Is the process fun?

A serious approach to an endeavor doesn’t indicate a successful outcome, whereas, a lighthearted approach does, regardless of outcome, guarantee a positive process.

I jotted that down during an intense meeting about nothing. The air was really heavy and everyone was into making their point. Outside of that, there was no real value being produced.

Sitting there, I thought, “what if we paused and acknowledged that we obviously don’t care about a successful outcome”? Would everyone still be serious or would they lighten up a bit?

Because if we all decided to have fun in the making, even if we didn’t get anything done, guess what? We still had fun!

The Golden Rule

What's the Golden Rule and how does it apply to real life? That's how I started down this road and ended up at the Golden Ratio.

Turns out the Rule is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." A classic quote and philosophy found in almost every religion.

The Ratio, described in the picture above, appears geometrically in nature, music, architecture, art, and places you don't expect, like your face. It throws you for a curve just thinking about it, but look at any straight edge in front of you (a coffee table perhaps?) and start breaking it down with your hands the way the picture describes.

The idea has been around for centuries! Fascinating stuff.

Why Can't We Walk Straight?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2010/11/03/131050832/a-mystery-why-can-t-we-walk-straight

Click on the link for a fun video about why we turn in circles when blindfolded and told to walk straight. We still don't know!

They didn't mention testing blind people though, which is curious. The blind are known to strengthen their other senses, so they'd probably do better.

If we can see, so be it. If we can't, we train our other senses. So it's a conundrum why we'd study this at all. Still, the style of the video is worth watching.

What to do when you're feeling stuck

Try to let go of your resistance because whenever there is something we can’t see ourselves, it’s because we don’t want to see it. Try to listen with an open mind, and remember that you are always the final judge of what you need. Anything offered to us from an outside source will need to be processed within before its wisdom can take hold.

In all this, be kind to yourself and remember that we all get stuck sometimes. Think of it as a part of your process, a necessary step on your journey, rather than as a problem that shouldn’t be happening. This can help to keep your frustration at bay and give you the space you need to take a deep breath and really figure out what’s going on.

From: http://www.dailyom.com/articles/2010/26110.html

Flash Mob

Gut-wrenching but too astonishing to tear your eyes away.

I’m constantly amazed at what people enjoy and what they can do when they work together. I’ve been on top and been the base of several two man towers before when doing bhangra. Human instinct kicks in and your legs start shaking, not because of the weight, but because of the fear. It’s exhilarating working with a group of people to do a stunt like that.

What a thrill to see group work at this scale.

Casteller from Mike Randolph on Vimeo.

The Bucket List Lie

But, then make a List Of One.

A single, meaningful action you’re going to take before the end of the day to move you one step closer to a single, deeply meaningful quest.

From: http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/the-bucket-list-lie/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JonathanFields+%28Jonathan+Fields+%7C+Awake+At+The+Wheel%29

The idea of focusing on just one thing is popular for

• Presentations - one word/image/sentence/idea per page (think Steve Jobs, Garr Reynolds)
• Agendas - discuss one topic that everyone can get their head around (think GTD)
• Companies - one consistent theme that every employee echoes (think customer service, bottomline, efficiency, quality, etc.)

In all the above, concentrating on one has been shown to be a measure of progress, of eventual success.

Over the years, my daily to-do list has whittled down from 10 to 5 to 3 to just 1 thing. It’s easy to think of, easy to track, easy to accomplish and functions as a self-fulfilling reward.

Great example: working out. You go in knowing you’re going to do X exercise for a certain amount of time. Once you’ve achieved it, you’re done. It’s incredibly satisfying and motivating. You want to do it again because you know you can.

Jonathan Fields’ idea of a List of One works off the same mechanism. Start with one and take it from there. Great advice.

Social Entrepreneurship

It's great to see companies like AWeber helping to keep the internet community fun and social. I assume companies at their outset are more local and friendly, and simply due to size eventually become unreachable.

Few, like Zappos, Bungie and 37signals though have kept up their customer-centric attitude throughout.

Regardless of marketing strategy, I can't help but like this Thanks-giving attitude. October till New Years is such a beautiful time of the year.

Breathing thought into existence

When we hold a thought in our mind without being distracted, we have achieved pure thought. When we have a positive emotional response to that thought, we enable it to dance and move and breathe itself into existence.

From: http://www.dailyom.com/articles/2010/26028.html

Just because...

Just because that’s how it’s always been done doesn’t mean that’s how it should be done.

From: http://blog.jayparkinsonmd.com/post/1526239350/dont-drive-when-youre-tired-especially-in-new#disqus_thread

A Final Cocoon - Dying at Home - NYTimes.com

“He said: ‘It’s O.K., everybody has to die. I’m here with you, let’s just focus on the now,’ ” she recalled. “He also said one of the things he had to do was finish this house, to put the windows in. We talked about going to Hawaii. He said, ‘Let’s go to Hawaii and be with God.’ In Bernd’s eye, God was beauty, God was nature, God was the flowers, the mountains, the moon and the stars, so he wanted to be outside all the time. He was not one who was going to lie in bed and die, that’s for sure.”

Fascinating and articulate read. We carry a sense of home imprinted since childhood with us from apartment to studio to house, wherever we go.

How we externalize it through design is up to us, our unique touch on an old recipe that will continue to be passed on.

Home doesn't have to be filled with just material reminders. The FEEL of a place, the essence that only we can know, is much more important. Nature, buildings, colors, woodwork, noise levels, the general hum we hear when we close our eyes. These are the elements that matter.

We reproduce in more ways than through the genes perpetuating our lineage. A sense of self carries on simply because of our presence.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/garden/11dying.html?pagewanted=3&_r=2

Calvin & Hobbes on Life

via www.existentialbuddhist.com

Freedom from desire...

Freedom from desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

-Krishnamurti (via blogosophia)

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.

Having realized that we can depend on no outside authority … there is the immensely greater difficulty of rejecting our own inward authority, the authority of our own particular little experiences and accumulated opinions, knowledge, ideas and ideals.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti

I was completely unaware that such a thorough biography of Krishnamurti was available on Wikipedia.

It’s absorbing.

Having read most of his works, I’m curious about the process that caused him to estrange himself from the people who found him. Maharshi, Nisargadatta, and so many other gurus-who-don’t-want-followers went through something similar, resulting in a series of talks and writing that lasted a lifetime.

Their message; focusing on the now, self as teacher, and lifelong curiosity is also extremely similar.

My sense, when thinking of them together, is people who served as conduits for a powerful message. Did they have personality? Only in so much as their message would be heard. It’s hard to call it devotion. It feels more like a need when you read them. They would not be without their mission to build awareness.

Impersonal Understanding

Understanding that people are driven by innumerable motivations can help you learn to see their actions as a product of their inner selves rather than taking their behavior personally. Not taking people’s words and actions personally frees you from the need to react to them. You no longer have to perceive any negativity on their part as ill treatment, nor do you have to see their responses to you as a reflection of whether or not you said or did something wrong. Other people’s behavior and reactions cease to be a benchmark of your worth. When you choose not to take the words and actions of others personally, you can feel positive today even when surrounded by negativity.

From: DailyOM - Impersonal Understanding

Blogging Continues!

I now blog at Just Be And You Are.

I also publish a newsletter specific to health care at Pulse of Care.

To be continued...

Blogging will resume. When and where even I don't know yet. Thanks to all who followed along. I've learned a lot through blogging and hope to learn a whole lot more and contribute back in the future.

Will the financial crisis make you more or less healthy?

Almost every issue has two sides to it. Its enlightening when you see both at the same time and get to figure out which side you fall on. For example, you would assume that the financial crisis is negatively affecting our health. Jane Sarasohn-Kahn agrees and just yesterday posted stats on the key sources of stress and how to manage them.

Opening up my RSS reader this morning, one of the the first articles I saw was by Jason Shafrin talking about how the bad economy may be good for our health. This is mainly because people eat out less, drink less and go to the doctor more. There are more interesting details in the post.

Overall, I believe what the source of the financial crisis argues for is more real value. Building on equity not debt, growing our savings acccounts, holding others more accountable for their actions. Just as there was a free-riding debt-laden groupthink surrounding the nation prior to the crisis, now there's more agreement around growing a solid foundation for the country.

Bottomline: Recognizing we're stressed and why lets us handle it better. Realizing the benefits of stepping back from the rat race and taking time out for ourselves and our families is equally as beneficial. Perspective will make all the difference in the coming years.

A Scraped Knee

The scenario is you go into your doctor to get a scrape on your knee looked at, cleaned and bandaged. The nurse sees you and sends you on your way. Your visit is over. The doctor's office submits a bill to the insurance company, gets paid for the procedure and care under the nurse's ID and everybody's happy. Perhaps.

What if the nurse probes further into how you scraped your knee (assuming a simple fall)? Maybe you tell her you've been having back problems lately or haven't been getting much sleep at night. Maybe you offhandedly mention an ear infection or she smells a hint of alcohol on your breath. There's a multitude of possibilities. The above could result in a referral to the orthopedist, a sleep specialist, an ears/nose/throat doc (ENT), or a social worker, respectively.

The way care is delivered right now though is very incidental. Patients are rarely looked at from a holistic sense of "what else is going on in their lives?" A lot of it has to do with how doctors are paid (fee for service) and the medical home model is one effort to correct that by getting insurance companies to pay additionally for coordination of care. This is what PCPs have been doing pro bono till now. Paying for a central model though builds in many other benefits:

• Pooled resources
• Central point of contact
• Change in perception
• Enhanced communication
• Better monitoring
• Standardized Best Practices

I'm a big fan of the shift in thought processes around care, incorporating both allopathic and holistic approaches and figuring out what works long-term as opposed to what gets the patient out the door. Other externalities that will emerge with this and other similar models are support services becoming involved, increased patient education and advocacy and assistance on the financial end. Its a mission statement that a whole lot of parties can converge around. A scraped knee is not always what it seems. Health and well-being has many layers. Exposing them is the first step to making them work for the person, not necessarily the patient.

Are You Your Job Title?

Titles mean little.  When you meet a professional in a casual context, a simple "doctor", "lawyer", "mechanic" suffices.  It seems to explain who they are at once.  Someone in sales, management or consulting doesn't get the same benefit.  Both parties though are liable for describing their life project.  One just has to think about it harder than the other.

For example, doctor A may seek to maximize the number of patients seen to improve income potential and doctor B may seek to maximize the number of patient seen to improve the health of the community.  Both have the same potential end result; increase in income as well as an improvement in community health, but their reasons are remarkably different and provide a much better insight into their psychosocial persona.  

Bottomline: I doubt professionals with definitive titles put as much thought into their life project as people with generic job titles.  With accountablity comes transparency of one's passions, ideas and thought processes.  That can be scary and the fear only goes away if others open up in the same way.  I've certainly pored over it quite a bit myself and while its still being tweaked, my own personal life project is to find the happy medium.

See What's Behind the Curtain

In America, we tend to hear about work in the form of results.  I started a company, I fought x number of cases, I fundraised x amount of money and so on.  Well-rehearsed 30-second spiels touting one-sided stats. The process in the background is rarely shelled out; leaving the listener in the dark about the "how?".  

These achievements could be weighted by multiple factors such as how much time was spent on the project or on a different judgment level, how much time was spent with one's family during the project.  By not weighting and thereby standardizing such accomplishments, we lose the real perspective.  And I wager we also lose a sense of the person's values, priorities, and overall purpose.  The same goes for companies and nations as well.  

Bottomline: The means and ends debate is never-ending.  In the midst of major financial institutions collapsing, you have to wonder just how all this happened.  What was the process behind all this acquisition of wealth and why wasn't it protected better?  Making a million dollars sounds fantastic.  Asking provocative questions as to how one go to that million will really lets you know if their priorities jive with yours.  Don't hesitate to get a perspective.  

A Tribute to Patience

Patience is a practiced skill.  It deserves particular mention because it serves as the backbone and precursor to many other positive character traits - kindness, compassion, respect, honesty, etc.  When you're on the road and get cut off, or waiting in a long line to check out, or in the midst of an argument, patience provides a balanced perspective from which to take further action.  

Prioritizing respect (towards others), for example, isn't going to do much when you feel disrespected in a heated argument.  Your view of respect is totally subjective.  So when someone disrespects you, how are they to know you'd feel that way?  Knowing this puts you on shaky ground to begin with.  You end up fighting back with what you for a fact know will be disrespectful to the other person.  All of a sudden you've lost your original priority.  And on top of that, you eventually feel guilty about your actions.  Same goes with kindness, compassion or even honesty.  They're all subject to, well, subjectivenes.

Not so with patience.  It's independent of one's idea of it.  Why?  Because there's no real beginning or end point, no benchmark for comparison, no real action that can be taken to refute it.  To be exact, impatience isn't disturbing to those who are patient.  They're willing to wait it out.  

My Project Is To...

American Express has a wonderful ad out (see below) with various celebrities such as Robert DeNiro, Martin Scorsese, Jim Henson, Ellen DeGeneres and others boiling their life achievements down into one sentence. The sentence always starts with, "My project was to". For example, for Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese, the sentence is "My project was to...tell unforgettable stories".

While this is an after-the-fact statement, I bet each of these celebrities would've stated something siimilar even prior to their success. They had a very clear idea that encompassed and drove their personal philosophy, career goals and family values all in one.

This project statement can serve as a great personal tool for anyone; as a daily reminder of why you wake up in the morning, when in doubt of your ability, and when someone asks you, "what do you do?" Take a little time out to figure out what your goals are and narrow them down into one or two sentences, starting with "My project is to...". It can't hurt and I bet it'll make you think differently about what your life focus is.

You think you know, but you don't

Even for a second, if you tune your ear to the radio these days you'll hear something about the upcoming elections. Inexperience, age, gender, family values are all up for debate and personal opinion has amazingly transformed into experiential wisdom.  We all seem to have an idea of "what it takes" to be the next president/vice president of the U.S.  But in fact, we don't.

Ability is measured in layers.  Its the same old "peeling an onion" analogy, where the complexity of a job and candidate's matching skill set lie deep beneath the folds.  From our own daily work/leisure perspective, we only see the superficial; the face, the job description, the relative difference from the last 8 years.  We don't see the inhuman stamina necessary to function at peak levels through all hours of the day, the sacrifice of personal time and family life on a campaign trail, the burden and responsibility of knowing how every decision you make may change the lives of millions of people.  Our day-to-day lives are nothing like that of the candidates.  We can't possibly understand the layers beneath such a career choice.  Just by getting to this stage of the game, the candidate has revealed their ability.  

Bottomline: On a more grounded level, think of how you felt right out of college coming into the work world.  The language of business, science, technology, or whatever career you chose to venture into was the same then as it is now with very minor modifications.  Five, ten, twenty years later, you simply understand that language on a much deeper level.  

Think of any concept you were familiar with in your 20s, say "community".  The mental connections you've made over time, through effort and in seeking knowledge give that word a lot more intrinsic meaning now than they did before.  You have layers of personal growth associated with your vocabulary.  Translate that to the presidency and you get the smallest hint of "what it takes" to be at that level.   

A Visual Web Stroll

NYTimes graphic on risks associated with 10 different causes of death:























Google's venture into the browser business; Chrome:




















Be a teacher, find a teacher - The eBay of teaching:

A Ubiquitously Useful App

Scobleizer recommends a lot of apps. Recently, Robert's had somewhat of an epiphany on why he started blogging and what PR really means to him. I love his passionates v. non-passionates debate. He drives home some really great points about the influence of early adopters on advancing new technology.

His most recent recommendation, a Firefox add-on called Ubiquity, is universally useful and deserves mention. Check out the video below.


Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Weekend Quotes

The report's authors "estimate that in order to provide services to these medically disenfranchised Americans, as well as current patients, health centers will need up to 60,000 more primary-care professionals, and up to 44,500 additional nurses."

-National Association of Community Health Centers (article link)

If pure thought is a body, it is our emotions that supply the heart that can really bring it to life. Our thoughts and feelings exist in relation to one another, and they form a feedback loop through which they communicate and empower each other.

-Daily Om: Undistracted Energy

“Redefining smoking not as a behavioral habit but as a pharmacological addiction may sound like good public policy, but it works against the public health when it reaches people that it is impossible to quit. Indeed, instead of having the intended effect of steering potential smokers – that is, children – away from cigarettes, demonizing cigarettes via nicotine reinforced smokers’ feelings of pharmacological enslavement and undermined their will to quit.

The tobacco habit should be characterized as an habituation rather than an addiction…”

-Smoking, A Behavioral Analysis, published in 1971