It’s hot and I don’t like it!

Today is another scorching, hot day. I know many of you reading this are experiencing the same. I come from the south. In my hometown of Monroe, Louisiana the normal high temperature is 95 for several summer months with high humidity as an accompaniment. You would think I would have grown used to this and just love summer weather. Nope. I have an aversion that is quite emphatic.

I was sitting with my dislike of hot weather and wondering how it impacts me. For starters, it creates a bit of separation with my wife. She loves hot weather. In fact, while I write this piece in the cool of my office, she’s outside in the 90+ afternoon smiling as she clips the grass. This is on the tail end of putting in 3 hours in the 1/2 acre garden today.

So how is it that she has this love of heat and I don’t. I know that the simple answer is, it comes from our beliefs. I believe that hot/ humid weather is uncomfortable, stifling, clammy (I can fill the page with adjectives and adverbs). I remember as a child feeling unhappy when it was warm and muggy. We didn’t have air conditioning until I was well into high school and I detested having to sleep in a puddle of sweat. Yet, all this is my response to the external world, rather than some absolute truth.

If hot and humid weather produced misery in everyone, then my wife would feel just like me. For her, the heat is a source of growth for the garden. She feels alive and stimulated on these hot summer days. She hums while I grin and bear it.

There is something simply astounding about my situation. Beliefs come from so many places that, often, we don’t even know we have them. Sometimes, the only sign of a belief is an opinion that comes with it. Such as I like this or dislike that, or this is good and that is bad. This opinion often arises to bolster my beliefs.

Today, I’m looking at my beliefs about heat. Probably a good idea, considering it’s likely going to get hotter here on planet Earth. More fundamentally, I’m reminded once again of the power of beliefs. WIth heat and humidity, my mood can quickly become glum and my physical stamina depleted. These reactions are coming not from some discernment of what I’m experiencing, but from my conditioned responses that are reinforced over many years.

As with my wife and I, the only difference between each of us is what we believe. When we start remembering that, and drop the need to be right about our beliefs, we open the door for authentic relationships. We don’t need to absolutely agree with each other, but to respect each persons right to their beliefs.

As you start your week, you may want to look around and see where you have different beliefs than someone you are close to. Practice not judging their beliefs as wrong or bad or inferior. Then, see, what this little change does to your relationship.

What do you Really Believe?

One of our projects today was to put a deer fence around my wife’s half-acre garden. You see the deer have been freely walking through and seem to like the leaves of everything from sunflowers to soybeans. With all the hard work that goes into tilling and growing, this is not a welcome development.

My wife and I were in our local Tractor Supply looking for twine to tie the deer fencing to the posts we were installing. We had reached the point where our seemingly endless ball of twine had been used up. We made our way to the rope section and found that all the rope and twine were products of a company whose values we don’t support.

We were faced with the dilemma of the convenience of buying what we needed right now or walking away. We didn’t think long about it. We decided we would scavenge twine from other parts of the garden until we could find twine from another company.

When we were back in the garden, I got to thinking about how, each day, we are faced with the choice of whether we support businesses whose values are not consistent with ours. On the one hand many people I know are quick to share an opinion about how badly these companies treat their employees, subvert the political process for their own gain, undermine unions, etc. They say they believe this is wrong. Yet, when they are faced with spending their money with the companies they vilify they have some rationalizing story that soothes their conscious and overrides what they say. To my way of thinking the only way to know what someone truly believe is to observe their actions.

I’m no saint. There are times when I don’t pay attention to the company behind the products I buy. My wife is much more attuned to this and helps me steer clear of obvious situations like she did at Tractor Supply today.

Many who read this post believe we need to reform corporate values. The only way this change is going to happen is for you and I to vote our values with our purchases. Companies can’t exist without customers. Customers who buy from their values will impact company values. For one of the key principles of all corporations is survival. If changing the values of a company can impact its survival, that change may well happen.

My invitation is for you to join me in exercising greater vigilance in spending your money. FInd out about the companies behind the goods and services you buy. Never compromise for the sake of convenience. It’s just not worth it.

What… Work on a Saturday?

It’s Saturday, and I’m writing. A month ago, when I put my head down and decided to write consistently in this Blog, the inner dialogue said something like, “Five days a week is enough of a jump for you. You haven’t been able to keep up a consistent rhythm of writing for years.” That made sense to me so, I committed to writing five days a week.

A few days ago, I was replaying this inner conversation and realized there was a flaw. I mean, do I breathe only five days a week or eat five days a week (more about eating next week)? Of course not! I do have a mindset about writing being work. It’s what I do when I’m not having fun. Hmm..I thought, “but I’m enjoying writing and it’s as much a part of who I am as anything else. “

That cracked the ice and more beliefs that are like this one have come up for review. For instance, I have the belief that I must spend less time with my family during the “work week” because, well, I’m working and work is a 9 to 5 (or longer) sort of thing”. What a trap that belief is.

I already have my own business and I can set whatever schedule I want. So I’m letting this old programming define my life. That seems ridiculous. I hear a lot of inner noise when I write this. “Don’t let your wife see this. She will want to change everything about what you do.”  (editor’s note: what makes you think that SW)Also vying for my attention is, “How can you take care of your financial commitments with this stupid idea?” There’s a lot more going on, but you get the picture.

Regardless of these distracting voices, I’m going to approach my days (whatever day it may be) with deliberateness. I will allow whatever feels right to be where I put my attention. I don’t know what will happen to the concerns voiced, but I’m going to give it a go and let you know.

Until later,

Our beliefs define what’s possible!

As I was reflecting on the quote of Anaïs Nin, in which he says,” We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are,” I was thinking about the current state of the economy. It seems that there are so many signs that the system within which we have worked for many decades is failing.

Every day there is news of layoffs or bankruptcies or another government bailout program. What’s interesting is that all of these steps are implemented from a belief that what we have been doing works if only we can temporarily bolster it.

What if that belief is invalid? What if we need to change the basic structure of how our economic system works? In times of great crisis, it is those who propose solutions that remake the landscape who often provide the most effective way out of the crisis.

In this time, we all need to assess our core beliefs about our individual economic situations. It is in these beliefs that we will find both our blindness and our strengths. To help you understand what I mean, I will use myself as an example.

I have a belief that “hard work” is the only way to financial success. This belief comes from a long history in my family that the men who worked hard were considered “good” men. So what is the problem with this belief? For one thing, it comes from an hourly wage labor perspective. The more I work, the more I get paid. Overtime (working harder) is a favorable consequence for hard work!?!

Now this belief may have worked well if I was a contract laborer when manufacturing was booming. What this belief does is not have me understand the value that I provide. This type of belief likens people to machines and the consequence of that is felt in every aspect of our lives.

When I think of the current economic situation, there is one belief that I find indicative of the challenges we face for change. This belief is that a corporation should live forever. When you think about it, corporations are formed for a specific purpose. This purpose was framed in the world that the corporation was serving. The world changes. A fundamental question that would be useful to ask is “Does it make sense for this corporation to continue?”

What happens more often than not is that the leaders of the corporation work diligently to find a way to shift the company. Maybe it’s new markets or a new technology approach, or whatever. This is fraught with challenges. For starters, the belief system that the corporation was founded upon is still in place. Simply making some changes in product lines or customer bases doesn’t change those now obsolete beliefs. So then, the company is struggling to succeed in its “new world” while unknowingly holding on to all the baggage of its past.

There are many other analogies I can draw. The point is, to borrow a quote from Albert Einstein, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” So why do we try? Probably, because it seems like the only thing to do. And yet it will fail.

What to do? Stop for a moment and let the true nature of life reveal itself. This can be done by quieting my emotions and ‘logical’ intellect. The key to this “essential looking” is to look with my intuition. For my intuition doesn’t have an agenda to further, or a point of view to support. It only feels what’s so.

When you feel you have the real truth of a situation, see if it “rings” in you. If it does, then you are on the right track. If it doesn’t, then stop and keep looking for the essence until you feel that ring of knowing.

Let me know your feelings about this.

Until later,

Thomas

What bubble am I living in?

I was reading an article in the July issue of The Atlantic titled, Infectious Exuberance. The author, Richard Shiler was writing about the boom and bust in the real estate market that have been a part of the history of the U.S.

One of the things that he talks about is how booms continue until the inevitable bust happens. He says that when a boom is happening, most people live in the “bubble” of beliefs that foster the boom. Beliefs such as “the prices of houses will continue to increase at 10% per year indefinitely” or “the safest investment you can make is buying a home”. These and other beliefs are accepted as truth by a large enough portion of the population and create a mood of inevitability.

There are some people who do not hold these beliefs. They may believe, “whenever there is a boom a bust will follow” or “it is impossible for this type of growth to continue.” Whatever their beliefs, they are watching with a different set of eyes if you will. They can see when indicators start showing a change that may lead to a reversal of the current trends of growth. While people living in the “bubble” of beliefs of inevitable growth don’t see these trends at all.

Then the bust begins. Those that were living in the “bubble” of continuous growth are “surprised” What happened, they ask? Those that had different beliefs were clearly observing the coming changes and would take action before the bust gets a full head of steam.

I say all this because it revealed to me a phenomena that I have experienced in many areas of my life. I have had times when I was so attached to something working out such as a business relationship that I did not see the signs that someone else not living in my “bubble” of optimism would have easily seen. I did not take action to correct the situation until it failed and I, like the people living in the “bubble” of inevitable growth, would have the sense of being “surprised”.

So right now, I am taking inventory of the “bubbles” that I am living in. What beliefs do I hold on to unquestioningly. For it is these beliefs that create a “blindness” in me and the outcome of continuing with these beliefs is often uncomfortable and not something I really want to happen.

What about you. What “bubbles” do you live in?

Until later,

Thomas

Technorati Tags: Accountability, dotherightthing, integrity, Intuition, leadership, success, Truth, Wisdom

Your declaration of independence

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. ~William Faulkner

In the U.S. we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. For many of us, the significance of this day may be more about time off from work, picnics and fireworks. As Sherry (my wife) and I were talking about Independence Day, we were reflecting on what this day could mean to us in a more personal way.

The signatories of the Declaration of Independence were letting the monarch of England know that they were no longer under his rule. They were setting out the terms t they were embracing for this independence. They were putting this lives on the line to stand for what was right and just to them.

Am I ready to declare my independence? What is it that I will be independent from? This question wasn’t one that I considered before today. What am I dependent on that is not supportive of my purpose and values? Oh, I thought, “that’s a good question.” Immediately I could feel a range of limitations that I automatically respond with in certain situations. What is causing these responses?

Simply said, it is beliefs that I have. These beliefs are mostly someone else’s belief that I chose as my own without consideration. So I am allowing my life to be experienced through the beliefs of others. For instance, when I was growing up, I heard a lot the admonition, “Be careful, you might get hurt.” Sometimes the concern that drove this caution was because I was clearly in harms way. Mostly though, it was a fear the adult had that was not based on fact, but on some belief they had about that situation. Like, “don’t pet that dog, it might bite you.” So I accepted their fear of dogs and was afraid myself. It goes on and on.

So today, I am declaring my independence from beliefs that limit my creative abilities and keep me from experiencing the amazing life I have created.

What do you declare your independence from today?

Until Later,

Thomas

Technorati Tags: authenticity, courage, dotherightthing, integrity, leadership, Purpose, Truth, values, Wisdom