mindfulness 2 - What Is Dialogue?

Each Moment Is Motion

In the mid 1980’s I managed a catering – wholesale foods operation which gave me the opportunity to reinvent everything. I researched the competition from the Canadian border to NYC looking for trends and new thinking, I spent time wondering, pondering and brainstorming with abandon. Some of my mad stirring of the pot paid off, and some deepened the dent in my forehead from repeatedly connecting with the desk. And no it doesn’t feel good when you stop.

Early on I learned that motion is connected to opportunity and that everything is always in motion, each moment is in dynamic motion spinning and churning without ceasing. What’s this have to do with running a busy catering operation you may be asking right about now? I’ll tell you.

During the 80’s business coaching and personal development schemes where taking off, you couldn’t turn around without being offered an opportunity to take your business or even your life to a higher level. If you couldn’t make it to a live seminar there were VHS and audio tapes + CD’s available for home study. Remember this was not only before the internet it was also the same time compact discs had just come on the scene,and people could for the first time rent movies for home viewing. The information revolution was rolling through towns and cities as never before.

Excitement about the possibilities to create something new was everywhere, you could feel the motion revealing itself. I happily allowed myself to be talked into taking a 12 week Robert Fritz course 0n expanding creativity and vision. So for 12 weeks it was me and the teacher spending 3 plus hours teaching me to crack open my creative side and how to embrace the vision. Wow, how could this not be worth all that cash I paid. I was learning to tap into the moment and find my higher self and learned how to attach vision to motion even though I didn’t know that at the time.

“Don’t be so loyal to your mind; the mind is not loyal to You.”
― Bert McCoy

A couple of months after completing the course I got all my employees together in a local deli for a creative jam. I asked everyone to think about where they thought the business could grow and how we would go about implementing their ideas. Of course the joke was on me because I never bothered to ask if they even had ideas or cared one way or the other. I had the vision thing and I was going to make sure everyone else joined me.

Six of us sat in the local deli and discussed their roles in the business with a few ideas peppered in between. The big ideas soon came from an outsider I’d invited to sit in with us for her business experience along with a wildly fertile imagination I hoped would help move the group forward. I was right about P. having a fertile imagination and before long the group had enthusiastically got on board with her ideas for serving our market.

Before I knew it I was free falling without a net, I had yet to share my vision and I was bereft of ideas to insert my beautiful technicolor vision with a group that was congratulating P. for her wonderfully stark, simple and easily understandable B+W plan.

Technicolor Technicolor I cried inside my mind as I gently shook while clinging to resistance from a place of fear. My vision was stalled and my grasp of motion derailed. P. knew the space I was in and touching my arm she smiled with compassion telling me we could always do Technicolor next.

In Motion The Moments Unfold

I didn’t then know about mindfulness, noticing assumptions, reserving judgement, active listening and it would be quite a while before the power of Generative Dialogue would cross the threshold of my consciousness.

Motion is what’s happening right now, right here. There is no past to retreat to, no future to rush to. What we have is one moment moving smoothly into the next. Each moment is motion and it is only when we are distracted that we miss connecting with the motion embedded within each moment, always unfolding and always arising.

Within each unfolding moment is an opportunity to pivot out of the deep chasm of ego we often find ourselves in. It was not knowing about using mindfulness to pivot that tied me in knots and doomed my vision. I clung to my vision ignoring the group as they moved forward. I was left in a heap along the side of the road not knowing how to listen or dwell in the motion of the moment and my employees moved on without me.

Part of being human is to attach to our memories, our brain runs more efficiently when it can repeat the same actions over and over, and ignoring current reality in favor of efficiency. What’s happening in the here and now becomes stalled, and we kill motion.

“It’s only when you’re forbidden to talk about the future that you suddenly realize how much the future normally occupies the present, how much of daily life is usually spent making plans and attempting to control the future. Never mind that you have no control over it. The idea of the future is our greatest entertainment, amusement, and time-killer.”
― Erica Jong, Fear of Flying

Below is a mindmap I created with a moment at its center. The map shows how the past and future are but memories and hopes we’ve created in our minds. Using mindfulness with this knowledge can aid us in living and functioning in each unfolding moment giving us access to new levels of creative collaboration and dynamic innovation.

Don’t get me wrong, memories are wonderful and help us to navigate and live a much richer daily life but they become distractions when we live our lives through our memories. Mindfulness can be like a new set of windshield wipers making your vision clearer and richer.

There is a warning sign along this road that’s label Shinny Objects, these are the distractions we all are exposed to 24/7. Unplug when you can and don’t forget to turn off those bleeping notifications living on your connected devices.

See a larger version of this mindmap? Click here A Moment by craig daniels

Distraction Free Workplace Zones Increase Productivity

Imaginations Filling The Workplace

In the near future creating a Distraction Free Workplace by morphing our current spaces into soundproof offices that diminish much of today’s office noise is not the answer. First the cost alone of retrofitting millions of offices into a something mimicking a trailer park is not going to happen, and second most people believe that the open space office setup works best to improve collaboration, creative flow and innovation. Lastly much of the workplace distraction is created by technology and not your coworker.

Distraction wasn’t invented in the last 20 years, but it has been hugely amplified with our increased tethering of cell phones and tablets to our existence. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and their ilk now demand our attention 24/7 and yes they chatter at us while we sleep with back-lit notifications that disrupt our sleep patterns.

Add to this hub of distraction the office phones, coworker crosstalk , official and not so official email streaming in like Niagara Falls, and a deeply chaotic picture emerges. Various estimates put the loss of productivity at $650 billion to $1 trillion dollars each year in the U.S. alone.

“My imagination functions much better
when I don’t have to speak to people.”
― Patricia Highsmith

The question becomes how do we in today’s business environment deal with the constant noise and distractions cutting into creative flow and ultimately productivity?

Taming the notifications beast would go a long way toward increasing the productivity, focus and attention of everyone in the workplace.

One huge concern is how we are losing our ability to focus as our attention is rapidly shifted from one thing to the next in what seems like a never ending merry-go-round. Studies have shown we are being interrupted nearly once every 3 minutes in the workplace, regaining optimum focus requires nearly 20 minutes.The studies are suggesting, in today’s busy open office few of us ever reach our most productive level of focus and concentration.

For teams struggling to communicate on important projects requiring new levels of creative and innovative dialogue and collaboration the above sobering thoughts are just distractions iceberg.

I’ve added s short video (distraction) with a bit of humor to an otherwise serious subject.

Ok, I’ve shared with you a a few thoughts on the subject of why we may need to seriously think about creating distraction free workplace zones so what’s next?

Email Can Wait: Some companies have implemented a policy of shifting away from emails for urgent issues by moving important communication back to the phone. This step means people no longer need to frequently check interoffice email as often because email can wait
No Devices: Companies such as Ebay are experimenting with no devices allowed in meetings. This may go a long way toward engaging interaction and creative dialogue in meetings.
Fewer Projects: Some companies are setting limits to how many projects each person can be attached to in an attempt to lower the levels of distraction caused by the stress of too many directions.
No Noise Zones: One way to cut out distractions is to set aside rooms without WIFI where people can sit and work for a couple of hours a day if needed. When someone is working in the room their whereabouts is recorded as quiet and they are not expected to answer emails or requests during the time in the room.
Mindfulness Classes: A growing trend in many businesses worldwide is for companies to make mindfulness classes available onsite for employees. The benefits to increased concentration and attention are well documented.

“In order to be open to creativity,
one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude.
One must overcome the fear of being alone.”
― Rollo May

The above ideas are just a few on a growing list of recognizing the need for a distraction free workplace to improve focus, attention and well-being of employees leading to both higher productivity and both happier employees and customers.

Are We All Too Busy?

Too Busy For What?

If we were to stop and write down a detailed list of all the things we’ve promised ourselves we’d accomplish we might find our minds rapidly spinning into a state of frustration, and quite possibly become overwhelmed.

In less than 100 years the world has moved from a time of simple expectations to one of 24/7 frenzied expectations and information overload. Even while we sleep our phones and tablets cast an eerie light as they alert our sleeping self to another innocuous notification.

Innocuous: “not interesting, stimulating, or significant; pallid; insipid:” according to dictionary.com

We are urged and cajoled by phones, desktops, tablets and game consoles to stop immediately and pay attention to their bleating cries, and as if they possessed the power of a mythological Greek siren we surrender and obey.

Many of us look up from what we’re doing to utter the same two words over and over when asked a question, “Too Busy”. We may find ourselves waking in the middle of the night and uttering “Too Busy”, as I myself did a short while back.

Our minds bounce from one thing to the next with nary a hint of conscious choice or recognition taking place. I need to ask, is there really a mindfulness revolution taking place in places of business or are we so busy during mindfulness class that we learn little

For me the real power of engaging with a mindfulness practice is developing awareness of what we are thinking, of learning to recognize what we are going to say before we say it. If we’re throwing out Too Busy when asked a question instead of the word no or I’m not interested then we need to pay closer attention to what’s going on and mindfulness can give us the needed focus to accomplish this deeper level of awareness.

developing-mindful-leaders-for-the-c-suite Bill George writes a short yet powerful post about mindfulness in business. Take a couple of minutes and check it out.

It’s not a surprise that asking a person to take on another task such as learning the intricacies of Generative Dialogue may cause them to pivot in another direction. For all its multitude of benefits both in our work and personal areas mastering Dialogue requires time and dedication for it to truly make a difference in a team’s innovation and creative skills.

Like most things of deep and lasting value learning the Dialogue Process and working with the tools you’ll master will open doors and expose opportunities that previously may have lived only in your imagination.

“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” Henry David Thoreau

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“Busy with the ugliness of the expensive success
We forget the easiness of free beauty
Lying sad right around the corner,
Only an instant removed,
Unnoticed and squandered.”
Dejan Stojanovic

Meditation Is Just A Tool

Meditation – It’s Not What You May Think

Often I’ve overheard people talking about Meditation in heavy and ponderous tones, words like transcendent, zazen and enlightenment pepper the dialog and boring, aching knees and spaced-out are added for emotional emphasis, but what would you say if I told you that Meditation is just a tool that neither requires aching knees or the desire for enlightenment. Meditation is just a tool that doesn’t require you to change your political or religious affiliations, it doesn’t require you to shave your head or wrap yourself in robes. Meditation is just a tool.

Boost ROI by Grabbing The Moment

On a particularly snowy afternoon I found myself overlooking an expert trail on top of a little ski area in Vermont named Round Top (since closed). The snow had been falling most of the day which resulted in many of the skiers packing up their gear and heading home. Along with my two companions I decided to stay and enjoy the fresh snow covered trails, now almost completely empty. If necessary we could always get hotel rooms and wait out the storm.

5 Benefits To Mindfulness at Work

I’m fairly sure most of us grew up hearing the old refrain “pay attention” or maybe it was another childhood favorite “mind what you’re doing.” And depending on what part of the world you grew up in I’m sure you heard a few other gems whose goal was to get you to stop fidgeting or giving into distractions. Now many years later companies all over the world are encouraging their employees to avoid distractions and stop fidgeting, though hopefully they are not including the dreaded finger wagging with their suggestion.

Learning Meditation Adds Depth To Dialogue

From a young age I can remember being curious about the people I saw in pictures meditating and more specifically about meditation practice itself.

I’m not sure where this curiosity sprouted from, maybe it was all the incense and Latin mystery I was exposed to growing up in the Catholic church or maybe it was the art books in the school library that excited something in me as I leafed through block prints from the faraway Japan and China. Whatever sparked this curiosity I was determined to go about learning meditation or at the very least learn more about it.

Mindfulness Practice Deepens Dialogue + Expands Innovation

Deep in the middle of another frigid February with record snowfall, I jumped into my bright red Honda to take a 500 mile drive to a remote meditation center. The trip was my first expedition into the unknown continent of meditation and Mindfulness Practice, it wouldn’t be my last. As I drove up the snowy twisty mountain road, the large stone retreat appeared, it was surround by huge snow drifts and painted by what I would soon come to realize was a relentless howling wind. My apprehension peaked.