Calling the Circle

Calling the Circle: The First and Future Culture by Christina Baldwin

Here are a few of my notes...

There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead —as if innocence had ever been— and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved. But there is no one but us. There never has been. ANNIE DILLARD, Holy the Firm

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As Mary Catherine Bateson says, “Any place we stop to rest must also serve as the platform from which we leave.”

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At a lecture in the mid-1980s, a participant asked psychologist and author M. Scott Peck what he considered to be the most significant source of social change in the twentieth century. He replied, without hesitation, “Alcoholics Anonymous, because it introduced the idea that people could help themselves.” His surety of comment fascinated me, and I began to study the origins of the Twelve Step movement. What I found was the circle.

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“We’re missing pieces, we’re missing pieces” ran like a chant in my mind all the days of that week, “but what?” I had to stop trying to act as though I knew what I was doing. I tried instead to look at camp as though I knew nothing, assumed nothing. “If I’d just landed here from Venus, what would I see?” I asked myself.

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We were trying to put the circle into place without first creating a commonly understood context so that the circle could actually function.

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Context prepares us to consider new ideas.

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Riding context is like riding the surf: We are swept up and moved along by forces that we ourselves have not called but which set the pace and support us on the journey.

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By now I knew: A circle is not just a meeting with the chairs rearranged. A circle is a way of doing things differently than we have become accustomed to. The circle is a return to our original form of community as well as a leap forward to create a new form of community.

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And so I began calling the circle our First Culture.

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We came into circle because the fire led us there.

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Both symbols live within us: We carry the circle and the triangle.

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By hosting a meeting in a circle, Carol and John are challenging five thousand years of enculturation by saying: “Here is another way. Here power will be shared, opened up, dealt with differently, so that we may find a new way of being together.” When Carol lights a candle in the middle of a meeting and John calls for a minute of silence, when Bev Ebble articulates her frustration, when Arlene finishes her thoughts, when Tom sees the correlation between what’s happening at work and what’s going on at his children’s school, consciousness shifts and liberation begins. When we call the circle into the midst of Second Culture, we create a new amalgam of the past and present—a Third Culture.

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For the circle to hold steady, there needs to be an understood authority that resides within the circle, a source that all members petition for counsel. If this authority is retained and personified by any person, the circle turns into a triangle: Someone becomes the chief, the leader, the guru, the boss, while others become the followers, the workers, the compliant or rebellious subservients.

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What is essential, for the center to hold, is that you and I understand how to make an authentic spiritual gesture.

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We cannot imbue the center of the circle with the strength to hold us unless we know how to shift our perception of where power lies, and how power is to be utilized between ourselves.

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There is a “wobble” that always occurs in human relationships.

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Somé’s prayer for us in the industrialized world is that we slow down enough to find the indigenous person within, to go in search of this archetypal figure residing in our collective unconscious and draw out his/her forgotten, but retrievable, wisdom.

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I have friends who meditate an hour a day, and friends who sing in the church choir, and friends who walk the labyrinth. I don’t think it matters what we choose as the ritual with which we hold on to the center of our lives, only that we choose something that honors Spirit and has meaning for us, and that we do it consistently.

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Alone on the lake, removed from all the machinery of modern life, totally responsible for her physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual survival, Ann entered into direct connection with the Sacred.

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Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free. STARHAWK, Dreaming the Dark

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People rush into business and faculty and committee meetings (and sometimes even to the family dinner table) still talking on cellular phones or responding to beepers; they carry on side conversations that create alliances and rifts right in the faces of those being excluded; they gossip about the organization, its leaders, or members who are absent. People glance at the agenda, slap papers out on the table, go get coffee, leave and return, leave and return, until nobody’s sure who is present or not. Finally someone looks at his watch and commands, “Let’s get this ball rolling.” And the free-for-all begins. This is disrespectful group process, even if it is the current social norm.

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“Thank you,” I said. “This is what we mean—the circle is social energy contained. The interpersonal structure of PeerSpirit is the glass; you and I are the water. The purpose of the principles, practices, and agreements is to provide a respectful social practice so we can decide what to do. Once the water—our energy—is contained, we can drink it, heat it or freeze it, wash in it, make a pot of coffee, make soup, but without the glass, all we have is a wet spot on the rug.”

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Three principles serve as the foundation of PeerSpirit experience: rotating leadership sharing responsibility relying on Spirit

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In PeerSpirit, we commonly use three forms of council: talking piece, conversation, and silence. These are introduced briefly here, and are illustrated in depth in the following chapters.

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Talking piece council teaches us to trust the process, to not carry on when we have nothing to say, and to have the courage to take our turn when a contribution wells up inside us. It is acceptable to take brief notes to remind ourselves of what we want to speak about or questions we want to add, but the most powerful use of the talking piece is to hold it silently a few seconds, settle into our own breath and body, and see what comes forward as our piece of the contribution. In many settings, the most immediate gift of talking piece council is how it slows us down.

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Artifacts identified as talking pieces have been found in many First Culture excavations, I can only conclude that the desire to interrupt each other is as ancient as council itself—and so is the desire to be heard without interruption.

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To combine the quickened responsiveness of conversation with freedom from interruption, use a talking piece that lends itself to being tossed around the group. A Koosh ball, a sock, a balloon, a paper airplane, or other small object can energize a tired council and bring levity into a conversation while still observing helpful council forms.

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There is a simple ritual for silence that seems to work almost universally. Take three breaths: one to let go of whatever energy charge was commanding us; one to touch the still mind; and one to ask, “What would Thou have me do?”—or, if that language is too formally spiritual, simply to ask, “What?”

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To be of use to the circle, both on the interpersonal and spiritual levels, we need to be centered within ourselves. Native tradition refers to this as “being able to sit within one’s own hoop.”

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Our ability to pay attention to each other in whatever form of council we find ourselves is largely dependent on three practices: speaking with intention listening with attention self-monitoring our impact and contributions

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The group uses a digital kitchen timer, granting each person a minute to check in, and passing on the unusual talking piece when it rings. The group also finds this quick round very helpful when gathering every person’s response to an idea or proposal.

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A circle is strengthened by strong, supportive dyads. Various exercises that pair up members of the group and invite them to take turns speaking and listening to each other help build cohesiveness as we come to know each other better. Such pairing experiences give us good practice in intentional speaking and attentive listening.

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The following generic circle agreements are listed here so that they can be read all in one piece.

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Often circles vote by using a “thumbs-up,” “thumbs-sideways,” or “thumbs-down” signal on decisions and actions that require approval. Thumbs-up signals agreement. Thumbs-sideways indicates that someone has further questions to raise, encouraging ongoing dialogue that can have an impact on the decision that emerges. Thumbs-down is used to indicate disapproval but may not necessarily block an action. A person can give a thumbs-down to state, “I don’t support this action, but the group may proceed if it chooses.” This needs to be clarified conversationally.

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Then, usually rotating on a meeting-by-meeting basis, one person volunteers to serve in the guardian role. The guardian has the group’s permission to interrupt and intercede in group process for the purpose of calling the circle back to center, to task, or to respectful practice, or suggesting a needed break.

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Most of the time, most of us arrive at the beginning of circle full of confused and scattered energies accumulated from the pace of Second Culture life. We are counting on the circle to center us, slow us down, and help us be present. We should not be surprised if our landing in the intimate lap of circle is often a little rough.

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Accurately reading energetics is a highly intuitive function, and therefore it can be highly inaccurate, skewed by the preconceptions in our own minds.

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Before the first meeting, three preparatory steps are helpful: setting intention, gathering feedback, and envisioning the group.

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Intention is the statement of a circle’s purpose. Setting intention begins by asking: “What is this circle about? Why am I calling it? What do I want?”

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May I suggest we take turns each speaking to our vision of this church, listening to each other without interruption?”

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For Demetria, paying attention to synergy meant listing people she thought would be interested in the circle, people she wanted to develop a close relationship with, and people she thought would mix well with each other. She drew a spiderweb on a big sheet of paper, putting women’s names and little biographical thoughts about them at the web’s connecting points:

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As people work through their initial awkwardness with the form—remembering not to cross-talk when the talking piece is used,

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The greatest trust is built when we get through the bumpy, scary, risky, and vulnerable aspects of circling. We don’t know what we’re made of until a circle has faced a problem, resolved a conflict, gotten several members through a crisis. Actual conflict resolution, since it’s so seldom practiced, may be nerve-racking as we develop confidence and learn to say our truth, but after a while, the empowerment is positively exhilarating.

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“I pulled off the road to a little resort by a lake, woke up the owners, rented a cabin, and called my wife to say we wouldn’t be home for a while. Then BJ and I held council. I mean, I pulled out the stops—told BJ everything I’d ever thought about my dad and what I thought went wrong between us, and gave him the chance to say the same about me. We passed a rock back and forth between us until that sucker was hot. No interrupting, no justifications. Then I drove BJ back to school, helped him get reinstated, and got back to town at midnight on Sunday.

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In appreciation council, the talking piece works in the opposite manner of its usual use: the person holding the piece is silent and the rest of the circle has the opportunity to offer heartfelt appreciation to the holder of the piece. It is useful to begin these statements saying something like: “What I honor and respect about you is…” “What touches me about you is…” “What I love about you is…” Dennie also has suggestions on what not to do: Avoid superlatives (“You’re the best…”) Avoid comparisons (“I’m not…”; “You are…”; “I wish I could…”) Avoid referring to first impressions of another person or his/her work (“At first I wasn’t sure you knew what you were doing, but then…”) Avoid talking about yourself while appreciating someone else (“Your story reminds me of the time I…”) Avoid interpreting his/her experience (“I see that you have worked through…and now you are…”)

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Appreciation council works well as an opening ritual at the beginning of staff or committee meetings by asking each person to articulate one thing they love (or appreciate) about their school, church, or company. The question challenges us to keep remembering why we work or volunteer where we do, and is especially useful to set a positive container around a council that may hold difficult moments.

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This is the dimension that differentiates PeerSpirit circling from other forms of group management: It can contain the concerns of the heart and help us express them in ways appropriate to the setting.

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“I lit a candle in the center of the table, without explanation. I held up my talking piece and explained the rules: Whoever held the stick could speak without interruption until he or she was finished and would then lay the stick down in the center of the table. Whoever wanted to speak next could pick it up. Interrupting would not be tolerated. Both would have the chance to tell their story completely and to respond to anything the other person had said. We would talk as long as necessary.

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The second contribution of PeerSpirit is the belief that people are by their essence capable of self-governance, and that by adopting the basic principles, practices, and agreements, each person in the circle assumes accountability for his/her own behavior and shares responsibility for the well-being and accomplishment of the entire group.

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Experience is not always a comfortable teacher.

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There is a church congregation I know of (the pastor participated in one of our Circle Practicums) where factions had developed and the pastor felt isolated, watching this fracturing from the pulpit, not able to help. One Sunday she announced, “The vision I think we share is that of a faith community. We aren’t fulfilling that vision particularly well, and I think my standing up here every week isn’t helping. So I’m coming down into the circle. I invite us to reconvene as the early Christians did, to believe that the Christ Light will work through each of us if we come into spiritual council.” That afternoon they held a circle of eighty parishioners, with one talking piece and the commitment to listen to every voice in the community. One of the women on the church board served as guardian, providing space for silence, prayer, and bathroom breaks. They were able to experience refuge, even in the midst of dissension and difficulty. The church is now doing fine.

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Projection happens when we put onto others the parts of ourselves we do not claim (“You’re so important to this group, I’m just a beginner”) or the parts we do not want to claim (“Joe is so judgmental—I can’t stand how he labels people”).

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We lay projection over our reactions if we add a judgment that makes another person a good or bad human being based on the way s/he is behaving. So if I think or say, “Mary drives me nuts! She’s so self-centered, making everybody listen to her so long,” then I’m projecting. I make her less than myself; I assume my experience is the same as other people’s experience.

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Projection may also be positive. If I think or say, “Mary’s storytelling is so lyrical, like listening to poetry. I could never talk like that,” then I make her more than myself; I make her be “the poetic one,” and diminish my own abilities to speak metaphorically.

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In Dreaming the Dark, Starhawk’s groundbreaking work on the circle and spiritual activism, she identifies ten common personas that people often assume around the rim. She calls these lone wolf, orphan, gimme shelter, filler, princess, clown, cute kid, self-hater, rock of Gibraltar, and star.2

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Personifying archetypal energies is an ancient and ingenious way to shift projection into consciousness and give it a voice in the circle. In native tradition, as it is carried by the EHAMA Institute in California, the council circle is represented as an eight-pointed Medicine Wheel.3 Each person sitting in council is trained to hold a specific perspective. Together the council speaks as a whole to any issue that requires wisdom and decision making. Each of the directions offers a perspective such as freedom and creativity, present condition and appreciation, power and danger, maintenance and balance, interrelatedness and timing, clarity and action, and integrity and vitality.

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We become our authentic selves by handling our own shadow material, instead of insisting, “It’s not me!” At some point in our lives, we enter a process of sorting the shadow and discover that what we have disowned is not so horrible. If we bring these contents into the light and practice living consciously with them, we experience many rewards, and the tension that had been bound within the psyche is transformed into an abiding peacefulness with the self. We learn to see and accept and hold ourselves accountable.

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If we refuse life’s invitations toward consciousness and continue to deny the shadow, our impact on other people becomes increasingly destructive. We become a dangerous influence in our circles. We cannot enter the protocol and share responsibility in problem solving if we are stuck proving our innocence.

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A few circles ago, there was a woman present whom I experienced as demanding a lot of attention from the group. As she spoke her needs throughout the first day of a week together, I got more and more agitated—she seemed (to me) to take longer and longer, to require more time, and every time she asked me something I winced inside. By the end of the afternoon I knew I had to intervene—with myself—to clear up my projections and to examine what piece of my shadow she was carrying. I went for a walk before supper and had a chat within my mind. I called home my annoyance, called home my own abandoned insecurities, called in compassion until I could visualize this woman in a new light. Instead of withdrawing from her, mentally or physically, I stepped toward her, extending five minutes of attention at supper, a special attempt to say good night, a moment to ask her how her day had been.

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When you and I come into council and have the courage to ask, “Where is my negative side at this moment?” or “Where is the cast of the shadow in this interaction?” we restructure how we see interpersonal relationships, in the circle, and in the wider world.

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PeerSpirit structure is a safety net. When walking the high ropes, a safety net does not prevent us from falling, but it gives us a place to land.

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However, within some people, it seems that the actual experience of being contained within circle triggers the need to break these bonds. They experience interpersonal containment as confining, threatening their identity. As the sustenance of the circle builds around them, they do not seem able to tolerate deepening emotional intimacy or energetic connection. They become psychologically and; or physically agitated and activate intense defense mechanisms to “protect” their core self from the threat of this bonding energy. Instead of experiencing the connective web of the circle as a safety net, they experience it as a fishing net and thrash wildly to escape. They are compelled to act out against the health of the group.

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When I’m in a circle that is in trouble, one of the first things I notice in myself is that I start ruminating over a particular moment or interaction, sensing there is more to it I don’t understand. I can’t seem to let it go. Or I find that one person seems to be consuming all my energy, both in the circle and as I think back on the circle.

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Once we’ve admitted our own agitation, our first job is to deal with our own dissonance in as healthy a way as possible for us. We need to get ourselves clear. In the middle of long circle sessions or seminars, during stretch breaks, meals, or free time, instead of using that time to keep chatting socially we may go outside, go for walks, go into silence, and listen carefully to the internal monologue, looking for clues.

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It is extremely helpful to begin the process of sorting by writing about the circle in the third person. Any of the following sentence stems will get us started shifting perspective: “I see a circle where…”; “In this circle is a wo/man who…” (this is us we’re writing about; first “know thyself”). If we are having specific reactions to a specific person, we may explore those by writing: “If I were (so-and-so) I would be feeling…thinking…sensing…behaving…”

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There are many questions that help in this sorting process; we may choose whatever fits and start taking inventory. How have I been pulled off center? What’s my body telling me? What’s my mind telling my body? Where do I experience these energies coming from? How am I contributing to them? What am I avoiding in the circle? How am I going passive instead of active? What am I afraid of? (What’s the worst-case scenario?) How will I take care of myself if all this comes to pass? What other options do I have for myself? for the circle? Is my compassion intact—for myself, for others, for the process of dealing with this? Where have I lived this before? Whose shadow work is this? And how do I do my own piece with integrity? Who does this person remind me of? Am I seeing this situation through a filter of past memory? of judgment? of fear?

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The piece that is coming forward through someone else is there because it is matched in the circle, and it is seeking completion/release. So as I explore and articulate what “they are doing” or “how they are being” that is agitating to me, I need to hold up a mirror to myself and see the complementary piece that I am (or someone else in the group is) holding for them.

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If we take the circle as our teacher, then we take these moments and this difficult person as our teacher. We are being offered a learning together: not me/her-or-him, not us/them. However this learning shakes out, we can take responsibility only for our piece of the puzzle.

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If others approach us, we may talk briefly of our own feelings without talking about someone else. “Some energy drain is happening for me,” I might say; “I’m working to clarify it, and then I intend to bring it up in council.”

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I’d like to know how other people are feeling and thinking about how we are functioning.”

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“No,” I say to a woman in Chicago who looks at me searchingly, “sometimes the circle cannot hold,” and without her speaking a word of her story, I see in her eyes the haunting she carries from a women’s group that shattered. “Thank you,” she responds, “I just needed to know,” and quietly she begins to cry.

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However, energy is not separated neatly into our preconceived notions of light or dark, good or bad, helpful or hindering. For Spirit to enter the circle, a threshold must be created and a door left ajar. The more we are conscious of this, the more readily we can work with what enters. Over this threshold, along with Spirit, comes the shadow, comes confusion, comes narcissism in all its subtle disguises. On the rim of the circle, our obligation to energy is to learn to stay awake, to practice discernment in the minute-by-minute shifts that break and/or sustain the weave.

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In her energy work, Kathleen Bjorkman-Wilson teaches people to respectfully separate from the collective field by silently calling to mind everyone who has been in a circle and stating three differences between themselves and the other. For example, Kathleen has blue eyes; Kathleen is shorter than I am; Kathleen lives in Idaho. These differences do not imply connection or rejection: They are neutral, observable. Yet simply stating them re-creates energetic boundaries and sends everybody “home” so that the field of the group can be fully released. Kathleen has taught us to add this to the ritual of closing at the end of a session, a seminar, or during breaks when energy is intense and people need to come back in with clarity.

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The primary classes in the local school system are being taught through the Tribes program, where children work in “tribal circles” of five to six students, with five to six tribes per classroom. The program, designed by California educator Jeanne Gibbs in 1978, is used in thousands of schools across the United States and Canada. The purpose of Tribes is to give each child a tangible sense of belonging and accountability among peers. The circles foster higher achievement levels and make students and teachers coresponsible for their learning. Tribes functions with four basic agreements: attentive listening; no put-downs; right to pass (the talking piece); and confidentiality.

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In the middle of a circle meeting, voting may be done by instituting a thumb signal. Thumbs-up—:“I’m for it, ready to support and do it.” Thumbs-down—“I’m against it. I don’t think this is the right way for us to go.” Thumbs-sideways—“I have a question that needs addressing or a comment I need to add before I can decide.”

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Zimmerman, Jack, and Virginia Coyle. The Way of Council (Las Vegas: Bramble Books, 1996). This book provides a method for training both professionals and nonprofessionals in basic communication skills using the council model. It’s an excellent contribution to the field.

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Two Is Enough

Two Is Enough: A Couple's Guide to Living Childless by Choice by Laura S. Scott

Here are a few of my notes...

In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned state laws that prevented married couples from using contraceptives; in 1972, the court extended the right to contraception to unmarried persons.8 Canada decriminalized contraception in 1969.

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However, women began to discover that they “just couldn’t do this,” said Risman. “The way our workplaces had been constructed—to expect a worker to leave the home at eight o’clock in the morning and get back home at six at night, fifty weeks a year—presumed that worker had an unpaid domestic partner to do everything else that it takes to live a life, from having clean underwear to taking care of babies to taking care of elderly parents who needed to be taken to the doctor in the middle of the day. We had constructed a world of work presuming every worker had a wife, and these women didn’t have wives.”

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She warned that women were not having children because of an antiquated and hostile environment that required “women to make impossible trade-offs between work and children.” She suggested that we could manage low birthrates and skilled-labor shortages by making our workplaces more family friendly, attracting talented and educated workers who might not otherwise be in the workforce because of family obligations, and by allowing existing workers the job security they need to take maternity/paternity leaves. Mencimer suggested that women hold out for what they needed to effectively parent and contribute to the workplace; that included part-time work with benefits, subsidized childcare, and a commitment from their husbands to share the domestic duties.

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Again, this is the problem we encounter when we look at the childfree life simply as a choice, rather than a process. It’s both, really. It’s a series of choices, or decisions made over a timeline in which life experiences, observations, and people act as influencers. Most of us, parents and nonparents alike, start with the assumption of parenthood and then, over time, either assimilate or adopt the assumption because it feels right, or are motivated to challenge it because it doesn’t.

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These couples valued the process of examining, on a case-by-case basis, the decision to parent; they looked deep into their own hopes and expectations, assessing their desire, skills, and suitability as parents. Most did not buy into the notion that effective parenting is a skill people learn on the job.

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Later, as I pressed my face against the nursery window, watching him sleep peacefully in his little blue hat, I scanned every nook and cranny of my heart and mind for any sign of longing. Do I want this? I waited for some little voice, or a twinge. There was nothing.

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Studies show that these couples have good reason to feel somewhat apprehensive about bringing a child into the mix. When I started seeing evidence of the marital-satisfaction motive, I recalled a USA Today article I’d read back in 1997, titled “Couples in Pre-Kid, No-Kid Marriages Happiest,” that cited sociologist Mary Benin’s long-term study of spouses and reported that marital satisfaction is greatest before the kids arrive and starts to decline sharply after the birth of the first child, reaching a low point when the kids are in their teens; it doesn’t rise again until the kids are grown up and have left home.1

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My independence and my ability to be flexible in my life are too precious to me. Perhaps if I had a desire to have children, I would be willing to compromise my idea of freedom and independence.” For Nancy, though, that desire wasn’t there.

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In his master’s thesis study of more than 450 childfree women and men, Vincent Ciaccio observed “a solid understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood. They understand that children will reallocate their time, affect their career ambitions, their finances, their privacy, and their social activities, and they do not want these changes taking place.”

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Many couples had some basis for comparison between times when they were free to take advantage of opportunities and times when they were tied down by obligations. Among the survey respondents, 64 percent felt compelled to remain childless partly because some of their dreams and goals would be difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish if they took on the responsibilities of parenthood.

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So if it is possible to live happily childfree and happily with children, then how do you know what is the right choice for you? Richard didn’t think it was wise, or necessary, to attach relative values to parenthood or nonparenthood. “I don’t think it’s a comparative state of better or worse; I just think it’s a decision we made.” That’s true—there is no “right” choice. However, if you are on the fence, it may help you to look to those who have made the choice to remain childless, as a way to gauge your own feelings and intuition. I asked my participants to offer suggestions or questions that might help others in their decision-making process.

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“This isn’t a snap decision; it should take a lot of soul searching,” Vincent said, and suggested that the soul searching include the question “Am I prepared to have a child that isn’t ‘perfect’? This includes the possibilities of mental and physical disabilities.”

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I told her about the undecided couples I had interviewed, asked a few indirect questions, and then sat back and listened, trying to determine how she might have responded to these more direct questions: • Do I really want to be a parent? • Do I enjoy children? • Will I likely regret it if I don’t have kids?

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Jerry suggested a drill to test your willingness to make the changes necessary to parent: “At least twenty times a day for the next week or month, ask yourself the following question: How would having children change what I am doing now? Ask it when you wake up, when you eat your meals, when you watch TV, when you read the newspaper, when you walk the dog, when you make love, when you go to sleep. If you consider most of your answers to be positive, then you might enjoy having children. If most of your answers are negative, then you might be happier without children of your own.”

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So how do you know what your gut wants? Easy: Spend a couple of quiet moments alone, imagining yourself as a parent. What does that feel like? Is it an excited, warm-and-fuzzy feeling, or does it feel wrong, uncomfortable, or even impossible? Some fear is natural when you imagine what will probably be one of the toughest responsibilities you ever take on. However, if imagining yourself in a mom or dad role feels really foreign or unnatural or totally uncharacteristic for you, you might want to take the time to reread this book and think hard about what you really want and what you really feel.

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For me, a workable compromise on something as huge as parenthood seemed impossible.

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“I would never think about having a child until my parents would say, ‘One day when you have kids,’” Dan continued, shaking his head, unable to imagine it. “It just seemed like a really alien concept to me. And now I see the trouble people have with their kids, and I see other people who have good kids, and it seems like this roulette wheel that you’re betting on. I’ve never been one to shirk responsibility; I have a lot of responsibility now. It’s just that that kind of responsibility has never been attractive to me.”

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But isn’t that selfish? Laura felt we needed to redefine what it means to be selfish, and quoted Oscar Wilde: “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”

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The Parenthood Decision: Discovering Whether You Are Ready and Willing to Become a Parent, by Beverly Engel. Published by Main Street Books, 1998. The author, a licensed marriage counselor, provides short questionnaires designed to help potential parents decide whether they are ready, willing, and able to parent. If they are not, Engel supports the childless option, stating, “You owe it . . . to your future baby to make your decision based on reality, not fantasy.”

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Why Is It So Important For You to Have a Baby? This is a questionnaire specifically for people who would like to explore their motives and ideals around parenthood. It is a clever tool with which to launch a discussion with your partner if you are still undecided or ambivalent about parenthood. www.childfree.net/potpourri_whybaby.html

Attitudes of Gratitude

How to Give and Receive Joy Every Day of Your Life

by M.J. Ryan

From the Foreword, by Sue Bender... Every morning, I read one page in each of four small "inspirational" books. The books change, but they always remind me that I am not alone, that there is a spirit larger than my immediate self-interest and concerns. I have added Attitudes of Gratitude to my morning reading list.

I didn't have a chance to flag this book (I could have flagged each one of the 60 small chapters!). This is a wonderful book to keep on hand - daily reading and gratitude practice are no doubt secrets to a happy life. Here is one of my favourite quotes from it:

If you look to others for fulfillment,
you will never truly be fulfilled.
If your happiness depends on money,
you will never be happy with yourself.
Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.
- Lao Tzu

Stumbling on Happiness

by Daniel Gilbert

from the cover... "Think you know what makes you happy? This absolutely fantastic book will shatter your most deeply held convictions about how the mind works." - Steven D. Levitt, author of Freakonomics

This book was recommended by a fabulously brilliant man, and it proved to be a most interesting read. Shattering convictions indeed!

my flags...

pg 23 ... We insist on steering our boats because we think we have a pretty good idea of where we should go, but the truth is that much of our steering is in vain - not because the boat won't respond, and not because we can't find our destination, but because the future is fundamentally different that it appears... just as we experience illusions of eyesight ("Isn't it strange how one line looks longer than the other even though it isn't?") and illusions of hindsight ("Isn't it strange how I can't remember taking out the garbage even though I did?"), so too do we experience illusions of foresight - and all three types of illusions are explained by the same basic principles of human psychology.

pg 25 By the time you finish these chapters, I hope you will understand why most of us spend so much of our lives turning rudders and hoisting sails, only to find that Shangri-la isn't what and where we thought it would be.

pg 53 Once we have an experience, we are thereafter unable to see the world as we did before. Our innocence is lost and we cannot go home again. We may remember what we thought or said (though not necessarily), and we may remember what we did (though not necessarily that either), but the likelihood is depressingly slim that we can resurrect our experience then evaluate it as we would have back then. ... The separated twins may be able to tell us how they now feel about having been conjoined, but they cannot tell us how conjoined twins who have never been experienced separation felt about it.

pg 81 The eyeball cannot register an image at the point at which the optic nerve attaches, and hence that point is known as the blind spot. No one can see an object that appears in the blind spot because there are no visual receptors there. And yet, if you look out into your living room, you do not notice a black hole... Why? Because your brain uses information from the areas around the blind spot to make a reasonable guess about what the blind spot would see if only it weren't blind, and then your brain fills in the scene with this information. That's right, it invents things, creates things, makes stuff up! (magician and earth trick)

pg 94 The point is that just as there are parties and pastas you like and parties and pastas you don't, there are ways of being rich and ways of being executed that make the former less marvelous and the latter less awful than we might otherwise expect. One reason why you found Fischer's and Eastman's reactions so perverse is that you almost certainly misimagined the details of their situations. And yet, without a second thought, your behaved like an unrepentant realist and confidently based your predictions about how you would feel on details that your brain had invented while you weren't watching. Your mistake was not in imagining things you could not know - that is, after all, what imagination is for. Rather, your mistake was in unthinkingly treating what you imagined as though it were an accurate representation of the facts. You are a very fine person, I'm sure. But you are a very bad wizard.

pg 94 If you'd been given a choice of brains at the moment of conception, you probably wouldn't have chosen the tricky one. Good thing no one asked you. Without the filling-in trick you would have sketchy memories, an empty imagination, and a small black hole following you wherever you went. ... But that smoothness and normality come at a price. Even though we are aware in some vaguely academic sense that our brains are doing the filling-in trick, we can't help but expect the future to unfold with the details we imagine. As we are about to see, the details that the brain puts in are not nearly as troubling as the details it leaves out.

pg 123 In a related study, researchers asked people who were working out at a local gym to predict how they would feel if they became lost while hiking and had to spend the night in the woods with neither food nor water. Specifically, they were asked to predict whether their hunger or their thirst would be more unpleasant. Some people made this prediction just after they had worked out on a treadmill (thirsty group), and some made this prediction before they worked out on a treadmill (nonthirsty group). The results showed that 92% of the people in the thirsty group predicted that if they were lost in the woods, thirst would be more unpleasant than hunger, but only 61% of the people in the nonthirsty group made that prediction. .... we cannot feel good about an imaginary future when we are busy feeling bad about an actual present. But rather than recognizing that this is the inevitable result of the Reality First policy, we mistakenly assume that the future event is the cause of the unhappiness we feel when we think about it.

pg 125 We assume that what we feel as we imagine the future is what we'll feel when we get there, but in fact, what we feel as we imagine the future is often a response to what's happening in the present.

pg 130 Among life's cruelest truth's is this one: Wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition. Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage ... but human beings have discovered two devices that allow them to combat this tendency: variety and time. ... The point here is that time and variety are two ways to avoid habituation, and if you have one, then you don't need the other. In fact (and this is the really critical point, so please put down your fork and listen), when episodes are sufficiently separated in time, variety is not only unnecessary - it can actually be costly.

pg 138 Economists shake their heads at this kind of behaviour and will correctly tell you that your bank account contains absolute dollars and not "percentages off". If it is worth driving across town to save $50, then it doesn't matter which item you're saving it on because when you spend these dollars on gas and groceries, the dollars won't know where they came from. But these economical arguments fall on deaf ears because human beings don't think in absolute dollars. They think in relative dollars, and fifty is or isn't a lot of dollars depending on what it is relative to (which is why people don't worry about whether their mutual fund manager is keeping 0.5 or 0.6 percent of their investment will nonetheless spend hours scouring the Sunday paper for a coupon that gives them 40 percent off a tube of toothpaste).

pg 141 We make mistakes when we compare with the past instead of the possible. When we do compare with the possible, we still make mistakes. ... Rather than deciding whether to spend money, you were deciding how to spend money, and all the possible ways of spending your money were laid out for you by the nice folks who wanted it. These nice folks helped you overcome your natural tendency to compare with the past ("Is this television really that much better than my old one?") by making it extremely easy for you to compare with the possible ("When you see them side by side here in the store, the Panasonic has a much sharper picture than the Sony"). Alas, we are all too easily fooled by such side-by-side comparisons, which is why retailers work so hard to ensure that we make them.

pg 161 The world is this way, we wish the world were that way, and our experience of the world - how we see it, remember it, and imagine it - is a mixture of stark reality and comforting illusion. We can't spare either. If we were to experience the world exactly as it is, we'd be too depressed to get out of bed in the morning, but if we were to experience the world exactly as we want it to be, we'd be too deluded to find our slippers. We may see the world through rose-coloured glasses, the rose-coloured glasses are neither opaque or clear. They can't be opaque because we need to see the world clearly enough to participate in it - to pilot helicopters, harvest corn, diaper babies, and all the other stuff that smart mammals need to do in order to survive and thrive. But they can't be clear because we need their rosy tint to motivate us to design the helicopters ("I'm sure this thing will fly"), plant the corn ("This year will be a banner crop"), and tolerate the babies ("What a bundle of joy!"). We cannot do without a reality and we cannot do without illusion. Each serves a purpose, each imposes a limit on the influence of the other, and our experience of the world is the artful compromise that these though competitors negotiate.
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pg 167 The bottom line is this: The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants.

pg 181 Research shows that when people are given electric shocks, they actually feel less pain when they believe they are suffering for something of great value. The intense shocks were unpleasant enough to trigger the volunteers' psychological defenses, but the mild shocks were not, hence the volunteers valued the club most when its initiation was most painful. If you've manged to forgive your spouse for some egregious transgression but still find yourself miffed about the dent in the garage door or the trail of dirty socks on the staircase, then you have experienced this paradox.

pg 202 Memory does not store a feature-length film of our experience but instead stores an idiosyncratic synopsis, and among memories is its obsession with final scenes. Whether we hear a series of sounds, read a series of letters, see a series of pictures, smell a series of odors, or meet a series of people, we show a pronounced tendency to recall the items at the end of the series far better than the items at the beginning or in the middle. As such, when we look back on the entire series, our impression is strongly influenced by its final items.

pg 217 Economists and psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness, and they have generally concluded that wealth increases happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter. Economists explain that wealth has "declining marginal utility", which is a fancy way of saying that it hurts to be hungry, cold, sick, tired, and scared, but once you've bought your way out of these burdens, the rest of your money is an increasingly useless pile of paper. ... Market economies require that we all have an insatiable hunger for stuff, and if everyone were content with the stuff they had, then the economy would grind to a halt. .. So what motivates people to work hard every day to do things that will satisfy the economy but not their own? Like so many thinkers, Adam Smith believed that people want just one thing - happiness - hence economies can blossom and grow only if people are deluded into believing that the production of wealth will make them happy. In short, the production of wealth does not necessarily make individuals happy, but it does serve the needs of an economy, which serves the needs of a stable society, which serves as a network for the propagation of delusional beliefs about happiness and wealth.

pg 221 Yet if we measure the actual satisfaction of people who have children, a very different story emerges. Couples start out quite happy in their marriages and then become progressively less satisfied over the course of their lives together, getting close to their original levels of satisfaction only when their children leave home. Interestingly, this pattern of satisfaction over the life cycle describes women (who are usually the primary caretakers of children) better than men.

pg 222 The belief-transmission game is rigged so that we must believe that children and money bring happiness, regardless of whether such beliefs are true. This doesn't mean that we should all now quit our jobs and abandon our families. Rather, it means that while we believe we are raising children and earning paycheques to increase our share of happiness, we are actually doing these things for reasons beyond our ken. ... we continue to be surprised when we do not experience all the joy we so gullibly anticipated.

pg 224 If you believe (as I do) that people can generally say how they are feeling at the moment they are asked, then one way to make predictions about our own emotional futures is to find someone who is having the experience we are contemplating ad ask them how they feel.

last note: loved the term "onward" used at the end of each chapter!

Cool Time

A Hands-on Plan for Managing Work and Balancing Time

by Steve Prentice

from the back... Cool Time doesn't focus on prioritizing and agenda setting. In the real world of interruptions, e-mail, and distractions, few people are able to organize their work in isolation from everything else. In fact, effective time management is more about human relationships and expectations than it is about making lists.

Amanda's note: While I did pick up some tips and insights from this book, for some reason I didn't have any flags. I think it's because I learned so much between the Covey workshops and Working Smart With Outlook, that my new nuggets weren't the loud 'ahas' that I typically experience when I read.

However, here is just a list of the stuff I remember picking up:

- schedule 55 min meetings
- check email at set times a day (I'm doing 9, 11:30 and 4pm and it's working great)
- the I-beam review
- keystone time
- opportunity time
- right not to answer if you don't recognize the number on call display
- out of office message on your phone - make it a good one
- a great deal of email is sent before it's really ready to be sent
- use effective subject lines
- alternate meeting strategies: stealth and pouncing and coffee shops
- May and October/November are peak times for energy levels, staff availability and work focus
- use a word document for your knowledge base (can assign bookmarks and hyperlinks within document)

http://www.cool-time.com/

Start Late, Finish Rich

A No Fail Plan For Achieving Financial Freedom At Any Age

by David Bach

I don't really think this book needs a 'from the flap' with a self-explanatory title like that!

Here are my flags...

pg 10 You may think this book is only about money, but you will learn that it's really about a lot more. My mission is to free you to be who you were put here to be - and my experience has taught me that what hold most people back from their purpose in life are financial challenges. Break the financial handcuffs of living paycheque to paycheque, worrying about debt, and losing sleep over how you are going to survive financially in the future, and you will be able to focus on what is really important to you. You are already rich inside - this book will help you reconnect with your born given gift.

This book may be called Start Late, Finish Rich, but I know that inside you are already rich in spirit. All we need to do now is help you become materially rich so you can live the life you were meant to live.

pg 15 The past will continue to be your future if you drag it along with you!

pg 29 Find your Double Latte Factor! It's not how much we earn, it's how much we spend! If there is one key concept on which everything else I have to say about finishing rich is built, it is this: how much you earn almost has no bearing on whether or not you can and will build wealth.

pg 74 Dead on last payment:

1. Make a list of the current outstanding balances on each of your credit-card accounts.
2. Divide each balance by the minimum payment that particular credit card company wants from you. This gives you the DOLP.
3. Once you've figured out the DOLP for each account, rank them in reverse order, putting the account with the lowest DOLP number first. You now know the most efficient order in which you should pay off your various credit card balances. Take half your latte factor savings and apply them to the card with the lowest DOLP rating. For each of your other cards, you make only the minimum payment.

pg 89 The question I'm asked most often about Pay Yourself First is, "How much?" I've always believed that to be fair to yourself and your future, you should Pay Yourself First at least one hour's worth of income every day. Say you make $50,000 a year. That works out to roughly $1,000 a week, or $25 an hour (figuring a 40-hour workweek). So paying yourself first an hour's worth of income every day means saving $25 per workday, or $125 a week, or $6,250 a year. With a 10 percent annual return, if you were to begin at 30, you'd end up with just under $2 million by the time you're 65.

pg 110 ... So knowing that you live in an insane world, what should you do with your money? ... I created the Perfect Pie Approach. ...draw a circle, divide into three equal slices: Stocks (mutual funds), Bonds (bond mutual funds), Real Estate.

pg 112 If you don't own a home - or the equity in your home doesn't equal one-third of your total assets - then you need to have real estate added to your portfolio. The single easiest way to add real estate to your portfolio is to invest in REITs. To be technical about it, a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) is a company that happens to be in the business of owning and operating real estate. First developed in Canada in 1993, REITs are generally publicly traded (though some are privately held) and they usually own income-producing properties such as office buildings, stores, hotels, apartment buildings, and shopping centres. There are also REITs that own hospitals and nursing care facilities, and some even own real estate loan portfolios. While there are more than 200 REITs in the US, there are only 20 REITs currently operating in Canada.

pg 11 I don't recommend that you buy individual REITs because it's too easy to pick the wrong one. The solution is simple: You should buy an index fund of REITs. (An index fund is a mutual fund that is designed to mirror the performance of a particular market indicator us as the S&P/TSX 60). In Canada, Barclay's Global Investors offers an ETF called the iUnits S&P/TSX REIT EFT. This REIT fund can be purchased through any brokerage and put into your RRSP; details are available at http://www.iunits.com/.

You can also participate in the REIT market through a real estate mutual fund, although you won't get the same benefit from one of these funds as you'd get by investing in the EFT. That's because... also invest in equities and other securities of Canadian companies that are involved in owning or managing real estate.

pg 285 Living to retire is not living... The fact is, you don't have to have a fully funded RRSP to have joy. What really matters is that you have consistent joy in your life right now, that you have some fun now, that you forget the idea that your supposed to wait until you retire to have those things.

pg 289 The purpose of your life is joy. This may sound far-fetched, but it's not. I believe you are here to have a life of meaning and joy - to do great things, to be a great person. To live rich. How do you find this fulfillment? You don't find it. You live it. Joy is not out there under a rock. It is not found in any one specific thing, like getting a new job, starting a new marriage, losing 30 pounds, or having a child. It is inside you waiting to come out. Joy comes from doing what you are meant to be doing with your life.

pg 292 If it's so easy to start late and finish rich, why do so many people think it's impossible? The answer is that most people are too busy to put time and energy into what matters most. We clutter up our lives with things we think are important instead of living what is really important. We major in minor things.

pg 300 (lessons to our kids) Lesson No 11: Teach them to dream big dreams. The world needs more dreamers. Let the adults be realistic. We need our kids to believe and know that they really can be "anything" and "anyone" they want to be. Our greatest purpose in life is to use the gifts our creator gave us to be who we were put here to be. For many of our kids, this means dreaming a life bigger than the one they are currently living.
Please, as an adult, be a dream creator and not a dream stealer. Your words of encouragement to a young person may shape not only the child's destiny but the world's. You don't know who you are talking to when you speak to a young person. You might be speaking to the next Dr. Martin Luther King, or Pierre Trudeau or Oprah Winfrey or Wayne Gretzky or Lance Armstrong. You don't know what the child you love can do. Only the child can know, and she or he might not know it yet. So encourage the dream!

Growing the Distance

Timeless principles for personal, career, and family success

by Jim Clemmer

My flags...

pg 33 In Going Deep, Ian Percy writes, "Most business people I know are much more concerned with the quality of their customer service than they are with the quality of their parenting and spousing." ... Yet these executives had failed to ask themselves an important question: When the company suddenly tosses them aside or they reach retirement, will they be so sure that career success is worth the cost of a broken family? Does this trade-off really represent their core values?

pg 42 We find what we focus upon. Whether I think my world is full of richness and opportunity or garbage and despair - I am right. It's exactly like that. Because that's my point of focus.

pg 51 "What's the world's greatest lie?" the boy asked, completely surprised. "It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie." Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

pg 53 "...everything can be taken from us but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's own way." Viktor Frankl

pg 78 "When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world. As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change my country. But it, too, seemed immovable. As I grew into my twilight years, in one desperate attempt, I settled for changing my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it. And now as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realize if only I had changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family. From their inspiration and encouragement, I would have been able to better my country and, who knows, I may have even changed the world." Anonymous epitaph written on a tomb at Westminster Abbey

pg 80 In my firm's leadership development work, we use a simple exercise to help people see the connection between changes they'd like to see in others and those they need to make in themselves.

Draw a line down the middle of a page. Title the left column "Changes I'd Like Them To Make". List the four or five biggest changes you'd like to see in others.

OK, that's the easy part. Now title the right column "Ways I Can Exemplify These Changes". Here, write down the ways you can influence "them" with your personal behavior. Difficult, isn't it? Of course it is - because it forces us to acknowledge all those things we have or haven't been doing to influence their behavior.

It's much easier to be a victim here, to blame others for their behaviour and refuse to accept any responsibility at all. But how honest and true is that - really? ... The big (and often painful) leadership question is: "What do I need to change about me to help change them?" Instead of just wishing for a change of circumstance, I may need a change of character.

pg 81 Good intentions are useless if they stop there. Unless we act on them, they're nothing more than warm, fuzzy thoughts in our heads. When it comes to leadership, the messenger must be the message.

The biblical story of the Good Samaritan would have no meaning if all he did was look with sympathy at the badly wounded traveler lying by the road. He acted on his compassion and made a difference. One of the biggest differences between most people and authentic leaders is action. Real leaders make it happen.

pg 87 Studies of thriving people and their successful career paths show that they types of jobs they have had is much less important than the type of person they are. There are no dead-end jobs, but there are dead-end people. Unsuccessful people in unfulfilling jobs often make the mistake of thinking that they are working for someone else. ... Albert Schweitzer, the Noble Prize-winning French philosopher, physician and musician, fervently believed that "the tragedy of life is what dies inside a person while they live."

pg 91 ... But we all agreed that a highly skilled mechanic who loves his or her work and is continually growing and developing in it is a much more productive leader than a doctor who feels trapped in a system he or she despises. I've met cleaners, security guards, bus drivers, and other people in low-skilled, low-paying jobs who love what they do and make strong contributions to their organizations and society. As the highly passionate American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr put it, "If a man is called a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."

Life is too short to give in to the Victimitis Virus and get stuck in the rut of a meaningless job; wishing and hoping I win the lottery, my fairy-job mother magically appears, or I can just hang in there. Meaningful work goes well beyond what I do for a living; it joyfully expresses what I do with my living.

pg 97 "The bedrock of character is self-discipline; the virtuous life, as philosophers since Aristotle have observed, is based on self-control. A related keystone of character is being able to motivate and guide oneself, whether in doing homework, finishing a job, or getting up in the morning. And, as we have seen, the ability to defer gratification and to control and channel one's urges to act is a basic emotional skill, one that in a former day was called will." Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

pg 111 ... written by a former football player and student of Lou Holtz. At the heart of the poem:
I've seen my share of tombstones but never took the time to truly read
The meaning behind what is there for others to see
Under the person's name it read the date of birth, dash, and the date the person passed
But the more I think about the tombstone, the important thing is the dash

pg 115 Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia outlines another face of love when talking about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four year-old whose next-door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the old man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, "Nothing, I just helped him cry."

pg 122 Leaders love their organization's greater purpose and see its products or services contributing to a bigger world that they love. That love - and desire for growth and development - extends to everyone involved.

pg 123 What's our best defence against being victims of change? To grow and develop every day; to change ourselves - and to lead others in the process.

pg 127 Losing our childlike curiosity. Our sense of wonder and discovery is replaced with cynicism and apathy, often expressed as "been there, done that, what else is new." Pablo Picasso, one of the most prolific painters in history (with more than 20,000 works) once observed that "every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

pg 128 Fearing to attempt. We know that the turtle only makes progress by sticking his head out. Yet we sit and dream about what we're going to do - someday. If we don't take steady steps toward our dreams, the walls around our complacency zone get ever higher and thicker.

pg 129 "In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition.

131 It's too easy to see learning as an end result rather than an ongoing process. Once I get my diploma, certification, or job, it's all too natural to relax and feel that I should now enjoy the fruits of my labors. Therein lies the deadly trap of viewing learning (or change) as a phase, not a way of life.

Constant growth, development, and adaptability to change comes from lifelong learning. As the 19th-century British theologian and essayist John Henry Newman once said, "Growth is the only evidence of life." If we're not growing, we're like a dying tree; eventually the winds of change will snap us of our rotting trunks and blow us over.

(Sidebar - this reminds me of a line from the movie "The Shawshank Redemption": Get busy living, or get busy dying.)

pg 137 The art of developing others is the art of assisting their self-discovery. Writing in the 15th century, Galileo put it this way: "You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself." ... I the workplace, managers are generally considered to be responsible for helping employees to grow and develop. The traditional management view is to get work done through people, but strong leaders develop people through work.

pg 144 True and lasting security comes from constant growth and development. We can't manage change, but we can be change opportunists.

The Art of Being Kind

by Stephan Einhorn

From the jacket... "Being kind in a genuine and positive way truly is an art; and it is an art that can be learned. Stefan Einhorn believes it is the single most important factor in achieving success and satisfaction in life - being a good person can make you happier, richer, more successful and fulfilled. ... Offering immediate practical solutions, The Art Of Being Kind holds powerful key to the rewards of being kind.

This book was an interesting read, from a 'flag bearer' perspective. Of the 212 pages, I had no flags until 152, but from there they proliferated. Here they are...

pg 152 So what goals are worth striving for if we want to achieve greater happiness and contentment? One study had looked at people's goals in life in relation to how happy they thought they were. It showed that the people who had struggled to get a high income and a successful and prestigious job were twice as likely to describe themselves a relatively or very unhappy, compared to those who named close friends and a happy marriage as their most important goals in life. Similarly, research in forty-one countries demonstrated a close correlation between the perception of happiness and how highly people valued love. The more important people regarded love to be, the happier they were. For those who valued wealth most, however, the situation was the reverse. The more important money was to them, the more unhappy they were.

pg 158 It is a question of finding a good balance. We cannot simply rush through life without enjoying and appreciating what we have. We are the ones who decide whether the glass is half full or half empty. In the end it depends on us deciding whether we want to be dissatisfied or satisfied with what we've got. In December 1914, Thomas Edison's laboratory burned down, and with it a lot of the prototypes that Edison and his colleagues had been working on. The loss of the building alone was not even covered by insurance. After looking at the devastation, Edison said: 'All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew.'

pg 174 In the 1930s the Austrian physician Rene Spitz visited a children's home where there were many children but few staff, which meant the children hardly ever got any attention. They were kept clean and fed, but had very little human contact. Almost all the children appeared apathetic and underdeveloped, and some had already whithered away and died, without anyone understanding what disease they were suffering from. Strangely, there was one child who seemed well and who was growing and developing.

Spitz investigated why this was the case. It turned out that a cleaning lady used to clean the dormitory while the children were asleep. When she had finished cleaning, she always sat down on the bed closest to the door, picking up and cuddling the child who lay in it. Just for a short while - every night. In that bed lay the only child who had developed normally.

(sidebar - this reminds of a Mother Theresa quote: "There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation than for bread.")

pg 180 It is almost never worth the cost of having a conflict, so for our own sake and everyone else's, we should try to handle the next approaching conflict with insight. I am not suggesting we flee any nascent conflicts, but that we should handle them with great wisdom.

We should be pragmatic in the face of a threatening conflict. We must ask ourselves: Where do I want to get to, and how can I get there? The obvious answer is almost always that we want to avoid gaining another enemy. We always lose by having enemies.

pg 182 Within Buddhism it is said that we should be grateful to our enemies, because they teach us tolerance and self-awareness. And this is true. Each time we approach a conflict, we are also approaching an opportunity: to understand ourselves better, and to train ourselves in the difficult art of treating our fellow human beings in the best possible way. Seeing the conflict as a challenge that we can use to train ourselves is undeniably better than being gripped by the discomfort and the primitive feelings many of us experience before a fight.

pg 185 There is a Buddhist story about two monks who had to wade across a river. A young woman was standing at the ford, worried about how she would reach the other side. One of the monks offered to carry her across on his shoulders. The other monk thought that it was outrageous that he should come into contact with a woman's body like that, but said nothing. Once they had reached the other side, and the woman had thanked the monk for his help, they continued their journey in silence. Eventually, as evening approached, the other monk could no longer hold back. and reproached his colleague for carrying the woman across the river. The monk who had carried the women looked at him in surprise and said: "Are you still carrying her? I put her down several hours ago.'

pg 188 There are only two possibilities for us to understand another person's thoughts, feelings and needs. One is to ask them how they feel and how they want to be treated. The other is to try and imagine how that person thinks and feels. This capacity for understanding - empathy - is available to all of us, to a greater or lesser degree.

pg 191 We bear responsibility for a lot in our lives - merely saying that we have to take responsibility does not tell us very much. What I mean here is the bit of extra responsibility beyond the usual. It is about exceeding expectations; it is about 'over-delivery'.

Several years ago my family was on holiday in a hotel in Italy. It was a well-run hotel, but one incident in particular filled us with delight. The children had taken with them an entire suitcase fill of cuddly toys, which we had to drag with us throughout the trip. Upon returning to our rooms after a day at the beach we discovered that the cleaners had been in. And they had done something beyond the usual call of duty. They had positioned the stuffed animals in a circle on the bed, so that it looked like they were having a meeting. The children were delighted, as were we adults.

pg 193 So should we work an extra five hours each week in order to be successful? No, we should not take everything upon ourselves, and we have the right to say no sometimes. But what we undertake to do, we should do really well. Whether it concerns work, family or friends, we should take responsibility for what we have undertaken, and then do a bit more.

pg 197 It is important to recognise a few simple things which we have a tendency to forget.

• We are always part of the problem we experience.


• We have great power to contribute to their solution.


• We can learn a lot on the way, and grow as individuals as a result.
  

If we want things to be different in our lives, then we ourselves have to take responsibility for that. No one else can do it for us. And if we see hindrances ahead of us, we must decide if they are real or merely excuses for that fact that we lack courage.

How do we start this process? The first step is to make the decision to change. And not only to make that decision in our minds, but also in our hearts. The next step is to stop and take the time to ask ourselves a few questions. We have to be self-reflective. Examples of these questions might be these.

• Am I doing right by myself?


• Am I treating others right?


• Am I doing the right thing?


• Why am I doing them?


• What do I think is important and meaningful?
  

It is important to take time now and again (not all the time) to think about where we are, who we are and where we are going. In the temple at Delphi there was an inscription in gold letters above the door: Gnothi seauton - 'Know thyself'. Self-awareness is a precondition for inner development, whether it be a matter of worldly or non-worldly goals.

pg 199 I believe Frankl is right. Far too many people strive for career goals, only to find when they achieve them that they feel empty. And then they set off after new goals, only to experience the same feeling once they got there. If we instead concentrate on what feels meaningful in our hearts, this feeling will not arise, but rather a feeling of direction and meaning. We cannot hold onto anything if our hands are clenched.

pg 201 Life is endlessly rich and meaningful. The problem is that we are often in so much of a hurry that we do not have time to appreciate the significance of everything we encounter and all that we do. We do not always see how much of what we do is meaningful and important. For this reason we need to stop and look about us in order to recognise it. We need to strive for that particular sense of meaning.

Sometimes seriously ill patients speak of how meaningful they think life is, when they do not have long left. They can see the meaning in a beautiful day, in birdsong, or in an everyday encounter with another person. And this is indeed the case - a lot of what we take for granted contains great meaning and beauty. It is just that we do not always have time to see, listen and reflect.

pg 202 In the collective society in which we live today, we seldom get time to ourselves - time to reflect, encounter ourselves properly and ask ourselves questions about who we are, where we are going and why. It is no easy task to take on, but, as Thomas Transtromer wrote: 'In the middle of the forest is a glade which can only be found by someone who is lost.'

Concluding Remarks

We will get a better world as a result. Even if individual people can sometimes feel powerless, this is not the case. Do not forget how the effects of a good deed can spread out like ripples on a pond. We can do more than we think for others, and in this way make our contribution to a better world. And a good world is much better to live in than a bad one.

In South Africa there is a particular phrase, ubuntu, which is difficult to translate into a Western language but concerns the very core of being a human being. The Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu, in his book No Future Without Forgiveness, wrote this about ubuntu: 'A person with ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of others, do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole.' I wonder if I have ever seen a better description of the word 'kind'.

The English author and philosopher Aldous Huxley said towards the end of his life: 'It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by the way of advice than "Try to be a little kinder".' In the end it probably really is this simple - and this difficult: kindness is the greatest thing we can offer those around us, and ourselves.

(suggested readings at the back of the book)