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Browse every published article connected to M.J. Ryan, with exact attribution and full-archive search.
Articles
Browse every published article connected to M.J. Ryan, or search within this exact expert archive.
It’s holiday time and for many of us, holidays that should be filled with opportunities for true happiness—a sense of togethe ess, a chance to give, and a chance to be grateful—are turned into occasions for fights, disappointments, overspending and fatigue. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Holidays don’t have to be expensive, meaningless or filled with stress.
“I can’t believe this is happening to me,” said the CEO on the other end of my phone line. “They just offered me a contract extension and three months later they’re telling me I’m out. I’m in shock.” Whether you have just received the news you no longer have a job or are dealing with any other change you didn’t ask for, chances are you’re dealing with a set of difficult feelings.
Research by psychology professors Richard G. Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun shows that not only do we have the ability to grow through the challenges of our life, what they call post-traumatic growth, but the benefits of doing so include improved relationships, new possibilities for our lives, a greater appreciation for life, a greater sense of personal strength, and spiritual development. Not bad rewards, I’d say. So how do we cultivate resilience?
Given the training we’ve had in listening to everyone but ourselves and believing we are broken and bad, how do we begin? We start by understanding that the capacity to trust ourselves is not a fixed state we either have or don’t, like straight hair or violet eyes. Rather it is a quality of heart and mind we can cultivate. Like a muscle, it grows or shrinks with practice.
Last time I wrote about the danger of focusing on the problem rather than the solution. There’s another reason why focusing on the road instead of the hole is important. It’s got to do with what The Secret is about. Say what you will about that massive bestseller, but there is a kernel of truth there as far as I understand. We all have the ability to use our energy in three ways—dynamically, to create the forward momentum of action, receptively, to become aware of what is available around and within us, and magnetically, to draw toward us that which we’re powerfully pulling in.
I wrote last time about how our limbic systems are constantly on high alert, ready to activate the stress response at the sign of a threat. That’s a good thing when we’re in physical danger. But unfortunately it also can turn on in traffic jams, layoffs, arguments with our loved ones…you fill in your favorite stressor.
My mother has been telling me she’s too old to change since she was 45; she’s now 85. In a way, she had the privilege of that position because she hasn’t had to support herself. Those of us out there making a living know how much the world is changing and how we must change to keep up, no matter what our age. I just read somewhere that the average American will have nine jobs by the time they’re 32. How many therefore by the time they’re 62? In his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, management consultant Peter F.
Hundreds of books have been written about getting rid of these voices because we all know they don’t serve any useful purpose. Even if those who spoke to us originally in this way were trying to be helpful, at this point they exist only to torture us. But I don’t know a single person who has eliminated those voices by any of the techniques in such books. That’s because such messages are deeply entrenched in our psyches—they ain’t going nowhere. That doesn’t mean we have to be at their mercy, however.
The first step to create a life of meaning is to truly see your life as the precious, limited time opportunity it actually is. You can make it a beautiful mansion. Here’s how Philip Adams puts it, “Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don’t. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever.” I have a client in his early forties who dealt with a serious illness last year that incapacitated him for months.
“I can’t handle this,” Susan cried, contemplating her daughter’s dwindling college fund. I know how she feels. When I think of the changes I’ve had to deal with in my life—having to lie flat in bed for a year due to back pain, going through a devastating breakup, dealing with the financial meltdown of my company, not to mention all the ups and downs of the life of an entrepreneur--there have been many times when I honestly doubted my ability to live through another second. And yet here I am, and so are you.
As I’ve written about before, our brains are not always our friends. They have various habits that can really get in our way. One is what’s called bifurcating, the tendency to think in either/or: either I am happy or I’m sad; either I am trying hard or I’m giving up; either I am a success or a failure. But human beings—and reality itself—is much more multifaceted than this mind tendency would have us be. We can be in more than one emotional state or hold opposing thoughts at the same time, and our actions can spring from a variety of conflicting motivations.
Tom Heuerman is an organizational consultant who recently wrote about the qualities of sustainable organizations: they “continually adapt to the exte al environment…. [and] have a core identity of purpose (why they exist) and values (guiding principles) that provide stability and continuity as all else changes over time.” What struck me is how much what applies to organizations also applies to individuals. As businesswomen, our work life springs from the same unchanging bedrock. Perhaps bedrock is not the only apt metaphor.
During the eulogy for Senator Ted Kennedy by his oldest son, Ted Kennedy, Jr., the son offered this story: “When I was 12 years old I was diagnosed with bone cancer, and a few months after I lost my leg there was a heavy snowfall over my childhood home outside of Washington, D.C. My father went to the garage to get the old Flexible Flyer and asked me if I wanted to go sledding down the steep driveway. . . .
Think hope is not something we need in the hard business world? Think again. In these challenging times, says psychologist and hope researcher Shane J. Lopez, it’s a crucial business skill. Here’s why. When we’re faced with challenges, as I describe in AdaptAbility, it is crucial that we think as innovatively and creatively as possible so that we generate possibilities, connect to our resources, reach out to others, and respond with all of our individual and collective brain power.
Find yourself in fear a lot these days? This is a five minute meditation created by my colleague in Professional Thinking Partners Dawna Markova. It strengthens the creative, problem solving part of our brain, the neocortex’s, ability to intervene during times when the amygdala (the primitive brain) is kicking into survival mode. It helps you get off the train of overwhelming, fearful thoughts and experience what’s going on for you in a different way—at the level of sensation and breath rather than story.
If there is a through line in my life, both personally and as a writer, it is to identify and develop those qualities that help us grow individually and collectively in wisdom and love. That’s ultimately why I’m so interested in self trust. “Wisdom,” Buddhist monk Khandro Rinpoche says, “is innate in us; it is not something that can be bought, heard or received from the outside.” In other words, we must look within to find it. It can’t come from anyone but us. Without self trust, we can never become wise because we will continue to look outside ourselves for the answer.
Pamela Busch owns a restaurant in San Francisco. Like everyone else, she felt the pinch of the economic downtu as people stopped going out to eat. She decided to adapt by offering a three-course tasting menu at a set price. Great. Her desired outcome is to stay in business. She’s accepted the fact that change is needed, thought through her options, created a plan of action, and put her plan in place. What’s next? Paying close attention to whether her plan is getting her the results she wants.
There is a story from the Talmud that goes like this: When Akiba was on his deathbed, he bemoaned to his rabbi that he felt he was a failure. His rabbi moved closer and asked why, and Akiba confessed that he had not lived a life like Moses. The poor man began to cry, admitting that he feared God’s judgment. At this, his rabbi leaned into his ear and whispered gently, `God will not judge Akiba for not being Moses.
The other day I got a fan letter about AdaptAbility from Daniel Hawthorne, a guy who described himself as having “high functioning autism” which makes dealing with any change, especially unexpected, difficult. In addition to telling me that he found my book very helpful, he shared a technique of how to cope that he read in Stephen Covey’s first book. When a change hits, draw two circles, one inside the other. In the smaller one, write down what you have control over in the situation. In the larger one, write down the things you can influence.
One of the greatest inspirational writers of the 19th century was a man named Henry Drummond who wrote a best-selling little book called The Greatest Thing In the World. In it, he said, “The world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday but an education. And the one ete al question for us all is how better can we love.” Learning and teaching in that schoolroom is what inspires me in my personal life and my work. For me, and I’ve learned for many of us, learning to love better begins with the self. Loving ourselves is no small thing.
I am larger and better tha I thought. I did not know I held so much goodness. --Walt Whitman The other day, I was driving down a country road in upstate New York when a giant billboard for a car dealership caught my eye. It had a picture of a smiling infant and the words “YOU WERE BORN…PREAPPROVED.” Tears sprang to my eyes. How would the world be different if I, if you, could claim this basic trust as our birthright? How much pain would we have avoided, how much feeling odd and different, how much loneliness and fear? How less overwhelmed and more joyful would we be?
Really. What do you want more of in your life? More peace? More time off? More fun? More inner tranquility? Unless we identify what it is that we truly want, we tend to be so caught up in daily life that we don't even think about what will make us truly happy. Today, ask yourself what you want more of in your life and then live with the question all day: How can I have more ______ in my life? Just ask; don't worry about an answer.
Self trust is a virtue, like patience, that has been all but lost in the exte ally focused society that has increasingly evolved over the past fifty years or so. It is the capacity to know ourselves deeply and to rely on ourselves confidently as the source of our decisions.
The other day I got a call from a reporter for a women’s magazine wondering if I knew of any new stress reduction ideas, “you know, beyond breathing and meditation.” It reminded me of our tendency in this culture to grasp for the novel and it even caused me to doubt whether to include this piece in the book.
In Greek mythology, when Pandora opened the box and let out all the troubles that have since plagued the world, she also let out a tiny fairy who said, “Yes, it is true that you have unleashed all manner of afflictions upon the world, but you have also let me out. I am Hope and will always be there to bring hope to humans, whenever they are in trouble.” This myth goes to the heart of the truth that it’s difficult to endure hardships without hope.
Archimedes figured out how to determine how much gold there was in a crown while lying in the bath tub. While dozing by the fire, Friedrich August Kekule had a dream of snakes that allowed him to understand the structure of benzene. For both of these scientists, the answer came when they stopped “thinking” about the question and did something else. They put their problem on the back burner and suddenly the answer popped into their minds. Has something like this ever happen to you? You aren’t sure about something.
sung__mantra400jpgWhen I was a child, dealing with my particular configuration of a dysfunctional family, I remember lying awake in bed night after night, year after year, too afraid to go to sleep. There were some willow trees outside my window I used to watch. No matter how hard the wind blew, and how far they bent, they never broke. I took that image on as my personal courage mantra. For years, whenever things happened that upset me, I would say to myself, “I’m like the willow.
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results, what is thinking the same thing over and over despite evidence to the contrary? I refer to my chronic illusion that some day I Will Get Everything Under Control. In my mind, it’s soon, just not now: after my daughter’s basketball season ends, after the guests go home, after I write this piece.
Really. What do you want more of in your life? More peace? More time off? More fun? More inner tranquility? Unless we identify what it is that we truly want, we tend to be so caught up in daily life that we don't even think about what will make us truly happy. Today, ask yourself what you want more of in your life and then live with the question all day: How can I have more ______ in my life? Just ask; don't worry about an answer.
If I’ve inspired you in my last blog entry to give meditation a try, here’s a very basic form of mindfulness meditation, adapted from Vipassana Buddhism: Find a quiet place to sit in a chair or on the floor, with your eyes open or closed, whichever is most comfortable to you. Set a timer for the amount of time you plan to sit. Become aware of your breathing, focusing on the sensation of air moving in and out of your body as you breathe. When thoughts come up in your mind, whether worrying, planning, wishing, don't try to ignore or suppress them.
“The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.” --Voltaire Lana Calloway is president of Exhibit Resources, a company that does design, construction, and installation of trade show exhibits. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Lana and many of her clients were forced to cut staff. She notied that coordinating details for trade shows was overwhelming for many clients who had slashed their marketing budgets. So Lana’s company began offering turn-key trade show project management services and her business has since boomed.
What’s happening right now is not because you’re bad or wrong or incompetent. It’s because the world is transforming at breakneck speed and each and every one of us must adapt to those changes as quickly and efficiently as possible. No one’s exempt.Age doesn’t get you off the hook. Nor does how hard you’ve worked until now, or what your expectations of your life have been. Or what you’ve sacrificed for or invested in.
So many of us think about creativity in the context of being an artist or musician. However I prefer the definition that resiliency expert Frederic Flach uses. Creativity is “a response to a situation that calls for a novel but adaptive solution, one that serves to accomplish a goal.” That’s why, when dealing with the challenges of our times, the best thing we can do is grow our creative capacity. We need to come up with thoughts and solutions that are different from ones we’ve used in the past. Otherwise we will be responding in habitual ways that may not serve us now.
Whether it’s because of a doctor’s warning, an important birthday, or just because you’re fed up, at some point you vow to lose weight. But by the time the rosy blush of good intentions wears off, your promise gets pushed aside. Not because you don’t still long to lose ...