For my run today, I decided to listen to a Ted Radio Hour podcast on Happiness. We are close to the start of a new year, like so many of you, I pretty much feel this way about 2016:
via GIPHY
and it was a blue bird day; 50 degrees in late December. The weather helped lift my mood. Perfect running weather.
As with all things podcast, I am usually hearing insightful comments, quotes, or thought provoking questions every few minutes. When running, these sources of inspiration and intellectual engagement help pass the time, and send my mind into overdrive. Where my mind goes, my legs follow and sure enough, I find my Zone 2 run is hovering more around Zone 4. I have so many thoughts that I wish I could write them down while running. This may prove complicated and perhaps somewhere in that wish is a new generation of gadgets for creative runners.
Back to the Happiness podcast. Among the many synapses firing from this hour of insight, two things struck me, well three actually. The first is that we move too fast. Our culture promotes doing more with less time, and thus, happiness passes us by because we are too preoccupied with doing rather than being. Second, we have too much stuff. We don't live simply enough and over the course of our lives, accrue a great deal of useless things. None of this stuff contributes to our happiness. The happiness we yield from it, is often momentary or is because the thing is associated with a happy memory. It is not the thing itself that makes us happy. Third, a quote: "it is not happiness that makes us grateful, it's gratefulness that makes us happy" (Brother David Steidl-Rast). I want to talk briefly about gratefulness and happiness and then about our fixation on speed because I see them as connected. I will save "stuff" for another post because there is much to say on that topic.
Being grateful, according to Steidl-Rast whose Ted Talk was featured in this podcast, is connected to recognizing that every moment we experience is a gift and an opportunity. We have no idea how many more moments will be given to us, how many more opportunities, so we should be grateful for every one. With that gratefulness comes happiness. Steidl-Rast is not saying we should be grateful for everything, because I am not grateful for violence, hate, war and bigotry. What he is saying is that we should avail ourselves of every opportunity given to us, and in so doing, we find happiness. Moments, he argues, are the most valuable things we can be given.
Now to our preoccupation with speed. I am currently contemplating my desire to continue chasing the elusive Boston Marathon qualification time by running yet another marathon in 2017. I had thought that my most recent marathon would be the finale in this story. If I didn't make the cut off, I would release myself from the self-inflicted goal of seeking a qualification time. However, that is not how the post-marathon thinking has played out for me. Which, in hindsight, I should have easily predicted. Runners do have, after all, pretty bad short term memories.
Qualifying for Boston is about getting faster, and with getting faster, comes work. Lots of miles, lots of speed work, and lots of time spent running. The drive to get faster is relentless. And, I am not sure how healthy it is. The qualification bar for women is far easier than it is for men, and yet, for many of us, not reaching it feels like a badge of shame. It reminds me of fairground rides I couldn't go on when I was a kid because I wasn't tall enough. Failing to reach my BQ time evokes the same feelings of inadequacy as standing against the makeshift ruler to determine whether my height met their safety standard. At the fairground ride, I would stand on my tip toes, hoping those extra centimeters would make a difference. This time, it's minutes and seconds and not feet and inches that determine my entry into the club. It is a point of pride for many, many runners to qualify for Boston, and they wear their Boston jackets and shirts like it's their nation's flag. I don't begrudge them that, and yet, it advertises a club to many of us that we can't be a member of. It separates them from us. The fast from the slow. For some of us, no matter how hard we train, those qualifying times are not attainable, like those extra inches elude many of us who just don't grow that tall.
Speed. My pursuit of it over all else is present in running and in life. According to one of the TED talkers in this podcast, Carl Honore: "We're so marinated in the culture of speed that we almost fail to notice
the toll it takes on every aspect of our lives - on our health, our
work, our relationships and our community." As these sentiments from the podcast bounced around my brain, and ideas started shooting off in all directions, my pace quickened. My mind and my legs were turning over at a pace far greater than was helpful. I thought about my work, and how my days are not as full as they used to be in different jobs. I crave to be busier. Why? Why can't I enjoy the slower more relaxed pace of my new environment? It is an entire frame shift for me to slow down at work and slow down in running (despite how often I tell my athletes to slow down). According to Honore, U.S. culture makes slowing down a behavior that is shamed or discouraged. He states:
"slow is a dirty word in our culture. It's a byword for lazy,
slacker, for being somebody who gives up. You know, he's a bit slow.
It's actually synonymous with being stupid. I think there's a kind of
metaphysical dimension that speed becomes a way of walling ourselves off
from the bigger, deeper questions. We fill our heads with distraction,
with busyness so that we don't have to ask - am I well? Am I happy? Are
my children growing up right?"
The amount of times I have heard fellow athletes offer up "I'm slow" prior to a run or other workout as if naming it up front anesthetizes them from their embarrassment. They don't profess to be good or fast and just want others around them to know that. What does "slow" really mean when a vast majority of people don't even choose to exercise in any way? Why do we tell ourselves and others we are "slow" or "not as fast" as someone else? We say this self-deprecating statement in fun, but it reveals an underlying sense of shame about our level of ability.
Faster isn't necessarily better. Running in Zone 4 for every run, work or life activity won't actually make you faster or more efficient, it will just wear you out. U.S. culture promotes Zone 4 all the time for everything with the prestige associated with a BQ time, 40 hour work weeks, minimal PTO, and lack of health and wellness benefits. Is it any wonder many of us struggle with the meaning of happiness when we don't ever give ourselves enough time to really think about it. To be in the moment, and accept each moment as an opportunity, is what we miss. How many more moments will we all get? As Honore says, it's time for us to get "in touch with [our] inner tortoise[s]." Live our lives rather than racing through them.
Quote and information taken from NPR podcast Ted Radio Hour, "Is There a Secret to Happiness?" http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/267185371/simply-happy (2/14/2104)
I listened to an interesting podcast the other day on the issue of power. Dacher Keltner, a psychologist who teaches at UC Berkeley, shared his research that found those who are generous, kind and empathetic are typically people who don’t hold much power in society. This didn’t much surprise me, I think it makes intuitive sense. His research also demonstrated that those employees, people, and leaders who experience the most respect from others, and thus social power, are those who are emotionally intelligent, kind and generous. Displaying empathy therefore is a force that can lead you to acquire social power. This was interesting to me because I have heard time and again that being “too kind” or “too empathetic” can lead you to be either taken advantage of or left behind. Gender constructions position women most often in the “kindness” box and we see that few women acquire extensive, large-scale social or structural power. Indeed, if they are perceived as too kind or too empathetic then society judges them harshly as weak.
What was most fascinating about Keltner’s research however, was that when folks acquire power, they tend to lose their capacity to be empathetic: “once we feel powerful, we lose - or our capacity to empathize and to know what others are thinking really is diminished.” In gaining power within whatever system a person exists, they can become less invested in others and their empathy networks in the brain are actually quieted (research by Keely Muscatell and Supvindeer Obdea shows this). Folks who hold a lot of power and privilege, the research shows, have inactive empathy networks in their frontal lobes. Keltner on Muscatell and Obdea’s research: “if you come from a position of privilege and power, the classic empathy networks in the frontal lobes of your brain are not even active when you're thinking about another [person]. So this is a very deep effect of what power does to our empathic capacities.”
I am not a scientist nor do I know much about the brain, however, I found this to be pretty interesting. The interviewer asked about billionaires who are also very philanthropic but the researcher’s response was to point out that the philanthropy might actually be a very small percentage of their actual wealth versus someone with less who gives a greater percentage of their income/assets. If someone only gives a tiny percentage of their wealth, even though this figure might be enormous, does that actually make them particularly generous or empathetic to other people’s needs?
When I think about leadership, I think fondly of those leaders I have encountered who truly seem to care about those around them and their communities. Sadly, these people I can probably count on one hand. Most leadership lessons I have experienced have been lessons in how not to treat others. Individuals I have known in workplaces who I might categorize as empathetic and generous, when rising in the ranks and acquiring more (structural) power within that system, have been unpredictable in how they have then continued to maintain connection with their colleagues and continued to exercise empathetic and generous leadership. Power corrupts, we have all heard that phrase, but research is showing that corruption isn’t just a selfish desire to maintain one’s power per se, but instead a dampening of the parts of the brain that oversee empathy. Gaining power creates a physiological reaction that diminishes our actual ability to be empathetic to others. What does this mean for leadership in general? How do we each maintain a connectivity to kindness and generosity when our brain changes as we gain power – social, political, structural, financial or otherwise? We can see this playing out right now in the U.S. presidential election.
Hidden Brain podcast on power: http://www.npr.org/2016/09/06/492305430/the-perils-of-power
Sometimes you just don’t know what life will throw at you. Even when you plan for a variety of eventualities, think through possible consequences of a decision and/or spend hours weighing up the pros and cons of something, still, the path you find yourself on can be far removed from where you thought you were going.
I recently made a major life decision. It was a fraught and conflicted decision made in a betwixt and between moment. I was never fully invested in my final choice, but made it any way in the hope that possibilities I could not predict would come of it. Since that moment, that one decision, my heart and mind have been pulled backwards, perpetually in a state of regret for the decision I made. The landscape I left behind shifted in ways I had always hoped for and the invigorating process of change began to develop. As I look back over my shoulder, I do so with both happiness and sadness. I am glad that things are changing for the place I once was, but deeply disappointed I am not a part of it.
In the space and time where I made the decision I did, I tried to be brave. I tried to think about the advice I would give others in similar situations – step forward, take the risk, be brave. We don’t know what is out there for us unless we walk through the door. Each step we take both creates and closes opportunities in our lives. It is easy to be comfortable, to remain in what we know, even when what we know is flawed. Taking a risk and stepping off into the unknown is filled with possibility and growth. Possibility and growth we can never realize if we don’t engage with opportunity bravely. Yet taking that step is extraordinarily challenging. Conflicted emotions, relationships, ‘what ifs’, and fear of regret compound the challenge.
I understand intellectually that regret is a wasteful place to spend time. It is a deep and boggy place that constrains your forward progression. It keeps your head on a swivel pointed backward instead of forward. I know this, and yet I still feel it and am currently consumed by it. I also know that I made the decision. No one forced me to make the choice I did. I was let down by the people around me and that influenced my decision and I still find myself let down by those same people as I grapple with the consequences of my choice. Maybe this second round of let downs is purposeful. Maybe it is the universe affirming I made the “right” choice in that moment months ago and that my response to the particular constellation of facts pushed me forward. I am reminded of an earlier blog post of mine where I reflected on our capacity to act “as if” something were true and in so doing, what we hope for can become a reality.
This blog post is not meant to elicit sympathy but rather to illuminate the complexities of our decisions and how we never really know where our choices will take us even when we try to plan. Does that mean we shouldn’t make hard choices? No, I don’t think it does. Part of being successful is believing in the decisions we make, embracing them with both hands, despite the emotional tumult that may accompany them. Being brave when there is hurt. Being resolute when doubt starts to creep in. Acting as if the path we find ourselves on is exactly where we are supposed to be. A friend recently shared this quote, and it fits perfectly [with a minor edit] here: “you can’t unwrap the present unless you let go of [the hurt and disappointment from] the past.”
