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Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

 Sometimes we’re angry but forget why. We may not be sure of the real reason for our anger, but our gut feeling says our anger is justified and we hold on to it. We start to think of justifications for our anger: the time our friend forgot to call, insulted the family dog, was late for the movies, never picks up checks, and constantly complains. Suddenly, we have lots of reasons to be angry. The list is endless. That cheers us up, and our busy minds are satisfied for a moment.

Whether it’s anger or passion or just our “to do” list, the mind always seems to be actively involved with something. One instant, it runs outward toward something it sees and wants, the next moment, it retreats inward toward some engrossing thought. Then it’s back to our friend and the anger that’s becoming so familiar. Our minds are always busy keeping track of this and that in our inner and outer worlds. It’s like having a job and a family — between the two, there’s hardly any break. One thought leads to another, and that thought leads to a third. At some point, we lose track and can’t remember how we got to where we are. When the mind goes around and around like this, it’s like water that’s stirred up all the time. It never has a chance to settle and become calm and clear. You can even have trouble sleeping because your mind is not at rest.

If you know your mind is busy and full of thoughts, then that’s actually not too bad. But often that’s not the case. Sometimes we’re juggling five or six trains of thought and the emotions attached to them. With so much going on, the mind starts to get agitated and confused. We can’t see clearly how disturbed our minds have become. We also can’t see that there’s no logic to our confusion. Still, we remain very diligent and patient when it comes to holding on to our thoughts. We try to keep them all alive, to keep up the steady stream of thoughts. If the stream starts to slow down or stop, we immediately try to revive it. We even have gadgets to help us hold on to our thoughts — pocket PCs, Palm Pilots, notebooks, iPhones — so we can record anything. It’s all there: your emails, texts, schedules and shopping lists. That’s not always a bad thing, but with all this going on, it’s easy to see how our minds never get any rest.

Our problem is that this busy mind can lose its connection to its real nature. When we take time to look beneath all this activity, we discover a sense of spaciousness and awareness, peace and happiness, that doesn’t change from moment to moment. It’s always there for us. The Buddha taught that this is the actual reality of our minds. To reconnect to that reality, we need to slow down and relax — totally let go and rest our minds. Then there is the possibility of the mind clearing up, calming down, and tuning in to its basic state of peace and happiness.

So how do we rest and relax our minds? There are a number of things that can help. You can nourish and relax your body with a healthful diet and exercise, especially yoga. You can take breaks, go for walks, listen to music, and disconnect for a while from the cyber-, info-, and techno- worlds. But what can help the most is the practice of meditation where you are just watching your thoughts and resting your mind on the coming and going of your breath. This style of meditation is simple, can be practiced anywhere, and has a strong impact on our well being. Once we become comfortable with the basic technique, which is described in many places, we can take a closer look at our thoughts.

The first thing you’ll notice is how many thoughts you have, how they’re always shifting and changing, and how the mind chases after them. The practice is simply to notice when your mind wanders off and bring it back to the present, again and again. The way you come back is by letting go of the thought you’re following. Once you notice it’s there, you don’t hold on to it. Then you’ve cut the momentum of the stream of thoughts instead of encouraging it. There’s a sense of relief when you’re not being dragged around by your thoughts. It doesn’t matter whether the thoughts are positive or negative. If a good thought appears, you don’t need to improve it or rejoice in it; just let it be as it is. If a bad thought pops up, you don’t need to get upset about it or try to block or change it. You can just let it be as it is.

The way to really rest our busy minds in meditation is to let go of all thoughts about our thoughts. We can simply relax as our thoughts come and go. The more relaxed we become, the more we can see the mind’s spacious, wakeful quality, which we’ve been more or less blind to. When we see this, we are seeing what the Buddha called our “enlightened potential,” which everybody has.

What this means is that we can find our own happiness and peace of mind just as we are in this very moment, because it is within us. We don’t have to change our thoughts or change ourselves into someone else. We don’t need to think that who we are, this “me,” is not good enough, smart enough, or lucky enough to be happy. We don’t need to be Mother Theresa, Bill Gates or the people in the Vogue magazine ads to be happy. If we think we do, we don’t have to chase after that thought. We can just let it go like any other, and rest our busy mind.

© 2010 Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

 Author Bio
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche is a widely celebrated teacher known for his skill in making the full richness of Buddhist wisdom accessible to modern minds. A lover of urban culture, Rinpoche enjoys writing poetry and creating art of various kinds in his leisure time. Based in the United States for the past 20 years, he devotes much of his energy to his vision of a genuine American, and Western, Buddhism, free from the cultural trappings that sometimes distort the Buddha’s essential message of wakefulness. Born in 1965 in northeast India, Rinpoche received comprehensive training in the meditative and intellectual disciplines of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism under the guidance of many of the greatest masters from Tibet’s final pre-exile generation. Among the many organizational roles he juggles, he is the founder and principal teacher of Nalandabodhi, an international network of Buddhist practice centers. His latest book is Rebel Buddha (Shambhala Publications) forthcoming in November 2010. For more information please visit Rinpoche on Facebook, Twitter and his Website.

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 If we want to be free of the pain we inflict on ourselves and each other — in other words, if we want to be happy — then we have to learn to think for ourselves. We need to be responsible for ourselves and examine anything that claims to be the truth. That’s what the Buddha did long ago to free himself from his own discontent and persistent doubts about what he heard, day after day, from his parents, teachers, and the palace priests. Although he was a prince born into a wealthy and powerful family, the young Siddhartha often just wanted to get away from it all. He wanted the space to think independently about who he was and what the spiritual path was about. Such freethinking was important to the Buddha’s search for inner truth and his ultimate realization of enlightenment. These days more and more people in the West are following the teachings and example of the Buddha. But what are these teachings about? What is Buddhism?

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

It looks like a religion, but is it? There are many definitions of religion. Some are so broad they’d include your neighborhood garden club. Others are narrower: your garden club would need a deity, enthusiasm for that deity, and a set of beliefs and practices. We all have some sense of what religion means to us, but when we start talking about it — trouble!

If you search “world religions,” you’ll find “Buddhism” on every list. Does that make Buddhism a religion? Does it mean that because I’m a Buddhist, I’m “religious”? I can argue that Buddhism is a science of mind — a way of exploring how we think, feel and act that leads us to profound truths about who we are. I can also say that Buddhism is a philosophy of life — a way to live that maximizes our chances for happiness.

What Buddhism is, at this point, is certainly out of the Buddha’s hands. His teachings passed into the hands of his followers thousands of years ago. They passed from wandering beggars to monastic institutions, from the illiterate to the learned, from the esoteric East to the outspoken West. In its travels, Buddhism has been many things to many people. But what did the Buddha intend when he taught?

Buddha

At the start of his own spiritual quest, Prince Siddhartha left his royal home, along with its many luxuries and privileges. He was determined to find answers to life’s most perplexing questions. Are we born into the world just to suffer, grow old, and die? What’s going on — what’s the meaning of it all? After years of experimenting with different forms of religious practice, he abandoned his austerities and all his concepts about his spiritual journey — all the beliefs and doctrines that had led him to where he was. At the end of that journey, with only an open and curious mind, he discovered what he was looking for — the great mind of enlightenment. He woke up from all confusion. He saw beyond all belief systems to the profound reality of the mind itself — a state of clear awareness and supreme happiness. Along with that knowledge came an understanding of how to lead a meaningful and compassionate life. For the next forty-five years, he taught how to work with the mind: how to look at it, how to free it from misunderstandings, and how to realize the greatness of its potential.

Those teachings today still describe a deeply personal inner journey that’s spiritual, yes, but not religious. The Buddha wasn’t a god — he wasn’t even a Buddhist. You’re not required to have more faith in the Buddha than you do in yourself. His power lies in his teachings, which show us how to work with our minds to realize our full capacity for wakefulness and happiness. These teachings can help us satisfy our search for the truth — our need to know who and what we really are.

Where do we find this truth? Although we can rely to some degree on the wisdom we find in books and on the advice of respected spiritual authorities, that’s only the beginning. The journey to genuine truth begins when you discover a true question — one that comes from the heart — from your own life and experience. That question will lead to an answer that will lead to another question, and so on. That’s how it goes on the spiritual path.

We start by bringing an open, inquisitive, and skeptical mind to whatever we hear, read, or see that presents itself as the truth. We examine it with reason and we put it to the test in meditation and in our lives. As we gain insight into the workings of the mind, we learn how to recognize and deal with our day-to-day experiences of thoughts and emotions. We uncover inaccurate and unhelpful habits of thinking and begin to correct them. Eventually we’re able to overcome the confusion that makes it so hard to see the mind’s naturally brilliant awareness. In this sense, the Buddha’s teachings are a method of investigation, or a science of mind.

Religion, on the other hand, often provides us with answers to life’s big questions from the start. We don’t have to think about it too much. We learn what to think and believe and our job is to live up to that, not to question it. If we relate to the Buddha’s teachings as final answers that don’t need to be examined, then we’re practicing Buddhism as a religion.

In any case, we still have to live our lives and face up to how we’re going to do it. We can’t escape having a “philosophy of life,” because we’re challenged every day to choose one action over another — kindness or indifference, generosity or selfishness, patience or blame. When our decisions and actions reflect the knowledge we’ve gained by working with our minds, that’s adopting Buddhism as a way of life.

As the teachings of the Buddha reach us and pass into our Western hands, what determines what they will be for us? It’s all in how we use them. As long as they help to clear up our confusion and inspire confidence that we can fulfill our potential, then they’re doing the job that the Buddha intended.

We can use all the help we can get, because strange as it seems, we hang onto to our confusion. We cling to it because we think it shields us from something. But like wearing sunglasses day and night, we are only avoiding looking at who we truly are. We prefer to wear our “shades,” simply because we’re not used to the bright light of our minds. The teachings of the Buddha — no matter how we label them — show us how to open our eyes to that brilliance.

 

 Author Bio

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche is a widely celebrated teacher known for his skill in making the full richness of Buddhist wisdom accessible to modern minds. A lover of urban culture, Rinpoche enjoys writing poetry and creating art of various kinds in his leisure time. Based in the United States for the past 20 years, he devotes much of his energy to his vision of a genuine American, and Western, Buddhism, free from the cultural trappings that sometimes distort the Buddha’s essential message of wakefulness. Born in 1965 in northeast India, Rinpoche received comprehensive training in the meditative and intellectual disciplines of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism under the guidance of many of the greatest masters from Tibet’s final pre-exile generation. Among the many organizational roles he juggles, he is the founder and principal teacher of Nalandabodhi, an international network of Buddhist practice centers. His latest book is Rebel Buddha (Shambhala Publications) forthcoming in November 2010. For more information please visit Rinpoche on Facebook, Twitter and his Website.

 

 

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The following is an excerpt from the book Body Intelligence: Lose Weight, Keep It Off, and Feel Great About Your Body Without Dieting
by Edward Abramson, Ph.D.
Published by McGraw-Hill; July 2005;$21.95US/$28.95CAN; 0-07-144206-5
Copyright © 2005 Edward Abramson, Ph.D.

Eating Rituals

Eating because it is mealtime is not the only example of habits determining food consumption. Eating rituals may develop in certain situations regardless of the time of day. When you go to the movies, do you buy popcorn before taking your seat? Would it feel a little strange to watch the movie without nibbling on something? If this is one of your eating rituals, it doesn’t make any difference if you’re going to a matinee or an evening show, or if you had a meal right before the movie started. Whatever the circumstances, you will have the popcorn. Popcorn at movies, hot dogs and beer at baseball games, coffee and doughnuts at the morning work break, and milk and cookies after school are a few of the common eating rituals. In addition, most people develop their own, unique eating rituals.

Charles, a forty-five-year-old pharmaceutical salesman, was required to make a 200-mile trip every other week to call on doctors in a town at the far edge of his territory. He dreaded the long drive, especially the hour and a half he had to spend on a lengthy stretch of desolate interstate. After several months, a new Wendy’s opened at about the halfway point in the journey. Charles stopped for a chocolate Frosty one day, and he was hooked. It didn’t make any difference if he was traveling at 10:00 a.m., 4:30 p.m., or 8:00 p.m. If he had a meal before leaving, the Frosty was his dessert. If he was going to eat when he arrived, it was an appetizer. Regardless of the time of day, or the amount of time that had elapsed since his last meal, every trip included a stop for the Frosty.

Katherine, a thirty-seven-year-old social worker, would come home from work and have dinner with her family. As soon as the dishes were done, she would make herself a huge bowl of popcorn, grab a bunch of grapes (when in season), and get into bed and watch the soap operas she had prerecorded. If popcorn and grapes were not available, she would search the pantry to find another food she could eat while watching her soaps. The taste of the food wasn’t as important as the eating-while-watching ritual.

Think about your own routines:

• Can you find examples of eating that occur in a specific situation regardless of your physical hunger or the time of day?
• Do you need a snack when watching television?
• Is there a task that you routinely perform that is followed by a treat?
• Do you reward yourself with a treat when you get home from work??

The sidebar, Changing the Ritual, offers some suggestions.

Katherine, the popcorn-eating, soap-opera watcher, rarely paid attention to the sensations of eating popcorn since she was usually involved in her soap opera. It was just a mindless activity that kept her hands busy. To give up this eating ritual, Katherine took up crocheting while watching her soaps. She left the yarn and needles on top of the television so she could grab them before getting into bed. Charles, the Frosty-loving pharmaceutical salesman, prepared a snack before his trip and then stopped at a rest area two exits before the Wendy’s. When the weather cooperated, he broke up his drive by taking a little walk and having his snack.

CHANGING THE RITUAL

Identify one of your frequent eating rituals. This is a type of eating that is not motivated by hunger or mealtimes, but by a specific set of circumstances such as going to the movies or coming home from work. Visual cues may be present, but they are not necessary for some rituals. In your notebook, briefly describe your ritual.

Where does this ritual usually take place? For example, you snack while watching television in the living room, or wherever you usually watch. Write these locations in your notebook.

Plan an alternative to eating when you are in the ritual situation. In your notebook, write down some specific activities you could do instead of eating, such as knitting while watching TV, holding hands in the movies, or drinking a glass of sparkling water when you get home from work.

            Copyright © 2005 Edward Abramson, Ph.D.

The following is an excerpt from the book The Untethered Soul
by Michael A. Singer
Published by New Harbinger Publications; October 2007;$16.95US; 978-1-57224-537-2
Copyright © 2007 Michael A. Singer

Chapter 17 – Contemplating Death

It is truly a great cosmic paradox that one of the best teachers in all of life turns out to be death. No person or situation could ever teach you as much as death has to teach you. While someone could tell you that you are not your body, death shows you. While someone could remind you of the insignificance of the things that you cling to, death takes them all away in a second. While people can teach you that men and women of all races are equal and that there is no difference between the rich and the poor, death instantly makes us all the same.

The question is, are you going to wait until that last moment to let death be your teacher? The mere possibility of death has the power to teach us at any moment. A wise person realizes that at any moment they may breathe out, and the breath may not come back in. It could happen any time, in any place, and your last breath is gone. You have to learn from this. A wise being completely and totally embraces the reality, the inevitability, and the unpredictability of death.

Any time you’re having trouble with something, think of death. Let’s say you’re the jealous type, and you can’t stand anyone being close to your mate. Think about what will happen when you’re no longer here. Is it really all that romantic that your loved one should live alone with no one to care for them? If you can get past your personal issues, you’ll find that you want the person you love to be happy and to have a full and beautiful life. Since that is what you want for them, why are you bothering them now just for talking to someone?

It shouldn’t take death to challenge you to live at your highest level. Why wait until everything is taken from you before you learn to dig down deep inside yourself to reach your highest potential? A wise person affirms, “If with one breath all of this can change, then I want to live at the highest level while I’m alive. I’m going to stop bothering the people I love. I’m going to live life from the deepest part of my being.”

This is the consciousness necessary for deep and meaningful relationships. Look how callous we get with our loved ones. We take it for granted that they’re there and that they’ll continue to be there for us. What if they died? What if you died? What if you knew that this evening would be the last time you’d get to see them? Imagine that an angel comes down and tells you, “Straighten up your affairs. You will not awake from your sleep tonight. You’re coming to me.” Then you’d know that every person you see that day, you’d be seeing for the last time. How would you feel? How would you interact with them? Would you even bother with the little grudges and complaints you’ve been carrying around? How much love could you give the ones you love, knowing it would be the last time you’d get to be with them? Think about what it would be like if you lived like that every moment with everyone. Your life would be really different. You should contemplate this. Death is not a morbid thought. Death is the greatest teacher in all of life.

Take a moment to look at the things you think you need. Look at how much time and energy you put into various activities. Imagine if you knew you were going to die within a week or a month. How would that change things? How would your priorities change? How would your thoughts change? Think honestly about what you would do with your last week. What a wonderful thought to contemplate. Then ponder this question: If that’s really what you would do with your last week, what are you doing with the rest of your time? Wasting it? Throwing it away? Treating it like it’s not something precious? What are you doing with life? That is what death asks you.

Let’s say you’re living life without the thought of death, and the Angel of Death comes to you and says, “Come, it’s time to go.” You say, “But no. You’re supposed to give me a warning so I can decide what I want to do with my last week. I’m supposed to get one more week.” Do you know what Death will say to you? He’ll say, “My God! I gave you fifty-two weeks this past year alone. And look at all the other weeks I’ve given you. Why would you need one more? What did you do with all those?” If asked that, what are you going to say? How will you answer? “I wasn’t paying attention . . . I didn’t think it mattered.” That’s a pretty amazing thing to say about your life.

Death is a great teacher. But who lives with that level of awareness? It doesn’t matter what age you are; at any time you could take a breath and there may never be another. It happens all the time — to babies, to teenagers, to people in mid-life — not just to the aged. One breath and they’re gone. No one knows when their time will be. That’s not how it works.

So why not be bold enough to regularly reflect on how you would live that last week? If you were to ask this question of people who are truly awakened, they wouldn’t have any problem answering you. Not a thing would change inside of them. Not a thought would cross their minds. If death were to come in an hour, if death were to come in a week, or if death were to come in a year, they would live exactly the same way as they’re living now. There is not a single thing they carry inside of their hearts that they would rather be doing. In other words, they are living their lives fully and are not making compromises or playing games with themselves.

You have to be willing to look at what it would be like if death was staring you in the face. Then you have to come to peace within yourself so that it doesn’t make any difference whether it is or not. There is a story of a great yogi who said that every moment of his life he felt as though a sword were suspended above his head by a spiderweb. He lived his life with the awareness that he was that close to death. You are that close to death. Every time you get in the car, every time you walk across the street, and every time you eat something, it could be the last thing you do. Do you realize that what you’re doing at any moment is something that someone was doing when they died? “He died eating dinner . . . He died in a car accident, two miles from his home . . . She died in a plane wreck on a trip to New York . . . He went to bed and never woke up . . .” At some point, this is how it happened to somebody. No matter what you’re doing, you can be sure somebody died that way.

You must not be afraid to discuss death. Don’t get upright about it. Instead, let this knowledge help you to live every moment of your life fully, because every moment matters. Thar’s what happens when somebody knows they only have a week left. You can be certain that they would tell you that the most important week they ever had was that last week. Everything is a million times more meaningful in that final week. What if you were to live every week that way?

Copyright © 2007 Reprinted with permission by New Harbinger Publications, Inc. From the book Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer http://www.newharbinger.com/productdetails.cfm?SKU=5372

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By Tal Ben Shahar,
Author of The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life

“I am a human being: nothing human is foreign to me.”
-Terentius

It was when I welcomed unhappiness, that I became happier. My most significant psychological breakthrough came when I realized, truly internalized the notion, that it was OK for me to be sad, that there was nothing wrong with feeling dispirited, stressed, lonely, or anxious — that it was just fine to be human. Allowing myself to freely experience negative emotions did not only weaken these sentiments, it also intensified the positive ones.

Acceptance is a prerequisite for a healthy emotional life. When we accept ourselves, when we welcome everything that is human about us, we open up a space within which we can act, and feel. If we repress an emotional reaction and refuse to accept it — whether anger or disappointment or joy — we create a knot in the channels that make up our emotional system. The same system is used for the flow of all emotions — positive and negative — and if we block the flow of one emotion it affects our ability to experience other emotions. For example, if I do not accept my agitation after having made a mistake I will hinder my ability to experience joy when something good happens to me.

At the onset of negative emotions we have a choice — to stifle and reject or to accept and experience. What we choose to do at that moment affects our emotional life in general because the emotional system as a whole is affected. Closing off the emotional valve to the flow of negative emotions inevitably restricts future flow of positive emotions. We cannot eat the cake (deny the free flow of negative emotions) and leave it whole (enjoy the free flow of positive emotions). Pain and joy are two sides of the same coin and there is a symmetry between our capacity to experience one and the other. In the words of psychologist Abraham Maslow: “By protecting himself against the hell within himself, he also cuts himself off from the heaven within.”

We can’t have it both ways — stifling negative emotions while expecting a free flow of positive ones. We have to choose whether or not to allow ourselves to fully experience our humanity — its sorrows, at times, but also its joys.

To accept ourselves is not necessarily to like what we did or to approve of it, but rather to forgive ourselves. To forgive, in Sanskrit, is to untie — when we forgive we untie an emotional knot and unclog the emotional system. And it is when we allow our emotions to flow freely — when we experience the lows and the highs, the pain and the pleasure, the sorrows and joys — that we are, as we can and ought to be, fully human.
 

©2009 Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D, author of The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life

Author Bio
Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D., author of The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life, is the New York Times bestselling author of Happier. He taught one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history, and he currently consults and lectures around the world to multinational organizations, the general public, and at-risk populations. He obtained his Ph.D. in organizations behavior and his B.A. in philosophy and psychology from Harvard.

For more information, visit www.talbenshahar.com

The following is an excerpt from the book Life Lessons for My Sisters: How to Make Wise Choices and Live a Life You Love!
by Natasha Munson
Published by Hyperion; May 2005; $11.95US/$15.95CAN; 1-4013-0805-8
Copyright © 2005 Natasha Munson

By Paul C. Holinger, M.D., M.P.H., author of What Babies Say Before They Can Talk

Human beings appear to have approximately nine built-in feelings at birth. These findings are based on the work of researchers such as Darwin, Demos, Ekman, Izard, Nathanson, and, especially, Tomkins. These feelings later combine with each other and experience to form our complex emotional life. Understanding these feelings and how they work can make a world of difference for you and your baby.

The two positive feelings are interest and enjoyment; the feeling which resets the nervous system and gets it ready for other stimuli is called surprise; and the six negative feelings are distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust (a reaction to bad taste) and dissmell (a reaction to bad odors). Each of these feelings is signaled by a specific facial expression in your baby. These facial expressions provide the signals which help you understand what your baby is feeling. These nine feelings operate on a scale from low to high: interest-to-excitement, enjoyment-to-joy, surprise-to-startle, distress-to-anguish, anger-to-rage, fear-to-terror, shame-to-humiliation, and varying levels of disgust and dissmell.

There are some easy ways to use this information productively for you and your child. We call it the five keys in infant and child development. These keys can help enhance potential and prevent problems.

Key #1 – Allow the Full, Reasonable Expression of All Feelings
Allowing – and encouraging – the expression of these feelings is one of the most important aspects of establishing good communication with your child and nurturing healthy emotional development. By encouraging the baby’s interest, you learn what your baby has passion for. Interest – or curiosity – is at the root of all our exploratory, learning, discovering processes. Understanding where his/her passions and interests lie will enable your child later to make decisions about education, career, and spouse much easier with much more self-awareness.

We also want the child to express the so-called negative feelings – distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust, and dissmell. These signals are like an S.O.S. They tell us when a baby or child – or adult – is in trouble and needs help. If we somehow tell the baby or child not to express these feelings, the feelings will get bottled up and cause mischief inside, possibly resulting in a chronic sense of being misunderstood, not heard, not being able to trust the environment, angry, and despairing.

Key #2– Maximize the Signals of Interest and Enjoyment
It is especially helpful to recognize and support a child’s interest. In this way, you learn about your child, and your child learns about herself. Supporting a child’s curiosity enhances his/her exploratory and learning activities. Even if the child is interested in doing something disruptive – like noisily pulling out pots and pans and playing with them – there is usually a way to redirect the behavior to fit the child’s interest and the parent’s sanity. Remember, a child’s “misbehavior” may simply be the interest feeling at work.

Key #3 – Remove the Triggers for the Negative Feelings
The negative signals – distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust, dissmell – are simply S.O.S. cries that something is wrong… “please help!” By responding reasonably to these signals, you show your baby you understand him/her and that help is near at hand. This enhances tension-regulation. The major triggers of the negative signals in babies are hunger, fatigue, and pain (e.g., dirty diaper, illness, etc.).

Key #4 – Use Words, Even with Newborns, to Express Signals
By using words early to label feelings, you give your child a head start on the important process of putting words to action. This allows for greater awareness and thoughtfulness and decreases impulsivity. “That car horn surprised you, didn’t it?” “You are angry, aren’t you?” “You sure are interested in this.”

Key #5 – “Be Aware Your Child’s Desire to Be Like You”
Infants and young children are eager to be like Mom and Dad. This is a powerful tool in helping your child with tension regulation and polite conduct. Speaking and acting calmly, putting feelings into words, not hitting or spanking under any condition, saying “thank you,” “please” and “I apologize” to your child – all this will result in your child following your lead.

These are the five keys of infant and child development. They are based on the nine signals. These easy keys will help enhance your child’s potential and prevent problems.

Copyright ©2005 Paul C. Holinger, M.D.

Author:
Paul C. Holinger, M.D., M.P.H., is the author of What Babies Say Before They Can Talk (Published by Fireside/Simon & Schuster; August 2003; $14.00US/$22.00CAN; 0-7434-0667-2) Dr. Holinger is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who has been working with children and adults for the last twenty-five years. He is Professor of Psychiatry at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center and is Training and Supervising Analyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. He earned a Masters of Public Health from Harvard University School of Public Health and has held fellowships in both Psychiatric and Psychosocial Epidemiology. He is a reviewer for the American Journal of Psychiatry, Pediatrics, Psychoanalytical Psychology, along with the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, to name a few. Dr. Holinger resides in the Chicago, IL area.

For more information, please visit the author’s Web site www.paulcholinger.com

By Ed and Deb Shapiro,
Authors of Be the Change: How Meditation Can Transform You and the World

Meditation is now the IN thing. Cross-legged yogis and Buddhist monks can be seen in advertisements for everything from computers and credit cards to herbal teas, major newspapers and magazines carry stories on the benefits of meditation with tips from famous film stars, and no self-respecting bookshop is without a how-to-meditate section.

It is only in the last few decades that the general population has begun to realize how valuable the practice of meditation really is, regardless of spiritual or religious interests. Yet meditation has been the main focus of spiritual practice for thousands of years. You do not have to be a hippie or on a spiritual quest to meditate: we have taught everyone from housewives to athletes and musicians, and therapists to CEOs, in town halls, high school gymnasiums, corporate boardrooms, and on our own TV series in London.

However, if meditation is so available and as well known as it seems to be, why is it not already an integral part of everyone’s lives? If health reports are saying how good it is as a way to cope with stress, why do we ignore it or find excuses not to do it? And why do we think of something as a waste of time when all the research tells us it is of such immense value?

Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” In other words, change has to start within ourselves; we cannot expect the world to change if we do not. If we want to have more love in our lives, we must become more loving; if we genuinely want to end terrorism and to bring real and peaceful change to the world, then we must start by ending the war within ourselves.

This brings us to the importance of contemplation and meditation. Without such a practice of self-reflection, we are subject to our ego’s every whim, and we have no way of putting a brake on its demands. Meditation, on the other hand, gives us the space to see ourselves clearly and objectively, a place from which we can witness our own behavior and reduce the ego’s influence. We get to know the madness of our monkey mind and until it loses its hold. Only then do we have a genuine opportunity to change.

Through the practice of meditation we find that the more positive aspects of ourselves are enhanced while the more self-centered aspects begin to naturally fade away. As the need to be constantly engaged in the details of our own story loses its relevance, so the ego releases its grip and becomes less demanding. This does not mean that we become just like a doormat and let people walk all over us. Rather, we become more confident, are able to communicate more openly and honestly, and to love more unconditionally.

In this way meditation enables us to change. From being self-centered, we become other-centered, concerned about the welfare of all equally, rather than being focused on just ourselves. We become more acutely aware of how we affect the planet, how we treat each other and our world, and seek to become a positive presence rather than a passive or negative one. As we find our own peace, we want to actively help others to also be at peace. When we find our peace there is one less person suffering!

We were in India in 1986 when we first met the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political leader of Tibet, and probably the world’s most famous meditator. We were waiting for our meeting in a room that led off a balcony at his residence, beyond which rose the Himalayas resplendent in the morning sunshine. Ed wandered outside to enjoy the view. He saw a monk further along the balcony waving for us to come. We presumed this monk would bring us to our meeting. But as we came closer, we realized that this simple and unpretentious man was the Dalai Lama himself. We immediately began to prostrate, as this is the respected way of greeting such a revered teacher. But the Dalai Lama took our hands and made us stand, saying, “No, no. We are all equal here.” It was easy to think, “Oh sure! You are the great Dalai Lama, spiritual leader to millions, and we are just mere mortals. How can we possibly be equal?” But over the following months, we both experienced the true equality he was referring to — the equality of our shared humanness and, simultaneously, our shared heart.

A Compassionate Revolution

A revolution is a re-evolution, where we take a higher step in the evolution of consciousness; it is also a revolving, a turning around of ourselves in response to an inner calling. To be the change and make a real difference in the world means we need a revolution — a compassionate revolution. This is the turning of our energy from being focused on self-centeredness, self-survival, and closed-heartedness to concern for others, generosity, and open-heartedness. If we genuinely want to end war, inequality, and abuse, then we have to practice ahimsa and kindness toward all equally, for there will never be peace in the world if we are not at peace within ourselves.

To activate a compassionate revolution is to enter into an exploration of all aspects of our humanness so that we can live sanely in a world that often looks insane, riddled with affliction and conflict. So much hurt and denial, abuse and disrespect, so many atrocities have taken place in the name of religion and politics, or through greed and selfishness, so many misunderstandings between families, races, and countries.

As the Tibetan teacher Mingyur Rinpoche says, “Who makes problems? We humans. And who is the controller of the human? The mind. And how to control the human mind? Through meditation. If you can control the pilot, then the pilot can control the plane.”

Meditation can do this because it brings us to a place of clear and caring responsiveness. It is that rare activity that can ease suffering while also giving us the awareness and spiritual intelligence to move beyond the self-centeredness and self-destruction that cause suffering. It removes the obstacles in our mind that prevent us from seeing things as they really are, freeing us to become kinder and more compassionate. In other words, it awakens our full human potential. And, as we are transformed, so the world will also transform.

©2009 Ed and Deb Shapiro, authors of Be the Change: How Meditation Can Transform You and the World

Published here with permission of the publisher.

Author Bios
Ed and Deb Shapiro, authors of Be the Change: How Meditation Can Transform You and the World, are the award-winning authors of fifteen books on meditation, personal development, and social action. They are featured bloggers for the HuffingtonPost.com and for Care2.com, teach meditation workshops worldwide, work as corporate coaches and consultants, and are the creators and writers of the daily Chill Our inspirational text messages on Sprint cell phones. The Shapiros’ books include Your Body Speaks Your Mind, winner of the 2007 Visionary Book Award;Voices From the Heart with contributors such as President Gorbachev, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Bishop Tutu; and Meditation: The Four-Step Course to Calmness and Clarity. Ed, from New York, trained in India with Paramahamsa Satyananda, with Sri Swami Satchidananda, and with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Deb, from London, trained with Tai Situ Rinpoche. The Shapiros have taught meditation and personal development for more than twenty-five years. They currently reside in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information please visit www.EdandDebShapiro.com

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Beliefs take root in our minds. Beliefs effect our feelings. Feelings often dictate the choices that we make. What we believe also impacts the actions that we take or fail to take. Sean Stephenson has written a very informative and educationally inspirational book, “Get Off Your “But”. This book challenges the reader in a gentle but firm and very honest way to take a look at his or her “buts” and to come to the realization of how those “buts” are effecting his or her beliefs in ways that may be causing pain and/or limiting one’s achieving of his or her potential in life along with goals and dreams. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about him or herself. — A.J. Mahari

How Beliefs Take Root in Our Mind
by Sean Stephenson,
Author of Get Off Your “But”: How to End Self-Sabotage and Stand Up for Yourself

GET OFF YOUR BUT NOW Make a “Get Off Your BUT” Personal Inventory

• Men are __________.
• Women are __________.
• My body is __________.
• My career is __________.
• My future looks __________.
• My partner is __________.
• I’m good at __________.
• I’m lousy at __________.
• People think I am __________.
• When I am under pressure, I __________.
• The world is __________.
• What I love about people is __________.
• What I hate about people is __________.
• My heart is __________.
• Marriage is __________.
• Love is __________.
• Exercise is __________.
• Work is __________.
• Life is __________.

The above is an excerpt from the book Get Off Your “But”: How to End Self-Sabotage and Stand Up for Yourself by Sean Stephenson. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Excerpted from Get Off Your ?But? by Sean Stephenson. Copyright © 2009 by Sean Stephenson. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Author Bio

Sean Clinch Stephenson, author of Get Off Your “But”: How to End Self-Sabotage and Stand Up for Yourself, is one of the leading authorities on the deconstruction of self-sabotage (what he calls getting people off their BUTs). A psychotherapist and
internationally known professional speaker, he publishes the international men’s online magazine InnerGameMagazine.com and has a private psychotherapy practice.

The speed of life can’t be stopped but it can be understood and leveraged in a positive way.  It is a fact that knowledge and information have always been a cornerstone of power, influence and achievement!  However, the speed of life generates so much information it creates distractions that unwittingly lead people into well-intentioned busyness.  It is a form of busyness that marginalizes results.  The solution is to identify and deploy high leverage activities that harness the right information at the right time and focus on action that will move the results needle!

The only thing certain about the speed of life is uncertainty.  It is impossible to accurately forecast future conditions over a long period of time and an  approach based on the principle of ‘going as far as you can see — so that you can see farther’  is needed.  Such a strategy is created by concentrating on the three strategic issues that matter most:  Clarity,
Focus, and Execution.

CLARITY

If you have no cohesive vision there is little chance of achieving sustained success in a bad economy.  Think about this:  Most organizations have adopted vision and mission statements; however, many within those organizations find it difficult to articulate the vision or mission, without reading it.  This condition is typical and may be evidence that there is no real  clarity about the vision and how to achieve it.  Unless there is clarity regarding a vision — there is no
vision!

When businesses have clarity concerning their vision it lives!  It also creates zeal and passion for the commitment and
determination needed to execute the vision.  The vision itself becomes able to pull everyone forward.  The pulling effect is created because clarity impacts people at the level of belief and produces voluntary change in attitudes and behavior.

Clarity is achieved when we have an unfettered view of our vision and understand what we really want, why we want it, the value of doing it and the highest purpose for doing it!

FOCUS

Focus is the opposite of distraction!  At the speed of life,  success hinges on the ability to cut through the clutter and focus on the high leverage activities that directly impact results.  Focus is not something that comes naturally for most people, and that is why it is a skill that must be learned, polished, and practiced. Specifically, focus is a thinking skill that is acquired as a result of mental discipline.

Because the human mind serves as a connector of facts and information, fresh input is the raw material of creativity,
opportunity recognition and problem solving.  The mind is always hungry for new information because it stimulates thought and is fulfilling.  Unfortunately, basic process of thinking provides the opportunity for distraction.  Distraction is always the path of least resistance and the most natural activity for the mind to embrace.  The speed of life offers up scores of opportunities each day that lure us into distractions that gobble time.

Between today’s conditions and tomorrows hope is a gap that must be crossed.  In that gap is every goal, objective and action step that must be taken to be successful. Achieving focus is a matter of identifying the high-leverage activities
in the gap that powerfully impact results and developing the mental skills to insure they receive the time they deserve.

EXECUTION

The ability to persuade others has a direct impact on achieving superior results, faster, which is what the speed of life demands.   As we gain clarity and develop our focusing skills, the need to concentrate on high-leverage activities becomes paramount.  However, identifying and focusing on those activities is only the beginning.  Once our high-leverage activities are known the challenge of actually doing them becomes the issue.  People must be persuaded to focus on these activities and to act quickly!  This always involves exceeding expectations.

There is more to exceeding expectations than adopting the idea as a strategy.  Exceeding expectations has its greatest impact when it is adopted by individuals as a way of life.  When you have a group of people who are willing to exceed expectations in the normal course of their daily activity a powerful force for superior results is created.

People in businesses and organizations are persuaded to exceed expectations based on the positive strategic presence of their leadership team. Leaders create images of influence in the minds of those they lead and those images define the organizational perception of leadership.    It is this overall persona that creates what I call Strategic Presence.  Leaders are constantly creating positive and negative Strategic Presence based on their values and their behavior.   The most important fact about Strategic Presence is that it produces two possible reactions in others.  It either produces voluntary cooperation or it produces various forms of resistance.  If the Strategic Presence of leadership is highly positive, people will be more likely to support the vision of leadership.  If the Strategic Presence of leadership is negative, people will not be willing to exceed expectations.  They may actually try to undermine the goals of leadership!

The key to persuasion is Strategic Presence and the ability to communicate strategically is the foundation for both. Organizations frequently treat communication as a collection of skills, or just another training or coaching objective. This idea represents a tactical approach to communication. If execution can be seen as a train rolling down a track to a predetermined destination, communication is the engine that powers the train!  If you can’t communicate effectively you will not execute effectively.

©2008 Tony Jeary, author of Strategic Acceleration Succeed at the Speed of Life

Author:

Tony Jeary is the author of Strategic Acceleration: Succeed at the Speed of Life, has been and continues to be the coach to the world’s top CEOs and high achievers for more than 20 years. His clients include the Presidents of Wal-Mart, Firestone, Shell, Samsung, New York Life, and the United States Senate, to name only a few. An advisor to many, Tony Jeary has invested his life and career in helping others discover new clarity for their vision, develop focus on direction, and create powerful execution strategies that strategically impact achievement and results. Tony is happily married and blessed with 2 great daughters.

Learn more about Strategic Acceleration at www.strategicacceleration.com
Visit Tony Jeary at www.tonyjeary.com

Re-printed here with full permission.

In the latest (Nov-Dec 2008) issue of Psychology Today Scott Barry Kaufman critically examined the development of ability and the components of success with a focus on the late bloomer. Citing the inspiring example of Joshua Waitzkin, chess champion and an accomplished martial arts world champion in Tai Chi Chaun, Kaufman interviews Waitzkin about his experience and success. – A.J. Mahari

In the latest (Nov-Dec) issue of Psychology Today I critically examined the development of ability, the components of success, and the potential benefits of early delays (read article here). I mention different types of late bloomers. Sure, there is the classic late bloomer like Grandma Moses. But there are other types of late bloomers, such as the late-recognized bloomer, and the repeat bloomer.

Joshua Waitzkin is a unique example of the repeat bloomer. In 1993, Paramount Pictures released Searching for Bobby Fischer, which depicts Waitzkin’s early chess success as he embarks on a journey to win his first National chess championship. This movie had the effect of weakening his love for the game as well as the learning process. His passion for learning was rejuvenated, however, after years of meditation, and reading philosophy and psychology. With this rekindling of the learning process, Waitzkin took up the martial art Tai Chi Chuan at the age of 21 and made rapid progress, winning the 2004 push hands world championship at the age of 27. Compared to others in the field, this makes him a late bloomer in Tai Chi Chuan. What a transition–from child prodigy to late bloomer! Even though he may be thought of as a “late bloomer” in Tai Chi Chuan, he clearly didn’t bloom late.

After reading Joshua’s most recent book The Art of Learning, I thought of a million topics I wanted to discuss with him–topics such as being labelled a “child prodigy”, blooming, creativity, and the learning process. Thankfully, since I was profiling Waitzkin for my article I was fortunate enough to get a chance to have such a conversation with him. I hope you find this discussion just as provocative and illuminating as I did.

The Child Prodigy

S. Why did you leave chess at the top of your game?

J. This is a complicated question that I wrote about very openly in my book. In short, I had lost the love. My relationship to the game had become externalized-by pressures from the film about my life, by losing touch with my natural voice as an artist, by mistakes I made in the growth process. At the very core of my relationship to learning is the idea that we should be as organic as possible. We need to cultivate a deeply refined introspective sense, and build our relationship to learning around our nuance of character. I stopped doing this and fell into crisis from a sense of alienation from an art I had loved so deeply. This is when I left chess behind, started meditating, studying philosophy and psychology, and ultimately moved towards Tai Chi Chuan.

S. Do you think being a child prodigy hurt your chess career in any way?

J. I have never considered myself a prodigy. Others have used that term, but I never bought in to it. From a young age it was always about embracing the battle, loving the game, and overcoming adversity. Growing up as a competitor in Washington Square Park helped me avoid the perils of perfectionism-it was a school of hard knocks, and those guys always kept me on my toes for complacency. On this theme, I think losing my first National Chess Championship was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, because it helped me avoid many of the psychological traps you are hinting at. That year, between ages 8 and 9 was one of the most formative periods of my life. I had felt my mortality, came back strong, and went on to dominate the scholastic chess scene over the next 8 years. On some fundamental level, the notion of success in my being was defined by overcoming adversity-and it still is.

The truth is that throughout my careers in both chess and the martial arts, I often knew that my rivals were more naturally gifted than me-either with their mental machines or their bodies. But I have believed in my training, my approach to learning, and my ability to rise to the challenge under pressure.

S. In general, do you see any disadvantages to being labeled a child prodigy?

J. Yes, there are huge disadvantages if you buy into the label. The most perilous danger, in the language of Carol Dweck, is that we internalize an entity theory of intelligence. The moment we believe that success is determined by an ingrained level of ability as opposed to resilience and hard work, we will be brittle in the face of adversity. For that reason, it is incredibly important for parents to make their feedback process related as opposed to praising or criticizing talent. Think about it-if you tell a kid that she is a winner, which a lot of well-intentioned parents do, then she learns that her winning is because of something ingrained in her. But if we win because we are a winner, then when we lose it must make us a loser.

S. If the movie of your life hadn’t been made, do you think you’d still be continuing on in chess?

J. That’s a great question. My mother would say no. I hope she is right but I’m not sure. I really loved the game so deeply, and it was a wildly intense, exciting, and spiritually rewarding process. The movie definitely had a large role in the existential crisis that locked me up and moved me away from chess. But that period of transition taught me some incredibly valuable life lessons that have defined my growth in other arenas-so just to be clear, although it caused me some pain, I would never take back that experience. My hunch is that I would have stayed in chess for much longer and would have gone much further-but I think ultimately I would have felt like a lion in a cage sitting at a chessboard my whole life.

S. Do you think if you took up chess at a later age, you could have been a world champion in chess?

J. I have no idea.

S.
Do you think you will ever return to chess? And if you do, do you think you are still capable of being the world champion? Or have you missed your boat?

J. I don’t think I will ever go back to competitive chess. I’m on to new mountains. Since winning the 2004 Tai Chi Push Hands Worlds, which is where my book ends, I decided to be a beginner again, and took up the martial art Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, a fiercely competitive and physically brutal sport. I am training full time and aiming for the 2010 and 11 World Championships-the biggest challenge of my life. I’ve also recently opened an educational nonprofit-the JW Foundation, www.jwfoundation.com , and am devoted to helping kids discover their shine in the learning process. My plate is pretty full beyond chess.

S. Were you a good student in school?

J. I was a cut up in classes that didn’t excite me, and I was passionate about what did.

S. Did you like learning new subjects in school? Are there any subjects you had trouble with? Or that you just didn’t like?

J. I never liked math much although I was pretty good at it. And I hated geography in 3rd grade.

On Blooming

S. What does the term “late bloomer” mean to you?

J. To be honest, I haven’t thought much about the term, but in my mind it implies that someone came into their own later in their life or process than most would consider typical for exceptional achievers. Of course this definition leaves a lot to be desired because I tend to consider the deeper aspects of the learning process to be most interesting, and they often take quite a bit of time, hard work, and suffering to penetrate.

S. Do you consider yourself a late bloomer in Tai Chi Chuan?

J. Well, I didn’t start studying Tai Chi Chuan until I was 21, so from a competitive athletic perspective, I was certainly a late starter-at a world-class level most of my rivals in Asia had trained full time since early childhood. I had a lot of ground to cover, and I did it essentially by taking my lessons learned in other arenas of life, chess to a large degree, and transferring them over into this new art. As for blooming, I’m still working on that.

S. In reading your book, it seems as though your major strength in Tai Chi Chuan is the way you put your mind into the game. You were able to beat players much stronger than you by “getting into their mind.” I find this fascinating. Why do you think you were so good at psyching people out? Was it because of your early chess experiences?

J. Sure, my chess experience taught me a lot about the psychology of competition. World-class chess players are incredibly brilliant people who have spent their lives figuring out ways to get it your head, to break you down. Usually every high level chess error is accompanied by a psychological break of sorts-to survive, you have to understand the inner game. I am always looking for where the psychological and the technical collide-that surely comes from my chess study. But frankly, I think I really got good at the psychological game after chess. Chess taught me how to be relentlessly introspective, how to unearth tells in myself and in opponents, but then I really took that foundation and put it into dynamic action in the martial arts. I work on being a heat seeking missile for dogma. If you unearth or instill a false assumption in an opponent, they are in a lot of trouble unless they feel you getting into their head and kick you out fast. Of course this eye for false constructs is an important tool in the learning process as well.

S. Do you think part of your ability to psych people out may have to do with your extraordinary intelligence compared to other players? You said something interesting in your book regarding your match with Buffalo. You say: “He was surely the greater athlete. But maybe I was the better thinker.” Is it possible that you were just smarter than Buffalo (even though he was stronger)?

J. I don’t think I have an extraordinary intelligence. Buffalo had cultivated his body his whole life, and he had that edge. I had cultivated my mind. My chance lay in making the mental game dominate a physical battle. At a high level of competition, success often hinges on who determines the field and tone of battle.

S. In your book you discuss Carol Dweck’s work on how perceptions of the fixed nature of ability can affect ability itself. I do think that Carol’s work is important and I appreciate you citing it in your book. I was wondering though: to what extent do you think so-called inborn ability determines success in learning a new craft like chess or Tai Chi Chuan?

J. I am a nurture over nature guy. While I would tend to disagree, some might argue that I was an extremely gifted chess player. Fair enough. But there is no way you could argue that I am an athlete of world-class talent. I am able to compete at the highest levels because I have cultivated an approach to learning and performance that maximizes my strengths, tackles my weaknesses through the prism of my strengths, dissolves crippling false constructs and divisive mental barriers, and allows me to express myself through my art in as unhindered a manner as possible.

S. How much do you think people can compensate for weak natural ability? It seems like a major component of your learning technique is learning how to play up your strengths, and exploit the weaknesses of others. Could you perhaps elaborate on this idea?

J. I tend to feel that there is something a bit self-destructive in believing you have to compensate for weak natural ability, because it implies that there is one ideal way to learn something and because of natural deficiencies we are forced to take a different, much longer road. On the contrary, I have found that people at the highest levels of Quality in virtually all pursuits are somewhat unusual minds-and their “brilliance” has usually evolved from working with their natural strengths. There is this terrible tendency in education to box all kids into the same mold-this is one of many problems with all these standardized tests. The paved road is often the dogmatic one (of course we cannot believe this dogmatically) and there is something wonderful about building a learning process around the uniqueness of your own inspirations.

On Learning

S. I read your book and thought to myself, “Wow, Joshua gets it. He really mastered the art of learning.” Your writing is so good and your points are so well made that it seems by reading your book that what you’ve discovered can be taught to anyone (although, as you mention, customized to each individual’s unique style). I can’t help but notice though how fast you learn things, even in comparison to others who are attempting to learn (and I assume with equal determination). To what
extent do you think raw IQ contributes to your fast learning ability? Research does show that those with a high IQ can learn nearly anything at a faster rate than others.

J. Thank you for the compliment, but my guess is that I wouldn’t have a terribly impressive IQ. And I don’t learn so fast, I just have a lot of passion and throw my heart and soul into things that move me. Learning happens to have been an art that moves me and that I have worked very hard to understand.

S. Have you ever had your IQ tested? Would you be open to me testing you sometime?

J. I haven’t. I guess I might be open to it, but I tend to find these standardized tests to be somewhat limiting. My greatest strength lies in finding hidden harmonies-discovering connections where others might see chaos or disconnect. That is a way of thinking that I have cultivated for many years. It is one that was not ingrained, and that most people could develop if they wanted to.

S. To what extent do you think your fast learning rate is due to your disciplined technique to learning?

J. I would say that the depth of my learning (and it has a long way to go) is a result of passion, hard work, an introspective honesty, and beyond all else, a love for the search.

S. How much do you think passion and devotion to learning contributed to your success?

J. It would be hard for me to overstate it.

S. In what ways did your chess skills help you with Tai Chi Chuan? What skills were transferable?

J. This is a deep question that was at the core of my inspiration for writing The Art of Learning. It will be hard to answer this quickly, but, in short, all of the skills were transferable. The two arts became one in my mind and it felt like I was transferring my sense of Quality from chess over into Tai Chi Chuan. And this had nothing to do with these
particular disciplines-they couldn’t really be more different-the translation process can be applied to anything. At the core of my relationship to learning is breaking down the barriers in our minds that divide our disparate pursuits. These walls are false constructs. If we cultivate a thematic eye, then growth in one area of life will immediately inform our other pursuits.

In truth, this is a big reason I took up Brazilian Jiu Jitsu-I am currently taking the essence of my chess and Tai Chi understanding, and transferring it over to a third art. This receptivity to thematic interconnectedness is a muscle I hope to cultivate for the rest of my life.

S. In reading your book, I wondered if you could become world-class at anything. You discovered that there are many similarities between Chess and Tai Chi Chuan. And it’s clear that your abilities are well suited to whatever is common across these two domains. But to what extent do you think you could take your insights into learning and use them to become an expert in any field?

J. This is an interesting question. I think my ideas could be applied to just about any field, and I would have a lot of confidence taking on most arts. I think there are obviously some things that we are weakest at, and it would be absurd to spend a lifetime in those arenas-in my case, anything related to neatness–that said, our strengths can be applied to disciplines that might seem as unrelated as possible. Just to be clear, I don’t think my approach has anything to do with what happens to be common ground between chess and Tai Chi Chuan. The connections were in my process, and that process, or anyone’s personalized variation of it, could be applied across the board.

S. In your book you describe a moment in your match with Buffalo where you say: “I reached deeper than I knew I had and won the most dramatic point of my life.” You then say: “I saw parts of myself I didn’t know about.” Could you please elaborate? In other words, can you demystify “reaching deeper” for me? Do you think most of us are capable of more than we realize?

J. Yes, I do-no question about it. Growth only really comes at the point of resistance, but that is the moment that we tend to stop. Because it hurts. Whether we are confronting our psychological foibles or our physiological limits, it is much easier to turn back from the challenge than to push through the discomfort. I think digging deeply into ourselves, pushing our limits, is a muscle that can be cultivated like any other–incrementally. If we embrace these outer limits of our ability as something malleable that can expand with training, and if we embrace the discomfort of these moments of growth, then we start tolove the richness of the self-discovery. The discomfort becomes exquisite. Learning becomes life.

As for that moment against Buffalo, I had lived as a competitor for over 20 years and had no idea what I could really do when pushed so far past my “limit.” Fortunately I had trained to be able to meet the challenge, even if I had no idea how big the challenge would really be. We have remarkable reservoirs.

S. What does it mean to “feel space left behind”? You use that phrase a lot in your book, but I’m honestly not 100% clear on what it really means.

J. This is an idea that applies to most disciplines. Every movement, be it mental or physical, tends to both take space and leave something behind. We are conditioned to see what something does more than what it doesn’t do. This tendency is a construct. Dogma. Training yourself to see newly created emptiness can be quite powerful.

S. In your book you say: “The only thing we can really count on is getting surprised.” Can you please elaborate a bit on this?

J. Sure. I wrote those words reflecting back on the ups and downs of my competitive careers thus far and more specifically on the 2004 World Championships, the most brutal experience of my life. I have learned that in those rare moments of truth in our lives, we have to be willing to let go of the comfort of our knowledge, our preparation, our sense of control, and we have to flow with an improvisational spirit that embraces chaos, turns adversity to our advantage, and digs into our deepest reservoirs of energy and creativity. Our relationship to the learning process, in my opinion, should be one that prepares us for that freedom under pressure-or more truly, that liberates us to live
every moment with that openness to unexpected beauty. Learning and peak performance aren’t about control or memorization or perfection-they are about something much deeper, something more essentially human.

S. What role do you think intuition and the unconscious plays in the learning process?

J. A
tremendously important one. A huge part of my process involves breaking down the walls between the conscious and unconscious minds, so technical growth sparks creative leaps, and perhaps more importantly, creative leaps can inform the direction of technical growth. The chapter entitled Slowing Down Time and the second to last chapter of my book in which I was training for the 2004 World Championships really go into my system for cultivating the intuition. Opening up communication between these different components of our minds is another muscle that we can all develop if we understand how.

S. What role do you think flow plays in the learning process?

J. It plays a critical role. People often make the mistake of dividing the learning process from performance psychology in their minds-as if they can learn for a lifetime and then perform at their level of ability whenever necessary. I believe this is short-sighted from two perspectives. One, the ability to perform under pressure is an art of its own that must be cultivated as a way of life. And perhaps more importantly, if we are not deeply present in the day to day learning process, then we will not be learning at a high level. The ability to enter a state of flow is one that should be integral to every aspect of our life in learning. And again, it is not so hard as long as we take it on systematically.

S. Do you think you’d ever consider taking up breakdancing? I have enjoyed learning how to breakdance and think you’d be quite good at it!

J. Thanks man. No breakdancing for me yet. One thing at a time.

© 2008 by Scott Barry Kaufma