Awareness Enables us to Make Conscious Choices
After a day and a half of intense, “learning-full” conversations, 28 people struggle to determine what they want to do after the meeting to continue to carry out their mission. They are running late...
View ArticleEmotions: the bane or the boon of our meetings
Perhaps you are reading this just after returning to your desk from a “bad” meeting. You feel frustrated, or even angry, because you think your ideas were ignored and/or nothing was accomplished....
View ArticleAnger and Emotional Contagion
Sometimes I wonder if I am being naïve. Does how we talk to one another really matter? Maybe I just pay too much attention to the news: it seems so many of us are yelling at one another (politicians...
View ArticleWatch Your Wake
Instead of dog droppings, my longtime friend and teacher Angeles Arrien puts it more elegantly: “Watch your wake.” A “wake” is the wave pattern or turbulence on the water’s surface caused by a moving...
View ArticleTalking Better Together by Choosing Mindfulness
In anticipation of the release of my book this Fall, I will be highlighting content from “Talk Matters: Saving the World One Word at a Time” here in my blog. I hope as you read, we will grow as...
View ArticleReturning to the Present Moment
This spring, the water in Murray Canyon* is higher and faster than I have ever seen it. Heavy rains have washed parts of the trail away. To reach Seven Sisters Waterfall you need to follow a trail that...
View ArticleGood Conversation Is An Inside Job
A good friend and colleague told me recently how reading my book, Talk Matters!, inspired him to reflect on his inner workings and how he interacts with others in his various roles as an experienced...
View ArticleI Get Scared When…
When do you get scared in conversations or meetings? You might call it “challenged,” “anxious,” or “threatened.” However, underneath our adult bravado, it remains what we called it as children:...
View ArticleThe Best Seat Is Often In The Balcony
In a recent conversation with a close friend I noticed I was getting angry and decided to “go to the balcony”* so I could avoid blurting out something I would later regret. This helped me take a...
View ArticleChange the Brain for Good: Resilience
This entry on resilience is the second in a five-part series. The series describes what we know about the impact of contemplative practice on the human brain and the relevance of these findings to...
View ArticleChange the Brain for Good: Pay Attention
This entry on attention is the fourth in a five-part series. The series describes what we know about the impact of contemplative practice on the human brain and the relevance of these findings to doing...
View ArticleAre We Stuck at a Cognitive Threshold?
The complexity of issues facing us is outstripping our ability to understand and solve them. Governmental institutions spin on gerbil wheels of outmoded, linear processes and procedures, attempting to...
View ArticleSystems Thinking for an Interconnected World
Are you trying to tackle a problem that, despite everyone’s best efforts, does not go away? Are you trying to optimize your part of an organization without considering the impact on the system as a...
View ArticleShifting from Pieces and Parts to Wholes
When tackling a problem, it’s easier to analyze its pieces and parts and try to solve them one by one than it is to try and understand the whole situation or system. However, this approach rarely works...
View ArticleSpaciousness of “Negative Capability”
John Keats, English Romantic Poet, wrote about “negative capability” in a letter to his brothers George and Thomas in 1871 when he was 22 years old. I read this letter nearly a century later when I was...
View ArticleGiving Away Power
Recently, I was talking with a small group of women about difficult situations and the impact they have on us. By “difficult” we meant anything that triggers us emotionally and diminishes our ability...
View ArticleTaking a Stand
Decades ago, I took a stand for “meaningful conversations about things that matter so we can do good things for the world, together.”* This stand has been the primary thread weaving through my...
View ArticleCourageous Communication
Picture about seventy people crowded into a dimly lit room with a creaking, wooden floor of an old building at the edge of San Francisco Bay. It was the home of the Dolphin Club, a legendary swim club...
View ArticleThe Dream of My Life
I have loved Mary Oliver’s poetry since college. Her poems speak to me in deep and surprising ways, particularly the stanza above. It came to mind this morning and brought the fragrance of rivers and...
View ArticleWill It Have Been for Nothing?
Browsing our bookshelves, my eyes landed on “An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum.” She wrote these diaries in eight exercise books in Amsterdam during the Holocaust years. She died in...
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