So you’re taking a summer vacation. Really?

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“What do I want to take home from my summer vacation? Time. The wonderful luxury of being at rest. The days when you shut down the mental machinery that keeps life on track and let life simply wander. The days when you stop planning, analyzing, thinking and just are. Summer is my period of grace.”
–Ellen Goodman

New York University sociologist, Dalton Conley, recently coined the term: “weisure” – the result of blurring the line dividing work and leisure. More and more, work is carrying over into folks’ leisure time. It appears that places and activities usually regarded as “fun only” are now work-play ambiguous. No surprise here!

Folks are using their smartphones to connect with their business colleagues while at home or hanging out with their families in the evening. Folks are chatting with Facebook colleagues on weekends and holidays. And, of course, all their other electronic leashes are keeping them connected so they can take care of business while “on vacation.”

What’s happening!

Some, including Conley, say the work-leisure phenomena is happening because more folks are finding work to be fun and want to stay connected during leisure periods. Really! Fun! Who’s kidding whom!?

For couples and families that have an honest, true, sincere and intimate connection with one another, I wonder how they view the “fun of weisure” as a reason for disconnecting with one other at home, at play, or on vacation. Perhaps you can ask ten of your closest friends how their spouses, partners or children feel about the separation caused by one of them experiencing all the “fun” while conducting business at home, or on vacation.

Rather than enjoying the “fun” of doing business and choosing to stay connected 24/7, 365, my anecdotal research says folks are (1) inundated with more and more work they cannot handle in a “normal” workday work and/or (2) fearful, guilty or anxious that if they don’t stay connected 24/7, 365, they may find themselves out of a job, and/or (3) they are addicted to their computers and/or (4) they have become emotionally disconnected from their families in favor of social networking and connecting outside their relationship – their “lover” or mistress is now the Internet. My take is that “weisure” is NOT ubiquitous because work now has more “meaning” or provides “fun.” The test – “If you won the lottery today would you continue to work as long and as hard in a 24/7, 365 “weisure” world? Be honest.

The downside of “weisure”

“No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one”. – Elbert Hubbard

The really upsetting fallout of living in a “weisure” world is sacrificing one’s privacy and the abdication of precious relaxation time. With the increasing blurring of work and leisure, research shows fewer and fewer folks are actually taking vacations. Many feel not only that they have to stay connected on holidays and weekends but that they actually fear they might lose their jobs if they went on vacation. And for those who actually do take a vacation, how many need to “unwind” after they come back from a “weisure-driven” vacation – as stressed when they return as they were before they left? The number of these folks increases yearly.

Stressed out, overworked and overwhelmed, many folks need time off but are worried and fearful that a short vacation could lead to a permanent one. They feel dammed if they do; damned if they don’t. Not a very psychologically healthy place to be.

The psycho-emotional-mental-physical effects of a “weisure” lifestyle are quite disturbing. More and more folks are experiencing stress-related dis-eases and illness, family dysfunction and disruption, and really rough times holding it together at work. The workplace is being populated by ever-growing numbers of disengaged, unproductive, underperforming and exhausted employees – not to mention those experiencing serious states of depression, addiction, self-neglect and serious overt or silent anger.

At home, these folks now have no idea how to “take it easy” or relax without working.

The parking areas of many of the office parks I run through, and drive around, are often one quarter or more full on weekends, evenings and holidays. “Weisure?”

Why vacations and honest leisure time are important

“Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.” – Susan Sontag

Simple, taking time for one’s self is a non-negotiable “must” to maintain a healthy mind, body and soul. It’s impossible to run a car engine on all cylinders 24/7, 365. The human body, mind and psyche are no different – dependency on energy drinks notwithstanding.

Leisure time and vacations, spent consciously, serve as preventative medicine. They allow time for de-stressing, decompressing, rejuvenating, replenishing and re-connecting with one’s self. It is when we consciously allow a real genuine opportunity of space for relaxation and novelty that we can discover the unconscious level of tension and stress we’ve been carrying day-to-day. In fact, the first few days of vacation usually begin the process of unwinding, which is followed by the recognition of a need for rest, relaxation and a deeper settling of our body, mind and spirit. And, if you’re fortunate, your vacation is long enough to allow you to enter into the phase of real rejuvenation.

Now the greater question is “What type of vacation do you take?” For some people vacation is wall-to-wall sight seeing, visiting family, exercise boot camp, or staying “connected” i.e., doing, doing, doing which is inevitably followed by that odd aftermath of “I need a vacation from my vacation.”

Some questions for self-reflection:

• When was your last “real” vacation?
• What does “vacation” mean for you?
• What are the elements of a favorite vacation for you?
• Do you take the type of vacation that really nurtures and nourishes you? Be honest.
• How do you prepare for your vacation?
• How do you transition from vacation to home to work?
• How is the first week back after your return?
• How are you at the end of the second week back after your return?
• What did you discover about yourself on recent vacations? Did you have time for any discovery?
• Is there something you learned about yourself on vacation that influences a change you want to implement into your everyday life?
• How do you experience your self on vacation? Do you enjoy your “self” away from the everyday routine?
• Was your work life and home life supported in your absence? Were the bases covered?
• Were you able to really disengage or were your Blackberry and laptop traveling companions?
• What was vacation like before you had a SmartPhone, IPhone, Blackberry, laptop or other digital gadget?
• How much vacation time do you have and take each year? How much do you need?
• Has your relationship suffered because of your “weisure” activities. Be honest. What would you spouse, partner or children say?
• What were vacations like when you were growing up?
• Can you visualize a world where you can take a vacation and truly leave work behind? Would you want to?

“And so we take a holiday, a vacation, to gain release from this bondage for a space, to stand back from the rush of things and breathe again. But a holiday is a respite, not a cure. The more we need holidays, the more certain it is that the disease has conquered us and not we it. More and more holidays just to get away from it all is a sure sign of a decaying civilization; it was one of the most obvious marks of the breakdown of the Roman empire. It is a symptom that we haven’t learned how to live so as to re-create ourselves in our work instead of being sapped by it.” – Evelyn Underhill

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(c) 2016, Peter G. Vajda, Ph.D. and True North Partnering. All rights in all media reserved.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to share this reading with you and I hope you find it insightful and useful.  Perhaps you’ll share this with others, post it on a bulletin board, and use it to generate rich and rewarding discussion.

What is the one thing that is keeping you from feeling successful, happy, confident, in control or at peace as you live your life – at work, at home, at play or in relationship? Maybe you know what that “thing” is – maybe you don’t. You just have a feeling that something has to change, whether or not you embrace that change. And how would that change support you to show up as a “better you?”

I’m available to guide you to create relationships that reflect honesty, integrity, authenticity, trust, and respect whether at work or outside of work. I support you to focus on the interpersonal skills that enable you to relate to others with a high level of personal and professional satisfaction – unhampered by personal inconsistencies, beliefs, “stories,” and behaviors that create barriers to a harmonious, pleasant, conscious, compatible, healthy and productive relationship.

I coach by phone, Skype and in person. For more information, 770-804-9125, www.truenorthpartnering.com or pvajda(at)truenorthpartnering.com

You can also follow me on Twitter: @petergvajda.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TrueNorthPartnering

 

Wisdom vs. Intelligence

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The renowned 19th century preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, observed: “Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.”

Businesses continue to face challenging times. In this uncertainty, some leaders have lost their way due to egregious moral and ethical missteps. Others have reached career dead ends due to their inability to see the big picture from a higher not-so-common perspective. Many of these leaders are undoubtedly intelligent. But they’re not wise.

Being of “two minds”
Our minds work on a lower and higher level. The lower level deals with the concrete – our immediate physical environment, information, facts and logic. Our lower mind supports us to be aware, conceptual and reflective.

Our lower mind is rational, analytical, opinionated, busy and often skeptical. It is bound by time and space. We use our lower mind to make sense of our complicated and emotional world. The lower mind is the stuff of business schools, “operations-focused” education and experiential learning.

“Wisdom is what’s left after we’ve run out of personal opinions.” – Cullen Hightower

The lower mind delivers reductionist thinking and mechanistic, conventional approaches to life. The main drawback of living in the lower mind is that it only reflects your internal map of reality. It is like being stuck in your own intellectual zip code, never moving beyond your nine-digit thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, expectations and world views. It is like living in one town, knowing it completely, and never venturing outside the borders of that town.

Intelligent people are generally engaged with their lower mind and left-brain thinking. The lower mind focuses on one corner of the painting. Wisdom does not arise from this place.

The higher mind considers the abstract. It involves intuition, aspiration, heart, soul and spirit and connects with the Universal mind, with Universal truth, with beauty and with goodness. Our higher mind speaks in the language of ideas, ideals, symbols, principles and impulses. It is loving. It guides us to the truth.

The higher mind sees the threads woven between the mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, psychological and social aspects of our life. The higher mind sees the entire painting – the place from which wisdom arises.

“Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.” – Henry Miller

The qualities of a wisdom mind
Wise leaders access both their lower and higher minds. Wise leaders understand they are spiritual beings living in a human form. They allow their lower minds to access their higher, helping them to access intuition and impressions that provide insights into the bigger picture of life.

Wise leaders understand the importance of focus, presence, self-discipline, meditation, study, loving service and creative expression. They seek to grasp the next higher level of awareness. They venture outside their historical map of reality – willing to jettison their old, “safe” beliefs, assumptions, expectations,. “stories,” and worldviews – to explore the possible and the unknown. They’re open to knowing what they don’t know.

Wise leaders understand that spiritual and personal growth means connecting with higher concepts and energies, be they values, ideas, ideals, potentials, archetypes, higher guidance or intuition. The wise leader develops the capacity to not only connect with these higher concepts, but also to seek to ground them into forms, tasks, projects, relationships and details that inform the way they lead – at ground level, at 9:00 Monday morning.

Wise leaders don’t stop with experience, but transcend experience – both their own and others’ – in a way that they spend an appreciative amount of time and energy in deep self-reflection and thoughtful consideration around their experience, leading to higher insights, enhanced value and a deeper sense of self-awareness.

“We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.” – Marcel Proust

Wise leadership is not about having experiences but consciously learning from those experiences. The process of learning from experience leads to a process of inquiry – looking with curiosity, not judgment, into the who, what, when, where, how and – most importantly – the why of their experiences. Inquiry is a matter of punctuation; it’s about question marks, not full stops. It is about curiosity.

Wise leaders understand how connections between diverse elements can create something new. They are adept at using analogy and metaphor and seek to recognize patterns, spot trends, draw connections and discern the big picture even when there seem to be nothing there.

A wise leader interacts with her world in terms of a richer and more varied array of possibilities and opportunities. A wise leader understands the importance of relationships – human and otherwise. A wise leader is a systems thinker, a gestalt thinker, a holistic thinker. Wise leaders are comfortable being oriented to their right brain, as well as to their heart and soul.

Inquiry, for the wise leader, is not about “futurizing the past” – using their past experiences, history and memory, the known, the tried and true – to explain present experiences that are un-common, un-usual, un-familiar. They understand that inquiry involves delving deeply into the self, even parts of the self that, heretofore, might have been unknown, in order to search for new insights, perspectives and understanding – seeking familiarity with the unknown.

“To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.” – Plutarch

For wise leaders, inquiry means creating an internal space unencumbered by old thoughts, beliefs and premises – a new, clear, inviting and open space – entering into a fresh realm without preconception or expectation and being informed with new learning, new sense, new meaning, new WHYs and new HOWs. In other words, new wisdom.

Many intelligent leaders aren’t even aware that they lack wisdom. Here are some indications to help them see where there’s room for wisdom-making:

• They are task-oriented and focused on short-term gains. They see the corner of the painting but often fail to step back and view the painting from 50,000 feet out – the painting being their respective business and their respective profession/industry.
• They choose to limit alternatives when engaged in analysis.
• They fear ambiguity or other’s opinions and are closed to myriad possibilities and perspectives; they fear the unknown and taking risks.
• They buckle under stress and tend to back away from challenges.
• They are linear thinkers and feel they must be rational and logical. They are unable or unwilling to allow their “gut” or intuition to inform their decision-making process.
• They can’t or won’t act “for the common good” when they are faced with conflict between multiple parties or priorities. They refuse to consider “right action” or the well-being of the group, team or community in favor of relying on the conventional perspective or their own personal goals.
• They have no deep sense of self-awareness, and lack spiritual and emotional intelligence.
• They focus on their strengths, deny their weaknesses and never allow their emotions to surface.
• They lack a people-orientation.
• They can’t be bothered making an effort to see others from a personal (as opposed to a functional) perspective.
• They don’t know how to, or are unwilling to, deal with others’ emotions, or emotional well-being.
• Relationship building is not their forte, by choice.
• They lack harmony – there is no alignment or congruence between what they think, feel, say and do.

When we reflect and contemplate from a deeper level, when we choose to “go inside” and honestly, sincerely and self-responsibly ask ourselves if our stories are true, we are using our higher mind and engaging the wisdom of our heart and soul. Relying on our heart and soul’s inner wisdom and intelligence open us up to new ways of seeing, do-ing and be-ing – discovering and exploring new territory and new maps of reality, new zip codes – supporting us to understand and deal with today’s uncommon challenges in new ways.

Using one’s higher mind is what will support today’s intelligent leaders to become tomorrow’s wise leaders.

Some questions for self-reflection:

Would you characterize yourself as largely “left-brained?” What would others say about you?
Do you consider yourself “emotionally intelligent?” What would your close friends or co-workers say?
Is your organization using its “higher mind” as it considers strategies to deal with future challenges?
Do you consider your leaders to be “wise?” How about you?
How often do you take time to seriously reflect on your life’s experiences?
Would you say you are a “task-oriented” or “people-oriented” person? Would others agree?
Would you generally rather be right or happy? Why?
How do you deal with the unknown?
Can you envision a world at work where people are regularly encouraged to take time out for meditation and self-reflection?

“Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired. Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” – T. S. Eliot

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(c) 2016, Peter G. Vajda, Ph.D. and True North Partnering. All rights in all media reserved.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to share this reading with you and I hope you find it insightful and useful. Perhaps you’ll share this with others, post it on a bulletin board, and use it to generate rich and rewarding discussion.

What is the one thing that is keeping you from feeling successful, happy, confident, in control or at peace as you live your life – at work, at home, at play or in relationship? Maybe you know what that “thing” is…maybe you don’t. You just have a feeling that something has to change, whether or not you embrace that change. And how would that change support you to show up as a “better you?”

I’m available to guide you to create relationships that reflect honesty, integrity, authenticity, trust, and respect whether at work or outside of work. I support you to focus on the interpersonal skills that enable you to relate to others with a high level of personal and professional satisfaction – unhampered by personal inconsistencies, beliefs, “stories,” and behaviors that create barriers to a harmonious, pleasant, conscious, compatible, healthy and productive relationship.

I coach by phone, Skype and in person. For more information, 770-804-9125, www.truenorthpartnering.com or pvajda(at)truenorthpartnering.com

You can also follow me on Twitter: @petergvajda.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TrueNorthPartnering

The Cold Within

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While I was out running this morning, I was thinking about the cloud of sadness that envelops the planet- the sadness that lies underneath the anger, vitriol, disrespect, resentment, jealousy, rage, hate, fear, and terror that inform and drive so many folks in their day-to-day dealings with others.

Then, coming in, I happened on this poem and thought, “Hmmm, synchronicity.” So, I thought I’d share it with you this week.

The poem, written in the 1970s by James Patrick Kinney called “The Cold Within” reminds me what may be at stake as we collectively (like it or not) move forward.

“Six humans trapped by happenstance,
In black and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story�s told.

Their dying fire in need of logs,
The first woman held hers back.
For on the faces around the fire,
She noticed one was black.

The next man looking ‘cross the way,
Saw one not of his church,
And couldn’t bring himself to give,
The fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes;
He gave his coat a hitch.
Why should his log be put to use,
To warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought,
Of the wealth he had in store,
And how to keep what he had earned,
From the lazy, shiftless poor.

The black man’s face bespoke revenge,
As the fire passed from his sight,
For all he saw in his stick of wood,
Was a chance to spite the white.

And the last man of this forlorn group,
Did naught, except for gain.
Giving only to those who gave,
Was how he played the game.

The logs held tight in death’s still hands
Was proof of human sin.
They didn’t die from the cold without
They died from the cold within.”

Some questions for self-reflection:

• What do you sense in your body as you read this? What emotions or feelings do these sensations communicate?
• Do you see any part of you reflected in one or more of these individuals? How so?
• Did/do you ever live life from a “zero-sum” game perspective – “if they get theirs then I don’t get mine?”
• Do you ever experience (in yourself) jealousy, resentment, “righteous indignation,” arrogance, “giving to get” behaviors, revenge, spite, guilt, shame…? How so? Under what circumstances? Do you try to justify these feelings or behaviors? How so? What are the stories you use?
• What are you doing with your stick of wood these days?

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(c) 2016, Peter G. Vajda, Ph.D. and True North Partnering. All rights in all media reserved.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to share this reading with you and I hope you find it insightful and useful.  Perhaps you’ll share this with others, post it on a bulletin board, and use it to generate rich and rewarding discussion.

What is the one thing that is keeping you from feeling successful, happy, confident, in control or at peace as you live your life – at work, at home, at play or in relationship? Maybe you know what that “thing” is…maybe you don’t. You just have a feeling that something has to change, whether or not you embrace that change. And how would that change support you to show up as a “better you?”

I’m available to guide you to create relationships that reflect honesty, integrity, authenticity, trust, and respect whether at work or outside of work. I support you to focus on the interpersonal skills that enable you to relate to others with a high level of personal and professional satisfaction – unhampered by personal inconsistencies, beliefs, “stories,” and behaviors that create barriers to a harmonious, pleasant, conscious, compatible, healthy and productive relationship.

I coach by phone, Skype and in person. For more information, 770-804-9125, www.truenorthpartnering.com or pvajda(at)truenorthpartnering.com
You can also follow me on Twitter: @petergvajda.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TrueNorthPartnering