Category Archives: Life Challenges

Sell local, buy local

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Before I became a Combs twenty-five years ago, my mother-in-law was my boss. She hired me to cook at the family guest ranch in Ennis, Montana during two college summers. “Jinny” was first “Mrs. Combs” to me.

Six days a week, the kitchen staff would be up at 6 am frying bacon so we would be ready to feed the wranglers by 7; Sundays afforded us just one more hour of rest. We’d then make breakfasts to order for our guests; eggs any style, pancakes of the day, toast and, more bacon. The waitresses and two cooks then would hope to be cleaning up by 9:30 am to start prepping for lunch and dinner. It was usually then Jinny would drop by the kitchen before heading to town to pick up groceries.

During those mid-morning hours she shared how to knead bread to the perfect consistency. Did you know that women have a “built in” advantage? Jinny taught me that “You pinch the dough, now pinch your… and if both feel the same, the dough is ready to rise!”

She would often add a few of her favorite left-over recipes to the conversation, and when prodded, I learned her philosophy on leadership. After taking over a dude ranch at 29 years old with no previous experience, Jinny had learned the hard way who to hire and how to keep your employees productive. She would have us all giggling, sharing how in the early weeks of her first summer, the head cook suddenly took off with a ranch hand left behind no note, only her dentures over the stove! Jinny got a crash course on cooking and careful hiring that year.

“Attitude is everything,” was Jinny’s assessment. “I can teach anyone how to do the work, just not how to work!”

Another clear leadership value of Jinny’s was and is “buy local.” I grew up in downtown Minneapolis, so this idea was a novelty to me almost thirty years ago. Jinny was adamant — we bought everything we could in Ennis. With a population maybe 500 at the time, Ennis was our community and we needed to support it. I found this funny since I was sure toilet paper would be cheaper in Bozeman, the nearest city some 50 miles away. We had to go to Bozeman to pick up guests, why not shop there too?

Today, with internet shopping and Costco, Jinny’s modicum for running a rural business is now becoming a critical philosophy. I recently facilitated a working group session on preventing obesity in Montana. There I learned, not buying local has created “food deserts” in rural communities across the state.  As we now purchase the majority of our food from outside our communities and are unable to sustain small town grocery stores, the only ready food choices become what is sold at the local gas station. Corn dogs have replaced fresh produce as the affordable or even available choice for dinner across Montana, and in many communities around the country.

Mothers, and even mother-in-laws, deserve to know that their advice was heard and deemed correct. I think this video illustrates a magical intersection of  Jinny’s two mentioned leadership lessons:

To learn more about creating local healthy food choices check out The Center for Rural Affairs and Grow Montana as interesting examples. How might we support the health of our local communities? What are your leadership values?

Intuitive Leadership

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Much has been written of late about how intuition plays into strong leadership. For example, Malcolm Gladwell, in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, describes how our initial split second assessment of a situation often yields better results than months of belabored “rational” research.

Gladwell cites three art historians examining a supposedly authentic 6th century kouros sculpture. The first, Federico Zeri found himself fixated on the figurine’s fingernails. Evelyn Harrison, saw it and immediately expressed regret that the Getty museum had purchased the piece, although she couldn’t say why. And, Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, unable to cite a concrete reason, exclaimed, “They just don’t come out looking like that.” No one could articulate the problem, but their intuitive knowing was at work.

Valuing the three historians “knowing” pushed the museum to dig deeper and found that the accompanying documentation was faulty and the statue, although it had passed rigorous chemical and X-ray testing, in subtle ways did not match the proposed time period. As a result, the Getty Museum updated their catalog to state that the sculpture might be authentic or a forgery.

Depending on our educational training or discipline, allowing our intuition to play into decision making might be a foreign concept. Meeting with a  high tech business executive this week reminded me of that fact. He remarked, “I have worked most of my life to find rational answers to problems. I try to put the science behind all that I do. But, after 10 years of working closely with potential clients, I can tell you if someone is going to buy from us, and if not what will trip up the sale. I can’t give logical reasons why I know if an opportunity is worth pursuing, but time after time I’m usually proven right.”

In my experience, intuitive leadership is a two-part process. First, we need to pay close attention to our gut reactions and see them as potentially valuable information. Next, it is practicing deciphering our internal tea leaves.

I notice that placing ourselves in novel or even uncomfortable experiences fosters better intuitive leadership.  When we are in situations that do not allow us to fall back on logical approaches to make our decisions, we are forced to step back and look at any data that might be coming our way, even if it is a tightness in our chest or a strange thought that drifts through consciousness.

In May, my “practice point” was to spend two weeks walking with our son Cody across half of northern Spain. A 1,200 year old pilgrimage route, the Camino de Santiago, is now a cultural icon of Europe. Folks come from around the world, to walk through rain, snow and heat to reach the western edge of the country, once considered the end of the world. Together, the travelers stay in dorms or “albergues” and work their way at different speeds along the established trail.

Cody and I would awake each morning with hopes of walking somewhere between 20 to 35 kilometers. Each afternoon, we would also hope to land somewhere that had space for us to sleep. In some towns you can call ahead for reserve a bed or two, in other places it is first come, first serve.

Since we didn’t know how long other travelers would walk, how many were on the trail and how early they would leave, Cody and I could guess and estimate, but we were clearly information short on many fronts.

Trying to pay attention to how a decision “felt” became a helpful guide in our choices. I can’t say I felt psychic, but after a few days on the trail, we started to be able to guess pretty darn well what might be a good next step. I appreciated that constant practice in listening and am noticing it has further refined how I am making decisions.

I must add that I was lousy at intuition when I was exhausted! As Cody will tell you, there were times when I wasn’t be able to problem solve my way out of the simplest of situations. Tired and hungry clouded any insight I might have had on our circumstances. Deduction — good listening depends on good living.

I thus pose the following questions:

  1. How much attention do you give to your intuitive nature
  2. What might provide you practice in intuitive leadership, or
  3. How might you actively place yourself in a place of discomfort so you can learn to listen better?

I have a hunch that answering these questions might provide valuable data as you move forward as leaders. ;)

Allow

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The fool who thinks he is a fool is for that very reason a wise man; But the fool who thinks he is a wise man is rightly called a fool. - Dhammapada 63

Last week a friend suddenly disappeared. Like magic, one minute she was engaged and providing her perspective in a meeting we were attending together and the next minute she was gone. Her body stayed at the meeting, but she had left.

My car battery also went on “walk about” last week…twice. Like my friend, its essential spirit took off and I was left searching for alternative transportation.

When I dropped my daughter off for a soccer game on Saturday, I noticed that I returned to the same mind set that had appeared during the earlier described disappearing acts. My mind raced like a train on an oft-used track clicking past scenarios of where we stood and what might happen next. My thoughts sped along with:

  • Will she score?
  • What if it rains?
  • What if they lose?

Earlier in the week, my mind-train visited its usual stops:

  • Will my friend return?
  • Is there more wrong with my car than the battery? and the ubiquitous,
  • What could I have done to prevent this?

That last one always gets my inner conductor yelling, “Next stop…Let’s Try To Control The Future…all aboard! Getting off that station, I’ll be sure to try to fix whatever is worrying me, whether it is a friend’s silence or a child’s potential disappointment.

Sometimes trying to control outcomes makes sense, like getting the darn car fixed. However, my “control the future” reaction is far from appropriate when it comes to wanting to shift the mental or emotional states of others.

Being a control-focused leader — be it as a manager, friend, parent or instructor — is not very attractive. While the conductor is calling out that next station, it is important for me to consciously decide if I need to disembark at “Control!”

In my examples, I had no need to intervene or control my friend or daughter. My friend, it turned out, disappeared because she was preoccupied with worry about an ex-boyfriend was very ill. My daughter did score and they won that day. Their experiences and emotions were best witnessed and left to unfold as needed, whether they were painful or pleasant.

Meanwhile, we are wired in such a way that just watching can be really difficult. Latest brain research seems to show that we are each equipped with “mirror neurons,” that mimic the emotions that we witness in others. You are sad, and I have a good set of mirror neurons, I will feel your sadness. You feel pain and I’ll register it too. Thus, when those I care about are on the way to tough emotions, I might wish to circumvent their route so I don’t feel discomfort.

I have been trying out a new approach to scoot me right by “control the future” land when the conductor calls. When another looks like they might experience pain, I first check if they are in true danger.  If the answer is “no,” I begin repeating silently, “Allow.”

“Allow” reminds me to let go of needless control. It’s my code word for allowing others their own experiences; to let them feel sadness, anger or disappointment. Saying, “allow” to myself calms. My body relaxes as I become more focused what’s occurring now instead of pushing to shift the future. It is a practice of recognizing that I don’t necessarily know emotions or situations are best for others and in repeating “allow” I place a bit more trust in those I care about, and in life.

Notice this week, what supports you moving from a quick “fix it” reaction to a more centered response?

Weeding One’s Garden

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Sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.  ~William Shakespeare

The calendar tells me it is spring, but at our home in the foothills of Bozeman, Montana that still equals snow drifts. I shouldn’t complain since my “in town” friends are spending this weekend weeding their gardens to make room for early tulips and crocuses.  The arrival of spring reminds me that if you are attached to what your flower or vegetable garden produces, there are usually weed-induced backaches involved.

To welcome in the longer days and work ahead, I read a 2002 interview this week with photographer Doug Burgess on his artistic study of weeds. After a childhood of pulling unwanted plants from his parent’s front lawn, Burgess continued this practice as a form of therapy to cope with a miserable job as an adult. Noticing that after 50 years he never had a weed-free patch of earth to show for his efforts, Burgess finally moved to “the dark side,” or a neighborhood where weeds are a norm.

Burgess then spent four years photographing weeds. In an eleven-page gallery catalog on the subject he states, “The relationship between weeds and people may be one of our most enduring relationships with the natural world.”

I recommend the interview to start you waxing philosophically the importance of observing the unimportant. Through Burgess’ careful regard of his surroundings he brings forward jewels of wisdom on how we deem something beautiful and thus welcome in our lives. One of his statements especially struck me — “a weed is a social definition”; that it is simply “a plant growing where someone doesn’t want it to grow.”

So, what makes a weed? I am less than thrilled when bull thistle erupts all over my lawn and vegetable garden. It’s a pain to uproot and no matter how diligent I am at attempting eradication, it returns. Meanwhile, I am told that this “weed,” as the emblem of Scotland, was brought to the United State as a beloved plant by immigrants.  A weed is in the eye of the beholder.

Outside of its original habitat a weed flourishes. It finds space and opportunity and with it the weed takes root with such gusto that it never wants to let go. Thus, in its enthusiasm it can also push out native species unaccustomed to the interloper. Weeds, like other introduced species, disrupt the balance of an ecosystem and bother its inhabitants.

Human have often been compared to invasive plant species when we set out into new ecosystems and create havoc.  At the beginning of the 16th century, Christopher Columbus, Hernan Cortez and Suleiman the Magnificent all shifted the landscapes of North America, Central America and Europe respectively. Five centuries later we can still feel the effects of their efforts.

When I land in an environment that provides fertile soil for my ideas, I am intoxicated! Isn’t it delicious when you find a community that welcomes you unconditionally? What about a place where you can live unhampered by old constraints?  Many are drawn to live in Montana – the “keep your laws out of my bedroom and gun closet” state – for this very reason. I have to admit that getting to wear jeans to dinner parties and roaming through wide-open spaces unhindered is really fantastic.  Yet, a common question in our region is we will destroy exactly what has drawn humans like me here for hundreds of years?

Am I a weed in Montana? Since no one wants to be classified as a noxious species, you’ll notice that folks here like to be regarded as “Native Montanans,” “a third generation Montanan” or being of Native American descent. Who belongs to this ecosystem, and who doesn’t, creates a constant source of debate here.  Walking into the surrounding wilderness though, humans as a whole can feel like very weed-like.

Yet, adding Burgess’ assessment of weeds into this equation, I must pause. He says, “When I photograph these weeds—and in the process of photographing them, you create an abstraction, it gives one a little distance—one of the things I’ve noticed is that some of them are very beautiful. It makes you think. If something that is so common and lowly is beautiful, the idea of what is beautiful gets to be a little confusing.”

The introduction of an invasive species is hardly new. Seeing MacDonald’s golden arches and pervasive graffiti in every foreign city I have visited in the past five years reminds me that “weeds” takes all sorts of forms. A weed’s success can be terrifying, as evidenced in the timely introduction of anti-Semitic rhetoric in the last century. It can also be delicious as we choose from a dozen gourmet chocolate bars at the average American grocery store.

Yet, each new introduction calls us to keep reassessing what we deem as beautiful, and what is inherently good or right. In their fortitude and relentlessness, “weeds” assure that these become questions we can’t ignore. In that exercise alone, a weed brings value by asking us to be conscious of what is worth fighting for and how we can best evolve.

Regardless of the ecosystem in which we each stand, how can we continue to pay attention to what we’d rather ignore? As I contemplate this question, I am finding the snow in my backyard quite beautiful for the time being.

Defining Leadership

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If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. – John Quincy Adams

I have been spending four days a week talking about leadership with university students since January. This converts to much considering what it means to lead and how to do it well. Over the past couple of weeks, the students and I have been exploring in depth the traits of leaders we admire.  Yet, completing that exercise left us all feeling like being an “outstanding leader” was well beyond our personal grasp!

Our class results contend that we like to admire our leaders. We want them to be strong, courageous, emotionally intelligent, organized and adaptable. We desire their passions to inspire us into action. We hope that they will motivate us to be our best. They should speak and write well. Yet, upon self-reflection every one of us had noticed that we don’t always measure up to our imposed standards.

My students remind me that this “name your favorite leader traits” game can discourage them from showing up as leaders. How can they consider themselves viable when they are sometimes weak, terrified, coarse, disorganized and fixed in their positions? “If I can’t make the grade, why play and fail,” some of them asked.

Meanwhile, I believe that they are all leaders and they all need to plunge into the work of facilitating change. I keep reminding them of my favorite definition of leadership from Margaret Wheatley, “A leader is anyone who wants to help at this time.” Since each student wants to be of assistance on their campus and in the community, they are leaders, like it or not.

To address the super hero leadership requirements we defined and being human, the students and I have been appreciating Bill George’s book, Authentic Leadership. Bill has a marvelous way of acknowledging that we each bring different approaches, strengths and weaknesses to this job of “helping at this time.” He invites to show up, regardless of where we begin AND to try to rise to our best. Bill explains, “After years of studying leaders and their traits, I believe that leadership begins and ends with authenticity. It’s being yourself; being the person you were created to be…Authentic leaders are dedicated to developing themselves because they know that becoming a leader takes a lifetime of personal growth.”

Using a personal example, I know that the best instructors are ones that have healthy detachment from their students’ performance. To effectively lead a classroom it helps to:

  • Teach at your best,
  • Encourage your students’ best, and
  • Not get thrown off if others don’t rise to your encouragement.

However, this week I wanted to verbally slap the student who, yet again, had not read the assignment and was nodding off in class; not very leader-like or lady-like behavior. I didn’t yell (thankfully), but I was mad that I took way too personally that student’s lack of preparation and focus.

Bill George’s words remind me that not only my wish to remain centered, but also my clear frustration, is authentically me. Acknowledging that I was not feeling very Gandhi-ish, is both kind to myself and it calls me directly to keep trying to practice healthy detachment and creative instruction.

Basically, as my son Cody likes to say, “It’s all good.” I believe it’s good that we set high standards. It’s good that I sometimes get thrown off, so that I can recognize what my standards are and how I get tripped up. Also, it’s good that even though I am far from perfect, I am still trying to help at this time. I don’t know if I’ll ever find appropriate detachment anywhere in my life, but it’s good, according to George and to most spiritual traditions, that I’m just willing to try.

This week as you lead in any way, pay attention. What traits would you like to display and which ones are you using? Instead of backing off from leadership or beating up on yourself because you missing the bulls eye you’ve created, allow where you are and what you care about to guide you. I personally appreciate your “help at this time” and that we all keep practicing!

Here’s a fun leadership video following the theme of today’s post by Derek Sivers that I thought you might enjoy as you consider helping.

What Should I Do? A Multicultural Answer

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I am currently teaching a new course at Montana State University called Leadership Foundations. Thirty students ranging from 18 to over 40 are exploring together what it means to be a leader while learning some core skills.  As part of the course, each student must devote 10 non-class hours to some type of volunteer activity where he or she can practice leadership.

One of these students, while struggling to get those service learning hours accomplished, asked, “How do I know what projects are worth my time or which ones I should give up on?” She added, “Just how much energy do you put into something that looks like it is going to fail?”

Considering these questions, I recalled two others that guide my decisions on where to devote my time. When I am wrestling with what to do or not to do, I like to ask myself:

  1. If I were really brave, what would I try?
  2. Would I do this even if it might fail and others might reject me?

Reframed these questions could also be:

  1. What would I do if I knew I would succeed?
  2. What would I do anyway; no matter the final result?

The first question asks me to rise to my highest and best while the second makes sure I am doing something for the right reasons. My ego loves success and to have everyone love me; so, sometimes I can be drawn to a project if it might make me look good or bring some adoration – that’s seductive stuff! But, I am really at my best when I contribute happily regardless of what might be the ultimate outcome.

Steve Jobs, we learned in an earlier post, asks himself in the mirror each morning, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do?” It seems that Jobs incorporates my two questions into one. I believe he is asking, is it bold enough, fun enough, substantive enough or right enough to be doing?

My friend David Baum taught me a similar centering technique derived from the Jewish tradition. He subscribes to an ancient proverb that says you should always keep one piece of paper in each of your front pockets. On one write, “I am part of the Divine,” and on the other scribble, “I am nothing but dust.” The wisdom comes, David reminds me, in knowing which to pull out of your pocket to guide your actions during your day.

Your appropriate next step in Buddhism is often called “right action.” In Hinduism it is referred to as “selfless service.” In both traditions we are counseled to be brave enough to get involved in life, and at the same time not to get attached to our desired results. To answer the inquiring Leadership Foundation student, these philosophies would say if the project will succeed or fail should not drive your decision. Instead the question should become, is it worth doing, would your involvement be of value to you, and to the world?Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers

I am drawn to people who have clarity around right action. Today I was reading about thirteen indigenous grandmothers who have been gathering twice a year around the world to find ways to care for our future generations. In closing, I invite you to watch Grandma Bernadette as she describes why she has chosen to be part of the 13 and devote her time to their efforts.

Grandmother Bernadette’s Story from Laughing Willow on Vimeo.

Steve Jobs — Three Tenets of Playing Well

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The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge. — Bertrand Russell

225px-Steve_JobsWhen I recently found a YouTube version of Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech, I was not surprised to see the 1.5 million “hits” to date. This became one of my personal favorites when its transcript appeared in my inbox soon after its presentation. Just in case, it hasn’t landed in your email — I include it below:

I was reminded watching this speech of a quote by Bertrand Russell, a 20th century British philosopher and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. At the beginning of his autobiography, written in his 80′s, he states:

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy—ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy…With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine…Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

Job and Russell remind us that love, curiosity and recognition of our mortality are great allies in playing well. When these are ignited within me, I find that I usually play at my best. First, loving what I am doing and who I am serving opens my heart. Curiosity gets my head into the game. Then remembering death and suffering are part of the human being program, centers me into my body and circumstances.

How can we engage these three passions, as Russell calls them, each day? We can pose Steve Job’s question of “If this was your last day on earth would you spend your day as it is planned?” I like to check if what I am doing both brings me joy and has substance. What daily practices assure that you are playing well as Jobs and Russell describe?

Different “Windows” or Why I Walked Out

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Where you see flowers, a rabbit sees lunch. Where most of us would have noticed pesky burrs stuck to our clothing, in 1948 George de Mestral on a walk with his dog visualized Velcro.

Our perspective shapes our experience. Brazilian Jarbas Agnelli reading the newspaper one day, regarded a color photograph of black birds sitting on electric wires. The picture was not simply seen as an idyllic scene, since to that artist’s eye, the birds’ placement reminded him of musical notation. “I knew it wasn’t the most original idea in the universe,” Agnelli writes on his website. “I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating.

So, Agnelli translated from “bird” to “note” and here we see the fascinating result.

During a mediation session, each party brings a lens through which he or she views a common situation. Where you might believe you sold me a car in good faith, I might interpret your actions as less than honorable. We each take a subset of the available data and try to make sense of where we stand. To calm down the parties when their interpretations of reality are markedly different, I like to say that we are each looking at a situation from different “windows.”

I had a personal experience of multiple windows while watching the movie “Avatar.” The theatre was packed as seemed appropriate given the positive reviews the movie had consistently received. Set on the imaginary planet of Pandora, the story describes a conflict between Earthings who have come to mine resources and the tall blue Pandorians who seek to protect their world and way of life. As one reviewer wrote, “if you’ve seen ‘Dances of Wolves’ you know the plot.” Avatar the Movie

Every good movie has a conflict to be resolved. Even if someone isn’t screaming at another, all compelling pictures present a sticky challenge/conflict that the protagonists must overcome. For example, will the hero win the girl? Can our star overcome poverty and solve her problems? or Can they save the world?

After studying conflict for the past 16 years, I can’t help but notice what approaches the protagonists use to resolve the concocted struggle. “Invictus” for example, was delicious as I witnessed Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela creatively employ the Rugby World Cup to rebuild a nation. As you can imagine, life was good while watching “Invictus” from my window!invictus1

After working this fall with university students from Pakistan’s FATA region, I have been actively wrestling with why must humans continue to use violence, and war as a knee jerk reaction. I care about these young Pakistanis. Knowing that they are each living now in a war zone, makes my contemplation of this question more than academic.

Mandela reminds me that we can transcend the old strategies of revenge and destruction. Out of love for these students, and others who I have taught from Iraq, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Libya and other past and current conflict zones, I want to hope that we can follow Mandela’s, Gandhi’s, Martin Luther King’s and HH Dalai Lama’s lead and shift as a species.

So, when the protagonists and antagonists responded in “Avatar” with violence,  I was disheartened. How I wanted a creative resolution! How I wanted the old “they have harmed us enough that we must kill” paradigm to be proven obsolete…especially by the seemingly enlightened and sexy seven-feet-tall blue beings! But no luck. After I had my fill of machine guns, arrows and death, I was probably the only person in America to walk out in the middle of “Avatar.” I knew the rest of the story without reading any spoilers; it’s just too common of a human tale.

If I had pulled out the movie technology lens like many of the reviewers, I would have been delighted by the film. If I had thrown on the glasses of a mythology student, I might have enjoyed how the hero’s spiritual journey was portrayed. But, that day, realizing how many innocent people are at risk due to the often unchallenged belief that revenge and killing can be justified, I couldn’t bear to watch it played out as entertainment. I thought of my international students, and instead needed to recover my composure in the lobby.

Everything depends on our windows.  George de Mestral saw velcro.  Jarbas Agnelli saw music.  Nelson Mandela saw the possibility of his country. In each of them, I thankfully see hope for our future.

And, by my departure from the theatre I also see that I am not done learning the subtle balance between caring deeply and objectivity. Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor was slavery abolished.  I want to hold a vision for productive strategies for resolving conflict without becoming as discouraged about the human condition as I was sitting outside the theatre that evening.  We can change — we are changing — that’s the view I want to see from this window.

The Power of Stories

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My friend Sunny calls it, “the Friday morning weep-fest.” After last week I’d have to agree. Driving downtown, I too had tears rolling down my cheeks listening to National Public Radio’s latest selection from the Storycorps Project.

Storycorps is an oral history project begun in 2003 where tens of thousands of everyday people have interviewed family and friends in a mobile recording booth. Each conversation is recorded on a free CD that the participants take home, and archived for generations to come at the Library of Congress.  Here’s Storycorps founder, Dave Isay, sharing from the project:

Chief Justice John Marshall once said that “to listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.”  I am impressed with not only the result of these interviews, but also the process. How often do I give my loved ones 40 minutes of uninterrupted, focused story telling time?

So you might wonder, what had me tearing up in the car? story corps

I listened to Debbie Watterson and her son Mitchel talk about having a deaf family member. Click on the link to see caught me.

This piece seems like an apt follow up to last week’s post on encouragement — I hope you enjoy it.

Selfish Selflessness

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Note To Self – Always remember how you can still recall your parents’ off handed comments from childhood…

As an example, my father, an outplacement counselor,  lodged this memory in a still accessible mental file cabinet. Recounting the highlights of a client meeting with my mom over dinner, he explained, “I told him to go out and do something good for someone else. It would decrease his depression and get him moving.”

Perhaps this snippet stuck with me that I was privy to inside information about my father’s work life, but regardless, it was sage advice that has come to serve me well.

This week, my friend Deborah, doing something nice for another, sent me a New York Times article that provides scientific backup for my dad’s derivation on the Golden Rule. This seemed especially appropriate to share after last week’s Thanksgiving and the Islamic world’s celebration of Eid — two holidays which focus on the giving of food to loved ones and those less fortunate.

As Tara Parker-Pope writes, “An array of studies have documented this effect. In one, a 2002 Boston College study, researchers found that patients with chronic pain fared better when they counseled other pain patients, experiencing less depression, intense pain and disability.

Another study, at the Buck Institute for Age Research in Novato, Calif., also found a strong benefit to volunteerism, and after controlling for a number of variables, showed that elderly people who volunteered for more than four hours a week were 44 percent less likely to die during the study period.”

So, how do we kick ourselves out of our house of struggles and do something good without an outplacement counselor or parent urging us on?

We can make giving a daily practice like making our beds or brushing teeth. A young woman with MS, Cami Walker, followed this tenet after one of her spiritual teachers pushed her to give something to another for 29 days without fail. You can read her story at her website 29gifts.org.

I had read about Cami’s commitment to give a gift for 29 days and visited this site as she was just beginning this practice for the first time in 2008. It was a simple website, just a couple of pages, documenting what she gave each day and how it might be helping her cope with her illness. I appreciated her authenticity and courage as she faced the challenge and MS.

Reading Parker-Pope’s profile on Cami, I returned to 29 Gifts and was struck by how much positive change she has manifested in the past year both in her own life and beyond. It’s worth a visit.

So, whether it’s just for today, for 29 days or every day, what might we do to lighten another’s load? What simple gift can you give? How can we be selfishly selfless and prove my father right? As a loyal advice giver like his daughter, he’d appreciate that I’m sure.