Author: Ariel

On Communication and Intention

Intention is embodied in the unconscious mind/body and through the tone used during a communication. When speaking from the ego we often concentrate on the words used as being most significant aspect of a communication. However it is the body’s position and gesticulations, the facial movements and the tone of voice that represent eighty five percent of the message. Most speakers don’t haven’t a clue of the significance of these other aspects and ignore their importance at their peril. This is because confusion can be created when body language says one thing, tone something different and the words another story all together.

Such inconsistency is at the root of many difficulties in relationships. When there are unrecognized conflicts between these essential elements it becomes difficult to determine which message is the one that is actually intended to be conveyed. Effective communication, however, is consistent in each aspect of what is expressed. You may find it very instructive to have someone video some of your interactions when you aren’t aware you are being taped, so you can see first hand the mixed messages you may be sending. This, however, isn’t practical so instead a simple formula to ensure good communication is as follows: it is the responsibility of the originator to ensure their intention is fully comprehended.

That the meaning of a communication is the response the originator receives is not a truth with a wide currency, but it is one that once adopted will drastically improve your communication abilities. If, for instance, after expressing yourself the recipient reacts in a way contrary to the intention of the communicationyou can pause, apologize and acknowledge that a miscommunication transpired so as to restart the cycle of exchange.

One of the reasons why this rule for communication is so effective is that it recognizes that all people’s understanding of language, verbal or corporeal, is inflected by their perceptions, beliefs, wishes, judgments and experience. You might not like their response – as you want it to be in accord with your beliefs, wishes, judgments and experience, but this is a condition that is destined to fail as people are always right from their own perspective! As such it is important to abide by a principle for communication that is less concerned about asserting one’s correctness with it’s cost of disconnection, but one that engenders connection and mutual comprehension.

Another effective communication principle is to take nothing personally. When you honor their perception and respect it, connection is maintained. Change your posture, tone and volume was that lead to the miscommunication and try again in a different manner. Whisper, smile, be gentle as if you were holding a newborn baby in your hands! If your recipient perceives your body language as threatening, your tone as condescending or your volume as angry, they might not really be “there”. These types of transmissions send people into a defensive mode to take personally everything you said. Remember, most people have experienced being yelled at, scolded, or berated at least once in their lives. Until healed, these emotionally charged memories can get triggered by any emotional experience that has any type of similar qualities in it. When a speaker raises their voice or gives a nasty look, many unconsciously regress to a time in their childhood when they were punished or felt threatened. This withdraws attention from the here and now and has them act from there and then! Once you improve your ability to get across what you really intend you develop a better rapport with people. Whatever the specific conditions causing the miscommunication, patience and mindfulness of these principles will help you undo them.

Tentative Book Club Reading List

Science Fiction has played a powerful role in human culture’s relationship to new technological developments. It has not only foreshadowed the possibilities involved by applied scientific research but also delineated the potentials for conflict as a result of it. Issac Assimov’s works have inspired generations of scientists and politicians to unabashedly embrace the automation and artificial intelligence while as early as the 1920’s Karel Capek depicted the anxiety of such developments in Rossum’s Universal Robots that has since become one of Hollywood’s most recurring tropes. It is not just, however, in the inspiration of a select few that helped science fiction become a potent voice for expressing the varieties and anxieties of the human condition. Books such as Looking Backward played a large historical role in helping American’s to understand the possibilities involved in increasingly technological world and how best they could benefit from it.

The books I’ve chosen thus far for the SubCulture book club all represent modern iterations of Science Fiction/Science Fantasy that have each been heavily awarded for their aesthetic and intellectual content. Over the next 6 months we’ll look at new worlds, future Earths that’ve taken on an entirely new form due to technological changes, as well as a historical attempt to apply Science to all aspects of human relations. We’ll discuss what it means to the characters involved and what it means to us now in an age where each of is, to an extent, a cyborg.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
The Windup Girl by Pablo Bacigalupi
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Red Plenty By Francis Spufford
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Notes from the Global Leadership Summit

So this weekend I attended the Global Leadership Summit at Palm Beach Community Church. This event brings together a wide range of noted business, church, government and social leaders at the Willow Creek theatre and is then broadcast simultaneously throughout the globe to different viewing locations.

On Friday Susan Cain and Patrick Lencioni spoke and both of them presented what I would consider to be variations of the speeches that gave at the World Leadership Conference. Bryan Loritts, however, was new to me and I found his speech on instigating change through personal sacrifice to be a highly thoughtful meditation on the manner in which the minor alteration of certain habits and beliefs can bring about large changes in our lives. He gave examples of how it is that our being accustomed to be in a decision making position can sometimes lead us to overestimate our perspective at the expense of others. Loritts framed this within an explicitly Christian context. He said that our attachments to aspects of our perspective must be abandoned to better exemplify our beliefs in the eternal oneness of humanity. A series of general prohibitions, which reminded me of the better aspects of Catholicism, followed with illustrations how such attachments can bring about poor dynamics in an organization. The examples that he gave were all related to the modern workplace and made me think about a conversation I recently had with Steve DeMoss, founder of Word in Deed ministries.

Over dinner he’d described the need for the values educations found in missionary work as often times in the places of dire poverty that he did mission work in Africa the moral reasoning which was prevalent was so short-term that workers would, for example, sooner steal goods to pawn for an equivalent of a months pay made in a day rather than work daily for weekly wages. Getting back on track, this long time, eternal orientation was one not devoid of attachments but aware of their operation on the spirit – a compelling imperative for the self to live by indeed! Carly Fiorina’s perspective on the manner in which it is important to use multiple markers for assessing performance and its relationship to continuous, successful innovation were some of the primary characteristics of a successful leader. Her role as the president of HP certainly gives her message an import based not solely on research but also on practical application.

On Saturday I especially liked the first featured presenter, Joseph Grenney, author of the book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High. Crucial conversations are those defined by their having high stakes, opposing opinions and strong emotions. Indeed the health of an organization is the degree to which certain subjects are wholly taboo or limited in such a scope that it prevents real positive adaptation. Grenney pointed out how often when people are forced to engage in such crucial conversations they often fare poorly. This type of aversion should be avoided, however, as people that are unable to talk it out will often act it out and because it can generally negatively affect the behavior at the workplace. Crucial conversation need not to be see too much as a contest amongst conflicting positions, but a trust-building accelerant to intimacy and better organizational efficiency. To make sure that the conversations are candid, organizations need to make sure that people are safe. The ingredients of safety are the recognition of mutual purpose, mutual respect and mutual movement forward. By recalling this alignment of current intentions, value for each other and agreement on how things will go into the future organizations are able to set up a smooth pattern for how interactions will be in the future.

I was less impressed with Erica Ariel Fox, author of Winning from Within: A Breakthrough Method for Leading, Living, and Lasting Change. The speech seemed to drag with unfunny jokes and anecdotes that were too long for the point that they were trying to convey. She did, however, speak of two things that I found rewarding. The first of these are performance gaps, or the space between people’s potential and their actual behavior and how it was the quality of a great leader to be able to identify them and work with people to close them. What precisely this form of measurement is she didn’t go into great detail about, but as someone that’s been lately learning about life coaching and psychoanalysis for personal and professional growth and development it didn’t bother me that much. The second point that she made is how biochemically our brains are more like an orchestra than a soloist. According to her we have four major internal forces/spirits; The Dreamer, The Thinker, The Lover and The Warrior. We also have a number of minor roles, but she didn’t delve into this instead talking about the four major roles. The Dreamer is the creator of possibilities that sets strategic vision, the Thinker analyses data and clarifies perspective, the Lover manages relationships and feels emotions while the Warrior catalyzes performance, takes action, speaks truth and helps reach goals. Worth noting is how I see a certain similarity to the work of Carolynn Myss, and other Eastern inspired psychologists such as C. G. Jung, that also sees a benefit in fixation upon certain recurrent characters found in an archetypal form. This is worth talking about more, but not here and now.

Later came Don Flow, who also kind of ambled his way through his speech. He seemed to me to be exhibiting a loving swagger that was perhaps fitting for those that knew him but didn’t particularly translate well for me. That said, I did really like his thoughts on love and serving. Living love means that we are called to be with people while to serve mean to display Self-Respect, Earn Trust, Reach for Perfection, Value input and Energize others. To me this is a great little acronym and mnemonic device in order to recall those components. All in all I had a great time there, am grateful that I was able to attend and look forward to being in situations where I can put this knowledge to practice.

Review of Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Being vulnerable in our personal lives is difficult for many people. Behaving from a place of openness can give us a feeling of emotional exposure, uncertainty and even risk involved in speaking up. As expression of one’s thoughts, fears and desires openly and honestly with a partner, a child or a co-worker can lead to feeling judged many people quell their concerns and simply hope for the best. However unless we have these Crucial Conversations than our romantic lives are not as fulfilling, our familial dynamic can be thrown into imbalances and the business and civic organizations we are a part of can lose their dynamism and decay. In order to illustrate the importance of embracing vulnerability Dr. Brene Brown in her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead shows how it is that vulnerability and shame emerges and operates within our current social topography and how to combat it. After all, allowing this influence to continue to operate unopposed means that we live a life with a dearth of mutual connection, trust and engagement with others. Wholeheartedness, the willingness to act from a place that is open, present and vulnerable, gives us the opportunity to genuinely be embedded in our world, for good or bad.

Dr. Brown’s research first distinguishes between shame and guilt and their relation to vulnerability. Shame is connected to being language (I am a screw-up, I am a liar, I am not worthy) while guilt is related to action language (I have made mistakes, I have lied, I made mistakes). While it may seem a trivial manner of categorizing, the adoption of such logics by the psyche has wide-reaching implications that neuro-psychologists give significant credence to. On a more practical level, use of the former prevents personal self-transformation while the latter is the means by which we can gain control over our personal narrative. This is why if one’s self-talk denigrates and self-destructs an effort must be made to acculturate oneself to a different understanding of themselves and thus their value.

Dr. Brown then shows that vulnerability is not weakness, but a form of courage. It indicates a full engagement with the matter at hand rather than ironic, traumatic or ideological detachment. This can be daunting to embody given the shame-prone culture within which many people live, and further requires that one feel genuinely loveable and worthy of good things, however to not do so is to have our happiness forever dampened due to our unwillingness to engage.

Another point that Dr. Brown pulls from her research is how people often feel ashamed due to hypothesized external judgments that can empty otherwise genuine joy. For example, despite the fact that extensive social science research shows that people are most satisfied with purchases of experiences such as vacations or nights out, due to the social nature of reality people can become fooled into the idea that by spending money on status goods they will be happy. Once comparison compulsion rather than personal values or the words of other people rather than your own principles have control over your emotional life you are immediately enfeebled because of it. Ideas that limit our capacity for wholeheartedness include not only comparisons to other people, but also nostalgia for the past and the general feeling of unworthiness caused by essentialism. People in our lives that tell us we are not good enough, perfect enough, smart enough, “anything” enough as well as saying things such as we’re too unmotivated, not worthy of love, crazy, etc. perform the same function. By limiting these thoughts occurrence and our interaction with those people that claim our being as something we don’t want we are able to gain more freedom for ourselves to be vulnerable and thus happy.

One of the research conclusions that Dr. Brown’s makes that I resonated with is how: “When we pretend that we can avoid vulnerability we engage in behaviors that are often inconsistent with who we want to be. Experiencing vulnerability isn’t a choice – the only choice we have is how we’re going to respond when we are confronted with uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.” (45). While I think the broad implications are clear, bear with me as I pull them out. People crave the feeling of vulnerability as it allows the armoring that we have produced from numerous interactions to be reduced or even disappear. However it is possible that as a result of a previous painful incident, be it work, familial or romantic relationship, we may seek for the sake of our “future self” to be protected from such violations by repressing that softer side of ourselves. Thus when we act in a manner that seeks to deny our vulnerability, we are actually acting counter to what we really wish for. I’ve seen this most often when people have a romantic relationship has ended and they describe themselves as feeling emotionally dead or drained. Their vulnerability, their hopes, their desires are all seemingly dashed and the idea of starting over again seems like a fool’s errand. If we are to be truly happy, at least according to Dr. Brown’s research, than this is exactly what we must do.

Another point that I really enjoyed about Dr. Brown’s book is the need for discomfort at times. People generally, especially those in leadership positions that want to see their employees apply critical thinking, need to normalize the awkwardness that allows for honest exchange. In the crucial conversations that we have with those around us we must expect and be OK with handling anxiety, fear and shame. Allowing their occasional appearance should become normal and the fewer the “forbidden topics” there are is an indication of organizational/relationship strength. Vulnerability is at the heart of the feedback process and it is through this process that growth develops. Lacking it we are armed from the past and stunted, unable to move forward and instead of living life to the lees it’s as if we’re always about to leave. And being caught in such a flight pattern means that we are living with distress and fear.

10 Killer Workout Mixes to Turn Up Your Heartbeat Vol. 1

When lifting heavy, HIITing or even just doing bodyweight exercises, I love to listen to music with fast rhythms to help me keep my flow going. Here’s a couple of hour-long mixes that I like to work out to as it keeps my energy level turned up even when I can start to feel the fatigue kick in.

Diplo & Friends: Clockwork

Major Lazer Workout Mix

Diplo & Friends: RL Grime

RL Grime – Happy Halloween Mixtape

Diplo & Friends: Diplo

DJ Romeo Reyes – TrapStep2.0

Flosstradamus – B⚠nned 2

Bird Peterson – Drankenstein Vol 5

Bird Peterson – Drankenstein Vol 3

David Guetta – DJ Mix #169

Review of "The Five Love Languages"

Five Love Languages in a nutshell
Five Love Languages in a nutshell

The general content of Gary Chapman’s book The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts is easily summarized. Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch are the five ways that people are able to perceive the love of their partner. The presence or absence of these acts within the love relationship will determine whether the emotions evoked from the daily exchanges are good or bad. A repeated metaphor that Chapman uses is that of the gasoline tank. Having a full tank means that one is filled from one’s partner expressing love in the manner that they expressed they preferred to their partner while a low tank means there is no expression of love whatsoever or they are expressing it in a manner that is not aligned with their partners wishes. This is a very important distinction not only as it determines the quality of the love relationship, but the entire perspective of each party involved. Writing on the wider effects of this love tank, Chapman writes on page 37:

“When your spouse’s emotional love tank is full and he feels secure in your love, the whole world looks bright and your spouse will move out to reach his highest potential in life. But when the love tank is empty and he feels used but not loved, the whole world looks dark and he will likely never reach his potential for good in the world.”

As such a powerful determinant of our perception of reality, Chapman strongly encourages his readers to become more fluent in their understanding of their own desires and the desires of their partner so as to increase their capacity for and ease in obtaining peace of mind and happiness. If psychologist William James is correct is stating that the deepest human need is that for appreciation – these are the means of expressing that appreciation.

In order to better do this Chapman distinguishes between being “in love”, which he says is more aptly classified as limerence, and loving someone. The feeling of being “in love” is a more or less temporary madness that other research has likened to a period of intense intoxication due to the mind-body’s ready release of various pleasurable neurotransmitters. Being “in love” is a dangerous state of being as it is one of almost total fixation that will cause someone to pay no heed to work, school other aspects of life. Research tell us that this feeling, however, lasts at most a mere two years and it is only with the practice of these interpersonal exchanges that it can grow to a love that it more mature and rewarding as it is predicated on choice.

Chapman’s valorization of choice moves beyond this into his description of the first love language, Words of Affirmation. This is not just to give encouragement, but to also bring attention to the manner in which we comprehend the relationship and share that understanding with our partner. For instance, by bringing in the option of choice in exchanges, ie. “Could you please..?” instead of demands “I want you to…” a sense of autonomy is emphasized that allows for agency to develop. He further emphasizes the power of words as it relates to the role of forgiveness. He states that we can either chose to be Judges, and thus gradually disrupt and destroy the relationship, or Forgivers. Once Judgment is kept a permanent distance is created. Emphasizing the power of it’s opposite he states: “The best thing we can do with the failures of the past is to let them be history… Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a commitment. It is a choice to show mercy, not to hold the offense up against the offender. Forgiveness is an expression of love” (47).

Chapman is clear that there is often more than one love language present spoken by our partner and that we must be open to listening to what it is that they say they want rather than expressing to them what it is that we want or what it is that we have learned that we are supposed to do based upon our familiar upbringing or cultural messages. Failing to be aware of them is, in essence, to fail the relationship as true love liberates and lacking such a mutually beneficial dynamic then it does not meet this standard.

Throughout the book, Chapman provides anecdotes based upon his counseling practice on how people’s increased ability to read their partner’s needs for Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch and giving it to them radically changed their relationship. The application of them, as the stories included by Chapman shows, is not always easy as a partner may be running on an empty tank and thus slow to register improvement – but over a long enough period the committed person is always able to accomplish their goal. Minor changes in inter-personal exchange can result in major changes for both the individuals and the relationship. There are plenty of short thought experiments in the form of questions directed at the reader to help them realize how it is to better obtain this knowledge about one’s relationship and they are in a format that does not break up the pacing of the book. For these and many other reasons I can foresee myself heartily recommending this book in my private practice to couples in search of counseling.

Prayer as a Practice of Spiritual Alchemy: Why and How to Create Moments of Ritual Mindfulness

The saying of prayers before the performance of a certain rites is a recurrent practice through varied religions, be it before the taking an animal’s life, before a meal, when giving dues to the dead, the dawn of the day, the birth of a child, or saying blessings before the beginning of a season. The context is myriad but the form is the same: words and actions are tied together in aspiration for a specific sentiments actualization.

While the rationale for some such religious actions may be based on a conceived need to appease or please a deity, it’s important that those that are more scientifically minded not conceive of themselves as superior without seeing the deeper truth underlying such acts of “magic”. Thinking responsibility, and thus examining and testing our presuppositions, we learn that the vocalizer and the experiencer of those vibrations are in fact actively practicing manufacturing upon the plasticity that is their mind and body.

In a manner similar to that of a camera, that upon which our consciousness reflects gives form to our thoughts. This, combined with other elements, determines how it is that our psyche is constructed and thus how we view the world. Just as changing one’s environment, purposive social interaction for positive transformation and actively re-educating oneself are three manners in which to accelerate positive self-transformation cognitively, so too is prayer.

Establishing certain times during the day to remind ourselves of the manifold possibilities held within our True Nature’s potency can be a powerful practice on the path towards self-liberation. Doing so during the many moments in which we normally take care of our body – such as when we feed it or just before we go to sleep – or act in a ritualistic manner are especially powerful due to their daily recurrence.

One such daily action ripe for prayer is bathing or showering. When doing so we are literally removing secretions and things that have attached to us that we do not want: a fittingly poetic moment to own with intention if ever there was one! An example of a short prayer that one could repeat in such a situation is as follows:

As I wash my body I also clean my spirit and mind
And return to the state of essence purified
The best of the day stays while the rest leaves
Exiting through the trunk and extremities

Writing your own prayers based upon your self-proclaimed values is a wonderfully creative method of expanding your spiritual practice. While it need not conform to any structure or stricture other than that which you think is appropriate, making some reference to the acts that you are performing at the moment will increase it’s resonance.

If you want, following this opening prayer, you can also allow yourself to alight upon specific examples of non-alignment with your values you perceived or experienced through the day. After you’ve noticed their emergence, you should forgive yourself for the false thinking that allowed it to emerge and restate your intentions and commitment to being clear of heart and mind in your future actions.

The Two Choices our False Feelings of Separation Presents: Growth or Decline

“No llores porque ya se terminó… sonríe, porque sucedió.”

– Gabriel García Márquez

Moments of separation between people, be it the death of a loved one, a close friend moving away physically or due to new life choices they’re making as well as the breaking up of a romantic relationship can have a have a powerful impact on the way in which we view ourselves and the world. The context of the events leading up to such circumstances will further inform how we treat the event. An unforeseen death may leave one feeling that they live in an arbitrary, meaningless world; a close friend moving away due to new life choices or opportunities may make one feel slighted or that there is now something missing in a milieu once seen as abundant, while a break-up can lead one to feel rejection or resentment.

The quote by Gabriel García Márquez that opens this blog is not meant to indicate that we should not feel these losses by suppressing our emotions. Doing so would only hold and perpetuate anger, despair, doubt, resentment, jealousy or feelings of loss within and so keep us from being present. However much we feel this, we must also not fixate upon such feelings.

It is a product of delusional thinking that any relationship between people is permanent. Each individual has their own needs and desires that can and oftentimes do come into conflict with others. No matter the lofty expressions of commitment or the amount of time spent together building a relationship, such relationships, just like our mortal life spans, will always come to an end on a long enough timeline.

At these moments of separation we are presented with two choices. We can continue to hold on to those feelings based on fear that evoke such internal commands such as “Never trust anyone again”, “Don’t get close to anyone”, or “The actions in my life have no meaning” or we can see the experience as one from which we can instead grow through forgiveness of ourselves and others.

For instance, an unexpected death can inspire us to apply more energy and vitality to the areas of our life with which we feel passion, for we too are mortal and can leave this coil without a moment’s notice. The moving away of a confidant or comrade can be recognized as prods to meet someone or several new people that can perhaps expand your personality in new ways that may bring you even greater joy and happiness. Separation with a romantic companion can be a point at which to examine aspects of the self that had informed such a decision so that future romances need not repeat similar travails.

We all have incredible personal strength and power that at times we seem afraid to exercise. Once we recognize these truths of the human condition, we no longer need to hold onto those lower emotional sentiments that inform our personality to our detriment. While it may be hard to recall at the moment, we must always view these instances as opportunities from which to learn and grow. To not do so we condemn ourselves to unlearn our truly resilient nature free that is free of only the fetters that we would place upon ourselves.