The Four Reliances

First, rely on the spirit and meaning of the teachings, not on the words;

Second, rely on the teachings, not on the personality of the teacher;

Third, rely on real wisdom, not superficial interpretation;

And fourth, rely on the essence of your pure Wisdom Mind, not on judgmental perceptions.

The five good qualities necessary to follow the Noble Path to Enlightenment

1. Good health

2. Confidence

3. Diligence

4. Sincerity of purpose

5. Wisdom

5 habits to purify your mind

1. Have the right ideas of things (we must rid the mind of worldly passions)

2. Practice careful and patient mind control (this is the key to removing worldly passions)

3. We must have the correct ideas with regard to the use of all things (Clothing, food, etc. only in relation to the body’s needs)

4. Learn endurance!

5. Avoid all dangers along the path.

The 5 faculties of power

In Buddhist practice there are 5 faculties of power:

1.The faith to believe.

2. The will to make the endeavor

3. The faculty of alertness

4. The ability to concentrate ones mind &

5. The ability to maintain clear wisdom.

The 4 correct procedures

In Buddhist Philosophy there are 4 correct procedures;

1. Prevent evil from starting.

2. Remove evil as soon as it starts

3. Induce the doing of good deeds &

4. Encourage the growth and continuance of good deeds that have started.

The 4 correct viewpoints

There are 4 correct viewpoints in Buddhist Philosophy;

1. Consider the body impure; remove your attachment to it.

2. Consider the senses as a source of suffering

3. Consider the mind to be in a constant state of flux

4. Consider everything in the world to be a consequence of causes and conditions.

The Shortcut to Success

I just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers: The Story of Success”.  I am happy to report that I have finally found the equivalent to the Fountain of Youth; the shortcut to success. 

Our blog is dedicated to creating happiness and building business value.  However, I only occasionally remember to really think about success itself.  This is important as happiness is a close relative to success.  If you are careful about how you define success then becoming successful can lead to a sense of happiness.

In one of my prior periods of reflection, I realized I had never defined the word success.  This led to a series of blog posts relating to John Wooden’s definition of success and his Pyramid of Success.

http://buddhaceo.blogspot.com/2011/05/like-minds-lessons-from-wizard.html
http://buddhaceo.blogspot.com/2011/05/coach-woodens-pyramid-of-success-part-1.html
http://buddhaceo.blogspot.com/2011/05/coach-woodens-pyramid-of-success-part-2.html

But here is the really interesting part; Malcolm’s book does NOT contain the shortcut to success.  Quite the contrary really, he actually describes how much effort goes into success.  Malcolm’s research sets the bar very high.  It turns out that we need 10,000 hours of perfect practice to reach the mastery of a single subject.

However, Malcolm’s book does get credit for being the inspiration for my discovery of the shortcut to success.  A light bulb turned on as I contemplated the requirement of 10,000 hours of prefect preparation for skill mastery. 

I realized this is why people will pay for franchises, cookbooks, teachers, coaches and tutors.  These are the ways we pay for a shortcut to success by leveraging off of the mastery that someone else achieved the hard way by putting in their 10,000 hours.

So the path to success is simple.  Start by defining success for you.  Then either put in the 10,000 hours of perfect practice that is required to achieve the success you define or purchase a shortcut through the use of someone else’s’ system, recipe, pay for coaching, etc. 

So all of this leads me to the following question: If you are a business owner, a member of a management team or if you aspire to become either one, have you put in your 10,000 hours of perfect practice as it relates to the business of business? 

Not practicing what your business does, but practicing how to run a business that does what you do.  Being a plumber and managing a plumbing business require two very different skill sets.

Our goal at Buddha CEO is to help your Company create happiness and build business value.  So if your organization defines success in this way; we hope you consider this blog as part of your shortcut to success.

Please post a comment relating to your favorite recipe for success.

We would love to hear from you!

You Can’t Manage Change

The Buddha CEO blog is dedicated to "creating happiness and building business value”.  This process will necessitate some type of organizational change.

An email exchange I had with a client this week really got me to focus in on this age old problem of change management.  Please see the content of that email below:

No matter how well intentioned, it is very easy to fall back into predictable familiar patterns.  It takes roughly 21 days to build a sustainable new habit.

Organizational change is a little like going to the moon.  Most of the thrust is needed from takeoff until you break the Earth's atmosphere.  Takeoff for you was Friday the 30th.  Breaking free of the Earth's atmosphere for you will occur after approximately 21 days of sustained effort to integrate the new tools you have learned into your daily routine.

Once you get into outer space or your new frontier of change, really all it takes is constant, little, minor adjustments, but very little thrust.  Moon missions were only on their intended paths about 3% of the trip.  Therefore, they required constant checking and re-checking of the flight path. 

However, the adjustments needed to get the flight back on track were minor and took very little energy as long as they engaged in the constant checking and re-checking to make sure they were not too far out of their plan. 

If you let your change initiative, get too far off track, it is almost like starting all over again.

As I reflected on the massive difficulties and frustrations organizations go through to evolve and change and the resulting amount of headache and heartache involved it occurred to me that we are using the wrong tool for the job.

For those of you who attempt home improvement projects around the house, you can well appreciate the value of having the right tool for the job.  It makes the job at hand infinitely easier and more enjoyable.

So, let’s make organizational change easier and more enjoyable and more successful by making sure we are using the correct tool.

The light bulb that went off in my head is that you CAN NOT manage change because change is largely a people function.  Stephen Covey has always taught that you manage things and you lead people, but you can’t lead things or manage people.

Yes, change is process oriented as well and that requires management.  But the fundamental determinant of success of a change effort will always lie with people as opposed to process and so the dominate force in the change effort must be leadership and NOT management.

To see how wrong we are on this look at the results of my recent Google searches below:

Results 1 - 10 of about 27,700,000 for Leading change. (0.19 seconds) 

Results 1 - 10 of about 75,000,000 for change management. (0.18 seconds) 

Results 1 - 10 of about 18,300,000 for change leadership. (0.42 seconds) 

75M hits for change management vs. only 18M for change leadership of 28M for leading change.

Now, let’s look at the results from a Wikipedia search below:

Change Management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. The current definition of Change Management includes both organizational change management processes and individual change management models, which together are used to manage the people side of change.


There are no Wikipedia page titled “Change leadership” or "Leading Change"!

No wonder we experience the degree of angst and gnashing of teeth that we do.

Please STOP trying to manage change and start LEADING it instead.

How do you lead change in your organizations?  We would love to hear from you!

Take Austin Power’s Advice and Behave!

Who would have thought that Austin Power’s would be a role model for realizing your full potential, but it is true nonetheless as we can see from this guest post offering from our friend Hans.

Contributed by Hans | hans@hansyoga.com | hansyoga.com

A very simple way to put all of these together is “Learn to behave”.

Simple words, a vast spectrum of meanings as you will see.

Before we understand right behavior with others, we have to learn right behavior with our own selves.  The world is our extended self.  If I want to get along with others, I must first learn to get along with myself. Now, to get along with myself, I have to know myself.  Most of us are 'strangers' unto ourselves - how can one get along with a stranger?

In the scriptures of my homeland in India, we compare human beings with a chariot with 5 horses.  The 5 sense-faculties (of seeing, tasting, hearing, smelling and touching) are the 5 steeds, wayward and unruly, running amuck towards the sense-objects.  To control them, we have a rein which is our sensory mind.  It is called the lower mind (Manas) because its domain is just two-fold, "I like it" and 'I don't like it".  It is pleasure-driven, being sense-enslaved.

The rein is necessary but not enough.  There must be an able charioteer to hold fast the reins.  He is our higher mind - the reason, the discerning or discriminating faculty.  It is called Buddhi in Sanskrit.  Its domain extends to deciding whether what is pleasant is also good, and whether the unpleasant things the lower (sensory) mind is rejecting, could actually be good for us. 

The creamy cake may look temptingly pleasant to the diabetic, but reason tells him it is bad.  Early morning walks look so unpleasant, so unthinkable, but if you make it, you are empowering by discriminating reason, that which eventually benefits you. When anger comes on, you want to slap the other person, but reason tells you to hold.

Let us see what right behavior means at various levels of our being - Physical, Mental, Emotional, Intellectual & Spiritual, etc.

RIGHT BEHAVIOR FOR YOUR BODY

Your body is not you, you have it but you are not the body.  Treat it like a good employer would treat his employee.  Giving it its rightful dues, but not pampering it.  For example, when you want to eat, find out whether it's your body's genuine need (appetite) or your mind's endless desire (greed).  When the body feels tired, find out if it is actually fatigued from over-work or just being lazy, and so on.

A saint called his body 'brother donkey'.  Indeed, the body is the animal in us, our dear beast of burden.  Since our aim is to love all, we cannot ignore the body, but we have to remember to treat it wisely - without cruelty, without indulgence.

RIGHT BEHAVIOR FOR THE MIND

The mind is a drunken, drugged and devil-possessed monkey, unless we learn to control it.  The body is much simpler in comparison.  We can dominate the body through will.  But managing the mind monkey is not a game of just will power.  We need wisdom - a wisdom-guided will.  For example, if you order the mind not to think any more a particular thought that it has been chattering about, it is unlikely to obey unless you know the subtle rules. 

Why is it so difficult to control the mind? If you know the reason, you will know the cure.  The reason is, the sensory mind is hyper-active and restless by nature.  The mind's restless habits of thought and action get programmed or hard-wired in the brain which is the seat of energy or life-force (Pranayama).  The brain then drives further reactive actions. 

My Master (Paramahansa Yogananda, author of 'Autobiography of a Yogi') explains that the energy in the brain is spent in various bodily functions like blood circulation, breathing (movements of diaphragm), digestion, chemicalization, excretion etc., but that most of its energy is wasted in processing our useless or misguided thoughts, feelings and emotions that our big brother mind indulges in.

If somehow the mind's excessive energy (energy is where the consciousness is), routed through the brain,  can be regulated  and harnessed, not only will the monkey-mind get quieter, there will be energy available for so many worthy tasks.  So we have an energy crisis at micro-level too! 

This taming of energy or life-force (Prana) is called Pranayama in Yoga which is a marvelous super-science for body-mind-soul harmony, but many in the West think Yoga is just about some Yoga postures for bodily cure.  Yoga is about mind technology, which then permits tapping the soul-resources.

We must raise our self-awareness that gives us valuable feedback about our conduct.  We can then learn to be, as my Master taught me, "Calmly Active & Actively Calm".  We can then work smart, not just hard which even donkeys can do.

Emotions are Ego in MOTION.  They are not our highest faculty; even animals have emotions, but they have no guiding reason, no self-awareness and hence no self-control.  They have no wisdom which is much higher than reason.

Thoughts shape our destiny.  They create our outer and inner conditions. By Yogic mind management, we can choose right thoughts and thereby create right conditions.  The Law of Attraction is based on this. 

Questions are welcome from readers.  It is a vast and interesting subject, that has power to transform humans and through their optimization, it can optimize workplaces.  Stephen Covey rightly says that the way we look at the problems IS the problem.  We need to have holistic perceptions. Life's highest truths are the simplest.   There is too much of intellectual jargon in modern management.  We need wisdom, we need values and we need self-management.  You don't need to manage people, just empower them to manage themselves. 

Please browse http://www.hansyoga.com or write to me at hans@hansyoga.com to know more. 

Have a good day!

Take a Dose of Community and Call Me in the Morning

I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers: The Story of Success” when it became apparent that I had erred in my post titled “Creating a Culture of Community” back in May (link below).

http://buddhaceo.blogspot.com/2011/05/creating-culture-of-community.html

In that post I made a big deal not just about the importance of culture in business, but about a very specific kind of culture that you want to create in your organization called a culture of community.  It turns out I was dead wrong.

I massively under-estimated the importance of creating not only a strong culture in your business, but specifically a culture of community.  It is at least 100 times more important than I implied.  As a matter of fact, your very life depends on it; both the quantity and quality of your life as it turns out.

How can this be?  Well in Outliers, Galdwell retells the story of The Roseto Mystery.  The executive summary of the The Roseto Mystery is that in the 1950’s a physician by the name of Stewart Wolf became aware of a medical mystery happening in the small village of Roseto, Pennsylvania.  During that time period heart attacks were an epidemic in the U.S.  Yet, rarely did anyone in the town of Roseto under the age of 65 suffer from heart disease.

Wolf conducted an exhaustive study and concluded that the urban legend about the lack of heart disease in Roseto was in fact true.  Further as it turns out, the Rosetans were dying of only old age and nothing else!

This led to an additional intensive study to determine the underlying cause of this phenomenon.  They ran through the usual suspects; diet and exercise, genetics, regional bias, etc.  In the end the only reason that held up under the microscope of rigorous scientific analysis was that the Rosetans longevity both in terms of quantity and quality was due to the unique culture of community within the village of Roseto.

Now it is true that we can create this Roseto effect in our time outside of work.  We can strive to make our residential communities more Roseto like.  But, if a culture of community is so directly linked to the quality and quantity of our longevity then why stop there.  Why leave our health and happiness to chance.  We will likely spend from 1/3 to ½ of our adult lives at work and so the type of culture we create there will have an undisputable and significant impact on our overall quality of life.

With this new evidence and emphasis on the importance and impact of a culture of community I urge you to re-read and apply the principles I shared in my post back in May on the best practices I have found for creating a culture of community.

Please share with us your best practices for creating a culture of community.

We would love to hear from you!

John Wooden's Nine Promises for Happiness

Coach John Wooden said happiness comes from making and keep nine promises:

1.    Promise yourself that you will talk health, happiness, and prosperity as often as possible.

2.    Promise yourself to make all your friends know there is something in them that is special that you value.

3.    Promise to think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best in yourself and others.

4.    Promise to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

5.    Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

6.    Promise to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to greater achievements in the future.

7.    Promise to wear a cheerful appearance at all times and give every person you meet a smile.

8.    Promise to give so much time improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.

9.    Promise to be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit trouble to press on you.

How do you GET YOUR HAPPY ON!  We would love to hear from you!!

Disney is NOT the Happiest Place on Earth

What is the formula for creating the happiest place on earth?

Charge a competitive but fair price for your main product or service, charge prices that are noticeably less than your competitors on most items that are necessary to maintain your original sale, and give the rest of your products and services away for free.

Where in the world does someone employ this type of philosophy?

       Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana

How can such a model work to create sustainable enduring success?

First of all, Holiday World understands the difference between optimizing the lifetime value of a customer vs. maximizing an individual customer transaction.  

Secondly, they understand the marketing buzz that is generated by the power of free.

I just got back from taking my family on our annual trip to Holiday World.  During this much needed day of rest, I was reminded of a great story form Randy Pausch's Last Lecture book. 

It was a story of how Disney created a magic trick when he was a child and turned $10 into over $100,000.  He and his sister had purchased a $10 gift for their parents at one of the souvenir shops in the Magic Kingdom. 

As they walked from the shop back to meet his parents, the gift slipped out of the package, hit the ground and broke.  Randy's sister convinced him to return to the shop and at least ask for an exchange.  Reluctantly he agreed to try even though he was pessimistic with their chance of success since the breakage was clearly his fault.

When they arrived back at the shop and explained what happened, the clerk accepted full responsibility for improper packaging, gave them a replacement free and was much more careful about how she wrapped and packed the gift the second time around. 

When Randy and his sister relayed the story to their parents, the Pausch family was so impressed that during the rest of Randy's life, he estimated that he and his extended family spent in excess of $100,000 at Disney World.

As Randy retold the story in the book he knew he was relaying a lesson about great customer service.  As a computer scientist as opposed to a business consultant, he might not have known that he was telling a classic story illustrating the power of focusing on optimizing the lifetime value of a customer vs. maximizing an individual profit per customer transaction.

Randy shared this story with a group of modern day Disney executives as an adult and asked them if their current business practices would allow a store clerk to make that type of decision today.  Their silence told them everything he needed to know.  Disney has become a corporate machine obsessed with maximizing profit per visit. 

Disney makes sure you leave their compound without a penny in your pocket to spare.  You have a great time, but you feel a little cheap and used as you return home.

A visit to Holiday World (HW) takes you back in time when Walt Disney's original legacy and magic was still alive at Disney World.  HW charges a fair and competitive price for their tickets. 

Where you really start to feel the difference is once you get inside the gates.  For most theme parks, the ticket price is just the start.  The real expense begins once you start buying food. 

At HW, you would have to work really hard to spend very much money once you get in.  The food prices are fair and the food quality if good. 

This is where the remainder the formula for sustainable success kicks in. 

Step 1; charge a fair price for your main product, tickets in the case of HW. 

Step 2; charge a noticeable lower price than your competitors for subsequent purchases that are necessary to maintain your original purchase, food in the case of HW. 

Step 3; give the rest away for free.

This step 3 is the one that will drive your competitors completely crazy.  HW provides free drinks and sunscreen all day, every day. 

This amounts to a substantial savings and increased enjoyment for their customers over any of their competitors.  It is also very unlikely that your competition will every try to match a move this bold. 

Most businesses are obsessed with maximizing the profit per customer transaction.  Only truly great and enduring successful companies are obsessed with optimizing the lifetime value of a customer; the magic trick of turning $10 in to over $100,000.

The second dimension of free is that it is the highest ROI marketing expenditure you could ever make.  You can actually justify a price of free in terns of marketing ROI alone without even considering its effect on lifetime customer value. 

If you take the cost of the free sodas and sunscreen that HW incurs every year and divide by the word of mouth marketing that comes from people like me telling every one they meet about their experience, you would find that it is the most effective and cost justified part of their extensive overall marketing campaign.

Please tell us your stories of organizations that understand lifetime customer value and the marketing power of free.

We would love to hear from you!

Like Minds - Tim Sanders “Love is the Killer App”

In Tim Sanders’ masterpiece, “Love is the Killer App” he offers up the lovecat way “Offer your wisdom freely, give away your address book to everyone who wants it.  And always be human.”  You accomplish this through sharing your knowledge, sharing your network and sharing your compassion.

He describes the above system as an antidote for what he describes as the biggest challenge facing businesspeople today “Men and women across the country are trying desperately to understand how to maintain their value as professionals in the face of rapidly changing times.”

What is a killer app?  Sanders’ defines a killer app as follows: “basically it’s an excellent new idea that either supersedes an existing idea or establishers a new category in its field.  It soon becomes so popular that it devastates the original business model.”

The premise for the book is that Love is the new killer app.  Sanders says (also the clever name of his blog) “Those of us who use love as a point of differentiation in business will separate ourselves from our competition. Further he states that “I believe that the most important new trend in business is the downfall of the barracudas, sharks, and piranhas, and the ascendancy of nice, smart people – because they are what I call lovecats.”

Sanders’ defines love in business or what he calls bizlove as “the selfless promotion of the growth of the other.  When you are able to help others to grow to become the best people they can be, you are being loving – and you, too, grow.”  Sanders’ battle cry is “SHOW ME THE LOVE”.

Tim sets up our contract with our employers as follows: “we take on a contract to create more value than the dollar amount we are paid.  If we don’t add value to our employer, we are value losses; we are value vampires.  Tim’s definition of added value: The value of you inside a situation is greater than the value without you.”  Further he points out that now more than ever, “every member of your team depends on each and every other member to contribute.  You can’t afford to take on people who will sink your value boat.”

Finally, he sets up the meat of the book with the following definition and observation.  “Here then, is my definition of love business: The act of intelligently and sensibly sharing your intangibles with your bizpartners.  What are our intangibles?  They are our knowledge, our network and our compassion.  These are the keys to true bizlove.”

Amen!

Please share with us your thoughts on the next killer app.  We would love to hear from you!!

Buddhist Compensation Best Practices

Compensation systems rarely create strategic alignment of both the team member and organizational goals.

Care and Compassion

Many employers, especially in the small to middle market are very generous when it comes to seeing and helping team members through hard times.  However, this is hardly universal.  There is no better way to instill trust and loyalty in your workplace than to stand behind your teammates when they need you most.

Sharing

Sharing pleasant things with your teammates and vendors can not be over emphasized; little things can make a big difference. 

The culture of your organization will be determined more by the small kindnesses, unexpected pats on the back and sincere thanks than any other single element of your overall compensation systems.

Rest for the Weary

Providing your troops with needed rest is another incredible opportunity to differentiate your organization and make you an employer of choice.  Again, many companies do a respectable job here, but in general, we work way too hard in the American culture.

We do not provide enough paid vacation.  We work too many hours with too few breaks for renewal.  We provide too little time off to allow our team members to be engaged in their families’ lives and the community at large.

Adequate rest is good for business.  It is the embodiment of the John Wooden principle of the need to have “fresh legs” in the fourth quarter when the game is on the line.

Recognition – Show me the Love!

Do not underestimate the power of non-monetary compensation in attracting and retaining key talent on your team.  It has been said that people are more starved for recognition than they are food.  In my experience this has certainly been true.

Non–monetary systems can also be informal, and those may have the most motivating impact of all.  Examples would be the so called “Pat on the Back” that you give a team member in the simple form of a thank you for a job well done.

An example of a legendary informal non-monetary recognition system is the thank-you notes Ronald Regan would send out to Republican Party volunteers and supporters.  He reportedly wrote and mailed five such cards every day.  No wonder he was so popular with the party loyalists at election time.

Please share your thoughts on the most important aspects of sustainable compensation strategies.  We would love to hear from you!!

The Responsibilities of the Buddhist Employer

Buddha taught that the master should:

1. Assign work that is suitable for the team members abilities
2. Provide proper compensation
3. Care for them when they are ill
4. Share pleasant things with them
5. Provide them needed rest

This is basic HR management 101 from 2500 years ago.  Still, it is amazing to me how often we violate these principles in everyday business life.

Please share your thoughts on employer responsibilities.  We would love to hear from you!!

Mindfulness vs. Time Management

Life is all about the power of present moment choices.  The first choice you need to make is to choose to live.  There is a big difference between living, really living your life vs. existing, merely existing.  Essentially going through the motions and punching the clock putting in your time in this life.

The Buddha taught that we need to appreciate this precious human life we are leading.  To truly appreciate it, we need to make the most of each moment we are give.  In any game, even the game of life, somehow we all know that to play it safe is to lose the game.

We should therefore, live in a constant state of urgency, but short of a state of panic.  We need to always stay in control and “never let them see you sweat” 

We must seize the power in each present moment, because our decisions in a handful of these key critical present moments will likely define our lives.  The interesting thing about these defining moments is that they rarely come at a convenient time and we run a great risk of missing them altogether because we are so wrapped up in our mundane lives we fail to recognize the significance of the moment.

Our schedules are so packed with the mundane and ordinary that we are irritated when we are interrupted with these potentially miraculous and extraordinary moments.  Are you ready to react at a moments notice?

When we talk about Perfect Deed or Action in the Buddhist sense, we are really recognizing that the most important activity that we engage in each day is making choices; making choices in each of our present moments.  Our lives become the cumulative result of all of our present moment choices.

Each individual moment is the context in which we live, our choices in the present moments chart our course and determine our destinations.  Our present moment choices either move us towards long-term happiness or further away from that goal.

Here is a quote on the importance of present moment choices from the Dalai Lama’s “The Art of Happiness”

We need to be able to judge the long-term and short-term consequences of your behaviors and weigh the two.

Please share your moment managment tips and tricks.  We would love to hear from you!

The Dali Lama's advice on "Time Management"

Time management is essentially the discipline of moment management.  Creating intentions and next steps and then prioritizing action plans from moment to moment to stay on track and use each moment to its fullest.

It is hard to know what to put first if you don’t know what the first things are in the first place.  This is why I believe that the best way to start this section on time management is with an excerpt from the Dali Lama’s book “The Art of Happiness”.

When faced with a feeling of stagnation and confusion, it may be helpful to take an hour, an afternoon, or even several days to simply reflect on what it is that will truly bring us happiness, and the then reset our priorities on the basis of that.  This can put our life back in proper context, allow a fresh perspective, and enable us to see which direction to take.

The firm resolve to become happy – to learn about the factors that lead to happiness and take positive steps to build a happier life – can be just such a decision.  The tuning-toward happiness as a valid goal and the conscious decision to seek happiness in a systematic manner can profoundly change the rest of our lives.

Sometimes when I meet old friends, it reminds me how quickly time passes.  And it makes me wonder if we’ve utilized our time properly or not.  Proper utilization of time is so important.  While I have this body, and especially this amazing human brain, I think every minute is something precious.  Our day-to-day existence is very much alive with hope, although there is no guarantee of our future.  There is no guarantee that tomorrow at this time we will be here.  But still we are working for that purely on the basis of hope.  So, we need to make the best use of our time.

I believe that the proper utilization of our time is this; if you can serve other people, other sentient beings.  If not, at least refrain from harming them.  I think this is the whole basis of my philosophy.

So, let us reflect on what is truly of value in life, what gives meaning to our lives, and set our priorities on the basis of that.  The purpose of our life needs to be positive. We weren’t born with the purpose of causing trouble, harming others.  For our life to be of value, I think we need to develop basic good human qualities – warmth, kindness, compassion.  Then our life becomes meaningful and more peaceful – happier.

Please share your time management tips and tricks.  We would love to hear from you!!

The Middle Way

The following are a collection miscellaneous thought tools.  The first is the Buddhist principle of moderation or “The Middle Way”.

Buddha taught to avoid being caught or entangled in any extreme.  He taught non-duality; “Be not elated by success nor depressed by failure”.  The middle way is accomplished through the “Eight Fold Path”

Buddha taught that the wise man learns to meet the changing circumstances of life with an equitable spirit, being neither elated by success nor depressed by failure.  Thus one realizes the truth of non-duality.

The Dalai Lama defines the middle way like this in “The Art of Happiness”.

True happiness is stable and persistent despite life’s ups and downs and normal fluctuations of mood, as part of the very matrix of our being.

The eight fold path is subdivided into three different sections as follows:

Wisdom

1. Right understanding – know that all is not right; identify what is wrong and replace it with what is right.

We are responsible for our own destiny; only we can change the way we are!  We cannot change circumstances or people, but we can change our reactions to them.  Holding a right view will lead us to right action and to a true liberation.

2. Right resolve or intention – the honest decision to do something to improve oneself.

It is your commitment to your commitment. 

Morality

3. Right speech – the elimination of idle chatter, gossip and backbiting; harsh speech and lying.

This is simply living the golden rule that if you don’t have something nice to say or can not be constructive and compassionate when engaging in difficult communications, please refrain from communicating at all for the time being.

4. Right action – acting with honesty, compassion and humility.

Be a lovecat in action with everything you say and do; always be helping others to grow and succeed.

5. Right livelihood – one that helps you develop your unique potential and the understanding of those around you.

You can not separate your work life from your spiritual life.  Only you can determine what this means to you. 

6. Right effort – the development of insight and will power; the discipline to change.

Right effort is embodied in Jim Collin’s “Rinse your Cottage Cheese” metaphor (See Good to Great).  It is your personal discipline.

Meditation

7. Right mindfulness – learning to be constantly and acutely aware of your thoughts, words and actions.

This requires constant vigilance and mind control.  You are not responsible for the negative thoughts and emotions that pop into your head moment to moment.  You are responsible if you allocate your current mental resources to focus on these negative thoughts and emotions as opposed to replacing them with positive thoughts and emotions.

8. Right meditation – routinely taking the time to enjoy nature and calm your mind to the point that you are thinking about nothing at all.

This is part of the rest and renewal process necessary to achieve enlightenment.  This is one of the biggest differences between eastern and western cultures.  Sometimes doing nothing is the most productive thing we can do.

The eight fold path can also be organized with the perfect thought, perfect word and perfect deed structure as follows:

Perfect Thought

      Right understanding

      Right resolve

      Right mindfulness

     

Perfect Word

      Right speech

     

Perfect Deed

      Right action

      Right livelihood

      Right effort

      Right meditation

The disciplined observance of the eightfold path will lead to “the middle way” which is the key to successfully executing the intangible elements of enlightenment which are moderation, contemplation, and renewal.

The eightfold path within itself adequately addresses moderation and contemplation.  It addresses renewal through meditation which is a critical element of renewal. 

However, in our modern times, renewal is about more that it was in Buddha’s days.  In out modern culture, we have to add proper diet and exercise into our daily routines in order to maintain ourselves as elite corporate athletes.  This is Covey’s seventh habit of “sharpening the saw”.  I would also refer you to the “The Power of Full Engagement” by Dr. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.

The most passionate voice for the value of celebration in business is Jack Welch.  He discusses this tool in depth in both his books “Straight from the Gut” and “Winning”.  Properly executed this team building exercise does not violate the concept of the middle way.

How do you practice moderation, contemplation, celebration & renewal?  We would love to hear from you!