Ideals in Motion

Bucket Lists and New Year Resolutions

“It is only by a change of consciousness, by actually changing your concept of yourself that you can ‘build more stately mansions’…It is of vital importance to understand clearly just what consciousness is. The reason lies in the fact that consciousness is the one and only reality, it is the first and only cause-substance of the phenomena of life. Nothing has existence for man save through the consciousness he has of it.” ~ Neville Goddard, The Power of Awareness

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I wrote my first bucket list when I was 18 years old and just graduating from high school. I had 20 things on that list ranging from travel the world to flying an airplane. I grew up on a farm in rural Oregon and was the only one of my siblings to go to university. We certainly weren’t wealthy and I didn’t personally know (or even know of) people that had done most of the things on my list. At that time my sense of my “identity” (my consciousness of self) in no way included having, doing or being any of these things. They just seemed to me to be worth experiencing.

I kept revisiting that list and, interestingly, I found that within 10 years every item on that first bucket list had come to pass. Looking back on that time, I didn’t exert any undo effort to make these things real. As a matter of fact, you might say I simply “followed my nose”. Opportunities seemed to appear out of nowhere and one unplanned “yes” or carefully considered “no” (more on this in a later article) positioned me in ways I couldn’t have deliberately planned. The key to this was keeping my consciousness in the game and, over time, my sense of identity – my concept of myself – had transformed. I also realized I needed to start dreaming/imagining “bigger”!

Goddard continues in The Power of Awareness to say that “I can only give what I AM, I have no other gift to give. If I want the world to be perfect, and who does not, I have failed only because I did not know that I could never see it perfect until I myself become perfect. …all outward appearances are but states of mind externalized.”

Now, here's the unvarnished truth about why most people give up on their New Year resolutions within about two weeks and why most bucket list are unfulfilled. Most don't understand the purpose of meaningful goals. Goals are not meant to "get" anything, they are meant to position me (and my organization) to grow. Ideally, we'll also get what we desire in the process, but that is simply frosting on the cake. Growth is the objective and growth of any sort tends to be uncomfortable. This is why awareness becomes such an important part of the developmental mix. We all run on habituated "automatic" to a significant degree. Indeed, studies show that upward of 95% of a person's behavior is the consequence of subconscious programming. It keeps us comfortable because it's familiar andit keeps us imprisoned in a self created identity rooted in what was. Any increase in awareness will illuminate new choices, possibilities for new actions, and obstacles that were perviously hidden. Awareness is the catalyst for growth because "...all outward appearances are but states of mind externalized." What comprises my "state of mind?"

Breaking the habit of being yourself is difficult work and it's work that is worth engaging.

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To master anything, we must first master ourselves—our emotions, our thoughts, our actions. In times of uncertainty and disorder, self-discipline and self-mastery are not just essential but are your competitive advantage.

Click HERE to find out how my Sustainable Success Toolkit can help you be a more "trusted" and "masterful" leader.

Beautiful Misfortune...

“I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.” ~ Seneca, On Providence

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With this quote from Seneca, whom I consider to be one of the most influential of the ancient Stoic philosophers, I invite you to take a moment and reflect on the present and the near term future.

Conflict and trust go hand in hand. We have no control over what life dishes up for us. Storms happen, markets shift, people die, and new people come into our lives…relationships change in unexpected ways. The measure of who we are as a leader is often forged in the red hot crucible that is life...it's one of tempering our tendency to react to the unexpected and unwanted with a dash of hubris and humility. It’s the unexpected that throws of off balance that is the invitation to discover what within us we can trust. Without the conflict presented by the unexpected (what we call misfortune) we can’t truly know what we are capable of.

A review of my life to date reveals events that, at the time, felt calamitous. Looked at today, the death of my wife, the loss of a major client, the market collapsing, a divorce, Covid, the untimely death of my brother, being fired from a job I loved were all crucibles that provided me with the opportunity to excel. In the face of each of these events I grew. I discovered more of me that I could count on. More of me that I didn't know was available.

At the end of the day, conflict and trust do go hand in hand. Having developed the awareness of who you are, what your strengths are and what your center is made of, you are equipped to trust that you will know what to do when you don’t know what to do. You’ll have the courage to move and to act knowing that you’ll get it wrong sometimes. But also knowing that you will land on your feet. As Sun Tzu said inThe Art of War, "The successful person has unusual skill at dealing with conflict and ensuring the best outcome for all."

An old mentor of mine suggested something to me years ago that I invite you to take on as a practice with when things don’t go as planned.... "It is what it is. Harvest the good. Forgive all the rest."

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To master anything, we must first master ourselves—our emotions, our thoughts, our actions. In times of uncertainty and disorder, self-discipline and self-mastery are not just essential but are your competitive advantage.

Click HERE to find out how my Sustainable Success Toolkit can help you be a more "artful" and "masterful" leader.

What's Love Got To Do With It?

“Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone's face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.” ~ Henri Nouwen, Dutch Theologian

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Tina Turner sang “What’s love got to do with it?” Short answer? Simply, everything.

I’m not talking about romantic love. I’m referring to the love that is present as a consequence of realizing that literally everything is connected. Another word for this is compassion. In times of busyness and conflict it’s easy to dismiss and forget that connection is a universal truth. In times of conflict it’s common to experience emotions other than compassion. Anger, frustration, defensiveness, and righteousness are only some of what we and others likely experience in such times. When we’re involved in a conflict situation with another it’s common to want to be right and to be in control. These are two of the surest ways to ensure that ill-will and resentment will be part of any resolution.

We, each of us, have views of the world and what we call reality that differ from everyone else’s. We have arrived at a conclusion about what is going on and so have they. It’s useful to remember that all conflicts are conflicts of competing conclusions. There will always be differences. Doing what you can to minimize the likelihood of these differences becoming the focus rather than the mutually desired outcome is why, as a leader, you want to be able to approach any situation with the thought of leaving the other with the experience of uplift.

Do they feel validated and understood or do they feel wrong and judged? This is not the same as you agreeing with them. It’s simply the acknowledgment that their view of reality is valid from their current point of view. This a loving thing to do. It values their world view without sacrificing yours. And, it fosters the development of trust in the sense that they experience they are held in regard and not being made wrong by you. As the late Zig Ziglar once said, “If people like you, they'll listen to you, but if they trust you, they'll do business with you.”

Using inclusive language (words like "and", "we", "us", "our") will go a long way to reinforcing that your intent is co-creation. Make no mistake, disagreements occur. Friction and tension exist. Of that there is no question. The beauty of friction is that it's a prerequisite for movement because it produces both heat and light. Used well, the tension and the resulting friction experienced in the midst of disagreements can illuminate and can often result in innovative solutions. The beauty of friction is that it's a prerequisite for movement because it produces both heat and light. Learn to love it and your leadership effectiveness will definitely be enhanced.

This week be sure to keep a modicum of love present – for yourself and for them – it’s how you maintain connection.

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To master anything, we must first master ourselves—our emotions, our thoughts, our actions. In times of uncertainty and disorder, self-discipline and self-mastery are not just essential but are your competitive advantage.

Click HERE to find out how my Sustainable Success Toolkit can help you be a more "artful" and "masterful" leader.

The "Frequency" Of Coordinated Movement

 

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” ~ Nikola Tesla

In my work I define leadership as being the activity of influencing others in order to co-create coordinated movement in pursuit of a worthy ideal. Leadership is not command and control, it's not "my way or the highway", it's not "do it because I'm the boss", it's not superior over subordinate. It's also not a carrot and stick process of motivating others with external rewards to achieve your goals. While it does produce results, such leadership is jarring, disempowering, and often requires clean-up after the fact.

Coordinated movement is beautiful. It is a function of frequency not timing. An orchestral instrument or section that plays a score simply “in time” with other instruments or sections is not coordinating and is not in “flow”. What is being expressed is mechanically precise but it is missing a key ingredient that makes it beautiful, timeless, and memorable. Timing is an expression of an intersection of frequencies that doesn’t require phase alignment. Phase alignment is the co-created experience of flow. Beauty is the experienced expression of co-created coordination of energetic frequencies. It is a harmonic. Whether it is expressed as a Mozart sonata, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s David, a beautiful sunset, or a perfectly executed strategy informed by “soul”, what has occurred is a phase alignment of frequency that, if held in coherence, produces an aligned experience that is outside of time and space. It exists and it is beautiful.

My invitation is to examine your leadership activity through the lens of "beauty". What frequency are you inviting other to harmonize with and how might you co-create this?

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To master anything, we must first master ourselves — our emotions, our thoughts, our actions. In times of uncertainty and disorder, self-discipline and self-mastery are not just essential but are your competitive advantage.

Click HERE to find out how my Sustainable Success Toolkit can help you be a more "artful" and "masterful" leader.

The "Frequency" Of Coordinated Movement

 

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” ~ Nikola Tesla

In my work I define leadership as being the activity of influencing others in order to co-create coordinated movement in pursuit of a worthy ideal. Leadership is not command and control, it's not "my way or the highway", it's not "do it because I'm the boss", it's not superior over subordinate. It's also not a carrot and stick process of motivating others with external rewards to achieve your goals. While it does produce results, such leadership is jarring, disempowering, and often requires clean-up after the fact.

Coordinated movement is beautiful. It is a function of frequency not timing. An orchestral instrument or section that plays a score simply “in time” with other instruments or sections is not coordinating and is not in “flow”. What is being expressed is mechanically precise but it is missing a key ingredient that makes it beautiful, timeless, and memorable. Timing is an expression of an intersection of frequencies that doesn’t require phase alignment. Phase alignment is the co-created experience of flow. Beauty is the experienced expression of co-created coordination of energetic frequencies. It is a harmonic. Whether it is expressed as a Mozart sonata, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s David, a beautiful sunset, or a perfectly executed strategy informed by “soul”, what has occurred is a phase alignment of frequency that, if held in coherence, produces an aligned experience that is outside of time and space. It exists and it is beautiful.

My invitation is to examine your leadership activity through the lens of "beauty". What frequency are you inviting other to harmonize with and how might you co-create this?

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To master anything, we must first master ourselves — our emotions, our thoughts, our actions. In times of uncertainty and disorder, self-discipline and self-mastery are not just essential but are your competitive advantage.

Click HERE to find out how my Sustainable Success Toolkit can help you be a more "artful" and "masterful" leader.

The Soul of Nature...

The following is authored by Fr. Richard Rohr and can be found in his Daily Meditation newsletter HERE.

Nature has been my greatest teacher and in this missive Richard captures the essence of what this newsletter speaks to: "Soul is the blueprint inside of every created thing telling it what it is and what it can become. When we meet anything at that level, we will respect, protect, and love it." ~ Blaine

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The modern and postmodern self largely lives in a world of its own construction, and it reacts for or against its own human-made ideas. While calling ourselves intelligent, we’ve lost touch with the natural world. As a result, we’ve lost touch with our own souls. I believe we can’t access our full intelligence and wisdom without some real connection to nature.

My spiritual father Francis of Assisi spent many days, weeks, and even months walking the roads of Umbria and letting nature teach him. Francis knew and respected creation, calling animals, sun, moon, and even the weather and the elements his brothers and sisters. Through extended time in nature, Francis became intimately connected with non-human living things and came to recognize that the natural world was also imbued with soul. Almost all male initiation rites—including those of Jesus and John the Baptist (see Matthew 3:13–17)—took place in nature, surely for that reason.

Without such soul recognition and mirroring, we are alienated and separated from nature, and quite frankly, ourselves. Without a visceral connection to the soul of nature, we will not know how to love or respect our own soul. Instead, we try various means to get God and people to like or accept us because we never experience radical belonging to the world itself. We’re trying to say to ourselves and others, “I belong here. I matter.” Of course, that’s true! But contrived and artificial means will never achieve that divine purpose. We are naturally healed in this world when we know things center to center, subject to subject, and soul to soul.

I think of soul as anything’s ultimate meaning which is held within. Soul is the blueprint inside of every created thing telling it what it is and what it can become. When we meet anything at that level, we will respect, protect, and love it.

Many human beings simply haven’t found their own blueprint or soul, so they cannot see it anywhere else. Like knows like! When we only meet reality at the external level, we do not meet our own soul and we have no ability to meet the soul of anything else either. We clergy would have done much better to encourage Christians to discover their souls instead of “save” them.

While everything has a soul, in many people it seems to be dormant, disconnected, and ungrounded. They are not aware of the inherent truth, goodness, and beauty shining through everything. If God is as great, glorious, and wonderful as religions claim, then wouldn’t such a God would make such “wonderfulness” universally available? Surely, such connection and presence are as freely available as the air we breathe and the water we drink.

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To master anything, we must first master ourselves—our emotions, our thoughts, our actions. In times of uncertainty and disorder, self-discipline and self-mastery are not just essential but are your competitive advantage.

Click HERE to find out how my Sustainable Success Toolkit can help you be a more "artful" and "masterful" leader.

Equanimity...Your Ground Of Being

I want to delve into a crucial aspect of leadership that significantly impacts not only your personal well-being but also the effectiveness of your leadership journey — equanimity.

What is Equanimity? In the realm of psychological stability and composure, it is the art of remaining undisturbed by the ebb and flow of emotions, pain, and the myriad phenomena life presents. As leaders, our emotional states radiate energy, shaping the atmosphere around us. The contagious nature of our moods necessitates a thoughtful exploration of how we can manage our own states to foster a positive and productive environment.

The heart of equanimity lies in recognizing and embracing what is within our control. Our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and behaviors are the realm we can influence. Everything else resides outside our sphere of control. The desire for control over external factors often breeds anxiety, pulling us away from the steadiness equanimity provides. It's akin to a muscle that, when exercised, becomes a potent tool for effective leadership and balanced living.

The question arises — why should we invite equanimity into our lives? The answer is simple yet profound. Equanimity aligns us with our true locus of control, empowering us to lead authentically and effectively. It allows us to rise above the tumult of external events, providing a vantage point from which we can respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively. In essence, cultivating equanimity is an investment in our leadership resilience.

As you navigate the complexities of leadership, I encourage you to reflect on how equanimity can become a guiding force in your journey.

Extraordinary Ordinary Moments

The following is from Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations newsletter. Mirabai Starr poetically describes the contemplative experience that is stirred through regular lives, whether in nature, through relationships, or our suffering:  

Contemplative life flows in a circular pattern: awe provokes introspection, which invokes awe. 

Maybe you’re making dinner and you step outside to snip chives from the kitchen garden just as the harvest moon is rising over the eastern slopes. She is full and golden, like one of those pregnant women who radiates from within. Suddenly you cannot bear the beauty. Scissors suspended in your hand, tears pooling at the corners of your eyes, you nearly quit breathing. Your gaze softens, and the edges of your individual identity fade. You are absorbed into the heart of the moon. It feels natural, and there is no other place you’d rather be. But the onions are burning, and so you turn away and cut your herbs and go back inside. You resume stirring the sauce and setting the table.  

This is not the first time you have disappeared into something beautiful. You have experienced the unfettering of the subject-object distinction while holding your daughter’s hand as she labored to give birth to your grandson; when curled up in bed with your dying friend …; while yielding to your lover’s lips. You have lost yourself in heartbreak, then lost the desire to ever regain yourself, then lost your fear of death. You long ago relinquished your need for cosmic order and personal control. You welcome unknowingness.  

Which is why seemingly ordinary moments like moonrises and lovemaking undo you. The veil has been pulled back. Everything feels inexhaustibly holy. This is not what they taught you in the church of your childhood. Your soul has been formed in the forge of life’s losses, galvanized in the crucible of community, fertilized by the rain of relationship, blessed by your intimacy with Mother Earth. You have glimpsed the face of the Divine where you least expected it.  

And this is why you cultivate contemplative practice. The more you intentionally turn inward, the more available the sacred becomes. When you sit in silence and turn your gaze toward the Holy Mystery you once called God, the Mystery follows you back out into the world. When you walk with a purposeful focus on breath and birdsong, your breathing and the twitter of the chickadee reveal themselves as a miracle…. 

So you sit down to meditate not only because it helps you to find rest in the arms of the formless Beloved but also because it increases your chances of being stunned by beauty when you get back up. Encounters with the sacred that radiate from the core of the ordinary embolden you to cultivate stillness and simple awareness. In the midst of a world that is begging you to distract yourself, this is no easy practice. Yet you keep showing up. You are indomitable. You are thirsty for wonder.

The Future of Business Is Making The Future It’s Business

I am a big fan of capitalism. It has lifted more people out of poverty and driven more progress than any other economic system in human history. But we are also experiencing significant negative consequences as a result of a departure from its original principles. As a widely adopted system, capitalism has seen various versions emerge over the years. Here, I want to compare two types of capitalism: Compassionate Capitalism and Crony Capitalism. I will briefly examine their societal and economic impact using Adam Smith's classic 1776 book The Wealth of Nations and his earlier (1759) Theory of Moral Sentiments as references. Both books arguably provided the original source material for what we call capitalism.

Compassionate Capitalism encourages businesses to prioritize social responsibility while pursuing profits. It emphasizes the well-being of employees, customers, vendors, the environment, and the communities in which they operate. In contrast, Crony Capitalism is today’s dominant economic system. It is a system that allows, and even encourages, businesses to use their political and economic power and influence to gain unfair advantages over their competitors. It focuses on maximizing profits at the expense of societal well-being.

The Wealth of Nations emphasized the importance of competition and mutually beneficial trading in driving economic growth. In a competitive market, businesses are forced to innovate and provide better products and services to attract customers. Compassionate Capitalism encourages healthy competition while ensuring that businesses do not engage in unethical practices that harm society and compromises overall well-being. It recognizes that businesses have a responsibility to improve the lives of the people they serve. Why else offer a product or service? Indeed, within this model, the purpose of business is to enhance the possibility of thriving for all while also making the requisite profit necessary to keep the business viable. The operative thesis of Compassionate Capitalism is rooted in enlightened self-interest and uses well-being as the metric of success (see: Just Capital).

In contrast, Crony Capitalism stifles competition and innovation. It allows – even encourages – businesses to use their economic and political power (i.e., Citizen’s United) and influence to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors. This creates an uneven playing field, limiting economic growth and harming society. Crony Capitalism leads to income inequality, political polarization, and environmental degradation as the benefits of economic growth are concentrated among a small group of wealthy individuals, corporations, and political power brokers. The operative thesis of Crony Capitalism is rooted in rational self-interest.

Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments emphasizes empathy and compassion in a healthy society. Compassionate Capitalism aligns with this philosophy by encouraging businesses to prioritize the well-being of their employees, customers, and communities – an enlightened self-interest. As cited above, Crony Capitalism is driven by self-interest and greed (see: Greedflation) and is rooted in a mindset of scarcity that inevitably leads to accumulation of profit, market share, resources, and dominance as the metric of success.

The invisible hand of commerce Smith speaks about in The Wealth of Nations is a metaphor for how self-interested individuals operate through a system of mutual interdependence. The idea of the invisible hand is often misunderstood as an endorsement of unregulated capitalism or selfish behavior. In reality, Smith believed that the market could only function properly (i.e., benefitting all) when it was regulated by a strong moral code and a sense of social responsibility. This was the mechanism by which Smith envisioned a tempering of an individual’s toxic selfishness. The invisible hand was a recognition that individual self-interest, properly channeled, can lead to market and societal benefits – again, enlightened self-interest.

Compassionate Capitalism is a more ethical, generative, and sustainable economic system than Crony Capitalism. It encourages businesses to prioritize the well-being of society while also pursuing profits that are necessary to keep a business viable, thus creating a more equitable and just society where everyone can benefit from economic growth. Crony Capitalism harms society (and business) in the long run by prioritizing rational self-interest, and encouraging accumulation, and greed. By adopting the tenets of Compassionate Capitalism, we can create a better future for ourselves and future generations. The future of business is making the future its business. And if the purpose of business is recognized as enhancing the possibility of thriving for all, it will be a future worth committing to.

If you would like to learn more about Compassionate Capitalism and the kind of mindset and leadership required to make it so, you can request a free copy of my #1 international best-selling book Compassionate Capitalism: A Journey to the Soul of Business by emailing your request using this link.

Conflict...What Is It Good For?

 

 

“I don’t like conflict!” How many times have you heard others say this or have actually thought or said it yourself?

The truth is, if you and others truly understood what conflict makes possible you would absolutely embrace it and, as a leader, you would consider it to be one of the most valuable sources of your and your organization’s growth and success.

Let’s unbundle this notion in very simple terms…

Every organization is nothing more than groups of individuals who are in relationship with each other and, more importantly, with anything and everything that the organization is involved with. This includes intangible and tangible things such as workmates, customers, vendors, goals, objectives, values, vision, work processes, equipment, parking places, roles, titles, and preferences. These, and more, are all part of the relationship stew that is the organization. To the degree that all of these varied relationships are working well the organization has a pretty good shot at being successful.

Why this is important to acknowledge is that conflict only appears when relationships are perturbed. And change of any sort will always perturb existing relationships. Therefore, the problem with change is rarely with the change itself. The problem with change is that it always involves a disruption in existing relationships. And people don’t like to have their relationships upended. It's this disruption – not the change itself – that is the source of conflict and it often results in things coming to a screeching halt or, at best, a grudging compliance that requires way too much energy and attention to sustain. Given this scenario, it makes sense that conflict would seem to be the one thing a leader would try to avoid. Unfortunately, a leader that seeks to avoid conflict is doing themselves, their people, and their organization an incredible disservice! Leaders are far better served learning how to quickly surface and leverage conflict rather than taking steps to minimize or avoid it. Let’s look at why this counter-intuitive “truth” is worth understanding.

Conflict produces friction. Without friction you’re simply spinning your wheels – nothing moves. If you've ever tried walking across a frozen surface you know what this is like. Friction provides traction needed for movement. Friction also produces heat and light. Heat is required to remove impurities from any melding/forging process. Enough heat will produce light and light contains information that can illuminate how things (such as differing points of view) can come together in a different way to produce something new, something better. Effective leaders need to master how conflict is used, how it is directed, and how it is structured.

Deliberately surfacing and addressing conflict isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a delicate dance and it is something that high performing, growth-oriented leaders are willing to undertake.

You can learn more about developing the kind of leadership mindset that can transform how you and your organization handle change and growth – and the conflict that is always part of this process. Learn how to do this with greater elegance and certainty. Request a personal interview with me to see if joining my acclaimed, invitation only Leadership Mindset Mastermind makes sense for you. Simply follow this LINK to schedule an interview. I look forward to speaking with you.

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Leadership is the Art and Science of influencing relationships in order to co-create coordinated movement. It's what effective leaders do when they so firmly declare a possibility that it becomes a probability in the minds of their followers. Learn how to do this with greater elegance and certainty.

Here's what a couple of former clients have to say about Blaine's work...

• "I would not be ready for this role without your coaching." ~ Joy S. Powell, CEO, Springbuk
• “Blaine Bartlett’s ability as a coach to design process and content that are both elegant and effective, yet challenging and stretching, makes him one of the most impactful leadership coaches I’ve had the privilege to work with.” ~ Magdalena Mook, Executive Director & CEO, International Coach Federation (ICF)

We Are The Earth

The illusion that we are separate from anything let alone each other is the greatest danger we as a species face. Its pervasive hold on our collective consciousness drives such destructive behaviors as competition, domination, accumulation and hoarding, fear based reactivity, and polarization - politically, societally, and economically.

The following was penned by the Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh in his book Love Letter to the Earth (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2013), 8–9, 10.

"At this very moment, the Earth is above you, below you, all around you, and even inside you. The Earth is everywhere. You may be used to thinking of the Earth as only the ground beneath your feet. But the water, the sea, the sky, and everything around us comes from the Earth. Everything outside us and everything inside us comes from the Earth. We often forget that the planet we are living on has given us all the elements that make up our bodies. The water in our flesh, our bones, and all the microscopic cells inside our bodies all come from the Earth and are part of the Earth. The Earth is not just the environment we live in. We are the Earth and we are always carrying her within us.

Realizing this, we can see that the Earth is truly alive. We are a living, breathing manifestation of this beautiful and generous planet. Knowing this, we can begin to transform our relationship to the Earth. We can begin to walk differently and to care for her differently. We will fall completely in love with the Earth. When we are in love with someone or something, there is no separation between ourselves and the person or thing we love. We do whatever we can for them and this brings us great joy and nourishment. That is the relationship each of us can have with the Earth. That is the relationship each of us must have with the Earth if the Earth is to survive, and if we are to survive as well.

If we think about the Earth as just the environment around us, we experience ourselves and the Earth as separate entities. We may see the planet only in terms of what it can do for us. We need to recognize that the planet and the people on it are ultimately one and the same. A lot of our fear, hatred, anger, and feelings of separation and alienation come from the idea that we are separate from the planet. We see ourselves as the center of the universe and are concerned primarily with our own personal survival. If we care about the health and well-being of the planet, we do so for our own sake. We want the air to be clean enough for us to breathe. We want the water to be clear enough so that we have something to drink. But we need to do more than use recycled products or donate money to environmental groups. We have to change our whole relationship with the Earth."

Fr. Richard Rohr, who brought this writing to my attention, says: "Hanh recognizes that our false notion of separateness from the Earth not only creates physical harm but emotional harm as well."

I suggest taking this even further. If your ideal life is to be realized you, we, I must act, think, feel and love as if there is no one and no thing "out there". All I perceive and think of as reality is an outward expression of who I think myself to be. No person's conduct will be higher than their conception of the creative force that moves to and through all life. And their conception of this creative force is determined by the kind of person they think themselves to be.

Being Present to Presence...

 

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, a Buddhist monk and international teacher, left one of the three monasteries of which he was abbot to spend several years on a retreat journey. Following in the ancient tradition of wandering ascetics, he “wanted to explore the deepest depths of who [he] really was out in the world, anonymous and alone.” Here is part of the letter he left for his students before his departure:

"In parting, I would like to give you one small piece of advice to keep in your heart. You may have heard me say this before, but it is the key point of the entire path, so it bears repeating: All that we are looking for in life—all the happiness, contentment, and peace of mind—is right here in the present moment. Our very own awareness is itself fundamentally pure and good. The only problem is that we get so caught up in the ups and downs of life that we don’t take the time to pause and notice what we already have.

Don’t forget to make space in your life to recognize the richness of your basic nature, to see the purity of your being and let its innate qualities of love, compassion, and wisdom naturally emerge. Nurture this recognition as you would a small seedling. Allow it to grow and flourish. . . .

Keep this teaching at the heart of your practice. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, pause from time to time and relax your mind. You don’t have to change anything about your experience. You can let thoughts and feelings come and go freely, and leave your senses wide open. Make friends with your experience and see if you can notice the spacious awareness that is with you all the time. Everything you ever wanted is right here in this present moment of awareness."

~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche with Helen Tworkov,
In Love with the World: A Monk’s Journey through the Bardos of Living and Dying

Bob Proctor interviewing Blaine about The Leadership Mindset Weekly

 

 

What do amateurs pay attention to?

 

What limits most of us has nothing to do with our lacking skills or intelligence. Nor does it have anything to do with being wrong or sick. What limits most of us is that we are living our lives as amateurs. Having th e life we aspire to requires discipline and intention. It requires a mastery that is informed by a specific kind of mindset.

Typically, the amateur's mindset is to develop just enough competency to feel more or less comfortable doing what they're doing. Amateurs, while they say they would like to excel, typically practice just enough to avoid looking foolish. They tend to be easily distracted, blame external forces for poor results, and will be easily pulled away if something proves too difficult.

Contrast this to the professional's mindset.

A professional is not willing to settle for anything less than excellence. Comfort is not part of their mindset. A professional identifies what it will take to excel at their chosen endeavor. And then they set out to do what it takes to achieve that level of excellence knowing that they will be continuously stretching themselves - and frequently failing - as they do so. In the process, they know that they will be uncomfortable. They know they will not want to stay late, work harder, do one more rep, get back up one more time, ask for feedback, or ask for help. They also know very clearly that success takes what it takes. There are no shortcuts. Energy does indeed follow attention. Professionals are willing to make that kind of investment and they design their life with this in mind.

We make choices daily in our lives. While many of our choices don't seem to involve life and death choices we are, in fact, losing a bit of our life each and every day. A question to begin and end each day with is: Am I spending my life or investing it? Spending your life's energy returns very little in terms of fulfillment, satisfaction, and joy. On the other hand, investing your life's energy in something you consider to be worthwhile, has an ROI measured by excellence - both as an experience and as a result. What investment will it take for you to design and have your life as a professional would?

Alone or All One?

I’m unique…as is everyone and everything who has ever been in existence.

The difficulty being unique presents is that, literally, no one can ever truly know me. They may try...and if I'm in a "significant" relationship, I may actually believe that they “should” fully know me. But, they will never -  and can never - know the feel of the breath I take the way that I know it. They will never see the sunset the way I see it, or smell a fragrance like I smell it. They will never be moved by art or music the way I am moved. They will never experience the combination of sleeping beside a lover and having the exact thoughts I have in that exact time and space. Followed to its logical conclusion, uniqueness is a perfect description of being alone. Try as I might to have another “grok” me (or me them) I will never truly be able to. I am unique and I am alone in that uniqueness.

My world is unique and I, alone, am its only resident.

This is where uniqueness presents an interesting paradox. Because everyone is a unique being inhabiting a unique world on a common planet it's important to realize that we are continuously interacting with aliens. They may look like us as a human and it's easy to assume that we are the same. But they are unique. And they live in a unique world known and knowable only to them. It’s only through compassion informed by the desire for connection – a desire rooted in a need to be understood, seen and valued – that we can build harmonious, loving, respectful and tolerant lives with others. Compassion is how we manifest successful lives, cultures, societies and businesses. To be understood, seen and valued. Achieving that is a challenge we must learn to master.

The desire - the absolute need - for connection is not to be underestimated. It is the source all human striving and its absence is likely the source of all human suffering. Without it we are left alone with our uniqueness...and being alone in the Universe is probably the most frightening thing we can experience. And because at the end, that unique "I" that carries my name and resides in my body is alone, I am well served learning how to become very comfortable with me. I am well served by becoming very much in love with me…all of me.

After all, what’s not to love? I’m unique.

The Hidden Power of Mindset

It started with difficulty sleeping because of a simple backache that wouldn’t go away. A little more than four years later, she was dead and my entire world had been turned upside down and inside out.

“She” was my wife Pam, and the backache was the first symptom of what was eventually diagnosed as 3rd stage acute multiple myeloma, a blood cancer of the bone marrow. Our journey from that diagnosis to her eventual death in August 2010 was a shared and uniquely personal experience. Ultimately my part of the story is one of reclamation and rebirth made possible by intentionally developing a completely new mindset in order to make a new life possible.

When she died my world as I knew it also died. We had been married almost 20 years and in the immediate aftermath of her death I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before and it had to do with my identity. I had become part of an idea that was “Blaine and Pam”. If she was part of who I was then, without Pam who was I? Where did I belong? What do I now do? Who is the “I” that manifests the life I’m living? GREAT unsettling questions that I embraced with a passion I hadn’t experienced for years.

As I dealt with my grief I became very aware that “moving on” was not something I wanted to do. We had together created too much good to leave. The idea of moving on and leaving this good behind didn’t feel right. As I wrestled with this notion I gradually came to realize that I needed to find a different way of thinking about what I was dealing with. Moving on or staying stuck in my grief were the only two choices I thought I had and having only two choices always results in a dilemma. I needed a third option and this eventually became the idea of moving forward. I started to consider what I needed to let go of that no longer served me, what I wanted to hold on to that was meaningful, and what I wanted and needed to learn anew. The difference between moving on and moving forward may seem subtle but as a mindset shift, it was enormously empowering.

How to move forward? Wow, I didn’t have a clue, and so I simply started to imagine what I would love – not simply like – my life to be. I knew enough to know I needed to allow time for grieving and I didn’t want that grief to be what defined my experience of living. The question of experience seemed like a good place to start…what experience did I want as my life? Even though the answer was, at first, pretty fuzzy, that question was perfect because the experience I wanted was about love, not things.

I first read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich in the 1960s but I hadn’t studied it. So, I started to truly study it as well as Michael Singer’s The Untethered Soul which I read over and over. I began playing with my imagination and thought about what kind of future I really wanted and what mindset and new paradigms would best contribute to that future. I started to pay attention, imagine possibilities, and intentionally practice new ways of thinking and acting that I felt were in alignment with the new future I wanted to manifest and experience. That future included a new love who would fully embrace my family in such a loving way that they too felt invited to move forward, it included laughter and family vacations, and it included a reinvigorated passion for my work. The one thing I did not do was spend a lot of time trying to figure out how all of this was going to happen. I truly trusted that spending focused time vividly imagining and feeling in my bones that this new future was already real was the key to its manifesting. And, this wasn’t idle time spent contemplating my navel. I was in action; I was moving. The Sufis have a way of describing this kind of action as “effortless efforting.”

Rather than being preoccupied trying to figure out “how” this was going to happen I trusted the “how” would become clear to me if I followed my heart. I experimented. I wasn’t attached to having any particular “way” produce any specific outcome. There were some dead ends and false starts but they were all part of the process. One of the absolute keys for me was joining a couple of small mastermind groups to help with the process. They were invaluable (and continue to be today). They helped me identify what I’d never considered which set me up to practice and integrate new ways of thinking into my daily routines. These new practices slowly began to replace and modify the mindset that was and new possibilities began to appear. As my life began to expand and grow in new directions so did the lives of my family. As they saw and felt me moving forward without moving on, they began to move forward from their own grief. It’s said that time heals. Yes, it does and with intention, focus and discipline, time can be sped up.

The ten years since Pam’s death have been extraordinary. Like the Phoenix rising, a new life and world have appeared. I met and married an absolutely amazing woman and partner, Cynthia Kersey. My kids, grandkids and extended family members love her and she them. She truly entered my and our lives with grace, gratitude, and love. Being open to the experience of loving and being loved again was important. I let go of notions of “appropriate” grieving time and I welcomed what my heart wanted knowing that defaulting to love is always inclusive and empowering. Cynthia was and is a foundational part of realizing the experience I now have of my life. None of us builds our lives by ourselves. Everything is a relationship and the quality of my relationships truly does become the quality of my experience of life. Other new relationships formed, existing relationships transformed, new business opportunities appeared, and with them, new opportunities to do that which I most love to do – teach.

A new mindset of moving forward was truly the catalyst that enabled me to experience and create what I have today. Developing that mindset wasn’t accidental and it wasn’t left to chance. It was intentional. I took action while being attentive to existing relationships and was careful to not be constrained by them. What did my heart want? What would I love? Elegance – doing things in ways that result in little to no unintended consequences – became my litmus test. I was and still am on an amazing journey informed by “what would I love?”

I invite each of you reading this to consider the hidden power of your mindset. All of your results are the consequence of your mindset. When I set out to rebuild my life I didn’t start with how. I started by looking inward and wondered what would I love. I thought about what needed to be left in place, let go of, or learned anew. This isn’t a journey for the faint of heart. Changing a mindset is hard work. As the saying goes, “if it were easy everyone would do it.” I found people and a mastermind group to support me on my journey to what was possible. Find your people, explore a mastermind, and begin your journey to a future that is worthy of who you are.

To find out more about Mindset and Masterminds please go to blainebartlett.com/mindsetmastermind and/or get a copy of my latest book The Leadership Mindset Weekly – 52 Weekly Practices To Transform Your Leadership Mindset.

Don't Settle....

Is good enough really good enough? It’s your choice and what you choose is who you become.

The Stoics believed that a beautiful life was the result of beautiful decisions. They also believed that the only way to freedom, to strength, to wisdom, was through continual effort.

Beauty, according to Plato, was the premier virtue. Beauty, as he held it, was the perceived manifestation of the underlying “soul” of anything. Soul, as Carl Jung described it, is that kernel of any and all things that cries out to be more, to grow more and to do more.

“Progress is not achieved by luck or accident,” Epictetus said, “but by working on yourself daily.” 

The question for you today, then—and really, for this upcoming year as well—comes down to one word: When? To quote Epictetus again: How much longer are you going to wait to demand the best of and for yourself?

Facing Reality

This post is from Fr. Richard Rohr, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation. It is an elegant, thoughtful, and insightful commentary on the nature of our current reality.

Facing Reality

To love is to be conscious, and to be fully conscious would mean we are capable of loving. Sin always proceeds from lack of consciousness. Most people are just not aware and not fully living in their own present moment. When Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34), he was absolutely right. Most people are on cruise control, and most of their reactions are habituated responses—not fully conscious choices.

We may have moments when we are conscious of our real motivations and actual goals, but it takes years of practice, honesty, and humility to be consistently awake. Whenever we do not love, we are at that moment unconscious. If we consistently choose to defend our imagined state of separateness, then, spiritually speaking, we are unconscious, or in religious language “in sin” (emphasis mine). As has often been said, unless we make the unconscious conscious, it will direct our life and we will think of it as fate.

Spiritual maturity is to become aware that we are not the persona (mask) we have been presenting to others. That is why saints are humble and scoundrels are arrogant. We must become intentional about recognizing and embracing our shadows. Religion’s word for this is quite simply forgiveness, which is pivotal and central on the path of transformation.

This can be painful as we realize that even when we thought we were loving, we often really weren’t. And when we thought we were bad and sinful, we often weren’t that either! Facing reality is also liberating because we recognize that our manufactured self-image is nothing substantial or lasting; it is just created out of our own mind, desire, and choice—and everyone else’s opinions of us! The movement to second-half-of-life wisdom requires serious shadow work and the emergence of healthy self-critical thinking—but without condemning or shaming that same self. That is the truly “narrow gate and hard road that few follow upon” (Matthew 7:14).

There is no shortage of opportunities to discover your personal or corporate shadow. As Jung said, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” In the end, the face we turn toward ourself is the face we will turn toward the outer world.

Soul of Business with Blaine Bartlett: Heather Mason, CEO and Founder of Caspian Agency

Wow...do I have a fascinating and powerful interview for you in this most recent episode of Soul of Business with Blaine Bartlett (https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/soulofbusiness)! Join me as I speak with Heather Mason, CEO and Founder of the amazing Caspian Agency. Her expertise in the innovation and social good business space have led to successful projects around the globe for Skoll World Forum, Dalio Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Participant Media, University of Oxford, and Keurig/Green Mountain Coffee to name a few.
#soulofbusiness #leadership #socialgood

The Co-Creative Nature of Leadership

“When we look deeply into a sheet of paper,
we see that it’s full of everything in the cosmos:
the sunshine, the trees, the clouds, the earth, the minerals,
everything—except for one thing.
It’s empty of one thing only: a separate self.
The sheet of paper cannot be by itself alone.
That is why the word inter-be can be more helpful than the word be.
In fact, to be means to inter-be. The sheet of paper cannot be
without the sunshine, cannot be without the forest.
The sheet of paper has to inter-be with the sunshine, to inter-be with the forest.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

 

When the activity of leadership is stripped of the behavioral characteristics, personality distinctions, and situational competencies typically used to describe a leader, what one is left with is simply movement – leaders cause movement, they cause change simply by their presence in a system irrespective of anything else they may bring. Leadership is defined for the purposes of this brief article as being the activity of co-creating the coordinated movement necessary to generate the actions required in order to produce desired results. The activity of co-creation is central to this definition and is important because of the simple fact that nothing is ever created absent a relationship of some type. Leaders can never unilaterally cause movement. Change only occurs when something has moved in relation to what was before. It requires two (or more) to be part of the process.

It is in this sense that leadership must be seen as being foremost a relational activity. It is not an exaggeration to assert that the quality of the myriad relationships found in organizations is an accurate litmus of the likelihood of the organization’s long-term success. These relationships include the obvious interpersonal relationships that are readily and objectively visible. Perhaps more importantly however, they also include the subjective relationships that are not so visible – the relationships that individuals have with such things as values, work processes, goals and objectives, vision, mission, self, spirit, identity, behavior, mood states, parking places and office layouts. To the degree that all these varied relationships that are present in any system are working well, the system has a pretty good chance of being successful. Being unaware of, and consequently, not attending to these objective and subjective relationships can and does limit any leader’s effectiveness dramatically.

In today’s rapidly changing world it must be understood that the difficulty people and organizations have with change is seldom with the change itself. The true difficulty is with the difficulty people have in dealing with the disruption to the myriad relationships that the change causes. Learning to lead within this context of co-creation requires a fundamentally different world view and educational approach. It’s not enough to simply teach to a set of situational or generic leadership competencies. Relationships are much too fluid and complex to be held hostage to such a competency framework. Rather, leaders today need to learn what it means to co-create. They and their organizations need to disabuse themselves of the legacy paradigm of the leader as the one “in charge”.

Competition and collaboration are terms that are widely used to describe how results are generally produced in and by organizations. They can be thought of as existing on a zero-sum continuum that moves from competition to collaboration as two or more parties come closer together to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. Both terms are predicated on a fundamental duality that is framed in language as “us” and “them”. “We” collaborate or compete with “them”. This experience of separation, despite our best efforts and intentions, often reinforces a sense of scarcity relative to resources (and success) which frequently results in counter-productive competition. Not incidentally this dynamic typically involves feelings informed by notions of fairness or its lack. This is important to understand because its feelings that drive behavior – not intention.

Co-creation requires a different paradigm – a paradigm organized around a world view that recognizes that everything is connected. Being able to lead from this world view requires skills steeped in arenas such as Awareness, Context, Communication Mastery, Trust, and Commitment/Ownership. These new skills are informed by the domains of Spirit, Time/Space, Mind, and Personal Mastery as its core.

Ultimately, the effectiveness of tomorrow’s leader will be measured not only by the results they produce but by the beauty and elegance by which those results are co-created and delivered. Beauty in this model is linked to the Platonic virtue of Beauty which is defined as being the result of a spiritual co-creation. Something is beautiful when the spirit giving birth to its manifestation is evident – think of a beautiful sunset, the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo's David, an exceptional relationship, and the iPhone. Beauty is the measure of co-created outcomes that are designed to thrive rather than merely survive. Beauty is the measure of co-created outcomes that are designed to thrive rather than merely survive. Wherever we find Beauty there is an enormous reserve of power behind it because what is being produced is connected to all of life.