Good Humaning: Grace under pressure means...

When I'm overwhelmed, I need to eject my consciousness. How I think, particularly under pressure, matters. Too often, feelings create an unnecessary distraction from developing a feel for my work.When I'm...

• behind on rebuilding my blog

• behind on writing articles to get published

• overwhelmed by my website and its needs

• underwater with my publishing projects

• strategizing new ways to increase my business

and I want to do them all at the same time, of course, I need to hone in on my core strengths:

• Determination. Learn what to let go of--and it's likely my anxiety. The more concrete it feels, the less real it is.

• Familiarization. Practice the opening and letting go of my mind all the time so that I integrate the idea that all things pass, all things come to a natural end.

• Plant seeds. Know that I have the innate ability to let go of my anxiety and feel compassion for myself and others.

• Tend weeds. Realize that the identity I form with self-reproach and anxiety limits my perspective, and to not succumb to the desire of keeping it from falling apart. Trying to "keep it all together" wasn't working.

• Aspiration. When things fall apart, when situations find their natural ending, when on the cusp of a new chapter--position myself to be with those who can teach me the most so that I can do my best service.

This is the only way I can process feelings in my work so that I can get back to developing a feel for it./This post-series is about trying to anchor my experience by exploring within and reminding myself about what it means to practice "good humaning." It's about moving forward imperfectly. To follow this thread in my posts, look for these tags: #NotesFromMyYogaJournal

Decisions Made In Stone

How do heads of state, presidents of major philanthropic organizations, or CEOs make decisions?

Decision making comes down to feelings. The quality of our memory and the amount of information we can access helps, but we tend to make choices and decisions based on feelings. Then we start to rationalize—to ourselves and others. It speaks to our vulnerability as human beings that for all the preparation, thought, intensity, and data we put toward choice, a real decision is delivered from the soul.

Whether a leader is strong or weak, or whether he or she initiates or avoids particular decisions, the same forces and factors shape those decisions. All leaders must wield their power of influence under limitations. The larger their influence, the more extraordinary the constraints. It is the limitations that give the problem of choice its complexity and even poignancy.

Leaders of major organizations have unique perspectives, immense pressures and high stakes. From my view, the work of such leaders is special but not unique. Appreciating that the scope of their mission is worlds apart from individual craftsmen, the dynamics leaders manage are the same ones that stone carvers, wood turners, metal sculptors—and practitioners in every demanding field manage every day of their working lives. If we overlook the universality of our mental processes, such as judging options, balancing tradeoffs, dealing with uncertainty, we overlook the fundamental capabilities of the human mind.

The CEO takes the pulse of employees and customers while also assessing external competitive and market pressures, then makes a strategic decision about which products to release. The stonecutter sees a face in the natural angles of a stone’s edges and structures the rest of her sketch around that emerging relationship. As they operate at their craft, neither limits his or her judgment strictly to subjective or objective knowledge or deductive reasoning.

To work at something with craftsmanship, committed practitioners must rely on both control and openness in their work—at the same time. To do it well takes a tremendous amount of self-awareness and self-management of their emotions.

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Good Humaning: Be in tension

There is a common example in yoga about the importance of holding tension. Namely, that we must inhale and exhale to stay alive. They refer to it as “riding the breath.”

And, I get that sort of literal example. I have to sustain the right blend of breadth and depth to advance in what I’m doing.

Athletes work to sustain peek flexibility and strength. Organizations move between local and distributed control, or of innovation and efficiency. In any of these examples, the goal is to balance the act of replicating success against the need to get to the next performance level.

And there it is, sneaking up on me: my comfort zone.

Too much effort on either side leads to lopsided outcomes. When I merely replicate what I am good I lean more toward efficiency and stagnate. When this happens, it’s an indicator that it’s time to start taking a few more risks and start innovating.

Easier said than done.

Finding tension in this sense is messy, unsteady, risky, and hard. It requires me to be highly focused. I have to find ways to manage my emotions of overwhelm, frustration, or even boredom in order to remain present and pay serious attention to the nuances of my work.

I have to learn to adopt a certain kind of stance, one that is relaxed with what is and what will be.

Genuine fascination gives us an edge on problem solving

Example of creative problem-solving and also how someone's fascination with a particular creative medium, in this case: mushrooms. Genuine fascination with something particular gives us a unique advantage: the ability to see what most people don't. We see opportunities, experiments, and solutions that no one thought possible.

 

To most people, mushrooms are a food source. To mycologist (mushroom scientist) Philip Ross, fungi are much, much more. In fact, Ross is most passionate about mushrooms’ ability to be used for building materials and it is this is what he primarily focuses his attention on. Recently, the mycologists figured out how to make bricks from growing fungi that are super-strong and water-, mold- and fire resistant.

 

Inhabitat reports that the 100% organic and compostable material is made from dried mycelium and then is grown and formed into just about any shape. It has a remarkable consistency that makes it stronger – pound for pound – than concrete. He recently patented his own version of the mycotecture procedure.

During an interview with Glasstire, Ross explained:“It has the potential to be a substitute for many petroleum-based plastics. It’s left the art world and seems to have entered a Science Fiction novel or something like that. With this stuff it’s possible to go into regional production of biomaterials. For instance, here in San Francisco, we could start producing lots of local materials using this fungus and could create a pilot project of sorts.”

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Good Humaning: What it is I think I'm up to...

Photo by Fernando Puente

In 2016, when I completed my research on Master Craftsmen, I was also recovering from painful leg surgery. I had many, many insightful conversations with my subjects. Some conversations were transformative and deeply influenced what work I chose, and how I went about my work. The most important lesson: craftsmanship rests on deliberate practice.

In 2017, I took up daily yoga around the same time as my physical therapy. There, I could take all my anxieties about changing my life’s course and the frustrations of my recovery to my yoga mat. My mat took a pretty big beating in those early months. I had many profound lessons within that 2×5 foot space. Without really intending to, I had taken up a practice and dedicated myself to it. Over time, my practice became very…deliberate. I also was able to make significant connections between what craftsmen and women were referring to by the idea of “showing up”, “meeting a challenge,” or “being deliberate” that I will continue to explore and share.

In 2018, I turned my attention to developing my business (something I had been doing the whole time, but now in a more focused way). I took many of the lessons I had learned and continued to work on them. And, as is typical with most learning, when I stopped going to yoga regularly and stopped writing and researching regularly, I started to forget some of what I had learned. I genuinely learned what I learned, but had not integrated all of my insights fully.

This blog category (NotesFromMyYogaJournal) is one of my practices for trying to anchor my experience by exploring from within and reminding myself about what it means to be human. Part of that work is re-learning what it means to be a good human or to do “humaning” well. 

I refer to “humaning” because I learned so much from my last few years of research, writing, and building my practice. Between learning and integration lies “the journey”, “the struggle”, “the gap.” Hence, this theme…and me sharing some of my own re-learning practice here.