Category: Possibility

See Your Thoughts, Don’t Just Be Your Thoughts

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engineerIf you want to reduce stress in your life, if you want to make your choices from a more powerful place, if you want to become more intentional, then developing this skill can be incredibly helpful.

We can live knee-jerk lives, where our response is completely based on the stimuli around us. Thoughts are borne from our reactions to stimuli and off we go, following those thoughts. Having a fear-based existence and stretches of our lives comes directly from this pattern. Many people we tend to judge are living inside this pattern, too.

When we can get to the point of just seeing our thoughts, knowing that we are not our thoughts, knowing that they are often creations of our discomfort, our histories and traumas, our conditions, we begin to develop a powerful ability to choose how we want to be. We start to see our thoughts roll by like trains and we get to decide which ones to board.

Better yet, we get to make our own trains and ride in the engineer’s seat.

Choo-choo!

May You Live to See Your Dreams Fulfilled

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babywithparentsI was blessed to be at a Bris this morning (a Jewish naming ceremony for a male child). Any healthy baby is a blessing, to be sure, and the benefit of recognizing the birth publicly, offering prayers for the life of the child and the parents helps to focus ourselves on the potential meaning we can grant life.

One prayer said at this service includes the following:
May you live to see your world fulfilled.
May your destiny be for worlds still to come
May you trust in generations past and yet to be
May you live to see your world fulfilled
May your heart be filled with intuition
May your words be filled with insight
May songs of praise be upon your tongue, vision straight before you.
Even as you ever yearn to listen to words of the holy ancient one of old
May you live to see your world fulfilled

May you live to see your world fulfilled. Such a powerful statement of the opportunity of life and of the wishes we have for our children. It’s also often translated where you replace “world” with “dreams”.

As a coach, it states the beauty of the relationship we hope to build with our clients, partnering with people to have the world their heart wants, come into being. As a parent, it is a transference of the joy and beauty of this life you’ve been blessed to foster and share. We want their world to be as beautiful as they are and we know we can have something to do with that happening. As a human being, it reminds me of what we tend to forget about each other. How far we stray from relating to each other as fellow ushers of our world fulfilled.

This is a prayer we can say for our friends and for those we don’t understand as well, for our families, for those we don’t agree with, because if we truly fulfill, all the way down to the essence of who we are, who we were as babies, before the world took it’s toll on us, we will all wind up in the very same place, a world of acceptance, joy, cooperation and love.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…

Resolve

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ResolveRESOLVE is so valuable. Resolve means that when you know, you just know. Resolve means you do, because not doing is impossible.

Partnering with anyone who is not resolved is a crapshoot. Settling for less than your own resolve and saying yes to things you think or hope will be good is a recipe for patterns of breakdown and preoccupation with distraction, indecision, fear…

Resolve is formidable. Resolve creates the love of the journey. Resolve quiets the mind. Resolve is beyond the judgment of others. Resolve turns down the fear. Resolve makes you bring your best game. Resolve brings admiration, but is never for admiration.

It’s not that you should have resolve, it’s that if you don’t, you can find where it is, what it really wants. I’m talking about the noun, resolve as a thing, not something you do, which can be spiritually unreliable. Resolve is already within you. Helping each other find our resolve can be the most rewarding way to be with each other. Finding our resolve is finding ourselves. Keeping it, remembering it and honoring its voice is a remarkable way to live.

I’m practicing cultivating my resolve, feeding it, connecting ever more deeply with it, surrendering to it. Want to join me?

Coaching Group for Professional Women

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I’m looking for two professional women who are interested in being part of a four person coaching group (two have already committed).

Here’s the concept: I want to create a group of women who are committed to creating big things in their lives (you get to say what’s big to you) and each other’s. Your goals could be entrepreneurial, about breaking through to a powerful professional result, they could be relationship-oriented. Everyone will be working on their well-being as a foundational element as well. It’s hard to create breakthroughs without it.

What I’m looking to do is create power in sisterhood and really leverage it, with each woman pulling for the results of the other three and growing from each other’s processes. In addition, there will be a relationship with a man providing support for your goals who is committed to you winning, a platonic but intimate relationship with you based in trust and not power other than the power of our coaching relationship, which is yours to create. I want this to be a laboratory for how we can be together professionally and personally, empowering each other beyond the normal wasteful versions of competitiveness and gender issues in the workplace and our lives.

I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from my network about this concept, so I’m sharing it more widely. If you’re interested in hearing more about it or think it would be good for someone else in your life, email me directly here. Time and financial commitments will be discussed offline.  If you like the idea, please share it along with a note about why you’d recommend this for someone in your life.

Thanks for reading this!

Best,

Gregg DeMammos

 

Brian Williams and Accountability

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BWillCoach Talk – Accountability

Stop moaning about Brian Williams’ suspension. He lied and he is appropriately being held accountable so he can come back stronger. It will be his choice whether he takes that opportunity and makes the most out of the learning available here.

I was watching the #1 college basketball team in the country last night, the now 24-0 Kentucky Wildcats when another moment of accountability showed up. A star freshmen player, Karl-Anthony Towns, was called for a technical foul for doing a chin up on the rim in a tight, conference game on the road. Coach Calipari took him out of the game and made it very clear how much of an offense this is to the team and the mission and the potential costs. If you were watching at home, the way the coach addressed the situation might make you cringe and think that’s too much for an 18 year old kid on a big stage. That he just made an honest and understandable mistake.

CalTownsLike clockwork, LSU scored 16 straight points and Kentucky was losing, late, its perfect record in serious jeopardy.

Towns didn’t pout, he learned. He went back into the game and made some absolutely key plays on the way to Kentucky winning. After the game, he showed his youth, by photobombing his coach during the post-game interview, but he also showed his maturity when he was being interviewed himself. He was asked about the run-in with his coach and Towns said something like “that’s coach Cal, he only wants all of us to get better.”

NBC wants Brian Williams to get better and he needs to. Let him sit on the bench and learn and come back stronger, too. Hopefully, he has as much support as Coach Cal provides and as much maturity as 18 year old Karl-Anthony Towns.

Last Night at The Relationship Circle​

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relcirclePeople were funny, committed, vulnerable, supportive, honest, open, kind and brilliant while we created a temporary community of 12 people and took our own lives on.  We were willing to see the inner workings of how we operate and the possible futures we may not be prioritizing for the sake of somewhat satisfying and seductive habits that lead to predictable results in our lives.

We created uncommon experiences, powerful conversations and commitments for people to choose a path that leads us out of our comfort zones, a commitment to courage for the sake of the lives we want to live, the growth we want to see in ourselves.  That’s a great context in which to get to know people.  I really LOVED how so many people played the game last night.

Leading a transformational group for three years has been so helpful to me, too.  Working towards being who I want to be for the people that show up has been a great incentive for my own growth.  It really struck me that last night my emotions really stayed out of the conversation, at least the ones that would normally keep me from having the kind of perspective that actually can serve people.

Last month at my Advanced Circle, I called myself out there for holding a judgment about someone’s participation (I got stuck relating to her as uncooperative).  An embarrassing experience for a facilitator, but making the decision to own my reaction helped me show up way more open and loving and able last night.  So grateful to have this space.

Stuck In Our Own Creations

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billboard-stuck_1116867iThis is an amazing part of life. We create something, a relationship, an organization, a partnership, a commitment and eventually it can start looking like a trap, a situation we don’t know how to get out of or something we see is taking over our lives.

This usually comes down to one thing, or two related things, bad planning and the gift of learning.

Bad planning usually comes down to naivete. It’s not on purpose. Learning is usually a good thing, but not so much when we’re unwilling to make the changes our learning asks of us or to see the learning available in the first place.

When the picture changes, when our marriage or our business requires more than we thought it would, more time, more resources, more attention, a more evolved version of ourselves, this is GOOD NEWS. The key is making sure we don’t respond by increasing our own suffering. There is always a win, we just may need more help than we think, there may be more foundation-building to do, we may need to grow or let go of our grip, our image of what it’s supposed to be.

If we can do this humbly and let go of our ego and get to work of learning and incorporating that learning, then we can really start to make life and our commitments work, and everyone has a chance to win.

This is something coaches and other people we empower to put a mirror up to us can help us make a huge difference around. They support us creating the humility to see what our traps are teaching us and the courage, conversations and accountability to grow into who we need to be to take necessary action and succeed.

Liberty and the Relationship of The Human Race

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Liberty.

Such a radical act of humanity. The concept of liberty says I may become a target for standing for liberty since liberty is entirely subjective. One person’s version of liberty says that it is appropriate to kill me for living outside of what their ideology dictates.

Attempting to find ground where liberties are basically respected will always seem like a tyrannical act to some people’s sense of liberty. We see it every day, it is the source of many of our greatest daily frustrations, upsets, crises and tragedies.

Liberty is always a marketplace, which makes it potentially dangerous for all and simultaneously beneficial for most. Can there ever be perfection inside liberty? Of course we try to do our best, we learn, we fight it out all the time, but what would it take to play all out for the ideal of liberty?

Liberty itself is a battleground as well as a machine for the transformation of humanity. We are in early days for the experiment and we must accept many terrible things if we choose to be a part of that experiment. Working out liberty isn’t pretty. I think we know this.

Also tragic, unless we create total freedom from conditioning for the individual, from the accidental adoption of beliefs from where you are born, into whatever family, whatever culture and the unconscious choices we make from the environments we are in, the events we witness and suffer from, we can and will be a victim of our own unconsciousness. The Kouachi brothers are dead, but were they ever free? If they were free, who would they have turned out to be? Of course I don’t mean free to make a choice. I’m talking about the freedom you earn from questioning what makes you you.

What would liberty look like if creating individual freedom from conditioning was prioritized? Can it be? We cling to our idea of identity, who we are familiar with ourselves being and we live our lives unconsciously from what we haven’t allowed ourselves to question, to deconstruct.

I’m in awe of the problem and possibility of Liberty.

My 5 Year Old Has it Right

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After my son Marcus told me I hated him when I told him he needed to stop playing video games this morning, I asked him if I loved him, what would I be doing differently.

He said I would be racing him and playing soccer and games with him.

I get it.

Love lives in a world of full agreement, or a lack of dwelling on the disconnect of disagreement.

When we’re young, before the disappointment of human beings disagreeing with our idea of Eden, our hearts don’t even fathom the possibility of disagreement with our own consciousness. It comes as a shock and HURTS. It feels like love is gone when we encounter disagreement. I still remember feeling like that when I was his age.

The thing is that this is a grave and understandable error and the correction of this error, that disagreement threatens love, is our life’s opportunity. Not just to get it intellectually, but to transcend through it. To really get it. This is our cross to bear, to do the work to return to love, as Marianne Williamson puts it.

Marcus is at the beginning. The unfortunate period where the disagreement rocks us, where it informs our personalities and unconscious beliefs about life. I empathize with him deeply.

And he’s getting the return, too. When he asked me to pick him up in my arms at drop off and gave me 17 kisses and told me he knows I love him, he took courageous action. He inspired me.

The idea that disagreement threatens love (threatens us, really, as we are made of love) – from loved ones dying too soon to not getting the job to not feeling heard to being rejected romantically or even abused – is false, but it hurts.

Love is always here, waiting for you. Getting back to it is the work of our lives. Be courageous.

Obedience Can Be Dangerous

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reprimand

I was at a potluck dinner for the parents of kids in Marcus’ class this Friday night. I met the father of this very intelligent girl who is a bit of a chatterbox and doesn’t sit still well, but who is so lovely, so curious, so wonderful, so clearly well-equipped to succeed as well. Her father mainly wanted to talk about how disobedient she was, how her teachers in language school kept telling him how disobedient she was. He seemed shameful and wasn’t too interested in how great I thought she was. I was sure to give her a big smile Monday morning, happy to see her and now seeing the growing impact on her of being told she was wrong more clearly, the confusion building in her. She’s in kindergarten.

When the desire for obedience crosses with another person’e true expression of themselves, you’ve got trouble. This is where darkness occurs.

A facebook friend of mine and fellow coach, Mike Hrostoski recently shared a letter he wrote when he was a teenager that was truly saddening. A young man writing about suicide. The conflict between who he was and who his community wanted him to be was so clear. He then detailed his drug use, his confusion and his pain that lasted for years. He posted it here – http://hrostoski.com/2014/11/everybody-hates-you-and-you-want-to-die/ (his site is currently down, maybe find it on his FB page)

No one could want Mike to go through this, to even have a memory of this and what’s even more gut wrenching is how many people we know are right where he was when he wrote that letter, who have gone through that, who are still wrestling with it and unfortunately, who may never truly try to free themselves, who get eaten alive by the ways they try to cope – power games, passive aggressiveness, controlling behavior, numbing out, withdrawal, acting like everything is ok.

Living in a society, a family, a culture is hard. These entities condition you. They ultimately mean well, but that doesn’t mean they are well-suited for the human condition. We need to teach each other how to cross the street without getting hit by cars. We don’t need to teach each other how to forsake our own self-expression, our lives. The results are heartbreaking and they lead us to transformation or unfortunate ends or both. As a father, this really hits home for me.

Mike is transforming his life with a fervor. Sometimes I can resonate with where he’s at, what he’s wrestling with today, sometimes not, but what I can always relate to is how vital his freedom is to him, how painful it is to be at the moments where it feels like life is in total disagreement with you. How desperate we are to get out.

Go on, Mike. Get OUT.

Me, too. You, too. We all have some of this in us.

Love,
Gregg