Being Point

Month: July 2009

  • How Open Are You To Changing Your Mind?

    Is your mind sufficiently open to change it if the circumstances which were part of your original decision have changed?  Some people pride themselves in never looking back – saying, “A decision is a decision.”  Others constantly second-guess themselves and doubt their choices.

    A workable middle ground can be:  make clear decisions based on your core values; and if circumstances change favorably in alignment with your core values, be open to reconsidering your decision.

    Author, Robert Collier said, “One comes to believe whatever one repeats to oneself sufficiently often, whether the statement be true or false.  It comes to be a dominating in one’s mind.”

    Flexibility is key to having an open mind.  Stubbornness in holding on to a decision may mis-serve us because that old decision may harden and have us experience being stuck.  Giving people and situations the benefit of compassion, understanding, and empathy can bring balance to issues where changing your mind could be a better choice.

  • “Love Is A Warrior’s Sword; Wherever It Cuts, It Gives Life, Not Death” ~ Dan Millman

    Any sincere discussion about an open mind will ultimately lead to consideration of having an open heart because, after all, what we are really talking about is *being* open.

    Dan Millman, one of my favorite authors and teachers, wrote:

    “You haven’t opened your heart fully, to life, to each moment. The peaceful warrior’s way is not about invulnerability, but absolute vulnerability – to the world, to life, and to the Presence you felt.  All along, I have shown you by example that a warrior’s life is not about imagined perfection or victory; it is about love. Love is a warrior’s sword; wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death.” (Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives – buy it; you’ll love it!)

    Are you living with your heart wide open?  How do you feel when both your mind and your heart are wide open?  How have you felt when one or both have been shut down?  How have you opened up when you have been unavailable?

  • W. Edwards Deming Believed That Asking Naive Questions Promoted An Open Mind

    The consultant widely credited for being the architect of postwar Japan’s economic recovery was W. Edwards Deming whose famed “Deming System” became the gold standard of strategic consulting for decades.

    Deming was an author, consultant and advisor to governments and multinational corporations, and he believed that all organizations are holographic of their leaders.  With all of his accomplishment and wisdom, he often said that one of his primary strengths was asking “naive questions” – questions which assumed little to nothing about how things had always been done.  The reason?  To have the freshest possible approach and an open mind.

    Are there places in your business or employment situation where asking “naive questions” could be useful?  How are you with letting go of prior knowledge and assumptions, at least for a while, in service of seeing something new?  What resistances have you noticed to this kind of approach?  How can you effectively address those fears?

  • Where In Your Life Would Adopting Beginner’s Mind Be Most Beneficial For You?

    In Zen Buddhism, there is the concept of beginner’s mind. This is a state of openness and receptivity as if one were just beginning – no matter how long you might have actually engaged in a particular activity or faced a specific situation.  There is less analysis and judgment about whether or not something is working.  Thus, there is more presence and attention. Less distraction, more focus.

    Imagine the possibilities of approaching your career, your romantic interests, your financial position, your dreams, your life –  all from the perspective that you are just beginning. Why? A beginner has, by definition, no preconceived notions about how something should be done; therefore, she or he has a very open mind.

    Where in your life would having beginner’s mind be most useful to you? What assumptions and limitations might have to fall away if you approached everything as if for the first time? Have you ever done this before? If so, how did it work for you?

  • “Always Keep An Open Mind And A Compassionate Heart” ~ Phil Jackson

    How open are you to change, to opportunity, to life?  We humans have sometimes felt as though we’ve known “the answer” – and we’ve perhaps gotten stuck there when our perceptions became rigid.

    Coach Phil Jackson said, “Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart.”

    Keeping an open mind is most often simply a matter of practicality because circumstances are always changing, so one’s mind or perceptions often move as well.  And having compassionate hearts assists in keeping our minds open.

    Would you characterize yourself as having an open mind, or are you more rigid in your points of view?  How can we balance being open, yet being decisive when we need to be?

  • Doing Your Best: Engaging With Absolute Intention To Do What Is Required

    Preparation and practice are fundamental to doing well, yet doing our best doesn’t demand excellence as much as it demands intention to do as well as possible under the circumstances.

    Doing our best means engaging a presenting situation with the absolute intention to deliver what is required – for example, the advance intention of shooting the arrow into the bulls eye.  It means not holding back, never giving less than you know that you can, refusing to be a slacker, and always persevering.

    Half-hearted efforts are exactly that:  situations where someone has refused to put his whole heart in.  Focus, attention and complete presence are optimal, and living in the moment predicts doing your best.

  • Are So-Called “Best Practices” Really The Best? How Do You Decide What Is The Best Way To Do Things?

    The term “best practices” has become a management buzzword, and it means a specific approach toward a particular field – for example, software development – that is thought of as the best way to do something.

    In the rest of life, we are exposed to lots of ideas about what are the best ways to do things, but most often, there is significant variation in what constitutes “best.”  What’s the “best” way to raise a child, for example, or to govern a country?  Lots of different opinions; aren’t there?

    Raising fruits and vegetables might be less controversial because horticulture is more scientific, but, no doubt, there are gardeners who have individual ideas about what is “best.”

    How do you choose from among differing points of view that hold themselves out to be “the best”?  Since we have to decide what is “best” from a myriad of choices, what are the “best” criteria or processes by which we make those determinations?  What degree of usefulness do you consider the notion of best practices to have?

  • Some Of The Key Indicators For Whether Or Not You Have Done Your Personal Best

    Some of the indicia of whether or not we have done our personal best include:

    Have we improved a situation both for ourselves and others?

    Have we grown by stretching ourselves beyond what is easy and convenient?

    Have we stopped and chosen where we want to focus our best efforts, all the while knowing that best efforts in one area are likely to result in less than best efforts in another?

    Lincoln said, “I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”

    Being wiser each day, learning from mistakes, understanding hidden dynamics that impact our ability to act from our best selves:  how do you feel about these as indicators of doing your best?

  • Is “Doing Your Best” Situational And Circumstantial?”

    Among the most challenging things about the concept “best” is that it is inherently subjective in most cases.  “Best” implies reaching a particular level of excellence – but isn’t that level a moving target depending on the circumstances?  Some days, it’s our “best” to be super-productive, and other days, our “best” may be no more than getting out of bed and going about the day.

    So is “best” circumstantial and situational?  And, if so, what, if any, value does the notion of “best” have?  When you’re buying an appliance, “good, better, best” actually seems to work because you can usually quantify the feature set and ascribe it some increasing value leading to “best.”

    In understanding your personal best, how much do you take into consideration the circumstances with which you’re dealing?  Do you believe that personal best is objective or subjective?  Is the value of “personal best” limited to just another way to be inspired, or is there genuine utility in its use?

  • Doing Your Best May Still Be Imperfect: Are You Okay With That?

    Thanks to Vince, in our monthly men’s group, for choosing to facilitate last Saturday’s session on “doing your best” – now a great topic for Study Hall this week. “Best” is a powerful (and sometimes loaded) term which means different things to different people.  The word means “superior” and we think of “best” in words like “as good as it gets.”

    Yet, there may well be flaws even in anything that may up to that point be the best.  Churchill famously said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”  He acknowledges its flaws, but asserts that democracy is the best form of government compared to other forms.

    The concept of “doing your best” does not mean perfection, but it does imply an advance intention of taking action as “well” as you can.  There’s “best” for the individual and “best” for the group, so how do you reconcile that often different points of view?  How do you feel about doing your best?  What is the appropriate role of comparison in doing your best?