Meaning at Work

Meaning at Work - A Life Less Ordinary

by guest blogger and Integration Training Associate the Rev. Francis Briers

There seems to be a contemporary hunger for fame. It doesn’t seem to matter any more how we come by this fame, and many of the ‘stars’ that grace our front pages are not famous for their sporting prowess, artistic talent, or even striking physical beauty. Fame seems to have become a currency all of its own with people becoming famous for err…. Being famous? Getting drunk? Being rude about someone else who is also ‘famous’?

I have got to wondering about this hunger for fame, and while some people place it as a psychological desire for attention, and others have placed it as endemic lazyness – a desire for wealth without a desire to earn it, I’m not so sure…What if the hunger is entirely natural? What if it is merely mis-directed? I don’t believe that ‘the youth of today’ are averse to work – I don’t think any of us are. In my experience, I have never met a person that didn’t love working if they were working for something they really believe in. So what if this hunger, when we trace it back to its source, is really a hunger for a sense of meaning and purpose? Life without meaning is dull, repetitive, even painful. Ordinary… painfully ordinary… So what if our hunger is not for a life of fame, but for a “life less ordinary”?

Some years ago I read a piece of research by Roffey Park (a management and training institute in Sussex) in which 70% of the respondents said that they would like more of a sense of meaning in their work. Perhaps you can identify with this too. For many of us we are doing jobs that would not be our first choice in terms of what we’d spend the majority of our lives doing. This is especially true in Brighton where it seems that every waiter/waitress is a musician or artist or complimentary therapist just waiting for their ‘other work’ to take off! I’ve been one of those people and in some ways I still am, but I’ve found ways to find meaning and purpose where I am as well as keeping shooting for my dreams. If all our energy is focused on tomorrow, no matter how beautiful our dreams may be, the life we are living right now will only seem that much more dreary, ordinary, even painful by comparison. So how have I pulled off this piece of spiritual conjuring? Here’s 3 ways of being to cultivate which I think are key to a meaningful life…

For the sake of what?

I’ve just returned from some study in north California where I had the pleasure to train for a few nights at Richard Strozzi-Heckler’s dojo (dojo is a martial arts training hall which translates as ‘place of The Way’) and this phrase is one he works with a lot: For the sake of what? I think it’s a great question. Whenever we are doing what we are doing I think we should always be asking ourselves why we are doing it, and not just the short version. I might be in the office and think to myself ‘Why am I writing this report?’ The short answer is that my manager requires it of me and will want to know why I haven’t done it if it doesn’t arrive in his email box. The bigger answer has to do with taking care of people (because that’s what the organisation does), and the real big picture is that I want to dedicate my life to empowering people and making the world a better place, and right now this job is helping me to fund the training which will help me be the person I want to be to accomplish this heroic task! So how do you become the hero of your own life, and how does your work facilitate that. Connect those 2 dots and anything can have meaning! (I should know, I’ve done everything from retail, to being a chocolatier, to teaching acting, to making Bagels, to data-entry!)

Practice

As my friend Clare Myatt says, “Practice makes permanent.” So make a conscious choice about the behaviours you practice (and practice is really just repetition). Every spiritual tradition across the globe has some kind of practice associated with it. Whether it’s prayer, meditation, eating, smoking, martial training, some kind of practice is an amazing anchor. It can be the one constant in a day when everything else seems to be in flux, and if it is nothing other than that it has value. I have trained in various martial arts and also methods of meditation and prayer and have found that taking a single practice and deepening with it over months and years helps me enormously to reflect on what changes, and also what doesn’t in life. When I notice what doesn’t change in my life and in me it may reflect a pattern I’m not happy about – in which case, now I’ve spotted it I can change it – or it might show me a pattern of something that’s important to me. In this second instance, I am probably noticing something that is connected to my ‘For the sake of…’ in which case I may be looking my life purpose in the eye…Useful huh?

Aloha

‘Aloha’ means ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ in Hawaiian, it also means ‘Love’. Now being the kind of guy I am, I really enjoy the way that this means that I welcome and send people on their way with Love when I say Aloha. However, there’s a deeper, philosophical meaning too. Serge Kahili-King also translates ‘Aloha’ as meaning ‘To love is to be happy with.’ So I would say: Love your work. Wherever you are right now, love it. If you are always looking to tomorrow’s goal to solve all your problems, chances are you are forming a habit of that way of thinking. So if you are always thinking ‘If I could just earn a bit more money, then I’d be happy…’ chances are that when you increase your earning’s, you’ll still think ‘If I could just earn a bit more money…’. Subconsciously we are incredibly clever so you’ll probably even manage to fritter away more money so that no matter how much more you earn, you still feel like it’s not enough! I’ve done it. I had a job several years back where I kept upping my earnings by moving up in the company and still couldn’t get out of debt. The fact was that I was never happy so as I earned more money I’d just spend more indulging myself to cheer myself up. I left, took a job training as a chocolatier on about 2 thirds the salary and started paying my debts off! So one way is to change to work you’re happier doing (which in my experience is often a temporary fix, and can lead to job hopping), the other way is to invest in loving what you’ve got. Love is active. It is a constant saying ‘Hello’ to what is arising in the present moment, and saying ‘Goodbye’ to what is dying in the present moment. Whatever we do we will always have to accept that we are not doing other things. So rather than thinking of all the other things you could be doing, pay attention and get the maximum learning and value from what you are doing. Rather than thinking of all the people you could be hanging out with build relationships with the people you are spending time with. The fact is that sometimes we can control our circumstances (to some degree) and other times we have more limited choices. So whatever turns up: Love that. You’ll be happier that way, and maybe you’ll even start to notice your life seeming a little less ordinary...

Tango and Contact Improvisation

This is some new friends and I dancing a mix of Contact Improvisation (a dance form from aikido) and tango with a group in London. I'm not much good at either Contact Improv or tango but it was a lot of fun. The teacher Adriana Pegorer is great and I'll be back this Sunday in London for more!

New Paul Linden Book

From Aiki Extensions:

"Sensei Paul Linden Ph.D., founder of Columbus Center for Movement Studies and Aikido of Columbus, has just released his latest book in electronic form. This is an ecologically responsible way to share essential work dealing with conflict, body awareness, and life in general. Half the sale price from each ebook sold will go to Aiki Extensions, an international non-profit working around the world to spread practical and sustainable methods which move through conflict toward the benefit of all involved.

Breakfast Essays consists of 45 short, hopefully thought-provoking essays that you could read at breakfast to start off the day. The essays serve as a selection of appetizers, introducing the broad scope covered by body awareness training in general, and by Being In Movement® mindbody education and the non-violent martial art of Aikido in particular."

Somatic So What: Buy it

Ageism Against Young People at Work

I hear a lot about ageism against older people at work today, and that's fair enough, no one should be mistreated because of their age. What I don't hear much about but experience on a weekly bases is ageism against young people at work (reverse ageism). Ageism is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice, and ageism against young people the side of it that rarely gets addressed. For a good example of something that would never be allowed in regard to race or gender see "Shed experience, hire young fools" from the Times.

In the training industry in which I work age is sometimes equated with "life-experience" - some kind of magic quality that makes people with beards better trainers apparently. Now I'm not saying that one can't accumulate skills or even wisdom as one ages, I'm saying this doesn't necessarily happen. For every person that ages like wine, there's another that ages like vinegar.

Experience can equate to being stuck in ones ways and out-dated, youth can equate to being dynamic, creative and open - but neither necessarily.

Age is often not a good measure of experience in a fast moving world based on specialism, and if there is such a thing as "life experience" (as opposed to specific skills and multiple intelligences) I'd claim that it was measured in love and loss and not years. Also, each generation tends to build on the one before so what was a great achievement for my parents generation (e.g. racial equality) is just a given for my generation. As my aikido instructor put it - "You should be better than me, you've got me teaching you!" In fact aikido is a good example of a skill that takes time to develop (ten years to black belt is typical), but that you can begin at almost any age meaning there is some but not far from total correlation between age and skill. There are also skills within aikido that young people are much better at and gifts which complete beginners bring which "the experienced" are blind too. I would claim that many modern workplace skills are event less age related than traditional arts like aikido due to the pace of change.

When I asked a representative of DWP (the government body responsible for such issues) about ageism against the young at a conference this year - I was greeted with a somewhat confused look and the comment "We normally concentrate on older people." Happily they followed-up by e-mail with some good resources -and I recommend contacting them if this is an issue for you. One of their papers concluded:

"The research findings show evidence of ageism against younger people in the workplace. The group discussions produced fairly widespread anecdotal evidence of younger people experiencing some form of discriminatory treatment because of their age."

So where does ageism against the young at work come from? Fear of the unknown, fear of change, clinging onto power, arrogance? I don't know - what I would claim is this - if you need to mention how long it's been since your parents happened to get jiggy with it to justify something - maybe it's time for some other qualifications. How is being asked how old I am in a professional context where it's not relavent different from asking if I'm gay or Jewish? I'll happily tell you my age, sexuality and ethnicity if you're just curious, but if you're asking so you can jump to some stupid assumptions you better just take a jump full stop.

Anyway, I'm 30 next month so I guess I can start complaining about the other side of the coin :-)

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Ageism So What: It ain't about how long you've been here, it's about what you've done and what you're going to do here.

Stress Resources on Personnel Zone

Integration Training's lovely PR person Vicki Hughes has got us some more coverage - this time in Personnel Zone. New Stress Management Approach. It reworks these free stress resources.

"Integration Training has launched a new approach to stress management in response to the rising levels of stress at work and its impact on performance. Called ‘Embodied Stress Management’, the technique incorporates a range of experiential training techniques covering the mental, physical and emotional needs of the individual."

Technique Head

“Learn all your theories and techniques as well as you can, and then be prepared to set them aside when you meet the miracle of the miracle of the living soul in front of you.” – Carl Jung

Most trainers annoy me. Consultants, coaches and therapists too. Their head’s are full of techniques that confuse them and me. They can’t just be and get on with it – life’s too complicated and dynamic for silly models. I’m often the worst culprit trying to think about NonViolent Communication, Integral theory, NLP and somatics at the same time while asking my housemate to pass the ketchup...in a really clever way naturally. The result is that I get the brown sauce if I’m lucky and the ketchup poured on my head if I’m not. People don’t like having techniques done on them. People like authenticity flow and ease – and mostly our silly techniques don’t cut the ketchup.

Ultimately the training I’m interested in is working at the level of being rather than tips and tricks to manipulate others. This takes some of the edge off “technique-head” as I’m working on myself. I dislike much of the NLP I’ve seen as it seems to be more about getting what you want than personal transformation – but practitioners of any art can be irritating technique heads. Even while working on yourself there is still a conscious incompetence (obvious and annoying) and conscious competence phase (sometimes even more obvious and annoying).

So what to do? Give up learning new stuff all together? Well no. It takes practice to learn, but once deeply assimilated techniques stop being clunky and become invisible. If you can hear the phone itself it doesn’t work well...yet. For me the key is to practice explicitly with permission from others involved– in my experience people don’t mind this and you won’t make an idiot of yourself. When you get good at whatever, you forget you’re even “doing” something. If you’re remembering and referring back to theory, you’re still in the practice stage and I’d say it’s polite to put your learner plates on and let everyone know.

Technique Head So What –Until you’re so good you forget - ask permission - you’re annoying.

Thanks to Aboodi Shabi of Newfield for the quote.

Reintegrating My Inner Hippie

I’m just back from my second Buddhafield festival. Buddhafield is an orgy of the alternative and this year I taught embodied peacebuilding, aikido and a workshop on business as a spiritual practice. The latter was advertised as “What hippies can learn from business" - on the surface like leading a workshop on cross dressing at a Klu Klux Clan rally; however it was well attended and well received. As one participant put it, “This workshop has balanced my Buddhafield experience” – referring to the fact that there was little else on offer there in regards to money and the business aspects of getting things done.

For me the festival was about reintegrating my relaxed, pluralistic, being in the moment inner-hippie. In order to establish my business over the last two years I have focused on discipline, results, organisation and focus. This was what I was offering in my workshops and it was well received. I have however repressed my inner hippie in the process so it was good to reconnect with this part of myself. I spent a lot of time, dancing, mooching around having coffees and saunas – not trying to get things done for a change, sans watch and phone. I guess this is how we grow – through differentiation and reintegration. In integral terms, as we move from one level of development to another.

Part of my process in doing this was struggling with loneliness and belonging much of the festival – though in Jayaraja's Skillful Flirting workshop this was hardly a hardship J I also enjoyed associate Adrian Harris’s work on Ecopaganism, the anarchic Lost Horizons Cafe (gold painted nipples, mock funerals, tantric sisters licking departed friends - pictured) and a little contact improvisation.

Where you're at might be different of course. Do you need?

- to distance yourself from achievist and materialist values to develop a more sensitive hippies self?

- to reintegrate achievist values to get something done in the world?

- something I have no idea about that's way beyond me?

It's all a (beautiful, terrible) game so hi-ho :-)

Mark

Busting The Mehrabian Myth

A lovely animation from Brighton friends and fellow trainers Creativity Works. It challenges the misunderstandings around non-verbal communication research by Albert Mehrabian. Never say I only present my own (embodied) point of view. What they say is quite right - Mehrabian's findings only apply to "emotionally significent" communication...the important stuff in other words...I mean bodies. So if you wana know if he loves you so, I still say it's in his myth ;-)

Stress Management Training Featured Online

Integration Training's embodied approach to stress management training has been featured on Personneltoday.com. How nice :-)

"No Love - No Fee" - Training Offer

Integration Training is currently offering a "No Love - No Fee" guarantee - if clients don't love the training we provide they don't have to pay.

I started this as I'm confidant that the stress management, team building, time management, communication training and leadership training we provide works. I had the experience of being a customer for other services recently and I didn't like how I was expected to take a risk - paying money for "a maybe". My point was that if you can do something why would you not offer your customers a money-back guarantee?

If you work for an organisation that would like some risk-free training - stress management, time management, communication training, office team building or leadership training - then drop me a line - 07762 541 855 mark@integartiontraining.co.uk

Mark

What Can Business Teach the Buddha?

I spend much of my life packaging material from the “alternative” world to produce a form that appeals to business and the mainstream in general. I use mindfulness in stress workshops, embodied exercises in corporate leadership training and NonViolent Communication on appraisals courses. Next week however I will be doing things the other way around – “selling” business at Buddhafield.

Buddhafield is a wonderful festival of meditation, yoga, and music where you get sent if you’re too big a hippy for Glastonbury. I led a workshop there last year on Embodied Peacebuilding which went down well. This year I decided that for a challenge I would lead a talk on “Conscious Business – Can Business be a Spiritual Practice?” And “What can Business teach Buddhafield?”

I’m still deciding on the content and thought I’d start thinking out loud here. Here are a few thoughts on things that alternative communities I’ve been in contact with might learn from business:

- Effectively coordinating action over time. Rigour and commitment
- Evidence base – i.e. what actually works - the limits of fundamentalism and relativism
- Putting feeling over rationality instead of alongside it.
- Basic ethics and keeping things simple
- Self –reliance (as well as communion)
- Re-owning the urges for power, prestige and achievement rather than repressing them

I’d love to hear from readers who have some additions to these?
My thinking on the matter is influenced by Ken Wilber’s “Post Trans Fallacy” – pre rational/materisalistic and post rational/materialistic look a lot alike but the former is superstitious and dogmatic while the latter “transcends and includes” to be truly integral. In Spiral Dynamics terms it’s the movement from relativist green (much of Buddhafield) to a world view that includes achieveist orange (much of business) and traditionalist blue (old-school business as well as much traditional spirituality).

As for the Buddha – well that was just a nice title. More on Buddhism and business here. Perhaps he set the tone for spiritual practice as “anti-wealth” by renouncing his position as a prince. But then as Fred Kofman points out- the last ox-herding picture in Zen is “return to the market-place with helping hands.” The marketplace not the bloody hot-yoga studio.

Embodied Learning

The Strozzi Institute - US leaders in embodied learning and good friends - have added a page to their site that may be of interest. My own company is the UK specialist in embodied learning.

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Why Embodied Learning?

In a world of continuous change and constant social innovation, learning has taken on a new meaning. While it was once sufficient to be competent at the same job over a lifetime, we are now required to continually learn new skills, to adapt to people with widely different backgrounds, and to be flexible enough to change roles, job positions, and organizational directions. Learning over the course of our career has become a necessity. Learning how to learn is one of the most powerful ways of dealing with the changes of today’s world. In this time of accelerated change, learning to learn gives us a competitive advantage. To succeed in the future we must be learning individuals in learning organizations. The current conversations about neuroscience and leadership gives scientific grounding for the effectiveness of embodied learning....

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Somatic Coaching tips

Guest blogger and Integration Training Associate Anthony Davies (pictured left coaching) on somatic coaching:

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Somatic Coaching is a progressive form of coaching that produces genuine transformation for individuals and groups. Through the process you can benefit by: -

- Creating a greater centred presence
- Learning to replace outdated habits with positive practices
- Experiencing a greater sense of aliveness throughout your body
- Enabling yourself to take action more effectively in the world

Four top tips that emerge from Somatic Coaching: -

1. Make sure you get clear about what you are declaring for the future you are creating. Envision the end in mind.
2. Ease and dissolve ‘banding’ or ‘armouring’ in the body. Typically these are areas of built-up tension. You can release these through somatic movement, regular hands on Somatic Bodywork, and ideally both.
3. Commit to doing daily physiological practices, with intention. Richard Strozzi-Heckler is known for writing “until it is in the muscle knowledge is just a rumour.” You can literally change yourself through your body, and you change your life.
4. Yes, and breathe deeper!


Anthony Davies is a Brighton-based Somatic Coach, qualified through Strozzi Institute California . He practices one on one, and runs groups in Brighton and internationally. There are spaces open on his July Somatic Coaching that he is running. For information on his group work please email anthony@somaticcoach.co.uk

Stress Management Videos

The good 'ole Heath and Safety Exectutive (HSE) has released some new stress management videos. Here's a cheesy stress management video from Youtube too:



Of course if the stress gets to much you could just do this:




Currently working on my own stress management video - watch this space.