I Haven’t Got Time For The Pain

You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens- Rumi

The “no time for pain” is what the old pain reliever advertisement told us. I sit here with a pinched nerve in my spine with severe arthritis. The pain radiates up and down the right side of my body. All I can think of is “How do you spell relief?” I will spare you the rest of my “organ” recital. Suffice it to say I’m looking for ways to make the physical discomfort go away be that through a chiropractor, painkillers, or medical marijuana.

We live in a culture where pain free living seems to be a sometimes-elusive promise. Depression, please make it go away. Practice meditation and detachment and banish suffering. I get it. If there is a solution, find it.

Recently a reader asked me whether personal growth only comes about as a result of pain. My answer was both yes and no. That made me think about the ways we respond to life’s painful events.

We can look at pain from either a practical or philosophical level. I’m doing the practical stuff. Philosophically I resonate with the words of an Indian spiritual teacher who taught that difficult circumstances in life are like a donkey blocking our path. 

He taught, “Don’t kill the donkey. Regard it as your teacher”.

Such a perspective on suffering instructs me that, 

There are valuable life lessons that can be learned in the school of hard knocks.

My biggest take away from some of the tough times I’ve been through is the realization that my mind creates unnecessary inner turmoil (my donkey). I remember a movie from my childhood “Francis the Talking Donkey”. Some questions from your donkey (suffering) may include:

What erroneous beliefs do you have that trigger unnecessary shame (about your body or your failures)?

How does massaging your ego produce superfluous suffering (there’s never enough to go around) in its quest to be seen or appreciated?

In what way do you subscribe to a philosophy of life that hurts too much where it produces feelings of unworthiness, self-loathing, or separation from others?

There’s a ‘wise’ self that speaks words of wisdom within us. 

This wisdom source whispers, “There more to life than the tragic movies we produce in our minds”. Think of a time when you were at your wits end with all of life’s pressures. No solution appeared on your horizon. Your internal dialogue was like an ancient movie soundtrack. It told you that you can’t deal with the problem, you do not have sufficient resources, your only option is to feel overwhelmed, or you don’t deserve better for your life”. Also what if your ego quips “There are no lessons in this adversity”?

How can you listen to inner wisdom instead? Consider the following statements about waking up to our inner wisdom

• Recognize that an inner wise self is within everyone. There’s more to us than the tragic movie in our minds 
• Such messages are revealed to us from a higher Source that loves us unconditionally. This power comes from both within as well as beyond.
• We have to release ourselves from trying to solve a problem beyond our control causing the suffering. Here we surrender both to that which is beyond our control. Another word for this experience is grace.
• Realize that this shift towards an awakening is not a matter of crossing a finish line but a continual adventure.

Listen to the voice of the pain. If you can find solutions (medical, best practices) by all means do so. But also ask “How is this pain a breakthrough moment for me? What is it teaching me?

Wake up to the power/wisdom within.

What’s Your Story?

Storytelling is as natural to us as human beings as breathing. But most of us do not naturally tell good stories. It is crucial that we learn this art because it is the best way to persuade others to embrace your vision, influence a new strategy, and win hearts rather than minds.

When we transmit an idea of any sort it is imperative to tell a powerful story that engages listeners at an emotional level.  But isn’t this counterintuitive? Haven’t we all learned that reason is our most powerful persuasive tool? As it turns out, no, storytelling does something data and logic, however valid, cannot:

Powerful stories engage people’s emotions and imagination inspiring them to action.

Reasons that Stories are Powerful

Let’s look at several other reasons that stories are so persuasive.

First, stories are a way that we as individuals naturally organize our personal lives and communicate our everyday experiences. From our early experiences of ‘show and tell’ in elementary school to the way we remember vacations and the important events in our lives, we are by nature storytellers, we make sense of our lives through our personal narratives; similarly we are naturally drawn to the stories that others tell.

Second, stories touch our emotions, making them highly memorable because we remember best what we powerfully feel. The leader who wants to be the most persuasive must have a story line that resonates with what the audience strongly feels and values. This will increase the likelihood of buy-in for the vision or idea being presented.

Third, stories breathe life into statistics. When we read a newspaper article where hundreds of people have perished in an earthquake, our intellect registers the news and although we may think the news is terrible, we somehow remain detached from it. But, when we read the harrowing personal story of a survivor emerging from the rubble after her family had given up hope that she was alive, our emotions are triggered and the story takes on a completely different quality-it becomes real, urgent, and palpable.

Fourth, stories are a powerful tool in shifting our focus. For example, stories have the power to shift us from being fearful or risk averse to being driven by hope. The reason for the change in perspective is that stories give us a belief in ourselves as we imagine new possibilities. As we listen to a story of someone overcoming odds, we find ourselves thinking, “If the story’s character can do it, so can we.” Think for a moment when you last became drawn into a movie story line where it became your story. Consequently, stories are excellent vehicles for triggering positive emotions within each of us.

Fifth, stories have the power to orient people towards the greater good. Anything that smacks of self-centeredness will turn the audience off. A “What’s he trying to get out of me?” audience response is the death-knell of any speech. A powerful story must step into the real world of the audience and mirror what they believe to be good for the organization. They need to be left with the feeling “We can make a difference in this important area.” Such a response insures that they will heed the speaker’s call to action and in so doing make the proposed idea theirs as well.

Finally, stories are a powerful source of inspiration. The communicator must also be cognizant of the sources of inspiration in all persons – contribution, character, imagination, empathy, expecting the best – and be sure that at least one of those themes are included in the story’s overarching theme. Inspiration driven action is a powerful driving force in any organization.

6 Keys to Telling a Powerful Story

Key#1: Tell a story that touches your audience at an emotional level. Unless your story has universal appeal it will fall flat.

Key #2: Tell stories to breathe life into statistics.

Key #3: Tell stories that shift the focus to a powerful present and a compelling future.

Key #4: Tell stories how great odds or obstacles have or will be overcome. We all relate to a redemptive appeal and where the outcome represents the triumph of the human spirit.

Key #5: Tell stories that step into the world of the audience and address what inspires them.

Key #6: Tell stories that provoke deeper questions rather that giving answers in neat little packages.

Four Different Story Forms

There are four story forms that are used the most. These, as identified by the authors Peter Denning and Robert Dunning in “The Innovator’s Way” (2010) are: The Research Paper, The Transformational Event, Life Struggle Story, and The Manifesto.

The research paper is the primary vehicle of the scientific community but is very seldom inspiring and only captures the imagination of a very small audience. It may excite the minds of a select few who are data driven but it hardly the royal route to the heart of most people.

The transformational event is a story based on a number of anomalies in a current situation (the business model or technology is no longer effective and there is the need for a paradigm shift). Here the storyteller proposes a new framework that resolves the paradoxes in the world of his/her audience. The biggest challenge with this type of story is that the bright new vision of the future, as told by the storyteller, is often purely speculative. It takes a lot more effort to persuade audiences to act based on such an event.

The life struggle storyis the basic format of many screenplays. The protagonist has high hopes and aspirations, runs into frustrating and sometimes life threatening obstacles (antagonists), and finds a way that grabs the interest of the viewer to overcome those obstacles. This ‘in spite of all odds’ story line is the stuff of many inspirational tales. Such narratives in the business world can be compelling provided that the storyteller does not become the story itself. The question listeners are more than likely to ask is “how does this person’s life struggle relate to us and our mission?”

The manifesto, the last story form, is where the speaker asks people to imagine a better future.

Recently I was working with a senior executive who was struggling with a new and groundbreaking strategy for his organization. He was giving a lot of facts and figures when I stopped him with the statement

“Too many words. Too many words. Answer this question. Imagine what the world will be like for both your customer as well as your organization when your strategy comes into play.” Tell a Story.

By definition this future lacks detail and precision but you can certainly fill in the blanks by extrapolating results from current trends, from competitors, initial studies, or different domains. Some Manifestos come from stories within the history of the company itself as a “Remember when we….” story. The bright future can also be presented in contrast with the difficulties and roadblocks of the present. Here the audience will have an‘aha’ moment because the ‘bright future’ makes so much sense to them.

In my consulting I encourage people to use the Manifesto as their most frequently used story type because of its potential for the greatest impact.

In a nutshell, what story are you telling to influence a particular group or meet a compelling challenge?

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Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Heart

“One of the most important developments in human evolution is the ability to think. However, an even more important development is the ability to grow beyond thinking. To do this, we need to discover the intelligence that is inherent awareness itself” – Loch Kelly. “Shift into Freedom”

This week I witnessed a miracle. I saw the transformative power of love and how it manifested itself despite years of toxic parent/child pain. To me this goes to prove that you can teach an old brain new tricks. That is of course if you see thought as something that come from wider sources than our heads i.e. the gut and the heart.

My mother in law was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. She no longer recognizes friends and family. Where does one find a miracle in that situation?

Kris my wife has had a lifelong convoluted and conflicted relationship with her mother. It had reached the point that the level of toxicity was so high that we could no longer visit the family home. Then came the medical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and the fact that her mother had very few years left to live. To visit or not to visit became the question. Deep within her spirit Kris knew that the time had come to say her last goodbyes. She had also been praying that somehow her mother would be released into the arms of love as she transitioned to the next life. 

The change came precisely because the operating system of her mother’s mind had crashed due to the disease state. She did not initially recognize Kris. She called her Pat. However, the blessing was that she did not remember their conflicted relationship that had developed over the decades. Her mind was a blank slate. And that created the opportunity for her to come straight from her heart.

Just imagine you could encounter a person with whom you had decades of hurt, judgment, and conflict. And then somehow both of you felt nothing but love. You could hint at events from the past with humor and tenderness And then after three hours that person tells you “I wish you did not have to leave” and “I love you as well”? Is that a fantasy? Or does that indicate what it means to forgive and forget? Maybe it says something deeper about all of us.

Here is how I view that situation.

Our brains are naturally hardwired for God (or whatever you name the power greater than yourself). And the essence of that imprint is love. The problem for most of us is that our minds are busy creating stories out of unresolved conflict and misunderstanding. These disabling narratives did not come out of thin air. There arose from actual battles that got twisted into acrimony and resentment. They clung to our psyche like barnacles to a sunken ship. Unfortunately their continue chatter overrides most of our potential for love.

However when we access our true nature we can discover that “the greatest of these is love”.

My wife came away from that encounter and reported “This is the first time in my life that I experienced true love with my mother”.

How then can we scrub our minds clean of a toxic past? Do we need to micro dose on mind-altering drugs? Do we wait for the tragedy of Alzheimer’s disease to hit? Or are there other ways to access our original self?

All I know from that episode yesterday so fraught with conflict and pain is that we can switch to another operating system, the one of our true love nature. We don’t have to be prisoners to our thoughts. We wrote the story in our minds and we can edit out toxic elements. But in order todo this we have to find ways to access that other deeper part of the self, the one uncontaminated by thought.

This is what it means to wake up to our true selves. It is always there. It is closer than breathing. The journey from the head to the heart is possible. We can take resonsibility for our own liberation and awakening right now.

I will write more on this topic in coming weeks.

Broken Crayons Still Color

Like many psychologists I have years of psychotherapy under my belt. What I dug up on the couch was not always pretty. At first I was fascinated with my past problems. I gained some insights about myself. I also made some course corrections in my life. But I could well have become a lifelong patient staring at my bellybutton. Then my psychological archaeology started to bore me (I do recall my therapist yawning a couple of times). To add insult to injury, I bought into my materialist culture that drummed into me that I was not a winner because of past failure and emotional accidents.

How did I learn to become more invested in meaningful pursuits by editing my story and not just rehearsing it ad nauseam? One resource was the noninterfering attentiveness of my partner Kris. 

When we met in 1997 she described me as a ‘bloody mess’. The other night at our twenty-third anniversary dinner I thanked her for taking me on. That was despite the fact that one of her relatives told her that she was an idiot for getting involved with me.

At that time I saw myself as less than my full male self because I was grossly underemployed. It helped having someone attentively accepting of my predicament. She saw my potential but did not pigeon hole me in the culturally conditioned breadwinner ethos. (* The Pew Research Center reported in 2017 that 71 percent of Americans thought “being able to support a family” was important to a man being a good husband). 

I was at the tail end of a decade long meltdown. My ‘organ recital’ included depression (for which I was treated medically), disease (my cancer and my son’s schizophrenia), death (both my parents), painful divorce, and a nasty debt (from my son’s frequent hospitalizations). 

However, I am not the sum of all my accidents. I don’t ignore these stories but I just don’t take them as the last word on my personhood. They are informative not determinative for my wellbeing. Today I let the sleeping dogs of my past lie. It also helped when a Good Samaritan came along and gave me a hand up rather than a hand out. I love the quip from the TV series “Queer Eye” that 

** Even a broken crayon can still color. 

Kris took my broken crayon life and started helping me draw a new portrait of the true me. Slowly I caught a glimpse of new possibilities for myself through the eyes of someone who believed in me. As I was coaxed off the ledge of my small miserable self I realized the truth articulated by the poet Rumi,

“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens”.

But I literally had to go out of my mind before I could get into my heart. 

My biggest hurdle to being awake to my true self has been my thinking brain. The latter is like multiple radio stations in my head. One is the ‘lonesome me’ channel where I bemoan my isolation from others. Another is the ‘frightened’ channel that recites all the horror stories from the world around. And then there is the station that’s all about my ego identification. It blasts away the message ‘you are your performance’ or ‘you are the approval from others’. All these channels have two things in common. They cause suffering and sustain the illusion that I am the sum of all the messages from my mind. I had to wake up from this delusional dream and learn that I am more than my most dramatic failures or stellar success. The most powerful message that has come my way in recent days is,

You are not that

That will never be my truth or path. As such beliefs slowly began to crumble I came to a more sublime expression of inner kindness, self forgiveness, and the ability to laugh at myself. All I can say today is “What took you so long?”

• Quote from the NYT article “How Men Burn Out” By Jonathan Malesic
• Also the title of a book by Shelley Hitz

My Encounter with Mysticism

(An excerpt from my memoir “The Prodigal’s Progress – Leaving Tribal Beliefs – Waking up to Inner Wisdom” at breakframe.wordpress.com)

There is a very thin boundary between this life and the next. I realized this in writing my doctoral dissertation where I interviewed individuals about their ‘direct’ religious experiences. To my surprise, some reported they had had mystical encounters. I discerned their capacity to know the Divine directly. Sufis say, “God longs to be known.” The central experience of mysticism is that God, rather than being “out there” is “in here”. And that still small voice can speak with us and in so doing we move beyond mind bending dogma to seeing truth with the eye of the heart.

1978, I recorded an interview with one of my dissertation subjects, Lee Edward Travis, the founding Dean of the School of Psychology at Fuller Seminary where I was a graduate student. I would say that of all my teachers he was the most influential. In 1925 he was one of the founders of the field of speech pathology at the University of Iowa. At the time of the interview Lee was in his mid-eighties. 

Lee reported that he had had a powerful mystical experience fifteen years before while he was a faculty member in the psychology department at the University of Southern California. Up until then, he said, he had attended very little to the world of the spirit. His feet were solidly planted in a scientific, materialistic perspective. 

Lee described how he had been invited by his wife Lysa to attend Bel Air Presbyterian Church. On the first Sunday they visited that church, located just over the hill from their home, the sanctuary was overflowing and the service was being broadcast to the large overflow crowd outside of the church. Lee described the story of listening to the pastor Louis Evans, Jr. this way:

“I couldn’t see him and I had no idea what he looked like. His voice was coming through and I thought that the public address system was not the best. So we sat outside there and this is when I commenced to be affected by being sort of carried away, sort of leaving the current situation, leaving current reality; I sort of walked away and then came back while the sermon was going on and I didn’t pay much attention to that. Well, that Sunday ended and I did not do anything about that; we went home. Next Sunday we went back”.

The following Sunday they arrived at church early so that they could find a seat inside the sanctuary. Lee reports:

“I could see [the pastor], and that is really when I had the intense experience. I did not have any visual experiences and I didn’t hear anything other than the preacher and the choir, so I had no visual or auditory experiences. It centered around mainly breathing, and I have great difficulty in breathing, and the main thing that occurred was that I would be carried away. I never once thought that this was generated within me. I always have felt, and still feel, that it was coming from the outside; I don’t mean from the preacher or from the music but further than that, and because I don’t couch this experience in ordinary Christian language, it loses some of its appeal in the way I tell it. I just say that is what it was. So mainly it was, Cedric, that I would be carried away, way out into the yonder. I was out there in the cosmos; I was part of everything in the world, the universe, and I was amazed at the largeness and I was amazed at my privilege at being a part of this immense reality and I would check to see what I really was doing. There were two of me; there was this part of me that was way out there, looking over everything in the whole universe, seeing the end of time, seeing the beginning of time, seeing this, and seeing that I was a part of the whole thing and that I have always been here and that I would always be here. The other feeling is that an outside force occupied me. I was being used. To me, in no sense, seems to be an experience that can be interpreted purely and only psychologically. My mind was used and my body used to carry the feeling of really being one”. 

In the end Lee viewed this experience as an inexplicable direct encounter with God. What pastor Louis Evans found significant about Lee’s experience in 1961 was that, as he explains, 

“I see Lee as a son, not of dogma, but of the Spirit.”

Decades later, I learned that in early Christianity, such divine/human encounters were commonplace and embraced as true among a group called the Desert Fathers and Mothers. These individuals chose to live in the desert so they could increase the possibility of a direct meeting with Presence. They saw with the eye of the heart.

At this stage in my spiritual journey one of my aspirations is to continue to wake up to inner wisdom that speaks in a still small voice (See my previous posting).

My Ten Imperatives for 2022

1. To wake up to inner wisdom that speaks in a still small voice
2. To be alert to the teachers who come my way no matter how difficult the lessons they present
3. To respond wisely to what is and not resist what I cannot control
4. To unhook from the delusion of the small self created by the ego
5. To view myself as one with all. I see you in me and me in you
6. To do good as I have opportunity
7. To make the journey inward before I try to move outward
8. To experience my consciousness as eternal and in so doing prepare to die well
9.  To not take myself too seriously
10.  To forgive myself for not perfectly fulfilling the above

What are your aspirations?

Wake Up To The Wisdom Within

(An excerpt from my memoir “The Prodigal’s Progress -Leaving Tribal Beliefs – Waking to Inner Wisdom” at breakframe.wordpress.com)

We are all storytellers. The key is to discern the difference between narratives that do us a disservice and those that come from a wise place.

I am not talking about false news in the political realm but self-assessing voices within vying for attention.

Recently I saw a bumper sticker “Don’t believe your thoughts”. Such skepticism about the thinking mind warrants attention. As a psychologist I know about mental tricks we play on ourselves. As unconscious spinmeisters we shape the image we want to project (“We have a loving and stable family”). Personas (“I’m a no drama type”) are exchanged like costumes on a movie set. And the ego, never known for its humility or reality testing, cashes in on all self-impression management. 

The problem with the ego voice is that it causes great suffering. Thought constructed me’s like “Why don’t I get what I deserve? What’s wrong with me?” or “I wish these good times will last forever” get us bent out of shape. They are not aligned with our goodness within, our true love nature, nor the impermanence of life.

So is that it? Do we give up on listening to any inner message?

It depends on where the voice originated. If it is the still small voice stemming from our True or spiritual self then by all means pay attention. However, most of us are asleep to this part of our being. As a result we meander and stumble through life guided by ego driven desires.

Do you remember a time when this voice last spoke truth to you? Maybe you were viewing the Grand Canyon or star gazing on a clear night here in New Mexico. The wonder of the occasion silenced the ‘other’ voices. You were more focused on being in the moment, and maybe, just maybe, you heard an inner whisper, “love yourself!” or “pay attention”. Or maybe the last time you attended to this authentic self as in childhood before the constraints of parenting and culture pressured you to conform.

One thing about this still small voice is that it remains silent when you ask “Why?” That same question directed to the ego will set off a cacophony of chatter. That false self will justify what it has said or just plain lambast you with judgment. The true self just wants us to shut up and listen. It comes both as a gift as well as shrouded in mystery. We cannot control the spirit within. It “blows where it wants”. It also guides you on the narrow and dangerous path of wisdom. At least it is dangerous to the small self, the ego.

And the path of that silent voice liberates us from the lies in the world around us as well as falsehoods within.

My wish for all of us for the New Year is that we wake up to the wisdom within.

So You Want to be a Visionary Leader

You can learn the ways of a visionary leader.

Here’s how.

I have known quite a number of remarkable futurists in my decades of consulting practice. Each took their organization to new levels of excellence and profitability. However, one stands out above all the others. I asked him “Do you see blue sky or dark clouds in your industry?” His business was going through a bit of a slump but he had an irrepressible sense for greater opportunities in the future.

o What made this leader stand out from his peers in the same organization/industry?

o Why was he like the optimistic child who viewed a pile of manure and started digging for the pony?

The thing about this leader is that he saw both the obstacles as well as new possibilities for the future.

What five behaviors made him such a remarkable visionary? 

He had a

1.  Global Business Perspective

The problem with many a successful business is that the leadership can become internally focused. What worked in the past is assumed to be the predictor for future success. However, this leader was able to appreciate and integrate multiple socio political and global factors like the growing scarcity of water, nutrition needs of a greatly expanding and mobile world population, advances in technology like that of artificial intelligence, and the changing nature of the workforce that included millennials.  He truly saw the bigger picture.

2.  Realist/Optimist Disposition

Futurists are not clueless or careless dreamers. They can look at the facts about their organization, good and bad, and press on to new business frontiers. That makes them realists. However, what makes them stand out from the pack is that they see viable business opportunities where others see obstacles. They ask questions like, “How can we leverage the downturn in the economy to our advantage?” And their native optimism spurs them on in the face of opposition.

The motto of such a leader could well be

Pensaron que nos habían enterrado, pero no sabían que éramos semillas They thought we were buried, but they did not know we were seeds

3.  Openness to Change 

Most of us have a love/hate relationship with change. We may hear the drum beat “change or die”.  We resist the imperative to alter our ways for a multitude of reasons. Our resistance may be conscious or unconscious, based on a fear of going out of our comfort zone, spurred by a tendency to rest on the laurels of our success, or a deep longing for the “good old days”. But in the end, the visionary leader has a compelling reason to lead change. And come hell or high water, change happens.

4.  Wide Network With External Thought-Leaders

Many senior leaders confine their network to their own organization. However visionaries have the opportunity to meet with thought-leaders beyond their own company and discipline. In so doing they enjoy the fruits of cross-fertilization.  All this exposure to a wider circle enriches their capacity to innovate and expose their organization to new ideas.

5.  Deep Interest in the Arts and History

I once taught a Humanities course in a Business Management degree program. One course assignment was for the students to visit a museum, art galley, cultural event from their ethnic group, or read a biography of some important historical figure (other than in business). The assignment was then to relate this experience to their business context. The surprise was that many of them had confined their whole life experience to the business world

Great visionary leaders read widely, travel extensively, have broad experience in the arts, and are insatiably curious about the world around them. They then import this experience to their business experience that becomes richer as a result. All work and no play truly makes “Jack a dull boy”. The leader I work with has all this intellectual and cultural breadth and it continually informs his work experience.

I realize that this article is based the anecdotal evidence of one leader who embodied all these behaviors. However,

My Question

What behavioral markers have you observed in true visionaries?

What research (articles) do you have to support your observations?

Please share your perspective.

In Celebration of an Ordinary Life

Most of us live at the level of the ordinary. 98% of our thinking is repetitive and trivial. And routines are the rule not the exception. But to rub salt in our wounds we all have an ego that constantly reminds us how few home runs we have hit in this life. I know because I aspire for the big hit and at times neglect the base hits.

What a bummer to be ordinary? Really?

At Thanksgiving I reviewed with Kris some of the highs and lows in our lives. As I approach old age with fewer tomorrows than yesterdays what do I have to show for all my efforts? Sure I’ve done some interesting things in life but on the whole it has been quite vanilla. No rocket ship to outer space and no great American novel. 

So the question is, “What’s so wrong with ordinary?” Is my life only the sum of all the likes I have received on social media? Is my character to be measured by the accolades I received?

What does it mean to have a life well lived?

In a recent eulogy at Secretary Colin Powell’s funeral his son Michael quoted the NY Times opinion writer David Brooks distinction between

Resume virtues and Eulogy virtues.

Despite General Powell’s star studded career, what was important to Michael was his father’s character like kindness, friendship, and loyalty. In Brooks NYT column “The Moral Bucket List” the author writes,

“About once a month I run across a person who radiates an inner light. These people can be in any walk of life. They seem deeply good. They listen well. They make you feel funny and valued. You often catch them looking after other people and as they do so their laugh is musical and their manner is infused with gratitude. They are not thinking about what wonderful work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all”.

My conclusion is that there is nothing wrong with an ordinary life.

But in that life it’s character that matters far more than an impressive resume.

Be a Soul. Not a Role*

 (An excerpt from my memoir “The Pilgrim’s Process” at breakframe.wordpress.com)

As I age I find myself in an identity crisis once again. That convoluted process spins around the ego impression that the value of my personhood is to be measured by my bank balance, parenting, education, maleness, physical capabilities, and my various professional roles. In each of these areas I’ve had some success but also stellar failures.

I have forgotten the lesson that I could have learned from a high school experience sixty years ago.

I clearly remember the ecstasy I experienced at age eighteen when I broke my high school record for the half-mile race. Two weeks later, at the regional track meet, I line up for the start of 880 yards run. With adrenaline pumping like crazy at the starter’s gun, I surge ahead of the rest of the competition. At the half way mark, way ahead of everyone with an unprecedented time of 56 seconds, I am about to smash the national high school record in well under two minutes. 

I only have 100 yards to go. Unexpectedly I fall to the ground in pain with a severe leg cramp. In agonizing slow motion I stagger to my feet and stumble towards the finish line. The other runners catch up to me. My teammate pushes me over the finish, which leads to my disqualification. And I collapse again. My chest heaves as I lay on the side of the track gasping for what seems like my last breath. I was vaguely aware of other athletes hovering over me with anxious questions like “Are you OK?” 

The soundtrack drowning my heaving breathing is not some inspiring “Chariots of Fire” music that drove me to run my heart out. Rather it is a depressing dirge played over and over in my mind. It left me sick in the pit of my stomach as I repeatedly asked “What if?” 

For years afterwards I second-guessed myself with regret as I thought “If only!” “If only I had warmed up for the race properly”; “If only I had paced myself better on the first lap”; “If only I did not have a go for the gold mentality in all that I do.”

Where did this “my life-depends-on-my performance” craving develop? Where did I learn that I am what I do and achieve? At the time of the race I did not have a clue as to what drove me other than the desire to win and win big. In those days I never linked my performance to my value as a person, but that sure was my MO in later years. I sometimes call it my ego swagger. Many life lessons caused me to crash and burn. 

I seem to have a Ph.D. in failure.

Each incident pricked the bubble of my ego illusions. The shelf life of my “I am my doctorate in psychology,” “I am the books that I publish,” “I am my global consulting experience,” or “I am my white male entitlement” each had an expiration date.

When it came to that half-mile race, it was only decades later that I reflected, “What if I had not fallen that day and became the national champion?” Would that have really changed the direction of my life?  It has only been in recent years that I concluded, “You are not the sum of your likes or dislikes, failures and success in life.

The problem with performance-based living is that it is an ego-fix. Like drug addicts we store up a secret stash of our achievements in case the detox from the ego becomes too difficult. Ego-fixes come in all shapes and sizes. Achievements reinforce the lie we tell ourselves with questions like “How many likes did I get on my blog? What was the size of my audience? Did people like what I did on that project?” Those are the types of questions that the ego-driven extrovert or stage personality in me asks. But what then is the world of my true self? 

Souls are not broken. They were quite fine as they were. I love this statement by Richard Rohr: 

“The True Self cannot be hurt.”

What speaks to me about this quote is that my true self, the stamp of Presence on my person, is impervious to hurt and remains whole and intact both in this life and beyond. That “home” needs no improvement or repair. This leads me to a conclusion reached by all masters of the spirit that our chief purpose in life is to discover and live out our inner essence.

From the perspective of the True Self then I do not need self-improvement. That false self, the one that gravitated to performance as value, is disconnected from eternal consciousness and oneness with all. It is fool’s gold and not the real thing.  

With my performance fading fast with physical frailty emerging in old age, the thought, I’m too old for this crap, the knowledge that most people are too self-absorbed to give a rip about what I do, and bothering less and less about impressing others, I am finding more inner contentment and security. Sweating whether or not others are impressed by my performance or me is a flailing ego dance. It is not who I am. It is an illusion of the mind that according to Eckhart Tolle is “98% repetitive and pointless”.

As I started in on the practice of meditation and mindfulness about a decade ago, I had the opportunity to discover a new part of myself. Somewhere in the depths of my being there was an indwelling Consciousness. It is something in but also way beyond my brain. That soul self is a separate operating system from my mind. At first those soul-moments came somewhat infrequently and in whispers. It was a decades-long journey of that true self that continues today. I observe it in the middle of a coaching session when it tells me to shut up and listen deeply without judgment. My focus is on serving others not proving that I’m a good coach. Other times I get a flash insight where a highly plausible explanation for the person’s behavior just seems to pop into my mind and out of my mouth.

The other day I was listening to a highly talented young woman whom everyone other than herself (and her parents) see as having important things to say and contribute. But somewhere along the way old wounds put a gag order on her. A response welled up from the depths of my intuition, “You have a voice; now use it.” I could see a glint of recognition in her eyes since I had tapped into what she already knew deep down. She got it and thanked me. I have seen multiple “Aha!” moments like this.

Many times answers to our deepest dilemmas come out of that inner self and not from the accumulated knowledge of our familiar roles. I call this our “inner sage”. Mostly people need a listening presence and receptive silence from someone who trusts them to come u with the answer for themselves The solutions are already there in the seat of our consciousness, the soul.

The wisest words I’ve heard in recent years about my various roles in life was from a friend. She told me,

“You are not that”

I am an eternal soul that happens to have a body with various time-limited roles.

*From a quote by Ram Dass