Deepak Chopra and the Meaning of Life

Your consciousness constructs the expansion of facts

I’m a dreamer and a skeptic. As a teenager, I remember being fascinated by the Amway promotional materials given to my parents, dreaming (like so many MLM victims) of the good life, then sitting at my desk and doing the math. When I walked to the living room and shared my findings during the pitch to my parents, the Amway visitors were not pleased at all.

My skepticism continues around gurus, the fortunate few who have built lucrative businesses around their products and ideas. Deepak Chopra is a big one, and my impression was always that his teachings were hollow.

Imagine my thrill when I stumbled on Wisdom of Chopra, a website that generates Chopra-esque quotes. They sound like science, sounds like sage wisdom, but do the words actually mean anything?

The Role of Skepticism

Inspirational words are intended to help us dream, but wistful dreaming can lead to trouble.

Skeptics have a bad reputation. They are the Debbie Downers in our lives. The stubborn naysayers. That’s not all skepticism is.

Skepticism helps us sift the good from the bad. It helps us test hypotheses, to really unearth what works. And in the case of gurus, it helps us avoid expensive folly.

Let’s sift through some of the gems and folly from the quote generator:

Innocence is the womb of dimensionless success
It certainly is a womb of success for those who prey on innocence. And yet, while we have our guard up for the charlatans of the world, it becomes ever more important to retain innocence and wonder and creativity and love.

Your heart experiences positive experiences
I certainly hope so. Both my anatomical heart and my metaphorical heart thirst for the positive.

Making tea expresses visible creativity
Tea anyone? I can imagine a guru rolling out a bespoke line of teas using quotes like this. If you’re not drinking enough of it, you won’t ever reach your creative potential.

Information is the path to the progressive expansion of truth
Um, as long as that information is not corrupted. There are too many sheep following dangerous leaders. Folks whose brains have been infected with false facts often peddled by the right wing. We need more skepticism around sources of information.

The secret of the universe exists as exponential positivity
All I imagine when I read this is alarm bells ringing louder and louder as a nuclear power plant melts down. Or someone stubbornly insisting on “looking on the bright side” in the midst of his life falling into tragedy. It’s not just positivity, it’s exponential!

I’m more into insightful positivity than exponential, thank you very much. I’ll take empathetic mourning in the service of healing over the nuclear meltdown positivity, please.

Unleash the Dreamer

What do fake Chopra quotes have to do with peak performance and taking on ambitious goals?

Everything.

For all but the most privileged, life is about overcoming setbacks. Our mental game is what keeps us moving forward. We become powerful by being able to transform the weird into something useful or even inspirational.

We’ve all seen the inspirational photos and quotes that champion athletes put on their walls leading up to big competitions. In the end, though, the inspiration is not in the words but with us. We give the words power, and the power changes with each reader of the words.

One of the reasons we partner with coaches is that they help us find the words and keep us connected to what inspires us. They remind us that we are greater than we believe. They hold us accountable to our words. They strengthen our skill at getting through discomfort in order to generate velocity toward what matters.

Therefore…Your desire is reborn in visible potentiality

Skeptics have a bad reputation because we perceive them as being only skeptical. We imagine them having no capacity to dream. As we navigate a tough and often brutal world, it’s important to stay connected to inspiration.

Words mean things. And we can create meaning out of anything we encounter, including words. So while these fake quotes might be funny or scary or even insipid on their surface, they also offer an opportunity to interpret them for our own purposes. My cynical takes on the fake quotes could have been inspirational instead.

Maybe “making tea unfolds through nonlocal actions” has nothing to do with tea for you. Maybe it shakes you out of dwelling on neighborhood gossip and reconnects you to a larger purpose.

Maybe “greatness illuminates the flow of happiness” is not about traditional ideas of happiness or greatness but simply finding a way to happily go grocery shopping and get the laundry done

What if “nature is inside the light of fulfillment” has no other meaning than reminding you that there’s a park nearby and it might be nice to take a silent walk on a cold winter night, or feel leaves ruffling past your feet as you walk, or hear birds chirping as spring unfolds?

We get to use words as we please. We get to be fueled by a word or phrase even if no one else understands it.

We get to remake each moment, transform the tough ones to our purposes. We’re not always as skilled as we’d like, and sometimes it feels like an impossible goal. But, the possibility is there, even if it is to chuckle at some fake Chopra quotes during a rough day at the office.

Don’t take it from me. Be discerning and intelligent. Be blindly loyal to no one. With healthy skepticism AND an openness to imagination and dreaming. And, just as I share a bit of myself here in the hopes that you will be skeptically inspired, please share a bit of yourself with those around you.

Trust Is Your Job

Trust

I’ve been thinking about trust recently after hearing two heartbreaking leadership stories:

If I Trust You, You’ll Cheat Me

In the first, the head of an organization’s branch sent out a message through his managers: no remote work during the holidays, even though the facility itself was essentially closed. As this message was shared, you could feel the deflation in morale across the entire branch.

Staff correctly interpreted this rule as a vote of no confidence. You’re all cheaters and I don’t trust you to get anything done. You’re just going to take vacation days and not document them. I don’t trust you unless I can see you are working. Making the situation worse, the message was phrased in a way that implied it was a worldwide rule. When word got out that other facilities were shutting down for the holidays or giving days off, it destroyed staff morale and exposed this manager’s lack of trust.

If I Trust You, I’ll Fail

In the second, a leader under pressure from her bosses turned her frustration on her team. The team had delivered a successful program a month before, except in the leader’s mind the success was due to her taking over the program halfway through planning. In her narrative, the team had let her down, and she had saved the day. She hadn’t trusted her team to deliver, so she did “all” the work herself.

She shared her perspective in surprise conversations with each team member. One described it as an ambush. Another reminded the boss that she had never even celebrated the completion of the program by thanking the team for its hard work. The boss’ response: there was nothing to thank the team for.

By getting stuck thinking of herself as the savior, she shrunk as a leader. She lost sight of the needs of her team, their talents, and their substantial work that she had simply repackaged into the final program. In situations like this, a cratering of morale isn’t the only result. They can be triggers for the disintegration of the team itself.

When trust disappears, it can cost organizations their very lives.

Being A Leader When Trust Falters

There are schools of thought that it is the employee’s job to earn trust from the manager. It’s just the opposite. It’s the manager’s job to cultivate trust.

Noticing you’re not trusting your team? As a leader, it’s your job to fix it.

Leadership means taking responsibility for the situation. And here’s a key point many leaders forget: responsibility doesn’t mean doing everyone’s work for them. If you’re doing that, you’ve surrendered responsibility. By doing it all, you’ve relieved your team of expectations and weighed yourself down with work that isn’t yours.

The boss in our second story shared that she felt like if she didn’t do all the work, she could never ensure that there would be a positive result. I empathize with the pressure she felt, and I thirst for her to see the greater possibilities of letting go of control: the wonders of using the full talents of the team, and the incredible upside of chaotically unexpected insights.

Your work is building teams and team behavior that create results. And trust.

This is the point where some team leaders are thinking “I can’t imagine ever trusting my team.” What if you did anyway? What if there is no way to actually be a compelling leader than to trust your team when you’re not sure you can?

Like our leader above. What if she set aside her perspective of “I can’t trust” and trusted her team to kick ass on the next project? What if she practiced expert management to maximize their talents? It might feel terrifying at first. There aren’t even any guarantees that the project would work out. What I know is that the team would be stronger at the end and more ready with each succeeding challenge.

Trust is always there to give, even if you don’t feel it.

That sounds hard. Yup. Sounds that way, and with practice it can feel easier. Amateur leadership is easy and ineffective. World class leadership cares enough that stepping up to “impossible” challenges is the only option.

So how do we fix things when we’ve lost trust?

Fixing Distrust

The solution comes down to courage and communication. It’s courageous leadership to hold back and not blame your team members for the situation. It’s courageous leadership to look deeply at the situation, be honest about your role and imagine what positive contribution you can make. And it’s courageous leadership to make that contribution.

More often than not, it’s going to be about communication designed to elevate the skills and leadership capacity of each member of the team. Diplomatic communication. Nonviolent communication. Some of your team members may not yet have the communication skills needed to thrive with you, and your challenge is to communicate anyway and support their growth. Becoming a better leader means summoning more courage and expanding your own willingness to communicate effectively, in service of trust.

And yes, sometimes it’s not going to work out. Sometimes people are not ready to contribute at the level needed by the team. Sometimes people are not ready to be trustworthy. And your team needs you to replace them, but only after you have shown tremendous leadership in owning the situation.

Trust Is Everyone’s Job

Trust

One more thing. This is for all of us on teams who are relieved by this article, that it’s the boss’ responsibility to fix things. Let’s go back to this statement from earlier: there are schools of thought that it is the employee’s job to earn trust from the manager. It’s just the opposite. It’s the manager’s job to cultivate trust.

I take that back. Leadership is the responsibility of every team member. So if you’re noticing something is off, look courageously at the issue and communicate to create the working experience you envision for the team.

The Ecstasy Of Incomplete Information: Why Knowing Everything Instantly Is Not The Best Thing Ever

Online access to reference materials is amazing. Want info on a movie’s cast? imdb.com. Need to know how much money that movie made yesterday? boxofficemojo.com. Then there’s Wikipedia. Despite attempts to game the system and despite sometimes overzealous volunteer editors, Wikipedia is an extraordinary source for summary information on nearly any topic, usually with robust citations for those who want to learn more.

As we revel in this luxury of ready access to answers, it’s worth considering the tradeoffs. Knowing provides closure, but the mystery of not knowing inspires curiosity, wonder and a shared quest for answers. Are we losing the richness of the mystery? Are we corrupting our freedom to even ask those around us what they know?
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The Melody of Coaching

7183 migration song

My coach, Ann Betz, and I were talking yesterday about vocal range in coaching. As an introvert, one of the things I’ve noticed about coaching training is that when range is mentioned, the training is toward going big. Being louder. Being more animated. Being crazier. What’s missing is equal emphasis on the companion lesson of being more quiet, more still, more grounded. Challenging territory for an introvert – and ripe with growth opportunities. Not as challenging territory for extroverts, and the omission of stillness deprives them of a chance to expand…or is that condense?
Continue reading “The Melody of Coaching”