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Whole is in – at least it is for Martha Stewart. She decided to change the name of her magazine Body + Soul to Whole Living to match her site www.wholeliving.com.
As I have said, whole is the new green. We all are looking for a way to enrich our lives. Living a life in balance is great. Caring for a planet is great. But there is more than just doing the right thing or doing it well.
You may have the perfect life, yet I propose if you don’t have the hidden revealed in some way you will feel lacking. That part of you that goes beyond the material world earns for a richer existence. It’s true that having a healthy environment and body is critical to a good life, but for a fully whole life, you need to be in partnership with that part of you that connects to the eternal.
Chaos often wakes up the eternal through the quest of traveling the Whole Adventure. Life will attempt to shake loose what is not truly whole for you. If you allow the less than to shake off, the eternal starts to sprout. The seed is germinated by circumstance, breaks ground in chaos and grows with the honoring of your sacred aspects.
From body and soul, we go to whole. I wish Martha good luck with her new magazine; I wish you deep integration with your hidden as you find your unique wholeness.
I learned a long time ago that touch was a powerful communicator. When someone touches you they go beyond your conscious mind, they are touching your unconscious. They are contacting your emotional body.
An article in the New York Times describes the recent research on touch.
The evidence that such messages can lead to clear, almost immediate changes in how people think and behave is accumulating fast. Students who received a supportive touch on the back or arm from a teacher were nearly twice as likely to volunteer in class as those who did not, studies have found. A sympathetic touch from a doctor leaves people with the impression that the visit lasted twice as long, compared with estimates from people who were untouched.
The article goes on to describe how touch improves performance with it citing a study done with professional baseball teams. “… good teams tended to be touchier than bad ones.”
For us in relationships – “the couples who touch more are reporting more satisfaction in the relationship,” according to Dr. Oveis of Harvard.
In part because for over 30 years, of Rolfing clients and also because I learned how powerful touch is, I find myself touching people during normal conversations. When I am not being as articulate as I would want to be with my words, I let my hands do the talking.
Start communicating more with touch. Let us know how it goes.
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There is an inspiring article in this month’s Fast Company about how developing countries are starting from square one in building their new cities. Countries such as South Korea, China and India are bringing the best minds and companies together to create City 2.0. These cities will be wired beyond anything we have today. These technologies will have every system speaking to every other system to increase the efficiency of the entire city.
All this sounds like Blade Runner in the light. Reading the article, I was left with two feelings. First, I want these toys now. The article describes the ideal of how technology can solve many of our energy, green house effects and over-population problems.
The second feeling was – something is missing. The men behind these plans are on the leading edge and brilliant, but they are missing a big part of the puzzle. A paragraph at the end of the article speaks about how all the planning still might not be enough – it certainly won’t be if they don’t take in the human and natural aspects. It seems like another example of believing technology will solely solve the problems caused by technology. We have these problems not so much because of technology, we have them because we’ve left out the human and natural components.
What we need are projects where technology supports the natural parts of us instead of controlling them. We need to change our meta-model that knowledge will set us free. It is knowledge in service to the whole that will heal the planet.
A new site – www.betterme.com allows you to anonymously share feedback. A recent post in Lifehacker explained the advantages and disadvantages to this “nameless” feedback.
Yes, it might be a wimpy way to tell someone what you think. Let’s face it we all can be cowards when it comes to telling someone what we think about them.
What would it take for you to just tell the person?
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In my last post, I wrote about utilizing the power of your feelings to be smarter. I want to build on that to encourage you to make another distinction with your thoughts and feelings. Seth Godin speaks in this interview with Merlin Mann of 43 Folders (the video is good too) about how our lizard (limbic) brain is hardwired to focus on survival needs. Godin gives us insight on how to “ship” in spite of the power of this old brain of ours. For Godin, shipping is producing.
Not all of us are oriented toward shipping the product as much as we are creating it. Both of the men refer to Steven Pressfield’s excellent book, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles as a great guide to breaking out of the procrastination that prevents shipping.
We can’t nor do we want to shut down our limbic brain’s survival response. Godin does a good job describing what many would call being mindful. I agree it is not about denying, it is about moving forward with that response still present. If you try to make it an either or – you are more likely to be taken out by your fear. Godin uses the example of how he got over his fear of public speaking from just doing it.
When you can, you procrastinate, rationalize or just avoid – you aren’t shipping. Wouldn’t you rather produce, so you are going to get off your ass and do it? It does sound simple and easy. Yet, if it is – why aren’t we all doing more shipping?
After a few hundred thousands of years, we’re not going to change our biology. However, we can change our behavior. Godin’s new book – Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? should be a good guide to not always being a lizard with feelings of survival ruling your behaviors.
How do you honor your fears while you ship?
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