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Zooming

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Ah, the wonderful art of zooming. Magical, really. Do you find yourself incredibly flustered? Even angry? Find some detail so engrossing you lose track of your objectives? Of all the skills on managing the mind that I have learned and developed for myself, this one may be the most powerful.

Enough sales pitch – try it.

Let’s imagine that there is a distance between you and what you are focusing on. That distance has two factors – how emotionally engaged you are and how much of your view it consumes. These factors are highly correlated. When we are upset or flustered, we are using a microscope to look in at an issue…we don’t see much context to it, and we may even be so zoomed in that we can’t see the whole thing, but only a portion of it. No wonder we can’t wrap our heads and energy around it to take effective action! We zoom in and our heart and emotion gets tangled up in our perception – we are emotional around what is huge and vibrant to us.

I hereby empower you to use an adjustable zooming tool. Take it with you where ever you go. So lightweight you can take it anywhere. Alright, I am being silly…but really, you can manage your interaction with the world and with others by adjusting how close or how far away you want something to be in your perception.

microscope mylifeLet me give you an example: Terry is looking over finances and sees how the income and expenses are converging (and maybe that credit card statement shows a distinctly negative balance). Terry gets frustrated. The inner dialog sounds something like, “I am trying so hard, and yet I am falling behind on my plans. I am never going to be able to afford my dreams at this rate. What am I doing wrong?” and maybe Terry has a wide enough lens to see what friends appear to have, and the inner dialog continues, “Sam seems to get by on a similar salary and have better things…where did I mess up?” And most of us like to play a blame game, so add in for good measure, “If my boss would just acknowledge how hard I work, I would get that raise. Then this wouldn’t be a problem.” This sort of conversation happens in people whose income is far beyond the poverty level. Really.

Yeah, so that last statement was part of zooming. What sort of view can be included in the perspective that hits a reset button? Zoom out, and see some context. Take a flight up to 30,000 feet and view where you stand in relation to the rest of humanity (are you living on $2 a day?) and then farther out through time….throughout human history… If that doesn’t help you see how incredibly lucky you are to be where you are with this tiny issue around cash flow, then zoom farther out in the vast reaches of space – the mere fact that you even exist on this tiny planet just the right distance from the sun with just the right ingredients for life…and a strange twist of arching fate led to human evolution and here you are. A gazillion of miracles converging to make it possible for you to be here right now.

You don’t always have to back that far up. You are the author of your own stories. What is the context you want that story to be in? Zoom in or out to choose a story that works for you. Choose what you include in your field of vision and perception.

Zoom! Zoom!

Warning: zooming does not absolve you of responsibilities, it simply mitigates your attachment. Thus you can be clearer about prioritizing and taking action on your responsibilities and opportunities.

Thrivable Living: Edge-Riding

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How do you lead a thrivable life? Let’s begin by looking at edge-riding.

One of my colleagues asked me once, why do you insist on riding the edge? To be honest, I think there are lots of ways I am not pushing the edge. And some ways that what I do might be pushing some cultural edge, but it isn’t an edge for me. For example, the father of my kids has them the majority of the time. We have been doing it this way for five years (and three of those years we have been separated.) Our kids don’t seem to think this is strange. It is how we are. I don’t wake up in the morning debating about it. It is what it is, and for the most part seems to work for us. Creating Thrivable.org, on the other hand, feels like edge-riding to me.

Wisdom from the darkness
I do sense that there is something about living a thrivable life that has to do with riding the edge. When I talk with people who have faced their own death – whether through an accident that they have willed themselves to come back from or the threat of cancer, the death of a loved one near to them, or just a serious wake up call, I hear a craving for the edge. Sometimes it grows slowly, and often times it comes in the blink of an eye. This life is short and precious. As Mary Oliver’s poem goes, “What are you going to do with this one wild and precious life?” Well, I am not going to spend it sitting down and passively letting the world go by me. And when I talk with people who have suffered tremendous loss – of wealth or love, passion project or dream, I hear there too a certain resilience that allows for riding the edge. An “I know how dark the darkness is, and I learned to survive that, and I can survive what comes next” attitude emerges in the ones I admire. Whether having faced death or failure, questions emerge that can bring one to strive for edge-riding:

What is the worst that can happen? Can I survive that?
If I don’t do anything or don’t choose this course, will I regret it later? In 5 years? 20?
Can I look in the mirror with integrity and love myself?

But what will my friends think of me?

Most of us ask this question when we ponder something on our edge. We look to them to externalize our sense of ourselves and the norms of our tribes. However, the answer does not rest with them, it rests in our own hearts. You are the only person you have to live with for the rest of your life. The only one. Not your significant other(s), not your family, not your work circle or faith circle. You. When you are 80, and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of your family play at your feet, will you look in the mirror and say, “I lived a thrivable life – living in dynamic balance with myself and the world around me?” No one else is having to look in that mirror with you.

If you can’t look into the mirror today and love yourself, then you won’t likely be able to do it when you are 80 unless something changes. You are the only one responsible for that change. That is the integrity test – looking in the mirror and knowing that you have integrity – with your nature, your dreams, and your inner most self. Being able to do that, well, I think it is worth riding the edge for. If you really want to honor your nature…really want to achieve your dreams…really want to connect to your innermost self, then find your edges and ride a few until you evolve in the person that feels a glorious tingle when you look in the mirror and discover – “cool, I actually admire the person facing me.”