In a New Job

With experience comes the opportunity to have honed our craft. But experience and honing aren't necessary to have a profoundly positive impact on the people in our lives. Especially for teachers and other "helper" professionals.

This fall, whether we are completely new to a profession or new to a particular community, we never need to prove ourselves and we never need to hold ourselves back. Those we’re with want us to play full out, to bring ourselves fully to the court, to engage in this game here and now.

In some ways, beginners have an advantage: their vision is broader, heightened, and less clouded by the illusion of already "knowing."

My younger son’s advisor this year is new to his school. I asked my son to make sure that he’s welcoming and helpful to this new teacher. Most of us are nervous when we join a new community, and teachers are no exception.

There’s so much newness in a new job - people, buildings, routines, and unknown expectations - that it can be very challenging to join a new community at all. Let alone a school community, where adults are there to train kids in skeptical thinking, where adolescents in their desire for fun can sometimes be cruel. And wherever we go, especially in a school, most people are busy enough to forget what it was like to be new.

On top of these new relationships and the acclimation to a new culture, the job still needs to get done. For teachers, it’s new faculty and school cultures, planning lessons, setting up the classroom space, and hitting the ground running from day 1 while standing on stage in a spotlight.

None of this is inherently a problem, of course. In fact, it can be an exciting and thrilling adventure. By nature of our humanity, we needn’t live at the effect of our environments, circumstances, or challenges, and we all have the capacity to thrive in exploration and presence of mind. Furthermore, we all have an inherent wisdom, wholeness, and unbreakable nature, and this can be applied in any situation. Even for new teachers.

However, most of us haven’t had much training in how to stay grounded despite the occasional storms and apparent insecurity of life. We live in a symptom-focused society where the absence of obvious disease means health, and we’re expected to figure things out on our own until then. For teachers and other “helper” professions, we’re also expected to continue to have a positive impact on others without anyone checking in on how we’re doing.

Nearly all of us are doing our best for ourselves and others, yet too much we live in a mildly desperate hope that our colleagues, our students, and ourselves can hold it together well enough to function sufficiently. It's not even about thriving as much as it is about surviving and "making it." But without training and understanding, it's a game of craps.

We have an untapped capacity for satisfaction, enjoyment, and effectiveness. And while most of us haven’t developed an understanding of how to access it, one thing is certain: our environments can help. The more at ease we are in our environments and communities, the more at ease we can be in life. While lasting ease comes from the inside-out, the people in our environment and communities can certainly have a positive impact on us.

This is why I want my son to let his teacher know she’s welcomed, she’s cared about, and there are people in this community who know she can thrive.

He said to me that parents usually tell their kids to be friendly to the new students, but I’m talking about the teachers. “It’s just that important,” I told him. And it would be good if he’s friendly to the new students too.

Because of our broad impact, teachers and other professionals who mentor, guide, teach, and/or support must be healthy and well. Their families depend on it. Our kids depend on it. And our society and future depend on it.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

When Emotions Transform

During my morning routine today, I felt sadness well up when looking at a picture of my kids.

In the picture, my arms are around the kids and the three of us are standing in Rocky Mountain National Park on a beautiful day. Seeing these two precious humans, I felt fear of losing them and regret for times when I’ve been a crappy father. The fear and regret became sadness.

Allowing myself to fully feel emotions is part of my morning routine, so I let myself completely feel the sadness. I felt it in my shoulders, in my stomach, as a weight in my arms, and as a hollowness in my chest. I also had thoughts - memories and imaginings of the future - meandering through my mind, but I focused on the sensations in my body and let the thoughts keep meandering on their own.

In allowing myself to fully feel the sadness this morning, I was able to clearly see what caused it - fearful and regretful thinking - and then get in touch with what underlies that fear and regret: my love for my kids.

It’s because I care about these little guys that I fear losing them. It’s because I want them to have a great experience of life that I regret when I’ve been a crappy dad.

Fear is based on thinking about the future. Regret is based on thinking about the past. Sadness and love are felt when we get present to something in the here and now.

The sadness, the fear, and the regret transformed into love. I only had to feel into the sensations of the emotion; I didn't have to actively think about it. That's how insight works - it usually doesn't come from our conscious thinking. It usually comes from someplace else in our mind, and we only need to give it room to arise.

The meditation portion of my morning routine ends with some gratitude. This morning, I feel very grateful for the opportunity to live with and grow from having these two amazing little people in my life. I’m also grateful for the opportunity to feel, whether it’s sadness, fear, regret, or love. What a gift to be able to feel anything at all.

And I’m grateful to have learned to allow myself to feel emotions, to allow and let loose the thinking wrapped up in them, and to see what new insights arise to connect and awaken me to the life and love around and within me.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

A Revolutionary Perspective

Each of us has an innate capacity for insight and well-being. At our core, we are inherently whole, wise, perfect, untarnishable, and unbreakable. We all have immediate access to peace of mind, enjoyment, and effectiveness.

There’s a good chance you think those assertions are a pile of bull crap. It sounds nice, and wouldn’t it be great if it were accurate, but it’s simply not true. It’s some kind of positive-thinking or escapist hopefulness that doesn’t reflect our actual experience.

Maybe it could be true if you hadn’t made the choices you’ve made, had the family you had, went to the school you attended, had that thing happen to you, had that other thing happen to you, or seen that other thing happen to someone else. But those words certainly don’t apply to anyone in the real world except maybe babies.

Well those words are true for each of us. So why don’t we feel it, and why don’t we see it more easily?

We've been trained to think otherwise. We’ve been conditioned to view ourselves, others, the world, and life itself as an unending engagement with circumstances that challenge us and then define us. X happens and we respond in Y way. X happens and it means Y about us, others, or life. It’s inevitable that this is how we work, and we’ve turned out this way because of our past experiences.

Ridiculous things happen to us, and so much of it really is outrageous! I am so angry that they did that! That must be so upsetting for you! Poor us! The world is against us, and it’s taking everything we’ve got not to crumble under the weight of it all. All we can do is resist the forces of evil trying to drag us down. The best we can do is turn our victimhood into empowerment to persecute the true perpetrators!

That’s all a bit extreme, but not too far off the mark for many of us. Circumstances happen to us, and the best we can seem to do is survive them. In any conflict or perceived conflict, we shift among the three roles of the drama triangle, and that’s just how it is.

So yes, those words don't feel real to us because we've been conditioned to see life a different way.

Another reason we don’t experience ourselves as the free, divine, and enlightened beings we already are is that it would mean that we really are solely responsible for our experience of life.

If I acknowledge that I am inherently well, then I can’t blame another for my lack of wellness. I can’t blame another for my frustrations. I can’t blame my past for my current shortcomings. I can’t blame myself or my family or society or substances or even my own thinking for my seeming inability to be well. I can’t resign myself to a future of “more of the same.”

Some of us don’t blame others as much as we blame ourselves. Some of us have an intuitive sense that only we are to blame for our tough experience of life. We might realize that we can’t point our finger out there and blame anyone else because only we are to blame.

But that’s more of the same!

I’m not suggesting that being responsible means that we take on blame for all of our challenges and suffering. I’m actually suggesting that there’s no one to blame. Blame itself is a way to avoid being responsible, and blame itself is part of what keeps us feeling down.

I’m suggesting, instead, that there’s always an opportunity to take radical responsibility for our experience, our actions, and our results.

This is why the question that always delivers continues to be the most powerful question I can ask myself or another. It’s a reminder that we’ve always got agency. Here are the three forms of the question that I like to use:

• What am I avoiding being responsible for?

• What can I be responsible for?

• What do I really want?

The idea that we are innately well and perfect is revolutionary. Not only does it take courage to see it, but it takes trust and a willingness to be vulnerable. It’s been said by our favorite sages for thousands of years - look around, look within, and wake up to heaven and the God that’s already among us - and we sort of believe them, but not really.

Participating in this conversation helps us shake loose our conditioned thinking that there’s anything innately wrong. There’s not anything wrong, and transforming our experience doesn’t need to be hard, take a lot of “work,” or exist as a possibility for only some of us. If you're human, it applies to you.

Conversations, trainings, coaching, and exploring are all ways to awaken to this truth about ourselves. Our conditioned pathways of thinking will disagree, but our deeper knowing will get the cosmic point.

"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be." - James Baldwin

Thanks so much for engaging with my work. ❤️