My Most Meaningful Work – A 40+ Year Path of Gradual Awakening

July 10, 2017 by Barry 1 Comment

And we dance, To a whispered voice;
Overheard by the soul, Undertook by the heart;
And you may know it, If you may know it

Neil Diamond, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Roles help us find ourselves

I’ve played many roles in my life: physician, professor, a college dean, a college president, a window washer, a retail store manager, consultant, and a guy who cleaned eyeglasses and hawked some anti-fog stuff for eyeglasses…yes, many roles and obviously not in that order.

You probably have played several, too. There is nothing wrong with playing these roles. But like we do in perfecting our golf swing or crafting the perfect cup of coffee, hopefully…eventually…we find a sweet spot. We find that one type of role within which we could stay in character for the rest of our lives.

Roles help reveal what comes easy to us. On a deeper level we call these traits, talents, and strengths. Over time we experiment with different roles to determine our interests. I see roles as hugely important because the results of these experiences ultimately inform us about our deepest work.

The rest this post is somewhat autobiographical. It discusses various phases in my life and the roles I played. It talks about the fractured process of discovering my strengths, talents, and ultimately, my deepest work and concludes with how you can avoid a similarly painful 40-year search for your deepest work.

The early years

The path to my deepest work has been anything but linear. As an aspiring actor in high school, I was the poster boy for ‘Most Likely To Succeed.’ My yearbooks were filled with remarks like, “Remember me when you you accept your first Academy Award,” and “Be sure to sign my yearbook so that I have your autograph for when you’re too famous to remember me.”

It seemed that my destiny was to be a performer; to impact others with my ability to delve deeply into various characters and bring the intimate detail of their struggle to the screen, small or large. With roles to my credit such as the overbearing Lord Capulet in Romeo & Juliet, the mentally challenged Charley in Flowers for Algernon, and other lead and supporting roles, I was poised for greater roles and larger venues.

That didn’t happen

The dream of becoming an actor never was never realized because I gave up on it, far too easily I might add, not long after graduating from high school. I acted in a few student films, one for my close friend Bill, who today is Billy Dickson, A.S.C., an award-winning television and film director/cinematographer.

My fellow actor and high school friend, Brad ‘Taylor’ Negron also went on to appear in numerous films, write and produce plays, and perform stand-up comedy. Another actor and friend, Michael Mendelsohn, today is a performing tenor in the San Francisco Bay Area with several light opera and theater companies.

The chief reason I gave up before mounting any serious effort, was largely that I had no support at home for anything but a traditional college trajectory. If I wanted to be an actor, I’d have to be enrolled in college; that was the edict from the parental units.

The gauntlet was thrown and the ultimatum issued; So I enrolled in Pasadena City College, about ten miles from where I lived. Unfortunately my schedule didn’t include any acting classes, only algebra, english composition, and other general studies. These courses didn’t interest me in the slightest.

I was miserable every day I was there. I hated college so much that I withdrew and bought a ticket to England to lose myself in another country. And though the time I spent in the UK was transformative in many ways, it was a substitute for doing what I really wanted to be doing. I was still the same directionless, unmotivated kid I’d always been, just on another continent; the unfulfilled longing to connect with my art remained a gaping wound.

Before this seems like a pity party, let me state that it’s no one’s fault but mine. For years I blamed my parents for my lack of direction, for my fractured life, but the truth was evident. I simply didn’t want it as badly as my friends did, and who are today in the arts.

I feel as if I owe my friends a deep apology (my parents and I have long since discussed this in case you’re wondering). It was my own directionless state that I chose to remain in; it wasn’t like anyone had a weapon pointed at me. (Actually that would happen later in a McDonald’s restaurant robbery in San Francisco, but that’s not important to this discussion.)

The young adult years

Fast forward ten years, and I found myself married for a second time, still substituting any kind of work for my unknown deepest work. I was a father of three, attending medical school (I ultimately did finish college with a bachelor’s degree in biology, though a bit later than my contemporaries) and I thought I was headed for an illustrious career in medicin. Certainly that had to be my deepest work.

I graduated from medical school, completed a residency in foot and ankle surgery, and for a few years all looked good. I wasn’t making much money as practice opportunities weren’t plentiful for new kids on the professional block – pre-HMO era. I loved the one-on-one time spent with patients and the intellectual aspect of medicine was certainly stimulating, but still there remained a visceral level of discomfort deep inside that I wasn’t able to articulate.

Needing to earn some additional money, and kind of on a whim, I answered an advertisement for a teaching position at a local college. I figured I could make some extra money teaching anatomy & physiology, a topic I was fluent in.

I loved teaching immediately. It was an immediate fit for me in that I found something I was as comfortable with as acting. My ability to lead students to explore new areas of knowledge and skill was a natural path. While medicine was intellectually thrilling, it lacked the fulfillment I had when acting and performing, and now teaching.

A part-time teaching position led to an offer for a full-time one. After some soul-searching and shedding a few tears mourning the loss of my anticipated medical career, I took the full-time teaching job. My youngest son, Jay, had just been born and I needed to provide some stability for my family.

I felt as if I’d betrayed myself

But in reality, I was on the right path, I just didn’t know it. In retrospect, if I hadn’t moved into teaching, I’d might never have found my sacred calling or my most meaningful work.

I’d been teaching for a while when I was appointed Dean. This meant less time in the classroom and more spending more time on administrative tasks. I took the promotion because of the money even though I immediately missed the engagement in the classroom. The Dean’s position led to being named President of another college a few years later. That job was more of a headache than anything else; it lasted only two years. Part of my job was to oversee the writing of accreditation studies -think multiple volumes of writing and supporting documents- that kept Title IV Federal Financial Aid funding in place for students.

This was to be the link that introduced me to writing as a profession. It introduced me to the corporate side of writing, something I’d not experienced at that time. When my second marriage ended, I was awarded sole custody of my youngest son and we moved from Silicon Valley to Santa Cruz on the beach. I got a job -just a time filler, or so I thought- with a national engineering firm headquartered nearby.

I spent the next decade honing my business writing skills, something I’d always done well, as a project manager writing and managing proposals for complex infrastructure projects over $50 million in construction value. I was successful in winning projects that included the US/Mexico International Border Fences, numerous light rail projects like the Las Vegas Monorail as well as the California High Speed Rail projects.

It was good work, it paid well, but it had little to do with my deepest work. I endured a toxic corporate atosphere for far too long and my health suffered because of it. For the next twelve years writing would become evident as a primary component of my deepest work and support my tiny family in the process.

I wrote for business clients, developed and taught online courses, and published books. I developed a loyal online and offline following, and over the next few years, enjoyed considerable success. In quiet moments I pondered how the transition from physician to Internet business owner was even possible. It seemed to me like a strange series of linked events, yet here I was living the reality.

I enrolled in online courses taught by experts that helped me drill into the deeper aspects of the work I enjoyed. I took several online courses of six months in duration and a longer 12-month program as well. I continued to explore those creative areas that seemed to put me in a place of peace and fulfillment investing well over $20,000 in my ongoing education over the next several years.

I knew that if I wanted to make world-changing contributions, I’d have to find and develop my deepest work.

At one time I produced and wrote an online magazine.

Bringing all the pieces together

After forty years of working seemingly independent jobs, a pattern emerged. I started to see that my years in acting, teaching, and writing were a natural expression of who I was and were activities that produced flow. When I engaged any of these activities, I was in-the-zone, totally absorbed in my art.

Here’s what I noticed about this pattern:

Acting and performing placed me in flow
My years working one-on-one with patients awakened both a sense of compassion and a desire to alleviate their suffering
Teaching and working with students one-on-one (another form of acting and performance) coupled with communicating critical information, allowed me to help others find their way to greater achievement
Writing and publishing books, eBooks, teaching online courses brought all of these activities together

From this pattern I derived a list of terms that I classified into types of work. I found they correlated to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs classification. In the list below, my terms -in bold text- are followed by Dr. Maslow’s classifications in italics:

Work – those activities that enable us to meet basic needs related to physiologic survival and safety
Meaningful Work – activities that tap our natural strengths and talents and allow us to meet the higher level needs of esteem, love and belonging
Most Meaningful Work – work that magnifies our ability to meet and exceed lower and higher level needs but also allows us to achieve the highest human need, self-actualization

I later added two additional types of work:

Toxic Work – that work that detracts from our happiness because it interferes with our abilities to meet the higher needs of esteem, love and belonging
Deepest Work – repetitive contributions to the world that are only made possible by engaging our Most Meaningful Work, leading us to prolonged periods of self-actualization

It occurred to me that before I knew my deepest work, I’d habitually settled for jobs that I’ve since classified as toxic work. They interfered with my ability to meet higher aspirations and needs for esteem, love, and belonging. I also considered those jobs that propelled me toward meeting these same needs and knew that these jobs were accessing aspects of my most meaningful work.

Now that I knew the difference, charting a course to make lasting contributions was a matter of working through the processes that led me there.

Evolving your deepest work

It took me 40 years of introspection, experimentation, and action to fully know my deepest work. I am convinced that each us has a sacred calling that’s coded into our very DNA.

Unless we do the work of discovering our deepest loves, favorite activities, talents, and strengths we will not reach that state of flow that accompanies self-actualization.

My deepest work weaves together all the most important themes I discussed above. It allows me to change the world.

Your deepest work allows you to change the world. When you know your deepest work, all limitations drop away and you’re empowered to change the world.

A chip off this old block

My youngest son Jay, who I mentioned earlier, is now 21 years old. He’s a talented musician and lyricist.

While he was growing up, I felt my sole purpose for living was to raise him to adulthood and see him occupy a place of autonomy and maturity. It was a responsibility and mission sacred as any in my life. Even now, when I write about it, it evokes much emotion.

I’ve said many times that during the darker times in our lives, it was he who saved me, and not the other way around; it was he who finished raising me instead of the reverse; that it was he who shared his innate luminescence and lit my path.

You’ll recall that I wrote above having no support in my aspirations as an actor. In Jay’s case, and for my older children as well, I decided early on to allow him to choose his path based on what he found that he loved to do more than anything else.

His music, his most meaningful work, his deepest work, is already evident and he is actively engaging it at 21. He has a lifetime ahead, as all of us do, but he possesses more direction at 21 than I did.

That is what I want for you

Your deepest work and your sacred mission might have everything or nothing to do with your current work. I know that astounds weird, right? The truth is that what you identify as your deepest work has a lot to do with what you’re excited about.

If you’re not currently excited about your work path, then you might need to reboot and reconnect.

If you’re ready to discover your sacred mission, identify your most meaningful work, and engage your deepest work, I urge you subscribe below and begin the process.

It doesn’t matter if your 18 or 80, retired, in a career, or in college or university, knowing your deepest work isn’t something you should go to you grave without discovering and fully embracing.

Why a Former Physician Ended His Technical Consulting Practice in Heavy Civil Construction and Started Coaching Stressed-Out Office Workers

July 2, 2017 by Barry Leave a Comment

Stress is a killer and it’s an inside job. pc: pexels.com

Among others, two titles I’ve held in my mosaic career have been Physician and Technical Proposal Consultant

What could the two fields of medicine and construction possibly have in common?

In medicine I operated on patients and worked with a few physicians that acted as if they were God. I was exposed to Type-A personalities in the operating room and in hospitals. As a Type-B practitioner, I often felt out of place training alongside more ego-burdened colleagues.
As a proposal consultant, firms I consulted with built freeways, dams, urban light-rail systems, heavy rail systems, etc. Many executives I worked with were hard-charging Type-A personalities who didn’t care for the Type-B’s like me or those in their support staff.

Now I work helping other corporate personnel get a handle on their stress levels by listening, and teaching them how to incorporate mindfulness practices into their life.

Why such a drastic change?

One reason is that it’s what feels like a natural extension of my experiences years ago as a physician. At one time I spent my days meeting with patients who were in pain and did my best to partner with them to achieve better health. It was what I considered heart-and-soul work in that it gave me the sacred opportunity to co-create a healing environment and be of critical service to others.

Another reason is that because I know all too well how stressful it can be for a sensitive Type-B support staff member to work alongside demanding, workaholic Type-A bosses. Whether that boss is a surgeon who thinks she’s divine or a construction executive who thinks marketing people are just necessary fluff, I understand the range of egos in the workplace.

Working for a Type-A is no picnic. In fact, it can kill you if you don’t do what you can to prevent stress from taking over your health.

If you work in the corporate sector, heck…if you’re even alive and reading this…you’re already a victim of stress-related illness. You might not have any symptoms yet, but I guarantee that something sinister is brewing within.

Hypertension, gastric distress, Crohn’s Disease, and a whole host of other maladies have all been linked to stress, both at work and at home.

And…to add insult to injury, it’s inside job…and you’re doing all this to yourself. By that I mean that stress isn’t the pressure you’re under, it’s how your body responds to that pressure.

Researcher Hans Selye is credited with the modern definition of stress when he wrote:

“Stress is the body’s response to environmental pressure.”

A conflict with my Buddhist path

In the midst of a particularly stressful few years in which my second marriage ended and I suddenly became a single parent, I wrote my book, The Practical Buddhist: Buddhism Without the Robes & Ritual, some it from my office at work.

(Hey, you have to have some down time, am I right, Facebook addicts?)

In the book, I chronicled my experiences that led me to seek a healthier way of living day-to-day surrounded by the Type-A personalities that ordered my work life.

I explored and ultimately adopted practices that included mindfulness and meditation as well as a more secular approach to being in the world.

Not long after I was laid off -and as I started more gaining experience as a consultant- I realized that there was a conflict between the Buddhist concept of right livelihood and my consulting practice.

I wasn’t in right livelihood

In the Buddha’s Eight-fold path, one of the suggestions for living is to engage in right or appropriate work (work that doesn’t harm other beings, and does violate personal principles of morality or human rights).

As I started to reflect on my consulting work in the construction industry, I realized that there was a conflict simmering within. Then, at the end of 2013 and before I could make a decision, I was suddenly laid off from my job.

I spent 2014 and most of 2015 freelancing as a technical proposal consultant thanks largely to the contacts I’d made during the past decade, and my reputation for doing quality work. This gave me some additional time to isolate the issues that were troubling me. The consulting practice performed well, but I still wasn’t happy.

It was then that my dad was diagnosed with both Alzheimer’s dementia and an aggressive form of pulmonary fibrosis. I relocated from my beach home to San Jose and for the next two years I spent almost all my time caring for him. Sadly, we lost him in February of 2017.

This two-year experience of intense caregiving demanded everything I could muster in terms of inner strength, compassion, and resilience.

As I emerged from that experience, still occasionally consulting, I finally understood the conflict that existed, not because the work caused harm to other beings (although I did cringe when I knew that our plans would force some homeowners to sell their homes to the State to make way for a new freeway on-ramp), but mainly because of the need to place myself in direct conflict with the Type-A personalities I worked for.

As an empathic Type-B personality, I soak up negative energy like a sponge. When I was traveling I often left a long day of meetings and proposal work only to collapsed in my hotel room, often not feeling like having dinner.

Most of the Type-A executives I worked with didn’t really want to listen to my input, something that’s a deal breaker for me as it turns out.

I felt increasing less valuable and more like hired gun. I was told what to do and how to do it. For me, that didn’t fulfill the goal of right livelihood and I made a decision to end my practice.

Ultimately I stopped actively marketing my services for consulting within the industry and only accepted assignment from former clients, which I occasionally still do even though it’s rare.

The circuitous path led me to you

All of that led me to start Zen-Journal. What started as a simple blog about my more mindful analog planning system, began to flourish and expand into coaching others in mindfulness practice.

The heart-and-soul work of medicine had returned, though not in a way that I expected. I now write about mindfulness and coach individuals who feel invisible, undervalued, and continually over-scheduled and overwhelmed by the demands of the their Type-A boss.

They feel like quitting, but they need to make it work…at work.

It really is the best job in the world…for me.

P.S. If you feel lost, are unsure of what to do or where to turn because of stress-related problems at work, let’s talk about it. Contacting your HR department has its risks and sometimes you’d rather them not know how you’re feeling. I fully understand that.

Please click here for information about my coaching for individuals or use the contact form below to reach out.

8 Ways Regular Mindfulness Practice Can and Will Transform Your Brain

June 27, 2017 by Barry Leave a Comment

Mindfulness practices can reshape and rewire your brain pc: unsplash.com

Mindfulness practice is a transformative practice. If you engage in eating ice cream five minutes every day, do you know what would happen? Your waistline would be transformed… and probably not in the way you’d want. 🙄

You wouldn’t see it changing each day, but over the course of a few weeks, you’d notice some changes.

That’s how it is with mindfulness practice.

After five minutes on the first day you might not notice any transformation occurring, but over a few weeks you’ll notice some significant changes.

8 Ways Mindfulness Can Transform Your Brain

This article in Forbes by Alice G. Walton explain no less than seven ways mindfulness meditation can change brain function. I’ll summarize her article here:

1. Meditation helps preserve the aging brain. As we age we lose gray matter in our brains. That’s been known for a while. What a UCLA study concluded was that even though there is brain loss as humans age, in the meditators more brain impact in terms of brain loss was less and demonstrated a widespread area of positive impact. As Walton writes:

“We expected rather small and distinct effects located in some of the regions that had previously been associated with meditating,” said study author Florian Kurth. “Instead, what we actually observed was a widespread effect of meditation that encompassed regions throughout the entire brain.”

2. Meditation reduces brain activity in the ‘me-center.’ A Yale University study found that “mindfulness meditation decreases activity in the default mode network (DMN), the brain network responsible for mind-wandering and self-referential thoughts – a.k.a., “monkey mind.” Walton writes. Since this DMN is associated the meandering thought activity and found to be dominate in less happy people, this is significant. It means that meditation can imparts prolonged period of happiness in those who practice.

3. Mindfulness meditation can rival the effects of anti-depressants. Walton writes, “A review study last year at Johns Hopkins looked at the relationship between mindfulness meditation and its ability to reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety, and pain.” Because meditation is an active training activity for the brain, “it’s one of the tools that may help manage symptoms” says researcher Madhav Goyal.

4. Meditation may lead to volume changes in key areas of the brain. As Walton reports, “In 2011, Sara Lazar and her team at Harvard found that mindfulness meditation can actually change the structure of the brain: Eight weeks of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was found to increase cortical thickness in the hippocampus, which governs learning and memory, and in certain areas of the brain that play roles in emotion regulation and self-referential processing. There were also decreases in brain cell volume in the amygdala, which is responsible for fear, anxiety, and stress.”

5. Just a few days of training improves concentration and attention. “One recent study found that just a couple of weeks of meditation training helped people’s focus and memory during the verbal reasoning section of the GRE.” reports Walton. “Since the strong focus of attention (on an object, idea, or activity) is one of the central aims of meditation, it’s not so surprising that meditation should help people’s cognitive skills on the job, too.”

6. Meditation reduces anxiety — and social anxiety. “Mindfulness meditation has also been shown to help people with social anxiety disorder: a Stanford University team found that Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction programs (MBSR) brought about changes in brain regions involved in attention, as well as relief from symptoms of social anxiety.”

7. Meditation can help with addiction. “A growing number of studies has shown that, given its effects on the self-control regions of the brain, meditation can be very effective in helping people recover from various types of addiction,” Walton writes.

“One study, for example, pitted mindfulness training against the American Lung Association’s freedom from smoking (FFS) program, and found that people who learned mindfulness were many times more likely to have quit smoking by the end of the training.”

That’s impressive.

8. Short meditation breaks can help kids in school. Walton reports, “For developing brains, meditation has as much as or perhaps even more promise than it has for adults. There’s been increasing interest from educators and researchers in bringing meditation and yoga to school kids, who are dealing with the usual stressors inside school, and oftentimes additional stress and trauma outside school. Some schools have starting implementing meditation into their daily schedules, and with good effect: One district in San Francisco started a twice daily meditation program in some of its high-risk schools – and saw suspensions decrease, and GPAs and attendance increase. Studies have confirmed the cognitive and emotional benefits of meditation for schoolchildren, but more work will probably need to be done before it gains more widespread acceptance.”

How practicing mindfulness can improve things at work

With all this good stuff going on in response to meditation, you’d think everyone would be doing it. But we humans can find almost any reason to avoid something we know is good for us.

With regular practice, even just five minutes each day, you can reap some of the benefits of mindfulness meditation. Of course, you won’t experience all the above changes in only five short minutes, but it’s all you really need to get used to the mechanics.

What you’ll notice is that after a week of two of daily practice, the way you view things that used to stress you immediately don’t have quite as much affect on you. That thing your boss says all the time that really grates on your nerves doesn’t really get to you like it used to.

That alone is worth the price of admission, right?

Mindfulness and meditation aren’t the panacea for everything that bugs you about work, but it can help you decrease your stress level and promote healthy changes in your brain.

How to get started with some guided help

I’m experimenting a new free offer for my subscribers called the Free Monday Morning Mindfulness Sessions. I’ll be meeting with as many as 100 folks each Monday morning via a free teleconferencing service. We’ll spend about 5 minutes in seated meditation with me guiding you through the process.

You can join me each week at 7a Pacific Daylight time (check your local time here) by becoming a subscriber to Zen-Journal.com below. You’ll receive conference details before the next session. I’m excited about this global outreach and the power that group meditation practices can provide.

If you’re interested in taking part, it’s just another reason to join here Zen-Journal where making your life and workday better is the goal.

Your Workday Doesn’t Have To Feel Like You’re Living a Scene from ‘The Shining’

June 25, 2017 by Barry Leave a Comment

Jack Nicholson in The Shining…like a bad day in the office pc: google

REDRUM, REDRUM…

OK, that’s a bit dramatic…(if you’ve seen the film or read the novel, you get it), but life working around Type-A folks can certainly evoke some really strong reactions.

Anger, feeling hurt, annoyance, and othe forms of upset are example often how we choose to respond to various stimuli at work and maybe even at home, on the freeway, or around our kids.

It’s almost as if we possess a negative-reflex-thinking mode that becomes our go-to response, triggered over and over again each day.

Unfortunately this leads to increased stress levels, a dumping of stress hormones in our bloodstream, and ultimately to disease states like hypertension and heartburn.

That’s an unhealthy way to live. [Read more…] about Your Workday Doesn’t Have To Feel Like You’re Living a Scene from ‘The Shining’

No, You’re Not Crazy; 3 Reasons Why Working for a Type-A Boss Feels Like You’re Losing You’re Mind

June 25, 2017 by Barry Leave a Comment

There are reasons why you feel like you’ve lost your mind but none of them are about you. pc: pexels.com

Working for a Type-A boss can be like working for a meth addict

If you’ve ever crossed paths with a meth user in full-on tweaker mode, then you may have seen some similarities with your Type-A boss. Both are driven toward a goal like a locomotive charging off a cliff.

Like a tweaker in search of his next score, your Type-A boss can exhibit some strange behavior when she’s in hot pursuit of new goal or outcome. So much so, it can seem like you’re the one who’s not focused or on board with her latest agenda. [Read more…] about No, You’re Not Crazy; 3 Reasons Why Working for a Type-A Boss Feels Like You’re Losing You’re Mind