In SEI Cert class today, Yoshimi said she really liked what I said about Pursue Noble Goals, so I’ll try to recreate it:

Pursuing a Noble Goal isn’t about taking some “lofty” action in the future. It’s about understanding why we might do such a thing, then putting that “why” in action today in “everyday” interactions.

Our lives are made in small moments that add up.

Pursuing a Noble Goal is about ensuring those moments add up to significance — that they add up to what we mean to create.

Sometimes people hear the word “pursue” as something abstract and outside us – it’s really about putting it in action within us.

So, I know you’ve probably heard it everywhere in the last few days. I have too. What will we do differently this year?

Now, I’m not usually one for New Years resolutions, mostly because I feel like I make changes in my life when they’re necessary and it doesn’t generally correspond with a tidy date. However, waking up today on the 2nd of January and realizing there’s something I desperately want to accomplish gave me the idea of using the new year to actually further a plan for change this year. A plan to tackle one big, nasty, persistent problem in my life that I have just not handled effectively yet. Today I thought, “What if I could wake up a year from now and be able to say that for 364 days I had done this thing well?” Wow, I really liked that idea!  I needed a strategy for making change that was based on me, my patterns and my ‘operating system.’ And, for once, I liked the idea of attaching a number to it.

So, here’s to day 1 – January 2nd, 2010! What will inspire you to make changes this year? How well do you know yourself and use that knowledge to choose change strategies that will work for YOU? How much more effective can we be when we use our knowledge about ourselves to tailor our plans and when we’re not afraid to do things in a way that we know feels right to us? We’ll see how it goes for me. I’ll report back in a year, give or take a day…

In the Six Seconds EQ Model, the “capstone” is a competency we call “Pursue Noble Goals.” Members of the Six Seconds’ team were discussing this last week, and reflecting that especially in “tough times” it’s easy to feel stuck and have a sense that the work you really want to do is occluded by the “stuff you have to do.”When we say “pursue” Noble Goals, that could sound like, “I have to give up the day to day and totally focus on the truly significant.” Nice, but unlikely.

Pursue Noble Goals really means putting purpose into everyday action. If your purpose is supporting equity, how can you build more equity between the people in the elevator today? If your purpose is sustaining a vibrant earth, how can you change what you buy for lunch to be more sustainable? If your purpose is nurturing compassion, how can you think and feel as you wash the dishes so you end that experience more compassionate?

In other words:  Consider the alignment between WHAT you are doing each moment, each day — HOW your are doing that, and WHY?  Is your intention coming through both in the action and in the way that action is undertaken?

In promoting Satyagraha, nonviolent compassionate activism, Gandhi explained that you can not make peace through anger. Anger and violence make more anger and violence. Real peace only can be made through peaceful means. Sometimes we think the “end justifies the means,” but in this vision, the means IS the end and the end is made of the means. So when we talk about Pursuing Noble Goals, that’s the standard: Live it. It’s not something to work toward in the future, it’s a future to bring into the present. Everywhere, all the time.

I love this Manifesto.

A lot of this is familiar, but I like how he has managed the principles based on the 24 Character strengths and virtues from Positive Psychology. Essentially Michael Lee Stallard describes how our individual efforts can bring about good organisational climates… I particularly like to include schools in this….

The bottom line is that connection plays a critical part in improving individual performance. People who are more connected with others fare better in life than those who are less connected. Connection, because it meets our human needs, makes people more trusting, more cooperative, more empathetic, more enthusiastic, more optimistic, more energetic, more creative and better problem solvers. It creates the type of environment in which people want to help their colleagues. They are more open to share information that helps decision makers become better-informed. The openness that emerges in a trusting and cooperative environment creates a robust marketplace of ideas that stimulates innovation.

A few months ago I blogged about Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” about Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. He didn’t use these words, but he talked all about what we call emotional intelligence. Here’s a reprise he gave on Oprah:

Plus here are a ton of other videos about Randy.

Lately, I have been thinking about values and EI so I started to re-read some of the earlier writing on the theory. These abilities are to be used to promote emotional growth and development. People high on EI are not masters of the universe, nor do they rise to the top of the corporate heap. They do, however, have stronger and more positive relationships, they communicate more clearly, and they care.

It’s another gloomy day. Where the hell is Spring??? I have a cold. The day is stretching out unpleasantly in front of me. And I just RSVPd to a party for my 20th high school reunion.

Looking at the list of who’s coming I was hit by all the wonderful and awful memories of middle and high school. The sense of bullet-proof unstopability simultaneous with this total powerlessness and dread. The names include people who I desperately longed to be like, who I desperately longed to like me (“like” being euphamistic, in the second case, for lust), and who I took totally for granted. There are also a lot of blissfully happy memories. On a day like today, I guess, somehow that sense of the totally open road is eclipsed by the memories of loneliness and loss.

My best friends in high school were the theater geeks. We spelled it “theatre” because that was more sophisticated. I don’t know if we really thought we were cool, or if it was a booby prize because we weren’t as cool as the actually cool kids (all jocks, of course). Of course they were as busy working at being cool as we were working at being anticool. We were all furiously chasing after some image or other. What a colassal waste. I’m sure the institutions and cultures of American high schools has made the fortune of many a therapist. Maybe many an EQ consultant too.

One surprise was seeing how many people are bringing their kids. My high school classmates are still frozen in my head as 18 year olds. How can they all have kids??? Oh. It’s 20 years later. Where did that all go?

Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing if I can see these people as humans instead of as icons of what we wished to be. I suspect for all of us (well, most of us) we came to see those paper-doll cut-out figures were ultimately pretty empty.

We has a great conversation last night about gossip (at Mount Madonna School – amazing place). On our school climate survey the lowest scoring question was, “People here don’t gossip much.”

One of the parents pointed out that gossip isn’t necessarily done with harmful intent — people could say they “gossip” because they are concerned and sharing important information. Personally I wouldn’t call that gossip. Princeton WordNet says:

n 1: light informal conversation for social occasions
2: a report (often malicious) about the behavior of other people; “the divorce caused much gossip”
3: a person given to gossiping and divulging personal information about others

So there is a dimension that’s just “chit-chat,” but there’s that “often malicious” in there. What do you think? Is there something inherently malicious or undermining in gossip?

Anyway, one of my favorite questions: How do we use the tendency to gossip in a positive way?
What’s so good about this is that it acknowledges people are as they are — and we still have choice… and we still have the opportunity to influence others. It’s a very strengths-oriented approach: What do people do well, and how can that come into service of a larger purpose?

The 2nd best remedy for feeling yucky.

• 2 cups chicken broth
• 1 avocado cut into cubes
• 1/4 c salsa, chunky
• 2 tortillas, crisp over flame (on gas stove) or in pan, tear into pieces
• 1/2 lime.

Put all the stuff into 2 bowls, eat with your true love who also has a bit of a cold and comisserate.

EQ Reflection, March 31, 1999

I got back from Missouri last night — somewhat later than I had planned, but in exchange for the delay, I had an opportunity to think about complacency.

I was in Colombia, MO (smack dab in the middle of the state), started to drive west to the airport in Kansas City, and after two hours realized that I have driven east to St. Louis… so what happened in those two hours? How did I manage to ignore all the signs? To ignore my own “are you going the right way?” questions?

I’ve often been outraged by complacency. During elections, for instance, people seem to vote more on “life is fine for me now” than on issues. So perhaps it was high time for me to get clocked in the head by my own complacency. In the two hours driving back to Columbia, then the two more hours driving to KC, I had a bit of thinking time. I decided that complacency is moving ahead in spite of all the messages to re-assess.

For example, when I first got on the freeway, I definitely had a moment where I felt like I was spinning the map around in my head… but I chose to believe that I was disoriented rather than going the wrong direction. All along the drive, I kept seeing signs, “St. Louis, 140 miles” “St. Louis, 120 miles” yet somehow I chose to believe I was going in the right direction… and, I remember pressing one of the “preset” buttons on the radio, and when there was no signal, I choose to believe that I must have changed the preset from where I had originally set it in KC.

I was having a great drive! I listened to a Garrison Keilor tape, laughing hard, fully awake in the bright sunshiny morning, enjoying a beautiful day… but obviously I was not fully awake.

So, on the return trip, I thought about what might help me be more awake:

Experiencing the here-and-now. I have a tendency to fill my moments with plans, to brainstorm, to dream, to work on problems. This seems like useful activity… in moderation. On the return drive, I practiced being here-and-now every once-in-a-while.  Once-in-a-while-here-and-now. Just about that length of time, focusing on my five senses, on what my toes felt like, on the temperature, on the light in the trees. In some of those practices, I started thinking, “hey, I ought to practice so I can write about this… I’ll write that I…” ERRR. So I tried ignoring that voice, I tried laughing at myself, I tried shifting that voice from talking about the future and you, to talking about now and me. Not 100% successful, but different.

Time to hear myself. In daily conversation, I often interrupt people, I often “push the conversation along” — I am a bit impatient. I think I do that with myself too. So I tried to not be impatient with my messages to myself, I tried to not interrupt and actually attend. Not a breakthrough… maybe because this time I was going in the right direction… but I’ll keep practicing this one.

Turn off the road. I finally realized that I was going the wrong direction when I got off the highway. As I wen tot get back on, I finally saw what I’d been doing. In “real life” (as opposed to driving in Missouri), I do this too — I get in a rut, and pretty soon I don’t notice that I am in one. I LIKE my rut — it is a comfy, warm, friendly rut. Fine — if I still like it after stepping out and looking around, I can climb back in… but if I don’t get out and look around, I can’t choose. This has implications for learning, and even learning over the course of a few minutes. This rut-affection is one reason why “eustress,” or positive stress (as opposed to “distress”), is so important for learning. It is also one reason why variation, shifting focus, and multiple approaches are so essential for effective learning.

Thanks for reading, thanks for all the encouragement about the baby (Patty is doing well, he belly feels like a drum… a wiggly drum, anyway), and if you have more “be awake” ideas, I’d love to hear from you.
- Josh

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