Category: well-being

“Here lies the body of William Jay,
Who died maintaining his right of way –
He was right, dead right, as he sped along,
But he’s just as dead as if he were wrong.”–Dale Carnegie

Workplace Injustice

Last week I listened to two stories about perceived injustice in the workplace.

In both cases I agreed that the actions described were unskillful because they had created suffering for co-workers. But, as a third party, I couldn’t gauge whether the infliction of suffering was intentional.

How much of the suffering was created by the actions, and how much was created by the perception that the actions had been unfair?

Justice Workplace

At most workplaces, employees share the common goal of making the organization successful.

In competitive sports, one party wins by outperforming the other. It’s the referee’s job to keep things fair.

But in the legal profession, your co-workers are your adversaries, and to succeed you must prove you’re right and they’re wrong.

Problem Solving, Competition, and Perfectionism

Scott Rogers, Director of the Mindfulness in Law program at the University of Miami School of Law discussed occupational hazards on Dan Harris’s 10% Happier podcast.

Lawyers are really good at problem solving. They’re competitive and like to stay on top of their game. They’re perfectionists. These qualities serve their clients well and are assets in doing their job. But, if lawyers can’t turn down the dial on problem solving, they’re constantly looking for the next thing that’s wrong. If they can’t turn down their competitiveness then they see threats everywhere. And perfectionism compels them to review documents again and again for fear of being shamed by a misplaced comma.

As a result, lawyers live with anxiety, depression, and commit suicide, even when they appear to be thriving in the eye of the beholder.

Fundamental Insights

Rogers’s exposure to Transcendental Meditation during his early days in law school fueled his curiosity in introspection. In reading about mindfulness, he sensed that authors like Thich Nhat Hanh and Ram Dass were re-stating basic fundamental insights.

He quotes a talk by Ram Dass: “There’s nothing I’m going to share with you all that you don’t already know. It’s that we tend to forget. So, here we are, we’ve come together to remember.”

Rogers admires Ram Dass for his early work developing a healthy relationship with the voice in his head, and for deepening his connection with the heart. Rogers referred to this as an open-hearted embrace.

Open-Hearted Embrace

An open-hearted embrace is realizing that we’ve got more going on together than we think. We’re not quite the threats that we take each other to be, so we don’t have to be as guarded and stressed about each other.

“Going a little deeper, I think it speaks to this recognition that if we can really tame that voice in our head, not forget it, but really size it up and befriend it, then there’s this letting go of something that was never real in the first place.”

The feeling of connection isn’t touchy-feely, but actually inherent in the system in which we find ourselves. Realizing this is a game changer.

Unbelievably Frustrating

Rogers first practiced this open-hearted embrace during a case from hell.

He was sure he was right, and he was sure the opposing counsel and their client were misrepresenting the facts. It was unbelievably frustrating to feel that he was being treated unfairly, and he was having a difficult time setting the record straight.

In desperation, he performed his mindfulness practice and reached the insight that he was contributing to the suffering. Even though he may have been right, his sense of unfairness wasn’t relieving the stress of the situation, it was contributing to it.

He realized that we’re all in this together.

Uncruel Competition

But how does the viewpoint that we’re all in this together affect your ability to prevail over your adversary?

It doesn’t mean that you don’t forcefully pursue what’s called for in the moment. But it does mean that you’re doing what’s actually called for to be responsive without overdoing it or under doing it.

You can compete with your adversary without losing your sense of connection to them as a human being. Just like you, they are living a life that began, they are going through challenges, and sadness, and celebration. And remember that just like you, their lives will end.

“That’s something you feel, not something you know just in your head.”

It’s seeing the humanity in your competitors while still competing, and not losing touch with the humanity within yourself, because the two run in tandem together. As you lose sight of it in the other, you’re losing touch with it within yourself, and as you maintain that awareness in the other, you cultivate it more fully in yourself.

Advantages of Embracing Awareness

Acknowledging that your adversary is just like you allows you to be present and alert. You hear what’s actually being said. Letting the person who’s talking finish what they’re saying, no matter how their views differ in terms of the legal matter, avoids notching up the tension in the room.

The ability to clearly distinguish between what’s actually happening and the story you’re telling yourself about what’s happening can help you respond more skillfully to whatever challenge arises.

And that’s a major competitive advantage.

Ten Minute Exercise

Ironically, lawyers, whose success depends on achieving opposing outcomes, have one advantage over co-workers who are pursuing a common goal.

Lawyers have to make the case that their point of view is 100% correct and reasonable.

Chade-Meng Tan, former Google engineer and author of Search Inside Yourself offers this exercise for reducing perceptions of unfairness in the workplace, and in life. (I’ve adapted it so that you can do it in 10 minutes).

1. Gather your writing tools.

2. Set a timer for two minutes.      

3. Think of a difficult situation from your present or past when there was some conflict or disagreement, something real, something that has some meaning and potency for you.

4. Set a timer for four minutes to describe the situation as though you are 100 percent correct and reasonable.

5. Set a timer for four minutes to describe the situation as though the other person is (or the other people are) 100 percent correct and reasonable.

6. When the timer sounds, re-evaluate your sense of unfairness.

Two common challenges for understanding the opposing viewpoint:

Just like you, your co-worker prioritizes certain values based on their life experience.

Just like you, your co-worker sometimes has to act without having all of the relevant information.

According to Meng (what both friends and strangers call him):

“The more often you are able to see how each side in a disagreement is correct and reasonable, the more often you will be able to understand differing perspectives objectively and the more accurate your organizational awareness will become.”

And the less you’ll have to struggle with the additional stress of things being unfair.

Bonus

It takes work to come to grips with perceived unfairness. These capuchin monkeys show us how hard it is to rationalize: it’s just an experiment.

A surprising question about the the future got me thinking about problems we can never answer through thought.

A Surprising Opportunity

The doorbell rang, and when I went to satisfy my curiosity, a pair of gentlemen introduced themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses. They asked if they could leave a pamphlet with me that included information about their website.

I was scheduled to lead a discussion on the fifth of Frank Ostaseski’s Five Invitations, “Cultivate Don’t Know Mind,” the following week. Frank writes, “Don’t know mind is one characterized by curiosity, surprise, and wonder. It is receptive, ready to meet whatever shows up as it is.”

I was surprised by the opportunity to try this out, curious about what the pamphlet said, and wondered why it was important to these two men.    

How Do You View the Future?

The pamphlet asked, “How do you view the future?”

I confessed that I make predictions with an appalling error rate. Last Thursday, for example, I had RSVP’d a Meetup for 7:30 p.m. that was 1.6 miles from my house. I had planned to walk, but in the morning the air remained smoky due to several local forest fires. The unhealthy air advisory was in effect until noon. It had been extended from noon Wednesday.

Late Thursday afternoon, I went outside and the air was still smoky, so I cancelled my RSVP. There was a wait list for the event, so I wanted someone willing to brave the smoke to have their chance.

Within hours, the sky had cleared.

With the caveat that I don’t believe my own predictions, I looked at the possible answers for the pamphlet’s question.

Will Our Future World Stay the Same?

I felt confident enough to eliminate the first of three possible answers.

At the moment, the world is constantly changing, so even if it stopped changing in the future, that would be a change. I rejected the option that our world would stay the same.

Will Our Future World Get Worse or Get Better?

Both gentlemen said that they thought things would get worse and offered the news as evidence.

I repeated a sentiment by On Being host Krista Tippett: “Journalism, the way it came down to us from the 20th century, is absolutely focused, utterly and completely, on what is catastrophic, corrupt, and failing. It’s not the whole story of us.”

Then there’s the challenge of determining what changes are for the better and which are for the worse.

The Perspective of the Chinese Farmer

British philosopher Alan Watts once told a traditional story about a Chinese farmer.

Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.” The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.” The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.” The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”

The farmer steadfastly refrained from thinking of things in terms of gain or loss, advantage or disadvantage, because one never knows… In fact we never really know whether an event is fortune or misfortune, we only know our ever-changing reactions to ever-changing events.

In March, I broke my foot. I thought that was a change for the worse. In retrospect, what I learned from the experience may far outweigh what I lost.

A Real World Koan

The concept of “don’t know mind” comes from the world of Zen. It’s a paradoxical anecdote or riddle used to  demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke greater insight into the nature of reality.

“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

“When you can do nothing, what can you do?”

When it comes to the pamphlet question, we might ask, “What is always coming, but never arrives?”

The Eternal Now

Learning to walk was a trial and error affair. I fell down a lot, watched what the grown-ups did, and gradually learned to stumble less: sort of the way I learned to process my emotions. But what if the grown-ups I learned from were doing it wrong?   

Learning to Walk

The physical therapist watched with concern as I walked up and down the hallway. She said that my right leg was doing most of the work and my left hip was just along for the ride.

I said that was how I had always walked.

She said that it might well be, but it could lead to problems down the road.

I confessed that I was self-taught.

We both laughed. I realized that her job was to teach grown-ups the right way to do things they’d been doing wrong all their lives.

She gave me an exercise to strengthen my left quadriceps so that I could learn to walk correctly.

Healing the Body, Not the Behavior

Because the fussy type of fracture I had sustained through a stumble, my primary care physician had referred me to a podiatrist instead of a sports therapist to oversee the bone’s mending. I didn’t think about the implication this had for regaining my mobility.

The podiatrist’s specialty was to restore the foot. The sports therapist’s specialty was to restore how I used it.

As the physical therapist I was referred to after the bone had healed intently scrutinized my gait, I thought about how this echoed depression treatment.

Keeping weight off the foot was sufficient to heal the bone. Taking an antidepressant was sufficient to regulate the brain’s chemical imbalance.

But I’d sustained my initial fracture by stumbling with my feet. And I’d sustained my initial depression by stumbling with my brain.

By analyzing how I used my foot or brain, the therapist’s job was to show me how to stumble less.

Learning Through Treats

At my age, it’s a little embarrassing to admit that in order for me to learn something I still need treats.

In behavioral science (B.S. for short), the acknowledged path to learning a new habit is:

Trigger.

Response.

Reward.

The physical therapist addressed my foot’s swelling at our first appointment by giving me a Manual Lymph Drainage massage. This meant gently stroking the sides and back of the knee and gliding her fingertips over the calf in an upward direction, finally moving down to the ankle in gentle circles.

I noted that it would be easy to remember to do this at home because it felt good.

Trigger: Waking up in the morning.

Response: Doing the Manual Lymph Drainage massage.

Reward: It felt good.

Learning Through Tricks

The two exercises, soleus stretch on the wall (for ankle, calf, and thigh stretches) and standing heel raises (for strengthening ankle and calf) weren’t painful, but weren’t naturally pleasant.

I’d have to trick myself to do them by linking them to the preexisting trigger. My morning sit-ups aren’t pleasant either, but I’ve managed to stick with them long enough to enjoy the deferred gratification of a flatter, firmer stomach. I could anticipate the deferred reward of the stretching and lifting would be walking with greater ease.

I enjoy my walks.

Learning Through Fun

At my second visit, we dispensed with my need for treats or tricks by tapping into one of my passions.

Instead of exercising my muscles, we began exercising my brain!

Like the exercises to move from depression to well-being, the instructions were simple, but the work wasn’t easy.

To do single leg balance – foot behind, all I had to do was stand with my arms at my side and lift my uninjured right foot behind me.

My calf and ankle muscles began shooting confusing instructions to my brain:

Pull to the left, no, to the right, too far, no left, now forward, no backward!

I couldn’t keep my right foot aloft for more than a few seconds.

The therapist reassured me that this was a little tricky at first, but I loved this challenge from the moment the muscle twitches began.

Mindfulness of the Body

A popular (simple but not easy) method for training mindfulness of the body is to begin at the top of the head or tips of the toes and slowly direct attention upward or downward until the entire body is scanned.

A challenge I’ve always had with the body scan is that while I could imagine where, say, my spleen was located, I could never detect how it talked to my brain.

The nerve endings and muscles in my left foot and lower leg chattered in rapid-fire conversation about how to keep me from stumbling, and I could hear it loud and clear. This was a response I was happy to develop a number of triggers for (any time I took a break from writing, went to the bathroom, stood in a line). The reward was the opportunity to practice training my brain with some tangible real-time biofeedback!

We also added seated ankle alphabet: slowly tracing the letters of the alphabet with the toe of the recovering foot. I realize that this might not sound as fun to you as it did to me, but, as a practical way to demonstrate how to use one’s attention to retrain the brain, this was exciting stuff.

Intrinsically Rewarding Well-Being Exercise

I told the therapist how well these exercises corollated with my depression to well-being work and she confessed that she’d never been able to meditate.

I offered her a mental well-being habit with a variable trigger and a guaranteed reward that I love to do.

Trigger: Notice when you experience a moment of pleasure, like I did when I discovered how much fun I could have with the balancing exercise.

Response: Pay full attention to the pleasure for as long as it lasts or your attention is called to something else.

Reward: Paying attention to pleasure is its own reward no matter what the pleasure is: your first sip of coffee in the morning, feeling warmth of sunshine on your face, smell of fresh-baked bread, sight of a close friend arriving from the airport to pay you a visit, sound of a timer reminding you that it’s time to take a break.

Learning to Motivate

In the time that I spent in the waiting room before sessions, I observed people who faced much more debilitating mobility challenges than I did, and whose recovery would involve working through pain.

I asked the physical therapist a question about a problem we had in common. Like the physical therapy exercises, the mental well-being exercises only work if someone does them.

She told me that motivation was a large part of her training. She used motivational interviewing to help patients discover the discrepancy between the thing they wanted to do, and their current physical status or behavior.

For example, if I had been resistant to the Manual Lymphatic Drainage massage, we might have explored how my swollen foot made it impossible for me to wear my shoe properly. This threw off my gait and caused blisters, which hampered my healing and made walking painful.

If I had resisted the balance exercises, she might have taken the bad cop approach and pointed out poor balance increased my chances of re-injuring my foot and landing me back on crutches. On the good cop side, the weather was getting nicer and I wanted to get back to hiking my favorite forest and mountain trails. I needed to improve my balance to climb hills and negotiate rocky terrain.

She said that if the patient was motivated to achieve their goal, the physical therapist was there to offer them techniques that they could try.

If the patient wasn’t willing, all she could do was tell them to come back when they were ready.

Whether exercising to recover from a fractured foot or depression, learning to stumble less required some effort. As she put it, “Magic is in short supply around here.”

Ten Minute Exercise

One of my favorite lessons on learning to stumble less is Portia Nelson’s autobiography. Don’t worry. You can read it in less than ten minutes.

Autobiography in Five Chapters

by Portia Nelson

I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost…
I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I’m in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in…it’s a habit
My eyes are open; I know where I am;
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V

I walk down another street.