Work Consciously - Productivity, Mindfulness and Spirituality » self-improvement

New Blog: Development In Context

Chris — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 05:26:26 +0000

I’m excited to announce that I’ve launched a new blog I’ve been thinking about for some time. It’s not a replacement for this blog — I’m going to keep writing for both of them, because each of them deals with a different aspect of my work. The new blog is called Development In Context (or DevInContext for short).

As you may know, particularly if you’re a personal growth junkie like me, the personal development area has been the subject of some controversy of late, and many books and articles critical of the field have come out in recent years.

I think this is wonderful, because it gives us personal growth junkies an opportunity to get back to basics and understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. The goal of DevInContext is to do just that — to explore and explain some central ideas of personal development, and answer some criticisms made against them. I think personal growth has a lot to offer, and that it would be a mistake to hastily dismiss it as just woo-woo navel-gazing.

If this is a topic that interests you, I look forward to welcoming you there, and you’ll be seeing another post here within the next few days.

Best, Chris

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The Inside Really Does Create The Outside

Chris — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:10:19 +0000

As I’m sure you know, some people doubt that personal growth work has practical benefits. Some scoff at the idea of working with our thoughts and emotions, seeing it as just a tree-hugging hippie way of escaping the harsh reality of survival and conflict. Others only see value in personal development work that teaches nonstop action, and don’t see much reason to spend time sitting alone with yourself.

Despite all the “inner work” I’ve done, sometimes even I become a skeptic. I’ve had moments in meditation when my mind has griped “what am I doing? I should be writing an article.” In the middle of a few weekend retreats, I’ve found myself wishing I could go home and explore different ways to expand my business.

Some “Down-To-Earth” Benefits of Spiritual Practice

What I forget in these moments is that I wouldn’t be able to do my “outer work” without the time I spend in my spiritual practices. I don’t just mean that meditation, yoga, taking workshops and so on help me feel peaceful and grounded, although they do. What I mean is that I actually have many of the ideas at the core of my writing in the midst of my inner work.

I had the idea to write my recent book, for instance, in the middle of a meditation. I’d written a book before called Path of the Demonslayer — a somewhat misguided attempt to combine the fantasy and self-help genres that I don’t plan to release. For a while afterward, I was wondering whether a decent book idea would ever come to me, until it suddenly appeared to me in a state of deep relaxation and mental quiet.

Another important point I want to make about inner work is that you can do it in real time – while you’re working, talking to your partner or doing other “real world” activities. You don’t have to sit in a lotus position, burn incense or go to a monastery to do it — as much as I enjoy doing those things.

One great example is the way that my spiritual practice helps me stay centered when I’m speaking to an audience. I used to get nervous and distractible in front of groups, until I got into the habit of focusing my attention on my body as I spoke, noticing the pressure of my feet against the ground. I borrowed this exercise from a meditation I do that has me slowly scan my attention over each part of my body, and it helped me to feel solid and focused as I gave my talks.

Defusing the Doubting Mind

What I’ve learned from these experiences is that “my inner world creates my outer world” isn’t just some New Age slogan — there’s clear evidence that it’s true in my life. Keeping these stories in mind is a great way to calm my cynical part whenever it pipes up during one of my practices.

I don’t mean to say that the only benefit of inner work is the “results” it gets you in the outside world. In fact, approaching meditation, yoga or a similar practice with the goal of getting richer, more attractive, or something like that would probably lead to suffering. But I have no doubt that spiritual practice, if we stick with it, has positive effects in our day-to-day lives.

Do you have stories about how your inner work has affected your outer world? I’m curious to hear them.

Link Love

David Cain has a subtle — almost subversive — way of relaying spiritual wisdom through anecdotes about his life and social commentary. His blog is a great read.

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Your Inner Productivity Questions Answered

Chris — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:54:37 +0000

As some of you know, I recently released a book called Inner Productivity: A Mindful Path to Efficiency and Enjoyment in Your Work. While most productivity books are about techniques for rearranging your outer circumstances, like making to-do lists and organizing your inbox, Inner Productivity is about dealing with obstacles to getting work done that come from inside — the stray thoughts, difficult emotions, discomfort in the body, and so on that make it difficult to stay on task.

Inspired by mindfulness practices like meditation and yoga, Inner Productivity offers forms of visualization, movement, conscious breathing and more to help you find peace and focus in your work. As Getting Things Done author David Allen puts it, Inner Productivity is “a useful guidebook for turning the daily grind into something much more interesting and engaging.”

Everyone’s mind and body is unique, and no two people seem to face exactly the same productivity challenges. So, I think the best way to illustrate what the book has to offer is to show you how it applies to real-world problems people are dealing with.

In this post, I’ll open the floor to you to bring me the productivity issues you’ve been facing. Whether it’s your pattern of procrastination, lack of inspiration in your work, anxiety about whether you’ve “got what it takes” to complete a project, or something else, I’d welcome an opportunity to work with you and illustrate how the techniques and perspectives in Inner Productivity can help you find efficiency and enjoyment in what you do.

So, I’m inviting you, in the comments to this post, to ask questions about the challenges you’ve been having. Feel free to comment anonymously if you’d feel more comfortable that way. I’m looking forward to talking with you.

Best,
Chris

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Eye Contact And Self-Understanding

Chris — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:52:16 +0000

I’ve found that one of the most reliable ways to measure the progress of my personal growth is to notice how I feel when I look someone in the eye. Whenever I start doubting that all the inner work I’ve done on myself has had any effect, all I need to do is go outside and hold someone’s gaze for a bit to convince myself otherwise. There’s a world of difference between my experience of looking someone in the eye several years ago and how I feel when I do it today.

A few years back, I had trouble even making eye contact with people in the first place. When someone would look me in the eye, the discomfort in my body would be so pronounced that I’d feel as if I had no choice but to look away. I couldn’t lock eyes with someone long enough to get any understanding of how I felt and thought while experiencing eye contact.

When I first took up meditation, yoga and a few other practices I adopted to further my personal growth, my experience of making eye contact noticeably shifted. I became able to look people in the eye for several seconds, and no longer felt seized by an irresistible impulse to avert my gaze. However, my body did tense up in those moments—particularly in my jaw, where a feeling of pressure quickly mounted. This reaction is probably best described as shame, as if I were doing something wrong by looking into someone’s eyes, or as if the other person were learning something embarrassing about me.

As I continued my journey of personal change, eye contact felt less and less threatening. Eventually, I noticed that, when I held someone’s gaze, I no longer felt tension creeping into my body. However, for a while, other concerns arose when my eyes met someone else’s. Sometimes, when a person broke eye contact with me, I would feel a twinge of anger or despair. On some level, I’d be convinced they were looking away because I’d upset them or they didn’t respect me.

Finally, after I’d spent a few years using various practices to feel more whole and accepting of myself, I noticed one day that the suffering I once experienced when someone looked away had disappeared. When someone wouldn’t meet my gaze, I wasn’t even slightly rattled. Even if I pondered the possibility that the other person looked away because they disliked me or thought I was unimportant, my sense of peace was undisturbed. If that was how they felt, it was fully okay with me.

With my newfound composure around eye contact came an insight. I saw how closely my progress in my ability to hold someone’s gaze mirrored my overall journey toward feeling more whole. When I first resolved to do some changing and growing from within, my main concern was with my shame about aspects of who I was. This shame had me unable to make eye contact with others, for fear that when they locked eyes with me they’d see uncomfortable parts of me that I didn’t want to show the world.

Later, having dissolved much of the shame I used to feel, I shifted my focus to some of my deepest-seated fears. One of these, which I suspect many people can identify with, was the fear of abandonment—the fear that people in my life would leave me, and I’d be alone and defenseless against the world. When I was in the grip of this fear, I’d become anxious even when a stranger refused to meet my gaze—“abandoning” me with his or her eyes. As I came to terms with the fear, the ugly sensations that used to arise when someone looked away began to subside.

More generally, my ability to hold eye contact with people without experiencing discomfort and negative thoughts reflects how I’ve come to perceive the world. Before I began working on improving the way I experienced life, I saw people as basically malicious and dangerous, and my reluctance to look them in the eye signified my desire to escape and protect myself from them. As psychologists Mark R. Leary and Robin M. Kowalski write in Social Anxiety, “averting one’s gaze reduces the saliency of the threatening stimuli that are causing anxiety, thereby allowing a degree of psychological withdrawal while one remains physically in the encounter.”

Today, I have a new perspective. I see people as, at their core, benevolent and compassionate—even though, out of fear and a desire to protect themselves, people often act as if this isn’t their nature. My willingness to hold others’ gazes reflects my new, more open and trusting view of the world.

If you want more understanding of the places in your life where you have room to grow, notice the way you respond to eye contact with others. What feelings and thoughts arise in you? Do you feel exposed, as if the other person might discover compromising things about you? Do you feel the need to stare others down to prove something about yourself? Do you feel upset when people won’t meet your eyes? Simply noticing your reactions when looking into another person’s eyes, I’ve found, can teach you a lot about who you are.

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