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Why Meaning Matters

Meaning is what fuels success in good times and bad, but that doesn’t surprise you, right? If you were to pick up any article or listen to any expert on the topic of employee engagement, happiness or sustainable success, they would undoubtedly throw around the terms “purpose” and “meaning.” And yet, what’s difficult is where to find this elusive concept and how to incorporate it into one’s work day-in, day-out.

But first, let’s remind ourselves why “meaning” plays such a vital role in long-term success.  Success typically starts with a vision: I want to be this, do that, and have these things - hopefully, in that order.  As I’ve said before, these declarations are defined in the conscious mind.  And yet, we know that achieving goals is predicated on getting the desires of the rational, conscious mind aligned with the actions and behaviors of the unconscious mind because the latter aspect of mind is really in charge. So in short, the successful have learned to bring the unconscious mind along by speaking its language: emotions.

I’m not talking about fear, revenge or even pride.  Research has proven that these types of motivations are short-lived because they invite old behaviors to return once the risk is out of sight.  However, positive, forward-facing emotions allure the unconscious mind to turn off the automatic pilot so we can get outside our comfort zone.  And yet, some people will go an entire lifetime without knowing what stirs the deepest crevices of their soul, which is why purpose feels like an elusive concept for so many.

My search for meaning started with years of self-absorbed navel-gazing.  Oh, I asked myself all the “right” questions: who I am, why am I here, what do I do well, what’s most important in my life, what are my interests, what has my life taught me so far, and now that I’m here, what am I meant to do – right now?  I’m not discounting the process – it introduced me to the importance of meaning and changed my life.  I exited that process knowing full well that I was supposed to be helping others to unleash their untapped potential.  But, in retrospect, I am also aware that some of my answers came from my head, not my heart.  And, here’s how I know the difference.

Last summer I was in Phoenix and took a quick two-day trip to Sedona with a colleague.  If you’ve been to this magical place, you already know it’s the allure of the red rocks and nature’s untapped splendor that brings millions of tourists to this part of Arizona each year.  On our second day we set an intention: find a vortex.  A vortex is a site where the energy of an area is said to be concentrated and it is a great place to pray, meditate or heal.  So, Sally and I embraced our new-aged Thelma and Louise personas and set off in the compact rental car with the vortex map from the visitor’s center and the pendulum we’d purchased hours earlier in-hand.  Go ahead and laugh; we did.

And yet, that all changed for me when I sat at the base of the first mountain. We’d split up, and I sat uncomfortably on a rock in my attempt to meditate. The chatter of the morning ran through my head: how did I miss the rain forecast, I wish I’d had another cup of coffee, were we really at the right location. One minute passed. I continued to sit, and my thoughts slowed.  Two minutes turned into five.  There was more silence than chatter.  I don’t know how long it was when the message came through to my consciousness, “It’s time for us to heal.”  

The words didn’t make rational sense, but my body viscerally responded to the truth of the statement.  Tears formed in my eyes.   

Not long after that thought, a picture entered my awareness: it was a Native American Medicine Wheel.  Months earlier I wouldn’t have recognized the symbol, but now I had an inlay of a medicine wheel in the foyer of a house my husband and I had purchased a few months earlier.

The concrete and copper wheel in our house was created by the original owner, Kitty Farmer.  At the time, she was a literary agent.  However, she would go on to leave the publishing industry, move from Washington State, and co-found the Medicine Wheel Foundation, which addresses the significant health disparities occurring in the Native American population.  I had the chance to talk to Kitty about the wheel and her work, and afterward, was intrigued enough to watch the trailer of a documentary she was making, What’s in the Heart.  The film, once completed, would highlight the cost of emotional wounds from past generations and explore the programs that are bridging allopathic and traditional native healing practices to assist the Native American communities to heal.

The words that flooded my conscious awareness that day were taken directly from that video, “It is time to for us to heal.”

This was a significant moment for me, because I’d been avoiding using the word “healing” to describe my work.  And yet, on that day my heart opened and I heard those words as if they were my own. I knew I wanted to be a part of the movement to help people to self-heal in more non-conventional ways.  My work would be different than Kitty Farmer’s, but in the global sense – it was the same.  After all, my self-discovery had been surface until I learned how to open my heart.  It was clear that the time had arrived to let go of my ego and listen to the whispers of my soul, which is where you find real purpose and meaning.  And, you’ll know you found it when your emotions tell you so. 

Today, those words – IT’S TIME TO HEAL - sit above my desk in the visual mapping goal work I did with Patti Dobrowolski a few months ago.  It’s an icon that keeps me focused, inspired, courageous and clear.  It fuels my work, and my life.  It tells me why I exist, right now.  And, it opens the door to the real principles of success.   

This is a series of posts born from the post, The Real Secrets to Success.  In our next post, we will explore the importance of Ecology to success.  

The Real Principles of Success

Over three years ago I posted an anonymous Craig’s list ad and sent out a viral email seeking volunteers who wanted to take a yearlong journey to discover the real secrets to loving work.  I egotistically thought I’d share my wisdom, and in return, they’d give me permission to chronicle their stories in a book one day.  In the end, I was humbly reminded that they had more to teach me about the real principles of success than I had to share, and the book was put on hold.  Fast-forward to today and a lot has changed since that first innocent post.

My quest for more answers changed the face of my business, corporate clients replaced my willing volunteers, and the yearlong program was shaved down to nine months.  What hasn’t changed, however, is that my students continue to teach me much about happiness and success.  In fact, I want to share today the collective wisdom that surfaced from one of my last groups that wrapped up earlier this month. My hope – to pay homage to their hard work and dedication by sharing what I think they’d want you to know about the real secrets to loving work.

Meaning

We’ve always known that purpose and meaning grows in importance come mid-life. Finding meaning answers the question, “What’s important and why am I here?”  People seem to be waking up to this question earlier these days.  For folks just like you and me, answering this question means connecting to the emotional desire and intrinsic motivation that carries you in the face of adversity and challenge.  It creates grit.  For those receiving the benefits of what we do, meaning and purpose conveys without words that heart is embedded in the outcome of the work. 

Conscious Choice

By the time adults become employees they have become a bundle of automatic reflexes and their earliest life experiences have settled into comfortable patterns meant to keep them safe from repeating the past.  And so, those who are achieving a new level of success operate from a place of present-moment awareness and choice. This allows anyone to more gracefully embrace uncertainty, trust their intuition and take full responsibility for what’s important…one decision and solution at a time.  Sure, living in the present still includes a declaration to big bold intentions for the future, but never at the cost of ignoring what they’re being called to do right now.

Authenticity

We’ve grown accustomed to “sameness” in the Western world, which forced people to quiet their own needs, vulnerabilities, desires and hide behind the mask of ego: the person they think they need to be in order to be successful. This shaped the fear-based systems of conformity, control and judgment that’s still present in business today.  However, sameness is making way for greater individuality and creativity that is being fueled by awareness and a willingness to let go of old ways of being.  In return, there’s more unapologetic authenticity out in the world. These are the folks who have learned to listen from the inside and operate from a place of flow, faith, gratitude and abundance that manifests in very tangible ways.   In the end, they define and achieve success on their own terms because work is an extension of who they are most naturally.

Ecological

When using the term ecological, it’s much more than a reference to the planet. Ecology begs the question about whether what and how people do their work is good for those who are directly and indirectly impacted: maybe those they love the most, the team, organization or community they support, the country where they live, and yes, even the planet.  Using ecology as an on-going litmus test gives way to healthy boundaries, flexibility, character and ultimately, legacy.  Those who ignore this natural ecosystem suffer the effects of non-sustainability because resources are easily depleted – even within humans – when there are more withdrawals than deposits. 

Collaboration

Competition was emphasized when Darwin declared the human ecosystem was based on survival of the fittest.  Of course, this is fear-based thinking.  However, physics now tells us what we believed in more mystical times:  we are all interconnected.  There is no such thing as “separateness” that keeps anyone safe when someone strives to win at any cost.  In fact, when someone loses, the whole collective of humanity loses a little bit at a time even when we hide behind the façade of pride. I suspect those of you who are prospering in this economy already understand this principle and are maximizing opportunities to trade, collaborate and partner for the greater good.

Service

All of us have a unique set of special gifts and talents we bring to this world.  When these natural wonders converge, it defines that one thing someone does better than most.  We call this brilliance.  Claiming and naming one’s brilliance illuminates the possibilities and lights the pathway to success through a natural call into service. Not subservient service, but empowered service for the betterment of humanity.  No longer is it necessary to extrapolate our interests, desires and ambitions in order to serve humanity. When humanity launches from this place, there is no need to sell, convince or unnaturally wedge services into places where they don’t fit because it’s the story embedded in the repetition that opens doors and closes deals.

Again, I thank my students [turned teachers] for this wisdom. You courageously showed up, discovered and clarified for me what really creates happiness and success from the inside out.  On a personal level, you gently reminded me that living these principles is the only way to see clear to your place in the world; and, it’s not a destination, but a journey.  For that, and many other things, I am humbled and grateful that you allowed me to serve as your guide on this leg of this journey.

After this post and over the next few weeks, I will expand on what these principals mean to me – please stay tuned.

You Get What You Need

There is this thirst in our society to find the “perfect” something – whether it’s the perfect career, perfect relationship or perfect circumstances.  We want to know what we are supposed to be doing, and are convinced it will bring a lifetime of happiness and success.  And in our incessant search for all the right answers we miss what our life is trying to tell us – right now.  Embarrassingly, I found myself in this very position recently.  And, I thought you might want to know how to avoid similar circumstances. 

It all started a few months ago.  My practice was thriving, but I was asking the old question of, “What’s next?”  Therefore, I did what I tell all my clients to do whenever progress feels stalled: I revisited my long-term vision of success, declared three big goals, and prepared to watch things naturally unfold.

For the first time, I did my visioning work with the help of Patti Dobrowolski.  She specializes in visual mapping, meaning I talked about what I wanted and she gave visual representation to my words, ideas and dreams.  The process was incredibly inspiring.  I reconfirmed my long-term vision to help people to reconnect to their full potential through healing.  (Let’s be honest, we’re getting loud signals that the world needs healing right now.) And to further the mission, I committed three goals to paper – create a healing center, tell my own story of personal transformation, and build a robust on-line community for those interested in learning how to self-heal.

Since that time, I could give you a million little and a few big examples of coincidences that have unfolded effortlessly – like unexpectedly buying land for the healing center, miraculously finding financing in this economy, having a spectacular marketing team assembled on my behalf – but of course, nothing happens by accident. Nothing.  No, we all move closer to what we want when we learn to trust, pay attention and act definitively.  Oh, the decisions don’t always feel logical or rational at the time, but I’ve come to give greater value the unconscious mind and the collective wisdom of something greater than myself.  I just have faith in these pulling forces because they are always a few steps ahead of the limited conscious mind, which is where we tend to conjure up short-term goals anyway.  But when you get them on all the same page – magic happens, and it happens quickly.

That’s right.  When you declare a goal out loud, you have to be prepared as the universe rearranges itself on your behalf.   You might get the right email at the perfect time, read an article that answers an old nagging question or show up at the wrong appointment and meet the right person.  But what people don’t often tell you is that you also have to be prepared to get circumstances that you didn’t want, which is what happened when my writing coach almost fired me a month ago.

Fire me?  I’d just declared my recommitment to writing the book. I thought to myself, “I can’t write a book without my writing coach?!”  But of course, my coaches’ perspective was much more on target:  I can’t write a book if I don’t make time for writing the book.

Like I said, the universe will rearrange itself on your behalf.  And, you may not always get what you want, but you’ll get what you need.  You just have to trust that it’s all happening for the right reasons. Sometimes it’s a lesson cloaked as a diversion.  If you haven’t heeded the lesson in the past, it can easily look like a wake-up call.  My conversation with Kimberly was a wake-up call.  And the only way you’ll know the difference is to ask yourself what your life is telling you – right now.

When I asked myself that question, I noticed a convergence zone of sorts. My coach asking me to declare a specific writing goal, my breakthrough appointments uncharacteristically slowing, the all-star marketing team efforts that started to wane, the computer problems which cut me off from barrages of email, an invitation to writing time in the woods… and as a result, I’ve done lots of writing. Over 5,000 words, thank you very much. It’s not yet a chapter, but it’s a start – and a good start.

So today, I am humbly reminding you to stop, look and listen to what your life is telling you – right now.  Having a long-term vision and declaring goals tells the universe what you want, but you have to be prepared to listen even when you don’t like the answer.  Don’t take for granted the hidden meaning that arises from the circumstances of your everyday life.  If you’re not getting the perfection of what you want, it probably means you’re getting the perfection of what you need.  

Demystifying Emotional Triggers

Have you ever felt emotionally hijacked – held captive by some mysterious emotional trigger that you didn’t quite understand?  Who hasn’t, right?  You know the drill: a flood of unexplained and seemingly uncontrollable emotion races through your body and seizes your ability to behaving rationally.  An emotional trigger can be spurred on by something as simple as a distressing email or a customer service conversation gone wrong, but let’s not forget about the perky neighbor or co-worker that everyone seems to adore…everyone, but you.

When these reactions happen, it’s so easy to look outside of ourselves and blame the situation or person pushing our buttons.  But, what if I told you that every emotional hijack is actually a ransom note telling you there is something to heal?  I was abruptly reminded of this fact last week when I found myself in the midst of an unexpected emotional tailspin.

At the time, my husband and I were discussing our long-term financial plans.  The conversation included sobering topics like wills, life insurance, and retirement income; important issues, but not fun, right?  Well, in the middle of the conversation I found myself officially hijacked.  Hell, between us – it was like I had a case of undiagnosed Tourette’s syndrome.  On some level, I was aware that my response was totally out of proportion, but I just couldn’t stop myself.  My emotions were over-the-top, out-of-control and my body’s physiology kicked into high gear, which left nothing to bubble up to the rational brain but waves of desperation.  That’s how a hijack works, unfortunately.

And yet, we both know that these natural and automatic fight or flight responses are supposed to be reserved for the real thing – like an intruder in your home or ten foot waves at the bow of your boat.  Both, by the way, I’ve experienced. So, a few hours later I embarrassingly asked myself – “What was I thinking?” – knowing I wasn’t thinking at all.  So, I wondered, "What unconscious belief caused this response?"
     
As I’ve said before, the unconscious mind works on the premise of least effort.  It’s always on the lookout for seemingly similar circumstances and responses from the past in hopes of applying those old responses to present day situations.  It was clear I had a belief that had been running amuck for some time.  So, I went looking for the root cause.

Here is what I found:  “You are not capable of supporting yourself!”

This, of course, is a disempowering belief that is not true, so I let it go. In a matter of minutes, I could feel a sense of self-reliance, capability and focus being unleashed in my body.  These internal resources didn’t come from a protective “I’ll show you” mindset, but from a place of internal expansion.  In that moment, I knew the resources had already been there but it’s as if they were being held captive by a very old wound. 

In the days that passed, I reflected on how this belief has shaped my life.  If I’m honest, I’ve been waiting for someone to take care of me for most of my life.  Don’t get me wrong – I’ve worked hard and successfully over the years – but deep down at a unconscious level it appears I never believed it would be my financial success that would fuel my ability to be in service to more people.  Again, not flattering to say out loud, but I can see many decisions tied to this belief.  And, it explains a lot about my writing, as well.

As you know, I’ve been writing a book for the last couple of years.  It’s probably more accurate to say I’ve been thinking about writing a book more than writing a book.  In other words, my mental intentions haven’t been matched by the action of written word on the page.  I can see how this belief impacted this endeavor.  Consciously, I would say, “I am going to write a book and create a huge platform to help others to heal more quickly.”  And my unconscious mind whisper, “Oh, why bother?  You’re not capable of supporting the outcomes you want in life.”  I only know this because I have been supercharged for the last week, and not only in my writing.
 
I would have never recaptured these internal resources if I hadn’t followed the ransom note delivered by my emotions.  Every hijack – big or small – tells me there’s something to heal. And when I address the ransom, I reconnect to more of my potential and the resources that come along with greater wholeness.  And, the same is also true for you.  

I Don’t Like Spiders and Snakes

If you’ve had a critical conversation, first date, job interview or have ever spoken in front of a large group — you already know the connection between the mind and body.  Who hasn’t experienced these tell-tale  physiological symptoms in times of stress:  stomach butterflies, an embarrassing color shift or perspiration that appears at the most inopportune time?  But, what happens when these natural physiological responses are so exaggerated that they immobilize someone at the mere thought of something…whether it’s a small eight-legged critter, slimy reptile or confined space.  Most people know we call this phenomenon a phobia, but maybe you didn't know how easy it is to release these irrational fears.

The term irrational feels a little harsh, huh?  But, in this situation the term used by the field of psychology actually makes a lot sense, because the vast majority of phobias are created before our capacity for rational thought is fully developed.  In the absence of a logical counterbalance in someone’s youngest years, the seeds of phobias are planted through misconstrued experiences exaggerated by fear.
  
These misinterpretations are stored as unconscious memories.  And, all of our memories are stored as internal representations — collages of pictures, sounds, and feelings — which tell us how to respond to something in the future based on an experience in the past.  So, someone with arachnophobia can see a small spider and lose himself in a sea of anxiety. And yet, it's not the spider that scares the person, but the internal picture of how his unconscious thinks he's supposed to respond to spiders.  And, when you change that picture — you remove the phobia.  It's that simple.

Regardless of the ease, it’s always humbling to witness someone release a debilitating fear so quickly.  One time in particular stands out in my mind. I had just finished delivering a half-day workshop to a large group of Vistage CEOs.  We’d spent our time together discussing the topic of beliefs, performance and instant change.  At the end of the workshop, I quipped I could easily release a phobia for anyone who had an extra fifteen minutes to spare.  Because the group already had a deep understanding of how change happens instantly, I jokingly made the offer. And if I’m honest, I was surprised when someone took me up on it.
 
This person had a snake phobia.  At just the mere suggestion of having a slimy reptile caged in the front of the room, his physiology jumped into high alert: flushed face, heart racing, beads of sweat.  I quickly changed the subject to keep him in the room, until he was calm enough to discuss how old he might have been when he decided snakes were scary.  He remembered lots of memories from later in his life, but like most clients, he couldn’t consciously remember the first event.  Therefore, I guided him to identify the first seed that formed this irrational fear.

Within seconds, he entered the memory a very early childhood experience.  This recollection, in itself, will not undue a phobia but it offered a starting point for our work.  Instead, our job together was to change the earliest internal representation.  So for the next ten minutes, I lead him to replay and disconnect the fear from that memory using the NLP phobia model.  In the end, he realized the first memory never even included a real snake - but instead, was a stern warning from his mother about playing around snake holes.  Once he had this rational perspective, I asked him one final time how he’d respond to a caged snake in the front of the room.  When he ambivalently shrugged his shoulders, I knew our work was done.

Of course, not everyone has a full-blown phobia.  And yet, the same model that creates a phobia also creates the stress and anxiety we experience in every day situations — during a critical conversation, first date, job interview or speech before a large group.  Were my client had a belief that snakes are dangerous, many of us hold a set of limiting beliefs that send direct neurological commands to the body when our unconscious mind believes we are in danger.  They, too, are often created by misconstrued experiences. Though the physiological response from these beliefs may not be as overt, the unconscious signals are disempowering none-the-less.  And also like a phobia, these beliefs don't go away through awareness, but they can be released easily.  In fact, it's even quicker than letting go of a life-long phobia.    

Meditation Made Easy

I’ve tried mediation on and off throughout the years — mostly off.   Meditation has always felt difficult for me, and if you’ve read any of my blogs, you know I’ve spent most my life avoiding hard.  In fact, I suspect it’s my propensity to skirt the difficult that originally fueled my motivation to wake up through more unorthodox techniques.  And yet, I understand the benefits of meditation to consciousness-raising — I do.  In fact, with this understanding I’ve tried insight meditation, guided meditation, contemplation meditation, breath meditation, walking meditation and maybe a few more.  But it always felt hard, and in the end, my practice was always short-lived.   And then, I read about a different type of meditation that promised to be easy.

The book was Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation, which is currently a New York Times best seller, written by Dr. Norman Rosenthal.  Rosenthal is not a new aged prophet or a self-help guru, but a well known psychiatrist and researcher at the Institute of Mental Health.  In fact, he affectionately named the seasonal effectiveness disorder (SAD) that impacts many in the Pacific Northwest.

But anyway, Rosenthal makes a compelling case for the benefits of a specific type of meditation called transcendental meditation or TM.  In addition to the obvious health benefits of meditation, he talks at length about how the simple technique of TM can allow anyone to connect to the silent core of our being – in other words, reach pure consciousness.  In fact, he promised that TM would feel natural and easy and wouldn’t require lots of practice to be effective.  And finally, he said it didn’t require any specific belief system or religious context.  I was intrigued.

Now, for anyone who has tried other forms of meditation, like me, this declaration seemed way too good to be true.  I found myself succumbing to the same skepticism that surrounds the work that I do.  Just slightly ironic, I think.  But, I’d tried other types of meditation and still had vivid memories of time passing too slowly and watching thoughts run through my mind….and then, opening my eyes to realize only two minutes has passed.  UGH.  Could this technique really be easier?  I set out to find a qualified TM teacher in Seattle to learn more.

In early July I attended the information session.  I learned that the technique was created by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who reemerged this ancient technique as a way to offer western folks a technique to find inner peace.  For those who lived in the 60’s, it was actually Maharishi who introduced the Beatles to the benefits of meditation.  This specific type of meditation uses a personalized mantra — which has a certain vibrational sound and quality — that guides the psyche to what it does naturally:  moves toward happiness, stillness and peace.  This really interested me, because much of my work uses the same principle, but I was still skeptical how this would translate to meditation.  So, I decided to experience it for myself.

In my very first official training session, I was sitting in an unassuming house in the middle of suburbia Kirkland.  Somehow, I’d always envisioned this would happen in an Ashram.  I was guided into a very small room simply decorated with two chairs and a make-shift ceremonial shrine that adorned a picture of Maharishi.  After a very brief ceremony in Sanskrit, I was left to meditate with my very own secret mantra.  I didn’t need to sit in the lotus position or put an uncomfortable pillow below my butt, but encouraged to make myself comfortable in what appeared to be an old dining room chair.  Apparently, there is no suffering necessary with TM.

And in fact, the theme of no suffering actually continued through the meditation technique, as well.  Unlike other types of mediation I’d tried, I was encouraged to allow my thoughts to rise and meet them with my mantra.  Over time, the mantra was more present than the thoughts.  And then, the mantra left and I found silence.  Until the cycle started again, slowing down a little each time.  Before you know it, the teacher said, “Okay, you can come out of the meditation now slowly.”  What appeared to be five minutes — tops — had actually been twenty.

It’s funny really.  I’ve had an appointment on my schedule for the last two years for daily meditation.  Every day it pops up on my calendar reminder, and I turn it off.  I’ve never allowed myself to remove the appointment because I knew I wanted meditation as part of my daily self-care.  And today my reminder popped up and I just smiled.  I’d already done my morning 20 minute mediation.  That’s right; with TM you only meditate for 20 minutes twice a day.  And, as Rosenthal says in his book, he used to want a place in the country or in the mountains.  Now, he just looks forward to his mediation.  I couldn’t agree more.  I’m already looking forward to tonight’s sitting.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s easy?