Belief Makers

In many ways, the American celebration of Halloween is similar to the Saint Martin (Sint Maarten) celebration I grew up with in The Netherlands, except scary people, masks and demons were never part of the celebrations I participated in.

Realizing that I had some judgments about this (the scary) part of the Halloween, I decided to educate myself on Halloween.

While "googling" around (is this an accepted verb these days?), I read that Halloween traces its origins to ancient pagan customs. I read that Halloween originated among the Druids in the lands of the ancient Celts in pre-Christian Gaul and Britain. The Druids believed the night was filled with demons and foul spirits who roamed the land to celebrate the return of the cold and dark. People tried to buy their freedom by offering food and assorted treats. It is believed that they also used to ward off harmful spirits by wearing costumes and masks.

Now that I understand where the scary part comes in, we can compare Halloween with the Saint Martin's Day.

Saint Martin's Day, November 11
Martin of Tours was born in the 4th Century and started out as a Roman soldier who later became a monk. His exemplary life (one of the legends tells how he cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar who was dying in the cold) led to his appointment as the Bishop of Tours (supposedly against his will).


Basically, Saint Martin's Day is a different celebration coming from a different origin. Cool.

"So", I ask myself, "Why is it that the Halloween celebration that started so close to my birth country is celebrated in the US, but not in the Netherlands?"

I googled a bit more and found out that Halloween is celebrated in the Netherlands! In fact, there are some areas in the Netherlands where people celebrate a Halloween type of event to scare away the bad spirits. The event occurs at about the same time as the American Halloween.

Cool. Now I know.

So What?
What I take away from all this is that the people around me are not trying to scare me; they're trying to scare demons and foul spirits. Also, this is not just some American thing; people do this in lots of different places around the world.

Now I'm wondering, "Why? Are most of us just a bunch of scared people? Do we believe in scary devils and evil spirits? Are we really buying our freedom and negotiating the freedom of our children?"

I doubt it...

As for me, I think I'll hold onto Saint Martin's day!

Bring your children by on November 11 with their lanterns, and we'll sing together while consuming goodies to celebrate Saint Martin's exemplary way of life.

Happy Halloween!

Labels: halloween, iris tuomenoksa, Sint Maarten

The other day I was talking with Kat who had just returned from a conference in New York. Kat was excited and spoke enthusiastically about all that she had learned. In a nutshell, and no doubt inadequately paraphrased by me, Kat had learned about new theories regarding the fundamental causes of Autism and approaches that might successfully address them. At one point Kat was so taken by the implications of these new insights, that she felt as though she knew absolutely nothing about Autism.

Now, to be clear, over the past decade Kat has totally invested herself in understanding Autism and helping families of children with Autism. Not only has she completely immersed herself in the Son-Rise Program, but she has also undertaken the deep study of numerous theories as to the causes of Autism as well as the various and often contradictory approaches to Autism treatment. She's made Autism treatment her life. She knows more about Autism and its treatment than anyone I've ever met.

And yet, in the light of her new discoveries, Kat was willing to put down everything she'd learned so far were the new insights to prove more useful or beneficial.

This struck me as the essence of intellectual integrity: the willingness to abandon everything you've done so far, no matter how passionately, in the light of new insight (even if the new insight came from someone other than yourself).

Hanging On to What You've Got
Maybe it's simply the fact that I and the people around me are getting older, and therefore, we tend to have more to lose, but I've noticed that more and more people are less and less willing to take risks... less willing to go for something that could be truly life changing and wonderful... less willing to, well... live.

I've seen this frequently in friends who've "done well" for themselves. They've made money; they've established families; they may even have grand kids.

They may not like their jobs. They may not like where they live. They may not like their partners. But, you know, they've already come this far... They're getting older... They're not sure if they could handle a change or a loss... and so on.

It's strikes me that there are two basic reasons they hang on to what they have although they find it less than satisfying. The first and perhaps more obvious one is the fear of losing what they have. The second, and perhaps less obvious one, is the fear of what change would imply about all they'd done so far.

It's the second one that interest me today.

Sunk Cost Decisions
One of the most common mistakes in business is making decisions based on "sunk costs". Sunk cost decisions occur when you let the time and effort spent on a specific project or task influence your perspective on what to do next. Sunk cost decisions are often accompanied by phrases such as, "We've already invested so much into this project, we can't just drop it and do something else!"

In fact, the astute business answer to that statement would be, "But, of course we can!"

Savvy and honest business people don't look at what has been invested so far; they look at what the costs will be going forward. If you find a new alternative that can get you where you want to go more quickly and less expensively than your current initiative would, you go with it. No question.

The reason I threw in the word honest is that there are savvy business people who will still go with the sunk-cost decision because they don't want to get saddled with having made the wrong decision. Avoiding blame (even blaming yourself) and fear or embarrassment are other reasons for sunk cost decisions.

Sunk Cost Lives
Sunk cost decisions are even more prevalent in daily life. When we stay to watch the whole dreadful movie because we already paid for it... sunk cost decision. When we plow more money into a hopeless automobile because we've already spent thousands on repairs... sunk cost decision. When we stay in a career we don't like because we decided at eighteen to spend our parents savings on a specific college curriculum... sunk cost decision.

I imagine that you can think of times when you've said something like, "Hey, we've come this far already, we might as well keep going."

Looking at sunk costs not only leads to really bad decisions, it also artificially limits the choices that we consider. We not only make a bad choice, we don't even consider the best choice.

The Greater the Cost
If you've read many of my blogs, you might read references to my dad who, through expert use of anger, frustration, self-righteousness, malcontent and alcohol, may be the king of self sabotage. Still, over the past ten years, due primarily to his participation in programs at The Option Institute and his exposure to people who have really embraced the Option philosophy, my dad has managed to completely free himself from anger, frustration, self-righteousness and alcohol to become downright contented and happy!

...at least for a period of time, and then it slowly falls apart.

Dig Your Own Hole
The thing that's amazing about this is why it falls apart. It's not that my dad doesn't get it. He understands that how he feels is really up to him. He also understands that how others feel is up to them. He even understands that our lives' purposes are defined by us, not discovered.

And yet... Just at the point when he seems ready to really run with his new found freedom, he starts to consider the implications to every decision he's ever made. For example, what if all these years, he could simply have decided not to drink? All those destroyed relationships and lost days! What if life just is and all meaning is that which he ascribes to it? What would that mean about all the years that he spent going to church and studying the bible? What if he could have been a medical doctor rather than an electrical engineer? Did he completely waste his career?

As he considers these questions, everything slowly unravels. It's not that he's calling into question his new insights; he truly believes them. However, he simply can't tolerate the implications of his new insights; he's invested too much of himself into where he is. The sunk costs are too high; he retreats.

And then everything goes to hell.

Achieving Escape Velocity
I can remember the time that my dad came closest to breaking through. He was 76 years old and doing really well. He had a new girlfriend whom he adored. He was traveling. He was happy! He was even funny!

One night, he started playing the sunk cost game and I said to him, "Dad, I hope that the remaining years of your life are so amazing, so exciting, so engaging, that you completely forget everything that happened in all the preceding years of your life."

To be clear, it was not as though my dad was laden with responsibilities. I was the only one of his kids that would talk to him or return his calls. He had no debts or commitments to fulfill. His past friends weren't anxiously awaiting a visit.

I could see the gears turning as he considered the possibilities. I watched him taste the freedom. I swear, he seemed to sit taller as the burden of the sunk costs fell away.

And then... Sigh.

Are You Drowning in Sunk Costs
In business, considering sunk costs is just bad business. If you're a business person, you may want to consider decisions you or your organization has made based on sunk costs and revisit them.

By extension, in life, considering sunk costs is just bad living. If any of what I've written resonates with you, you might want to start looking at your decision process and identify the sunk cost components. Start with the easy ones: eating the entire terrible meal because you paid for it... throwing good money after bad into a wreck of a car... keeping your kids in a specific educational program simply because you've spent so much on it already.

Once you've tuned into the sunk cost model, you might want to consider bigger life decisions or your general life situation.

How much of who you are and who you're becoming is due to sunk costs? Your career... Your location... Your friends... Your house... Your partner... Your religion... Your politics...

What would you do differently if the sunk costs didn't matter?

They don't!

Labels: all blogs, business, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Two evenings ago my world got shaken deeply. While examining my breasts which I do regularly, one of my breasts started to discharge something milky. First I looked at it in utter surprise, and then went into shock… Oh, my god! Am I pregnant?

You must know that I decided years ago that I don't want to have children. Mark has three grown children and two grand children whom I love, and I do not have any desire to raise my own children.

After a night of weird bloody dreams with dead aborted babies that were used for experiments to have souls implanted from people who died (yep, too many x-files!), I called the doctor's office and nervously told them my concerns. They were so kind to let me come in that afternoon. I was so grateful for that. I wanted to take action, because waiting just seemed too much.

When I told the doctor my story, she thought out loud about what could be going on. She decided to have my blood checked for thyroid problems and some hormonal things.  She also decided to send a little of the discharge to the lab to check for different breast problems.

She never ever, even once, mentioned pregnancy. I said, "don't you want to check on pregnancy?"

She responded, "But you use anti-conception. Do you think you are pregnant?"

I said, "No! (apparently very inauthentically), but I still want you to test me for it!"

Ohh, ohh, ohh, these fears we have! The sweet lady decided to have a pregnancy test run for my peace of mind, while she was going on to research all the other possibilities.

Back home, I got on the Internet and did my own research. It turns out that lots of women experience a milky discharge from their breasts while not pregnant. When you are pregnant, it starts normally somewhere between week eighteen and the end of the pregnancy.

Women also have these discharges in relation to lots of other things: it can be related to their hormonal balance, pre-menopause, medications they take, clogged pores in the breasts, different diseases, and the list goes all the way to cancer. Even men can have these challenges.

Pfff... While reading all this, I started to feel much, much better! I decided that I am going to be just fine!

You can guess that I slept with sweet dreams that night..

This morning I am feeling great! I believe I did the best thing to do, by going to the doctor and have everything tested. I believe I am not pregnant; I don't feel a cantaloupe in my belly (I found that description somewhere online, for the state you're in by the time you breasts start to discharge) and I use anti-conception medication.

The discharge doesn't look worrisome (you should read about the different colors that can come out. ughh!) and the doctor is looking into the different possibilities of what might be going on. I am grateful for my body talking to me and making me aware that it was time for a checkup.

Yep. What an experience. I learned so much. I know so much more about myself. And, I realized that if I would ever get pregnant, I would be able to figure out what to do.

Goodbye fear!

Labels: all blogs, iris tuomenoksa, philosophy

I was looking through some of the articles on this blog and I got inspired by Teflon's blog posted on September 30, called "The Path to the Future". The quote posted in his article says:

"The path to the future is brightly illuminated by the bridges burning behind us".

I love this motto.  Think about it: traveling through life is so much easier when you truly decide to let go of the past and focus on the future. You don't have to carry the weight of a tough childhood, an abusive ex-partner, etc. All you have to do is focus on what you want in the future and how to act in the present in order to bring your desired future into being.  Doing this lets you enjoy the present moment.

After reading the Teflon's motto, I spent some time thinking about all the things that I have let go of, things that I didn't want in my life  and are no longer in my life.  It felt so good to recognize the choices I've made and it felt great to silently celebrate them.

The same evening I was talking to my friend Mark K. I mentioned that I had withdrawn my application from a position at work because I didn't trust the manager. Mark asked me why my reaction was to withdraw my application. He suggested that I could have changed my relationship with the manager or I could have asked to work in that position under another manager. He wanted to know why my action was to simply redraw.

I explained my reasons. Although I had made attempts to change our relationship, I had decided that I didn't want to trust him. I had also made attempts to switch organizations (which might have actually happened in the end), but hadn't happened yet.

As I talked with Mark K., I got tired. I felt exhausted!

Mark also got tired of listening to me!

Wearing Myself Out
Initially, I thought I got tired because I felt that I hadn't "succeeded". I wasn't "good enough" and I could have "done more".

And this might have been true, but...  Today, I realized that my problem was the following: I had made the decision that "the man was not trustworthy by my standards, and that I did not want to work closely with a man of his standards".  This would have been fine had I only  BURNED MY BRIDGES. 

I hadn't!

Instead, I had held on to the belief that everything would have been better if I simply could have inspired the manager to change or if I could have inspired the organization to remove him from the department where I wanted to work.

Simultaneously, I held on to the belief that I could not have changed the situation in any way!

On the Horns of a Trilemma
I've been taught that I should split the situations I face into one of three categories:

1. things over which I have full control
2. things I can influence or over which I have some control 
3. things where I have absolutely no control

In this case, I decided that this situation fit into the second category; I decided that I would be able to influence or have some control over either the manager or the organization.

Why did I decide this?

Well, Samahria believes she can control the weather. So, why would I not believe that I could change my department or my manager? Maybe I already have influenced my department!

Understanding that this was my decision, I have now made peace with my decision, burning my bridges and looking forward.

I can always look at my dis-empowering beliefs about which parts of the world I can influence and which parts I cannot influence.

Looking Forward
For now, I can take credit for the changes I have started in the organization by pointing out that low standards are not acceptable to me. Maybe highlighting one person's low standards is what it takes for ten other people to raise their own standards.

Next, I am going to make a list of all the parts of my life where I have low energy and see for each of them if there are bridges I need to burn. I already feel my energy level getting higher!

Thank you Mark .K for being such an honest friend. Thank you Mark T. for introducing this great motto which I'll repeat:

"The path to the future is brightly illuminated by the bridges burning behind us."

Labels: acceptance, empowerment, joy vigh strand

Have you ever had one of those days when you wake up and wonder "how did I ever get here?".

This past week has been one of those days or should I say, seven of those days. After my exercise in judgements where I realized I still judge the heck out of everything, I began judging my judging. Real productive huh?

Then I began feeling sorry for myself and generated a large list of things I am tired of. I realized that this list contained most things in my life. So why exactly am I living a life that I am tired of?

This is where the confusion set in. Since I believe that we always do what we want to do, I must want to be doing all of the things I am doing. If I am doing what I want to do, why am I tired of most of it?

My first thought was that I do everything for others. Aha! The victim. Yup, that is me.

The martyr. Aha! Yup, me too.

As I went down this road of self pitty for a while, I realized that I so highly value what other people think of me that I end up doing things/being things that I think will be valued by other people and somewhere in that craziness, I lose myself.

OK, I don't lose myself; I simply become such a fraud, I that I don't even recognize myself anymore.

So now, I am simply confused. I am not quite sure who I am anymore. I am not even sure who I want to be.

The good news is that I know I will be whatever I want to be and I also know that I am in full control of who I am.

In the last week, I had two dialogues related to the subject of tension and stress. In both cases the explorer judged had judged the situation he or she was in as being bad. Their judgments had brought them to a place of unhappiness.  The specific unhappiness had been tension and stress.

•  Stress created in the moment: a huge explosion of emotion and adrenaline as an immediate response to a challenging or threatening situation.
•  Stress built over time: a long-term build-up of unhappiness fueling beliefs that are not questioned or challenged.

Labels: all blogs, iris tuomenoksa, stress

Today, I'm writing to ask for your help addressing a challenge that has reached epidemic proportions. A scourge that knows no ethnic, racial, religious or geographic boundaries. An insidious affliction that affects rich and poor, tall and short, red and blue, public and private.

The problem I refer to is bullshit.

Once the province of politicians, scalawags and the kid who always forgot to do his homework, bullshit is now pervasive touching every one of our lives. Odds are you know someone who bullshits daily... it could be you!

Bullshit costs tax payers trillions of dollars annually. It results in wasted time and missed opportunity. It ruins relationships.

It you know someone who bullshits, then this article may be for you.

Causes of Bullshitting
The debate rages on as to the real cause of bullshitting; experts are at odds with one another. Yet, I would hazard to propose three causes that seem to pretty much cover it:

1. Wanting to win an argument at all costs
2. Not wanting to be found out (e.g., cheating on your partner, failing to fulfill a promise, not completing a work assignment, not wanting people to know that you listen to Barbara Streisand records, etc.)
   
3. Not wanting to be honest about your real intentions or beliefs (e.g., agreeing with something to avoid an argument, saying you can't make an appointment when you simply don't want to go, saying you loved something that you really didn't like, etc.)
   

Identification and Acknowledgment
The first step to eradicating bullshit in your life is to recognize it when it's happening and then to act swiftly and decisively. Fortunately, many bullshitters are not skilled. You can tell immediately when they turn it on by looking for one or more of the following signs:

1. An upward inflection at the end of a statement making it sound like a question, rather than a fact.
2. Eyes looking up and to the left indicating that they're accessing visually constructed images rather than visually remembered images (eyes up and to the right).
3. Eye looking left indicating that they're access constructed auditory images, versus remembered auditory images (eyes right).
   
4. Hesitation and stammering.
5. A smile that involves there mouth only, and not the rest of their face.
   
6. Looking at you to see if you bought it before continuing.
7. Really, really ridiculous statements.
8. Statements preceded by "Would you believe..."
   

When seeing one or more of these key indicators,the easiest and perhaps best response is to ask, "Is that true?"

Typically, the inept bullshitter will stop in his tracks. He may hem and haw. He'll look to his left seeking some kind of visual or aural inspiration. He may avert his eyes or look away so that you can't see his mouth.

With any luck, he'll simply say, "no" or "no really" or "not exactly."

At this point, he may launch into myriad explanations, justifications and excuses, but you're not through the hard part.

Dealing with the Adept
As the epidemic rages on, practicing bullshitters are getting better and better and better. I'm going to outline several techniques used by adept bullshit artists to help you identify it when it's happening.

The Confident Bullshitter
Many bullshitters learn early on that, if you look someone directly in the eye, say things with strength and confidence and without hesitation, and if you don't let the ends of your mouth curve up, you can get away with pretty much anything.

The thing that gives away these artists is that they don't actually believe what they're saying. They find it hard to hold your gaze for an extended period of time. The mask that they screw their face into feels unnatural and is hard to maintain.

For example, if they're smiling, it's likely that just their mouth will be smiling and not the rest of their face. Their gestures and timing will be a little bit off. Over time, they'll start checking in to see if you're buying it.

In this case, the best solution remains asking "Is that true?" or perhaps a slight variant, "Do you really believe that?"

The confident bullshitter will not likely be deterred by these questions, initially. However, she'll also find it difficult to maintain the facade of confidence, slowly revealing the signs of an inept.

Hey, Is that Elvis?
A commonly employed technique of even inexperienced bullshitters is distraction with things that are irrelevant. In high school, I really, really, really hated math class. Each day I would walk out of Mr. Reedy's class feeling even further behind than the day before.

Over time, I noticed through his comments that Mr. Reedy loved handball and loved to complain about his wife. So, on days when I believed that I simply couldn't take another hour of falling behind I would start the class by asking Mr. Reedy a question about handball or his wife. It would easily chew up half the class.

Given that most of us have a difficult time staying on track, the distraction technique can be quite effective. Still you can address it by knowing what you're talking about (by what, I refer to the topic, not the subject matter), recognizing the attempt at distraction, and then simply asking, "what does that half to do with thus and such?"

Playing to Doubts
Some great bullshitters use the technique of positing. Let's say that you're in a meeting trying to make a decision. As you approach a conclusion, the bullshitter (either having failed to make any contribution to the discussion or not liking where the discussion is going) will posit, "Hey, have we considered thus and such? Even though we believe that we've come to the right conclusion, we don't know it's right. It could still be thus and such!"

What makes this technique so insidious is two-fold:

1. There's no lie in the statement. The statement that some other course of action could possibly be correct is absolutely true.
2. The posit plays to the fears and doubts of the decision maker.

This technique is typically employed at times when decisions are being made. They can be corporate decisions, Son-Rise team meeting decisions, personal life-choice decisions. The posit-er may come in the form of a team member, a friend, a family member. The posit-er's goal is typically to delay or divert.

When you recognize that someone is using the posit technique, there are several reasonable counter measures.

You can say, "Sure, thus and such is a possibility, but then, so are this and that. Why did you bring up thus and such? And why now?"

Alternatively, you can say, "Sure, thus and such is a possibility, but so unlikely as to not be relevant."

Or, perhaps best of all, "Do you really believe that thus and such is going to happen?"

The Best Liars are the Sincere Ones
The most difficult bullshitter to recognize and deal with combines all the above techniques with an overwhelmingly powerful catalyst, sincerity. In the moment he's saying what he saying, the bullshitter absolutely convinces himself that it's true. All the gestures are there. There are no telltale signs of eye movement. There's no hesitation.

These bullshitters often go on to become powerful politicians or prominent religious leaders or great lovers. They're the players. Over time, a player tends to lose touch with who she or he really is. They morph from situation to situation, relationship to relationship, adapting and sincerely playing the part.

The easiest way to identify this type of bullshitter is to bring their worlds together. For example, bringing people from work home to dinner, or bringing family members from home to work. Most players will vehemently resist having their worlds collide (a key indicator). If the worlds do come together, it can be an amazing show.

Alternatively, you can simply watch over time to see consistency in statements and beliefs.

If you find yourself in the company of a player, again, the easiest approach is simply to ask, "Do you really believe that?" Sometimes that simplicity and the directness of the question can have an immediately sobering effect.

Alternatively, you can ask questions like, "Why did you say that?" or, if they're referring to someone not present, "Hey, let's call so and so on the phone right now and check it out!"

A Bullshit Free Life
In the end, we only have bullshit in our lives because we allow it there. Even if your life is full to the brim, it's easy to completely eradicate it of bullshit.

1. Decide that you want a bullshit free life
2. Learn to recognize bullshit (it's easier than you think, and you probably already can do it)
3. When you see it, call it (just ask, "Do you really believe that?")

You'll be amazed at how quickly either a) the bullshitter stops bullshitting, or b) the bullshitter stops inviting you to dinner.

What kind of weekend will you have?

Labels: all blogs, business, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Joining a Son-Rise Program® has been a great inspiration for me. Not only is it fun to be in the playroom. I also get inspired to do more fun stuff outside the playroom. I get inspired to find ways to inspire Christo's mom. And I get inspired to change my life.

Inspiration in the playroom
When I am in the playroom we mostly play games inspired by Disney. We started with Tigger, which happens to be Christo's and my favorite Pooh character. We will bounce around and quote Tigger. Just try to perfect your "youuuhuuuhuuuhuuuhu". Can you do that without smiling? Do you recognize the amazing feeling when you get Tigger under your skin? You can feel the energy and happiness bounching around while being Tigger. It is so different from playing Eeyore (which is fun too, just different).

Sometimes we pick characters from "Jungle Book". I love Balou. Being Balou gives me a chance to move my but! I would like to be a monkey, but I still can't sing all the words from "I wanna be a Mankind" (I haven't made it my highest priority yet!). Than there are the dogs. They are everywhere: it can be 101 Dalmantines, Blutz, you name it. There are so many great Disney dogs, and I'm a dog person..

I would recommend to anyone to personify a disney character. It's fun and you can make it a good workout too. Pick one of your favorite disney characters and start playing! And by the way: when was the last time you were standing close to someone making funny faces? or scary faces?

Preparing for the playroom
We've been playing monsters, dogs and George of the jungle. I didn't even know George of the jungle. So recently I 've spent time on youtube. Laughing a lot watching clips from this crazy movie.

I've bought some new dvd's and borrowed some from friends with kids. Because how could I know that "Get out of here" was just a quote from Beauty and the Beast"? And I for sure didn't know that there were lines from StarWars in KungFu Panda!

Lately I have been smiling, singing new songs and making more jokes and people around me have been laughing with me!

Inspiring someone else
When I did Group Facilitator training I found it challenging to find the energy and enthusiasm within me. But when I am sitting at the kitchen table exchanging ideas for the playroom with the mom, I am excited. I love telling her how good she is, how fantastic it is that she can see what to do next and that she keeps moving.

I want her to get more help and training, so I keep feeding her with suggestions, and step by step is she moving on it. It's fantastic. I see that I can inspire, and can be patient, all at the same time. It feels so good.

I used this inspiration to challenge people at my work, people who seemed to be waiting for inspiration. When they resisted taking responsibility for their lack of inspiration, I would ask them: how is it working for you to wait for a small ant to bite you, to get under their skin and fill you up with inspiration. As we laughed I knew that they knew that inspiration was there for them to choose.

Let the world be my playroom
I want to take as much as I can from the playroom and build my world from this.

I know that Brian and Mary have a webpage on how to create relationships. My suggestion will be: build a playroom for you and your partner. Build this place with love and acceptance, and a lot of space for exploration.

If anyone want to join my playroom, let me know. It might include pillow fighting and greek dancing, but it will be fun.

My playroom, my rules.

Joy

Labels: inspiration, intention, joy vigh strand, love, relationships, son-rise

What if today were all you had? How would you live it?

What if you had just this year? What would you change in your life?

What if you were to live forever, never sick, never without? What would you do differently?

How much in your life is what you've settled for? How much in your life is what you've dreamed of?

What would you change?

Everything and Nothing
The other day, Iris asked me what I would change in my life. I thought about it and it occurred to me that, at a macro level, not much. I really love the life I've chosen. I'm apparently, based on the feedback of others, incredibly happy and content. I certainly feel that way.

Yet, at a micro level, there are gazillions of things that I would change. I would spend more time playing music. I'd figure a way to get my kids to come visit us here in the middle of nowhere versus us always going to them. I'd spend more time writing and more time singing. I'd cure cancer. I'd solve the energy thing. I'd cook more. I'd run more. I'd spend more time talking with friends late into the evening. There are so many things that I would do.

What an interesting paradox: being totally contented and wanting so much more. It's pretty amazing.

And yet...
There are times when I'm not so contented. There are times when I start pressuring myself to deliver on my wants. I start believing that I'm not working fast enough or hard enough or smart enough. I start believing that I'm not enough... that I should do better.

Perhaps it's an interesting side-effect of always assuming that you can do the impossible or the improbable or at least more than you thought was possible or probable. Over time, you slowly raise the bar higher and higher and higher. What was a stretch goal becomes an expectation. What was a stupendous victory becomes ho-hum.

Over the past few months, I've been pushing myself really, really hard: perhaps harder than I have ever pushed before.

My friend Jonathan gave me this amazing opportunity to write the software for his device that precludes heart attacks. My friend Kat gave me an amazing opportunity to work with her to develop a website that will help families of kids with autism and other developmental challenges. Iris gave me an amazing opportunity to play music with a great group of musicians who are the sweetest people in the world.

It's all been, well, amazing!

What If I Can't Do It All?
I've been running as fast as I can to keep up with all the opportunities that I've been presented working at least twelve hours every day of the week, and yet, I feel like I'm always just inches behind where I need to be.

The thing that I noticed today is that my attitude towards myself has been slowly shifting. Rather than seeing myself as doing remarkable work and valuing my effort, my heart and my skill, I've started judging the fact that I'm always just shy of where I want to be.

It's not a disabling kind of judgment per se. I don't spend time lying in bed bemoaning my situation. Some might even call it an enabling judgment in that I actually work harder and longer. But still, I'm quite convinced that, by focusing on the spots where I'm missing, I've started to undermine how effective I am.

It's a subtle thing that shows up as a tightness in my neck and shoulders or as a shallowness in breathing. My very concern is undermining my ability to address that about which I'm concerned! Maybe more importantly, the work I love so much has become less fun. It's almost become, work.

A Milestone
Today, I go the this incredible email from Jonathan regarding the software that I'd developed for the heart attack device.

By way of background, medical devices (even implantable ones) are typically tiny computers that run software. Unlike the software that runs on the computers that we see on our desks, medical device software has to be really, really efficient (so that the battery can last for years, not hours), and it has to be really, really, really reliable. Blue screen of death takes on a whole new meaning.

One of the things that was special and challenging about the software that I wrote for Jonathan is that he wanted the exact same software to be able to run both on the device and on a the desktop computer that doctors use to program the device. Typically, these are developed independently because the tiny computer on the medical device and the big computer on your desk are so different from one another.

Jonathan knew that, if you developed the software once for both, then you could dramatically improve the quality of both systems; by testing one system, you would also test the other. This would also guarantee that whatever the doctors saw on their program console would be exactly what was happening in the device that was implanted in their patient.

Over the past few weeks, Jonathan has been running tests on the software, tweaking little pieces as he goes. In his email, Jonathan told me that he'd just run a test that successfully processed and analyzed thirteen million segments of heart attack data (more than 300 million heartbeats).

As I read the email, I thought, "Shit. It's really working!"

And then, I just stopped.

Celebration and Closure
A few weeks ago, I handed off the software to Jonathan and his team and then raced back to the Berkshires to pick up the next task at hand. Internally, I don't think I even paused to acknowledge the accomplishment, let alone celebrate or relish it. I had too much left to do.

As I sat with Jonathan's email in front of me and paused, I could feel my neck and shoulders relaxing. I could sense my lungs opening and my breathing slowing. I felt an ease that although normally present, had been evading me over the past few weeks.

So, I've decided that one of the things I'm going to change about my life is to take more time to to recognize and enjoy my accomplishments. Not just the big ones... Not just the ones that go according to plan and schedule... Not just those that others would consider important...

I'm going to start recognizing and celebrating anything that I see as an accomplishment simply because it feels really good.

Happy Thursday!

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

So tonight I got this really interesting voice mail from my dad who lives in Kentucky.

He said, "Hello, it's dad calling. I just wanted you to know that I'm in the hospital. I almost drank myself to death tonight. The number here is, xxx-xxx-xxxx."

There were voices in the background telling him the number as he repeated it over the phone.

I didn't call him back.

My Frigging Idiot Father
You might have read previous blogs in which I talked about Mark K and Jonathan competing in The World's Dumbest Smart Guy championships. Well, despite all their qualifications, my dad's got them beat by a country mile.

My dad grew up in Finland. When he was fourteen and his father was overseas in the US, the Russians invaded Finland making it impossible for his father to return until the end of the war. So, my dad tutored calculus to college students in order to help pay the bills.

When he went to MIT to study electrical engineering, he would take advanced math classes for fun. He would complete the supposedly impossible-to-complete three hour final exams in just a couple of hours and then go back through his test and enumerate the steps required to get each answer. The professors would then post his exam as the answer key as he never missed even one question.

A Brief Interruption
Excuse me a moment, it's Mark K calling on Skype...

OK, I'm back! As I conversed with Mark, I typed everything he said... He gave me some advice regarding my dad, told a couple of jokes, interrupted our call to talk to Vadim (trying to include Vadim by holding his iPhone up to his computer's camera), and generally said things like:

"No... see... what I understood is... No, I don't have a theory or interpretation, but, well, umm, his actions... uhhh... So, a man and a woman both buy tickets on an overnight train via the Internet..."

I said, "Mark, when I type everything you're saying, it becomes immediately clear that you never actually pursue a train of thought to it's conclusion."

Mark said, " I just want all of you in the blogoverse to know that Teflon is trying to get me to write his blog for him. Now may I please talk to Iris...

Back to Dad
While cruising through MIT, my got a summer job in Manhattan where he met my mom who was studying music at Columbia. My mom was from South Carolina, her family having been there since the 1600's. My dad was just off the boat from Finland. My mom was a singer who couldn't do math to save her life. My dad can't carry a tune in a bucket, as they say. My mom was an extrovert. My dad the silent type. She was the queen of the prom. He was a nerd. They were pretty much polar opposites. It was a marriage made in heaven.

I'm not sure exactly when my dad took up the pastime of consuming as much vodka as possible before passing out, but I can remember different incidents as a young teenager where he would just seem out of it and get really belligerent.

My mom grew up Southern Baptist and a teetotaler. So, we didn't talk about alcohol, let alone alcoholism. As a kid, I was instructed not to mention things like beer and wine when we visited my grandparents in South Carolina. Even as we shipped my dad off to rehab at Hazelden, my mom wouldn't say that he was an Alcoholic. So, it was pretty much up to the kids to do something about his drinking.

When is Enough Enough?
I can't count all the times I've bailed my dad out of a touchy situations, cleaned up after him, reconciled his finances, sorted his paperwork, appeased those he'd offended, got him into programs, found people to help him, and generally navigated his wake.

I can't estimate the number of relationships he's burned through: people who were good friends who finally gave up or were simply afraid to have him around. Over the past five years, he's pretty much exhausted the good will of everyone in his life. At times, it's come down to just me and Iris.

The crazy part is that my dad doesn't seem to appreciate or have any gratitude for any of our help. Every once in a while he seems a bit humbled by his past actions and their effect indicating that he holds a lot of judgments about them, but he never says, "thanks".

When he does get himself into trouble, he expresses entitlement. He calls or has the doctor call or has the cop call expecting me to do something.

I think that this time, I'm not going to do anything.

As you might have noticed, I'm feeling a bit emotional about this whole thing. I feel sad. I feel angry. I also have a sense of determination and a feeling of freedom.

What do you think?

Teflon...

Labels: mark kaufman, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy, relationships

Labels: baby, beliefs, faith clarke, parenting

I regularly hear from friends that they deeply admire the relationship that Mark and I have. They tell me that they want to create for themselves a relationship like ours. I agree with them; Mark and I have a wonderful and amazing relationship. Let me tell you our secret: we keep things simple.

My husband is working eighty hours a week and is grumpy all the time.  I think he prefers his job to me...

She's wearing that ugly red sweatshirt just to irritate me...

When he makes a drink for himself, he never asks me what I want. He doesn't care about me...

She was crying again last night. She just wants to make me feel guilty...

Labels: all blogs, iris tuomenoksa, love, mark tuomenoksa, relationships

Early this morning I knew that I would not be able to post an article, so I posted a quick note which said that I would post my article later this afternoon! This way I could write the article after my sessions and you would not have to guess when it would show up. Wasn't that great thinking?!

Then during my day, I "forgot" to write the article. This afternoon, I took time to work, do a workout, and do my singing exercises. Five minutes ago, while sitting on the couch being hot and sweaty from my workout, I realized that I "forgot" to write and post an article!

Forgetfulness
The word forgot always makes me smile, because I no longer believe in the concept of forgetting. For years, I was a victim of my forgetfulness. My forgetfulness was a weapon used against me, and I believed I had no way of controlling it.
Today, I see that my forgetfulness has nothing to do with me not being in control. I believe in this moment that I am totally in control and my actions were orchestrated by me with precision! I could have scheduled my calendar in a way that it would have reflected my plans to write this article this afternoon, but I didn't do it!

So, seeing that I didn't schedule time for me to write the article, I purposefully and deliberately made room for "forgetfulness"; I decided that instant that I could make other things more important. I opened the door for that option and then I took it!

Inauthenticity
I'm just realizing that by not scheduling writing into my calendar for this afternoon, and by not writing in the announcement this morning that I was planning to forget to write a post, I also was totally inauthentic with all of you.

I am a liar! Wow!

Luckily, I will have a new chance tomorrow! You will find that article early morning!

Labels: all blogs, iris tuomenoksa, philosophy

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that the blog for today will be posted around 4PM.

XXX

Businesses all over the world conduct a ritual known as the Annual Review. The Annual Review takes on many forms and many implied meanings. Some annual reviews are conducted on or about the service anniversary of each employee; others are conducted en masse.

Some reviews are designed to provide feedback on an employee's performance based on a set of goals established the previous year, others are designed to rate employees to establish a basis for compensation.

The King of All Reviews
When I was at Bell Labs, we went through this incredibly rigorous process that took days (not the use of the word incredibly). Each employee would submit a list of their accomplishments for the year. We called it the Why I'm Great! form. Next, taking the Why I'm Great form as input, each manager would complete forms for each employee including accomplishments, strengths, weaknesses, and so on.

We would distribute all the forms to all the managers within a given area and then convene a series of meetings whereby we would rank order (i.e. from 1 to n) every employee in the organization.

As we rank ordered the employees, we would pursue vigorous discussion of the employees strengths, weaknesses and areas of improvement. We would talk about development plans and so on.

Adding a Little Pressure
At times, the discussions would get quite heated. The reasons were three-fold.

First, once we established a ranking for each employee, we would discuss salary treatment. The reason we called it salary treatment rather than raises is that the process was designed to align compensation with performance; ostensibly, the highest ranked employee would have the highest salary and the lowest ranked employee, the lowest salary. Makes sense, right?

The problem was that the rank ordering didn't always reflect the salary ordering. Some employees might have had an off year, others might have transferred from another organization where they were paid more highly or more lowly, and so on.

Since we had a limited pool of funding for raises, truly aligning salary and performance meant providing some people with negative raises. If I had a highly rated person who was poorly paid, in order to fund their salary increase, I would have to take salary away from a poorly rated person who was highly paid. You can imagine the discussions that would arise when a manager was told that one of his or her employees would be receiving a significant negative raise.

Second, in order to be promoted within the organization, one would need to be consistently highly ranked. So, we often had lots of debate over the people who were in almost in or just in the top ten percent.

Third, as a matter of policy, we would look to let go people who were in the bottom ten percent. Again, lots of heated discussion about who deserved to be let go.

All in all, I really enjoyed the process. I liked the debates and what they revealed about both the topic of debate and the debaters. I also really liked the concept of aligning compensation and performance.

The Bell Curve
One of the the most amazing things I discovered in the Bell Labs annual review process was that the distribution of employees' performance levels complied with what's referred to in statistics as normal distribution. When you plot data that distributes in this manner it has the appearance of a bell, so we often call it Bell Curve distribution.

In bell curve distributions, the amount of data decreases as you move away from the center of the bell and increases as you move towards the center of the bell. The farther you move from the center (either to the left or to the right), the less data you'll find.

You might have heard people in science or statistics referring to standard deviations. A standard deviation is simply a way of referring to clumps of data within the bell. If you start at the center of the bell expanding simultaneously to the left and to the right until you've included 68% of the data, you have one standard deviation. If you keep expanding evenly to the left and to the right until you include 95% of the data, you have two standard deviations. At 99.7% of the data, you have three standard deviations.

There's a lot of math that people use to compute this, but in the end, that's all standard deviations mean.

Data that falls into one standard deviation is referred to as being one sigma data, data within two standard deviations as two sigma data, and so on.

So What?
When you think about it, the whole idea of a bell curve distribution seems kind of silly.

If I were to measure the height of every tree in a given forest where the shortest tree was ten feet tall and the tallest tree was 100 fee tall, why wouldn't I find just as many ten foot trees as I did twenty for trees as I did fifty foot trees, and so on? Or, why wouldn't I find all the trees were either ten feet tall or 100 feet tall, with no other heights?

If I were looking at SAT test scores, why wouldn't I expect an equal distribution of poor scores, moderate scores and high scores?

The answer is, "I don't know!"

Nonetheless, as we collect countless data on observable natural phenomena, they seem to conform to bell curve distribution.

It's pretty amazing.

Back to Annual Review
The crazy thing is that Bell Curve distribution seemed to apply to the performance levels of employees at Bell Labs.

Why is this crazy?

It's crazy to me because every one of the people being rated had always been in the three sigma category. They were at the top of their class in high school, at the top their classes as Berkeley and Stanford and Cal Tech and MIT, and so on. They were all used to being the best at what they did. And still, when we did our rank ordering, everything complied with Bell Curve distribution!

The three sigma people (the highest rated and the lowest rated people) were easy to identify. Accordingly, the people in the middle (the one sigma and two sigma people) were also quite easy to identify.

In the end, although we could spend weeks trying to figure out the linear rank ordering of each and every employee, all we really needed to do was decide into which standard deviation they fall. Within each category, the differences weren't that meaningful or significant.

So, How Does this Apply to Me?
If you've hung in here this long, congratulations and thank you!

If you think about it, when it comes to decisions in our daily lives, most of spend most of our time focused on the nuances that distinguish items within a certain group and almost no time on selecting the group itself.

I know managers who will agonize for months or years about a poorly performing employee trying to figure out how to get him or her up to snuff, when in fact, the employee is simply not a match for the job. Alternatively, I have three sigma friends who have miraculously found a compatible three sigma girlfriend or boyfriend, and yet they harp on all minor incompatibilities.

In the end, I think the most useful approach is to understand into what deviation our challenges fall, and then look for a solutions that are in the same deviation. If you have a one sigma challenge, then all you need is a one sigma solution. If you have a three sigma challenge, then don't waste any time looking at one sigma solutions, go right to the three sigma category.

You can apply this approach to everything from thinking about where to eat dinner to what car to buy to where to send your kids to school to whom to marry! By matching the standard deviation of the challenge to the solution, you can make better, faster decisions, and you won't waste time on solutions that will never ever work.

If you made it all the way to here, thanks for your indulgence!

Happy Sunday

Labels: all blogs, business, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Someone asked me of examples of my positive self-dialoguing. This is an interesting question since I haven't done self-dialogues in a long time. I do pose myself dialogue questions but for the last two years I have had dialogue exchanges every week or every second week, and these are the times I have been exploring (with a few exceptions).

About Self Dialoguing
I see a difference between "posing dialogue questions to myself" and "doing a self-dialogue".

For me doing a self-dialogue is setting aside time to pose questions, in a similar way as if I was getting a dialogue with a certified mentor. I might sit at my computer and write down my own questions and answers or I will talk out loud as I pose the questions and give the answers. When I write the answer and read it, the following question will come easily; following the process. If I do not write down the answers I can easily buy into my own beliefs or I can stay in general rather than specific. All things which would lead me to pose non-dialogue questions. In an ideal world I would speak out loud. When I speak out loud I activate different centers in the brain and this process will increase the efficiency of the questions. When I speak out loud I also let myself stay with one thread rather than jumping between different threads.

If I stay silent without writing, I will often pose non-dialogue questions. I see the same when I mentor a person who doesn't leave room for questions, but poses the questions him/ herself. In that situation I hear the person buy into beliefs, which then will not be questioned. I hear them jump from one example to the next, as if they were deciding that their beliefs were the same in these different situations. Often their feelings are the same OR there are similarities between the stimuli, but it is far from obvious that it is the same belief which is invoked in all the examples (this is more significant when the explorer is not a mentor him/ herself). Another situation that can happen is that the explorer doesn't stay with the example but goes to general with "this happens all the time".

Posing dialogue questions to myself
I see the dialogue process as a slow logic process, which helps me understand how I'm thinking and how I'm reasoning. I can then decide whether to change or not.

In many day-to-day situations I'm using a faster logic. I might pose one or more questions, and then decide to change without having done the whole part of uncovering my belief.

For example:

1. In a meeting I get angry or annoyed with a person. I could do a dialogue about it, but since I know that I usually get annoyed when I am judgmental (I believe that the other person should be thinking differently) and I also know that I am not being present when I am annoyed, and so I am not listening properly. My fast logic will tell me: I am annoyed - get back to being present. (I can look at the reasons for annoyance later if I want to).
2. In the playroom I'm often asked to repeat a sequence of movements and quotes until I can repeat it correctly. At times I catch myself in thinking "Could we please change this activity". I instantly change the thought to: I want to be useful, and being present is a premise for being useful, so I change it to "I want to be useful". (I can always do a dialogue about what happened after my playroom session).
3. Crying: I have done so many dialogues about crying and they have always seem to end in: "I cry because I have a problem and I want someone else to fix it". So when I catch myself crying I start smiling asking myself: what do I want fixed, why, how...

Biggest change from exploring
My biggest change since I learned the dialogue process is that I stopped being suicidal, and I stopped "doing" depression. This was not done by one single dialogue. It was several dialogues. It was a combination of dialogues and life experiences. But I remember two dialogues that were part of the final "quitting depression".

The first one was a eight minute dialogue with Jon as a mentor. A dialogue where I explored what it meant to me to be always living with the notion: "I can always kill myself in 3 months". So it was this idea of always having a back door. If choosing happiness doesn't give me what I want in life such as job, partner, family, health etc.; if choosing happiness doesn't give me all these things I "need" to have in order to stay happy - THEN I could just kill myself. (Prior to the option process I believed that some of my wants - symbols of success - were things I would "need" to be happy)

A person who has never been depressed, might not understand the magnitude of this. Part of being depressed was for me having my brain full of memories of things which didn't work out the way I wanted it. These thoughts were ranking from abuse and violence to minor things as feeling fat or getting the second best grade (instead of the best).

When I was depressed I was judging myself for not being good enough. And because there were people who were not treating me as I would have wanted, I was constantly judging myself for being judgmental towards them.

Over several dialogues I had given up this way of thinking, but I still had the "I can always kill myself in 3 months" back-door mentality. So in this particular dialogue (during a class break at a wide-awake course at The Option Institute) I decided to give up this mentality. What I realised was: considering suicide sometime in the future is really not relevant: my life is now. Do I or don't I want to live now? And I decided to live!

A week later I did my "last depression dialogue". This was during an evening - a late evening! I was walking the dog in the rain. I was sad and on top of my sadness judging myself for not being good enough to imply the option process. As I started to pose questions to myself I realized that my sadness was my way of asking for help. Even if no one was there to see my sadness. For about 30 years I helped my mom when she was depressed, and I had learned to use depression when I had a problem and no answers. But since my mom didn't want to see me sad, I had learned to do sadness when no one was around.

Suddenly I started laughing: here I was, on my own (except for the dog), how would sadness help me do anything if it wasn't just helping me NOT solving my problems. Since this day, I have never been depressed. I have been sad at times. I have wanted my life to be different. But I know forever that crying is for me "a cry for help". So anytime I realize that I'm sad, I just ask myself: what is my problem, who do I want to help me? And why do I not solve it myself?

Another issue I solved on the same walk in the rain, was choosing happiness. I went through all my fears of death and loneliness and realized that anything which could ever happen to me in life, being happy would make it ok.

Do what works
So happiness is now my first priority. At times I forget it and find myself focusing on future wants and at times this brings unhappiness into my life. Until I give up my want to have it right now and I choose happiness again. I still practice to make the priority of happiness stronger.

For me it works to blow up the issues I have, because I find it the best way to see how I can start changing it. An example was when I got feedback on my recertification tapes. My average on the tapes was very good, so we were in fact talking about details. I'm sure that anyone listening to the conversation would have thought I was not certifiable.

How do you use the Option Process? The questions? The attitude? How does it work for you?

Labels: all blogs, beliefs, dialogues, joy vigh strand

I spent years working in the research group at Bell Laboratories. It was an amazing job. We had a $350M budget, about 300 scientists, no responsibilities for delivering revenue (or in some cases even results) and the freedom to pursue almost anything we could think of.

I came to learn that the thing that distinguishes the great research scientists from the not-so-great research scientists has nothing to with their degrees and pedigrees, nothing to do with their experience or craft, and nothing to do with their knowledge of the subject matter. It's simply this: the great research scientists know how to ask the most useful question.

Oftentimes, the questions posed by the great scientists seem outlandish or irrelevant to the mainstream. Yet, it's with these questions that we see the breakthroughs.

Einstein posed the question, "Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?"

He realized that the answer was, "Yes, it does depend on its energy content!"

And you get to E = MC².

Getting Ahead of Heart Attacks
After my friend Jonathan and others developed a chip that could detect and electrically block epileptic seizures, it occurred to them that they could probably do something similar for heart attacks. When they concluded that they couldn't actually block the attack, they asked themselves, "Even if we can't do that, what can we do?"

This got them on the train of thought that led them to an implantable device that can detect heart attacks six to eight hours before they occur. The device communicates with a little pager that instructs you to either call your doctor (if the issue isn't an emergency) or call 911 (if it is). When you get to the hospital, rather than running all sorts of tests, the doctor simply downloads information collected by the device and then treats you, all before the heart attack occurs.

If Jonathan and his crew had stuck with the question of how to create a device that blocks heart attacks, they would still be at the drawing board. Instead, by re-framing the question, they have a device that is in clinical trials and has already saved peoples' lives.

Stuck in the Wrong Question
What I've noticed lately is that, in general, people seem to be terrible at picking questions.

For example, as I drove from New Jersey back to the Berkshires yesterday, I listened to a "conservative" radio talk show where the host was blasting liberals and democrats for wanting public this and public that. He was a strong advocate for keeping things in the private sector. This was in stark contrast to the opinions that I hear voiced here in the Berkshires.

The question of whether things like health care, banking, etc should be public or private has taken on almost religious proportions, and it's the wrong question! The question is one of how to to deliver services in the most cost effective manner with the highest quality.

I then heard a an interview with a man in a nearby town who was trying to figure out how to get federal funding for a wind-powered electricity generator. Sounds good on the surface, but he lives in an area where there's not enough wind to power the thing effectively. So, what's the question?

Not long ago, I was working with an organization that was sponsoring a European lecture series. In the middle of an executive meeting, just days prior to the series, someone burst into the room telling us that much of the material that was required for the lectures had not been sent to Europe. Several people exclaimed, "How could this have happened?"

Of course, the best question would have been, "What are we going to do about it?"

Becoming a Better Questioner
There are several things that to me seem common to skilled questioners.

Skilled questioners seem to start with what they want, and then look at what they have.
Unskilled questioners tend to look at what they have and then consider what they can get.

Skilled questioners start with the assumption that there must be an answer.
Unskilled questioners start with the assumption that there are many questions for which there are no answers.

Skilled questioners constantly reconsider and re-frame questions.
Unskilled questioners tend to harp on exactly the same question over and over and over.

Skilled questioners always ask, "Hmmm..., is that really the question?"
Unskilled questioners just jump into the fray.

So What's Your QQ (Questioner Quotient)?
Whether you're already a great questioner or not, improving your skill of asking the most useful question possible in any situation can absolutely change your life.

Look at the questions you ask yourself on a daily basis and consider the alternatives. It might mean re-framing a question such as How should I get to work? into How might I work from home?

Which of these diets should I pursue? might become What's the perfect mix of foods for me?

Should I go to this university or that? might become Which professor do I really want to work with?

Whatever your questions are, whether they're the big life questions of the mundane daily questions, I invite you to revisit them and consider, "Is that really the question?"

Have an inquisitive Friday!

Labels: all blogs, business, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Labels: all blogs, art, iris tuomenoksa

I am very excited to share with you my recent experience with a 12 year old autistic boy whose name is Kyle. Kyle is very unique. He is unique in regard to the sensitivity of his senses. He intensely reacts to smells, light, noise, touch and seeks lots of opportunities for movement. His heightened sensitivity affects Kyle's behavior in many different ways. One of the ways in which it impacts his behavior is expressed by his extreme vigilance and avoidance of people, objects and any new situations.

Through out the past 6 months my interaction with Kyle has been very limited, especially in the area of touch. Because Kyle is so defensive in the way he perceives touch sensation he is much more comfortable with touch input that he is fully in control of. In order to give him full control I have brought materials of different textures that he can explore on his own. I as well brought a vibration pillow and placed it in his favorite corner in order to expose Kyle to a variety of touch sensations. I am very happy to say that he has been experimenting more then ever with all the textures however he has still been very resistant to having me place my hands on his body, until yesterday.

Yesterday, when I walked into Kyle's playroom he was demonstrating his typical behavior. He was curled up in a ball on his bed while peeking at me from under his hands. I decided to play a peek-a-boo game with him since he was pretending to hide his face from me. As I was playing the peek-a-boo game Kyle began to smile and suddenly sat up on his bed with his feet hanging down. At this time he was much more open and connected to me in comparison to the beginning of the session.

So I decided to use the peek-a-boo game to transition into a game where I can touch Kyle's feet. I pretended that his toes were hiding from me. He loved the idea and kept smiling while wiggling his toes as I pretended to look for his toes all over the room. The sillier I became the more fun Kyle was having. Since we were so connected I decided that it would be a good time to finally find his toes as part of the game and start touching them. So I did just that. Bingo, Kyle was very accepting of my touch and gave me both of his feet to massage. After massaging his feet for some time I then asked Kyle's permission to touch his head, which he was very open to. I propped my self up behind him and asked Kyle to place his head on my lap. I was able to message his head for about 15 minutes. My next step was asking Kyle to allow me to touch his face. To my surprise he was opened to that as well and even pressed my hand into his chin with his hands. I was able to massage his jaw line and his lips for approximately 5-7 minutes. It was such a great experience. I felt his whole body fully relaxed and trusting of my touch. This was truly a miracle for a child who does not feel comfortable with any type of touch sensations.

As I was leaving, his mom knowing that I like apples offered me a nice green apple as I was heading out. Suddenly, Kyle ran up to me and whisked the apple out of my hands and vigorously started to lick it. I was very amused by his behavior and decided to let him have the apple since he seemed to really enjoy it. As I got home that day I found an email from Kyle's mom stating that he ate the entire apple by him self without having to cut it into little pieces. She said this was the first time he has every done that. She also attached a beautiful picture of him eating the apple with such joy in his eyes.

Writing this article I started thinking from a standpoint of an occupational therapist about the power of our jaw. First of all, the jaw and our mouth is one of the best connector points between the head and the body. It is very important to note that. Most of the children who have autism have difficulty organizing incoming sensations, which creates lots of chaos in the brain because the signals are not send to the appropriate place for processing. This makes it very difficult for the child to use their body effectively. Providing deep pressure touch/message to the jaw/mouth will open up channels of communications between brain and body. This type of input will allow the child to feel the muscles of his mouth and jaw, thus help with speech production, chewing, biting on hard foods, and allow for brushing of teeth for those children who are defensive to being touched in that area.

 As in the case of my little friend Kyle, giving him that extra sensation into his mouth, jaw area allowed him to connect and become aware of that area. Therefore, he was able to feel the muscles of his mouth and use them effectively for the first time to eat a hard big apple.

Labels: massage, occupational therapy, rita gendelman

Labels: all blogs, babies, iris tuomenoksa

I spent the last week in Tokyo on business. It was a wonderful week, especially once I decided not to have jet lag or worry about not speaking Japanese. Thanks to my son David, I have learned that most communication has nothing to do with language. Ironically, I was planning on writing this blog Monday morning but am up writing it on Sunday evening because I can't sleep. My not sleeping has nothing to do with jet lag and has everything to do with David chattering non stop as he giggles around the house. Who would have thought I would ever be asking my son (who for years I prayed would speak) to please be quiet so mommy could sleep. When I realized how silly this was, I simply got up, giggled myself downstairs and began my blog. In meanwhile David decided to giggle himself upstairs and go to bed. Now, I am laughing out loud at how quiet it is!

At this very moment, I am thankful for David and autism and how I have changed over the last four years. I remember a time when my trip to Tokyo would have been a huge stimulus for fear. I would have worried about the 14 hour flight, fretted about jet lag and been outright scared to enjoy the city since I didn't know the language. Many of my colleagues talked to me about sleeping pills to which I responded, "no thanks, I am sure I will sleep if I want to". After many curious looks, and head shaking, people left me alone about the drugs. Many also talked to me about the long flight and how horrible it would be. I thought "Business class... how cool, fourteen uninterrupted hours of movies, food, and drinks and I get to pick the movies." Once we arrived, I couldn't wait to go to a local coffee shop alone and experiment with my new knowledge of yen and the few Japanese words I picked up on the plane. It was a blast. I had dinner each night at well known local restaurants with new friends and didn't have a care in the world about language. I chose to be fully present whether they were speaking english or japanese and really loved how expressive people were outside of the words they chose to speak. I realized that I seemed to enjoy people more when I was just loving being with them and not worried about having clever conversation.

During dinner one evening earlier this year, I remembered how Mark and Iris love to play "tell us XX's story". My typical response when this game is started is "oh... I hate this game" and then I struggle through it to be a good sport. I realized that I was actually playing this game in Japan and loving it! When a Japanese conversation was happening, I was making up what I thought people were talking about and having fun laughing, smiling, and experiencing the "culture". It was the togetherness that was important, not the words or my ability to accurately understand what everyone was saying. I began to reflect about why I was having such an amazing time in Japan but do not always have an amazing time in similiar situations in the US. The answer was so clear that it appeared to be written in bright Hollywood lights. JUDGEMENT. When I was being "culturally prepped" by a colleague who had just returned from living in Japan he said very emphatically " be prepared, you will be judged". I remember thinking "how silly, of course I will be judged, we are all judged every day by most people we interact with, why would I care about this when I am in Japan" Aha.... so why do I not care about it in Japan but obviously do care about it when I am in the US?"Once again, Hollywood lights. The reason I care in the US is because I am judging first. I judge who's judgements matter to me and then I fear their judgements. Isn't this an interesting little circle.

With four years of going to classes at The Option Institute and running a full time Son Rise Program, I still judge the heck out of people and what do I fear most......JUDGEMENT. Here is a little exercise I plan to do this week. I will need a LOT of paper. Each day, I plan to write down every judgement I have about people and why I am judging that about the person. I will then do some self reflection about how I feel about myself relative to that judgement and if I am willing to let go of that judement (without judging my answer yes/no). I then plan to look at the things I am willing to let go of and those I am not to see if there is additional insight there. Try it with me! I'll let you know how it goes.

Love to all,
Kathy

Labels: all blogs, judgments, kathy decastro, philosophy

Anticipation
Yesterday was a very, very special day. It was a day I had looked forward to for quite some time. In August, I even drove to Cambridge to do everything I needed to do to make this day happen! It seemed unreal at the time, but I knew it was going to happen. I contacted service people, sent emails, made preparations, sent out directions, and then I waited until the Saturday morning of October 10, 2009 at 10 am...

When I woke up yesterday, I was so exited for the upcoming day. I jumped out of my bed and I decided to immediately start preparing for what was coming. I walked into my living room and decided that the bookshelf as well as the (cupboard) would need to find new places in other parts of the house. Without the help of a strong arm, I managed to get them to their new places. I kept telling myself, "Look at me, the female 'hulk'!" While waiting for 10:00, I  even organized my books and other stuff that I stored away.

Excitement
Then I heard the truck rolling up the driveway.  Two extraordinarily strong men expertly moved the subject of my excitement into the house. Carefully they started to unwrap the different parts that they had collected months before in Cambridge. They padded the floor with protective materials and slowly they started to bring in the pieces.

The very first thing that came in was the bench. After that, the legs, three beautiful black shining pieces of ebony and the tools to put it all together. But this was just the intro to the big event. The two men still had to move the 882 pound main piece, wrapped in cloth, through my yard, up a couple of steps, and into the house.

For a bit, the men seemed to have disappeared. But then I saw them rolling the 7.5 feet long and 4.5 feet wide object across the yard, around the corner and toward the steps.  I invitingly held the doors open as the men used their brains and muscles to bring it inside.

Once inside, the men finished their job quickly. In another fifteen minutes, all the pieces were put together and for the first time we could admire our newest living room accessory: the Steinway grand piano that Mark received years ago from his mom and dad (after they moved to a place where they could no longer keep it) was shining happily in his new spot in our living room.

Celebration
Mark walked into the house about the same time that the piano was moved into his new corner, just in time to sit down and play some beautiful passionate notes. Yes, this was what I had been looking forward to: Mark playing the piano, while his beaming smile was exuding excitement and pleasure!

We spent time enjoying ourselves, playing music and singing songs.  After a bit, we realized that it would be great to have a little sing along party that night to celebrate this event, so we decided to invite some of our friends to join us.

We celebrated the piano's first night with food, drinks, snacks, talks and singing.

I went to bed night feeling wonderfully satisfied and with the realization that we have great friends with whom I hope to spend a many more nights singing and dancing around the piano!

Labels: all blogs, iris tuomenoksa

Thursday morning, Iris and I walked into the coffee shop at a bit past 7:00 to be greeted by the rousing sound of a lively debate regarding the alignment of specific tasks and services with public sector versus the private sector. Our town's lone republican seemed to be holding his own, but looked like he could use some assistance. Since I have no alignment with any particular political perspective and since, in this case, it sounded to me like I would be more likely to agree with his perspective than the other one being offered, I jumped right into the debate.

Ahhh... it felt wonderful. Over the past couple of months, we've had lots of house guests who were either not particularly interested in intense and lively debate or who weren't very good at it. To me, walking into the coffee shop felt like the pool had finally opened on a hot summer's day and the water was wonderful.

I seem to remember Iris passing me on her way out saying something like, "Breathe". I was totally enthralled.

As debate wound down, I concluded that the whole public versus private thing was a bit of a red herring and that the real challenge was ensuring that people did their jobs effectively and efficiently regardless of where they worked. As we talked about this, the question arose as to how you can get people to actually do their jobs effectively and efficiently. One member of our little debating group voiced his frustration at trying to get anything done when working with public employees.

I then recalled a lesson I'd learned early in my career regarding using authority to manage people versus using influence to manage people.

Who's In Charge Here?
Most of us grew up with hierarchical organizational models. We see it in businesses, we see it in government, we see it in educational organizations, we see it in non-profit groups. Hierarchical organizations tend to operate using an authoritative management model. The person above me in the hierarchy, the boss, has the authority to tell me what to do. Although the boss may be polite and considerate when telling us what to do, even phrasing assignments as requests, at the end of the day, the boss is in charge.

Because we are so familiar with this model of management, we often treat it as the model of management. If we run into a situation where we can't get someone at work to do what we want, we go to their boss. If we're on the phone with someone at the phone company and can't get what we want, we ask to speak with their supervisor. If we can't find anyone in charge who will do what we want, we get frustrated and give up.

Bureaucrats and Entrepreneurs
Both the person starting his own company and the one who's the low man on the totem pole in a large bureaucracy have something in common; they have almost no management authority. They're the boss of no one. They don't have teams of people ready to get things done for them. They have no one to whom they can delegate

So, then, how does either one of them ever get anything done that requires more than they can personally accomplish? How do they make things happen when dealing with unresponsive peers or suppliers or people who are higher up in the food chain than they are?

The answer is management through influence.

How's It Work
The basic idea behind management through influence is to get people to do what you want because they want to. The key to doing this is to understand what motivates the person with whom you're trying to work.

Let's say that you've got a great idea that's going to improve your company's efficiency and save the company a lot of money. Let's say that you've been selling your idea to anyone who will listen and they seem somewhat resistant to it. You've worked through all your numbers and you know the idea is sound, yet no one is picking up on it.

The problem could be that many people immediately translate cost saving into job cutting. Further, although many people would agree that saving the company money is a good idea, not many people are strongly motivated by it. So, the key is to find out how your plan benefits the people you're trying to sell it to in a manner that motivate them.

This requires a little happy detective work. Ask questions about what people like about their work and what they don't like. Find out what really excites them and gets their juices going. Then, look at your proposal and translate it into terms that align with those motivations.

As you get to the core of what motivates people and then translate what you want into those terms (or modify what you want to gain alignment), you'll be amazed at how many impossible situations become possible!

Remember, It's What Motivates Them
This may seem obvious, but it's not what motivates you, it's what motivates them. I can't recall all the times someone has come into my office with a proposal for a new project or a request for a raise or the desire to see some changes and then launched into why they want it.

After I hear them out, I'll often say, "Wow, I can see that you really want what you're asking for, but you never gave me a reason why I should want it!"

Remember, influence involve understanding the other person's motivations.

More than Just Business
Since there will always be more people over whom you don't have authority than people over whom you do have authority, learning influence as a management technique can be quite useful. It comes in handy everywhere from being served a late night dinner after the restaurant's kitchen has closed to garnering the support of your local government case worker when looking for assistance with your special child.

The beauty of the influence model is that you not only get what you want, but you also create win-win situations and develop great relationships.

Happy Saturday (Evening)!

Labels: all blogs, business, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa

written by Paul Bos

It was the last full day of my holiday in the USA when I realized the actions I have been taking lately that are not serving me. And I have to thank Virginia for that!

Virginia is a kind, softhearted, friendly and open young woman that I met on Thursday morning at the coffee shop called Fuel. Iris introduced me to her.

Virginia started asking me questions about why I am here etc. and we started talking. I told her that I was here on a holiday and that I would go home to the Netherlands the next day. As I chitchatted with Virginia, I felt so uncomfortable that I never shared why I was here or anything interesting about myself.

Incognito
Iris joined our table and jumped right into the conversation telling Virginia the real reason for my visit. At the end of 2008 while visiting me in the Netherlands, Iris decided to record a CD in 2009 and she asked me to play harmonica on it. So, I scheduled a holiday for October, 2009 where I could visit Iris and record music. That's why I was here right now.

On hearing this, Virginia seemed impressed and her eyes and mouth took on a surprised look. This did not register with me at that moment, I only realized it after looking back at the situation while writing this article!

Iris proceeded to tell Virginia about my desire to practice conversations with lovely ladies (I'm quite shy).  So I decided to ask Virginia some questions about her life.

An Invitation
Later, Virginia told me that she had to go and began packing her bag. I said goodbye and went to the counter to order something more to drink.  On her way out, Virginia passed me standing in line. She stopped and then invited me to come to a party that night.

How exciting!  I've wanted to meet new people and practice not being shy.  So, of course I told her, "I can't come; I still have to pack my suitcase tonight".

And Then The Questions Started
When Iris came back from her job, we walked around Great Barrington and on a given moment, I told her about the invitation from Virginia.

Iris immediately started to ask me all kinds of questions and make all kinds of statements.

"She invited you? Great! What did you say?"

"You have to pack your suitcase????"

"Why would packing keep you from going to a party?"

"That sounds like an excuse! It sounds more like you didn't you want to go, how come?"

I told her about my fear of forgetting things and wanting to check all kinds of stuff to make sure I didn't forget anything (even though it was 2:30 pm and I only had one suitcase to pack!)

I also told her that I would only be seeing these people for one night and so I didn't see a good reason to get to know them. Iris challenged me by saying that I might have missed meeting a wonderful harmonica player who can teach me through Skype!

Driving home Iris challenged me by saying that "I want to be worried". I really had to think about that because it sounded so illogical!

And More Questions
When we arrived home we told Mark (Teflon) about the event of today (me ditching the invitation) and he also started to ask me questions.

As we talked, it occurred to me that I had trapped myself in a way of being (worrying, hesitating, deciding things weren't worth the effort) that I didn't like and never did.  And still, I somehow felt comfortable with being that way. I told Mark how I hated this and how there had been a few times in my life when I had taken action immediately, without worry and hesitation, and how good it had felt.

When I said "No" to Virginia, I was being the worried, hesitating me. As Mark asked me questions, I saw that I use worry as a way of maintaining control. My worry stops me from doing things in the moment where I might not be in control or I might lose control.

Then we did this role-play where Iris was the worrying me and I was someone giving her advice. In my advice, I told her how she could go to the party and pack her suitcase. There was plenty of time left in the day.

I started to realize how differently I could look at the whole situation. I ended up calling Virginia to tell her that I wanted to join the party, but Virginia didn't answer her phone. So last night, Mark, Iris and I went out for dinner.

A New Paul
At dinner, Mark commented that I seemed to be completely relaxed and "lifelike".  He talked about how I was animated, using my hands to illustrate things while talking. He pointed out that I wasn't constantly pausing and looking at the ceiling or saying hmm... umm... err... when answering questions. He excitedly said, "Man, you've come alive!"

The whole evening, I was totally present and never distracted or worried.

I said to Mark that I wanted to create something that would help me remember to not be worried. We decided to create a short list of things that I could use to help me focus on who I want to be.

Here is the list I created.  From now on, I am going to:

1. be open (to people and to opportunities; I don't want to miss anything)
2. take initiative in relationships (without that I am a victim of what happens to me)
3. be loving (this helps me to connect with people)
4. be fearless (trusting that things will work out perfectly)
5. take an attitude of "What the hell" (this one was contributed by Mark based on a point in our conversation where I was so concerned about forgetting my toothbrush that I wouldn't go to a party)

I want to invite all my friends to help me make my list a reality in my life.  Whenever you see me, ask me about how I'm doing with my list at that moment.  If you see me worrying, remind me of my list so I can go back to how wonderful and relaxed I feel today!

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, paul bos, philosophy

written by Mark Kaufman

Lately I've been getting my fair share of ink on these pages. Mark has shared me with all of you, most notably in his blog of August 26th entitled "Defending Your Honor". Iris even mentioned me in yesterday's blog, "Belief Filters". I have thoroughly enjoyed this unexpected notoriety and am thrilled and honored to have these extra-extraordinary people as my beloved friends. And what's more, all this attention has set me to thinking.

As I read Mark's loving and delightful descriptions of who I am, I find myself reflecting on the nature of our relationship and other relationships I have had in the past.
Throughout my life I have had a series of relationships with a variety of people who I have adopted as my personal mentors. These were not mentors in the Option Process sense of the word, but people to whom I could hand over the power to define me and my relationship to the world.

The list of people who have occupied this position for me has included my parents, my sisters, favorite teachers, girlfriends, psychiatrists, psychologists, fictional characters on TV shows, co-workers, both my wives, my teachers at The Option Institute (especially Bears) and various friends of mine over the years.

The one thing all these people had in common was that I looked to them to be the authority outside myself that was capable of and qualified to tell me who I am and how I think. I depended (and often still do depend) on these people to explain why I did what I do and what was important to me. I would seek their opinion on what is the right thing to do in a given situation or how to meet a particular challenge that lay in front of me. I looked for them to have faith in me so that I would have faith in myself and to believe in me so that I could be confident in my ability to meet whatever those challenges were.

While I have lived my life as an non-believer in God, I really see very little difference between giving yourself over to Him/Her or choosing your college roommate, the Zodiac or your dog Ralph to be your guide. You're still outsourcing responsibility for who you are and how you live your life.

Rather than creating myself and my life I would describe my situation to these people and then listen to what they said about what one should do. Then I would put together an amalgam of those answers as if it were a recipe and proceed to follow those steps to make my way through the crisis du-jour. While this very effectively answered the question of how a group of people I know would live my life, it fails to address the question of how I want to live my life.

From there I  asked myself  "If I could decide who I am and what I want, what would that be?" I am astonished to find out how hard that is for me to do. So take a rest, Jesus, I find that the most important question in front of me today is  "What would Mark do?"

Don't get me wrong, I think that consulting with others and trolling around for perspectives and ideas outside your own is a very useful thing to do, but those are just inputs to a creative process. There is still an act of creation beyond that in which we can conceive and give birth to our own unique way of being in the world.

So how about you – how much of your life today do feel is derivative, how much have you  created, and are you in touch with your ownership of that creation? Do you believe that you can create yourself and your world?

I know I can, or at least that what my friends tell me.

Labels: empowerment, mark kaufman, philosophy

Did you read Teflon's article from yesterday called "Generally Speaking"? He described how we often use generalizations in our daily lives. When Teflon talked about finding generalities in how we speak and think, he himself made a generalization.  His filter to find generalizations was turned on, so he was seeing them.

Doesn't this sound very familiar? When we have something on our mind and we focus on it, we seem to find the proof that supports what we focus on!

Let me give you another example of this same phenomenon. The other day I received an email from Mark K., who responded to my article from last Tuesday called "Relaxation". He told me about this professor who supports my article and recommended one of his books. In this case Mark K. found "proof" that supported what I had written about and shared it with me.

So, how does this work?
This all has to do with what we call "belief filters". A belief filter is a belief or set of beliefs that cause us to see some things and to not see  other things.  It also causes us to apply a positive or negative spin to what we see, hear or experience. You can compare it to wearing glasses with colored lenses; depending on the color of the glass, some light gets in and other light doesn't. The world looks quite different, depending on the color of the glass or the beliefs you are using in that instant.

In my article "Relaxation", I wrote that relaxation is not dependent on what you are doing; it depends on your state of mind as you do it.

Mark K., reading this article, was interested in this concept and changed his "glasses" to reflect this belief. He "turned on" the belief that relaxation was a state of mind and then, while reading other stuff,  found proof that supported it.

We always use filters!
Yesterday morning, while discussing belief filters with my friend Paul from the Netherlands, I realized that not everyone may understand that we are using belief filters all the time and that at any time we use a combination of different filters.

Let me give you an example that shows the difference between two Blog authors. The first author wears glasses that support the following beliefs: "life is wonderful", "everything is interesting", "I am a great writer", "I have important things to say", and "people want to explore the world around them".

The second author wears glasses that support the following beliefs: "life is work", "everything is interesting", "I am sometimes a great writer", "I have something to say" and "people need to be told what to do next".

In my opinion you will get different kinds of articles from these authors. The passion and enthusiasm of the authors will also vary. The articles will reflect the glasses the author was wearing while writing the article. Of course, a good writer can change his glasses in an instant depending on the article. This way he can show things from a certain viewpoint that might not reflect his general beliefs!

What filters are you using?
I can write about this subject for hours, but instead I want to give you the opportunity to ponder your belief filter system by answering the following questions:

• What are your beliefs around getting up in the morning to go to work? Are you excited about it? Are you waiting for the weekend? How does this belief filter affect your experience throughout the day?
  
• What is something you absolutely don't like? Is avoiding it affecting other aspects of your life and how you see the world around you? For example, Paul told me he doesn't like curry. The consequence of this is that he doesn't eat at Indian restaurants. Is he missing all sorts of wonderful social opportunities?
  
• Finish the following sentence: "I believe that learning something new is...". How does your sentence influence how you approach new experiences and opportunities?
• What is a belief that you would NEVER change? What is a NEW belief that you just started to implement in your life? How does the combination of these two beliefs influence your view on life?

I encourage you to observe yourself today and to take notice of what glasses you are wearing.

Have fun!

Labels: all blogs, iris tuomenoksa, philosophy

The other night, Iris and I were hanging out in the living room with our Dutch friend Paul. Paul and I were jamming with Paul on harp (harmonica) and me on piano.

I noticed that Paul tended to stay on the low-end of the harmonica seemingly shying away from the higher notes. What he was playing sounded great, but I thought it would be cool to hear some higher notes. So, I asked Paul about playing something a bit higher on his harp.

Paul responded, "Most harp players play mainly the lower notes of the harmonica."

I remember one college professor who, after reading responses to various essay questions would say, "That answer's not even wrong!"

This statement reflected my sentiments regarding "Most harp players play mainly the lower notes of the harmonica." It all started feeling like I was talking with Mark K.

So, I asked Paul, "When you say most harp players, what do you mean? How many harmonica players are we talking about here? What percentage of them constitutes most?"

Paul quickly recovered saying, "Well, I mean, most harp players that I know."

So, I said, "Cool, how many is that? What percentage of them are we talking about?"

Paul quickly recovered again saying, "Well, I mean, I've heard other people say that most harp players play mainly the lower notes."

(See what I mean about this sounding like I'm talking with Mark K).

Anyway, I grabbed my MacBook, plugged it into the PA and fired up some Blues Traveler whose lead singer and harp player extraordinaire, John Popper, is one of my favorites. John Popper plays all over the harmonica with virtuosic speed and agility. He's amazing.

After playing a couple of songs, I said to Paul, "I don't know about most harp players or not, but that's what I'm talking about."

On to Niagara Falls
On Saturday, Paul, Iris and I drove to Niagara Falls to show Paul a bit different part of America, namely Canada. I've got a couple of projects I've been working on, so yesterday afternoon, I sat in the hotel lobby with my Mac while Iris and Paul went to the iMax theater.

When they came back, they told me about what they'd seen and how much they'd liked it. Iris mentioned that there were many funny parts of the movie where she laughed, but none of those Americans laughed. Iris believes that the Dutch sense of humor is much dryer than the American sense of humor; indeed, we're often in movies where she will burst into laughter when everyone else is dead quite.

I said, "We're in Canada. How do you know that it was Americans rather than Canadians who were not laughing?"

Iris, looked at me and said, "Well, actually almost everyone else there seemed to be Japanese."

I looked at Paul and then back at Iris and said, "Wow, I think what Paul's got is contagious!"

So this morning, I started thinking about how pervasive the use of generalization is.

A General Epidemic
Generally speaking, and most experts would agree with me, the broad-based use of generalizations is generally out of control.

Just kidding. Actually, now that I've turned on my spot-generalizations filter, it's amazing to me how often we use them.

How often have you said "most people would..." (or some variant thereof) in describing a normative way of doing something?

Have you ever said, "I tried that before and..." or "We tried that before and..." as a way of dismissing a new idea as if your experience had anything to do with what someone else could do?

Or perhaps you've used "The thing about so-and-so..." or "The thing about thus-and-such" as a way to paint a picture of some one or some organization with a single brush stroke?

Even people who generally think quite clearly using well formed logic, specific examples and verifiable data can easily slip into the use of generalizations.

So, you gotta ask, "Why?"

What's Up with That?
I imagine that there are as many reasons for using generalizations as there are for anything else we do.

Sometimes it's because we feel a need to justify what we want. You know, "But mom, all the other kids parents are letting them..." At other times it's away to quickly dismiss something we don't want to take time to explore, e.g., "No one else is doing thus and such, so why should we?" And still at other times, it's arrogance or insecurity, or both. You know, "As a trained professional, I can tell you that..." or "Experts agree that..."

The thing is that, generally speaking, generalizations are less than useful.

So, I invite you this week to crank up your generalization spotter. When you catch yourself using a generalization, stop and ask yourself "why?"

When you catch someone else using a generalization, dive into specifics. Ask questions? Solicit details? Importantly, if you want to keep your job, do it in as loving and supportive a way as you can.

Happy Monday!

Labels: all blogs, business, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Labels: all blogs, iris tuomenoksa, philosophy

The Emergency Room
I was sitting in the coffee shop the other day when my phone rang. I answered and Iris said, "You'll never guess where I am!"

I said, "Where?"

She said, "At the hospital..."

Turns out that our friend Paul, who is visiting from the Netherlands, had mistakenly taken part of his index finger for a frozen breakfast roll that he was trying to cut in half. So, Iris and he were at the hospital getting him a stitch or two.

A couple of hours later, Paul and Iris showed up at the coffee shop, Paul proudly displaying his expertly wrapped finger. They told me the whole story including the part where, seeing his finger bleeding, Paul began to swoon.

Iris, sizing Paul up at about 6'3" and being the ever practical one decided that it would be much easier to get Paul to the hospital if he were to pass out in the car rather than on the kitchen floor. Further, since the cut didn't actually appear to be that bad, she figured that he could just kind of pull it together and get to the car.

Paul mentioned that when these types of things happen, there's really nothing you can do about it. If you're going to pass out, it's just going to happen.

That got me thinking...

OCD and Me
When I was a kid, I would obsess about everything from diseases and death to phantom itches and pains to giants trampling down our house and comets destroying the earth. I can remember talking to my dad one day when I was five. I sat on my parents bed as he hung up his jacket and took off his tie after coming home from work. He asked me how my day was and I said, "I've been worrying."

He looked at me curiously asking, "Worrying? What have you got to worry about?"

I said, "Death."

I went on to explain that I'd been thinking about infinity and eternity and how they seemed to go on and on and on. I had also heard people in church talking about hell. So, putting two and two together, it didn't seem like the prospects were very good.

Every night I would lie in bed trying to imagine infinity and eternity, thinking that if I just pushed a bit harder, I would somehow get a grasp of it and everything would be better. I would run through the litany of "bad" thoughts that I had had during the day, considering whether or not they were damnable. I'm pretty sure that the whole period pretty much freaked out my parents.

When it comes to OCD, I did all the popular ones and then some. I'd wash my hands so often that my hands were continually raw. I would start thinking about peeing and then end up going to the bathroom every five minutes. I would scratch itches until my skin bled. I couldn't watch a hospital drama without being convinced that I had the mortal disease du jour.

Ahh... my poor parents...

Breakthrough
Many years later, I was working on a house that we had just purchased after moving from Illinois to New Jersey. I was working by myself cleaning, painting, tearing up old carpeting, etc.

As I ran the razor knife through a particular dirty section of carpeting, I felt the blade slice through my thumb. Seeing blood everywhere and being aware of how filthy the carpeting was, my OCD went into overdrive. I started feeling dizzy and lightheaded, ready to pass out.

It then occurred to me that, "Hey, I'm all alone here. Lying unconscious on a floor while bleeding profusely may not be such a great idea."

I just decided not to pass out. And it worked!

I wrapped my finger up, using a rubber band to cut off the flow of blood to the wound, hopped into the car and drove to the hospital where I got stitches and a tetanus shot.

Prior to that, it had never occurred to me that you could just decide not to panic or obsess or pass out. Now it never occurs to me that all these things aren't simply decisions.

OCD is a Choice
Sometimes, when I talk to people about things like OCD or panic attacks or fainting being choices, they get offended and annoyed. They'll say things like, "These are things that happen to people, they're not things that people do. They're psychological disorders with real physical parameters! Who would choose to have panic attacks? Who would choose to have OCD?"

I always see this as an invitation to expand the scope of the discussion to include things like alcoholism and addiction. If you ever want to see fireworks...

Timing is Everything
One of the reasons that people have a hard time seeing these kinds of challenges as decisions is that they're not always aware of when the decision takes place.

For example, if you're an alcoholic, the point of decision doesn't occur as you contemplate the glass of vodka sitting on the bar in front of you. At that point, you've pretty much already decided.

You decided as you walked into the bar rather than passing by it. You decided as you chose to walk down the street that passed the bar, rather than one that didn't. You decided when the idea of a drink entered your mind and you gave it a second thought rather than dismissing it.

In many ways, the decision is a series of events rather than a single event. As the series progresses, the decision becomes more and more difficult to make.

In other ways, the series of decisions is really just a lie; we've already decided, but we go through this elaborately choreographed dance of faux decisions pretending that we're still considering what to do.

Resisting the Irresistible
I think the key to transforming disorders, addictions and irresistible urges in to decisions is a two part process. First, decide that you do have a choice; if you continue to believe that you don't have a choice, then this whole thing ain't gonna work.

Second, you want to really analyze your decision process, unraveling it until you get to that first decision that set all the others in motion. The midnight overindulgence in ice cream probably was decided earlier in the day as you walked down the freezer aisle at the market. The panic attack as you enter the subway car is the result of all sorts of choices you've made regarding fears and fearful beliefs that you're hanging on to.

If we openly engage and deeply explore our decision processes that lead to panic or obsession or fear or addiction, I believe we can find the keys that allow us to disarm them before they become irresistible.

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy