The Point is to Live the Question

At a recent coaching conference, a wise colleague shared a very powerful practice: the 10-Year Question.

In coaching, questions are the primary tool: the probe, the lever, the dynamite that can explode a story, the key to unlocking awareness.  What sort of question, I thought, could take ten years to answer?  That would be a powerful question, indeed!

“So,” we asked eagerly, pencils poised above our notepads and journals, “what is the 10-Year Question?”

Fact is, a question that powerful does not come from the coach, it comes from the client.  Here’s the question I can ask as a coach: “what is a question that is so big that it will take you 10 years — or more — to completely answer it?”

Are you getting it, now?  It’s YOUR question.  It’s the question you have not dared to ask yourself.  It’s the deep question that you’ve probably ignored in the busy-ness of getting things done.  It’s the question that does not have a clear answer.  Indeed, it may not have any answer.

What is point of asking a question that does not have an answer?  Practice. practice holding the question and notice how the question affects everything you do — the decisions you make, the paths you take, the conversations you find most compelling, the things you become curious about, the part of you that choose to explore.

I met a friend for lunch; I gave her the 10-year question as a “gift” and she sent me a lovely magnet with the following quote, which eloquently captures the spirit and power of a 10-year Question:

“I beg you…to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms of books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer…”

~Rainer Maria Rilke (German poet, 1875-1926)

So, what’s YOUR 10-year question?  And what will happen when and if you have the courage to LIVE that question?  I”m still working on mine….

Happiness is Flying High!

Zip Lining over the Costa Rican Rain Forest

I had a lot of adventures on my recent vacation in Costa Rica — I explored coral reefs, climbed a mountain on horseback, and allowed myself to be strapped to a steel cable and pushed out of tree — upside down.  Yikes!

I took this video on one of my right side up trips.  Gives you a flavor of what Zip Lining over the rain forest canopy is like.  I’m WAY up there in this one, and take a look at the gorgeous sky!

Happiness is truly Flying High!

The Unforgettable Commencement Address 2009

Questioning the Need for Answers

I fear that one of the biggest obstacles to solving our world’s many problems is that we’ve become a society where, if you don’t have THE answer — and the CORRECT answer — on the first pass, you are labeled ineffective.  You are a failure if you don’t have the answer.

I got to thinking about this after a colleague included the following quote in an email:

“In our society, mainly concerned with production and efficiency, the drama is that our capacity for questioning, still so vivid in early childhood, is very quickly eradicated or pushed aside for the benefit of our capacity for answering.
When a child has a real question, most of the time he is immediately given a stupid answer. In the best cases the educator goes to the dictionary to be sure his answer is accurate. But anyhow unconsciously, if not proudly, he closes the question.
From school to the end of our life it is always necessary to answer. We are compelled to learn how to answer. If we don’t know how to answer, we are just no good. So little by little we become some kind of model machine able-to-answer-to-all-situations with all the necessary blindness as regards its own contradictions.
That kind of answering, whose degree of sophistication may sometimes hide from us its conditioned character, is required by our life. But under its dominating necessity, is it possible to keep alive in ourselves our most authentic and precious capacity, which is questioning?”

~Michel de Salzmann, French philosopher and spiritualist, 1976

We seem to have lost our capacity for curiosity.  This, I assess, is a big problem itself.

Consider where we are.  I mean, REALLY consider the situation we are in as a planet — financially, politically, climatically, and as regards energy:  we have NEVER been here before.

We are in totally new territory.  No one (I repeat, for emphasis, NO ONE) has the answers…. heck, we’re not even clear about what the problems are!  We keep treating the symptoms, nothing’s improving.  H-E-L-L-O!  perhaps we could achieve a bit more if we just stopped demanding answers and instead took the time to explore the issues.

Curiosity is one of man’s most powerful tools.  Our ability to question, to probe, to learn distinguishes us from all other species on the planet.  Imagine what could happen if, for just a few months, everyone stopped trying to Solve these enormous problems (which, by the way, hasn’t been workin’ too well!) and spend that time trying to Understand the problems.  Understand the root causes.  Understand the impact of various solutions.  Understand the impact on human lives.  and most of all, Understand the emotions that are attached to both the problems and the potential solutions.

What might be possible if, for just a while, our leaders took the time to look at the world through the eyes of a child?  Hmm.

In the end, I suggest, we’d have better answers.

Change Starts With You

“If you start waiting for other people to stop being stupid, it will take too long.“
~Raskilnikov, in the play Crime and Punishment

Isn’t that just the greatest quote?  Raskilnikov utters this line near the end of the play, shortly before he breaks down and confesses his crime.

He holds a theory that some men are “extraordinary” and are thus exempt from laws (like murder) when they can show how an act of evil can be justified if, in the end, a greater good is made possible. He has a few problems, however, convincing people that his murder of an evil woman is balanced out by the prevention of her future cruelty to others.

He utters the above line as he realizes that time has run out on him — no one’s going to buy his justification…

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Imagine me sitting in a darkened theater at the moment this line is uttered, suddenly startled into looking frantically for a pen to capture the quote before I lose it.   The line perfectly captures the essence of coaching, of my work in happiness, and my belief that I am the only person who can create my world.

Look at that line again.  Now, substitute for the word “stupid” just about any human trait you find irritating, and notice how true it is:

“If you start waiting for other people to stop being IRRESPONSIBLE, it will take too long.”
“If you start waiting for other people to stop being MISERABLE, it will take too long.”
“If you start waiting for other people to stop being GREEDY, it will take too long.”
“If you start waiting for other people to stop being UNREASONABLE, it will take too long.”
“If you start waiting for other people to stop being UNCOMMUNICATIVE, it will take too long.”
“If you start waiting for other people to stop being CONTROLLING, it will take too long.”
“If you start waiting for other people to stop being MEAN TO ME, it will take too long.”

See where I’m going, here?  It all comes back to you.  People are going to be who and how they are, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them from being how they are.  So if other people’s behavior galls you, you have only two choices:

1. Let it eat away at you until you become a victim, OR
2. Take responsibility for, and shift, how you react to other people.

I’m not giving anything away to remind you that, in the end, Raskilnikov turns himself in and thus finds peace within himself: he knows that by serving time for his crime, he’s doing the right thing.   He found the courage in himself to change how he responded to the world.

In a similar way you have the choice, every day, to hold onto your current beliefs, or not.  To justify your own actions and behaviors and always be RIGHT in every conversation, or to let go and let others be heard.  You have the choice to be in anger about other people’s “stupidity,” or accept that they are who they are, and move on.

Change starts with you.

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By the way, if you’ve never finished Crime and Punishment because it was just too long and too dense, know that this adaptation, written by Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus, does a magnificent job of reducing the story to just 90 minutes.  The play honors Dostoyevsky’s dark, brooding view of the world thru his existentialist lens, yet strips out a lot of the complications and multiple plotlines to bring the book’s primary struggle to life on the stage.

If you’re in Cleveland, note that Crime and Punishment will continue to run thru March 22 at the Drury Theater at Cleveland Playhouse.  According to a coupon in the playbill, if you mention that a FRIEND told you about it, you’ll get $10 off the ticket price.  We sat in the balcony and had a fabulous view of the stage in this intimate theatre — a real gem!

Happiness and Integrity

Reflection: it is difficult to experience true happiness when one does not live in integrity.

You can experience pleasure, yes.  But true happiness, as it is related to meaning and engagement with life, is difficult to achieve and impossible to hold when one is out of integrity.

The word Integrity comes from the Latin, “integritas” and “integra” meaning whole, complete, one.  Why is it so important to the experience of Happiness? Because seeking true happiness while out being out of integrity is like building a house without a foundation.  It may look nice for short time, but because it’s got a weak base it will quickly fall apart.

What is Integrity?

Integrity is… The ability to notice the difference between the truth you know and the truth you live.

Integrity is… What you do when nobody’s watching.

Integrity is… When ethics, honesty, and consistency all collide in one place: you.

Integrity is…. When Think = Say = Do

Integrity is… The quality or state of being entire or complete; wholeness

Integrity is… A very nice balance of self respect and confidence

Integrity is… Being consistent with one’s values or belief system

Reflection for you: picture three interlocking circles: What you Think, What you Say, and What you Do.  The place where those three circles interect in the middle — that is integrity.  And if there is any discrepancy between the three, the circles will NOT intersect — there will be a gap.  Consider where your thinking, speaking, and behavior are out of line. What might you shift so that you are consistent?

Notice how happiness becomes more available to you when you pay attention.

There Are Other Places To Sing

A reader sent me this story as a response my post on Saying Goodbye.  I teared up as I read it, and now pass it along to you.  My Aunt Corrine passed on last Friday evening — she’s now singing in a different place.

I hope you enjoy it.

THE OLD PHONE

When I was quite young, my father had one of the first telephones in our neighborhood. I remember the polished, old case fastened to the wall. The shiny receiver hung on the side of the box. I was too little to reach the telephone, but used to listen with fascination when my mother talked to it.

Then I discovered that somewhere inside the wonderful device lived an amazing person. Her name was ‘Information Please’ and there was nothing she did not know. Information Please could supply anyone’s number and the correct time.

My personal experience with the genie-in-a-bottle came one day while my Mother was visiting a neighbor. Amusing myself at the tool bench in the basement, I whacked my finger with a hammer, the pain was terrible, but there seemed no point in crying because there was no one home to give sympathy.

I walked around the house sucking my throbbing finger, finally arriving at the stairway. The telephone! Quickly, I ran for the footstool in the Parlor and dragged it to the landing climbing up; I unhooked the receiver in the parlor and held it to my ear. ‘Information, please,’ I said into the mouthpiece just above my head. A click or two and a small clear voice spoke into my ear.

‘Information.’

‘I hurt my finger,’ I wailed into the phone, the tears came readily enough now that I had an audience.

‘Isn’t your mother home?’ came the question.

‘Nobody’s home but me,’ I blubbered.

‘Are you bleeding?’ the voice asked. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts.’ ‘Can you open the icebox?’ she asked.

I said I could.

‘Then chip off a little bit of ice and hold it to your finger,’ said the voice.

After that, I called ‘Information Please’ for everything. I asked her for help with my geography, and she told me where  Philadelphia was. She helped me with my math. She told me my pet chipmunk that I had caught in the park just the day before, would eat fruit and nuts.

Then, there was the time Petey, our pet canary, died. I called, ‘Information Please,’ and told her the sad story. She listened, and then said things grown-ups say to soothe a child. But I was not consoled. I asked her, ‘Why is it that birds should sing so beautifully and bring Joy to all families, only to end up as a heap of feathers on the bottom of a cage?’

She must have sensed my deep concern, for she said quietly, ‘ Wayne , always remember that there are other worlds to sing in.’

Somehow I felt better.

Another day I was on the telephone, ‘Information Please.’ ‘Information,’ said in the now familiar voice. ‘How do I spell fix?’ I asked.

All this took place in a small town in the Pacific Northwest . When I was nine years old, we moved across the country to  Boston . I missed my friend very much. ‘Information Please’ belonged in that old wooden box back home and I somehow never thought of trying the shiny new phone that sat on the table in the hall. As I grew into my teens, the memories of those childhood conversations never really left me.

Often, in moments of doubt and perplexity I would recall the serene sense of security I had then. I appreciated now how patient, understanding, and kind she was to have spent her time on a little boy.

A few years later, on my way west to college, my plane put down in  Seattle  I had about a half-hour or so between planes. I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with my sister, who lived there now. Then without thinking what I was doing, I dialed my hometown Operator and said, ‘Information Please.’

Miraculously, I heard the small, clear voice I knew so well. ‘Information.’

I hadn’t planned this, but I heard myself saying, ‘Could you please tell me how to spell fix?’

There was a long pause. Then came the soft spoken answer, ‘I guess your finger must have healed by now.’

I laughed, ‘So it’s really you,’ I said. ‘I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me during that time?’

‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if you know how much your call meant to me. I never had any children and I used to look forward to your calls.’

I told her how often I had thought of her over the years and I asked if I could call her again when I came back to visit my sister.

‘Please do,’ she said. ‘Just ask for Sally.’ Three months later I was back in  Seattle  a different voice answered:  Information.’ I asked for Sally.

‘Are you a friend?’ she said.

‘Yes, a very old friend,’ I answered.

‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this,’ she said. ‘Sally had been working part-time the last few years because she was sick. She died five weeks ago.’

Before I could hang up she said, ‘Wait a minute, did you say your name was Wayne ?’ ‘Yes.’ I answered.

‘Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down in case you called. Let me read it to you.’ The note said, ‘Tell him there are other worlds to sing in. He’ll know what I mean.’

I thanked her and hung up. I knew what Sally meant.

Never underestimate the impression you may make on others.

Whose life have you touched today?

Why not pass this on? I just did….

Lifting you on eagle’s wings. May you find the joy and peace you long for.

Life is a journey … NOT a guided tour. So don’t miss the ride and have a great time going around.  You don’t get a second shot at it.

Namaste,  Jim

Slumdog Millionaire - I hope it’s as good as the book

Two years ago in my 2007 Summer Reading List I lauded the book, Q&A, by Vikas Swarup.  I thought it was a WONDERFUL story, and highly recommended the audio version of the book.  I am thrilled that it’s been turned in to a movie, Slumdog Millionaire, opening in Cleveland tonite!

Here’s an excerpt from my own review of the book:

[Jim’s Notes:How do I describe this book? The premise is that a young, uneducated waiter who lives in Mumbai, India, has just won the largest Jackpot in television history – a billion rupees! – by answering a series of twelve consecutive and increasingly difficult questions on a “who wants to be a millionaire”-like program on Indian television. The producers of the show find it impossible to believe that he achieved this without cheating. As the book opens, he is being arrested. He ends up in the custody of a police detective to whom he tells his story, demonstrating how his unique life circumstances led him to know – uneducated as he is – all the correct answers. The tale is an exploration of life for the indigent and servile masses in modern day India, the caste system, injustice, child slavery the buying and selling of lives, greed, friendship, love, betrayal, and most of all, the power of spirit. AND it is all wrapped up in an engaging story about an unassuming young man who has struggled to survive on his wits alone, in an unforgiving system, since he was orphaned at age seven.

In the midst of much misery, by the way, this character never suffers – for suffering is not about pain but about how we respond to pain. He does not suffer because he sees life for what it is – life. He just keeps moving, doing what he needs to do to survive. (I do not believe this was a commentary by the author, but more my own observation. I never felt sorry for him – he simply tells his story in a straightforward matter -- it is what it is).]

To read the rest of my review, you can download the list from my archives.

It’s got a 92% postive rating at RottenTomatoes.com.  Read the book.  See the movie.  I promise you your heart will feel lighter!

Happy Coincidences

My wife’s brother is getting (re)married in a couple weeks, and we need to have a modest gift (it’s a third marriage, so no crockpot for this one!).  She came across an old photo of her parents’ wedding a few weeks ago, which sparked an idea.

The bride-to-be is really “into” vintage photos, which hang about the house.  So we searched out a wedding photo for each of the grandparents, to put with the parents’ photo.  The plan is to have them all scanned, turned into matching 5×7 shots, and put into a nice frame.  That’s nice, but not the best part.

The two photos show a similar wedding portrait from early last century (the two couples were married about two years apart in the mid-1920s).  The groom is seated, while the bride stands slightly behind and to the right, so as to show off the entire length of the white dress and veil.  The shots are two different sizes and carry different backgrounds, so at first glance they are quite distinct.

Until you look closely — and I’m apparently the first one to ever do this.

“Sweetie…. come here and look at this,” I invited.  She came over and looked.  We looked again.  We put it under a magnifying glass to confirm.

BOTH grooms are sitting in the same chair.  Not just a similar pose, we now realized — the SAME pose.  The exact same carved wooden chair, identical down to the little patch of frayed material on the corner of the cushion.

It’s a tiny little coincidence, but really neat to know that these two couples who came from very different worlds — one a pair of second-generation Germans and the other very new immigrants from Slovakia — ended up going to the same place to memorialize their wedding, not knowing that 30 years from that time two of their offspring would meet and marry.

Isn’t that just cool to know?!

And it put me in mind of a little coincidence with our own parents.  Early in our relationship, we realized that both sets of parents were married on the same date.  It was just a little tiny coincidence that we interpreted as a sign from The Universe that it had some plans for us to be together, all along.

Apparently those happy coincidences go back a couple generations!

So now, I’m wondering what other tiny little message The Universe plants around world.  Have YOU come across any meaningful coincidences in your world, lately?  Please, share!

Happy Thanksgiving - Inventory Your Wealth

Happy Thanksgiving!

As The Executive Happiness Coach^® I especially love any holiday that carries a greeting of HAPPY in front of it.

You know, many people say that Happiness is the “ultimate currency.” So when we wish each other a “Happy Anything” we are, in a way, wishing for them a life that is wealthy on many levels.

In this time of crisis in which, uncertainty, worry, and fear seem everywhere, give yourself also the gift of hope. Eventually the crisis will pass, the transition will be history, the recession will fade to memory. My wish for you is that you take time during this 2008 Thanksgiving holiday, to inventory the wealth you possess that is independent of money:

Your Relationships
List the people who love you, and whom you love

Your Wisdom
Think about how much you know, and recognize what an asset you are

Your Communities
Write down all the groups of which you are a member – work, family, faith, civic, and even virtual/online

Your Faith
Consider the beliefs you hold; the things you believe in even if you cannot “prove” them

Your Health
Take a deep, deep breath and consider how fabulous it is to be alive (aches and pains and all!)

Your future
Regardless what’s happened till now, the rest of your life is yet unwritten, and you can change the story if you want to

Make time to express gratitude, on purpose. It’s good for you! Gratitude is one of a handful of emotions which create as much good feeling in the Giver as in the Receiver. So remember that when you say, “thanks!” you’re filling up someone else’s tank… as well as your own!

So HAPPY Thanksgiving. I am grateful that you are in my world – as a reader, as a client, as a colleague, as a friend, as a fellow traveler on Spaceship Earth.

In happiness, J

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