just different looking people, but a whole another set of rules we're not prepared for. It's like going through the 5 stages of grief, first there's denial and then anger and eventually we evolve to acceptance. We get the travel bug, spurred by not just wanderlust or a desire to escape, but to be renewed by our surroundings.

What if we could be renewed within our own cultural context? Major change usually occurs when we change our environment or our thinking. Travel ushers the former, but what creates the possibility for the latter? Self-awareness doesn't happen in a vacuum. We often think of meditation as an escape within ourselves, when it is in fact exactly the opposite, it is complete awareness of our present moment. That means we hear, see, smell and accept everything around us as it is. It's almost a hyper-sensitivity to our natural and unnatural surroundings.

The awareness of nature in itself is fascinating, because it can be very limited in an urban environment, but all of a sudden you see a beautiful tree swaying in front of your apartment building that you completely missed! Or you'll be walking in a hurry to a meeting and be stopped by pigeons doing some kind of mating dance in front of you. It's surprising that you could have missed it lost in your thoughts about what you're going to say, do, and think in your next face-to-face.

Nature is constant movement. Trees are never as static as they may seem. Life is happening around us, just asking us to witness it. It makes sense that our awareness sees that movement when we work simply to build up our senses.

What's even more fascinating is how aware we become of our unnatural surroundings, or rather the cultural mores that condition our minds daily to guide our thinking one way or another. If we're truly paying attention in the moment, we can immediately see the effect an advertisement has on us, its repetitive nature seeping into us hoping we'll think of the brand when we go to the store. We start noticing people's ticks and responses and our ticks and responses to other people. We hear the news differently, the intonations that exaggerate and polarize. We notice art in a way we never saw it before, seeing the incontrovertible evidence of the artist's life experience and emotion and reaction to the world embedded within a simple painting. We start seeing through things, not needing the environmental shift to notice how we live and why we live. The acknowledgement of our unnatural surroundings also becomes a constant as we shift to an instantaneous mental acuity of where we are and why we are.

How will we change otherwise?

How to be your best self

2013-12-09T14:30:00.000-05:00

I thought about bringing my mental energy to a situation this morning and realized, why wouldn't I also bring my body and spirit to it as well? It's confusing sometimes to lead with a part of yourself. It's strange to think the rest of it will just tag along.

When you're working out, how much are you using your mind? When you're hard at work, is your body involved? And where is your spirit in all this? Everything is at play all the time, we've only falsely compartmentalized it because I suppose compartmentalization makes it easier for our body/mind/spirit to focus on one part of that trio. Which is kind of strange if you think about it more granularly. If you can never be without your body/mind/spirit and you choose one to concentrate on, then what's being toned down? Your whole being, right?

You're deciding to exclude one or multiple parts of yourself (or perhaps you don't consciously realize that's what you're doing) with yourself. It's not an oxymoron because by taking a part of yourself out of commission, you've diminished your being entirely. Can you actually direct your chi?

I'm not sure how Bruce Lee would have answered that. He comes to mind(/body/spirit) as the most famous example of someone who could truly control the energy inside of him. At 5'7", 140lb, he could bench press 400 lbs and propel people 10 ft back with a small gut punch. But was he directing his chi? Or was he suffusing his entire being with it?

I believe this is why so many spiritual teachers (at least those that don't aspire to some greatness from their followers) refer to the being as body-mind, or simply as an entity or self. There is much inherent confusion about who is in the room, who showed up, what they're looking for, what incentive drives them to do what.

The questions people ask are self-concerned, not necessarily selfish. They don't necessarily want something to the detriment of another or just because they seek instant gratification, but they are trapped in their self. A conglomerate of emotions and experiences they constantly mull over.

When they say, how can I get rid of these distracting thoughts? How can I be at peace? The first thing that must be defined is this "I". Unfortunately, in the settings that this question emerges in, primarily Eastern ashrams, or Western spiritual centers, this comes off as woo-woo and is easily dismissed. The question though is much more literal, much more analytical than that.

Who is it that wants to be at peace? Who is having these distracting thoughts? Is it the mind? Is it the spirit? Is it the pain the body feels or the frustration the mind interprets or the weight that burdens the spirit? Where's the connect and disconnect? What part of you must you get rid of, change, re-imagine, to be yourself?

How much of yourself must you trim to be a better version of yourself? This is a fair question when you're thinking of it from the perspective of a fragmented self - creating a difference between body, mind and spirit. There are character traits that we dislike in ourselves and wonder if were to eliminate them, would we be better people? Laziness, procrastination, selfishness, etc. We imagine who we would be if we didn't have these traits. How much better we'd function in the world, and how much people would appreciate us more. Whether it's self-help, a psychiatrist or a spiritual guru, we go and seek a solution to eliminate these traits we perceive to be negative.

The question always comes back to the origin, the source of the problem. The root cause. Why do you have this trait to begin with? Who has it? Where did it come from? Does it exist in a vacuum? Is it a part of your culture? Are you lazy without others being more relatively active? Perhaps what you're trying to accomplish is very difficult? Not beyond your reach necessarily, but complex in its own right?

No man is an island. It's not a saying just to preserve a sense of community, it's a fact. We exist relative to our environments. Even if we hermit ourselves away, we're still not free from the place we inhabit. Our being, our self, our body/mind/spirit is always involved, all the time. There's no separating these parts of yourself. Your whole being is trying to separate itself then, and to what end? Eliminating a character trait you dislike is something you have to deal with in its entirety. Don't approach a problem halfway with a part of yourself. It just creates more fog. Go to the root always.

How do I bring about change?

2013-11-12T12:45:00.000-05:00

No one knows how. But many will try to persuade you they do. Ideology will emerge to spur you to action and you will interpret it as change. Something new is always exciting and as you become a part of it, it will soon grow old and you'll start looking for another new thing.

The cycle of looking for ways to bring about change are endless. There is no formula. If one system wins, another loses. And the winner will eventually be replaced by another system, one born from the past friction and opposition.

Changing the world, your life, your relationships is a deeply rooted internal inquiry, isn't it? Why do you want to change? What is it that bothers you? How are you a part of it? What assumptions do you bring to the problem? How will your thinking evolve?

It's not analysis, it's internal journalism. Bringing stale beliefs to a fundamental problem won't solve it. It never has. A new ideology is only new to you right now. You as a citizen human being must question yourself to the core so you don't mimic or repeat any beliefs you don't support. But who am I to tell you what to do? Who is anybody? You must do the work.

Krishnamurti puts it more eloquently:

"If I were foolish enough to give you a system and if you were foolish enough to follow it, you would merely be copying, imitating, conforming, accepting, and when you do that you have set up in yourself the authority of another and hence there is conflict between you and that authority. You feel you must do such and such a thing because you have been told to do it and yet you are incapable of doing it. You have your own particular inclinations, tendencies and pressures which conflict with the system you think you ought to follow and therefore there is a contradiction. So you will lead a double life between the ideology of the system and the actuality of your daily existence. In trying to conform to the ideology, you suppress yourself - whereas what is actually true is not the ideology but what you are. If you try to study yourself according to another you will always remain a secondhand human being."

An Experience of Flow

2013-11-11T13:30:00.000-05:00

“Something happens at around 92 miles an hour. Thunder headers drown out all sound. Engine vibration travels at a heart's rate. Field of vision funnels into the immediate.

And suddenly you are not on the road - you're in it, a part of it.

Traffic, scenery, cops - just cardboard cutouts blown over as you pass. Sometimes I forget the rush of that, that's why I love these long runs. All your problems, all the noise, gone. Nothing else to worry about, except what's right in front of you.

Maybe that's the lesson for me today, to hold onto these simple moments - appreciate them a little more, there's not many of them left. I don't ever want that for you, finding things that make you happy shouldn't be so hard. I know you'll face pain, suffering, hard choices but you can't let the weight of it choke the joy out of your life.

No matter what, you have to find the things that love you. Run to them. There's an old saying - that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, I don't believe that. I think the things that try to kill you make you angry and sad. Strength comes from the good things, your family, your friends, the satisfaction of hard work. Those are the things that will keep you whole, those are the things to hold onto when you're broken.”

- A journal entry by Jackson 'Jax' Teller, a character from the show Sons of Anarchy

Leading with permission

2013-11-07T13:30:00.000-05:00

Leadership coaches are beginning to purposefully use mindfulness training in their workshops. In a way, their practice of working with leaders to provide more personal insight is mindful in and of itself. Applying a more direct approach can only enhance that practice.

Below is a wonderful quote by Doug Riddle on what benefits that affords:

How do we contribute to the possibility of change? How do we serve as catalysts for turning experience and reflection into more effective, meaningful lives? Mindfulness offers a powerful alternative to the coercive and linear assumptions that have dominated our thinking. It might be that individual change is not so much driven as permitted.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccl/2012/01/23/three-keys-to-mindful-leadership-coaching/

Allow yourself to be your best guide

2013-11-06T12:30:00.002-05:00

At times, after sitting and meditating, a feeling emerges as if you left your keys behind somewhere, or left something undone. As if there is something that needs attending to. It becomes a nagging itch and sticks until we address it.

Perhaps it is something we left undone months ago that's creeped up, simply an item on our to do list. Or perhaps we feel like getting in touch with our parents, relatives, or siblings. Or feel the need to travel and explore a hidden part of ourselves. Perhaps it's that we need to listen more, or alternatively speak up when we get the chance.

Whatever it is, that feeling is there now. It exists in your consciousness. Without applying any positive or negative attribution to it, we simply acknowledge it. Give it some time so we can better understand its origin and need for reemerging once again.

Sometimes, we apply labels to it: change, desire, longing, fear, etc. Doing so can turn us off from accounting for it. And even that is telling. What is it that we're applying this emotion to and why? What's behind our agitation or discomfort or hope? Pay attention to that because it's directly related to why the feeling came up in the first place.

Stay with that feeling without judging it. Allow yourself to go down a path you created, in a state of mind when you were most attuned to your inner workings. Recognize it and roll with it. You don't know where it will take you but some part of you wants to get there.

How to control time

2013-10-31T13:00:00.000-04:00

Having a meeting at noon structures the rest of your day. Usually in a grid-like calendar format where you schedule travel time, lunch, and your work activities before or after. Paper or electronic systems all support this format of booking your day.

What if that grid didn't exist? What if that noon meeting was just a point in your day without any other type of anchoring? No gridlines to put 1/2 hour or 1 hour long calls, meetings, and tasks. Just a blank before and after. How would your day change?

How your environment can enable or disable you

2013-10-30T17:24:00.001-04:00

Camping in the woods, away from urban convenience, requires effort that comes very naturally. You're on the sun's clock while hiking and you have to set camp before nightfall. Putting up the tent, starting a fire, cooking food, even going to the bathroom are all laborious tasks. They seem ingrained though. They don't seem like work when they're necessary.

I struggled with the concept of being mindful in nature while on a 3-day hike through the Grand Canyon. Nature requires mindfulness at all times. You don't force attention to the moment or feel you are judging the moment when the environment is set up for you to be attentive every step of the way.

Just being is easier.

It's not about the lack of distractions either. It's all the needs you have regularly being fulfilled simply by where you are that moment. The views are spectacular and entertaining, you're exploring the unknown feeling a sense of adventure, the exploration itself is a workout and communication with others is focused though light and fun. The labor that goes into living is just that, no less no more.

Oddly, the feeling that the environment can enable you reminds me of a video about a blind Ugandan lawyer who talks about one's environment disabling them. It's fascinating.

How resilient are you?

2013-10-24T13:30:00.000-04:00

Amishi Jha expertly explains how we assign value judgments to daily events can impact our ability to respond to stress. Building our meta-awareness through mindfulness can help us become more resilient to what life throws our way. Short, sweet and to the point, she brings to the forefront our automatic reactions to stress and how we can manage them.

The details of this program and the full presentation can be found here.

How to be (and stay) in the moment

2013-10-23T13:00:00.000-04:00

The moment I think I am in the moment I am instantly out of it. Because I am thinking now, not experiencing. I am forced back into my mind because I have cut the chord to the natural experience simply happening without my thinking mind. Instead of being in the experience, I am back to thinking about the experience.

It's very frustrating. It's why you cannot describe the benefit of meditation or mindfulness easily. It's an experience not the description of an experience. When the description, the knowledge, the recognition of the experience comes to mind, it's gone. Because now your mind is centered on thinking about it, not doing it.

To go back into the experience once you have recognized it is also difficult. Because now you have created an expectation. You think you know what it feels like. The main problem is "you think," when you can "just know." The last quoted phrase is the trigger: "just know" or "just be." It shifts thinking into the present experience.

Thinking is noise when you are experiencing. When you are thinking, thinking alone is the experience. Your body will continue breathing as long as there is air. You will continue talking as long as there is a listener. You will work as long as there is a project at hand. One does not exist without the other. Action arises from need and you just do it. Thinking about it only gets in the way.

Just breathing

2013-10-22T07:30:00.000-04:00

We think we breathe when without oxygen breathing would not be possible. We take it for granted that our bodies are in control of our breath. But what if we were on another planet or in space?

Both our bodies and our environment are necessary for breathing to exist. This is no breather without the right air and there is no breath without the person taking in the air. There is only breathing, which requires both the body and the air.

This occurs to me especially when I am focusing on my breathing during meditation. Just watching, listening, paying attention to my body taking one breath at a time. I assume I am in control. The equation is very direct at first: my body breathes the air around it.

Then slowly I become removed from the equation because the breathing does not stop. How can it? My body will simply breathe because of the air around it. You can't have one without the other. I am not truly in control of my breath, it's involuntary and only possible because there is oxygen in the air.

There is just breathing.

How to be more patient

2013-10-18T07:30:00.000-04:00

It's difficult to be patient. When you're trying to get somewhere, the last thing you want to do is wait.

When are you not trying to get somewhere though? We are always on the move, so where does impatience come in?

You can't beat time. How you get there determines who you are when you get there.

Impatience can be very selfish because we assume control over the end result. In our rush and foot-tapping, we think we can control time. The funny thing is if we get there and the other person is running late, it all feels for not. And now it's hard to wait once again.

You can't try being more patient if you're prone to impatience though. It makes no logical sense to wait when waiting is what's bugging you. Set your clock ahead, keep a good book with you, check traffic well in advance. Each trick will help but in the end it is just a trick that doesn't tackle the root problem.

What happens when you become impatient? Why are you so annoyed? What is it you are rushing towards? Do you feel like your circumstances got the better of you? Will the person waiting for you not understand? What is really making you angry?

Next time you feel impatient, ask yourself why. The answers are personal to how you deal with things out of your control. No one can understand what triggers you react to but yourself.

Spend time to make time

2013-10-17T11:30:00.000-04:00

When you spend time meditating, you get back even more quality time. It's similar to the adage that you have to spend money to make money. When you're busy, booked and overwhelmed, making time to meditate is the last thing on your mind. But what if it adds more focused time in your day?

Meditation may seem like a strange investment at first. Sitting on the floor, in a chair, on a couch closing your eyes and focusing on your breath can sound like a waste of time when you think about it. Don't think about it. Do it. Only then it will become clear why it gives back more time than it takes.

Just start one day. Any time. Anywhere. Focus on your breath. Focus on a word. Focus on an image. Choose one thing and only one thing and concentrate on it. Let everything else go. Watch your thoughts float on by. Stay with what you chose.

What's the point? The focus itself. Distractions are always tempting. Social media, email, instant messenger, podcasts, unread articles, are all waiting all the time. When distraction becomes a habit, loss of focus is the first to give. They're opposites on a balance beam with you in the middle.

Finding time to focus means regaining focused time. There is no way to know until you try meditation. There is plenty of evidence to support that meditation improves focus, but you would only be reading again, not practicing the thing that can help you. Find out by doing it yourself.

How to be present when you don't like the present

2013-10-16T10:37:00.000-04:00

Why would you want to be in the moment if it's not to your liking? What's the benefit of being fully engaged?

It's telling though, isn't it, when you don't like your present moment? You question why you're in it to begin with. You wonder how you can get out of it. How you can change it.

What can you do to want to be more in the moment? By simply informing you of your present, whether good or bad, mindfulness is letting you know something is up.

With this self-awareness, you're given a choice. You can change your circumstances or accept them. Either way, you're more present, more there, in the moment than you were before.

Ray Bradbury once said, "Love what you do and do what you love." It's kind of a Zen koan when you think about it.

Good writing

2013-10-06T13:14:00.002-04:00

Patriotism's failings belie the unity felt during war, echoed in raw tones within this LIFE magazine article published on September 20th, 1943.

"Here lie three Americans. What shall we say of them? Shall we say that this is a fine thing, that they should give their lives for their country? Why print this picture anyway of three American boys, dead on an alien shore? The reason is that words are never enough. The eye sees. The mind knows. The heart feels. But the words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens.

And so here it is. This is the reality that lies behind the names that come to rest at last on monuments in the leafy squares of busy American towns. The camera doesn’t show America and yet here on the beach is America, three parts of a hundred and thirty million parts, three fragments of that life we call American life: three units of freedom. So that it is not just these boys who have fallen here, it is freedom that has fallen. It is our task to cause it to rise again."

The above quote is narrated here, creating the expected somber aura though with an inescapable hopefulness.

Why you need to see Fruitvale Station

2013-08-15T14:00:00.000-04:00

I can't get Fruitvale Station out of my head and I'm writing about it two weeks after seeing it to see if I can explain why. I went to see it at Angelika in Soho and almost bought a ticket for "Before Midnight" instead.

I had little foreknowledge of the Oscar Grant case and it didn't make a difference either way. The first scene of the film removed any foreshadowing whatsoever and it was more about the character's story than anything else.

Hard to talk about a brilliantly directed and acted film because really you just have to see it.

I'm still bewildered by the senselessness of what happened, shocked at the injustice of the aftermath, enraged by the helplessness I feel about avoiding it in the future.

This obviously isn't a light recommendation and I don't know what you will feel when you watch it. I simply recommend that you do. It's rare these days for a movie to move you so strongly.

How to be happy and rich

2013-08-14T13:30:00.000-04:00

There's plenty of research showing that money doesn't make you happier. If it did, then linearly, the rich would be happier than the poor. But turns out that's not true.

Assume someone takes this to heart and prioritizes something other than money. Family, food, music, dance, travel, time, healing, volunteering, etc. A competitive person who prioritizes money may now be better off because they have one less person to beat. More money for them.

But if enough people agreed not to prioritize money, who would the money-hungry person be richer than? The next money-hungry person right? It's completely relative isn't it? Those that don't care about money won't be at a loss. The value of money is only figurative so if it isn't the benchmark of success, it loses value.

Without everyone competing for resources on the basis of money, there will be less resources you can buy with money. There will be less of a high-price market for the rich. Less relative difference in production costs because "the poor" would become a smaller market (or larger depending on how you look at it).

What would we compete for then? Very little. The things we prioritize would determine the circles we participate in.

You can see this in reality when you hang out with a group of people that distinctly prioritizes something other than money, like food. They may work at a farm, or start a garden, or become part of a community-supported agriculture group, or go wwoof for a while. They may cook more or save money to go to nice places that use mainly organic, locally-grown produce. They may not spend their money on clothes or a car or an apartment as much as others who prioritize those items.

Money would go back to being merely a form of exchange for those basic things we all need, food, water, shelter. Competing with someone else to have a bigger house, or nicer car, or prettier furniture wouldn't make much sense unless it was just friendly competition. It wouldn't be about what lots of money can buy, it would be about what you want to buy.

It goes back to happiness, doesn't it? If money doesn't make us happier the richer we get, then why go after it? Why not just go after the things that make you happy?

What is the purpose of education?

2013-08-12T08:30:00.000-04:00

"The function of education is not to make you fit into the social pattern; on the contrary, it is to help you to understand completely, deeply, fully, and thereby break away from the social pattern, so that you are an individual without that arrogance of self; but you have confidence because you are really innocent."

That's Krishnamurti talking about self-confidence as "the capacity to succeed within the social structure," versus confidence without a sense of self-importance, which is "the confidence of a child who is so completely innocent he will try anything."

I went back to look up this quote after listening to Sir Ken Robinson's witty and comedic intro on The Commonwealth Fund. I highly recommend it.

He talks about America as a society acknowledging that a standardized educational system creates standardized automatons. It's doing what it's built to do, so why should we be surprised by the outcome?

We rarely expose kids to the options they have. Budget cuts eliminate art and music programs, technology class and creative writing, foreign language and sports. The focus remains on the hard sciences and english, missing out on opportunities to introduce children to a variety of professions.

Not being able to try other career options without taking enormous risks continues through adulthood. Whether because of debt constraints, family responsibility, or simply a risk-averse personality, too many people live "actively disengaged" lives because they don't get exposed to what they may like and excel at.

There are two approaches towards change: 1) re-engineer the current educational system to be less standardized and more diverse in its teaching curriculum, and 2) create risk-free opportunities through internships, externships, sabbaticals, temporary leaves, 20% time, and paid volunteer hours for people to explore other options.

The first approach is a political issue and is slowly being disrupted by the entrepreneurial community through maker movements, online education, and new learning profile models of teaching.

The second approach is considered unrealistic since employers are highly unlikely to release their clutch on workers they've trained (but not necessarily cultivated). I consider training a sunk cost when the employee has no personal interest or curiosity in their work. What kind of production value comes from someone who inherently doesn't care about what they are doing and are simply waiting for the weekend to come around?

The payoff in allowing your employees to explore their options is other individuals will explore your company as an option. Highly motivated, engaged and curious individuals willing to treat work at your company as rewarding in and of itself will apply and get involved. 9-5'ers won't come in at 9:01 and leave at 4:59. They'll be thinking about "work" outside of a set time schedule because to them it's a part of who they are.

If the positive side isn't a good sell, consider saving all the money spent on workforce development programs and morale-boosting in-services and wellness programs geared towards mental health. Treating symptoms is costlier than striking at the root.

I'm curious whether there are companies thinking innovatively about HR, from recruitment to retention. What startups are working to build the new HR? Which entrepreneur is building a conduit for people to explore other options?

The next step on the ladder

2013-08-09T09:08:00.001-04:00

Just because being the boss is the next step on the ladder doesn't mean you should want it or have it. Look among your colleagues and make a judgment call on who'd be a good leader. Who among you can facilitate a project efficiently, is humble but direct, is reliable yet lenient, brings up morale simply by being there, and is respected for handling tough situations well?

Regardless of the salary bump, of the title, or our current equal footing, I'd personally want a person with these character traits leading the charge because they will make me better as well.

Too often, we get caught up in beating out the next person because that's what we're supposed to do. It may not even be up to us, because we've institutionalized the construct that the best worker will make the best leader.

High merit in one skill set doesn't equate to high merit in another. We inherently know this, but choose to forget it just in case we're the one that might be selected, whether or not we want to even be the boss. Better judgment calls require less ego.

An integrated life

2013-07-24T08:57:00.001-04:00

"Real life is doing something which you love to do with your whole being so that there is no inner contradiction, no war between what you are doing and what you think you should do. Life is then a completely integrated process in which there is tremendous joy."

I think of Krishnamurti as the Yogi Berra of eastern philosophy. There is such a raw simplicity to his words. His statements feel obvious. And familiar. Like the voice in the back of your head that tells you to slow down on the highway or give up your seat to the old woman. His writing turns that empathic sentiment on yourself.

Looking out for your self doesn't mean having your way. Rather, it's the internal struggle for integrity. Trying to deeply understand who you are in relation to those around you. Observing, understanding, paying attention to what feels right, who you respond to, what turns you off and how you decisions affect the world.

The mirrors you avoid are the mirrors that matter.

"You cannot have integration without relationship - your relationship with society, your relationship with the poor man, the villager, the beggar, with the millionaire and the governor. To understand relationship you must struggle with it, you must question and not merely accept the values established by tradition, by your parents, by the priest, by the religion and the economic system of the society about you. That is why it is essential for you to be in revolt, otherwise you will never have integration."

The quotes are from Think On These Things.