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May 4, 2008
Unboxed
Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?
By JANET RAE-DUPREE

HABITS are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. “Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd,” William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word “habit” carries a negative connotation.

So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.

But don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they’re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.

“The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,” says Dawna Markova, author of “The Open Mind” and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. “But we are taught instead to ‘decide,’ just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider.’ ” She adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.”

All of us work through problems in ways of which we’re unaware, she says. Researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. At puberty, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.

The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought. “This breaks the major rule in the American belief system — that anyone can do anything,” explains M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book “This Year I Will…” and Ms. Markova’s business partner. “That’s a lie that we have perpetuated, and it fosters mediocrity. Knowing what you’re good at and doing even more of it creates excellence.”

This is where developing new habits comes in. If you’re an analytical or procedural thinker, you learn in different ways than someone who is inherently innovative or collaborative. Figure out what has worked for you when you’ve learned in the past, and you can draw your own map for developing additional skills and behaviors for the future.

“I apprentice myself to someone when I want to learn something new or develop a new habit,” Ms. Ryan says. “Other people read a book about it or take a course. If you have a pathway to learning, use it because that’s going to be easier than creating an entirely new pathway in your brain.”

Ms. Ryan and Ms. Markova have found what they call three zones of existence: comfort, stretch and stress. Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.

“Getting into the stretch zone is good for you,” Ms. Ryan says in “This Year I Will… .” “It helps keep your brain healthy. It turns out that unless we continue to learn new things, which challenges our brains to create new pathways, they literally begin to atrophy, which may result in dementia, Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases. Continuously stretching ourselves will even help us lose weight, according to one study. Researchers who asked folks to do something different every day — listen to a new radio station, for instance — found that they lost and kept off weight. No one is sure why, but scientists speculate that getting out of routines makes us more aware in general.”

She recommends practicing a Japanese technique called kaizen, which calls for tiny, continuous improvements.

“Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain,” Ms. Ryan notes in her book. “If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”

Simultaneously, take a look at how colleagues approach challenges, Ms. Markova suggests. We tend to believe that those who think the way we do are smarter than those who don’t. That can be fatal in business, particularly for executives who surround themselves with like-thinkers. If seniority and promotion are based on similarity to those at the top, chances are strong that the company lacks intellectual diversity.

“Try lacing your hands together,” Ms. Markova says. “You habitually do it one way. Now try doing it with the other thumb on top. Feels awkward, doesn’t it? That’s the valuable moment we call confusion, when we fuse the old with the new.”

AFTER the churn of confusion, she says, the brain begins organizing the new input, ultimately creating new synaptic connections if the process is repeated enough.

But if, during creation of that new habit, the “Great Decider” steps in to protest against taking the unfamiliar path, “you get convergence and we keep doing the same thing over and over again,” she says.

“You cannot have innovation,” she adds, “unless you are willing and able to move through the unknown and go from curiosity to wonder.”

Janet Rae-Dupree writes about science and emerging technology in Silicon Valley.
Dawna Markova has been a leading figure in education for many years, specifically around different learning styles/sensory orientations.

Accepting things as they are

When we accept things as they are, there is no more need to judge, make excuses, lie, call names, feel guilty, explain, defend. There is no more need to save our own skin by blaming and accusing others.
Instead we become firmly grounded in gratitude, love, acceptance, beauty and seeing the divine order in everything. We start to lose our limited ego identification and instead reconnect with our soul, the divine spark in us all that connects us as one. We become conscious players in the divine tragicomedy called life. Only now, we are aware that we are not only stuck as actresses with a script somebody else wrote for us, but that we are also able to rewrite the script anytime we want to and direct the play with our own consciousness.
Realizing this can be frightening. “What do you mean, I can rewrite my script and direct the play?” “How should that work?” “If everyone did that, wouldn’t we have complete anarchy and chaos?” “I am scared to do that and even though I don’t like my life and my circumstances, it is the only thing I know. How can I create something that I don’t know about?”
If you conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it. Making the shift is not something that takes place overnight. You actually have all the time in the world to do it. However, at this time in our human-global interaction we all start to perceive the urgency to make a shift happen. Global warming, solar dimming, the Mayan and other calendars coming to an end in 2012, pollution, obesity, increase in child diseases, fertility crisis, shrinking population, war, natural disasters give us glimpses that nothing more than the extinction of our human species is at stake. It is a pivotal time for the critical mass to make a quantum leap.
This shift in consciousness has to happen in each and every one of us. A shift in power starts with the people. We can no longer look at the government or corporations to guide our future. We have to make the internal shift, grow up and take responsibility for our choices. Be they what we consume, what we do, what we say, how we interact, even how and what we think.
Like the actresses in the play, it is time for us to read the script we have been operating on, take a red pen, some new paper and pen and rewrite our role, our habits, our behavior, our speech, our actions, our belief system and our internal dialogue.
Deep in our hearts and souls we have buried the blue print for our life’s purpose. Deep inside of us we know our highest potential. Our heart’s desires show us the way. Gentle excavation is necessary since there is also all the pain and rejection we have ever experienced stored deep within ourselves.

Once we connect with the pain, accept it and use it as the fertilizer for our growth, the happiness, lightness and inner peace that we will gain, is the light at the end of the tunnel. It is the promise to live heaven on earth now in this incarnation.

“The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is a self-aware ethereal substance particular to a unique living being. In these traditions the soul is thought to incorporate the inner essence of each living being, and to be the true basis for sentience. In distinction to spirit which may or may not be eternal, souls are usually (but not always as explained below) considered to be immortal and to pre-exist their incarnation in flesh.

The concept of the soul has strong links with notions of an afterlife, but opinions may vary wildly, even within a given religion, as to what may happen to the soul after the death of the body. Many within these religions and philosophies see the soul as immaterial, while others consider it to possibly have a material component, and some have even tried to establish the mass (weight) of the soul.

However, atheism and other non-religious philosophies, do not accept the existence of a soul.”
From the encyclopedia at wikipedia.org

A New Year has begun. 12 months, 52 weeks and 365 days are ahead of us. They are pristine as a brand new white canvas. The possibilities are vast. What will we choose, what will we fill these days, hours and minutes with?

The choice is ours. We are eternally free to choose the directions of our life every moment anew. How truly liberating this can be, if we only remember our free will.

However, we have become accustomed to the illusion that we are bound by our past. Bound by the deals we entered into written or unwritten, spoken or unspoken, fully aware or unaware.

We willingly become slaves to what society expects of us, what other people think of us, because we want to desperately belong, be part of, be normal, be accepted, loved and included.

We happily sell our souls to be hip, cool, revered, in, admired, acknowledged, famous, rich and beautiful. We fit in, revolt, become intellectual, knowledgeable or play dumb. We dress to stand out or to hide. We meekly accept what happens around us or protest out loud.

We perceive ourselves as bound by the identity of who we are, by the image we so carefully created of ourselves, by the patterns, behaviors that we needed to survive and grow up, by the expectations we have of ourselves and that others have of us.

All these creations are but a fleeting moment in the eternity of a soul’s point of view. The beauty of waking up and becoming aware of our souls is that we are no longer exclusively identified with the material world and our short lifetime here on this planet.

Once we have embraced that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, a whole new way of perception takes place. We are no longer able to ignore our part in the divine comedy of life. And if we chose to, we can step out of any given situation by bringing this awareness and presence into it. By calling the enmeshment by what it is, by declaring that we are no longer willing to pretend that we are bound and by choosing a whole new way of relating and being.

In this way we shall begin this New Year of 2007. Aware of our fleeting existence here on earth. Aware of the infinite possibilities that each day holds. Aware that we can change the outcome of any situation in a single moment. Aware of how magnificent we really are. Aware of the responsibilities we hold towards this planet and our fellow humans. Aware that our presence, love, patience and understanding can shift an ordinary moment into a magical one.

May 2007  be filled with many happy new choices that liberate you and the people you touch. May you bring peace, love and light into all your actions and thoughts. May 2007 be a magnificent, magical year for all of us.

The New Year promises new beginnings. It promises an opportunity to start afresh. But is this really so? Our western way of organizing the days into weeks, months and years is man made. Let’s also look at the fact that, with every year on this planet, we as humans tend to get even more set into our ways. It seems like the older we get the harder it is to change.

Yet this is the time of year to do just that. It is a perfect time to confront ourself with the old habits and patterns from which we get our sense of identity. It is the time to not only come up with New Year’s resolutions, that are well intended, but also get to the core of our being. The real questions that this annual ritual of resolution setting holds, are more as follows:

• - What does my heart, my body, my soul yearn for?
• - What baby steps can I take to move into the direction of my yearnings?
• - What new habits and routines did I create in 2006 that I like to keep in the new year because they are in sync with the bigger picture?
• - What is my bigger picture?
• - What projected future puts a smile on my face?
• - What gets me excited?
• - Have I included my passions in life into my daily routines?
• - What am I passionate about?
• - What skills have I always wanted to develop and haven’t prioritized yet?

Out of these questions a whole new list of resolutions arises. One that is focused on the life we would like to live. It focuses on the positive, that what makes us get up in the mornings and puts a hop into our steps, to go beyond our set ways to reach for that, which might just be possible.

Create a life beyond your wildest dreams. Take some time to reflect on your life so far. Give yourself a big pat on the shoulder for what you have overcome. Write down your responses to these questions. Explore, fantasize, project. So much is possible if you just dare to dream. May 2007 be the most soulful year yet for you and yours.

Tending our souls, tending the soul of this planet is, what is desperately needed, if we want to ensure that future generations will not only survive, but also have a beautiful planet to live on. Many of us have recognized that consumerism cannot fill the void inside. There are so many alarming statistics about child suicide, diseases and violence. It is time to wake up, free our heads from drugs, workaholism or whatever else our dulling agent of choice is and start speaking up and more importantly become present for what is going on inside of us. We cannot change the planet into any positive direction as long as we keep abandoning our selves, our needs and our dreams.

That is, where soul tending comes in. I think, that as a whole, in the so-called developed countries, we have lost our innocence. Technology, Industry and the mighty green God “Money” have become this big machinery, which is threatening our very existence as a human species. I am aware that I am using the same technology, industry and money to write this sentence. And this is what this website is all about. How can we use what we got, see the mess we are in, take responsibility and not only make the best of it, but excel?

I believe it comes down to stopping the sensory overload that we are getting bombarded with and consciously creating space to rest, assimilate, breathe and connect with our body, mind and emotions. It is time to dream, visualize, meditate. “What you can conceive and believe you can achieve”. Yet we choose to get so busy to keep up with the “Jones’s” that we are not tending to our quiet time any more. Rest, relax, let go and dare to dream again.

One of my teachers, Anna Halprin, used to say: “Your business is it to take care of your body, your mind and your emotions. The rest will take care of itself.” In other words: “Tend to your body, thoughts and feelings and the soul will be in harmony as well.” Therefore, you will find tips, guidelines and inspirations under the headings of Body, Mind and Emotions.

In addition, I have found in my own life, that it is very helpful to have some kind of image of what a soul is. Settling your body, mind and emotions enables you to listen to the soul. Connecting to your soul can give you a bird’s eye view of your life, a place to rest and to recuperate. Most of all it gives you perspective, shows you what’s really important in life and how to redirect your life in case it’s off course.

“The journey of the soul is a continual cycle, somewhat like the seasons. In spring, things open. In summer, they come to great fruition. In fall, things go out in a blaze of glory. In winter, the seed is in the dark ground and can’t be seen.

At different points of our journey, throughout our whole life, we are in one of these cycles. Winter is often experienced as a period of despair. At the same time, it is a period of creative hybernation and development. When we get sunk down in the dark night of the soul, it helps to remember this is just one phase that will change into something else. We will come out of the darkness with something that will help us and help other people. It is actually a kind of purification phase.” By Linda Leonard, Ph.D.

So instead of running around in the pre-Christmas hectic, take some time to hybernate. Say: “No”, stay home instead, cuddle on the couch, have some hot cacoa and simply be with whatever comes into your mind and touches your emotions. There is nothing to do. Simply watch, become a spectator of your inner reality. It’s like lying on the grass and watching the clouds go by.

Cozy up, give yourself at least an hour. Don’t do a thing. Just watch your thoughts, your impulses to maybe get up and get busy again. Let your emotions run through without holding on to anything. Just be, relax and connect with yourself.

This is winter time. Allow yourself to hybernate. Give yourself the gift of being present with what is. If you can’t stand it, you can always just get up and get back into the X-mas hustle. However, give hybernation another shot. It is a skill that will always enhance your communication with your soul and with God. Try it out several times. Let’s see what happens. If you want, come back and share your experience. Happy hybernation everyone.

The following is an excerpt of the book Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach:

“In order to know a semblance of serenity during the days of our lives, we also need to discover Time’s twin nature, which the ancient Greeks called chronos and kairos.

Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars, agendas, planners, schedules, beepers. Chronos is time at her worst. Chronos keeps track. Chronos is a delusion of grandeur. Chronos is running the Marine Corps marathon in heels. In chronos we think only of ourselves. Chronos is the world’s time.

Kairos is transcendence, infinity, reverence, joy, passion, love, the Sacred. Kairos is intimacy with the Real. Kairos is time at her best. Kairos lets go. In kairos we escape the dungeon of self. Kairos is a Schubert waltz in nineteenth-century Vienna with your soul mate. Kairos is Soul’s time.

We exist in chronos. We long for kairos. That is our duality. Chronos requires speed so that it won’t be wasted. Kairos requires space so that it might be savored. We do in chronos. In kairos we are allowed to be.

We think we’ve never known kairos, but we have: when making love, when meditating or praying, when lost in music’s rapture or literature’s reverie, when planting bulbs or pulling weeds, when watching over a sleeping child, when reading the Sunday comics together in bed, when delighting in a sunset, when exulting in our passions. We know joy in kairos, glimpse beauty in kairos, remember what it means to be alive in kairos, reconnect with our Divinity in kairos.

So how do we exchange chronos for kairos?
- By slowing down
- By concentrating on one thing at a time
- By going about whatever we are doing as if it were the only thing worth doing at that moment.
- By pretending we have all the time in the world, so that our subconscious will kick in and make it so.
- By making time.
- By taking time.
- It only takes a moment to cross over from chronos into kairos, but it does take a moment.
All that kairos asks is our willingness to stop running long enough to hear the music of the spheres.
Today, be willing to join in the dance.
Now you’re in kairos.”

Welcome to SoulTending.com a blog that explores how to embody, connect to and tend to the soul within oneself and everything that exists.

SoulTending.com is a place where we can gather and reconnect to what it means to be tending soul(s) in the fast paced, industrial, technological and ever changing world we live in.

Where to begin? The soul is elusive, yet real. What does it taste like, look like, feel like? How can I tend something so elusive?

My mind is bothered; peace, peace. If the mind is in fact an empty vessel, what do I fill it with? Being drawn to something, knowing what it is. Creating the space for it to grow. Creating a supportive environment to grow in. All these are things a gardener does.

One of my favorite sayings is: “Have time to smell the roses.” Whenever I am confused about how to tend to the chaotic life, I spend time in a nature garden. I weed, fertilize or start something from seed. Soul tending is very similar to caring for a plant. The seeds you plant matter, the soil matters.