September, 2011 | Lorne Rubis

Superheroes of Kindness: Lessons from 3 Year Olds

This past week two of our team members lost loved ones; a dad and a brother passed. As always, the people at Ryzex rallied with care and compassion. When the bigger things happen our team closes ranks and demonstrates what I call reactive kindness. This is important, but I also want us to work on what I call daily kindness.

The following CNN story by Asieh Namdar underscores the essence of this way of thinking and acting, becoming Superheroes of Kindness.

At one preschool in Missoula, Montana, the students turn into superheroes for a few days each month. These superheroes can’t fly and don’t fight monsters, but they do wear capes.

Instead, they are “Superheroes of Kindness,” and they are learning that they are never too young to make a difference by cleaning up their neighborhood, visiting senior citizen centers, and taking part in other acts of kindness. Kristal Burns, the teacher who pioneered the superhero initiative explains, “One of my most memorable visits was to a senior citizen center. I would ask the kids, ‘Why are we here?’ They would say, ‘To make them smile!’ ‘How are we going to do that?’ ‘We’re going to look at them. We’re going to say ‘Hi.’ At one point, one little girl started crying. When I asked her what was wrong, she looked at me and said, ‘My heart feels so good right now.’ She was so overwhelmed with the power she had. And that’s what she took home with her that day.”

Ms. Burns goes on to say, “Every child has kindness, but like everything else, we need to cultivate and nurture it. If we don’t, kids may not know how to use it. By watering it, feeding it and learning how to carefully keep away weeds that may want to overtake it, we not only allow the kindness inside to grow, but we learn how use it. Showing compassion without thinking of reward brings great strength and inner power. What a gift to foster in our children and humanity.”

Character Move: How about you and I take a lesson from these three year olds and proactively work to demonstrate more kindness daily at work, not just when the bad stuff happens, but every day. We need to water and feed the act of kindness, like Burns emphasizes for three year olds, or we get rusty. And as Burns notes, doing so without expectations of reciprocation or reward generates inner strength and power. And as the management guru Tom Peters notes over and over again… kindness is free! I challenge you to consciously make one proactive act of kindness daily. Write down what you did, and be aware of the reaction.

Character Hall of Fame: I am selecting Ms. Burns as new member of my Character Hall of Fame.

Superheroes of Kindness in the Triangle,

Lorne

Cowboys, Cancer and Fear

Purpose Respect

Sonny Johns is a friend of mine. This Texan is so “cowboy” that you can see George Strait’s aura surround him as he steps out of his truck, all boots and jeans.

I was with Sonny the other night in the capital of Texas, having Austin’s best BBQ at the iconic Rudy’s, wolfing down slabs of brisket and ribs, all smothered in sauce and distributed on shiny wax paper that also serves as cutlery. The conversation was even better than the dinner because Sonny is so fully alive and authentic. He’s just in his early 40’s and yet he has wrestled cancer and hogtied it to the ground twice. The last time (10 years ago), he was returning home from getting the oncologist’s diagnosis when he was hit broad side on his motorcycle. He ended up in intensive care, right back at the same hospital he was returning from. Sonny was given six months to live from the cancer let alone the bike crash, but he “cowboyed up,” his term for having the mental toughness to fight his way back to health.

Sonny will be the first to say that he couldn’t have done it without lots of help from many. But, he will also tell you that fear has two dimensions: one that comes from the concern related to uncertainty and doubt, and the other involves awe and a sense of extraordinary opportunity. It was his understanding and balance of both ends of the FEAR spectrum that gave him the mental framework to first survive and then thrive. Sonny is pictured with the moustache he is growing for Movember.

A personal growth teacher and coach, Tara Sophia Mohr has a thoughtful video and blog on the website Big Think about the spectrum of fear. In it she describes teachings by the late Rabbi Alan Lew that really changed her view on how to think about fear. Rabbi Lew talked about the many Hebrew words for fear, and about two words in particular. One is pachad – a fear of projected or imagined things. In our contemporary terms we talk about this as the fear of the irrational lizard brain (the amygdala, see Seth Godin’s work on this in his book Linchpin). It’s that over-reactive fear that when applied, often stands for False Expectations Appearing Real. That’s pachad – the fear of imagined worst case scenarios or consequences – a kind of delusional fear that we’re all hardwired to have. In the case of cancer although much of pachad fear is pretty rational, some is irrational too. In Hebrew another word for fear is yirah. According to Tara, the closest translation in English is “divine awe.” Rabbi Lew defines yirah as the fear that comes upon us when we inhabit a space that is larger than we’re used to inhabiting, when we are in the presence of something sacred or divine. When we are in that place of extreme uncertainty, there is some pachad (oh my God, what is going to happen?) and also a lot of yirah. There is that sacred, trembling feeling of being in the presence of something really mysterious and other worldly.

Character Move: when you are in that uncomfortable place that feels overwhelming, accept and recognize the pachad, AND allow yourself to find the yirah too. Hopefully we do not have to face the challenges Sonny did to learn these two definitions of fear in such a literal and sharp-edged way. Perhaps like Sonny, we can “cowboy up” and embrace the yirah when we find ourselves at the edge of something very unfamiliar. And like Sonny maybe we can leverage this to get closer to our real purpose in life. Embrace the sacredness of the space that is larger than what we’re used to inhabiting. The learning is waiting there for us.

Yirah in the Triangle,

Lorne

You can find Sonny on Twitter @SonnyJohns or at Austin-based BestFit Mobile.

Go Fish – Enjoy the Ones You Catch!

Abundance Purpose

A father and his son went fishing on a small boat, hungry.

The father helped his son reel in his first fish, and it was a beauty. “Great catch, son,” the father said.

“Yes, but I’m worried I’m missing out on better fish,” the son said. “What if I could catch a bigger, tastier fish?” “Maybe you should try,” the father said.

And the son did, catching an even bigger fish an hour later. “A real beaut,” the father said.

“But what if there are better fish out there?” the son asked.

“Maybe you should try,” the father said.

And the son did, catching a bigger fish, and then wondering if there were better fish, catching another, and so on.

At the end of the day, the son was exhausted. The father asked, “How did the fish taste?”

The son hesitated. “I’m not sure. I was so busy looking for better fish that I didn’t taste any of them.”

The father smiled contentedly, patted his belly. “Don’t worry. They were delicious.”

_______

The parable above is from Leo Babauta’s popular blog http://www.zenhabits.com/. I like it because it captures the frenzy we find ourselves in from time to time. Often I find people at all levels so worked up about getting to the next big step they forget to take a moment to digest what they’ve learned. They know there is a bigger fish and they forget to fully appreciate the one they’ve caught. Before one knows it, they end up like the little boy and lose sight of the main objective: to nourish oneself and add value to others. I really do think it is important to move forward and evolve. In fact our purpose in life, I believe, is to be constantly growing and developing ourselves while contributing to others. In fact in the highest order of spiritual thinking, even God is defined as a verb as much as a noun. However taking the time to learn lessons and “feed ourselves” is important to govern the pace of movement. “Fishing,” as a metaphor for our personal evolution, then takes on a somewhat more deliberate context.

Character Move:

Recognize that we are going to miss some things. I accepted the role as President of Ryzex and two weeks after I started and introduced myself to the company I was asked to do a high profile job that I wanted to do so badly that I was sick about passing on it. However if I had jumped to that “fish,” I might have missed the time at Ryzex where the Character Triangle became a fully developed concept. Accept and be accountable to feed and nourish yourself in the best way possible in your current role.
The time to move on and to “cast the next line” will become clearer if we are present enough to fully appreciate and absorb what we have in front of us. If our antenna is “up” we will know and use better judgment. When I look back on my career, there were a few times when I got anxious and probably took my eye off what was already on my line. The dot com era was such a time; I think I got so blurred by all the “fish” out there that I didn’t get the most out of the one in my hands. I left the COO job of a company I worked my tail off to transform and jumped to a “can’t miss” start up that of course crashed and burned in the dot com bust. I did learn a lot from that “catch,” trading a trout for a minnow. 🙂 Be opportunistic but act based on what you want, NOT what you’re missing.

Full Fishing in the Triangle,

Lorne