Give Up Busy-ness

Most time management systems emphasize creating, categorizing, and prioritizing lists and getting them done. One of the disadvantages of these systems is that the time spent getting something done is passed as drudgery and you get the high of the accomplishment. The high is fleeting, but you’ve passed minutes or hours. You are left with a sense of emptiness even though you’ve accomplished everything on your list.

Lists generate a lot of activity that is largely unfulfilling. Like a hummingbird, you flit from task to task and at the end of the day you have a tiny bit of nectar to show for your hard work. This can be very frustrating.

Let go of busy-ness. Spend your time engaging in meaningful activities that nourish you life. When I told my colleague this, he responded that he still had to do the laundry. This, of course, is true. We still have to do the dishes and the laundry and the bathrooms, so read on.

Do First Things First

Last year, in addition to my 40-hour week job, I served as Board President, completed speeches toward my Toastmaster’s Competent Communicator award, and published over 100 articles on this site. All while going through a divorce.

None of those activities were on my daily hit list though. Sure, doing my full time job was necessary to bring in income to fund the rest of my activities, but it was not a must-do. My top priority was living an inspired life. I realized that, meditation, walking, and writing, were the 3 things that enriched my life and fueled me to complete all the other tasks. That’s where I put my focus. They were at the top of the heap. Once they got done, I felt my day was complete even thought I still had 8 hours at my day job.

Completing the most important tasks first, sends a message to your being that you are successful. It reinforces that you can accomplish what you set your mind too. It gives you the confidence needed to reach your goals.

Identify what is important to you and do the activities that support this idea first.

Build Mental Space

Mental space gives you the capacity to hold the complete picture in your mind, yet execute effectively in the moment. At any point you are fully engaged in the task at hand, and in your mind there is a clear mental picture of all that is necessary for you to succeed. It gives you the ability to move with ease and grace throughout your activities without being overwhelmed.

What brings this ease?

A healthy spiritual practice, preferably silent meditation. Your spiritual practice will center you. You will gain clarity so that you function as a laser without having blind spots.

Interconnect Your Life

In the West, we tend to live in stylos. We work for 8-5 Monday to Friday. We spend time with our children for x number of hours a week. We engage in hobbies with friends or alone. However, we don’t see those friends in any other aspect of our lives. We might attend worship services, but not engage in the community outside of that hour on Sunday.

When you weave your life together, the party that you have to go to on Saturday for Christopher’s friend becomes social time for you as well. Rather than sit on the sidelines watching the kids play, spend some time engaging in conversation with the hosts. Get together with the moms alone so that you can enjoy the friendship these women offer.

An integral life that is woven like a tapestry is stronger and more fulfilling. You leverage your time because you are completing multiple tasks. In addition, the whole activity is more enriching than the sum of the individual tasks.

In Spirit,
Nneka

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© Balanced Life Center, 2008. | Permalink | 10 comments

Manage Up, Mentor Down

As Board President, I, along with the rest of the Board, was the boss of the CEO of the organization. We were accountable to the members of the organization and had sole purview to hire and fire the CEO. In this position, one can be tempted to rule with an iron fist. However, that method doesn’t benefit anyone.

I found it beneficial to adopt the mantra, “manage up, mentor down.” When you are someone’s manager, team leader or boss, your job is to enable that person to be successful. When your employees are successful, they make you shine. As a manager, it is your responsibility to provide the tools, resources, and direction needed by your employees.

It is also your responsibility to manage your customer expectations. You customer may be actual customers, shareholders, members of an organization, or your boss. After conferring with your employees to determine what they need to be successful, it is your job to relay this information to your customers.

Let’s say you are a project manager for an IT project. You’ve met with your clients and received a project charter. Rather than lord over your team members to ensure that every “i” is dotted and every “t” crossed, you can let them know that precision is extremely important to this client and ask them what they need to achieve the highest level of precision. At the same time, you can set the expectation with the client that the level of precision expected will require more time, money, or staff. You might also work with the client to relax their standards to a level with which both parties are comfortable.

Most managers work the other way around. They cow tow to clients and promise the moon. Then they turn around like a drill sergeant with their team. In my experience, I’ve found that you burn relationships, deliver unsuccessful projects, and generate unwarranted stress when you do this.

Take the time to cultivate relationships with your employees and your stakeholders. Be a bridge between both parties, rather than a referee.

Share Ownership

When you’re the leader of a 400 member organization, everyone seems to look to you to fix everything. It was tempting to be the savior, but much more enriching to engage the members of the organization.

When employees, customers, and other stakeholders engage in solutions, ownership shifts from the few to all. When everyone owns the organization, everyone feels responsible. Ownership is not just about paying for a service. Oftentimes, members and shareholders say that they own an organization because they monetarily donated, or paid for a share. Ownership is about doing the work to make the organization succeed. In order to foster ownership of your organization, encourage and empower your stakeholders to:

• Participate in events sponsored by the organization;
• Engage in the planning process of the organization;
• Take the initiative to solve their problems;
• Provide a solid financial base.

Everyone wants an opportunity to share their expertise. A good leader encourages and empowers everyone to use all of their skills.

Pay Attention To What Is Shown AND What Is Said

After moving to a new location, some of our long-standing members started to complain about accessibility to the building. On the surface, this was a valid problem. You needed a key, then a pass code to get into the building. Before, anyone could breeze in and out. There was a sense of familiarity and ownership.

Naturally, we sought to remedy the problem by giving access to those members and providing a doorbell so that it would be easy for members to come in and out of the building. And naturally, this did not really solve the problem.

You see, the members were complaining about the loss of that sense of familiarity and ownership which showed up as not getting into the building. Once access was provided, the complaints moved to another manifestation of that loss.

Only 7% of verbal communication comes from our words. The rest of it comes from voice inflection and body language. When listening to your staff and stakeholders, it is important to listen behind the words so that you can understand what they truly intend to communicate. You don’t need to guess what they are trying to say. You can ask questions, as you notice their body language and vocal tone, to clarify what they are saying. At the end of the conversation, it’s helpful to provide a summary statement and wait for the reaction. If someone says, yes, you got it right, but they look resigned, continue to ask until there is a sense of simpatico.

Live in Limbo

As a leader, it’s not your responsibility to fix everything. In fact, the less you are personally responsible for fixing, the better off your organization. It would mean that your organization is rich with resources and its own leadership pool.

Limbo is a tough spot to live in. If you are a natural leader, you want to get the job done and conquer. It may be difficult to witness your organization struggle. As a leader you will need to correctly identify problems, correctly assess the skills and passions of your people, and effectively match the problem with the people. They will have fun and relish the opportunity to fix the problems for you and to the benefit of the entire organization.

While you are waiting to match the problem with the people, you will need to sit with the situation without fixing it.

Be An Example

Whatever you expect from your team, you must be willing to exemplify. You want a team that’s punctual, you have to show up before everyone. You say a lot by your actions. Your actions build the construct for your team. You can list the rules of engagement on a poster on a wall. You can put them in policy manuals and have reams of orientation material. In the end, your team will mirror their behavior after yours.

Teach, Don’t Talk

You know the saying, “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” It’s the same with leadership.

When you tell your team what to do without giving them reason or context, they can follow the instructions and complete the task. However, when they need to do the same thing again, you will need to tell them again. On the other hand, if your provide for them the context for the directions, the next time the situation arises they can execute without your presence.

Another reason to teach your team and provide context, is that they may come up with solutions that you could not have conceived on your own. It may take a little more work on your part and a more time initially, but it will pay high dividends for you and expedite execution in the future. Best of all, you’ve empowered your team to execute without your direct influence.

Praise Publicly, Punish Privately

When you chastise your staff publicly, you are alienating yourself from them and making your job as a leader infinitely difficult. It’s bad enough if you chastise the group as a whole. If you single one person out, you are embarrassing that person and you cause irreparable harm to that relationship and your team.

Take team meetings, and other public events as opportunities to praise you team for their performance and highlight individuals who excelled. Take personal evaluations or one and one meetings to discuss weaknesses or short comings.

You shine as a leader when you empower and enable every individual on your team to shine.

In Spirit,
Nneka

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© Balanced Life Center, 2008. | Permalink | 10 comments

The whole concept of relating to the deceased and spirit guides is foreign to me. I’ve been a by-the-book God person from my inception. Not a God in the sky idea, but a notion of God as the Essence of Life. I even bypassed Jesus. My thinking was that if God is everywhere present and accessible, why do I have to go through all these people (saints, Mary, Jesus, Buddha), or entities (spirit guides, deceased, angels) to access It. I discounted the whole ball of wax. So this morning when I was greeted by the impressions of my grandparents I was a bit, how can I say, caught off guard.

They came to assure me that I am loved and to explain some things about my family dynamics. They were very effective. However, the visit prompted a core question: What happens when we die?

I think when we die we recede into Source, otherwise known as God/Consciousness/Spirit. When we are born, we re-emerge. It appears that we forget our experience as Source. I think we remember until we are convinced that it’s not so. Here are a few other ideas that I kicked around when the question of why we forget came up.

Why Do We Forget?

I think forget where we came from for the same reason we are admonished to live in the moment. In the moment we have access to all the Knowledge, Substance, Love, Joy, and Good things. It is All available right now.

Our memory serves more to cloud our perception of what we can and cannot be, do or have. Just memories from childhood limit what we think we can do. Our so-called knowledge about science keeps us from defying it or even thinking that it is defiable (until someone does it). Imagine if we had lifetimes of such information.

Better to be completely present and choose from the Infinite Realm of Possibilities that is readily available.

Would our Memories of Past Lives Hinder our Experience of This One?

I don’t think it’s the memories per se that would limit our conscious development. Rather, it’s our clinging to something that is not in the present. It was an experience. It happened. It’s not happening now, and our point of power is now.

Let’s take an example of a good thing in the present. Say you have a great 11 year old birthday. Your family was happy. Your parents were there. You had a lot of friends. Soon after, your parents got divorced, you had to move, and you lost your circle of friends. You became very isolated in the new city. Yet you cling to that experience. In one sense, it helps you to feel better. In another sense, it is preventing you from choosing in this moment to create new friendships.

Now imagine if you were a king in one lifetime or a pleb in another. A lot of us have the tendency to cling to memories as if they were happening now. That’s what inhibits us from living the life that we want, or in other words, from consciously creating the life that we want.

Doesn’t It Make More Sense To Remember?

At any given moment, we have access to All Knowledge and experience. We have access to our other incarnations as well as the incarnations and current lives of everyone else. In each moment, we have that access. So it wasn’t really “nuked”. We just aren’t aware of it.

What Happens When We Die?

Consider that God/Consciousness/Spirit is the ocean and you are a wave emerging from the ocean. So is grandmother, Lena. When she dies, she recedes into the ocean. Can you pin point a wave in the ocean when it has receded?

This is what I’ve experienced. As I became disciplined and consistent in my meditation, I felt like my edges were sandpapered. It scared the bejesus out of me because my edges were disintegrating. This prepared me for the next phase in which I felt like I had no ends. I just faded into the “ocean”. Today, I can overlap with other people’s consciousness.

We become attached to our individuality to the extent that we believe that it is the singular entity incarnating again and again. But it’s not you with edges in a container that comes in and out unless you choose too. I wouldn’t be surprised if people have experienced past life regressions where they were 2 people living at the same time.

My theory is - and a little bit of experience - that we emerge out of the ocean as a composite. Once we recede into it, we are no more. Sometimes people have a tough time returning because they want to stick together. I felt this as my edges were being sandpapered. I had great resistance to disintegrating.

We can disintegrate and reintegrate at any moment.

In Spirit,
Nneka

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I usually get the following questions:

• What do you do with all that time?
• How do you know what’s going on?
• Don’t you get bored?

Here are some answers:

1. Save $2000 a year from cable and electricity.
2. Engage in your life instead of watching people pretend to live theirs.
3. The average American spends 28 hours week watching television. Reclaim your time.
4. Make love passionately for hours.
5. Visit another city, state, or country on your savings.
6. Go to the spa every month.
7. Go salsa dancing.
8. Take bellydancing, yoga, pottery, name-of-the-class-you’ve-always-wanted-to-take-but-didn’t-have-the-money-to classes.
9. Learn to invest.
10. Pay off your debt.
11. Read a book a week.
12. Enroll in courses for a degree.
13. Get a part time job.
14. Cook.
15. Start a business.
16. Become a Toastmasters’ Competent Communicator.
17. Canvass for your favorite presidential candidate.
18. Develop your spiritual practice.
19. Take bellydancing, yoga, pottery, name-of-the-class-you’ve-always-wanted-to-take-but-didn’t-have-the-time-to classes.
20. Exercise.
21. Acquire leadership skills by serving as an officer in your favorite organization.
22. Screen your news.
23. Get information from consciously chosen sources.
24. Create your own standards for living.
25. Visit museums.
26. Create your own beauty standards.
27. Experience joy.
28. Meet your neighbors.
29. Talk to your neighbors.
30. Make friends.
31. Reconnect with friends.
32. Explore the city you live in.
33. Attend concerts, dance recitals, and plays.
34. Visit local art shows.
35. Discover music.
36. Plant a garden.
37. Get a pet.
38. Go for aimless walks.
39. Watch birds, lizards, and other creatures.
40. Babysit for a friend.
41. Search for the Truth.
42. Date yourself.
43. Go to bed and wake up early.

Guess which 5 I haven’t done

In Spirit,
Nneka

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© Balanced Life Center, 2008. | Permalink | 48 comments

Consciousness/God/Spirit does not have a beginning or end, but it chose to come into expression as you. Your body to Consciousness is like you putting on your clothes in the morning and going out into the world, if your clothes were integrated with your body - like the suits in the movie Fantastic Four.

Some people do “remember”, some of us don’t. Different people remember to different degrees. Some people have a vivid memory of being pure Consciousness, some don’t. We are always pure Consciousness in expression, it is who we are. The degree to which we are aware of this determines whether we “remember”.

The word remember connotes a past, but there is no past. You are here now. Always in existence. I haven’t figured out how to explain this yet, but it makes sense in my being.

Consciousness and Intentions

Consciousness from this perspective does not intend. If we were referring to it as you, conscious and subconscious mind, that would be true. However, it is not your Consciousness that intends say peace, it is you (or lowercase c-consciousness). Consciousness/God/Spirit is peace. What you are intending is to align yourself (your beliefs, your mind) with what already is. How much peace you manifest or experience is determined by how much you allow pure consciousness to express through you. Add to that, you have a unique blend of experiences, skills, and talents that allow you to express and experience peace uniquely (the how). You are the filter, so to speak.

The same with love. Consciousness/God/Spirit is love. People are loving because they express Consciousness. Some people let it flow freely, some people block it. Some people are aware of letting it flow or blocking it and some people aren’t.

Consciousness and Growth

God/Spirit/Consciousness is all knowledge. Hence the saying, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

You are here to express and experience Spirit. Growth the way we see it might be the progression of expressing more and more of it like Hawkins’ Power vs. Force scale.

I’m not sure that we have to progress in awareness, expression, and experience at all. It seems to me that babies express more of Spirit than adults. Some of us might realize that’s what we want to do and how we want to do it, then start trusting, becoming aware, expressing, and experiencing gradually. But I don’t think there’s any rule that says that that’s the way it has to be.

Your level of awareness, expression, and experience is determined by how much you trust or are open to It. Try as you might to be completely open, there are still parts of you that insist that it just can’t be that way.

As a practical example, take money. I believe intellectually that Consciousness is infinite supply. However, I also harbor another belief, and I believe this viscerally because to me it is reinforced by my experiences. I believe viscerally that I have to put in a certain amount of work to get money.

I could have an epiphany and suddenly believe in my core that I don’t have to do any amount of work for money (I’ve done that a couple times in my life and it appeared from the ethers), or I could “grow” into the idea that there is indeed infinite supply.

It’s not Consciousness that will be growing, it will be my capacity to express and experience it.

Nothing is outside of consciousness.

In Spirit,
Nneka

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