Monte E Wilson

Invisibility and Inauthenticity

2011-12-23T14:57:00.002-05:00

It is not good for man to be alone … but my o my does he go out of his way to Be Alone.

In the case of our God-created need for visibility, understanding, and companionship, many choose to remain invisible. The thinking here is that loneliness is far better than revealing a self that we believe will probably be rejected. One of the ways we do this is by pretending to not be ourselves. Rather than increasingly becoming the person we were created to be, like actors on a stage, we take on pseudo – personalities.

We are like Kirk Lazurus (played by Robert Downy, Jr), in Tropic Thunder: I know who I am! I'm the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude!

My parents insisted I become this person and, so as to garner their approval, I became that person.

My mother or father are like this-and-that and, in reaction to their shortcomings, I build a persona around the intent to Not Be Him or Her. What role is being taken on here? “Not-him!” (Bad news: when I do this, I cannot help but become whom it is I am focusing on.)

No one will love me as I am, so I have to pretend to be the kind of person others will love. Or, if I believe no one will love me, period, I go out of my way to reject them before they reject me. In this case, I take on the persona of the lone-wolf, or the perpetually misunderstood victim who must connive and manipulate others to love me.

And the award for Best Actor goes to … the Lonely Guy!

We are the dudes playing the dudes disguised as other dudes. So, which dude are people relating to? And are any of these dudes actually the real “me”? No. Therefore, as I know people are relating to a role I am playing, I know without a doubt the relationship is not real. However many people may appear to be in my world, because I am not being real, my world is not real, therefore these friends are not real.

I say we know, but, with some, they have forgotten what they knew: that the self they are projecting, what people are seeing, is not real. They have been playing a role for so long that they are invisible to themselves!

Interestingly, one of the ways we can discover that we, in fact, are pretending to not be our true self, is feedback from the individuals in our lives whom we know are authentic. Real people spot role players fairly easily.

Role players are seldom comfortable in their own skin

Dudes playing dudes are constantly calibrating for approval, where, if they sense they aren’t performing as expected, they morph into another role, not understanding that what an authentic person is looking for is … authenticity!

Actors are all buttoned up, perfectly put together, with just the right lines. Even the disheveled look that The Victim takes on is perrrrfectly cast: tears flow just so, and guilt-manipulating phrases are spoken with Academy award winning timing and pathos.

So. When you are ready for some reality, ask the authentic people in your life about how they experience you, as well as the “you” they see behind your mask. And, Yes: you DO know who these people are, for as soon as you read that sentence, he came to mind; she popped up on your radar.

Next post will follow-up on other ways to reengage and reconnect with your true self.

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Friendship and Psychological Visibility

2011-12-17T07:39:00.000-05:00

Some years back, a man whom I had known for about 10 years was describing me to a new acquaintance of ours. It was all very positive and complimentary, but with one small problem: he wasn’t describing me. In fact, the more he waxed eloquent about the attributes and personality of Monte Wilson, the more invisible I felt. All I could do was sit there thinking, “You really don’t know me.”

A friend responds to me the same way I would if I were seeing and sensing myself through the mind of my friend. In other words, he acts as a mirror that reflects the image of how I see and experience myself. He sees what I know to be true of myself. She senses how I experience life. In other words, true friends are psychologically visible to each other.

Of course, friends also help us discover the, heretofore, unseen aspects of our true self. You’ve had this happen before, when a friend complimented or criticized you about something and you instantly intuited that, yes, “That’s me!”

This is how Nathaniel Branden defines psychological visibility in his book, The Psychology of Romantic Love. “Human beings desire and need the experience of self-awareness that results from perceiving the self as an objective existent, and they are able to achieve this experience through interaction with the consciousness of other living beings.”

But it is not just visibility that we desire. We also have a desire to love and to be loved.

It is not good that man should be alone. (Genesis 2:18)

There is something about the way we are made that needs relationships where there is a large degree of mutual visibility. My own thought here is that there are a number of reasons this is so. Two come to mind:

External validation and affirmation “You really are you!” However self-aware I am, however brutally honest with myself that I seek to be about the nature of my true self, I need feedback as to the veracity of my self-evaluation. Caveat: I am not referring to a craving for the approval of others, as if I were asking permission to be myself. I am referring to the acknowledgment that my evaluation of my self is, indeed, legitimate.

Mutual support I know that I need the love, gifts and wisdom of others to make my journey in this life. I instinctually know that it is neither right nor wise to be “alone.” Think back to the stories many of us grew up reading: Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable, Frodo and Samwise, The Three Musketeers, Harry with Ron and Hermione, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, King David and his Mighty Men, and Jesus and the Twelve.

Certainly, the mere fact that we are visible to someone doesn’t mean that we are going to be good friends. However, there can be no true emotional connection and companionship where there is little or no visibility. How can you say," I love you," if you are blind to the “you”? Am I really going to believe someone loves me who doesn’t Get Me, get who I am (“warts and all”)? And sometimes, even where an individual does see me, there is still the possibility that this person does not have the capacity for mutuality or desire for companionship with me. "Yes, dear, I see you. And I can't stand what I see!"

Of course, there is the experience of people who love us for whom they wish us to be. I am not referring here to those who truly see us, and the person we can become: I am speaking of those who project or fantasize or idealize the person they wish us to be. In these cases, we know that there is no reality, no substance, and no foundation for a true friendship. Where such blindness exists, we know that, sooner or later, the individual will “see the real me,” and the “relationship” will end.

True friendship requires visibility and mutuality.

When we encounter a person who thinks as we do, who notices what we notice, who values what we value, who tends to respond to different situations as we do, not only do we experience a strong sense of affinity with such a person but we also can experience our self through our perception of that person. This is another form of objectivity. This is another manner of perceiving our self in the world, external to consciousness … The pleasure and excitement that we experience in the presence of such a person, with whom we can enjoy this sense of affinity, underscores the importance of the need that is being satisfied. Branden

While Branden is specifically referring here to the basis for Romantic Love, it, nevertheless, applies to friendship, as well.

I believe we were created with an innate desire to be with people who see and understand us, and with whom we share mutual beliefs, values and visions: people who understand our journeys, our struggles, and our achievements, and want to be a part of our lives, as we wish to be a part of theirs. These are the people whose empathy is most real to us and whose applause is most meaningful. These are the people whom we call friends.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Living With Urgency

2011-11-17T12:48:00.001-05:00

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. William Faulkner

We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it. Pascal

One of the perks of knowing you are going to die is that you are forced to make decisions as to what you will do with your allotted time. I mean, if we were all Highlander-like and lived forever, what urgency is there in deciding which career path to take, what to do with our time and money, or whom to cherish until death-do-you-part? But Death is coming, so now what?

What will you value?

Who is important to you?

By what code will you live?

What is it that is worth doing, in the face of death?

What is it you would do, even if it meant risking death?

How will you prepare for death?

And if you believe in God, and that you will meet Him when you die, how does this shape and inform your answers to the above questions?

Those individuals who Get Death, who accept its inevitability, who know that death is coming for them, rarely procrastinate: if anything, they are almost impetuous in their decision making, as they live by the words of Christ, Work while it is day for when the night comes … no more time to work: no more time to work on self, on your relationships, or on your legacy.

The challenge when you are young is to overcome the arrogance of thinking (or at least behaving As If) “I am immortal.” Plenty of time to Become and to Do, right? Feels that way at 17 … not so much when you wake up at 50 and realize you have yet to either truly Become the individual you were meant to be or Do what you were created to. “How did this happen to me? How did I get here?” ” Simple. “Immortals” procrastinate.

I say that those individuals who Get Death behave accordingly … but that’s not really true. Some people grasp it intellectually but refuse to wrestle with it existentially. Some people think, “What the heck: there is no afterlife so eat drink and be merry!” Others see death and are crippled by despair. But all this changes when Death knocks on your door.

Have you ever known someone who knew that they only had so much more time to live? Think back on their behaviors, their choices, and their attitudes. With death just around the corner, what is of great significance becomes all-important, and what is not important is ignored. Expressions of love, making amends, setting things in order for those who will remain here, and finishing certain projects, these and other Important Things are embraced with heroic courage. Everything else is inconsequential.

Why is it that we wait until our impending death to live and love this way? And how many of us will know with certainty that death is only a year or a week away? We don’t. As far as we know, it is only a week away.

So. Now what?

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Owning Your Power: Finding Your Voice

2011-11-06T16:29:00.000-05:00

One of the ways you can spot someone who is owning his power is that he has his own voice. (Yes, yes, I know this sentence is grammatically incorrect. However, it is psychologically correct, as “owning” denotes an ongoing process.) Your power will speak with your voice: no one else is controlling your mind and heart (your power) so no one else is controlling your voice.

People who deny their own power usually have allowed others to take up residency in their heads and hearts. “This is what you should/must feel; this is what you will think. Therefore, this is what you will communicate.” ACK Polly wants a cracker!

Finding your voice is a process. You will hear or see something in an individual or read it in a book and take it out for a spin. You will watch a co-worker or a friend you admire or one of your parents and what you see resonates as True For You: so you take it on as your own… and see if it fits or not. A little adjustment here, a little there and, Voila!, “It fits!”

When I first began speaking publicly, I sounded like any number of men whom I admired. The first year or two I “tried on” any number of people (we call this “modeling”) but after a while I developed my own voice. Or did I?

What took me much longer was to develop my own sense of self: my own beliefs and ideas and emotional responses. I was raised in a world where my beliefs, ideas, ideals and emotions were dictated. I don’t mean that someone held a gun to my head. However, the cost of having the “wrong” beliefs and such was a severe lack of approval or even outright rejection. To be as gracious as possible, it is very difficult to develop your own voice in such an environment.

Parents, I think, often miss it here, in so far as they don’t allow their children to express their honest thoughts and emotions. I am not suggesting we shouldn’t help our children process their minds and hearts toward a more healthy way of being, only that if we cut the process off – if we do not allow them to own what they are presently experiencing – they begin searching, not for what is true for them in that moment, but only for what should be thought and felt. Right Then and There. What this produces are children who no longer seek to discover their own identities but seek to be whom and what someone else says they are supposed to be.

We all have known parents who, rather than rearing their children to be individuals, instead, mold and shape them to be “whom I should have been,” or into the incarnation of Dad or Mom. “I couldn’t be or do ‘x,’ so you will do this and be that person.” “I am ‘y” so you will be ‘y,’ as well.” Sure, we have beliefs and values that we hope and pray our children will adopt as their own, but this must be done with respect for their individuality.

Years ago I was counseling a man who was struggling to find his own voice. Now, he disagreed with me as to the nature of his struggles, rejecting my observation that he appeared to always want to say what others wanted to hear. During one of our sessions he mentioned that he kept a journal. I asked him if he would mind allowing me to read some of it, noting that he could decide what I read.

The following week, I sat across from him and began reading what he had written. It only took me two pages to have a perfect example of what I was seeking to communicate.

Monte: You have edited this.

Client: Uhhh yeah. You think I want my wife or parents to know what I really think? … I can’t believe I just said that.

Monte: I can.

Finding your voice requires that you develop your own heart and mind. While you want the input and help of others, at the end of the day it is your heart, your mind, and your power. Frankly, I have now come to the place where I would rather be honestly wrong then parroting what is right but not presently real to me.

Toward developing your own heart and mind, ask yourself: What do I believe about God, Love, Truth, Goodness, Justice, Liberty, and Beauty?

Furthermore, and more to the point of finding your voice, what is the purpose or reason for your existence? We are not here to waste oxygen: we are here to make a difference. Subsequently, finding our voice will include finding our “message.” And how do you find your message?

Start with answering these two questions:

What do I believe gives my life purpose?

What is it that I most often do for others … or at least find myself desperately wanting to do for others?

Your answers will give you insights – they will point you in a specific direction.

For your personal power to be efficacious, it must have focus. One of the ways you will be able to tell just how focused your power is will be in the clarity of your communication regarding your heart and mind.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Protesting Wall Street

2011-10-10T13:43:00.009-04:00

Ah, but the great advantage of mass moronization is that it leaves you too dumb to figure out who to be mad at. Mark Steyn, American Autumn

Over the last week I have received quite a number of emails asking for my reactions to the “Wall Street Protesters” and their demands. So, I crafted the following over the last few days and was about to post this when I decided to search the Internet and see what others have been saying. Wow. Much of what I have written here has already been stated, and in many cases, far better than my musings. At first, I was tempted to forget the post but then it hit me: isn’t that the nature of reality, the nature of the obvious? I mean, it’s not like the socialistic demands of these protesters have not been asserted and then proven both fallacious and disastrous for well over 2,000 years!

So, in the spirit of Me Too! -- here are my thoughts.

First of all, as I watch and read the news, I can’t help but wonder if the parents of these people are thinking about suing the schools their children attended! If there was ever a perfect example of why we need a complete overhaul of our nation’s system of Public Education, this movement provides it. Whether it is a working knowledge of our nation’s Constitution and the nature of our inalienable rights, the differences between a free market economy and crony capitalism, or a rudimentary understanding of logic, these people appear to be utterly uneducated. (By the way, “inalienable rights” are God-given rights, not Government granted freedoms.)

Second, I am not sure many of these people even know what it is they are protesting, besides hygiene, that is. Big Business? Ok, which ones? What constitutes Big Business? Fortune 100? 400? Any business that makes more than … how much? And is everything these businesses are doing evil? And how precisely are they defining “evil”? And what about all those iPhones I keep seeing you guys use: Apple is certainly in the category of Big Business, eh? Do you even feel the slightest bit of hypocrisy?

Anyway, because it doesn’t appear there is a single voice, it is almost impossible to say, “This is what the movement is demanding.” I say “almost” because there is a list of demands circulating that many of these people either implicitly or explicitly seem to support.

1 Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

As many economists have been pointing out for decades, if we assert that importing goods across international borders is a job-killer as axiomatic, then logic demands that we say the same thing about importing goods across state borders. You guys up for California taxing all the fruit that comes into the state from Florida?

And what’s up with the $20 minimum wage? These guys are obviously thinking way to small. Why not have Congress raise the minimum wage to $100! WooHoo!

2 Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

Yeah. That’s the ticket! Give the Fed’s a monopoly on healthcare. After all, it did so well with the Postal Service.

3 Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

And you would choose to work because …? Somebody? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller? (Please note that I used a perfect imitation of Ben Stein, here.) And exactly where does the money come from to support all these people who will choose to not work? -- This will be a common refrain throughout the following post. I hate being redundant, but the point obviously needs to be made, over and over again. From where do these people think the money for all their demands is going to come?” Ew, Ew, I know! Taxing the Evil Corporate Bastards." Yeah, that sounds so cool, so like Sticking it to the Man. And what do you think Corporations will do to make up for the loss of revenues? They will pass that cost along to their customers … or go out of business. (Reference: Bank of America and new monthly charges for using debit cards.)

4 Free college education.

So you don’t want to pay for your education: you want me to pay for it through higher taxes, eh? Sorry, kids, Economics 101: There is no such thing as a Free Lunch.

5 Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

Great. No problem. But the barrier here is Big Government. When it stops interfering in the market place with its massive regulations, when it gets out of the way of our nation’s entrepreneurs, we will begin to see progress here—and not before.

6 One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

Again: this money is going to be provided by whom? The Government? And where does the Government get this money? Besides, spending on infrastructure is right at 2.5 percent of the GDP. That’s the highest it’s been in 60 years.

7 One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.

Let’s see, now. The EPA is spending around 10 billion a year, so this means he wants 100 years of spending over a period of … how long? And where is this money going to come from? And if we get rid of dams and nuclear power plants, this will mean we have to rely more heavily on coal and natural gas: how does this square with Number 5? Think people, think!

8 Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

See what I mean? Go read the 14^th Amendment, son.

9 Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” your terrorists, and your diseased yearning to bring this nation down. Whoa!

10 Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

Ok. No problem here, except I think all he needed to demand was honest vote counts. Computers can do this, unless he just has a thing against technology.

11 Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

This is a great strategy for doing away with lending altogether. These people are not only ignorant of the laws of economics; they are clueless as to the nature of human beings.

12 Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

Sure. The credit agencies were major players in the housing bubble, but the only way they could get away with lying to their customers was the fact that Big Government protected them from the laws of supply and demand but did not protect customers from fraud. This is crony capitalism at its “best.”

13 Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

How about the Government requiring secret ballots where neither management nor unions can place undo pressure on workers to go with either group? This way, they can do what they believe is in their best self-interest without fear of being smacked down by management or the unions.

If any of you know someone all caught up in this mob, send him or her some early Christmas gifts:

Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Ludwig Von Mises

The Law, Frederic Bastiat (Free online copy of the book)

Wall Street's Gullible Occupiers Great essay regarding how "reckless government policies, not private greed, brought about the housing bubble and resulting financial crisis."

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Love and Marriage

2011-10-03T12:29:00.007-04:00

This past Saturday, my daughter Rachel Marie was married to Justin Wetmore. Rachel is my youngest daughter, and the last of the four girls to be married. I have had the privilege of performing the ceremonies for each of them. It has been one of the highest honors of my life to do this for them. As I was asked by many of those attending for my notes, I thought it easiest to post it here. Note: as it was a blustery and chilly day for a garden wedding, and people were shivering and offering each other money for the use of a coat, I edited myself, so as to be a bit briefer, so a few remarks found here didn’t make it.

Love. We speak of it, we create art to express it, and we die – metaphorically and literally -- because of it.

But what is it? When you say “love” do you mean what I mean … or something entirely different? In English, it is a squishy word, a grey word whose meanings are as ever changing as a kaleidoscope. We use the word love to describe our feelings toward dark chocolate, our favorite football team and our children: One word to describe so many different experiences.

In Latin the word “love” has 6 words for the different kinds of love we experience.

Amor: this refers to the passion that pulls the sexes together to create a family. It is as powerful as gravity itself. You meet her, your heart stops and you are inexorably drawn to her. You could no more resist her than you could jump out of a 20-story building and fly.

Eros: The god of sexual love and beauty … intimacy. This is that mad, gaga, head over heels, driven, obsessive love. This is that love that JD Salinger was writing about: “I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the one thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty … you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.”

Affectus: This is the feeling of affection and admiration: the desire to be with your lover, because you admire him or her so very much. it is the source of compatibility. CS Lewis thought that it was this feeling of affectus that was “responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.”

Dilectio: This is where we delight in the person so much that simply being around her gives us unimaginable joy. The word comes from the root word electio: to “choose” to “elect.” In marriage, I think that this is of paramount importance. When eros is dormant and even affection wavers, it is this love of choice based upon deliberation that holds you steady.

Amacitia: this word speaks of friendship; alliance; mutuality. Break the law of mutuality to your peril. My dad once told me that marriage was 70-30. Sometimes you give 70, she gives 30, and sometimes the ratio reverses. BUT, and this is critical, over time there is a mutuality of giving and receiving.

One of the challenges most of us face in relationships is found here. What does he want? What does she want? Pay attention to her…to him. How is he demonstrating love? How is she demonstrating love? Go thou and do likewise … and then some. Study the other’s Way of Being and you will discover what you want to know regarding increasing your mutuality

Caritas: charity; mercy; God’s Love. As I was thinking about what to say here today it is this love that stood out. I have come to believe that many, many love-relationships fail because the love they have for each other is not tied to something or, for us Christians, to Someone: the transcendent God.

When our love for each other is All There Is to the relationship, there is a built in Not Enough. What I mean is that we cannot even remotely begin to fulfill all the needs of our lover: To believe otherwise is to place an unbearable burden on our marriage.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes about the relationship of husband and wife and how they are to mirror the love relationship between Christ and His church. There must be a spiritual quality to our love, where God is invited in to be Over, In, and Under and Beside us. How else can we even begin to mirror his relationship with the church if he isn’t part of our relationship?

There is something else here, as well. Going back to Amacitia (mutuality/ alliance): I suggest that the more successful love-relationships are those where the two have an alliance regarding their Quests in life, their respective visions for why God placed each of them on earth.

One of the healthiest things you can do in the following months is to begin a conversation around God’s love and purpose for bringing you together.

What is your mission in life and how may I help you achieve it?
Why are we here on earth together, at this time in history?

While your visions will be different, you will find where they are compatible… you will also find yourselves living for something larger than your relationship, something — and Someone-- that transcends your love for each other and, thereby, increases your attraction, your affection, your admiration and your mutuality.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Owning Your Power: Managing Conflicts

2011-09-29T09:31:00.001-04:00

Snippets of emails I received after the last post:

“As my boss is a vampire, what am I to do about …”

“My (family member) has no concept of boundaries …”

“What do you do when you are married to a victim?”

As I do not know all sides of the stories contained in these emails, there is no way for me to give any detailed advice or counsel. However, it does give me an opportunity to bring up the subject of “difficult conversations,” especially as it relates to managing and guarding your power.

Conversations v Monologues

When we are angry or upset, the tendency is to Hold Forth: We pronounce, we pass out edicts, we push back … hard. And we do this before we even know what’s going on in the other person’s head and heart!

Conversation are about searching for deeper issues, defining terms, agreeing on principles for a healthy relationship, and other such areas of concern. Monologues are about proving the other person is wrong and making them pay.

Outcomes

Before we engage in such conversations, we will want to determine our outcomes.

Do you want to win an argument (Be Right) or discover possibilities for maintaining this relationship in a healthy manner?

Where and how do you think the breakdown occurred and what are you tentatively thinking is the best way forward for all concerned parties? I stress “tentatively” because you will want to maintain an open mind as to the nature of the breakdown and, therefore, remain flexible as to the way forward.

Sharing Your Pain

As I believe we should be ready to be wrong or to have misunderstood, I suggest we share our upsets as our experience, not as the-truth-of-the-matter.

Stay away from identifying with your upset. “I am experiencing anger”, not “I AM angry”; “I am experiencing hurt,” not “I AM hurt.” Anger and Hurt are not who you ARE! The problem with identifying with our upset is …

When I make my upset about who I am then the other person is attacking my identity, the core of who I am. This only exacerbates the breakdown, because rather than sharing my experiences, I am defending myself from a personal attack. Defensive people don’t have conversations; they have fights to the death.

Feedback is Only Information

Feedback is what you are hearing from the other person. O, sure, they may believe their perceptions are truer than true, but, until you decide whether or not this is accurate, all you are hearing is information. However, and this is important, you need to have the same mindset regarding your feedback.

Of course, it is almost impossible to hear feedback solely as information, once you let it inside your heart: so don’t. Think of yourself as the catcher on a baseball team. You catch the ball (feedback), look at it, and ascertain whether or not it belongs to you. If not, throw it back to the pitcher! (Respectfully, please: no shots at the head!) “Thank you so much for caring enough to share your thoughts with me. However, at least at this time, I don’t believe this belongs to me.”

Why “give it back” to them? Because if you don’t they will walk away believing you agreed with their feedback. If they do this they will have certain expectations as to your future behaviors in this matter between you: expectations that won’t be realized. Obviously, this will only add to the breakdown.

Owning Your Power

Relational breakdowns are painful. The challenge is maintaining our equilibrium so as to not begin either throwing our power around in potentially harmful ways or choosing to cut our electricity off for a while.

Stay focused and stay strong, or at least as strong as possible. “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” (Ken Blanchard) If it is erroneous, it is still valuable, as it is a window into the mind and heart of the person giving it. If it is factual, you get to grow in wisdom. Either way, it is win for you!

And if you discover that you are dealing with a vampire, loser or victim? Sometimes you simply walk away from the relationship. There are situations, however, where you can’t do this. You need the job or you will see this person at all family functions, as you are a blood relative! What now?

As all situations are unique, I really don’t have solutions or answers for you. I can only give you some guiding principles that may or may not be useful.

Be true to yourself. By this I mean, maintain your personal integrity. You can remain respectful and gracious, without allowing the other person to walk all over you. You can keep your distance without making a scene. You can steer the conversation toward the weather or sports or some other innocuous topic. You can ask the person about a matter that you know they will find interesting and then let them Hold Forth for the next 15 minutes. No gauntlets, no exposed veins.

Maintain your boundaries. “Let’s not go there,” is a perfectly legitimate thing to say. So is, “This is not an appropriate thing for us to be discussing here.” Waiting until later to have a private conversation where you ask them to never Do This or Say That again is preferred over mouth-to-mouth combat before spectators. This is not Thunderdome: it is the place where you have to work everyday or the family-get-together. Collateral damage only increases the potential for irreparable breaches.

Avoid the Nuclear Option. If you need to, simply walk away from the conversation. If she is embarrassed or chooses to be angry, it is her own doing, not yours. If you cannot walk away, remain silent, while maintaining your dignity

Remember that this person is still a creation of God. God loves him more than you can imagine and more than he is aware. This doesn’t mean you must like him or approve of his behavior, only that you treat him respectfully. It also means that you are not responsible for him Getting that he is a vampire. This is between him and his Creator.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Guarding and Managing Your Power

2011-09-22T13:15:00.002-04:00

One of the more debilitating things for your power may be some of the people you are hanging around. Possibly, up until now, you haven’t thought of it, but you have experienced this. These are those individuals who most always leave you feeling drained of all power. Sometimes an individual is in a bad way, needing far more than they can give, at present. I am not writing about those people. No, my focus here is on avoiding people who are always a drain on our power.

Vampires. These are black holes that can never be applauded enough, cared for enough, loved enough, counseled enough, placated enough: even multiple apologies for past hurts are never enough. Vampires will suck the power right out of you. Their guiding principle is to use, use, use: never to give. Avoid them.

Losers. I regret the term but I can’t think of a better description. No matter what these individuals do in life, it doesn’t work. Relationships are always breaking down and breaking off, jobs are constantly being lost (through no fault of their own, of course). Nothing ever works out for good in their life. Call them unlucky if you wish, but I call them losers who wish to be losers because they keep doing the same things, exhibiting the same behaviors that have never ever worked. My belief is that there is a reason for their losing streak – a secondary pay off, if you will—that is more valuable to them then success. They want to lose, to be pitied, and even to be rejected: it’s part of their grand strategy for attention. Stop giving it to them.

Victims. There are tons of books out there on Victim-ology and how such people are annihilating our culture. These are people who, long ago, suffered a terrible injustice—sometimes real, sometimes, imagined—and insist on everyone around them paying for this injustice. It is a crown of thorns by which they define themselves and all their relationships. It is their North Star. Sure, they would never see themselves in this light but everyone around them knows this to be an accurate description.

You don’t relate to such people: you relate to the injustice they suffered. The laws of love do not apply to them, only to you. While you must be patient, kind, not easily angered, and never keep records of wrongs (I Corinthians 13), they have been emancipated from the laws of love because, after all, “I have suffered so much.”

Maybe you may wish to work with such people, if you are a counselor, a therapist or a coach. Everyone else should keep his distance or your power will drain right out of your toes.

Introverts and Extraverts

You are a unique individual with a unique personality. Subsequently, how you manage and guard your power will be unique to you. Here, I only want to consider the differences between introverts and extraverts.

Introverts. I am an off the chart introvert. I have learned to behave in certain ways so as to be successful in the endeavors I pursue. As I want to raise money for the charities I believe in, I had to learn how to work a room full of strangers. As a corporate trainer my clients better believe I can’t wait to be with them, even if it is for 18 hours a day. I love what I do but it taxes me beyond the imagination of most extraverts.

Introverts need time alone. One psychologist told me that for every hour with people, introverts need 6 hours of down time. I am not sure this is true for all introverts but it is a fact that introverts are charged by being alone or with the closest of friends, but only friends who understand their need for quiet.

Usually, what empowers introverts is such things as listening to music, reading books, watching movies, and visiting museums … but not with strangers! Writing this, I also need to point out the temptation for introverts is to allow being alone to use them, rather than using being alone for re-charging their power.

Being with others charges extraverts. They love groups of people. If they are alone for too long, their power begins to wane! This doesn’t mean that extraverts do not see the value of being alone; only that it is usually not how they re-charge. The temptation for extraverts is to not always be as discriminating as they need to be in the people with whom they chose for empowerment. Whereas introverts will instinctively shy away from people who overtly drain them of power, extraverts are prone to thinking that the sheer magnetism of their power will cure what ails the vampires. After awhile they go home wondering why they feel so drained. After all, “people charge me!”

Obviously, these are generalizations: lumping people into categories should always be done cautiously and with the understanding that some introverts love meeting strangers and some extraverts love being alone for days at the beach. With this caveat, look back at when you experienced the fullness of owning your power. What did you do that made this possible for you? Whatever it is, make it part of your routine. Or else!

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Owning Your Power: Brown Outs II

2011-09-13T12:36:00.002-04:00

One of the more frequent justifications for Brown Outs that people give is, “I don’t want to anger her/upset him/hurt them.” The challenge is that, in some situations, there certainly are wise reasons for utilizing my power in a gentle fashion. We can all think of circumstances with a boss or employee, a child or a grandparent, a friend or a teacher, where throwing around all our power would not achieve our intended outcomes. However, what about those circumstances where I pull back my power because I am refusing to honor my own values, refusing to require others to respect my decisions? My experience is that, when I make such a choice, my power is not being conserved but denied.

If I do not respect my values and beliefs, why should others? “It’s okay. You can crap all over what I hold most sacred.”

If I don’t honor my own decisions by maintaining my course, why should you? “No, no, no: feel free to step right in and circumvent my choices. After all, your life and journey is far more important than mine.”

When I experience pain over what I perceive as disrespect and choose to say nothing about this, what am I communicating to myself and to others? “Go right ahead and keep on doing what you are doing, saying what you are saying. My perceptions and experience have no value whatsoever … and, anyway, I have no right to my feelings!”

I have (to me, anyway) an annoying habit of constantly saying, “Sorry,” whenever I do or say something that I think might have crossed or inconvenienced you in some fashion. Part of this can be attributed to manners and seeking to be sensitive to others. But – b-u-t – some of it is a tacit profession that you and your welfare are far more important than my life or my Self.

In the past, if you were hurt with me, I wanted to know it so I could either explain or ask your forgiveness. I think this is a healthy response, by the way. However, the Not So Healthy response was that, if I was hurt with or angry at you … well, that was an entirely different situation, as my feeling were pretty much always irrelevant. So much for relationships based on mutual honesty and respect, eh?

What happens when, in owning your power, you choose to behave in ways that anger or otherwise hurts the feelings of one of your close buddies or a family member?

Question: Is his hurt feelings with you the litmus test for the wisdom of your choices? While you regret his hurt, you have a responsibility to live your life according to your faith, beliefs, values, etc. He doesn’t have to like it but, if he wants to maintain a healthy relationship, he will respect your choices, as you will want to respect the fact that he differs with you. Or you can pull the plug on your power, yield to his preferences for you, and live in a Brown Out.

For a very long time, I took responsibility for the emotional responses of others. If Dad was angry: MY FAULT. If you were hurt with me: I did something WRONG. It’s one thing if I set out to push my dad’s hot buttons or hurt your feelings, but simply because Dad is upset with me or you are hurt with me doesn’t necessarily mean I have done anything wrong.

Please. I am not suggesting that we blow our friends off over an upset or a breakdown. Many, many times, differences are not conflicts: they only appeared this way before we had an honest conversation. Sometimes, the friend has a valid point we will want to consider. My point here is for those whose default position is to always discount their beliefs, their values, and their boundaries, and choose to live in a Brown Out.

Stop it.

Cut it out.

Cease and desist.

Go get a shot of testosterone.

You are a unique creation of God. You are you: you are not him, her or them. Honor this you. In other words, honor your own power. People will not always like it, but you were not placed on this earth to run around pleasing everyone, while denying the person that God created you to become. Believe me, anyone worthy of being called “friend,” will respect your integrity and never ever ask you to live in a Brown Out.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Owning Your Power: Brown Outs

2011-08-29T07:24:00.003-04:00

As you travel around Africa, sooner or later one of the things you will experience is a rolling brown out. So as to conserve energy, the utility company will target specific areas at specific times where it will dim the power, so as to conserve energy for later use. My experience is that we humans often do the same thing: We only have so much energy to get us through the day’s activities so we pick and choose which tasks we need to be up for, and where we can turn on auto- pilot and simply cruise without expending a lot of power.

However, there is another reason behind human brown outs that is not based upon being wise but upon fear. By turning the power down, say, in my familial relationships, I automatically dim the lights so as to not see what I do not wish to see, but, actually, have seen but am now pretending to not see. Don’t you see?

I don’t want to own my power at home because …

if I do, I won’t be able to manage the conflict and the marriage will end in disaster and it will be my fault.

Owning my power means taking responsibility for the effects of that power and I do not want to be responsible for what is happening.

I do not want to face the effects of choosing to not engage my power.

(“Passivity” is a choice, by the way.)

if I just let sleeping dogs lie, I can at least sustain the status quo.

You choose to not own your power, all the while experiencing an anxiety that screams, Engage! Engage! Bad things are about to happen!

Yes, you do see. Your anxiety tells you that you see. But you pretend not to: you avoid, you evade, you feign confusion, and you deflect.

No I don’t. (Avoidance)
I tried but it got worse. (Evade)
I wouldn’t know what to do. (Confusion)

I’ll turn the lights back on when s/he does. (Deflect)

Reality is going to win here. Whether it is on the job, at home, with a friend or someplace else, sooner or later, it hits the fan and the room smells like a toilet. There is no hope if you stay in the dark. At least if you turn the lights back on and own your power, there is a possibility of solutions and healing. Brown Outs insure defeat. And if you turn the lights back on and still experience a defeat? Well, you can, at the very least, maintain your self-respect.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Somali Refugees

2011-08-12T04:53:00.014-04:00

You have been reading the news regarding Somalia: the fighting, the fleeing, the starving, and the dying. My friend, Derek Hammond, and I flew down from Addis Ababa to the border of Ethiopia and Somalia (Kenyan border is around 5 miles away),where so many terrified and emaciated Somalis were pouring into camps that were not ready for 2,000 people a day.

We are here representing Colonel Doner and Children's Hunger Relief Fund.

The plan is to find a pilot who is cool with landing in the desert, find our way to the refugees, assess the needs, and make contact with anyone who can help us with logistics involved in delivering aid and relief.

I say, “plan,” but when you don’t know anyone, have no idea what you are walking in to, and are fairly dead in the water if you can’t find a translator – “plan” is far too concrete a description.

It’s hot. Seeing clouds of dust off in the distance, we head off in the direction of the people, donkeys and cars that must be causing the sand to fly. First question is, “Where do we start?” We need to find someone—anyone—who can help us or at least point us in the right direction. Upon seeing a partially erected cell tower, we figured that might be a safe area to begin looking.

Sure enough, it was in the middle of UN camp. We bang on the metal door. We are given entre, but that’s it. We see some offices and go door-to-door but nada, zip, kibosh. Finally, someone tells us to wait and he will send someone who will help us with assessments.

Laura, a friendly young Brit, sits down and starts to give us the lay of the land, which is pretty much, "This has all happened so quickly we are playing catch up." Tall American gentleman walks in, “I heard an American laughing!” (He is from Seattle.) He then goes on to describe the disarray, the confusion, the fragile infrastructure, and lists the specific needs and which organizations were seeking to meet those needs.

First thing we are instructed to do is to meet the Ethiopian official in charge of overseeing the camps in this area (3 camps, one transition camp where people are checked out medically, registered, and then shuffled to larger camps. 118,000 people here, so far.) Nice guy. We need to have papers. We can’t go anywhere until we are “approved.” Blah, blah, well-meaning bureaucratic blah.

Ok. Based on the age old premise that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission, we strike out to find our way to the transition camp, about 3 miles away.

Yup. We need a translator!

Less than 3 minutes after leaving the Ethiopian official, a young man walks up to me: (In English) “I have taken a 2 hour course in management. Hire me.” So we hired him to find us transport and be our interpreter.

Derek Hammond: best friend, kick butt project manager,

fellow vagabond.

Somalis seeking to make a living. Kiosks

line the dusty roads coming up around

the UN Base camp.

Thousands of people, not enough tents

Make shift tents built from tree branches

blankets, and debris.

So. Do you think his parents will be

smiling when they realize where

their ration of water went!

Filia Abdiow with her family.

Three days tekking through the

desert. The camel died. The goats died.

They arrive only to find out there is

no room ... yet. Interesting. These

people know the west is sending money:

Where is it? Where is OUR Help?

Hey ... bet the white guy has a food bar!

Yes. That is me, returning to the plane. I now can say I have experienced a desert storm. Sand feels like it is going to rip your skin from your arms and face!

All in all, it was a productive trip. We need to iron out a few more logistics, but in the next month or so, we shall be sending our first shipment of food: over 20 tons of it. But that won't be enough.

Please navigate over to CHRF's web site and make a donation to help these people.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011. This includes the photos. If you want to use them write me and ask permission. If not, I will find you, and your next photo will be a mug shot!

Micro-Enterprises II, Nakuru, Kenya

2011-08-10T05:27:00.005-04:00

Lucy Gikonyo is a mother of four. She joined the program at the beginning of the year. She took a loan of $100 to add stock to her business. Through the proceeds she generates from the business, she contributes a part of it to the family budget … for which she takes great pride! (Avocados for ten cents!)

She looks forward to growing her business to a level of a wholesaler, since she will be earning more. “This can only happen when I get sufficient capital which I believe Farming Systems Kenya (FSK) will provide,” says Lucy.

Stephen Ochieng is married with a one-year old girl. He started with a small business of selling sugarcane near a Primary school in Ponda Mali (a slum). This was the only source of income for the family. With his first loan of $50 (used to add stock) he generated profits that helped him start a greengrocer business for his wife. The wife was happy because she was contributing to the family budget.

Stephen and his wife are also tailors (Mrs. Ochieng, above pic in red shirt), but could not use their skills because they lacked capital. With a loan of $150 they were able to purchase two sewing machines. He repaid this loan within a shorter period than allotted because he combined both incomes from his sugarcane business and the green grocers income.

He then qualified for a third loan of $300, with which he started a tailoring shop where he and his wife are not only selling clothes, but is also training others. (Sorry: Stephen was off working elsewhere so no pic of him.)

Beatrice is a wife and mother of 8 children. Because her husband recently had a stroke, she is the family’s sole provider. With a loan of $50 she started a food kiosk where she is making a profit of $4 per day. With an additional loan of $100, she expanded her space by purchasing posts and polythene, as well as some chairs and a table.

As she paid off her second loan in only two months, she is now asking for a third loan of $200 so that she can put up a tin roof and add more seats and tables for her customers.

The gentlemen peeling potatoes is her husband, determined to do whatever he can to make the business a success.

Sweet bread and tea will cost you … wait for it …. Waaaaaaait … fifteen cents!

Florence Waithaka is a dairy farmer. The income from milk sales has supported her in educating her children and for meeting her family’s basic needs.

Currently she has 3 cows that are in calf: in the next two months they will be calving down. Each of these cows produces around 5 gallons of milk per day. With the profits she is able to generate, she can meet all of her family’s basic needs.

But she wants more than her basic needs met. She wants to prosper.

Toward this end, she approached FSK for a loan of $200 so she can start a poultry business. I have no doubt that this lady will be soon graduating from “Barely Surviving” to “Prospering,” in the near future. (Florence was off working elsewhere, so I was only able to take a pic of her husband, who helps manage the dairy business.)

Due to post-election violence of 2007, Mary Munjiru was forced to resettle in Kiammunyi. She took a loan of $50 and bought 20 indigenous chickens. Over time, the flock increased to fifty. She sold them each at an average cost of $4-5. Through the profits she earned, she started a Kiosk outside the Nakuru General Hospital. Since the poultry project does not require much of her time, she spends most of the day at the Kiosk. She earns at least $8 per day from the Kiosk business.

The man in the photo with me is Amos Manyara, Executive Director of FSK. I have been working in Sub-Saharan Africa for over 20 years and can say without equivocation that this man is a rare gift: educated, wise, a nuclear powered work ethic, compassionate and generous. (Come to think of it. Amos would be a rare gift anywhere else in the world!)

Amos could be here in the States making his fortune. Of this, I have no doubt. Yet he chooses to serve his community, doing everything in his power to help create a middle class of people who are determined to turn poverty into prosperity, and to be lights shining in darkness. In other words, people like him. Amos is not simply a project partner. He is a friend.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Micro-Enterprises, Nakuru, Kenya

2011-08-09T06:56:00.005-04:00

August 9th I had planned on the next two posts being posted over a week ago. Alas, TIA! Between flights being randomly cancelled (without notice, of course: where would the fun be if I knew in advance that I needed to totally rearrange my schedule in Ethiopia?), being too wiped out at night to write, and spending time in the Somalian region of southern Ethiopia, I am just now able to get my brain to function.

The next two posts will cover some of our micro-enterprises in Nakuru. After this, I will write a report on Somalia ... and then, I am going to announce a brand new charity I have recently begun; Stopping Traffic, International. +

August 2 After the workshop, I wanted to visit some of the businesses we were helping out by providing micro-loans, as well as some trainings. I took Sunday off, and then headed out to see and to hear exactly how our investments were paying off!

Agnes is a single mom. When she graduated from Beauty School, her mother provided her the capital to open up her own shop. Given her skills and the care she gives her clients, she quickly became the most successful stylist in the area. Depending on the season, she often hires more stylists so her customers never have to wait too long. One day she hopes to establish her own beauty school.

With her first loan, she was able to purchase various products to sell at her salon. With these products her profits increased, helping her pay for living expenses and to place her son in a private school!

Florence is a retired primary school teacher and a mother of two. She practices mixed farming on her small piece of land. She grows vegetables, keeps a few chickens and is a renowned dairy farmer in the area. Being a widow, she had to work extra hard to ensure that her children received the best education possible. The two are currently in the University.

Green house technology is a new technology amongst small scale farmers here in Kenya. It is usually associated with the rich and particularly with huge flower farms owned by the Delemare family. Florence visited a friend who was practicing green house farming and was so impressed by the profits being generated that she went home and constructed her own green house. While she told me that it was quite a challenge, she saw a profit of $500 in only 6 months. (Remember: out here in Nakuru, a family can survive on $50-60 a month!)

After her initial success, she asked FSK for a loan of $200 for a dairy cow. After repaying this loan, she received a second for $350. Adding the profits from her dairy cow, she now had $1,000 with which to construct a much larger green house, where she grows the most beautiful tomatoes that she sells to local hotels and restaurants.

The business is so successful that she has had to hire help. Plus, the neighbors saw her success and are now constructing their own green houses.

Mr. Opondo sells green maize in the retail market in Nakuru. This business has supported his family of four for the last 5 years. His wife was a stay at home mom for some years but, through the proceeds from the maize business, he started her a business– selling ‘Mali Mali’ (assorted products) like, jugs, basins, cups, bowls, beauty products, clothes, stationary, toys, and etc. The family has been pooling resources together to achieve their vision of establishing a shop to expand the Mali Mali business -- a business that seems to be doing better than the maize business! The family hopes to shift the business into town where they can get more customers.

Mr. Opondo borrowed $200 to help increase his stock. He has plans of acquiring more money to inject into his business for expansion. He told Amos (Director of FSK) that his family has known severe hunger and, at times, his children were sent home from school because he was unable to pay their fees. Now, because of the help these loans provided him and his family, that is all a memory.

More reports on these micro-enterprises, tomorrow!

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Nakuru Training: Discovering, Developing and Deploying Your Potential

2011-08-03T02:42:00.003-04:00

(With my incredibly competent translator, Daniel Muiruri) "You have become a famous person … so famous that people are demanding an autobiography."

"What will be title of your bio? What are the ten most significant accomplishments in your life that will be listed on the back cover of your book?"

Off they went into groups of two to help each other come up with a title. The real challenge is with the “accomplishments.” After all, many of these men and women live in a rural area where they farm small plots of land or have a grocery stand on the side of the road. They haven’t traveled, ran a marathon, or developed any cutting edge technology.

As I worked with them, giving them things they might consider, reminding them that they learned to speak Swahili at the age of three, whereas I struggle with remembering four words!

You could almost hear the wheels turning in their brains.

Then, when everyone had completed the assignment, we brought each of them up in front of the room.

Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you for coming to this book signing. We are sooo proud to introduce the best selling author AB whose new autobiography “How I Turned Poverty into Prosperity” is already on bestsellers lists everywhere.

As you know, she has led a fascinating life…she owns her own plot of land, can read and write, has raised four wonderful children, survived civil uprisings and droughts, and is a respected group leader in her church. Please welcome Ms Aaaaaa Beeeeee!!!!

People roar, they clap, they bang their hands on their chairs. And the authors beam with pride.

Most of these people have received small micro-enterprise loans to either help them augment their business or begin a new one.

One of their greatest challenges is how life and people have continually told them that they are stupid, or “only a woman,” or not sophisticated enough to be successful, or or or or … NOT ENOUGH, NEVER WILL BE ENOUGH.

How in the world can such a mindset ever allow these people to find their way to learn and do what they need to so as to successfully operate their businesses? How do I sell my vegetables to you when I feel that I am not trading value (my corn) for value (your shillings) but asking for your mercy and charity?

By lunchtime you could already begin to sense the shift.

Three women—all farmers—approach me, and thank me for the happiest day of their lives.

“How is that?”

“We really are powerful”

Just. So.

From here I began showing them how to take this new found sense of power and value into their communications with customers. (Although one woman told me that the first place she was going to use it was with her husband!)

Each participant stood before his peers, introduced himself, told the audience what business he was in, and “Why you should buy my product.”

Monte: Now pretend to be the President of Kenya … now a Queen … now the largest land owner in Kenya. Persuaaaaade Meeeeee!

Amazing to watch, as they each began stretching the limits of what, up until now, they believed possible.

It was a memorable day, with some very amazing people.

My next report will be filled with photos of some of the actual businesses and owners, taken 2 days after the workshop.

Strategies for Effective Leadership

2011-08-01T12:32:00.002-04:00

My philosophy is that the more fun the participants

have, the easier it will be for them to learn ...

and to overcome the challenges that are being presented.

Helping each other ascertain where in the world

they want to be in 5 years, 10 years, etc.

One of the frequent challenges for leaders of spiritual communities is to overcome the tendency for a passive spirituality. This is where we all sit around feeling spiritual, feeling close to our God, and feeling love for each other … while actually giving little or no attention to demonstrating that “love and closeness” to the world around us.

As a community, why are we here?

How are we, specifically to demonstrate our love for God, self and others to the world around us?

As the person seeking to guide the conversation toward answering these questions, I wanted to massage their brains to begin thinking new thoughts. To accomplish this, I needed to use language they were unaccustomed to.

As these men and women were all participants in the Christian Faith, they were use to hearing of being fruitful and glorifying their God. So. What did I talk about?

What will success look like, sound like, and feel like … in your particular community? If you can’t describe this in specific detail, how will you know that you are headed in the direction of your vision, and fulfilling your mission?

Five years from now, what do you want to be seeing, hearing and feeling in your community?

Five years from now, what do you want the people outside of your community to be seeing, hearing and experiencing from your community?

Now. Let’s design a strategy for accomplishing this.

We then discussed the differences between being oriented around Needs and being propelled and guided by Mission.

One of he initial push-backs was my suggestion that none of the communities being represented here were equipped to be All Things to All People. No community, however large, is.

St Paul spoke of his own mission as This One Thing I Do. “What is your community’s One Thing?”

You can’t feed the poor, care for the orphans, provide graduate level theological education for the faithful, set up medical clinics, provide micro-enterprise loans to help people start businesses, create environments conducive to attracting unbelievers to the Faith, and etc., etc., etc. You don’t have the resources to Be All Things or Do All Things. Period.

From here, the conversation took off into exploring what each individual believed he or she was passionate about accomplishing in his or her communities, and then designing strategies for communicating and accomplishing their visions.

As a trainer/facilitator, I never know what the Big Takeaway is going to be for the participants. When the two days were over and people were standing to share what was most helpful for them, one of the most oft repeated topics was my comment (not original) that HOPE WAS NOT A STRATEGY.

You accomplish what you plan on accomplishing.

If you don’t plan, someone else will … and where will that lead?

If you don’t have a strategy that you are executing daily, you are at the mercy of circumstances.

“Leaders Lead. Leaders are headed in a specific direction, setting out to attain specific outcomes. If this is not your mindset, you are not a Leader.”

It was a great two days. Can’t wait to begin receiving feedback as to what is taking place in the communities these men and women are leading!

Tomorrow, I will be training 40 men and women involved in our micro-enterprise project. “Discovering, Developing, and Deploying Your Potential … or OWNING YOUR POWER!”

Stay tuned for my report!

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Owning Your Power V: Intentionality v "Motives" -- UPDATE

2011-08-01T00:49:00.006-04:00

Given the email I have been receiving, it appears that my use of the word “Motive” as opposed to Intent is confusing some of my readers actually waited a day to post this blog, searching around for a more descriptive word. Should have waited a week!

See if this helps:

While Intent is a determination that guides our Power, our Life Force, I can experience feelings that take me nowhere in particular or take me somewhere contrary to my professed intentions. I used the word “motives” because it is here where so many of us delude ourselves. How so?

If I profess noble feelings – e.g., Love, Kindness, Care, Empathy, Truth-telling – in regard to my words and behaviors, then this is all that matters, correct? Using the illustrations from this post…

It doesn’t matter that the policies and regulations I am executing are creating more and more poverty. What counts, what absolves me of all wrongdoing, as well as the failure to produce my stated Intentions, is the fact that my feelings—My Motivation—are noble!

It doesn’t matter that my words and behaviors have wrecked some of my relationships. I was experiencing loving feelings while saying and doing what I did, so the wreck is not my doing, so it is not my problem.

We delude ourselves when we divorce actual outcomes from stated intentions.

In contrasting Intent and Feelings (Motives), I am asserting that 1) feelings can be dreadful guides and interpreters; and 2) at the end of the day, what matters to people who are Intending to produce a specific outcome is whether or not this is taking place. They don’t hide their failures to produce behind professions of having noble feelings. In owning their power, they own the results it is producing.

Or so I believe …

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Nakuru, Kenya

2011-07-29T11:08:00.003-04:00

July 28

Nakuru, Kenya. I have arrived here to facilitate a two-day Leadership Conference (Strategies for Effective Leadership) and a one-day workshop (Discovering, Developing and Deploying Your Potential) for some of our newer micro-enterprise owners.On Monday, I will also head out to go see some of these new businesses.

The town is overrun with tourists who have come for a music festival featuring High School musicians from around the nation. As a result, the room that was reserved for me by our friends and project partners at Farming Systems Kenya was given to someone else. As this individual was part of a group of 60 people who wanted rooms at this hotel, management thought it wise to delete my reservation. Of course, the long-term consequences of people hearing that they cannot trust this hotel to maintain reservations didn’t occur to them. It will.

Gratefully, another room was found so I didn’t have to set up a tent!

Today, I will begin teaching 50 local leaders. Most of the attendees will be leaders of spiritual communities. I say “teaching” but actually I will be facilitating a conversation on the topic. As most of these men and women are use to a classroom setting where the Authority on the Subject Holds Forth (with PowerPoint, of course), they will be surprised that this is not what is going to take place.

Conversations open up far more possibilities for exchanges of information and wisdom than what is possible when one person – no matter how wise and brilliant – does all the talking. This is especially the case when the speaker is from the United States and the attendees are all African. It is an arrogance of the highest order to presume that a foreigner can ever fully understand people from another culture.

How in the world am I going to know that my audience is understanding what I am suggesting if there is no room given for constant, real-time feedback? Anyway –

Today, we will begin with Defining Success.

If you don’t know where you are headed, how will you know when you arrive?

If you don’t know where you are headed, how will you know if you are off-course?

If your staff has different and competing visions regarding how they define success, then what do you think is going to happen?

If your community or organization has no idea or competing ideas regarding what success looks like, how many people are going to end up thinking “we have failed,” even if the leadership is happy with present results?

So. The conversation will begin with everyone offering ideas of what success will look, sound and feel like. The real fun begins when it becomes evident that “My ideas differ from Yours … but, of course, Mine are correct.” A great opportunity for pointing out that this is precisely what is happening in many of the communities and organizations that they are leading.

Stay tuned for the next post, where I will report how the day’s conversation proceeded. If everyone simply stares at me for 8 hours, I will write about the weather. It’s great, by the way: in the low 60s F and dry! Then again, maybe I will pretend to channel God and just tell everyone what they are supposed to be doing!

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Owning Your Power V: Intentionality v "Motives"

2011-07-28T09:22:00.007-04:00

When I intend to be a loving person--when my determination is to demonstrate love in ways that others can see, hear and feel this love—my conscious and subconscious mind will automatically begin the process of seeking out avenues to do just this. I will also maintain a consistent awareness as to where I am and am not achieving what I am determining, and then adjusting my behaviors, attitudes and words accordingly. I am not interested in merely feeling loving; I am determining that others will be experiencing this love.

When it comes to motives, however—at least as I am using that word here—calibration and adjustments are irrelevant. “I AM feeling love toward you, whether you are getting it or not. If not, that’s your problem.”

People who are determined to produce X and see that they are getting Y adjust accordingly. My words and actions did not produce X so I choose a different tact. It’s a no-brainer. But it is right here where we discover the difference between those whose intentionality is to produce X and those who only wish to feel X-ing. For many people all that matters is saying, “My Heart is Filled with X.” It doesn’t matter that everywhere they go what people are getting from them is Y.

We see this delusion in many of our politicians. They say, for example, that their hearts are filled with compassion for the poor. The fact that their actions (policies and regulations) create more and more poor people is irrelevant. Results are meaningless. Why? Because it is all about feeling compassionate not about truly helping the poor.

Before you start screaming, “Amen,” however, look at your own life. Are you producing, over time, what you are professing to be your intentions? If you are not, then it is time for a Reality Check.

Owning your power includes taking responsibility for what your power is producing.

Yes, yes, if your intentions have only been embraced in the last few weeks, you probably need more time to compare your stated intentions with what is being produced. However, if this is not the case, if reality isn’t verifying your stated intentions, then wisdom dictates a change in tactics. Reality also might be dictating you check your actual intentions.

Back in the early 90’s I heard Daniel Tocchini refer to our individual worlds as a mirror. Brilliant metaphor. If my life is strewn with broken relationships—no matter what I profess about my loving heart--these mirrors are reflecting that I must change how I am seeking to demonstrate love or it is revealing a heart that just may be filled with a determination other than what I am professing.

Professing noble intentions may garner the applause of others, but for those of us whose intentions (determinations) are to achieve specific outcomes, applause means nothing and feelings of nobility useless: for us, results and achieving outcomes are what matters.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Owning Your Power IV: Intentionality

2011-07-24T07:24:00.006-04:00

Intention refers to a determination to behave in a certain fashion so as to achieve something that is important to you. I believe that one of the major keys to utilizing and managing our power is found at the level of intentionality. Whatever our intentions are—whatever we are determined to do or achieve—is what will inform, infuse and guide the use of our power.

The fact is that our attention is directed by our intention. I will pay attention to what will move me forward or to what may get in the way of where I am determined to go. Everything else is adjusted accordingly.

Now, I am not referring to those whims or desires that come and go, nor am I referring to those intentions we tell our friends and our selves so as to be accepted and respected. (Actually, if you want to know your true intentions, all you have to do is see what you are accomplishing.) Intention generates determination that, in turn, propels us in a specific direction. Your present actions and even inaction reveals your intention.

If I intend to use my power entirely for self –self-promotion, self-aggrandizement, and self-protection— guess where my attention, and thus my power, will be directed? And guess what possibilities for action will be filtered out by my intention?

If, however, I broaden my intent to not only care for self but, in the process, also intend to serve others wherever possible on the quest, then my attention will be broadened to take in these possibilities.

Conscious and Subconscious Process

For many people, much of what they are determined to do is held at a subconscious level. Something happened to them years ago that, by the power of the experience, shaped their intentions.

"My parents rejected me so I am determined to never be vulnerable to love and be loved again." The intention to avoid rejection focuses their attention on rejection: every slight, every raised eyebrow a sure sign of impending disregard. It also potentially creates an intention to Reject Before Rejected.

"As a youth my power was ridiculed so I am determined to aggressively assert my power at every turn." Or, perhaps, I will be determined to hide my power.

When you are clear about your intentions, your conscious and subconscious mind will constantly seek out opportunities for attaining what you intend. It is an automatic process!

If my intention is to generate more income, I WILL constantly be looking for opportunities to make this happen. My intention will guide me in the use of my power.

If my intention is for you to see, hear and feel my love, then I will consistently be seeking out ways to do this. The automatic process will guide how I utilize and manage my power, in this regard.

If I truly intend to be successful in my chosen “arena of achievement,” (Tom Peters), my attention will be focused on doing all that is within my power to equip myself and to do all that is necessary to achieve success. This is where my power will be focused. Conversely, if I intend to stay safe and secure, and to never push myself to the limit, then my attention and actions will be guided toward looking for the easy way, the safe way, only seeing those possibilities that will satisfy my intentions.

If you desire to own your power and to wisely utilize and manage it, then you must begin working on your intentions. What is it I am determined to achieve? What kind of man or woman do I intend to become? How do I intend to affect the world and people around me? Be clear here and your power will automatically begin moving toward achieving what you intend.

Owning Your Power III

2011-07-12T12:22:00.002-04:00

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind. -- Dr Seuss

Utilizing and managing your power requires awareness of self and the world around you, as well as a laser like focus on your intent. If you are to use your power for your own good and the good of others, you will want to be aware of self while paying attention to the affects of your choices on the world around you and then evaluating the outcomes of your behavior by the standard of your intentions.

Why did I make that choice?
Why did I think that?

Why did I say that?

Why did I behave in that fashion?

What exactly was my intent and is it being realized?

Did my choice move me in the direction I intended?
Are my thoughts (inner dialogue) aligned with my intention?
Are my words moving the conversation toward my intended outcome?

Does my behavior demonstrate my intention?

People who deny their power rarely (if ever) ask themselves such questions. On a subconscious level, they know that to do so would reveal that they are living out of fear rather than faith, hope and love. To examine their inner and outer worlds would gradually force them into a corner where they would have to ask themselves, “What is the purpose of my existence and am I fulfilling it?” Once answered they would have to face the Big Question:

Today is set before you Life and Death: which do you choose?

Are you going to live your life On Purpose or will you choose the death of mindless existence? Are you going to love God, self and others to the extent that fear is being banished from your life so as to truly live as God intended, or are you going to allow fear to extinguish love?

Those who own their power have chosen to live and to love On Purpose and By Intent. Those who yield to fear are choosing death —at least for the time being— and are robbing God, self and others of their full presence, which includes the power of their love, talents, and wisdom.

Choosing Life we choose to own our power.

Choosing Life we choose to pay attention to where we are generating life and where we are generating death and then begin doing away with those beliefs, actions and attitudes that are generating death.

Choosing Life we are choosing to be the person we were created to become.

Choosing Life we begin making choices regarding our words, behaviors and attitudes based on what we intend to accomplish and create in our worlds, by the power of our Life and Love.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Owning Your Power II

2011-07-08T07:31:00.003-04:00

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You. -- Dr Seuss

Owning your power is the first step in learning how to utilize and manage your power.

Okay, okay … actually, one of the first things that begins to happen is that you start looking back at all those false steps and missteps where you kept giving your power away!

How many times did I seek permission to have an opinion, an idea, or a point of view?

How many times did I look around for an “Okay, you may try that,” when wanting to go in a different direction from that of my friends or family?

How often did I edit myself, so as to not trouble or anger others? And I didn’t do this out of a sense of appropriateness, but out of a default mindset that refuses to take a stand and be who I am, what I am, and how I am in that moment?

How many times did I leave a meeting, party or get-together and no one even knew I was there?

These are all demonstration of not owning your power, or, at least, keeping it locked away.

Utilizing Your Power

Our intent is to learn to utilize our power for our own good, as well as the good of others.

Sometimes you may wish to blow someone’s socks off with your power.

Sometimes you will want to hold your power close to the chest, waiting for the opportune moment.

Sometimes you will want to show-up larger than life (authoritative), but at other times as a fellow traveler (approachable).

Pay attention to how your presence affects those around you and then manage your power according to your intended outcomes.

Have you ever known a very attractive man or woman with high energy who was oblivious of his or her affect on those around them? People left and right misinterpreting their every word and move. “He touched my shoulder, he is interested in me,” “She paid me a compliment, she likes me,” “They ignored me, those arrogant idiots,” and other such misunderstandings that could have been avoided had Ken or Barbie been paying attention.

Paying attention, he could have said something that would have placed the kindness in its proper context. Paying attention, she could have defused his increasing infatuation by some light humorous comment. Paying attention, they could have easily spoken or nodded their head in friendly acknowledgement of those across the room staring at them.

As you own your power, people will be attracted to your presence. Some are subconsciously attracted to your unique power because they intuit you can help them in some way. Others find your presence inspiring. With each of these, you will want to note the motivation and manage your power accordingly. By the way, you will also want to guard against allowing these people into your inner circle too quickly. They want something from you, which is all fine and good, but is NOT the basis of a lasting friendship.

Then there are those people who, having denied their own power, seek to live vicariously through you. The problem here is that, in the majority of cases, these people are vampires who will suck the life right out of you. If you are a generous hearted person, the temptation will be to give them some of your power so as to help them reignite their own. This rarely works. If you do choose to give them some of your power, have a cut off-date in mind, or at least note when you find yourself wanting to avoid them, or getting angry over their impotency. “Time to go.”

Of course, some will resent you and your power and go out of their way to either sabotage you or become overly aggressive with you, proving their power is superior. No one is allowed to eclipse her light. No one is allowed to appear more powerful then him. If this is your boss, then you will want to manage yourself accordingly. If this is someone you can stay away from, I wholeheartedly encourage you to do so. Small minded and insecure people are dangerous.

(Owning Your Power III coming soon!)

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Owning Your Power

2011-07-04T06:08:00.007-04:00

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You're the guy who'll decide where to go.

-- Dr. Seuss

You have a unique power: the power to love, the power to achieve, the power of your own way of being. You can deny this power, you can give this power away, or you can own it.

Denying your power, you may use it but with a complete lack of awareness so that you are oblivious to what is happening (for good or ill) to your self or those around you.

Denying your power, you reject the person you were created to become, obviously believing that you know better than God.

Giving your power away is the choice of allowing others to live their lives through yours, to think their thoughts through your brain, to speak their words through your voice.

Giving your power away is synonymous with giving away your freedom, as well as the responsibilities that go with it.

Why would any of us make such choices?

Some of us simply do not want to be responsible for our lives. “Let somebody else drive the car … I’ll just sit here in the back seat. It’s so much easier.” Well, yeah, if you don’t care where the car is headed and that there just might be a God who is not amused by your giving away what he gave to you with a very specific intent for how you were to use it and where you were to drive it.

Some of us refuse to own our power because of the fear of not being able to manage it. Power can be destructive. We love repeating, “Power corrupts!” I mean, come on: we have all witnessed powerful people leaving a string of damaged people, families, businesses, or nations in their wake. Wisdom here demands that we just not pick up what will inevitably lead to destruction, eh? But there remains the nagging awareness that in shirking our own power we are choosing to be a slave to others, choosing to not live as the individual we were created to be, and choosing to not love others with all the power that is uniquely ours.

Interestingly, some power-deniers love living vicariously through the lives and achievements of their powerful friends, church leaders, and such. These people often assuage their guilt over not owning their power by saying that they are here on earth to serve these powerful people. Maybe. But, if you are one of these “servants,” I have a question for you: Of what use is your impotency to the powerful?

Refusing to own my power, I go through life relating to others out of weakness. Rather than my seeking to be to you and for you the person whom God created me to be, I seek to be whoever you need me to be. Your beliefs, values, needs, and vision is all that matters: mine are irrelevant. You can degrade my beliefs, spit on my values, ignore my needs, and nuke my vision. After all, you matter, I don’t. (Of course, when I speak of “my” beliefs, values, needs, and vision in this context, I am referring to those memories of who and what I wanted to be, before I gave away my power.)

Owning your power means that you “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” People who own their power know that, because these Rights are God-given, they do not need the permission of other people or Institutions to pursue those Rights.

Owning my power means that I accept full responsibility for the world I have created and am creating. Powerful people never choose to play the victim.

Owning your power means that there is no longer a tin-cup shape hole in your heart that compels you to go through life seeking alms from others. As a creation of God you have value. When you enter into relationships, it is with a desire to share that value with others. When you enter the marketplace, you seek to trade value for value, not your weakness for the “charity” of others.

In owning my power I recognize and respect in others the same unalienable Rights. I relate to you as freeman to freeman, not as freeman to slave. By the way, this includes those men and women who choose to behave as slaves. However much they insist that I am responsible for their life and happiness, I choose to treat them with the respect owed to a freeman, refusing to play the role of slave-owner.

(Coming Soon: Owning Your Power II)

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

2011-06-16T12:47:00.002-04:00

It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.It’s not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound reinvention. . .no specific job or career goal defines me, and it should not define you . . . Whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity; with clarity comes conviction and true originality. . .whatever you think your dream is now, it will change, and that’s okay. Conan O'Brien

The World is Getting Better and Better

2011-03-25T11:34:00.002-04:00

2011-03-17T11:02:00.005-04:00

Happy St Patrick's Day ... lift a Guinness -- or, as I will do,

a Jameson--sing an Irish ballad, and do it with your friends!

May the Irish hills caress you.
May her lakes and rivers bless you.
May the luck of the Irish enfold you.
May the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you.

Egypt

2011-02-02T13:17:00.005-05:00

Most of us have been following the confusing mess in Egypt. I have read as many news services as I can find to ascertain what exactly is happening there. Today, I ran across this on-the- ground report that I found to be immensely helpful.

One week ago, Egypt was a stable authoritarian regime, prospects of change were minimal and every expert in Washington would have betted on the endurance of its regime. Today, Egypt is in a state of chaos. The regime, even after using its mightiest sword is not able to control the country and the streets of Egypt are in a state of utter lawlessness. As the world stands in awe, confusion, and worry at the unfolding events, perhaps it is important to write the evolving story that is happening in Egypt before any reflections can be made on them.

Contrary to pundits, it turns out that the Egyptian regime was neither stable nor secure. The lack of its stability is not a reflection of its weakness or lack of a resolve to oppress. It is a reflection of its inherent contradiction to the natural desire of men to enjoy their basic freedoms. Egyptians might not know what democracy actually means, but that does not make the concept any less desirable. Perhaps it is precisely its vagueness and abstraction that makes the concept all the more desirable.+

Saturday was indescribable. Nothing that I write can describe the utter state of lawlessness that prevailed. Every Egyptian prison was attacked by organized groups trying to free the prisoners inside. In the case of the prisons holding regular criminals this was done by their families and friends. In the case of the prisons with the political prisoners this was done by the Islamists. Bulldozers were used in those attacks and the weapons available from the looting of police stations were available. Nearly all the prisons fell. The prison forces simply could not deal with such an onslaught and no reinforcements were available. Nearly every terrorist held in the Egyptian prisons from those that bombed the Alexandria Church less than a month ago to the Murderer of Anwar El Sadat was freed, the later reportedly being arrested again tonight.+

Today the Egyptians are scared. They have been given a glimpse of hell and they don't like what they see. Contrary to Al Jazeera's propaganda, the Egyptian masses are not demonstrating anymore. They are protecting their homes and families. The demonstration last night had 5,000 political activists participating and not 150,000 as Al Jazeera insists. At this moment, no one outside of those political activists cares less now if the President will resign or not. They have more important concerns now; security and food.+

For the entire report go here.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2011

Conscience

2011-01-18T15:31:00.006-05:00

Conscience: For some, The Great Argument against submitting one’s self to a “so-called” objective truth and goodness.

Conscience. For others, the God given organ in each human designed to show us the way toward truth, goodness and beauty.

If conscience is organ-like, can we weaken or even destroy the organ by ignoring it? Conversely, can we, over time, exercise the organ so that it is more highly attuned to truth and goodness … to God-likeness?

Switching Metaphors Are we equipped with an ethical tuning fork that resonates to truth and goodness, or is it the case where all we are sensing are the reverberations of environmental and social conditioning?

If it is the latter, can we then actually speak of having a “conscience”? Isn’t it more a case where we possess “consciousness”: a subjective awareness of what others/society believe to be “useful” ways of living?

So, we are utterly dependent on the subjective opinions of others to show us the way? Does anyone think Western Civilization would have ever developed, had this been how the Three Greeks (Plato-Socrates-Aristotle), Erasmus and Luther, and Washington-Jefferson and Co viewed conscience and the reality of an objective truth and goodness?

I think that if we believe that God has not created all humans with a conscience that is to guide us toward an ever-increasing awareness of an objective truth and goodness, what we are left with is the “ethical” standard of Captain Jack Sparrow:

The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do.

And if this is the case, all we have is Naked Power -- via majority-vote or a Despot -- deciding for us all how we should live. Not exactly a model conducive for supporting and defending human dignity, is it?

Happy New Year

2011-01-01T12:02:00.006-05:00

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body. CS Lewis

The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than the real. It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live. Victor Hugo

A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people. Gandhi

Being the New Year has arrived I have been thinking about the popular practice of making New Year’s Resolutions and wondering what I could write that would help people better themselves.

Why do the vast majority of people give up on their Resolutions before February?

What is it that deters us from making the changes we sincerely wish to make in our lives?

I believe that all battles are won or lost in the soul. Whether it is the battle to lose weight, create healthy relationships or to become more prosperous, “winning” begins in the soul. Why? Because it is here where our values, ideals, and beliefs reside and it is these that dictate our attitudes and behaviors.

It seems to me that, in our technology driven culture, the soul is something that is overlooked. What we want are skill-sets and techniques, formulas and algorithms, rather than depth of soul. We want a book that gives us 7 Steps to Financial Success not one that digs around in our belief systems and values, challenging our notions of, say, personal responsibility and labor.

“Too touchy feely.”

“Too ambiguous.”

“Not practical.”

The fact is, however, unless we transform some of our beliefs and ideals, whatever techniques we learn will be ineffectual, or at least not as effectual as they could be. Techniques and skills are important, of course. But what happens when your skills are not supported by your deepest values and beliefs?

What you believe about “good and bad,” what you believe about “time and history,” your concepts of “Ideal Behaviors” and your beliefs about “God” and “spirituality” all drive your approach in going about living your day-to-day life. Of course the initial rub is that many people are clueless as to their beliefs and such and, therefore, also clueless as to how to make the wanted and necessary changes in this regard.

Going Deeper

I think the art of crafting or developing a soul with depth and breadth is becoming a lost art: it is something for monks and priests and little old ladies with time on their hands. Yet, it is this mindset that not only leaves people two-dimensional, but it also creates a society where the major issues of the day will remain unsolved.

Soul-less people equivocate, they cower before moral issues, having no core from which to address the foundational concerns. No, for these people the answer is always primarily Politics and Power. And it’s quite easy to harass and manipulate such people. The questions here, then, are no longer moral or philosophical or, heaven forefend, spiritual. It’s not about the soul it’s about technique. It’s not about Truth, Goodness or Beauty but purely about What is Useful for the Powers That Be.

The answers or solutions to what vexes us as individuals and a nation lie within the soul, not (primarily) in passing the correct laws or enacting the proper regulations, or following the 7 Steps to Success. The challenge here, however, is that developing souls takes patient work and deep reflection over time, and we want our problems — be they personal or societal — solved in the next election cycle.

“Think? Reflect? Meditate? Praaaaaay? Hell, No! WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING.” That’s the mindset that leads to placing Band Aids on a cancer.

This nation was founded on the premise that Life, Liberty, Property, and the Pursuit of Happiness were gifts from God. We then developed laws to protect these gifts. Rather than arguing about (for example) the next best Stimulus Package what about a conversation regarding these concepts? What do you believe -- what do I believe, what do we believe -- about these gifts? Are they even gifts or are they grants from the State?

Back to you: Rather than focusing all of your attention on the proper technique for losing weight, earning more money, or creating healthy relationships how about taking a long hard look at your soul?

What if there is a hole in your soul that you are seeking to fill with food, money or people? Do you think there will ever be enough to fill the void? What if that void can only be filled with Truth, Goodness and Beauty? What if the void is actually spiritual? I know—this is a stretch for some of you, but it certainly won’t hurt to think about it, long and hard. Will it?

What about making a resolution to go deeper than diets, financial planning and steps for making healthier friendships, and begin working on your soul? What about placing the important but secondary issues in the background and making your soul a priority?

Do you want a “Happy New Year”? Nietzsche said, “There is one thing one has to have: either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art and knowledge.” Happiness isn’t primarily something that comes with being skinny, financially flush and having loads of friends: it is something that is first made in the soul … or so I believe.

Frank Sinatra Thats life

2010-12-31T12:09:00.003-05:00

Thinking about making this one of my theme songs for 2011!

Santa Went Down to Georgia- Rockband

2010-12-24T06:42:00.000-05:00

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel {Robert Shaw}

2010-12-24T04:49:00.000-05:00

Slaughterhouse Christmas Special - Epic Meal Time

2010-12-23T10:16:00.003-05:00

Absolute proof that a man needs a woman in his life ... eventually.

UPDATE: To the women whom have written saying this is gross and disgusting: Please read what I wrote! Men need women ... or they turn out like this! I think it was Woody Allen who said that without women, men are pigs. Of course. he also said that women were insane without men!

North Point's iBand

2010-12-15T02:13:00.000-05:00

Memory Lane

2010-12-10T13:57:00.008-05:00

While looking under my bed for a dropped pen, I discovered some CDs I had forgotten even existed. As I was about to run some errands, I grabbed one put it in my car’s CD player and took off.

Here come old flattop he come grooving up slowly

He got joo-joo eyeball he one holy roller …

The Beatles and Abbey Road: Man, did that bring back memories.

Almost 30 years ago, I was in England taking exams to see if I could qualify to study for a degree from Cambridge. There was a break between written exams and I was sitting around with a few of the professors.

Prof: So, Monte, if you knew you were going to be stranded on an island for years and years what 2 albums would you like to have with you?

M3: Wow … that means there would be electricity! (No laughter.) Okay. Two albums ... hmmmmm … Beethoven’s 9^th and Abbey Road.

Prof: (Gulping) Abbey Road?

M3: I love it. It brings back great memories.

Prof: (Raised eyebrows) I found some of the lyrics a bit cheeky.

M3: Cheeky?

Prof: Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl

Someday I'm going to make her mine??????

M3: So you HAVE listened to it?!?!?

When we went back to exams, he told me that the conversation was also part of the interview.

Yes, I was accepted but never attended.

The next day, after walking around London for 10 hours, I went back to my hotel room and who was being interviewed on BBC TV? Paul McCartney! An obvious sign from heaven.

What two albums/CDs would you choose?

This is Not That

2010-12-07T12:54:00.006-05:00

“A” is not “B”

Kindness is not weakness

Niceness is not kindness

Friendliness is not friendship

Facts are not the truth

Talking is not communicating

Potential (“having promise”) is not performance

Preferences are not convictions

Faith is not magic

Failure is not final

Impartiality is not indifference

Calm is not peace

Confidence is not competence

Procrastination is not patience

Charity is not compulsory

Ignoring the faults of others is not “believing the best”

Running from death is not seeking after life

"Christmas is not your birthday"

Thanksgiving

2010-11-24T04:42:00.004-05:00

I am thankful to be above ground and healthy.

I am thankful for second chances.

I am thankful for each of my five children and six grandchildren.

I am thankful for my three—soon to be four—son-in-laws.

I am thankful for my brothers and sister.

I am thankful for the love and care of my friends, past and present.

I am thankful for the teachers and mentors who took the time to instruct and guide me.

I am thankful for all of the beauty God packed into creation.

I am thankful for the charities that I serve.

I am thankful to be living in the most generous and charitable nation in history.

I am thankful for a life that has allowed me to travel around the world.

I am thankful for air conditioning, computers, mobile phones, and airplanes.

I am thankful for stuffed-mushrooms, fine wines, Single-Malt Scotch and bodacious cigars.

I am thankful for libraries, bookstores, and art museums.

I am thankful for living in the US, for the wisdom and courage of our nation’s Forefathers, and for the men and women of our military who defend our freedoms.

I am thankful for the entrepreneurs who made and make the US the most prosperous nation in history.

I am thankful for the love, grace, and mercy of God. +

Giving thanks reminds me that all that I am and all that I have is because of others.

Giving thanks is giving honor to whom honor is due.

Giving thanks keeps self-pity, discouragement, and melancholy at bay.

Giving thanks (up-close and personal) encourages others. “You matter. Your contribution makes a difference. I see what you have done, who you are, and am grateful.”

Giving thanks reminds me to be a good steward of gifts received.

Giving thanks motivates me to be the kind of person for whom others can be grateful.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

The Wreck

2010-11-11T03:05:00.010-05:00

I wasn’t in any hurry, which, as it turns out, saved my life. When my Jeep began hydroplaning, I had actually just changed lanes, so as to allow the speeding cars behind me to pass in the outside lane.

“Slip sliddin' away …” (Paul Simon)

“This is not how I wanted to die.” I had no doubt I was going to flip over the concrete guardrail, falling out of the sky onto the hwy below. There wasn’t any sense of fear, only inevitability.

Slam, bam, “Thank you Lord!” I am bouncing back toward the other guardrail.

Seeing the pavement only 6 inches from my face, I think to myself, “This can’t be good.” I try to turn and see if there are any cars about to hit me but the pain in my back won’t let me move. Not sure what I thought I was going to do about it had there been any.

Slam! and my Jeep flips back, right side up, careening back into the center of the two lanes of the ramp headed onto 285 East.

All over.

“Let’s see. No blood. Back feels on fire but, hey, I AM ALIVE!” Upon seeing what I thought was a white t-shirt draped over the steering wheel. “O man, my clothes must have been thrown from the back of the Jeep.” I later realize that it was the deployed and deflated air bag. (Docs and EMT guys all were flabbergasted that I had no airbag wounds.)

“I’m a nurse. You are going into shock. Lie still.”

“Get me out of here!”

“You MUST remain still!”

(Sweat pouring into my eyes) “I am NOT going into shock. I need to get out of here, get back home, take a shower, and go to bed!” But I can’t move because the pain is so severe … and something was different from the pain I experienced 20 years ago when Colonel and I were walking up the broken escalator in St Petersburg, Russia, and I first discovered I had a degenerating disc.

Nurse places a blanket over me. “You need to stay warm.”

“Get this off of me. I am burning up!”

She replaces blanket, so I take it and throw it to the other side of the car where she can’t get to it. She then takes my hand and just stands there with me, telling me she isn’t going to leave until the ambulance arrives. I was later told that we waited almost 2 hours before help arrived. Thank you, ma’me.

A guy walks up: “Can I do anything?”

“Help me find my phone.” He does, and I call my son to tell him I am going to be late; my sister, who I ask to meet me at emergency room; and Cathie, because I don’t want her to worry about my tardiness with promised phone call.

Fireman with arms bigger than my legs: “I am going to get you out. Can you move?”

“Damn straight I can move. Just get me out of here and find me a ride back to my apartment. I need a shower.” But when I twist so he can maneuver me out of the door, the pain is so mind-numbing that I decide that, sure, they can take me to the hospital.

I see a small young lady dressed as a Fire … person? Girl? Woman? She sees that I am agitated and somehow knows that if she will run around to the other side of Jeep and open the door, the breeze will calm me down.

“Thank you!” And I do calm down.

Being tied down to a straight board increased the pain, so I began asking if I could raise one of my legs to relieve the pain. No one pays any attention to me.

Policeman: “Hi, I am so sorry about this but I have to cite you for driving too fast ‘under conditions.’”

“I wasn’t speeding!”

“That’s why it says ‘under circumstances.’”

Great.

“I am NOT getting into that ambulance without my backpack!” Firegirl comes running with backpack in hand, “I picked up everything I saw and stuffed it inside.”

Ambulance driver slides me in … he’s laughing at what the Policeman just told him. Evidently, I kept yelling apologies to every semi- and car that drove by. (Hey, this is Atlanta. I know what it's like to get stuck on 285 and miss your children's birthday party and your wedding anniversary while waiting for the wreck to be removed.)

“Where do you want to go? What hospital?”

“Untie me!”

“No. Where do you want to go?”

“St. Joseph’s. Now, untie one of my legs before I start ripping off all the restraints.”

He does. I then entertain him with witty quips which kept him doubled over with laughter. Wish I could remember what I said.

Not sure how long I was in emergency room before my sister Sandy showed up. Man was I grateful to see her. And then daughters Three and Four, Bethany and Rachel, arrived. Fantastic! I could feeeeel my muscles relaxing.

Woosh. Mr. Wonderful, Monte IV, comes barreling in.

Having family close caused my heart rate to slow down and my blood pressure to drop back to normal.

Reading over reports from EMT descriptions of wreck, the doctor was concerned that I probably had internal damage. After hours of x-rays and CAT scans, “all” he discovered is a compressed disc and broken back. Fractured vertebrae: L-3. Orthopedic doctor later told me that had the fracture moved only a half-inch farther I would have been crippled.

I don’t remember which of my many caretakers said it, but someone mentioned that I had to have had an angel protecting me because I should have been killed. I heard this again and again. Each time I could feel tears of gratitude welling up in my eyes. “Thank you, Lord.”

And thank you, Sis, Bethany, Rachel, Monte IV and Cathie for being there. (Daughters One and Two, Rebekah and Laura who live out of town, were texting me while I was waiting on Doctor.) Thank you for calling most every day afterward, checking up on me, taking care of Insurance (Rachel), taking me to follow up visits (Bethany) … helping me get dressed and bringing me some kickin’ wine to go with my meds (Monte IV)!

And to all of you who emailed over and over and over again, texted, and called telling me of your love and prayers, I am humbled by the caliber of my friends. Colonel, CJ, Joseph, Derek and my Brother Richard were texting me while I was in Emergency Room! (My brother Charles would have but he is fighting to hold on to a rebellious kidney after transplant surgery. Talk about helping me to keep my perspective …)

A huge shout out goes to all the staff at St Joseph’s, as well, especially to Katie Card (RN) who cared for me as if I were her father.

You who have had similar experiences, know how surreal it is … how we seem to be standing outside of our bodies watching it all take place in slow motion. I knew I was dead. After that, all the pain was durable because I knew I had been given a second chance, knew that God could have … but didn’t. Two weeks later, I am still overwhelmed with gratitude: not only to God, but for my family and friends, as well.

Thank you for Being There.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

Opera Company of Philadelphia "Hallelujah!" Random Act of Culture

2010-11-08T20:09:00.000-05:00

Living in Love II

2010-11-06T15:23:00.008-04:00

What would happen in your life if you began to operate primarily out of love? What would happen if you began following where your heart was leading?

What if you speak the truth (as you understand it) to your co-worker because you care for her well-being, rather than confronting her out of fear or anger? (Fear that you will appear weak if you don’t go to war, fear that you will be considered an ineffective leader, angry that she isn’t Doing It Right, etc.)

What would you experience in your relationships if, each time you felt love welling up in your heart for an individual, you followed it, without knowing exactly where it would lead? “Was thinking of you and wanted to call/write/drop by: how are you? Is there anything I can do for you? I wanted to tell you how much I love you.”

How would your experience of work change if you approached it with love? Love for serving others, love for the work itself, love for the grace of even having a job!

What if your Quest for Knowing God or for knowing whether or not there is a God was fueled by Love (Love of God, Love for Truth) rather than fear of being wrong, fear of “eternal torment,” fear of looking/sounding/acting like “them” or fear of not looking/sounding/acting like “them”?

What would happen in your relationship with your Significant Other if you permitted love to cast caution (fear) to the wind and stood before him or her with a naked soul?

“O, Monte. Be reasonable!” I am! If love is what makes the world go around, if we were created by and for love, then living in love is the most reasonable thing you can do.

My experience is that when the conversation turns to love and people start talking about being reasonable they are usually hiding or running. Such people can’t see the eye for the mote. All the beauty and meaning of life is constantly filtered out by so-called "reason."

Love surrenders

Love is vulnerable

Love is fragile (but not weak)

Love serves

Love feeeeeels: affection, empathy, fondness, care, and passion. Yes, I know. Love acts and behaves in loving ways. But ask yourself this: What would happen if you told your "loved ones" that you were behaving/acting in a certain way solely out of a commitment that was void of feelings? How do you think they would evaluate your "loving" behavior?

"I don't feel like serving you. Actually, would rather be doing something else ... anything else ... but I have to keep my commitments. Grrrrrrrrr."

Sure, we don’t always feeeeeel like keeping the laws of love (respect, kindness, believing the best, etc.) toward others. However, if feeeeelings are rarely a part of your “loving behavior,” you might want to drop back, punt, and go to the sidelines and get to work on your heart.

Elections: WWJD

2010-10-29T11:05:00.007-04:00

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

Thomas Jefferson

Time Out

2010-10-28T03:00:00.003-04:00

Unable to finish my thoughts on Living in Love, as I am presently Living in Pain. After hydroplaning my Jeep and bouncing around the I-75 S ramp onto I-285 E., I have a squashed disc, fractured vertebrae, and a hematoma the size of a baseball on my left knee. While the drugs I am taking help manage the pain, they also keep my brain in a fog. Hopefully I will be able to sit up and think in the near future.

Thank you so much for your prayers and kind notes.

Living in Love I

2010-10-24T16:00:00.007-04:00

Love

Dictionary: A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

St Paul

Perfect love casts out all fear

St John

Responsibility without love makes us inconsiderate

Power without love makes us cruel

Belief without love makes us fanatics

Intelligence without love makes us dishonest.

Lao Tzu

Upon hearing of the deaths of his two greatest disciples, the Buddha said,

It’s as the sun and the moon have left the sky.

I believe that the heart of the Universe is love: not narcissism, not vanity, not egotism, but Love. Why do I believe this? Because I believe that God the Creator is love. While God is One, God is also Three (Triune), or else what we would have at the heart of the Universe would be narcissism!

Communal love emanates from the source of all creation.

Love does make the world go around. Romantic love, familial love, love of creating, love of creation, love of working, love of living, love of others, love for God.

So what is it that causes so many of us to choose to live without love, or at least to live with so little of it, anyway? We play around the edges, we flirt with it, and we think about it. We want to give and receive love … but when love comes around it’s off to the shadows.

Too costly

Too dangerous

Too demanding

Too painful

Too, too, too

My studies and experiences of the human condition is that people typically live out of fear, rather than love. Look at what drives and informs so many of our decisions: fear of rejection, fear of exposure, fear of not fitting in, fear of loneliness, fear of losing, fear of doing without, fear of being wrong, fear of doing wrong, fear of being laughed at, fear, fear, fear. Here we are, created by and for love, choosing to live in fear … or at least choosing to keep our distance from an all-out-love for God, love for others, love of life. What’s up with that?

Yet each man kills the thing he loves 

By each let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,

And some when they are old;

Some strange with the hands of Lust,

Some with the hands of Gold;

The kindest use a knife, because

The dead so soon grow cold.

Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Jail

“Some kill their love when they are young.”

A couple of years ago a man I hadn’t heard from in 30 years sent me an email. I didn’t remember his name when I first saw it, but I remembered the counseling session as he described it. He had the Love of His Life who felt the same toward him. The fly in the ointment was Dad: he didn’t like the girl. At the time the young man was around 25 and dead set on attaining his dad’s approval. Admirable, to a point, but, as I pointed out, he was going past the point of honorable intentions into the land of juvenile fear. It’s a long painful story that ended with the young lady moving on with her life—without him.

The subject of his email? “I am 55 years old and still basing my decisions on fear of a father who has been dead for 10 years.” Sad. But at least he is waking up.

What is love? 'Tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter;

What's to come is still unsure:

In delay there lies not plenty …

Shakespeare, Sonnet 91

Love is now. Love lives in the moment, is experienced in the moment. The “plenty” that love can bring is lost by delay: delaying to decide, to act, to embrace, to move, to experience love’s fullness rather than shying away, unsure and fearful, running back to the familiar, the safe, the known.

This is getting too long for a single post! Let me think some more about this and will finish the thought here later in the week.

2010-10-21T11:33:00.002-04:00

Absolutely incredible. The boy's sense of rhythm and musicality is stunning.

Around 2 minutes in the Conductor has a problem with his nose, which is a crack up.

At the end, when he starts laughing and clapping and rolling on the ground, he has the same experience I had when I first heard Beethoven when I was around 9 years old: pure joy.

The Elusive Voice

2010-10-18T18:06:00.010-04:00

In my work as an executive coach and corporate trainer, one of the most frequent angst that I encounter in others has to do with “calling.”

“Am I doing what I am meant to be doing? It sure doesn’t feel like it.”

“I am good at this job, but it is not fulfilling. There is no sense of fulfilling my destiny.” (Note: I hear this from both spiritual and non-spiritual people.)

“I am a slave to my salary, benefits, and health insurance.”

“I am 50 years old and I still wonder what I am going to do when I grow up.”

Your Calling
The word “vocation” comes from the Latin word “vox”: Voice. This is where we derive the idea of a Calling.

Most of us want to be engaged in a Calling, not a job. We want meaningful labor, not drone-like activity. Gratefully, living in a relatively free country, we are at liberty to seek out such work.

For some reason, however, Callings are elusive. Part of the problem for some people is that they are waiting for a Clear Voice or Sign, such as St Paul experienced on the road to Damascus. However, this is NOT the norm. For most people such clarity comes gradually, over a long period of time.

Sometimes, you start out as a General Practitioner: you do this, that, and the other. You gradually discover that you are good at this, hate that, but only find meaningfulness in the other. A dawning then occurs. The whisper of a voice is heard … a voice that seems to be calling us in a certain direction.

At other times, we may wake up at 65 years old, look back at four different careers, and, Shazam, we hear it! What we experienced as four different paths is now seen as having had a single thread running through them all. “So THAT is my Calling!”

For some people, their job is what pays the bills, but their charity work or community service is their Calling. While some discover how to wed the two, others do not.

There is nothing essentially wrong with working at a job for money. St Paul did this when he became a tentmaker, didn’t he? The money he made from his business was used to support his Calling.

The challenge with a job is that they are rarely all that fulfilling. I understand that, given today’s economy, many people would be glad to have even a frustrating job! My point is that when comparing a job to a Calling there is a world of difference.

Of course, a career is better than a job: at least when it comes to a sense of satisfaction with your labor. With a career, there is a field you have chosen to specialize in and a path moving ever upward that you are following. However, if the path ceases moving upward with more and more challenges and rewards, it can become almost as unfulfilling as a job.

Answering the Question
As I see it, the concept of Calling, is an answer to the question, “Why am I here? What is the purpose of my existence?” For the majority of us, I don’t think the answer to such a critical question can be answered a minute or two after asking it!

What are my highest and most sacred values?

What are my gifts and talents? (What has always come easy to me?)

Who are my heroes? What do most of them have in common?

What makes you angry: not ticks you off or aggravates you, but makes you angry? Poverty? Injustice? Ignorance? Self-destruction? People who are suffering from curable diseases?

This last question may be new and possibly even troubling for some of you. However, when you think about it, if, for example, one of your highest values is Justice, then injustice is going to make you angry, eh? Now, if many of your heroes are lawyers and judges and crusaders against injustice … hey, isn't this telling you something about yourself that may help you discover your Calling?

Consider this quote by Abraham Kuyper:

When principles that run against your deepest conviction begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become a sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your conviction bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.

Something is terribly wrong: you see it, you hear it, you sense it. When you begin answering the question, “What am I going to do about it?” you just may be hearing a Voice … or at least a whisper of a Voice.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

Following the Tides

2010-10-09T15:33:00.009-04:00

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3

This passage has haunted me, ever since High School.

“What if I miss the tide? What if my eyes are not sufficiently trained to see ebb and flow?”

Then, seeing that I had missed an outgoing tide, the debilitating self-doubts and condemnation.

“What would have happened had I taken the tide, rather than choosing to stay in the relative safety of the lagoon? IDIOT!”

“I thought—‘I must stay in the lagoon with him/her/them … I will hate myself if I go out with that tide, leaving them behind.’ Now I see the truth: I sold myself—and them—short.”

“I thought—‘I don’t feel peace about that tide … ‘ Now I realize that, as with all momentous decisions, there is some discomfort.”

“I wanted to take that tide but those I thought wiser than I told me it would lead to pain and suffering. Now? I see they had their own agendas and plans for my life: plans that made them happy, but left me longing for the tide I had missed.”

Plans, Agendas, and Expectations
It is wise to plan for the future: to craft your budget, create a map for your career path with timelines, etc. Creating strategies for getting to where you want to go is critical for success. HOWEVER –

Do you know anyone older than 40 who is exactly where he planned on being, doing what he planned on doing when he was 20? Go read books about the creation and growth of some large corporations. Note how not one of them ever created a long-term strategy that actually worked out as planned. A Tide unexpectedly arrived and … whoosh, off they went!

Markets change. Shift happens. Better ideas emerge. The Tide takes you in a direction you had not foreseen.

The challenge of plans, strategies and the agenda of others, is that they can easily place blinders on our eyes, blinders that keep us from seeing the Tide.

Of course, sometimes we see or sense the Tide we want to take, but the circumstances are such that this Tide must be taken with others—a new relationship, a different orientation for our team, an alternate route for the business. However much you are convinced that this is the right or wise course to take, if he/she/they do not agree, you can’t head out to sea. Painful? You bet. But my focus here is where the choices are yours to make.

Learning the Ways of the Tides
Discerning the Tides is an art, more than it is a science. Here we are moving in the realm of inspiration, serendipity (providence), and intuition.

Watching for the Tide of opportunity is not like following a map. There is no “Take this road for 2 miles, then turn right at that intersection …” In watching for Tides, we are looking out for signs, hints, and symbols.

The Lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither indicates clearly nor conceals but gives s sign. Heracleitus

What may a “sign” of a coming Tide look like … sound like … feel like?

Over the past year, you have felt a deep sense of frustration over your job. One day you are reading a biography and there is an incident that occurs in the story that rings a bell in you soul—there is something here for you: maybe wisdom, maybe inspiration … you aren’t sure exactly what it is, but it sticks with you.

A week later, you are having lunch with a friend who shares with you something about her life that, strangely enough, has the same ring to it as the one you heard while reading the biography. Only in this scenario, you sense that your journey is similar to hers in some way that is important, or should be anyway. She did something that was new and attractive to you … but you can't get your head around exactly what it is.

And then—a month later—you hear about a job opportunity that, up until today, you would never have considered. It isn’t on your map. Or is it? You can almost hear the crashing of the waves, smell the sea: it reminds you of the story you read, of the actions taken by your friend. And – whoosh! Off you go. Or not. It’s your choice.

No, it wasn’t on the map. No, it wasn’t part of your plans. It is the way of life, however-- the Way of the Tides.

Remember the words of St James: Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow.

Go ahead and make your plans. Keep in mind, however, that you do not know what tomorrow will bring. Stay open to the signs. Pay attention to your intuition. Follow the inspiration … all the way to the outgoing Tide and the open sea.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

Gordon Gekko Was (Almost) Right!

2010-10-05T12:03:00.003-04:00

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.
Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, in the movie, WALL STREET

Gotch’ya! Title is a tease. Most everyone reading this would disagree with Gordon. Why? Because we know by experience and history that greed ultimately bankrupts individuals, corporations and nations because it is blinded by the lure of immediate gain, at any and all costs.

Greed is stupid. It is so blinded by the prospect of immediate reward that it fails to take into account what will be lost. And, what, you ask, will be lost?

“Here it comes. This is where Monte is going to hold-forth on the priceless nature of virtue.”

Well … kind of … but probably not in the way you think.

Greed is stupid because it is not in your best self-interest. Not in the long run, anyway.

Think about it. When my greed drives me to cross over the ethical boundary of, say, Do Not Lie (con, commit fraud, inflate figures, etc.), I may experience immediate rewards, but at what cost to my reputation? Who is going to want to do business with me in the future? How much money am I going to lose in the future because of this? And what about my reputation with friends and family, people whose evaluations and opinions deeply matter? And what of my relationship to my self? What damage have I done to my soul?

When I lie about my co-workers so as to place myself higher up on the corporate food chain, I am setting myself up for a future fall. Sooner or later one of those “idiots I so easily climbed over” is going to see to it that I am exposed: probably by sawing off the rung upon which my feet are standing. Worse yet, can I honestly think the Powers That Be will not see me in a less-than favorable light?

All of us act according to our self-interest. Not all of us, however, think about our long-term self-interests. Yes, even those of you who are spiritual act in your self-interest. For example, you “deny self” because of the value you place on the reward (God’s pleasure, favor and blessings) for having done so. In other words, you believe it is in your long-term/eternal best interest to make certain sacrifices. You who place great value on devotion to the welfare of others do so because it makes you feel good about yourself—you are “happy” because it is of value to you to behave in such a manner.

I place “happy” in quotation marks because I am not referring to momentary chuckles.

Sometimes my long-term happiness requires that I endure the pain of sacrificing B, because it was best for me to attain A. You may want B, but you want A more.

B. Eat a healthy scrumptious meal
A. Fast for the sake of spiritual or mental clarity

B. Buy some needed clothes
A. Save money for children’s education

B. Get a good night’s sleep
A. Sit with a friend who is ill

B. Have time for recreation
A. Go to night school three nights a week and Saturdays so as to provide more opportunities for advancement in your career

Getting back to Gekko …
The reason I wrote that Gordon was “almost” right, was because, today, when people use the word “greed,” quite often they are actually referring to “self-interest.”

There is nothing wrong or immoral about wanting to prosper. Wealth is not a sign of or synonym for Greed. As John Wesley (the pious founder of Methodism) said about money, “Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” You can neither save nor give money, however, until you have gained some of it!

There is nothing intrinsically immoral about seeking to take care of your self-interests. The question is, how do I go about fulfilling those interests so that I remain healthy (physically, psychologically and, if you are so inclined, spiritually), prosperous and happy over the course of my life … and, if you believe in God, throughout eternity,

Of course, today, when people seek to look out for their self-interests those who intend to make others sacrificial lambs call them Greedy. Remember: wherever there is a sacrifice there is someone collecting the benefit of that sacrifice. If you believe that it is in your long-term interest to choose to sacrifice time/energy/money for the sake of another, the sacrifice is a free-will offering. When someone demands the sacrifice, however, we are moving into the territory of slavery.

Consider the recent charges against The Wealthy by some politicians and ask yourself:

Why is it virtuous for Government officials to seek more and more power, but an act of greed when a corporation does the same thing?

Why is it that money found in Government coffers is Good, but in my hands it is a sign of Greed?

Why is it virtuous to demand that people sacrifice more and more of their money to the Government, but greedy for a businessman to make a profit for his labor and want to keep most of that profit? Frankly, I do not believe there is a single corporation in the US as greedy as our Government.

Anyway …

This nation was founded upon what our forefathers believed to be our inalienable rights … rights that come from God, not the Government. These rights include “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”: your life, your liberty, and your happiness.

Don’t accept the premise that guarding your inalienable rights is immoral. The fact is that it is the most moral thing you can do, as doing so is an act of stewarding the life and gifts God gave you. Or so I believe.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

Delta-Beings

2010-09-30T07:58:00.004-04:00

I believe that everyone is “interesting,” that no individual is without value or interest. Sadly, some of these people hide their colors, and others are simply sleepwalking through life. Call these sleepwalkers, Delta-Beings.

Why “Delta”?

A fully functioning brain can generate as much as 10 watts of electrical power.

Beta: Strongly engaged brain. Brain waves of 15-40 cycles per second.

Alpha: Not all that engaged. Brain waves of 9-14 cycles per second.

Theta: Daydreaming. Brain waves of 5-8 cycles per second

Delta: Deep, dreamless sleep. 1.5 to 4 cycles per second.

Delta-Beings always play it safe.

Delta-Beings do not ruffle feathers, trouble the waters, or rock the boat.

Delta-Beings will do what they are told to do…immediately…without even thinking about it.

Delta-Beings think tradition is off limits and that the mantra “We have always done it this way,” is divine wisdom.

Delta-Beings always agree with everyone—even when they all are disagreeing with each other

Delta-Beings don’t stand out.

Delta-Beings don’t know that there is a box, much less that they might want to think-outside-of-it.

Delta-Beings are predictable.

Delta-Beings parrot the company line, even after it is proven that it is only a punch-line to a very old joke which no one finds funny.

Delta-Beings rarely do anything “wrong.”

Delta-Beings do not challenge.

Delta-Beings can only solve the problems of the past.

Delta-Beings do not create, they only maintain.

Delta-Beings resist visionaries because such people require that Mr or Ms Delta-Being wake-up!

What can you do, if you are a Delta-Being?

Go find weird people, eccentric players, and off-the-wall-thinkers that never encounter a rule they don’t question. Find people who are allergic to boxes. Get to know them. Be challenged by them. Allow them to take you on the magical mystery tour of their thought processes.

Look around you. Look at your office and your life. R-e-a-l-l-y look. How many people of color are there? How many people from different cultures and countries? How many of your friends think exactly the way you do about almost everything? SNOOOOORING!

Read books, magazines and periodicals outside of your industry. Read up on genomes. Read Tolkien. Read Bob Sutton’s, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation. Read books which challenge the way you have always done-it, believed, thought. Shake-up your brain.

Visit museums. Immerse yourself in the atmosphere of creativity and self-expression. Consider the nuances, the juxtapositions, the shades, and the spaces. Go read up on the lives of the artists who move you. If they are still on this planet, contact them. Go meet them. Listen to them.

Visit a nearby graveyard. I am serious: dead serious. This is where you are headed. No matter how many years away it is, it is not all that far away. What will the epitaph read?

She Was Bored to Death
--Or—
Wow! What a Ride

A Question of Manipulation

2010-09-27T08:36:00.004-04:00

One of the questions that comes up when dealing with the topic of reinvention—at least as I am describing it—regards “manipulation.”

“When we create a role that takes up space in the minds of the Powers That Be, are we not seeking to manipulate people?”

Contrary to some people’s thinking, I see the word “manipulation” as value-neutral. The question for me is always Towards What End? I deeply appreciate the chiropractor manipulating my weary bones, for example.

The word “manipulation” is like the word “ambition.” There is rarely success or progress without ambition, yet for some reason it is usually spoken of pejoratively. The question for me, however, is, “Ambitious for … what?” Only then can I assign a positive or negative value.

When seeking to persuade someone to come to a decision or to take action, do you not speak in a certain tone, choose appropriate words, generate a certain degree of energy? Are you not thereby seeking to manipulate the person?

Most all of you reading this Dress For Success (to some degree, anyway) when you go to work, entertain potential clients, etc. Are you not seeking to “manipulate” people to see you in a particular light?

When you step into a room filled with the Powers That Be (PTB), do you not move Just So: making certain you speak to him, acknowledge her presence, make the rounds so as to be seen by them? Why? You do this because it creates the desired image (Power and Authority), which, in turn, will serve to add cache or value to your reputation. You are “manipulating” your image in the minds of others, are you not?

One of the comments previously posted was, “People see what they want to see.” I couldn’t agree more. People look at us through the prism of their beliefs, expectations, present psychological states, biases, etc. So, if you decide that keeping your job is important to you, that success is critical to your future well-being, I suggest that you ascertain the mindset of those you intend to influence and then craft the role you need to play, so as to be perceived in the manner you desire.

Example. If The PTB perceives your quiet demeanor as weak (due to their peculiar mindset), then you will want to “act” in ways that they will consider strong or assertive. Quiet is not a synonym for Weak, but some people think otherwise. If these people are the Gate Keepers, it doesn’t help for you to sit quietly, thinking quiet thoughts to yourself about their idiocy. You have to “act” in ways that demonstrate your strengths in their minds.

Example. The football stadium is filled with 60,000 citizen-voters. The choir is singing, America the Beautiful. Right when it gets to the phrase, “The laaaaAAND of the FREEEEEEE …” four fighter jets burst across the sky. And then, “Ladies and Gentlemen” (American Flags waving in the wind behind the individual): “The President of the United States!” Or, “The Future President of the United Sates.” Why this act? Because the symbols create the desired image … these are symbols that others perceive as “Presidential” and “Patriotic.” (I do think that, today, people are quite aware that such “acts” can be deceiving, but the point is still valid: “I need to act Just So, so as to create the desired image.”)

To all of this, some will still insist that, no, they are NOT seeking to manipulate, only to influence. Whatever.

Okay. If it helps, think in terms of “managing your image.”

What is the image you want to create in the minds of others? How are you going to accomplish this? How will you manage yourself—dress, talk, comportment, and expertise—so as to maintain this image?

If you don’t care how others perceive you, you are handing your image (and reputation) over to others to manage.

Maybe they will do a better job than you?

Maybe they care more about your success than you?

Maybe. I doubt it.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

2010-09-27T06:46:00.001-04:00

Never Upstage the Boss

2010-09-23T02:45:00.005-04:00

Show me a man who is a good loser and I will show you a man who is playing golf with his boss. Jim Murray, American sports writer and Pulitzer Prize winner

It seems self-evident, but all too often I have witnessed otherwise sane people making their bosses look bad. This is usually NOT a good idea. In fact the only time I can think it would be okay is if the boss was on his way out … but, even here, it can backfire on you, as it may cast you in a poor light in the mind of your future boss, not to mention your peers.

As you are reinventing yourself, creating a role that will take up space in the minds of the Powers That Be, you will want to be careful when both you AND your suoervisor are in the stage at the same time. In most cases, bosses prefer being center stage.

Give the boss credit for your ideas. Publicly. He knows who did what. If he wishes, he can deflect the praise and give you the Atta-boy. If he receives the praise for work he did not do ... well that is useful information, isn’t it?

If you run a successful project or campaign, make certain you say something to the effect that you couldn’t have accomplished x without his support. Yes, even if he did absolutely nothing to help you. You hold your job because he chooses to keep you employed, so it is not that much of a stretch to say, “He supported me,” is it?

Never argue with your boss in front of other people. If you have a serious problem with what he is saying or doing, go to him in private. However, even if no one else is around, maintain a respectful demeanor. Yes, even if he is unjustly chewing you out. Stand your ground, make your points, but do not hit back. Ever.

I am not talking about those conversations where there is a lot of give-and-take: where the supervisor is looking for different perspectives, approaches, ideas. Here you should share your mind. Respectfully.

I know. Some of you are great friends with your supervisors. This doesn’t mean, however, that you can take liberties with him. Michelle Obama might call the President “Obama” or “Dear,” but I guarantee that his closest friends call him Mr. President. The office is to be respected. Period. (Ok. Maybe this is just a hallucination of mine. Maybe they call him "Barry." You get the point.)

Even Saints have egos. If you wish to remain in the good graces of your supervisor, you will not want to threaten his ego.

And if YOU are a supervisor and are reading this?

You need the team’s input. Encourage healthy debate. Remember, “teamwork” is not where everyone is running around doing what you told him or her to do!

Cultivate an atmosphere of openness.

Don’t be thin-skinned. Realize that your employees are telling jokes about you around the cooler. If you overhear them, consider telling a joke about yourself that you thought particularly funny. While you can’t allow disrespect to develop in your team, you also do not want an image that creates fear of ever disagreeing with you. You might as well acknowledge your humanity. After all, everyone around you is already aware of it, eh?

When appropriate, share some of your past defeats and failures. This will encourage your team to be honest about the things that are not going well for them … while you can still do something about it!

Seek to win your team’s respect, on a daily basis. Give praise where it is due and help where it is needed. Put flesh and bones to the vision and values you espouse, through you words, behavior, and attitudes. Be the sort of person you want others to become.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

2010-09-20T06:56:00.005-04:00

Admiration and familiarity are strangers
George Sand

There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt.
Charles De Gaulle

If am often seen at the theater, people will cease to notice me
Napoleon

It’s finally getting cooler here, in Atlanta. Needless to say, for a guy who hates the heat, this is a welcome change. Of course, many people here are thinking the same thing, except, for the most part, when the winter months do arrive they will soon be pining away for the sun and heat. Not me, mind you, but then I am not the average guy. Ruminating on this led me to thinking about the saying, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Or is it “Absinthe”? Anyway …

There is something about absence that we need to remember in our quest for developing an image of authority and power.

The familiar becomes boring, or at least something we take for granted

The familiar becomes predictable, which, in turn, means you are no longer unique

Familiarity breeds contempt: not always, of course, but often enough to make it something about which we are cautious.

Once familiarity sets in, people begin defining you in terms of your weaknesses and faults. Or so I have seen. Remember what Ben Franklin said, “Fish and visitors stink in three days.” Time your “comings and goings,” so as to never stink!

Obviously, if you are in the early stages of creating a role that causes you to stand out from the herd, you will want to appear everywhere: helping complete this project, adding value to that team, serving those supervisors in their quest for success. However, after your image is seared into the minds of the Powers That Be, it is time for them to experience some tactful absence.

Where is she? We could really use her input on this project?

Has anyone seen him lately? We need his wisdom on this.

Someone go find her and tell her we need her. It feels like we are only operating on 4-cylinders.

Most people don’t get this treatment until their funerals. Don’t wait until you die for people to forget about the things that bored, aggravated, or upset them, only remembering the good things about you. Learn when to leave the stage for a while, creating desire and anticipation for your soon return.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

2010-09-17T10:32:00.001-04:00

2010-09-15T12:18:00.000-04:00

The Alchemy of Silence

2010-09-14T07:05:00.004-04:00

The last few posts I have been commenting on reinvention and the task of adopting roles (particularly at work) that cause you to stand out from the herd, in the minds of the Powers That Be. I have been careful to emphasize that I am referring to APPROPRIATE ATTENTION, mind you, using the illustration of how Court Jesters can attract attention but never be taken seriously.

For some personality types, the temptation is to think that the role that attracts the most attention is the gadfly. First of all, most offices already have this actor. so you won’t be standing out all that much. Second, the incessant talker who insists on chiming in on every topic of conversation, no matter how inane, is, as everyone knows except the gadfly, annoying. Not exactly the image of authority, eh?

But what about the person who, eschewing the inane, feels that he must have something important to say, something “valuable” to add to the “important” conversations? While you certainly do not want an image of being the Fifth Wheel--an unnecessary appendage that can easily be removed without any measurable loss--adding your two-cents so as to always be seen as a contributor is worth … what? Two-cents?

Silence is Golden
In my last post, I suggested that extroverts may want to consider refraining from a constant need to be transparent, so as to create an air or aura of mystery. This is different from the silence that is due to fear or insecurity. “What if I say something wrong or stupid?” No, the role I am referring to is the one used by actors such as Mitchum or Burton, whose serene stillness attracted the most attention.

Think about it: In an age where everyone is preening, posturing and prattling on and on so as to grab his or her Fifteen Minutes of Fame, it seems to me that, today,

Less is More

Minimalism Trumps Maximalism

Or at least this is a possibility that you may want to consider when creating your role.

Saying less, remaining silent when everyone else around you is speaking, can be a challenge.

Have you ever noticed how many people expect you to share your every thought, to be “honest” about your feelings regarding everything being discussed, and then insist on interpreting every word you have spoken? Of course, his or her interpretation is The Truth, regardless of your protestations! Have you also noticed how many of these same people then use that information to control you? “This is who you are!” “That is what you said.” Thereby putting you into a box from which, in their minds, you will never escape.

If Information is Power, then information given at the most appropriate time and in the most succinct manner—well, that is nuclear power!

Guard your thoughts. Hold your cards to your chest. The more people press and cajole you to be “honest,” to make your “contribution,” the more they are simply playing into your hands. Wait … waaaaait … not yet … hold your tongue …

When you do speak, do so in short concise sentences, and do not say everything that is on your mind. He will go crazy over what was not said. She will seek to add to what you were intending to say (or so she thinks), had you kept speaking. When they do this, they will invariably let you know their thoughts, their motivations, and their agendas. Handy. Also, when the meeting or conversation is over, their every thought will be about you: what you possibly meant (or was it?), and what you left unsaid.Voila! An image of Mystery and Power, created.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

Reinvention

2010-09-10T10:33:00.005-04:00

The responses to my last post keep rolling in: most all of them positive, all of them with questions regarding the correspondent’s particular situation. Of course, the majority of the emails I received were from introverts. Go figure. You would think I was asking people to show up to work in their underwear! But that is what it initially feels like, when an introvert acts “out-of-character.”

In considering playing other roles—roles that cause us to stand out, to take up space in the minds of the Powers That Be--I think the question that we must begin with is this: How important is your job and your desire to be successful?

The first time I attended an Improvisation workshop, I thought I was going to toss my breakfast. What held me there? I was anchored to my desire and intent to move audiences to take action in helping the destitute around the world, as well as becoming a more powerful corporate trainer and coach. I felt locked in to a single way of being and acting. I had one “role”: The Real Monte. The problem was that this “Monte” didn’t always move people toward my goals. My outcome was more important to me than my comfort-zone.

There are a zillion fundraisers in the US. Most of them are honest and sincere in their dedication to the organization’s mission. Same goes for trainers and coaches. However, when the stage is filled with so many other “actors,” you had better do something to compel attention, or you will recede into the background. You aren’t going to be noticed, if you are backstage.

Listen. I am not suggesting that you roll yourself up into a carpet so you can be unfurled before your audience. Although it worked wonders for Cleopatra when she first met Caesar! What I am suggesting is that you create a role that emanates power.

Taking on a role that causes you to stand out from the herd does not require that you play some over-the-top character. The movie actor Robert Mitchum learned that if he stood perfectly still while the movies’ marquee stars moved about before the camera, he could steal the scene, drawing the viewers’ attention to HIM. Richard Burton quite often did the same thing while acting on stage with the world’s greatest Shakespearean actors. Serene stillness is far more powerful than histrionics.

For my introverted readers: Take Baby-steps! Maybe all you need to do, so as to take up more space in the minds of your “audience” (supervisor, co-workers, etc.), is dress with a bit more flair. Subtle shifts can be powerful shifts.

For you extroverts: Maybe you will want to cease being so transparent about your life, so as to create an air of mystery?

Reinvention is not simply about taking on a role at work that fascinates and entertains. Court Jesters can do this but no one takes them seriously. The role should be inspired and informed by your goals. The purpose behind reinvention is (appropriate) attention, increased power, and success in your career. If the roles you choose do not achieve these outcomes, let ‘em go and create a new one.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

SHOW TIME!

2010-09-07T07:24:00.005-04:00

Aurore Dupin Dudevant arrived in Paris in 1831. She left her husband because, she said, marriage was worse than prison. She was weary of other people dictating whom she should be and controlling how she should act. Her intention was to take her life into her own hands and become a successful writer.

Becoming a successful writer at this time was an impossible task for a woman. What female writers that were able to get their books published in those days did not earn a living by their royalties. She was reminded of this hurdle when she showed her writing to a publisher and was told that she should go make babies, not literature.

Undeterred, Dudevant devised a strategy for reinventing herself. She would not play society's games. She would not be restricted to the role “proper women” were to assume. She would not be held down by the old boy’s network. What did she do?

Having always preferred men’s riding breeches to that of a woman’s, she began dressing like a man. All out. Long men’s coats, cravats, the whole shebang. She also would smoke and drink just like the men of her day, and, quite often, curse with the best of them. She then published her first novel, Indiana, under the pseudonym, George Sand.

This female-behaving-as-a-male intrigued people … especially the male artists, who welcomed her into their clubs.

Okay. They were French … but that’s beside the point! The point is she refused to have others dictate her role in society. Had she not taken on a different role, she would have never experienced the success that came her way as a writer.

Choose Your Roles
Hugh Laurie only plays a doctor on House.

Mark Feuerstein only plays a concierge doctor on Royal Pains.

These are roles that each actor has chosen to play. Only close friends and family have a clue as to their real personalities. No one condemns them for this. No one cries out, “FRAUD!” Even their families and friends realize that the guy on the screen is not the guy at home in the living room. And this is cool by them.

At work, what role will be most useful, most conducive to continued effectiveness and success? What role do you need to play so as to realize your dreams? I am not suggesting that you change who you are at your core. (Although, the roles you play often rub-off on who you are as an individual.) I am suggesting that you may want to learn to take on various roles, so as to achieve your goals.

In 1970 when I began my studies at Samford University, I was a Music major. (Voice and piano.) I loved classical music and found that learning instruments was quite easy for me. However, it hadn’t occurred to me that I was going to be required to perform in front of people. My personality profile was spot on when it noted that Monte E Wilson, III was an extreme introvert--off the charts, in fact. My High School counselor told me to stay away from anything with moving parts … and people. I kid you not!

My first anxiety attack came the day that I was told it was time for juries. I was to sing before four professors whom would then grade my performance. Worse yet, my jury was going to include Dr. Claude Ray, the Dean of the Music school. I immediately began wondering about another choice of majors.

While standing outside the jury room, waiting for my turn to sing four songs--one which would be in English, the other three in different languages—a young lady ran out of the room crying. Anxiety turned to panic.

For some unknown reason I remembered the fact that many of my favorite movie actors were quite shy and introverted, but became someone else before the cameras. Could I pull this off? Could I pretend to be someone else, a character in a movie that was a great performer? You bet!

When it came my turn, I said to myself, "SHOW TIME!" I went in and nailed the performance. I had chosen to play Mr. Extrovert.

While I didn’t remain in music, my career path required that, most days, “Mr. Extrovert” took center stage. Leadership seminars, corporate trainings, and fundraising for charities required that I play a role: a role that was the opposite of my true personally and way of being. To this day, all but my family and closest friends think that this role is who I am, that I am jazzed by being with large groups of people and standing at center stage.

My passion is helping others to become successful in life, cross-contextually--by which I mean “successful” in every area of life. I saw that Monte the Introvert was going to be limited in his ability to achieve his outcomes, and, therefore, needed to take on different roles.

The people in your world quite often wish to be in charge of who plays what role. They have determined that your role is Ms Mouse or Mr Limpwrist. However, you know what you want out of life. You know better than anyone else what roles will get you to where you want. If you aren’t careful about not allowing others to play Casting Director in the production of your life’s work, you will end up only having a cameo appearance … in the production of their life’s work.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

Unique ... NOW

2010-09-02T07:52:00.006-04:00

To stand out in the market, companies must offer something so individually attractive and so valued that it transcends being merely a product. They must break through and capture a position in the minds of fickle and choosy consumers.

The alternatives are stark. You must either burn yourself into consumers’ consciousness and leave behind a warm glow—or drop abruptly out of the market. In the wealthy parts of the world, scarcity of goods is history. Now, the precious resource is the space in the minds of consumers. If you can also win their hearts, your message will be really engaging.

Unique NOW… or Never, Jesper Kunde

In the arena in which you are working, think of your skills and talents as the “product” you are selling to your employer, every day. Now, go back and re-read the above quotes and ask yourself, “Am I burning myself into my employer’s consciousness … and leaving behind a warm glow?”

In this economy, expertise and skill only go so far. Especially, if other potential employees possess the same level of skill as you do.

What is it about you that cause you to stand out and be noticed? (In a positive manner, of course!)

How does your direct supervisor experience you?

How do your co-workers experience you?

How do you know your perceptions are accurate?

Being a nice guy is not unique. In fact, “nice” is often synonymous with “bland.” Being a team player is necessary, but usually does not cause you to stand out—unless your team is filled with anarchists. Being good at what you do is necessary, but most everyone else around you is also good at what they do.

Each and every day you are selling yourself to your employers. Obviously, this requires that you keep adding value to the business through your skills and talents. However, it also requires that you position yourself to be noticed and experienced in a unique manner.

Don’t allow yourself to be lost in the crowd. If you aren’t being noticed, you don’t exist in the minds of the Powers That Be. If you don’t take up space in their minds and hearts, it won’t be long before you don’t take up space in the office.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

Office Politics: Let the Games Begin!

2010-08-31T04:45:00.004-04:00

I was recently sitting at a hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Behind me there was a heated discussion erupting. Toward the end of this conversation, an older gentleman announced, “I don’t play those games. All I care about is the people and the work. I am NOT going to get into some political fight with the Board…”

Sounds altruistic, even quite spiritual, but it is, in fact, quite naïve … at best. At worst, it is subterfuge, by which I mean it is actually a game he is running on his Board to remain the Big Cheese. “See? I am more worthy/spiritual/pure than ye all, so I deserve to be the Big Cheese.”

When I was a young man, my dad, a Southern Baptist pastor, said, “Where two are three are gathered together in my (Christ’s) name, there will be political machinations.” (For the uninitiated, Jesus actually said that where two or three were gathered in his name, he would be there with them.) I, of course, being far more spiritual than my father, didn’t want to believe this, or at least didn’t believe this had to be the case. It is. Period.

All Industries have their games, and if you want to succeed you had better understand the players and the rules of the game. My experience is that there are two “industries,” or fields of endeavor, where some people have difficulty accepting this reality: spiritual guides (ministers/priests/rabbis/gurus) and artists. These people often want to be above the fray, living on the mountaintop where they can breathe the pure oxygen of divine inspiration. The problem is that pretty much everyone else is down in the valley playing The Game. Why is this a problem?

If you are a spiritual guide, the people whom you wish to care for are down in the valley mixing it up in the market place, fighting to provide for their families. They might go to the mountaintop for a visit on the weekend, but the other six days of the week they are working their derrieres off down in the valley. Many of these people are going to come to you for advice. If you point them toward altruism, you might as well also tell them to begin working on their C.V.

Your Board members--your coworkers, elders, council, vestry, deacons, what-have-you—also have specific reasons for Being There. There is something they wish to accomplish, and, being well versed in political maneuvering via their business experiences, they are going to bring all their resources to bear so as to accomplish their mission. If you choose not to Play the Game, you are giving up on realizing your own vision.

If you are an artist, the marketplace—the place where you have to go sell your art—is also down in the valley. All those other chaps up on the mountain with you don’t have any money. Or, if they do, they have learned how to traverse from mountain to valley and back to the mountain, so as to have the best of both worlds!

You can get all hot and bothered about this reality or you can embrace it. Getting all agitated, however, seems to me to be counter-productive, as it handicaps your efforts to succeed. Embracing The Game, on the other hand, allows you to focus your energy on winning, or at least surviving.

Let the Games Begin
Right now, someone you work for or with is mounting an assault. For them to succeed, they are going to move players around the game board. “This pawn goes here, the knight will move just-so, and my Queen … WHAM … right here.” And you, my dear friend, are removed from the table.

It’s not always personal, either. People want what they want and are going to use all of their resources to get it, within their ethical parameters. While you might be sorely affected by their chess moves, they were not “after” you; they were after the project, or the promotion, or whatever.

Sitting out and refusing to play only insures that you remain a pawn, or worse, that you are removed from this particular chessboard.

Of course, if the game involves people with whom you wish to remain friends, there is a caveat. Here, I suggest that you consider being open as to your goals and intentions. Let your friends know what it is your moving toward. On the other hand, you had better remain aware of the reality that these people may not hold your friendship as valuable as you do theirs. If this is the case, you gave the game away before your first move.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

2010-08-30T14:58:00.001-04:00

How Big Is Your Heart?

2010-08-27T12:53:00.005-04:00

When I first started out in the world of charity it was as a Christian minister. In my mind and experience, bringing food and medical attention to desperate people provided concrete evidence of God’s love. The problem I began to encounter was that while I was looking for ways to express God’s love for people out in the world, when I got home it was one battle after another: Christians against so-called Pretend-Christians, churches against churches, and etc.

Understand. The churches I grew up in pretty much had God’s Truth down pat. Before you could even complete your question, they had The Answer. There was no room for objection, no room for nuance, no room for friendly debate, and certainly no room for mystery. Sadly, there was also no room for love.

As time went by, I grew weary of the ”cultural wars” and the theological nitpicking that left people outside the Christian world wanting to have nothing to do with Christianity or the Church. “If that is your idea of God’s love, get me outta here!” So, I gradually began spending more time doing charity work in places like Kenya and the Sudan, than I did in church.

Around 15 years ago I could no longer stomach the constant condemnation, ridicule, and downright mean-spiritedness of people whose message appeared to be, “God hates everyone who disagrees with me,” so I pretty much walked away from having a formal identification with any particular church, and began solely giving myself to charity work. I am not saying my reaction to “church” was wise or mature, much less “loving”: I am simply sharing my own experience.

On the other hand, I believe I am also relating the experience of millions of others, as well. Read the surveys: the largest Christian “church” in America is probably the UN-churched! What is this communicating about people’s experience of “church”? What is this communicating to non-Christians?

I am sharing this brief personal history because I want to recommend a book to those of you who are interested in the topic of “Church.” My friend John Armstrong has written a book titled, Your Church is Too Small: Why Unity in Christ’s Mission is Vital to the Church’s Future.

When John says that your church is too small he is not writing about Church growth and mega-churches, but about the limits (historically, theologically, and relationally) we place on who is in the church and who is not.

The book is divided into three sections:

I Past: The Biblical and Historical Basis for Christian Unity

What John advocates in this section is a relational unity: a cooperational love.

“If ‘God is love,’ then our expressions of love within the Christian community must line up with his. It is his love that enlarges our hearts and forms our character so that we are freed to love others, whether they are a fellow Christian or an enemy.” (p 54)

“Unity” is not synonymous with “unanimity,” or “uniformity.” (pp 54-57) The unity that John is writing about is based in the universally shared reality of all believers: the life of Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, living in us all. The more we are filled with his life, the more we love him, the more relational unity we will experience with all those who share that same love.

The problem for many Christians is that, rather than starting with the fundamental truths to which all believers adhere (see The Apostles and Nicene Creeds), we start with our favorite Bible verse, or, even worse, with where “they are theologically in error.” Such an approach inevitably leads to arguments and divisions. On the other hand, if we base our conversations and relationships upon our mutual love of God and agreement on the core beliefs of Christianity, there is immediately space for us to work together for the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ.

II Present: Restoring Unity in the Church Today

One of the chief roadblocks to relational unity that John deals with is sectarianism: “a path, a way, a method, a party, or a faction.” Synonyms would be narrow-minded, parochial, and limited.

“The word implies mutual exclusivity, an exclusivity that thrives where people and groups believe they have a superior claim to truth. Sectarians believe their church/community/tradition can best ‘represent the body of Christ, to the exclusion or minimization of other genuinely Christian groups.’” (p 93)

He is not suggesting that we ignore or compromise our beliefs—this would only create a pseudo-unity. What he is suggesting is that we all remember that our beliefs are our best attempts at understanding Scripture, God, and his message for mankind.

“(A)ll theological truth claims must remain biblically contestable so the church remains fully open to the Spirit….This does not mean that all truth claims are relative or that Christian confession is nonbinding; It simply means that all human knowledge is ultimately provisional.” (p 95)

We are humans who “see through a glass, darkly.” The beliefs we assert are, at best, a close approximation to the Truth of God. This means that we should always be open to added meaning or nuance …or even to discovering that we are wrong.

Another roadblock John deals with is our understanding of “church.”

“One local congregation is as much the church as any other church. But the church is also the whole of all such congregations throughout the whole earth.” (p 108) If John is correct here—and I believe he is—what bearing should this understanding of “church” have on our attitudes and actions regarding other Christian communities? At the very least, I think it requires that we obey the laws of love (I Corinthians 13).

III Future: The Missional-Ecumenical Movement

“What is the Ideal Church?”

“Easy: it’s my church/denomination/tradition. Sure, we aren’t perfect, but we’re closer to the True Faith then the rest of ‘em.”

Evangelicals and Fundamentalist often teach – implicitly or explicitly – that you aren’t a Christian unless you adopt pretty much whatever theological hobby-horse they are riding. While Jesus said, “Follow me … Come unto me … Believe in me … Trust in me,” these folks scream, “NOT SO FAST! You need to ALSO believe the following system of theology.” Is it any wonder then that their churches are run more like boot camps for troops in the Special Forces? “The Few, the Proud, the Chosen!” Yup, that was Christ’s vision of his Church—the Body of Christ divided and at war.

Roman Catholics and Orthodox churches have their hobby-horses, as well. Of course, their horses are older than Protestant horses, but this doesn’t mean that they aren’t barriers to the good news of Christ being offered freely to all people, or to the relational unity that is possible with those outside their traditions.

As John sees it, it is the (relational) unity of the Church that points people and nations to Christ. “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” (John 17:21) Conversely, the more divided the Church, the more impotent it becomes in fulfilling its mission.

And what is the Church’s mission?

“The mission of the church is not to solve society’s problems or to gain political influence in order to change culture. And as important as adding members to a church is, recruiting new members for the church is not the church’s mission either. The mission of the church is ‘to participate in the reconciling love of the triune-God who reaches out to a fallen world in Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit brings strangers and enemies into God’s new and abiding community.’” (p 153f)

This mission requires that we exemplify God’s reconciling love. This doesn’t mean that Christians paper over their differences. It means that we have truthful and loving conversations regarding these differences, rather than mouth-to-mouth combat.

“(W)e can begin a healthy new conversation , a conversation that can lead to reconciliation in a context where the truth is profoundly important. This conversation could well become one of the Holy Spirit’s primary ways of pushing forward the ‘new ecumenism’—an ecumenism rooted in core orthodoxy and deeply shared love for Christ and his mission.” (p 167)

If you are weary of Church Wars and are seeking another paradigm for unity …

If you are sick of church in general and have chosen to go it alone …

If you think the way to unity is for everyone to see all Truth as relative …

If you think the way to true unity is for everyone to agree with you …

If you are a theology geek …

If you are a church-history nut …

If stories and anecdotes are needed to drive the point home …

This book is for you.

PS (For John): I said I didn't have any formal identification with a church: I didn't say I was not attending. I know ... I know ... pray for me.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010

Ethiopia 2010

2010-08-16T13:03:00.010-04:00

Mention Ethiopia and most people immediately start humming the multi-platinum song “We Are the World” (written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie) and thinking about the millions of dollars of aid raised for famine relief back in the mid-80’s through this musical effort. (Actually, this song is still raising money: to date it has raised around 60+ million dollars for humanitarian aid in Africa and the US.) To this day, at least to most Westerners, Ethiopia is synonymous with Poverty.

When “We Are the World” took place, Ethiopia’s population was around 40 million. Today it is 80 million, with around 10 million of these people dependent on foreign food aid. One disaster—a drought, a flood, or an earthquake—could easily increase this number exponentially. And to make matters even worse, over the last 20 years Western aid to Ethiopia has dropped by 70% … or more.

As you read this report or hear of people suffering in Ethiopia, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter, you think to yourself, “How sad. People are suffering and dying.” But it’s not people that are suffering: it is 4-year old Hadese.

Thinking in terms of People, rather than thinking of Individuals, disassociates us somewhat from the personal. “People” are an “It,” whereas Individuals have hearts, minds, and stomachs … just like you and I.

Four years ago, when we began working here in Angatcha (population: 260,000), there were 50,000 people just like Hadese who were starving. Today, after dispersing 200 tons of food aid over those 4 years, that number is a little over 700.

The Sebata Girls Home is finally fully up and running ... and what an amazing family of girls! They have been found wondering the streets, sleeping under trees or dropped off by gov't officials who know the girl will be cared for, educated, counseled, prayed with, and taught skills for her future.

Many of these girls do not know their names, if they ever had one, so the staff chooses one for them: a name that fits their personality. This is Gifty. And, yes, after only a short time with her, I can tell you, she is a Gift. Just being around her makes your heart smile.

This work is difficult. Thousands of miles of travel, lousy conditions on the ground, and constant interaction with suffering people takes its toll, so you have to learn to lighten up every chance you get. Psychological hernias may appear worthy of martyrdom status, but they only leave you incapable of truly serving the INDIVIDUALS you came to help.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010