1/11/10

Good day, team,

I fully intended to write a challenge last weekend, but with the death of my father I found myself in a state of silence. Grief stopped me in my tracks, and I made every attempt to stay in the silence it rendered.

There is much to be said about my father. This past week I reviewed the coach’s challenges where I’ve referred to him, and there are many stories, lessons and pieces of wisdom that I attributed to him. But when I think of my father, I realize that he was above all else an exceptional storyteller. And so this challenge is dedicated to my dad and the power of story.

The Institute for Co-Intelligence defines the power of story as follows:

“Stories are more than dramas people tell or read. Story, as a pattern, is a powerful way of organizing and sharing individual experience and exploring and co-creating shared realities. It forms one of the underlying structures of reality, comprehensible and responsive to those who possess what we call narrative intelligence.”

When I was growing up, my father’s storytelling abilities really shined on Saturday afternoons where he told stories to me, my sister and our friends. Our home was the place all of our friends wanted to hang out. My sister and I felt lucky and proud to have parents who were not particularly strict, were open-minded, and seemed to have a great appreciation for what young people were interested in.

My father would sit around the dining room table and tell stories about battles fought during the Civil War (a subject that most teens in the 1960s and 70s would be totally bored by) to an audience who hung on his every word. It was as though we could hear the musket fire or see the sunset over the battlefield. Sometimes he would talk about Socrates, or Leonardo, or baseball, or music or poetry and how these people and things had taught him significant lessons about life. He was a great lover of science fiction, and so there were Saturday afternoons when he would set up a crude solar system—constructed of toothpicks and styrofoam balls—in the middle of the dining room table so we could explore ideas about our universe.

When we gathered with family and friends, my father would often entertain us with off-color limericks that he could recite with perfect accents and timing. We laughed so hard that tears streamed down our faces. On All Hallow’s Eve, he would tell scary stories by dim candlelight that sent my girlfriends and me jumping out of our seats and into each other’s arms for safety. A good Edgar Allen Poe story recited by my dad was not to be missed. Years later, when my dad and his wife, Barbara, ran a bed and breakfast in New Hampshire, many of the guests would remark that yes, the inn was very nice and Barbara’s breakfasts were to die for, but it was Ted’s stories they would go back for year after year. Whatever the subject, my dad had a way of bringing it to life.

I have learned in my personal and business life that storytelling is essential in communicating ideas. Often people don’t understand a concept unless you reframe it in a story they can relate to. Stories help us define our lives and make sense of complicated situations. They allow us to tell the truth about ourselves in such a way that we can be entertained by what might be too painful to admit outright. They give us a way to interpret our lives.

While storytelling serves many noble purposes, it also has a dark side. Stories can be used to mask the truth, to help rationalize destructive or careless actions, to make someone else the bad guy. Over the last decade, I’ve realized that many of the stories my father and I had been telling about each other were not true. These stories were made up from painful interactions, imagined malicious intentions, misunderstandings and inaccurate interpretations of events.

With the help of my stepmother and husband, my father and I set out over the past decade to rewrite some of these stories and reach a new understanding based on love and compassion. We were not always successful, but we did close the chapters on many stories that were never true, but had been given life by our retelling of them over the years.

As a coach, I see my clients tell stories about themselves that are not true and serve no positive purpose. Perhaps they were true at one point in their lives. But an obsolete story, retold to themselves and others, has outlived its usefulness. I often suggest that they change their story to one that serves them, rather than continuing to tell a story that diminishes them. By changing their story, they change their lives.

In his book “The Power of Story,” Dr. Jim Loehr shares this insight:

“Telling ourselves stories provides structure and direction as we navigate life’s challenges and opportunities, and helps us interpret our goals and skills. Stories make sense of chaos; they organize our many divergent experiences into a coherent thread; they shape our entire reality. [Yet] far too many of our stories are dysfunctional, in need of serious editing.”

Your challenge this week is to hear the stories you tell yourself about yourself and others and to stop telling the ones that no longer serve you. Perhaps you work with someone who irritates you: Do you tell stories about that person which put him or her in a negative light? Maybe you tell yourself you can’t do this or that: Is it true?

One of my clients just decided to take a drawing class because she’s been hearing a story in her head for 25 years about not being able to draw. Evidently, in high school, one of her art teachers told her she couldn’t draw well, and she’s been repeating that story to herself ever since.

You may be telling yourself a story that puts someone on a pedestal or portrays her or him as super-human. That perception is sure to fall apart eventually. No one can stay on a pedestal for long. Or maybe you’re just telling yourself stories about family members that are no longer true. Forgive or seek forgiveness. You might be able to finally release these myths.

Over the last year, as my father’s dementia increased, he lost his ability to speak. The great storyteller was finally silent. How much this pained him only he can know. But I understood that my father told stories to hold people’s attention. Perhaps he worried that people would stop loving him if he lost that ability. I like to think that one of the miracles of my father’s illness was he could finally see that people loved him when he told stories, and they continued to love him when he no longer could. It really wasn’t about the stories at all but the storyteller himself.

For me, part of the grace of my father’s death is that now all of the stories are just that: stories. It’s a great relief to release all the tales of shame and guilt, pain and suffering, just as much as it’s a delight to remember those of joy and sharing, love and compassion.

This week, choose the stories that serve you best. You do have a choice: It’s just a matter of seeing the story for what it is, just a story, and then deciding whether or not you want to keep telling it.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2010 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

12/7/09

Good day, team,

This will be the last challenge for 2009, and as I write it, I’ve been reflecting on the opportunities this year has presented. From small business owners to employees of large companies, no one was exempt from the huge challenges the poor economy created for us.

Many of my clients understood they could no longer do business as they had been used to doing for many years. Their management skills seemed to be sorely lacking when it came to motivating a workforce faced with layoffs and no promotions or bonuses, as well as their inability to hire new talent. The fear of losing their best people, who were now working overtime to cover multiple functions, continued to weigh heavily on them, and keeping sales up and expenses down was the order of the day.

In my case, the first six months of 2009 were the worst I’ve experienced in the 17 years I’ve been in business. Ironically, this circumstance forced me to think creatively, and I’m now seeing that by being more open-minded and venturesome, doors have opened for me that I had never considered. As human beings, we are extremely adaptable, and when it comes to figuring out what to do to survive, we can be very inventive.

Maybe this was the year in which you got a new job or went back to school to learn a new set of skills. I applaud you if this is the case. We generally hang on to our current jobs or stay in whatever our familiar situation is when times get tough, no matter how bad they are. Changing in the midst of insecure times is particularly difficult, but the rewards can be great if we have the courage to move in the right direction, even when it seems like the wrong time to do it.

It helps to remember that change is not just one thing, but actually three things:  endings, transitions and beginnings. When we change, we always give something up. The loss is often painful, but it also creates space from which something new can emerge. Transitions are usually where the most opportunity arises for us, since we’ve let go of the past and are not yet quite in the future. It’s the scariest phase, but the most exciting! And beginnings are full of all those unknowns that we hoped or dreamed about as we moved through the transition phase. It’s important to remain aware in every stage, because each is distinct and evokes many different emotions and thoughts as conditions, demands and even people change around us.

As this year comes to a close, take some time to reflect on what it has required of you. Think about what you’ve learned and had to put into play. Perhaps you’ve refreshed some of your old ways of doing things. Maybe you’ve become more innovative and benefited by having to re-create your business model. I have a client who decided that the only way to drum up more business was to make many more cold calls. Like most of us, he hates this task, but his business is actually growing right now because of his extra effort.

Whatever the case may be, take time to reflect on what the challenges of this past year have been and how you’ve dealt with them. Give yourself credit for having done the best you could in difficult circumstances. Show your appreciation to the people you’ve worked with during these trying times and don’t forget to be grateful to your friends and family for being supportive when you needed them most. The holidays give all of us a much needed break and many chances to be with loved ones in positive surroundings. Take advantage of these moments and look to the new year with renewed hope that 2010 might bring all of us the peace and prosperity we seek.

Have a good week and Happy Holidays!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

11/30/09

Good day, team,

The coach’s challenge this week is about abundance. Look around you. What do you see? Do you have everything you need? Do you have everything you want? What is the difference? Are you grateful for what you have, or do you find yourself constantly longing for what you don’t?

Recently, I’ve been reading a book about life in the slums of Bombay, India. Most of the people in this book live in small, handmade huts on the outskirts of the city. They own a change of clothes, a toothbrush, a cup, a plate, a fork and a mat to sleep on. (And these are the lucky ones!) I am amazed at how happy these people are and how they experience abundance in their lives. They are grateful for the smallest things, because they have so little. I’m also reading a book about a young girl who was born into a family of billionaires and has all she’s ever wanted. Her life is characterized by continual displeasure with everyone and everything around her. The contrast between the two stories is obvious: Abundance is not about having more and more things, but about our attitude toward the things we have.

We live in a world of enormous wealth and consumerism. The selection of products is overwhelming at times. Do you ever find yourself in the store unable to decide among the 30 brands of laundry detergent on the shelf? I often think that the time I spend analyzing which brand to buy is worth far more to me than any benefit I might derive from saving money or getting better quality with the “right” choice. I have found that I’m actually happier if I have a more limited selection. Faced with too many options, I chafe for what isn’t available, and then I’m dissatisfied with what is.

Cultivating an awareness of our surroundings is one of the best ways to experience abundance. Right now, we are enjoying the beauty of autumn as it moves into winter. Geese are migrating to their southern habitats and small birds are grateful to find birdfeeders full of seeds.  Each of us can experience the abundance of this season,  but only if we take the time to see it, smell it, touch it. This time of year we can be especially grateful for some aspect of our indoor environment:  a warm fire and a good book to read, the beauty of candlelight on such short days, or  good food with family and friends around the dining table.  Perhaps you buy something new for yourself to wear over the holidays and you appreciate how well it fits or how nice the cloth feels on your skin. The next time you laugh with a friend or team member, try experiencing the abundance of being rich in relationships.

When we feel abundant, we tend to attract abundance. When we cultivate an attitude of scarcity, our minds focus on what we don’t have, and in turn, we attract less of what we need and want. Try finding something in your environment this week that makes you truly grateful. Experience how happy and abundant this appreciation makes you feel; enjoy life as William Blake expressed it in “Auguries of Innocence.”

“To see a World in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.”

Have a great week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

11/23/09

Good day team,

This week’s challenge is about teamwork.  My husband, David, and I went to see some musicians perform this past week. Watching them play reminded both of us of the beauty of great teamwork. I wrote a challenge about it and asked David to edit it.  His version was so much better than mine that I’m attributing this week’s challenge to him.
Bill Champlin is one of the best musicians you’ve probably never heard of.  As a band-leader, song-writer, keyboard player, vocalist and arranger, he fronted his own 9-piece band – the Sons of Champlin – from the early 70’s through the mid 80’s.  The Sons came out of Marin County, CA and brought a very funky and sophisticated sound to rock music.  They rose above the 3-chord psychedelic scene with with elements of jazz, really tight horn arrangements and soaring vocal harmonies. Their songs had a decidedly positive feel and the lyrics were rooted in spirituality.

Bill went on to join the band Chicago with whom he still tours.  But he wasn’t happy with the rather syrupy pop style that the band settled into.

Bill is a musician’s musician, often drawing people like Bonnie Raitt and Elton John into see and hear him play.  He’s in his sixties with silver gray hair and back now with a new band of mostly very young players, touring again and doing his own music. We caught the early show Thursday night at Jimmy Mak’s – a great local jazz venue.

Watching and listening to the new Bill Champlin Band is a lesson in leadership and teamwork.  They’ve picked up where the Sons left off as a funk band.  If you’ve ever tried to play funky music, you know that it takes incredible teamwork to do well.  It has to be tight. Everyone has to know his part and execute it with precision while listening to and playing off of the other band members’ parts.  The drummer and bass player lay the foundation and have to work as if they are one.  The keys and guitar have to follow the drummer’s lead and lay down a bed of syncopated chords and melodic riffs timed just right.  If any part is weak, the audience won’t feel the groove.

Champlin and his band laid down a 90-minute set of really tight grooves, great vocals and harmonies, and some mind-blowing solo work.  It was clear that Bill was the leader. But it was also clear that his leadership style left plenty of room for each band-member to show his or her strengths.  The band worked so well because each player knew his role – when to lay back and be part of the overall sound, when to solo and wow the crowd with individual talent, and when to add nothing but silence.  You could watch them communicate while they played with a nod or a smile, or a look toward Bill for a cue on timing.   Everyone on stage was committed to the same objective – working together to create a sound that made people want to move to the groove and feel really good.

Try to think of your management team as a band and imagine what instrument each would play.  Who are the leaders?  Who are the ones who love to improvise and solo?  Who are the drummers and bass players – the ones that keep the rhythm and lay down a solid foundation for the rest of the band/team? Would your team be good enough to play really funky music together.  Or would it sound more like a collection of one-man bands?  Who writes the music and who arranges it?  And are you all reading off the same set of charts?  And which band member are you?
Have a great week!
Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

11/16/09

Good day, team,

Here’s a challenge I wrote last year that seems appropriate to republish. Since many of the conditions that inspired it are still with us, I thought you’d appreciate seeing it again.

Lately, many of my clients are going through a particularly stressful time so I thought it would be useful to understand more about what’s actually happening to us when we become too stressed.

Here is an excerpt about the chemistry of stress from “Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership” by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatizis; it appears in the September 2008 edition of the Harvard Business Review. (The entire article is well worth reading.)

“When people are under stress, surges in stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol strongly affect their reasoning and cognition. At low levels, cortisol facilitates thinking and other mental functions, so well-timed pressure to perform and targeted critiques of subordinates certainly have their place. When a leader’s demands become too great for a subordinate to handle, however, soaring cortisol levels and an added hard kick of adrenaline can paralyze the mind’s critical abilities. Attention fixates on the threat from the boss rather than the work at hand; memory, planning and creativity go out the window. People fall back on old habits, no matter how unsuitable those are for addressing new challenges.

“Poorly delivered criticism and displays of anger by leaders are common triggers of hormonal surges. In fact, when laboratory scientists want to study the highest levels of stress hormones, they simulate a job interview in which an applicant receives intense face-to-face criticism—an analogue of a boss tearing apart a subordinate’s performance.

“Researchers likewise find that when someone who is very important to a person expresses contempt or disgust toward him, his stress circuitry triggers an explosion of stress hormones and a spike in heart rate by 30 to 40 beats person minutes. Then, because of the interpersonal dynamic of mirror neurons and oscillators, the tension spreads to other people. Before you know it, the destructive emotions have infected an entire group and inhibited its performance. Leaders are themselves not immune to the contagion of stress. All the more reason they should take time to understand the biology of emotions.”

Your challenge this week is to check your stress levels and try to regain balance for your heart, mind and body. Perhaps you’ve noticed a tendency to disengage when you’re at work. If that’s the case, try finding one particular thing you really love doing and focus on that for awhile. Passion naturally re-engages us, and lends us a new source of energy. Maybe you find yourself becoming negative toward your co-workers; try getting some exercise at lunchtime to counter those feelings. If you find that your behavior is having a negative impact on others, try asking for help. Talk to someone you trust on the team. Let them know you’re having a hard time and could use help seeing things in a more positive light. Experiment with meditation techniques. Recent studies have proven that daily meditation reduces high blood pressure, high levels of cortisol, migraine headaches, and a number of other high-stress symptoms.

Whatever your experience of stress, remember that it’s not just your brain that does the work: A healthy body and an open heart are necessary to face each day as it comes, with all of its successes and failures. If you’re running at a deficit, figure out what you need to do to turn that loss into a gain. And chill out from time to time throughout the day. It might just help you think more clearly and creatively while it supports your body’s ability to be stress free.

Have a great week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

11/9/09

Good day, team,

This weekend, the weather outside was cold and damp so I decided to spend a good portion of the day lounging on the couch watching college football.

I’ve been a football fan since I was young. I just happened to be lucky enough to live in Wisconsin when the Packers, under Vince Lombardi, won the Super Bowl. I was also living in Washington, D. C., when the Redskins won, and in New York when the Jets won, and in Miami when the Dolphins won. When I moved to San Francisco, I guess the 49ers caught my luck, because they started an unbelievable winning streak that lasted for years. I often thought I should start betting on football teams based on where I was going to live next!

Since then, I’ve moved to a city where there is no pro football team, and I guess my luck doesn’t apply to professional basketball, given the Blazers’ record. But I’ve become much more enamored of college football over the years, so this weekend I settled in for a long day of watching good games.

During the Oregon State vs. University of California at Berkeley (“Cal”) game, I saw something happen that is the heart of this week’s challenge. One of Cal’s star players, Jahvid Best, vaulted over a player from Oregon State into the end zone and fell hard from five feet in the air onto his neck and head. The entire Memorial Stadium went silent.

In a subsequent news report, Cal’s quarterback, Kevin Riley, said, “I was standing right there. You knew when he landed it was something. His eyes were blank, and he was trying to breathe.”

The report continued, “Best’s teammates went down on their knees and waited, then moved to the end zone as trainers and doctors took him away on a stretcher. The game was delayed 13 minutes. Some of Oregon State’s players who were on the field at the time huddled together in support.”

As I watched all of this play out on TV, I was moved to tears when I saw both teams go down on their knees to pray for Best. I expected the Cal team to do so, but when the Oregon players huddled together in prayer for him, I was inspired.

Just minutes before, the goal of the Oregon State team was to beat its opponents at any cost, and they were doing everything they could to prevent Best from getting into the end zone. But when he went down, everything changed, and what everyone wanted was for him to be all right.

I thought about the teams I’m working with and how combative team members can be with each other. They can get nasty when they feel their territory is threatened, or they’re being blamed for something they did or didn’t do, or someone is trying to sabotage them. This competitiveness plays out in so many destructive ways—not just within the team, but throughout the organization—that it often takes years to heal the rifts between team members.

At the same time, when something terrible or life-threatening happens to one of our teammates, we suddenly realize how important we are to each other and are immediately humbled into that place within us of unconditional love and compassion.  In this place, we are truly connected. All the noise and flying fur that occurs when we fight can create one bad story after another that builds on itself and then becomes so large we lose our ability to appreciate each other. I call it the “beastly bundle,” that knot that holds all the bad news and nasty commentary. Sometimes the bundles become so big, we can no longer see over or around them, and when we look at our teammate, all we see is a beast.

I encourage you to examine your thoughts and emotions when a colleague irritates you. Are you telling yourself a story that says, “That person is out to get me. How can they be so disrespectful? Why are they doing this to me? I’ll figure out a way to get back at them. They’ll be sorry they treated me like this.”

If you’re telling yourself such a story, think again. It’s not that these thoughts don’t come up—they do, and along with them come all kinds of sensations that we have to deal with, such as tightness of chest, shortness of breath, fire in the belly, heart racing, etc. But if we don’t grab hold of these negative thoughts, emotions and sensations, if we see that they are just part of a story, then they do not control us. Seeing them is not being them, and the part of us that is able to observe can free us from our negative thoughts and emotions by remembering what’s really important.

This week, try neutralizing your negativity about your teammates. Maybe you do that by looking at the bigger picture. Ask yourself what the whole team is trying to achieve, rather than being solely focused on winning one battle. Perhaps you need to be reminded of what other challenges your teammate is trying to deal with to get a better sense of why he or she is behaving badly. Difficult health or family issues can put any of us in a negative state at work. Try spending some down-time with your teammate, at lunch or over coffee, talking about something other than your jobs. If you don’t get the connection you’re hoping for, try something as simple as forgiving her or him and realizing that as much as you’d like to say, “Get over it!” what’s really needed is kindness.

Why does it require the hard lesson of seeing that we might lose someone to value that person? As I watch my father slowly die of kidney failure, so much of my anger and sadness about him melts away in my heart. At the end of the day, all I really feel for him is love and compassion, forgiveness and gratitude. The stories will all be silenced when he dies, just as they were for the Oregon State player who one moment was trying to defeat his rival and the next was down on his knees silently praying for his recovery.

We are so lucky to have one another and be able to work together toward our common goals. Let’s try this week to appreciate our teammates for who they really are and take responsibility for our own negativity by not always believing the stories we like to tell ourselves. Remember that we’re all trying to do the best we can, and each of us is trying to make a difference. In that way, we are much more alike than we realize.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

11/2/09

Good day, team,

Last week was a whirlwind, as I traveled the East Coast presenting sales and customer service training to a client’s branch offices. One experience stands out and forms the heart of this week’s challenge: the importance of getting away from our regular circumstances and patterns to expand how we see the world.

Monday, I flew to New York for Tuesday meetings. Having arrived at LaGuardia airport at around 6 p.m., I traveled to my hotel and, since there wasn’t a restaurant in the hotel, I asked the girls at the front desk about the nearest and best restaurant that I could walk to for dinner. As everyone knows, traveling by air these days provides you with tiny bags of nuts or pretzels, a soft drink, and coffee, unless you want to pay $6.00 for some sort of happy meal, so I was pretty hungry by the time I reached my destination.

My friendly desk clerks told me that the Italian restaurant around the corner was the best place and handed me a card with instructions on how to walk there, along with the name and phone number of the restaurant. As I walked down the street heading toward “Piccolo Venezia,” my stomach growled in anticipation.

I was in Astoria, a solidly blue-collar neighborhood with lots of three-story brick attached town homes, each with a small courtyard in front that showcased many different exhibits. A plethora of Halloween decorations were on display as well as many religious icons: a statue of Mary complete with plastic flowers at her feet, a stone bird bath with St. Francis overlooking the water, and small altars with pictures of Christ, illuminated by votive candles. It seemed like a safe neighborhood, so I relaxed into my stroll to the restaurant.

Once there, I walked into a darkened bar and, as my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw an imposing maitre’d in a tuxedo at the far end of the bar. He stood there with his arms crossed, and it became immediately apparent that I needed to walk to him. OK, I thought: This is New York, and this is his domain, so I play by his rules.

I approached, and he asked, “Are you alone?” I told him I was, and he ushered me into a dining room that looked like the kind of place Tony Soprano would take a more important client, with plenty of fancy touches in its décor. I appreciated that the maitre’d placed me in a good spot where I had a nice view of the room.

I took in my surroundings. Various forms of red wall paper and some interesting pink stone adorned the walls. There were inviting prints of Venice placed near bright gilded sconces.  Next to each table, a row of brass plates engraved with names like “Victor and Gloria Spinoza,” “Bruno and Rita Abelardo,” “Mario and Annalisa Fiorella,” paid tribute to the time-honored customers who had sponsored each table. I pondered how many times a couple would need to frequent a restaurant to pay for an engraved name plate in honor of their particular table. I realized that I was in a long-standing establishment that had a history of favorite customers, special events, and even a few minor celebrities whose pictures adorned the walls of the bar.

It dawned on me that I was no longer on the West Coast. No slow food or casual attire here.  My waiter wore black pants, a short red jacket with a white shirt, and a black bow tie. A white linen hand towel hung from his forearm throughout my entire dinner. When he wasn’t attending a customer, he stood in line with rest of the waiters, who were dressed identically to him, awaiting their next opportunity to serve their customers or get special instructions from the maitre’d, who also stood in attendance quite near them but just far enough away to make a distinction. As my waiter approached and recited the specials to me, I noticed that he didn’t write anything down as I ordered, he just nodded his approval when I mentioned certain dishes and was quick to make suggestions when I needed help.

Before long, I was served some delicious homemade pasta and a large glass of red wine. I could easily overhear the conversation at the table next to me: four men discussing their families, their jobs and the state of the world. One fellow’s wife was about to have their first baby. An older gentlemen at the table gave him advice about helping out in the middle of the night if the baby started to cry and suggested good Italian names for baby boys. Another fellow talked about the state of the economy, how in all his years, he’d never been so slow at the shop and hoped that, just as the stock market seemed to be picking up, his business would too. He said, “The cars they bring in these days aren’t what they used to be: No chrome, no fins, just little plastic economy cars that people don’t seem to care too much about detailing.”

When a large Italian family across the room passed the newest family member around—a chubby-cheeked baby with bright dark eyes and lots of black hair—I could hear the older family members speaking endearments to the child in Italian. How many members of that family had had the same experience many years before at the same table in the same restaurant?

I was born in New York state, and I lived in Manhattan for two years, so I have vague memories of New York accents and old Italian restaurants, but it had been so long ago that my familiarity with these things was very faint. This is a life very different from mine, I thought, and as I sat enjoying my dinner, I was reminded how important it is to remove ourselves from our daily surroundings regularly so we can become more aware of how other people live.

It’s easy for us to become comfortable with our lives when our attitudes and routines are never challenged. But place yourself in someone elses world and you find that, although you may not understand or agree with her or him, you become intrigued with that way of life.  Though we all share common concerns, our way of dealing with challenges may be very different. To expand our repertoire, it helps to keep our minds and hearts open to different traditions and customs.

When I finished the main course, my waiter approached and asked, “Ah, signora, some tiramisu and espresso for dessert?” I motioned to my very full stomach and replied, “No, grazie, but the pasta was great!” He smiled politely and swept the bread crumbs off my tablecloth with the small metal bar he kept in his pocket.

As I walked back to my hotel, I understood the importance of familiarity in our lives. It gives us stability and a sense of purpose.  I learned that for 25 years my waiter has worked at that restaurant and each late afternoon as he makes his way across town to get there,  he looks forward to waiting on the customers who have been coming there year after year to celebrate the important events in their lives or just have a good Italian dinner. I was the customer from Portland, some distant city he had seen mentioned in a “New York Times” restaurant review, who dropped into his life for a few hours. Maybe it was just long enough that it caused him to think about his life a little differently. When I mentioned that we enjoy locally grown produce in our restaurants here, he was surprised. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that if you live in a place where it doesn’t snow a lot, and it rains plenty, perhaps you can keep a local garden all year that can supply your restaurant. He shook his head as he pondered the thought and said, “There’s no room in my backyard to grow anything anyway, but my mother always grew her own tomatoes in a window box.” He sounded proud of her and as though he might entertain the idea himself.

This week, do something different to open yourself up to new ideas or possibilities. If you always drive the same way to work, try a different route. If you go to the same grocery store, try another one this week. Maybe you always start a meeting the same way or repeat the same routine when you get to the office each morning.  Ask a colleague, “What do you do each morning when you come in?” to discover a different way to start your day, and then experiment with it.

We are creatures of habit, but we also have the ability to adapt to many different ways of being. Don’t be afraid to stretch your boundaries for a week.  You may just find that it helps you see the world with a more expanded and compassionate view.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

10/26/09

Good day, team,

This past weekend, I’ve been perusing some of the coach’s challenges I wrote back in 2004. There was one in particular that seemed appropriate to republish, given some of the difficulties I see my clients facing at present. Here’s a portion of the challenge from April 2004:

“Try not to be defensive. We often find this stance is our knee-jerk reaction to blame: When someone blames us, we defend ourselves. The reality is that if we are trying to do our best, there is nothing to defend. See how often you defend yourself with others. More importantly, notice how often you defend yourself internally. Thoughts like “They really don’t understand me. I’m the one who was right; they just don’t get it” are a form of inner defensiveness. Sooner or later, this inner defensiveness gets projected out onto to someone else.”

What struck me about this challenge was the partnership that blame and defensiveness form in working against us, particularly when we’re trying to play on the same team. At the heart of this defensiveness is our overwhelming desire to be right.   This desire along with wanting to look good, or be the smartest person in the room, is so overwhelming that it blinds us to whatever anyone else is saying or doing.

I remember my father talking with my mother over dinner one evening about his colleague Bill. Bill always had to be right, always had to put himself in the best light possible, and could not be trusted because he focused entirely on making himself look good. My father said, “Bill is so determined to be right that even when he’s wrong, he’s often the first to point it out, so he can be right about being wrong!” I remember thinking how awful it must be to worry about what other people think about you all the time.

On reflection, I realize that what my father said that evening about not trusting Bill is at the heart of this issue. We can find other people to be reliable, competent and friendly, even committed to the same goals we are, but if we think their chief motivation is to make themselves look good, that their goal is merely the next promotion, a big bonus or a chance to pump up their ego, we don’t trust them.

When our self-image is at stake, we go to extraordinary lengths to defend ourselves. Sadly, though, the self-image we’ve created is imaginary, and so we end up defending something that doesn’t exist. I often ask my husband, “What do you see me doing?” because I cannot see myself. I’m too close to my well-honed self-image, like the hand right in front of my face, touching my nose. I often have to check in with myself to inquire about my true motivation. Am I only doing this to make myself look good? Have I taken anyone else’s well-being into account before I pursue a given course of action?

Some of the people I consider heroes—Gandhi, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama—have never been afraid to be wrong in the eyes of others when it comes to the well-being and welfare of their fellow beings. I hold them in high esteem and often think, “What would they do?” before I act.

Your challenge this week is to see where you are most defended and ask yourself, “Who am I defending?” If you often blame others for what goes wrong, ask yourself if blaming them leads to a good outcome. How much of your motivation is about making yourself look good rather than what’s best for the team? Be courageous in your inquiry.

The Dalai Lama advises, “When you think everything is someone else´s fault, you will suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy. Pride leads to violence and evil. The truly good gaze upon everything with love and understanding.”

Have a good week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

10/19/09

Good day, team,

Lately, I’ve been on a crusade to make things less complicated. I use the word crusade because I’ve had some pretty extreme ideas about how to do this. I announced to my husband at dinner the other evening that if I had a large tractor with a big scooper on the front, I would plow through our house and scoop up everything that was not absolutely necessary to keep (which is much more than I’d like to admit) and take it all away. Of course, he asked, “Where would you dump it?” but that’s another question.

This new attitude cropped up after my recent weekend on silent retreat. If you have nothing to do but just sit and “be” and you remain quiet enough, you begin to see how simple things really are and how the the mind likes to complicate matters. I notice that once my mind has hold of an idea, it loves to explore it, chew on it, expand it, disagree with it, analyze it, add to it, etc.

Not that there’s anything wrong with this activity, goodness knows: Many great inventions and discoveries have been made though just this process. But when the mind takes something that is relatively simple and then creates all kinds of complications around it, the process can complicate our lives and the lives of others.

Here’s a good example. In the past six months, I’ve bid on two projects for the City of Portland. Having not worked for the city before and wanting to find ways to give back to the community, I thought working on a coaching project would be a good experience. The first Request for Proposal—a nasty, gnarly document that was extremely complicated and laborious—required 24 hours to complete.

It was painful to respond to every question, some of which didn’t make sense and others of which were impossible to answer given the information provided. I realized halfway through completion that if this was any indication of what it would be like to work for the city, I might not be interested. I had to laugh when, at the end, I was asked to submit my bid on double-sided paper, to be more environmentally conscious. Too bad that same standard hadn’t been applied to the eight pages of instructions.

I wasn’t exactly disappointed when my bid envelope was returned unopened with a letter saying the city had run out of funds for the project the day after the bids were received. I held the still-sealed envelope in my hand and thought, “Well, I guess I’ll chalk this up to my one and only experience attempting to do some civic duty.” The entire exercise seemed like a waste of my time, but then again, I often don’t know why I do things until much later, so perhaps I went through all of this for a reason.

Two weeks ago I received an e-mail from another department in the City of Portland. This group sent out an informal RFP via e-mail that consisted of five topics to address, three questions to answer and a request for a resume. It took be about an hour to put everything together, which I sent back by e-mail.

When I was done, I realized that the information I had e-mailed was pretty much like the five two-sided pages I had completed a few months before, but in a much simpler and more concise form. The big difference was that one agency had made its request incredibly complicated, whereas the other had streamlined the process down to its essential details.

Herein lies your challenge this week. At work, see if you continue to go through a complicated process every day just because that’s the way it’s always been done. Are you complicating a task that’s actually relatively simple, just because you think it requires more intellectual rigor? How about your instructions to others? Are you confusing people by asking too many questions and getting farther and farther away from the core issue?

If you find yourself sitting in a meeting and can’t remember why it was called, ask yourself, “What’s the real issue here?  Have we gone down a road that leads us in a much more complicated direction? Are we spending too much time on something that’s really not all that important and, in doing so, side-tracking the real issues? For example, have we just spent the last hour wrangling over the issue of where to hold the company Christmas party when our sales have slipped for the fourth month in a row? Can we table everyone’s opinions for a moment to clarify what we’re really doing here?”

I’ve developed a new mantra that seems to be working for me: simpler, easier, better. Try saying that to yourself this week and see what happens.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

10/12/09

This past week Cloud Four (my website gurus) transformed my website yet again and enabled the blog feature.  We did this in response to a number of requests from subscribers who wanted to connect and converse with the community of people who read these weekly challenges. So I finally acquiesced and decided to begin blogging. I have resisted blogging for quite awhile for a few reasons. One, because I don’t like it when people start a blog and and then don’t keep it up. Two, I don’t like being criticized (invariably, someone writes in and  says, “you’re an idiot and what you write about is dumb”), and three, my ego got in the way.

So, let’s talk about number three, because I can see in writing this that number two and number three are part of the same resistance.  When I say my ego got in the way, I am referring to a voice in me  that always has a comment about my writing. It says all kinds of things like, “who’s really interested in what you have to say?” and “gee, that’s pretty good for someone who’s not really a writer” and so on. It’s the kind of ego that grows out of self-pity and self-judgment.   It took me awhile to understand this. I always thought that ego was like vanity, i.e., the part of us that thinks we’re special or better than someone else (I’m afraid I have some of those thoughts as well!).  But I soon came to understand that ego and vanity are exactly the same. When you tell yourself you’re not special and that you’re not as good as someone else, it still singles you out and makes you the center of the universe. It’s still all about ‘me’. It’s just reflects a negative rather than a positive self image. When I’m in that negative space I’m not thinking about anyone else.  I notice that even when I do think about others, it’s often in the context of what they might think about me, or what they’ve done to me, or how they’ve affected me.  So, there it is again, me, me, me.

As a coach, most of my days are involved with listening and speaking with others about themselves. There’s no end to the difficulties we all encounter.  A big part of why I love coaching is that I never seem to tire of the stories people tell me.  I’m fascinated by what motivates people and how they work to enrich their lives.  But, I also see that our minds construct a set of ideas and an image of who we think we are.  And when events don’t align with those images and ideas, we feel anxiety and struggle to find meaning.

In a way, I’ve grown to see that it’s my ego that often tries to define me. If I’m not careful, I take that definition to be all that I am.  In truth, I know that I am actually not anything that my ego defines.  My true nature isn’t an actual thing, thank goodness, but rather …. well, if I could define it, it would be a thing, right?

Your challenge this week is to see what’s not your ego. See when you act from that ego personality and when you don’t.  Perhaps you experience something of such beauty that it takes your breath away and, in that moment, there is no definition or thought, just an experience of beauty.  Maybe you say a prayer and, afterwards, you have that warm, spacious feeling in your heart – no need for dramatization or definition.  Often when I’m walking, I find that my mind isn’t telling me anything about myself or my surroundings.  There’s something in the rhythm of just walking that can quiet my ego.

I have a friend who loves to snow ski because he says, “when I’m skiing I’m just skiing, nothing else. It’s such a joy to do something that doesn’t require any thought or commentary. Of course, the minute I fall down I look around to make sure no one has seen me. My ego takes over and comments on my skiing ability. Right then, that moment of peace is gone.”

When we give to others in unconditional ways, we are likely to find that the mind and heart are at peace.  Find what works for you this week. Find something that allows you to experience a moment when the ego is not in charge. You may find that by observing your ego at work, you might just get a glimpse into what it is not, what is beneath it.

Years ago at a retreat, I heard someone ask the teacher, “How can I get rid of my ego?”  The teacher replied,  “Ego just is. And if you try to make it go away you’ll see that it’s your ego that is determined to be successful at making it go away and will be monitoring your progress and commenting about it.”  One of my favorite phrases comes from Papaji, and Indian teacher who advised us to allow the ego to become the handmaiden to the self, rather than the other way around.

Papaji’s teacher, Ramana Maharshi  also said, “Take no notice of the ego and its activities but see only the light behind it.”

Have a good week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.