The Joy of Sharing Our Light

Last night, I attended my church's annual Shrove Tuesday pancake supper and talent show. Oh my! There were about twenty "acts" from "Comedy News Show" to beautiful gospel. My two favorites:

• Marty Fernald (85 if she's a day) playing harmonica. Her dad taught her how when she was a little girl. She played "Let Me Call You Sweetheart," and we all sang along. She was great -- Marty really knows how to play the harmonica!

• A little 6-year-old girl (at most), also on harmonica. She played "Jingle Bells" (on Shrove Tuesday -- you gotta love it). But the kicker was that she played it all on the same note. Totally accurate rhythm, but every note the same. I think she got the most applause.

There were photograph and quilt displays, art by the pre-school through junior high Sunday School classes, singing, stories, other musical offerings, and dance.

I don't usually go to these evening church gatherings, and I will go more often in the future. Every offering was received with great applause and gratitude, even moreso for the lack of "polish" and the openness of heart with which it was shared. The joy in the room was palpable, the kind of joy that comes directly from letting our light shine. And that was true of the audience as well as the performers. We all felt the light and the love, the appreciation, kindness, and connection.

Wishing you light and love and connection!

And Good ki!

Judy Ringer

The Wave

In a recent workshop I was teaching, "Jane" brought up a personal conflict she was having with negative attitudes in her workplace:

"Our work environment is so negative. It's like The Wave. One individual starts and then everybody joins in, including me some days. I want to stop. But when I don't engage, they all look at me like I'm 'Miss Polly Positive' or something."

She went on to say, "I don't feel like I can talk about this without making the others bad. I also don't want to turn into a cheerleader: 'Hey, let's all look on the bright side,' or 'We can turn this around, come on!' I worry that the group will ostracize me if I don't join in their disapproval, sarcasm, and general negative energy. I hate to come to work some days."

The costs of negativity in the workplace are far-reaching, from lateness, errors, and unhappy customers to illness, accidents, and the loss of more positive-minded employees.

What to do? I rather like what Jane wanted to say but was uncomfortable voicing. Sometimes people need a cheerleader. Changing your ki, your energy, may be just what others are waiting for. They may want to change, too, and just need an invitation.

We brainstormed some ideas in our group, and Jane decided to come out of the closet with her positivism, as in:

"I'd like to talk about something that's been on my mind. I know we work in a difficult environment. We need to keep the customer happy, be effective, safe, and efficient, and achieve the best outcome we can for the department. Every day I try to come in with a positive attitude and to keep that energy going. But it's hard. It's so easy to focus on what's wrong, how needy that customer was or what a bad attitude someone has. Anyway, I just want to say that I'd like to change. When I hear a conversation that seems to be going in a downward direction, I may not engage. It doesn't mean that I'm not stressed. And I don't mean to suggest I'm better than anyone else. I'm just working on keeping my energy up and maybe trying to find something positive to focus on.

"I wanted you to know that I'm trying to be more positive here at work, and if you want to help me, that's great. I'd love it."

What I appreciate about Jane's approach is that she understands she does not have to change everyone, just herself. And that she does not have to keep her new direction a secret. She realizes that by being open about her process, she is freer to pursue the goal.

Jane may begin a sea change that will eventually create waves of its own.

Good ki!

--Judy Ringer

Managing Conflict in Teams

This morning's email included a Harvard Business Publishing Management Tip of the Day on How to Manage Conflict in Teams. It referenced an entry on Harvard's Management Update blog by Jim Kling in January that I thought might be of interest. A discussion is building on the topic that will grow in the next few days.

Here is the tip as distributed:

Conflict is essential to a team's creative collaboration. Without differences of opinion, there's no synthesis of ideas or debate about important issues. But when conflict is mismanaged, it destroys creative collaboration.

Keep conflict productive by establishing ground rules in advance for working through disagreements. Give team members two options: confront the conflict and handle it — or let it go. Agree to put issues on the table as soon as they arise. When feedback raises tempers, don't rush to cool things down. Instead, arrange team members physically to keep things from getting personal: Put issues and ideas on a white board and seat people around it in a semicircle so they're allied against the conflict, not each other.

Judy Warner

A Woman to Inspire

This morning I was listening to a Rick Steve's podcast: Helen Thayer: Walking the Gobi. What caught my ear was that Helen walked the Gobi Desert when she was 63 and her husband was 74. They didn't walk the 'short' version from north to south (2-300 miles) but 1600 miles from East to West. They did it in 80 days, accompanied by two camels, Tom and Jerry. Their supplies and water were restocked every 20 days but aside from that they were on their own, meeting nomads along the way.

As I listened to Helen describing her experience to Rick, she described walking 18 hours a day, every day. (At the time I was listening to Helen I was running on my treadmill for a mere 45 minutes - I quickly decided that I could do better than whine about the boredom of 45 minutes of running inside.) Helen and husband hiked up and down sand dunes (the down is more challenging for a camel in case you didn't know) and hunkered down next to their camels for the most severe type of sandstorm that turned the sky black and included thunder and lightning.

It was a most enthralling interview. I kept trying to imagine a 63 year old woman carrying off such a feat. She said that it felt wonderful to lie down each evening and take off her boots. I imagine it did. It is amazing to see what we as humans are capable of if we set our minds to it!

Helen has a book on her travels, Walking the Gobi: A 1,600 -mile Trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair, that has just come out in paperback. I intend to get it soon and read more of her adventures. In the meantime, the next time you are faced with what seems like an insurmountable task - just compare it to hiking the Gobi - particularly those sand dunes.

Judy Warner

Versaille Reflections

The past few winters, I have been able to visit Paris, France for a few days, In a way, it has become my ‘regrouping’ time as I focus on the new year. I think I set myself up for a ‘stretch’ on the trip that I just completed as I brought Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father as reading material. My thought was to better understand the roots of this president who holds hope for so many. The book shares Obama’s intense self-examination as he comes to grip with his personal identity and value system. Reading it easily pushes the reader towards reflection of their own life.

With passages of the book swirling in my head, last weekend I toured Versailles – an amazing creation. What stood out as I walked its halls, listening to an audio guide, was that it was, in fact, built as an escape from reality - a retreat from the conflict and poverty of Paris for Louis XIV, V, and XVI. To condense many years of history – by the reign of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the king and queen were so disconnected from their people that the French revolution occurred and the two were eventually beheaded.

The juxtaposition of Obama’s self- reflection with the French royalty’s choice of flight from reality found me walking the grounds of Versailles reflecting on the art of centering and the timeless value of its gifts of heightened awareness and deeper connection to both self and the world we live in. Would the fate of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette have been different if they had been more centered in their lives? Will President Obama’s choice to seek a deeper understanding of himself and the world he was born into help him in safely navigating the perilous journey he and our nation find ourselves on?

No answers to those questions here. Only a greater appreciation of the power we all hold in crafting our lives as we face our daily opportunities to center, or not, under pressure and stress. The tools of centering are indeed timeless and invaluable as we make choices. I would like to think that had Louis and Marie had access to some coaching in centering, their fates might have been different. As for President Obama, I can only hope that he will be centered as he makes the choices he must in the coming four years. And, I wish the same for all of us too – that we may be able to access a centered state in our own lives in times of need.

Judy Warner