Temporary Sanity: Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

Temporary Sanity: Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times CHARLES C. MANZ PEARSON EDUCATION, INC. “T...

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Temporary Sanity: Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

CHARLES C. MANZ

PEARSON EDUCATION, INC.

“This is an important book, which I enjoyed and from which I beneﬁted. I believe you will, too.” —Drea Zigarmi Coauthor of The Leader Within: Learning Enough About Yourself To Lead Others and Leadership and the One Minute Manager “Temporary Sanity offers a remarkable holistic approach for surviving and thriving in life’s most challenging moments. If you’d like a healthy blend of practical strategies to lift your mind, body and spirit, this book is just what the doctor ordered.” —T.L. (Tedd) Mitchell, M.D. Health Columnist for USA Today Weekend, Medical Director of the Cooper Wellness Program, and member of the President’s Council on Fitness “Charles Manz has a gift for taking the deep wisdom of the ages and making it simple and useful for everyday life. But don’t be deceived. Although the suggestions in Temporary Sanity are simple and easy, they are also incredibly powerful, and your life will never be the same!” —Judi Neal, Ph.D. Executive Director, Center for Spirit at Work, University of New Haven, and President of the Eastern Academy of Management

OTHER BOOKS BY CHARLES C. MANZ Fit to Lead: The Proven 8-Week Solution for Shaping up Your Body, Your Mind, and Your Career Christopher P. Neck, Tedd L. Mitchell, Charles C. Manz, and Emmet C. Thompson, II ■ The Power to Choose How You Feel: Keys to Creating and Maintaining a Positive Attitude Charles C. Manz ■ Emotional Discipline: The Power to Choose How You Feel Charles C. Manz ■ The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life’s Setbacks into Success Charles C. Manz ■ The New SuperLeadership: Leading Others to Lead Themselves Charles C. Manz and Henry P. Sims, Jr. ■ The Wisdom of Solomon at Work: Ancient Virtues for Living and Leading Today Charles C. Manz, Karen P. Manz, Robert D. Marx, and Christopher P. Neck ■ Team Work and Group Dynamics Greg L. Stewart, Charles C. Manz, and Henry P. Sims, Jr. ■ Mastering Self-Leadership: Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence Charles C. Manz with Christopher P. Neck ■ The Leadership Wisdom of Jesus: Practical Lessons For Today Charles C. Manz ■ For Team Members Only: Making Your Workplace Team Productive and Hassle-Free Charles C. Manz, James Mancuso, Christopher P. Neck, and Karen P. Manz ■ Company of Heroes: Unleashing the Power of Self-Leadership Henry P. Sims, Jr. and Charles C. Manz ■ Business Without Bosses: How Self-Managing Teams are Building High-Performing Companies Charles C. Manz and Henry P. Sims, Jr. ■ SuperLeadership: Leading Others to Lead Themselves Charles C. Manz and Henry P. Sims, Jr. ■ The Art of Self-Leadership: Strategies for Personal Effectiveness in Your Life and Work Charles C. Manz ■

TEMPORARY SANITY INSTANT SELF-LEADERSHIP STRATEGIES FOR TURBULENT TIMES CHARLES C. MANZ

An Imprint of PEARSON EDUCATION Upper Saddle River, NJ • New York • London • San Francisco • Toronto • Sydney Tokyo • Singapore • Hong Kong • Cape Town • Madrid Paris • Milan • Munich • Amsterdam www.ft-ph.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book can be obtained from the Library of Congress Editorial/Production Supervision: William Mara, Lori Lyons Composition: Gloria Schurick Cover Design Director: Jerry Votta Cover Design: Chuti Prasertsith Cover Photography: Jake Rajs, Getty Images Inc./Stone-New York Butch Martin, Getty Images Inc.-Business Man Interior Design: Gail Cocker-Bogusz Manufacturing Manager: Alexis R. Heydt-Long Manufacturing Buyer: Dan Uhrig VP, Editor-in-Chief: Tim Moore Editorial Assistant: Rick Winkler Marketing Manager: Martin Litkowski Copy Editor: Laura Burgess ©2005 Charles C. Manz Published by Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 Prentice Hall offers excellent discounts on this book when ordered in quantity for bulk purchases or special sales. For more information, please contact: U.S. Corporate and Government Sales, 1-800-3823419, [email protected]. For sales outside of the U.S., please contact: International Sales, 1-317-581-3793, [email protected]. Company and product names mentioned herein are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher. Prentice Hall, One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. Printed in the United States of America First Printing ISBN 0-13-147022-1 LOC 2004105833 Pearson Education LTD. Pearson Education Australia PTY, Limited Pearson Education Singapore, Pte. Ltd. Pearson Education North Asia Ltd. Pearson Education Canada, Ltd. Pearson Educación de Mexico, S.A. de C.V. Pearson Education—Japan Pearson Education Malaysia, Pte. Ltd.

I dedicate this book to my current primary co-author teams. They have magniﬁcently provided me, in the heat of our work, with the healthy challenges I’ve needed to be able to increase my capacity for temporary sanity. Even more, they have helped infuse my life with purpose and joy which has helped make both peace and exhilaration solid cornerstones of my personal journey. I will be forever indebted to: The Solomon Team Karen Manz, Bob Marx, and Judi Neal The Fit to Lead Team Chris Neck, Tedd Mitchell, and Tom Thompson The Knowledge Management Team Vikas Anand and Bill Glick The ASU Leading Teams Team Peter Hom and John Millikin My Other Key Current Authors (the “All Star” Team) Hank Sims, Greg Stewart, Craig Pearce, and Frank Shipper

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M

any individuals have contributed greatly to my thinking over the years in ways that helped with the development of the Temporary Sanity Approach and the strategies offered in this book. I have dedicated this book to several of these friends and colleagues who are listed on the dedication page. A few other people who have very positively affected my life and career over the years, and who deserve special mention here, include Jim Mancuso, Bob Mitchell, Denny Gioia, Kathi Lovelace, John Newstrom, Mike Beyerlein, Fred Luthans, John Sheridan, Art Bedeian, Kevin Mossholder, Andy Van de Ven, Hal Angle, Mary Nichols, John Slocum, Chris Argyris, Richard Hackman, Ted Levitt, Ed Lawler, and Mike Mahoney. In addition, I thank the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and especially my Dean and Department Chair in the Isenberg School of Management, Tom O’Brien and Bill Wooldridge. The Administrative Resources Center, and especially Becky Jerome, have provided me with great support in preparing my book manuscripts over the past few years. And a very special thanks goes to Charles and Janet Nirenberg who provided a generous gift to establish the Nirenberg Chair of Business Leadership, the position I now

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Acknowledgments

hold, and have also been a valued source of wisdom and friendship during my time at UMass. I am also grateful for the inspiration and very able support of my editor Tim Moore, my development editor Russ Hall, and my production editors, Wil Mara and Lori Lyons. Finally, I express my appreciation to all my other friends, colleagues, and to my extended family who have provided encouragement and support for me and my work through my many uplifting, and sometimes sanity-testing, life adventures over the years.

viii

CONTENTS Foreword xv Introduction: Finding Temporary Sanity and Peace in Turbulent Life Moments xix

PART 1 Foundational Peace(s) 1 What is Temporary Sanity? 3 The Four Truths 7 The Only Moment 10 The Promise of Temporary Sanity 15 Traveling the Inner Low Road 21 Rerouting to the Inner High Road 25 The Two Key Parts of the Temporary Sanity Process 31 Three Steps to Temporary Sanity in “Normal” Challenging Moments 35

ix

Contents

Three Steps to Temporary Sanity in Highly Challenging Moments 38 Finding the Peace(s) of Your Life 42

PART 2 Mind: Mental Peace(s) 47 Watch Yourself! 48 Choose Momentary Amnesia 54 Just Consider Letting Go 60 Ride Mental Storms 65 Mental Kung Fu 71 The Idea That Can Change Your Life 77 Mental Flow…Catch Your Inner Wind 83 Ideas for Other Mind-Centered Temporary Sanity Strategies 87

x

Contents

PART 3 Body: Physical Peace(s) 89 Stop! … And Relax 91 Breathe 95 Perceive in 3D 102 Smile and Laugh 107 Sense Your Senses 113 Sound Management 119 Stretch Yourself 125 Ideas for Other Body-Centered Temporary Sanity Strategies 131

PART 4 Spirit: Transcendent Peace(s) 133 Watch, Don’t Be, the Ego 135 The Question: Can I Feel Inner Peace Right Now? 141 The Statement: This Is the Way Things Are Supposed to Be 146

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Contents

Wake Up in Your Day/Life Dreams 152 4D Perceiving 157 Die Before You Die 163 Make Peace with Love 169 Ideas for Other Spirit-Centered Temporary Sanity Strategies 174 Create Lifelong Temporary Sanity 176

Endnotes 179

xii

FOREWORD

O

ver the past 20 years, Charles Manz has developed a clear and strong voice in the leadership literature. This voice has taken the essential position that we need to transcend the concept of follower in the leadership equation. Too much has been written in the ﬁeld of leadership without the needed in-depth understanding and advocacy of the potential leader in every person. The fundamental questions that Manz continually asks are “How can everyone be taught and encouraged to lead him or herself?” And “How can leaders lead others to lead themselves?” This voice takes the unique position of putting the ultimate focus on the reason for leadership: The profound and obvious reason is that self-leaders stay committed longer, have more fun, cost their organizations less money, and produce better results than those who are not self-led. The evolution of his thought shows a concern for the role of those being led. He has advocated and reasoned that every person, even those who others want to label as mere followers, need to initiate, need to be a stronger force in determining their organizational role and in shaping the fabric of their organizational life. He has been an advocate for self-leadership, self-understanding, self-courage, and self-control of one’s life. xiii

Foreword

This book, TEMPORARY SANITY, is a natural extension of his life’s work in self-leadership. This book is about ﬁrst letting go of ego but, more importantly, about the mental aspects of permanent mental sanity. This book asks us to understand how our mental illusions about the past and the future can cost us our experience and sanity with the moments at hand. And here is the best part: He gives readers clear steps on how to change their life for the better if they seriously want to. As an author in the ﬁeld of leadership, I applaud Manz and his life-long commitment to the development of selfleadership and to the development of the best in the human character. I can learn from his ideas on self-development. I can learn from this book because it is about choosing not to live life in fear, but rather how to live life in strength. This is a book about psychic health and inner spirituality. This is an important book, which I enjoyed and from which I beneﬁted. I believe you will, too. Drea Zigarmi Coauthor of The Leader Within: Learning Enough About Yourself To Lead Others and Leadership and the One Minute Manager (with Ken Blanchard)

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There are key moments in every life that can make all the difference. What are these key moments? How can you know when they are at hand? How can you thrive when you encounter them? Remain alert for when your life circumstances and the content of your mind seek to unleash the ﬁres of temporary insanity upon you. At these times, others may expect you to falter and self-destruct, and you may feel a growing sense of being overwhelmed within. But if you can stay the course by connecting with your deepest values and the power of temporary sanity, and the calm effectiveness that goes with it, these can truly be your deﬁning moments.

xv

Negative emotional reactions may be our biggest obstacles to a full effective life. When we react out of anxiety, fear, anger, hatred, or other negative emotions, we not only diminish our capacity to effectively handle challenges we face, we also create the conditions for physical disease and unhappiness. We can become toxic to ourselves and others. And we can unintentionally plant the seeds of intolerance, violence, substance abuse, and dysfunctional organizations and communities that are largely unﬁt to live in. In a very real sense we choose our health, our personal effectiveness, and the quality of our world. We do this when we face the inevitable challenges in our lives and either choose “temporary insanity” or “temporary sanity.” When we choose temporary sanity in these deﬁning life moments, we unleash a force that can truly create heaven on earth.

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INTRODUCTION: FINDING TEMPORARY SANITY AND PEACE IN TURBULENT LIFE MOMENTS

W

hen you experience your mind, emotions,

and sense of self as somehow separate from everyone and everything else and in need of very high and very thick walls to protect yourself, a strange thing happens. The very walls you create for protection—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—become a prison that keeps you from discovering the truth about who you really are. This prison is the source of insanity. Do you agree with the following statement? “The world is a very threatening place in which our personal safety and security are constantly at risk.” After all, we are continuously bombarded with news of violence, corruption, natural

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disasters, economic strife, and frequent disturbing evidence of acts of human insanity across the globe. For many of us, our experience of these potential threats may be mostly restricted to television news reports and newspaper stories, but we still carry the burdensome stress they provoke in us. And, perhaps even more to the point, we continuously encounter less severe but nevertheless disturbing personal challenges in our work and life that can set us off. What about you personally? Have you ever had the feeling that you responded to a stressful situation in a way that later seemed illogical, ineffective, and even a little insane? If you are like most people, and honest with yourself, I suspect that your answer is an unhesitating “yes.” Life in this world is often not only very trying but can trigger thoughts and behaviors that don’t serve us or others well. In the pressure of difﬁcult moments it can be very hard to put our best foot forward. It’s as though we become temporarily insane, making choices that are destructive for ourselves and others. For better or worse, we’ve all had these moments as part of our life experience—moments, when we responded to challenge with a touch of insanity, causing harm to our careers, our personal lives, and to those we work with and care about.

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For example, insulting a spouse or co-worker, even if we believe they “asked for it,” rarely serves any useful purpose. Nor does getting all worked up about an unpleasant surprise such as a hefty parking ticket, receiving notice of a tax audit, or learning of yet another round of “downsizing” in our organization. Yet some of the time we all ﬁnd ourselves responding in ways “that we know better than” in the heat of the moment and then suffer the consequences of our actions afterward. Society even has accepted commonly understood terms, such as “road rage” and “going postal” to identify more extreme versions of these kind of destructive choices. And there are many other, less obvious upsetting circumstances, such as simply remembering an embarrassing experience that happened in a meeting last week, which can rob us of our personal effectiveness, peace of mind, and immediate enjoyment of life. It seems reasonable to just let these reactions go and simply chalk up our dysfunctional responses to human fallibility. After all, nobody’s perfect. But as the world continues to become increasingly complex and changing, challenging moments ﬁll more and more of our time. This means that learning how to respond well to the inevitable difﬁculties we all face is crucial for building an effective and fulﬁlling life. We need to learn how to ﬁnd our sanity in the face of events and thoughts that pull us toward unconscious insanity.

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That’s what this book is all about—gaining the capacity to live through turbulent moments with calm effectiveness. It’s about being able to choose temporary sanity so that we can create instant peace of mind in the midst of a challenging life, including trying circumstances that might otherwise push us toward self-defeating responses. By “instant peace of mind,” I don’t mean to minimize the signiﬁcance or the challenge of successfully applying the temporary sanity process, as is generally implied by labels such as “instant” and “quick ﬁx.” Nevertheless, temporary sanity does offer an effective “quick ﬁx” approach because intentionally being in the moment, and then making constructive choices in the face of even the most trying circumstances, can instantly open a portal to peace of mind right now, which is the only time there is. This book offers many simple, yet highly effective, ways to transform difﬁcult moments into the building blocks of a great career and a wonderful life.

xx

PART · I Foundational Peace(s)

I

n this ﬁrst section, foundational ideas and

concepts for gaining a whole new approach to life are offered. The temporary sanity philosophy is outlined, and a three-step process is described that can be used to meet both “normally” challenging and highly challenging situations. In Parts II, III, and IV, additional “peace(s)” strategies are offered that can be used with the three-step process and the other foundational peace(s) included in this section. Together they can provide you with instant self-leadership strategies for turbulent times so that you can ﬁnd your temporary sanity in even the most challenging circumstances. 1

Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

Peace and fulﬁllment are based on what is inside me, not what is happening or might happen on the outside. That means if I am contented in this moment, no matter what has happened in the past or is currently happening around me, or how likely I am to get something I desire or don’t desire in the future, then I have a solid foundation for peace, fulﬁllment, and effectiveness right now. I can take constructive action toward my goals but I need not ﬁght what already exists. I can let go and accept what is and then act to create a positive ﬂow of energy. Reacting negatively toward others and events and straining to “ﬁx them” only robs me of my consciousness and peace. When turbulent moments come, I can be patient and conﬁdent. They will pass and peace will return if, rather than resisting the way things are, I concentrate on making constructive choices as I move forward. If I choose to watch rather than become my reactions, breathe deeply, relax, and choose temporary sanity, peace and happiness will rise and my whole life will be transformed.

2

WHAT IS TEMPORARY SANITY?

L

et’s begin with some basic deﬁnitions.

From the New World Dictionary:

Temporary—lasting …for a time only; not permanent. Insanity—any form or degree of mental derangement or unsoundness of mind …that makes a person incapable of what is …normal, rational conduct or judgment. Great folly; extreme senselessness. Thus, Temporary Insanity refers to a condition in which people are temporarily unable to respond to situations with sound mind and normal rational conduct. People are, in a sense, mentally incapacitated and subject to signiﬁcant error in judgment and consequently dysfunctional choices. This sets them up for at least mild ineffectiveness and potentially great folly and senselessness with potentially disastrous results.

When Caley entered the meeting room, his face was red and the veins were bulging in his neck. Despite being aware of a corporate-wide effort to encourage 3

Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

increased creativity and initiative from the workforce, and the fact that his department had been identiﬁed as being particularly weak in this area, he couldn’t control himself. He vented his rage on a small team of employees in his department that had made a mistake after he had given them the go-ahead to develop a new service plan for key clients. “What are you trying to do …drive our best customers away!?” Caley barked at the group. After Caley ﬁnished a lengthy volley of punitive ranting, the team was eventually able to explain that a misunderstanding with a client, an event that had occurred a few weeks earlier but that Caley had just heard about, had been successfully resolved. In fact, the service plan had since been reﬁned and the team was able to share written feedback from several clients praising the new “high level of service” that they were now enjoying. Although Caley felt bad about his knee-jerk reaction and provided an embarrassed apology to the team, the damage had been done. Much to Caley’s disappointment, these employees,

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Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

who had previously rarely initiated anything on their own, returned to their old ways of waiting for Caley’s instructions on most signiﬁcant activities from that day forward.

Usually we associate the term “temporary insanity” with criminal acts and a legal defense to excuse offenders from responsibility for their actions. But, like Caley, in a more general sense, we are all subject to degrees of temporary insanity when our work and life circumstances trigger potent emotions such as anger and fear. Anything from the news that we may be laid off from our job, to a direct critical attack on an idea we have raised in a committee meeting, to a signiﬁcant ﬁnancial setback, to news of a bomb threat in our building can trigger such a response and a temporary loss of our capacity to effectively cope. Again, from the New World Dictionary:

Sanity—the condition of being sane; soundness of mind; mental health. Soundness of judgment.

Temporary Sanity, on the other hand, refers to a condition in which we are temporarily in a state of reasonable calm, balance, and sound mind and judgment. When we are confronted with potentially disturbing situations, having the

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Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

skill and capacity to choose temporary sanity (rather than fall prey to an automatic downward spiral into temporary insanity) can make a tremendous difference in our level of effectiveness and personal fulﬁllment. Once we learn how to choose temporary sanity in our most difﬁcult moments, we have laid the foundation for literally changing our lives. Although challenges will continue to knock us off balance from time to time, we can face these inevitable rough spots with conﬁdence and competence as we draw on a solid repertoire of tools to ﬁnd our temporary sanity over and over in each life moment. This book offers a general approach and speciﬁc ways for establishing temporary sanity when we most need it—in the heat of trying work and life moments. The key is to learn the basic parts, alternative versions of the three-step process, and the other simple strategies of temporary sanity. This requires that we be open to learning and applying a different set of choices than our usual reactive habits. Benjamin Franklin put it well when he offered his own view of insanity: “The deﬁnition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Temporary sanity involves applying instant selfleadership strategies for turbulent times.

6

THE FOUR TRUTHS

I

t may seem natural to deﬁne who we are

according to the thoughts that ﬁll our minds each day. As logical as this may seem, it is not true. It may be that our experience and perception of life are greatly affected by the thoughts we think, but our thoughts often reﬂect more of an illusion than truth. In fact, the moment-to-moment automatic thinking that can dominate our minds tends to reﬂect more of our self-centered egos rather than the true spiritual beings that we are at a deeper level. The “ego,” as used in this book, can be thought of as that part of ourselves that is most subject to fear, and seeks a closed, defensive, selﬁsh, and generally dysfunctional existence. Our ego-based work and personal lives can lull us into a rather ineffective unconscious reactive existence. This book

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Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

shares a powerful alternative to this often-dysfunctional and unfulﬁlling way of living. The vast potential of temporary sanity is based on four primary truths: 1. You are not your mind or your thoughts. It may seem like we are what goes on in our heads, but in truth, it is simply mental activity that we can choose to emphasize or ignore. Our real self is far more than a collection of often-chaotic and disturbing thoughts. Temporary sanity, in even the most difﬁcult situations, can be enhanced to the degree that we learn to become aware of and watch our minds, just as we can watch other things that are going on in our lives, rather than allowing them to deﬁne who we are. 2. There is no past or future, only the present. It is easy to get caught up in regrets about the past or worry about the future, but the only real time exists right now. Past and future are simply mental representations created in the mind that may or may not reﬂect any true reality. They only exist in our thoughts, and our thoughts do not represent who we really are. 3. You can ﬁnd peace in the moment if you know how. Many practical choices are available to us for fully experiencing and living well in the present moment. The temporary sanity approach is founded on consciously being in the present without being swept away into the past or future by disturbing mind activity.

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Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

The ﬁrst three truths lead to a fourth and even more powerful truth: 4. If you can ﬁnd temporary sanity, and thus peace in the present moment, by going beyond the mind, the effect is not temporary at all; your whole life will be transformed. There are many strategies for choosing temporary sanity over and over again in the present moments, which ﬂow together to create one true moment (right now) that makes up our lives and careers. By becoming conscious and open in the present moment and making constructive choices, which transcend negative feelings about the past or concerns about the future, we can live with the peace and effectiveness that comes from permanent temporary sanity.

So the question is, how can you ﬁnd temporary sanity and peace of mind in the moment? This book can help you learn how.

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THE ONLY MOMENT

I

t is perhaps the most powerful paradox.

Moments of our lives are often ﬁlled with regrets about the past and concern about the future, yet the only real moment is the one we are in. The rest is like an intoxicating and disorienting blend of pixie dust that can cost us our lives—that is, our mental illusions about the past and future can cost us our experience of the moment at hand. This instant, right now, is the only moment there is. How can that be? Haven’t multiple moments already passed since ﬁrst considering this thought in the previous sentence? It is indeed a paradox, but this is the only moment because we only live, act, and exist right now. Everything that happened before is only a memory, and likely a distorted one. And all that we consider that is yet to come is simply a vision, a thought projection that exists only in our mind. That this is the only moment is a very important concept to grasp. You may have heard this idea many times, and 10

Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

you may even accept its reality, but that is not enough. You need to really embrace its truth for your life. Regret and remorse exist only in relation to a mental illusion based on the past. Even if you have experienced some terrible things, your current regret and remorse are the result of mental representations (that are likely quite distorted), not the actual events. And worry and anxiety are artiﬁcial creations in response to mental illusions of a future that doesn’t exist. Even if there are true threats and dangers (such as a terrorist alert) that we learn about on the evening news or from other sources, worry and anxiety, which almost always work to drain our energy and reduce our effectiveness, result from a mental experience of events that have not yet happened and probably never will. When we cling to the past or anticipate the future, we blot out the only real moment—now. A camera captures a physical image of an event but it is not the event. In fact, the image is reversed and lacks dimensionality and many other aspects of the reality it is based on. Similarly, our mind selectively interprets and creates memories of events, and we have feelings and thoughts about these mental representations. But they are no more real than a photograph and lack the visual precision and objectivity captured on ﬁlm. And our mental anticipation of the future is artiﬁcially created without the aid of any real event.

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Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

There is only one real moment …right now …now …now. All the rest is illusion, perhaps based originally on some facts, but an illusion nonetheless. Consider a river as a metaphor. Water continually passes a point. If you stand on the bank, you can watch the water but it has little impact on you. Now imagine that the river represents life, and you walk to its center and brace yourself in the current. As you stand, the water that surrounds you represents the present moment. If you resist the force of the current to maintain your standing position, you are both subject to the water pushing against you from upstream and the pull of the water that has gone by. Consider these as representing the future and the past. As the current becomes stronger (similar to the increasing change and complexity of the world that pushes and pulls us every day), you must devote more and more concentration and energy to ﬁghting the ﬂow. Now imagine that you decide to stop resisting the river’s force and instead embrace its power as part of your life experience. You simply let go and begin to ﬂoat in the water that surrounds you (i.e., the moment). As you ride the current, you see many beautiful trees, mountains, people, animals, and many other amazing sights. You also discover that with a simple shift of your open hand or an outstretched foot, you can easily maneuver in the current. By stopping

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Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

your resistance (of the past and future) and letting go (into the moment), you have gained a mastery of your “river of life” experience that otherwise would not have been possible. And you have been freed to focus on and appreciate where you are in this moment rather than on resisting where the river seemed to be forcing you to go. No matter what took place last week, yesterday, or an hour ago, or what you anticipate may happen later on, if you consciously enter the moment, you can more fully experience and capably handle your life adventure, with all its amazing challenges, right now.

The River Paradox I stand upon a river bank and watch the water ﬂow out of the past and on ahead to the future it must go. Think this through, it’s not quite right. The future is yet to be. Into the past the water ﬂows is that the truth I see? From the future and into the past, is that what’s really true? 13

Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

I only know that in this place the river is always new. Up in the air the water goes, an endless march toward the sky. The river will never be the same as long as rain drops ﬂy. The only truth is here and now as I take this single breath. Past and future, illusions both that can cause this moment’s death. The river of life may ever move but it always ﬂows right now. The only time that can exist is the moment I allow. —Charles C. Manz

14

THE PROMISE OF TEMPORARY SANITY 1

I

n his famous poem, “The Road Not Taken,”

Robert Frost created a lasting image, a powerful metaphor, for the importance of choosing our own path in life. Learning to respond to emotionally upsetting situations with a clear mind, constructive action, and calm personal effectiveness represents a particularly powerful demonstration of taking the road less traveled. And when we take stock of the amount of anger, fear, and destructive violence across the globe (where forgiveness, mercy, and courage might reside instead), it becomes readily apparent that it is a less traveled road indeed. In my previous book, Emotional Discipline: The Power to Choose How You Feel, I reviewed many of the beneﬁts of making healthy and constructive choices concerning our

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Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

emotions. Some of these beneﬁts include a reduction of negative emotional experiences and dysfunctional behaviors and avoidance of burnout. They also include improved problem solving and enhanced learning, and enjoying more satisfaction, energy, and fulﬁllment. There is no question that handling our emotions well can make a tremendous difference in how we feel and experience life.

CHOICE POINT—We are now at a point in the book where a choice is at hand. If you would like to have a basic understanding of how your mind and body respond during negative and positive emotion, and how this can impact your level of sanity and personal effectiveness, then I encourage you to read the next few pages now. If you would rather just read about how to put the temporary sanity process and strategies into practice in your work and life, then you may want to skip ahead to the section “The Two Key Parts of the Temporary Sanity Process” and continue your reading from that point. Either way, I wish you the best in your continued journey on the road less traveled.

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Some intriguing efforts are underway to learn more about our emotions and how they impact the well-being of our selves, our organizations, and our societies. As one example, the Dalai Lama has met on multiple occasions with leading scientists and philosophers to explore the workings of the mind and the role of emotion in affecting our quality of life and the fate of the world. One recent gathering at MIT brought together 1,000 academics, researchers, and other thought leaders from around the world to explore insights available from the Buddhist tradition (that offers, among other things, insights for an awakened and enlightened approach to life that works to alleviate suffering and discover happiness, largely through transcending as opposed to ﬁghting our problems) and the Biobehavioral Sciences for better understanding of how the mind works. 2 Also, based on a previous smaller gathering, as part of a series of “Mind and Life” meetings with the Dalai Lama, an edited book was recently published titled Destructive Emotions. Narrated by Daniel Goleman, champion of the concept of Emotional Intelligence, the book contains the reﬂections of a distinguished group of participants on topics as wide ranging as Buddhist psychology, anatomy of mental afﬂictions, the neuroscience of emotion, and the study of consciousness. In the book’s Foreword, the Dalai Lama shares compelling logic for the importance of pursuing a better

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Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

understanding of emotion and especially its destructive potential. He points out that a great deal of suffering in the world is the result of negative emotion that fuels hatred, violence, and addiction.3 Some horrible examples come to mind of the potential destructiveness that can result—ethnic cleansing, the hatred of extremist groups, the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, and other acts of inhumanity that have been unleashed on humankind. Clearly, fear, anger, and other powerful negative emotions can dramatically detract from our personal effectiveness and the quality of our lives. Much of the time it can seem that we are simply at the mercy of such forces. In fact, we are if we don’t intentionally make healthy choices that allow us to rise above these forces. That is where temporary sanity comes in. It can allow us to instantly promote a greater sense of peace, balance, and clarity in even the most difﬁcult moments. As an example, the work of Dr. Barbara Fredrickson of the University of Michigan Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory suggests that there are many valuable beneﬁts resulting from living life in a way that facilitates the experience of positive emotions.4 Her “Broaden and Build” theory, and the research that supports it, indicates that, unlike negative emotions, which tend to reduce a person’s potential options for thought and action, positive emotions

18

Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

actually expand them. Through the experience of positive emotions such as joy, interest, and contentment, people are moved to create, explore, integrate, and engage in other activities that expand their mental, behavioral, and social resources. Her research has also demonstrated a signiﬁcant beneﬁcial impact of positive emotion on cardiovascular health. These positive effects can promote surviving and thriving, even in a difﬁcult and challenging world. Dr. Dan Baker, director of the award-winning Life Enhancement Program at Canyon Ranch, echoes this general message—although negative thoughts damage the body, positive thoughts can heal it. In fact, he describes his earlier role as director of behavioral medicine at the National Center for Preventive and Stress Medicine as a fancy title for helping people avoid killing themselves with what they think.5 And he backs up his claim by citing many studies that provide evidence suggesting that emotional stress is even more strongly linked with grave health problems, such as heart disease and cancer, than other more emphasized health factors, such as smoking and cholesterol. Meanwhile, data supporting the healing effects of positive emotion is steadily growing. Even ideas as simple as bringing animals into hospitals, such as therapy dogs, to help patients have good feelings have proven to foster very positive results.

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Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

Much of the current evidence seems to center on taking a more positive and optimistic view of the human condition. In fact, Dr. Baker describes “positive psychology,” which shifts the focus from problems and pathology to what is right with people, as the strongest new movement in the ﬁeld. This more optimistic view is showing great promise. For example, in his book Learned Optimism, Dr. Martin Seligman, the leading researcher in positive psychology, argues that optimism can insulate us from depression, help us to achieve more, and improve our overall well-being.6 There is no question that making constructive choices in the face of trying circumstances can be the key to living a more rewarding, healthy, and effective life. This book will share simple but potent strategies for instantly turning around the kind of difﬁcult and upsetting states—the “temporary insanity”—that most of us experience to a greater or lesser degree in the course of our work and personal lives. First, let’s examine some of the powerful mental and physiological forces that can challenge our peace of mind.

20

TRAVELING THE INNER LOW ROAD

A

t the outset it is important to note that our

emotional reactions are very complex, involving many parts of ourselves. Harvard clinical professor of psychiatry Dr. John Ratey points out that emotions stem from the whole person and result from multiple forces in the brain and body. He says that we cannot separate emotion from thinking and thinking from the body, and to try to do so is folly.7 Further, he points out that contemporary researchers generally agree that, just as there are primary colors, there seem to be a basic set of primary emotions—fear, anger, sadness, and joy— but these basic emotions combine to form a multitude of other emotions.

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Recent data also suggests that our brain incorporates strong mental circuitry for survival. In fact, researchers such as Dr. Joseph LeDoux of New York University have discovered that conditioned fear responses, heavily inﬂuenced by past trauma, seem to be activated through a more primitive part of the brain called the amygdala. When potential danger arises, the thalamus sends raw information that bypasses the more conscious and rational cortex part of the brain and goes directly to the more primitive amygdala. This mental shortcut, dubbed by LaDoux as the “low road,” triggers a general alarm. The body is then ﬂooded with adrenaline and stress hormones, and physical processes that do not address immediate survival, such as digestion, stop. The skin becomes cool as blood ﬂows to the muscles, breathing and heart rate speed up, and blood pressure rises. Glucose is released by the liver, oxygen intake increases, and the whole body is set for ﬁght or ﬂight. This may all be ﬁne and good when quick action is needed to avoid being eaten by a wild animal, but when this dramatic mental and physiological response unnecessarily occurs on a regular basis, heart attacks, disease, mental dysfunction, and a whole host of other health problems can arise. And one’s personal effectiveness at work, and quality of life in general, are signiﬁcantly deﬂated. Although past learning of mental and physical skills can be a crucial part of a

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Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

full and meaningful life, the more primitive emotionally charged memories, which are triggered in response to perceived threats, can cause us to go “unconscious” and rob us of our personal peace and effectiveness. In his book Toxic Emotions at Work, author Peter Frost reviews many physical and mental health risks of experiencing and being around negative, or what he calls toxic, emotions.8 He suggests that this kind of toxicity is a typical by-product of life in organizations. With normal levels of toxicity, Frost says that a person might simply feel discouraged or deﬂated, but with prolonged and higher levels, a person’s toxin removers, such as the kidneys and liver, have a difﬁcult time functioning effectively, and health is put at risk. Interestingly, Frost especially focuses on what he calls toxin handlers, such as leaders who try to ease or alleviate emotional pain of others in the workplace. He argues that negative emotion can be contagious and that handling emotional pain can be as hazardous as handling physical toxins. Over time, toxin handlers can absorb so much toxic emotion that their natural systems can no longer adequately dissipate it. Consequently, this puts their mental and physical health at risk and can even ultimately make them toxic to others. For example, one professional who worked in a research ﬁrm recounted how a junior analyst became so toxic that he missed work at least once a month due to a terrible cold.

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Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

Meanwhile, those colleagues who were most sympathetic and supportive, apparently absorbing this toxicity, became ill far more often than others in the company.9 It appears that life in modern organizations and in our volatile world can set us up for dysfunctional careers and lives that can be overwhelmed by negative emotion, stress, and even disease. And sadly, our attempts to help others who are suffering, and to make our organizations and homelands better places to work and live, may actually set us up to absorb much of the toxicity that plagues so many. How can we ﬁnd sanity and healthy living when so many of the moments we encounter in our work and personal lives seem to be ﬁlled with insanity? How can we ﬁnd a higher inner road on which to travel?

24

REROUTING TO THE INNER HIGH ROAD

L

iving on the “low road” under the amygdala’s

rule, with powerful emotionally charged memories setting off unnecessary and even debilitating physiological responses, can be very dysfunctional. Not only is our judgment impaired, causing our choices to frequently be ineffective, but at times we can become effectively paralyzed. Freezing in one’s tracks in the face of an apparent extreme threat is one of the most common reactions, shared by animals and humans alike. Fortunately, Dr. LaDoux has found that the brain can be reprogrammed. For example, in his research with rats, he demonstrated that this immobilized response can be gradually unlearned. Through a combination of tones paired with electric shock and an opportunity to stop the tones by taking a step, it appears that the mental process of rats can

25

Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

gradually be retrained to promote constructive action rather than becoming frozen with fear. This research, which has been extrapolated to humans, suggests that little by little information can be rerouted (so that it passes through the basal nucleus rather than through the central nucleus to the amygdala), enabling a coping response rather than freezing incapacitation. This is particularly important and encouraging. It suggests that debilitating experiences, whether the trauma of dramatic events such as September 11 or less severe personal crises, need not set us up for immobilization in situations that require constructive action. We can learn to ﬁnd temporary sanity in the face of challenges, which can provide the building blocks of a more effective and fulﬁlling life and career, despite the vast array of threats we perceive in our workplaces and in our contemporary world. In reality, it can be argued that for most people, the world is a safer place to be than it has been at almost anytime in history. Just consider how much longer the average life span is today than it was just a few decades ago. For example, in the United States the life expectancy in the 18th century was about 25 years, 50 years at the beginning of the 20th century, and is currently somewhere in the high 70s to over 80 years, depending on whether you are a male or female.10 There is no question that there are a large variety of

26

Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

potentially severe and dangerous threats that we can be anxious about. Nevertheless, the data indicates that, for most reading this book, you are far less vulnerable to life-ending events than you would have been just a few decades earlier. In fact, you may have as much as triple the life expectancy of your ancestors from a couple centuries ago. Yet we are bombarded with threatening information about terror, war, natural disasters, the poisoning of the planet, frightening diseases, crime, economic and employment uncertainty, and ﬁnancial and political upheaval, all of which can program us for immobilized fear or ﬁght or ﬂight unconsciousness. In fact, researcher Dr. James McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine believes that memories can trigger the original autonomic responses of past threatening events, creating a memory-reinforcing cycle that further strengthens our debilitating responses. He has found that this further strengthening of emotionally charged memories can be treated through drugs (beta blockers). Yet relying on a chemical solution is not a long-term attractive alternative for those that would prefer more natural means of coping and an empowered lifestyle free of dependence on drugs. Again, the good news is that we have the capacity to make choices that allow us to not only survive but thrive in the face of our emotional challenges. Once again, Dr. Dan Baker of the Life Enhancement Program at Canyon Ranch

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sheds light on this issue. He says the brain has the capacity to overcome the force of fear, perhaps the most powerful and basic source of negative emotion. According to Baker, the biology of fear is the biggest obstacle to happiness. Fortunately, the neocortex, located in the cerebrum and the primary area of intellect in the brain, can compensate. He says it is where our creative, intuitive, and spiritual capacity lie and the source of our happiness and our ability to rise above fear. Certainly some exceptional historical events suggest the capacity of human beings to rise above even the most trying circumstances. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl’s account of how a group of people were able to rise above the most horrifying times is a notable example.11 In the face of Hitler’s attempt to obliterate the Jews in Europe during World War II, some death camp prisoners not only survived but thrived. Despite seemingly losing everything, they found a way to go on—they rose up from their own ashes and re-created their lives, leaving a remarkable legacy and lasting inspiration for us all. In this book, temporary sanity is offered as a powerful approach for rerouting from the inner low road to the high road. The stakes are high. Our effectiveness, peace of mind, health, and our very survival hang in the balance. Gradually we are trained to mentally and physically react to everincreasing threatening information we receive about our

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complex and turbulent world. Fear and anxiety in response to constant warnings of possible terrorism, especially for those who travel globally, is just one example. Many of us come to believe that a lonely, fearful, self-conscious, frustrating, ego-centered, and highly stressful life is normal. Yet this burdensome life orientation stems from preoccupation with regrets and enslavement to the fear programming of the past, and to anxiety and worry about the future, both of which exist only as illusions in our minds. The chance to replace the misery of such an existence resides in choosing temporary sanity, and consequently peace of mind. By choosing the kind of “peace(s)” strategies included in this book for ﬁnding temporary sanity, and thereby creating a ﬂash of consciousness that opens a portal to instant peace of mind, we are able to dramatically change our lives right now, which is the only time that really exists. When faced with difﬁcult and threatening life moments, we can draw upon a repertoire of choices, or “peace(s),” that can instantly move us beyond our unconscious automatic programming. Although we still feel the fear, anger, and other difﬁcult emotions, we are able to put them in better perspective, which can allow their intensity to diminish naturally. We can learn to watch and accept them as a natural part of life, like a rainstorm, the coming of night, or the orbit of planets. Consequently, we are no longer our emotional reactions.

29

Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

Rather, our emotions become just another part of our life experience, and we are better able to exercise effective choice and action. This can free us from enslavement to the automatic cycle of feeding and exaggerating our emotions and the destructive responses, and the immobilization that they can provoke. Temporary sanity can become for us the proverbial road less traveled by that can make all the difference in the quality of our work and personal lives.

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THE TWO KEY PARTS OF THE TEMPORARY SANITY PROCESS

T

here are really only two basic parts to the

potent temporary sanity approach offered in this book: 1. Become conscious. 2. Make a constructive/healthy choice.

We can focus intently on what is happening right now. By simply watching, with full attention, what is going on both outside and within our mind and body, rather than being taken over by our thoughts and physiology, we can become conscious (awakened from the automatic programmed responses that we are usually not even aware of). When we are in a conscious state, and we are alert to what is happening rather than just reacting to it, we are in a good position to make healthy choices. If you can sincerely apply these two steps in even the most trying circumstances, you probably can set this book aside and forget about building additional skills for temporary sanity.

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Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

For example … When Roberto was openly criticized by a colleague during a recent department meeting, he simply watched his growing anger and rising physical tension and decided not to allow them to become who he was in that moment. He then chose to take a long, slow, deep relaxing breath before responding in a calm but assertive manner. This enabled him to handle the situation effectively by staying focused on the common challenge he and his colleague faced rather than reacting destructively in a way that needlessly escalated the personal conﬂict.

Here’s another example … When Alicia and her work team heard the news of the pending merger, she could immediately see and feel the panic and tension that ﬁlled the room. Instead of allowing her reactions to take her over, as she recognized was happening to her teammates during the 32

Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

meeting, she choose to remain silent and watch her mind and the tension in her body for ﬁve full minutes before speaking. By then she was able to approach the situation in a more balanced way that focused on potential opportunities and constructive strategies her team might use to proactively respond to the merger rather than simply being sucked into the negative energy that was sweeping through her team.

Both Roberto and Alicia were able to successfully apply the two key parts of temporary sanity—they stayed conscious and chose constructive responses to potentially upsetting situations. However, most people, at least at ﬁrst, will need something with a bit more substance and structure. Eventually, we may learn to automatically live with the simple but powerful conscious-choice orientation and rarely need a more detailed process. But, in the beginning, it is helpful to use something more systematic. In my previous book, Emotional Discipline, I outlined a ﬁve-step process (causebody-mind-spirit-choice) that many people have found to be helpful.12 In this book, I suggest a streamlined three-step approach that is more in keeping with the idea of “instant” peace of mind.

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To effectively practice the temporary sanity strategies offered in this book to ﬁnd peace of mind and personal effectiveness, applying a consistent process can be very helpful. Here I share two versions of the three-step process; one is for “normal” life moments, and the other is for highly challenging or threatening moments.

34

THREE STEPS TO TEMPORARY SANITY IN “NORMAL” CHALLENGING MOMENTS

F

irst, it is important to keep in mind that what we

consider normal has changed quite a bit in recent history. Signiﬁcant worry, time pressure, and stress, in the face of increasing complexity and change, is no longer seen as unusual by many people. For example, “THE NEW NORMAL: From Boom to Bust to War to Whatever Comes Next” was the feature article, proclaimed in very large bold letters, on the cover of a recent issue of Fast Company magazine.13 Nevertheless, although you may well be experiencing signiﬁcant difﬁculty, strain, and fatigue in your “normal” living, the following version of the three-step process is designed for challenging moments where you are not under a particularly 35

Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

heightened level of stress. In terms of the previous section, we can think of this as applying to what Dr. Joseph LeDoux calls the “high road,” where the amygdala has not hijacked the brain and bypassed the more rational cortex. This is not meant to imply that thought and emotion are going along just ﬁne. But at least you are not experiencing freezing or a heightened ﬁght or ﬂight response, so you should be able to work with a process that requires a bit more reﬂective thought. Following is a summary of the three simple steps: moment, sanity, and peace. I encourage you to think of this as a preliminary process for dealing with life’s challenging but not overwhelming moments that might otherwise drive you toward suboptimal choices (mild “temporary insanity”), which you can adapt and replace according to your speciﬁc needs. 1. Moment—Choose to enter the moment and go beyond your mind and time. Rise above your habitual internal mental chatter and let go of the concepts of “past” and “future.” Concentrate intensely on this moment, paying attention to the sights, sounds, smells, and other sensory inputs that

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you are receiving. Purposely focus only on what is taking place right now. 2. Sanity—Find your “sanity” right in the moment. Create a ﬂash of consciousness with instant strategies, referred to as peace(s) in this book. There are many strategies for instantly creating temporary sanity even when very difﬁcult circumstances seem to be pushing you toward unconscious insanity. Simple powerful “peace(s)” can be used to ﬁnd your sanity, and thus move you toward peace of mind, in the moment. 3. Peace—Allow peace of mind to emerge naturally from the temporary sanity of Step 2 (awaken your spirit and really come alive). By applying the instant peace(s) strategies for temporary sanity and truly being in the moment, you can open a portal to lasting peace of mind and the natural effectiveness that it fosters in your life and work. The ﬂash of consciousness created in the moment can be released into a continuous ﬂow of peace that becomes relatively permanent. (You may ﬁnd it helpful to picture yourself gently and peacefully ﬂoating forward on the river that was talked about in “The Only Moment” chapter.)

37

THREE STEPS TO TEMPORARY SANITY IN HIGHLY CHALLENGING MOMENTS

W

hen you are faced with what you perceive as

a high level of threat, LeDoux’s “low road” amygdala-driven mental and physiological response can be triggered. And this can lead to disorientation, heightened “temporary insanity,” and more extreme self-defeating choices. Therapist and author Rosamund Zander recalled falling into churning rapids during her ﬁrst white-water rafting trip. Up to that point, she had thought her guide had overdone the training mantra of “Toes to nose” (to keep feet from getting caught in the rocks of the river bed) and then look for the boat and grab an oar or the rope. But now in the churning water, there was no up or down—she was completely disoriented. Remembering her training mantra, she went into a ball and soon had an oar in her grasp and was back in the raft.14 38

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In highly challenging moments, it can be a lot like being tossed about by churning rapids, leading to panic, overreaction …to temporary insanity. The following is a faster and less complex version of the three-step process that you can adapt and replace according to your speciﬁc needs. It is especially designed to help when you ﬁnd yourself either freezing or going into a more pronounced ﬁght or ﬂight response in the face of more extreme situations or mental and emotional turbulence. 1. Be conscious of your reactions. This should happen pretty much automatically. All you have to do is realize that you are really “freaked out.” (Note: The key is to really concentrate on this realization rather than acting out in destructive and selfdefeating ways. Another way to think of this is that you are purposely choosing to be conscious of the strong emotional pull toward going into an unconscious reactive mode.) 2. Observe both your body and your mind. Essentially shift your perspective outside yourself, as though you are watching someone else react. Notice where and how intensely your body is reacting (knots in stomach, tightness in chest, etc.), and observe the ﬂurry of thoughts in your mind. Just study your mental and physical reactions without judging or feeding them.

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3. Ask yourself, “Could I respond better to this situation?” If your answer is yes (as it will almost always be), then choose one or more of the peace(s) strategies to begin to create temporary sanity.

When facing very disturbing situations, it is important to immediately ﬂow into this three-step process to help alleviate the intensity of your emotional response. (Note: Once you have achieved a greater state of calm effectiveness and have broken free of the grip of the amygdala-driven low road, if you like you can then choose to transition into the overlapping version of the three-step process for “normal” challenging moments—moment, sanity, peace.) Daniel Goleman, in his writings on emotional intelligence, pointed out that when the amygdala signals an alarm, one of the many responses that result is the release of stress hormones that stay in the body for hours.15 As additional upsetting situations arise, these stress hormones accumulate and set up the amygdala to trigger panic or anger in the face of lesser and lesser threats. In highly stressful situations, the lightning speed of the amygdala-rooted response may put “temporary insanity” in the lead as it rockets along the low road. But the

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Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

temporary sanity process offers an effective way to try to head our unconscious/“insane” responses off at the pass and then steer our immediate life journey back toward an ever-improved higher road.

41

FINDING THE PEACE(S) OF YOUR LIFE

T

he remainder of this book consists primarily of

a wide variety of simple yet potent additional ways of ﬁnding instant peace of mind. I call these strategies “peace(s)” to emphasize how they can simultaneously 1. Provide key pieces for reassembling our composure and effectiveness. 2. Help us ﬁnd the fundamental peace we need for temporary sanity in the moment.

Some of these strategies may seem very familiar, such as taking a deep relaxing breath, letting go of regrets and frustrations, stretching yourself, or making an intentional choice to smile and laugh. This book will provide straightforward advice on how to quickly draw on these kinds of simple but potent strategies to completely turn around difﬁcult life moments.

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Other strategies will probably seem less familiar, and perhaps initially a bit more mysterious, but offer additional fast and powerful ways to ﬁnd your sanity and peace in the midst of moments of personal challenge and strife. Some examples include 4D Perceiving, observing rather than being your ego, and mental Kung Fu. They also include creating “mental ﬂow,” riding mental storms, dying before you die, and even making peace with love. This ﬁrst part of the book has presented foundational peace(s). Additional peace(s) will be offered in Parts II, III and IV. These strategies can be combined and applied to ﬁnd temporary sanity and instant peace in difﬁcult and upsetting situations. As we become adept at incorporating these personal tools for creating temporary sanity, our lives can be transformed in an instant …permanently. Yes, in a sense the change can be viewed as “permanent.” Once we learn how to go about it, we can make the choice to establish temporary sanity in each moment that it is needed. Even more to the point, because this moment is all that exists (the rest is just mental projection about the future or biased memory of the past), once you change your immediate reaction, your whole life and world will be changed for the only time that really exists …right now.

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It is important that you view these strategies as only a starting place. Create your own strategies that ﬁt your unique life circumstances and personal makeup. If you tend to be a rather physical person, allow your bodily sensations to work for you. Appropriate strategies may include things like progressive relaxation (e.g., progressively relaxing all the muscles in your body from your toes to the top of your head) or acupressure, which involves pressing on various points of your body (many books are available to guide your practice) to promote healthy and relaxing responses. On the other hand, if you tend to be very cognitive and your mind always seems to be running, you might want to develop strategies that address mental activity, such as your self-talk or mental imagery. Three suggested criteria for selecting and developing your customized “peace(s)” strategies include the following. They should 1. Feel right for you. 2. Be useful for even your most challenging situations. 3. Work. They should actually help you ﬁnd your sanity and peace in the moment when your mental and physical reactions are moving you toward “temporary insanity” and dysfunctional responses.

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All this means that you need to observe your thoughts and reactions and be willing to experiment. Your life can be a wonderful laboratory, and you can choose a rewarding and effective life for yourself. The key is to learn how to apply the temporary sanity process and your own customized strategies in the challenging moments of your life.

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PART · 2 Mind: Mental Peace(s)

I

n this part, a beginning set of peace(s) strategies

is offered that focuses on the mind. These strategies are applied with the three-step temporary sanity process (either for “normally” challenging situations or for highly challenging situations). The strategies are intended only to be a starting place for creating a set of mentally focused tools for regaining your clarity, calm, balance— your temporary sanity—when your circumstances and mind seem to be pushing you toward temporary insanity. I strongly encourage you to adapt these strategies and create your own to ﬁt your unique life situation. 47

WATCH YOURSELF!

Y

ou are nearing a dangerous bend on a high

cliff. One misstep, and you could fall to your doom. You hear the words “Watch yourself!” from your guide. Or, you are raising a difﬁcult subject in a sensitive meeting. You know this could strike a painful nerve with a colleague. “Watch yourself!” she warns. These words don’t only apply to your external circumstances. You can also use them to better face what is happening within you. Why not choose to watch yourself—how you are reacting and feeling—in troubling situations rather than being your reactions? Why not choose to calmly and sanely watch your rising emotions rather than letting them be who you are?

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You are becoming upset and moving toward a destructive response … wait. Don’t get lost in your reactions and feed them until you enter into a state of temporary insanity. Instead, just watch yourself! It’s a common phrase used for uncommon situations. When risk, danger, and potentially bad outcomes are at hand, we hear “Watch yourself!” At the core of this message is a great deal of wisdom that can be applied on a daily basis in countless situations to head off temporary insanity before it has a chance to gain momentum. Observe your thinking, behavior, and emotions. The choice to observe your responses to situations can help you gain perspective, keep cool, and maintain your sanity. There are many ways that you can learn to “watch yourself ” as a strategy for remaining calmer and clearer headed in troubling situations. The simplest is to purposely focus your attention with curiosity and interest on your internal reactions rather than allowing them to take you over.

“You did it again. I’m beginning to wonder if you get anything right. I’m just glad that some of us are competent and can clean up after you,” Bart ﬁnished with a tone of superiority. 49

Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

Normally, this would have plunged Michele into a ﬁt of defensiveness and anger, and she would have adamantly defended herself, which only would have made her feel even more uncomfortable and frazzled and provided Bart with more fuel to continue his attack. This time, Michele decided to just watch her responses to the situation. She noticed her rising emotion and her strong desire to tell Bart off. As Michele continued to watch her internal reactions, she become curious. Why would she take Bart’s comments so seriously? True, the project she was working on had encountered a setback, but her team had already made adjustments that not only corrected the situation but had actually contributed to a major breakthrough with a process the company had been struggling with for years. All this would soon be known throughout her division, so there was no need to argue with Bart now. As Michele continued to watch her response, she noticed that her emotions seemed to calm down. As she concentrated on taking deep relaxed breaths, she felt much better.

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Meanwhile, Bart became a bit uneasy because Michele did not respond as she normally did. Her more relaxed silence was not at all what he had expected. “Well, um, I have to get back to work,” he ﬁnally mumbled as he walked off. Michele found herself mildly amused. “All this time, I thought it was Bart who was causing me to get so upset, and it was actually just me taking my inner responses too seriously. I don’t think Bart is going to bother me too much anymore.”

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a general approach that focuses on the content of subjective experience as the primary source of our reactions to what happens around us.16 For example, we can mentally step out of a difﬁcult situation and view it as a more detached observer — even as though we are just watching a movie. Here’s an example.

Alfonso was beginning to become defensive. So he chose to try a technique he had recently learned in a seminar. As Mary continued her criticism of the new procedure he had proposed, he pictured himself as 51

Temporary Sanity Instant Self-Leadership Strategies for Turbulent Times

though he were sitting in a theatre watching a movie projected on a screen. In his mind both he and Mary became actors in a scene of the movie. This image immediately calmed Alfonso, and he was able to continue the discussion more effectively with much less negative emotion. Mary noticed this, too, and she calmed down as well. Soon they were able to discuss possible adjustments that they could both feel good about.

NLP is a surprisingly effective strategy and a key part of the temporary sanity approach. Experimenting with various ways to train yourself to observe your emotions and thoughts can help you see when temporary insanity is on the rise. And it can help you to learn a great deal about yourself—what situations and what people tend to set you off and what is the content of your usual emotional reactions? What kind of thoughts tend to ﬁll your head, and where do you feel tension in your body in response to upsetting circumstances? Once it becomes clear that your inner reactions are not you but rather something that you can observe, just like events in the external world, you are no longer at the mercy of your reactions.

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When you encounter trying circumstances and when you are getting worked up inside, just pause. Take a deep breath and watch yourself! You will be amazed at how effective this can be to establish temporary sanity. And when the situation has passed, you will be able to see once again that you have the power to handle even the most difﬁcult emotional challenges, if you put your mind, heart, and spirit, to it.

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CHOOSE MOMENTARY AMNESIA

L

oss of memory—forgetting who we are and the

details of our life—is a fearful prospect for most of us. But imagine for a moment what a relief it might be if you could choose to have a temporary bout of amnesia … to be able let go of the mental weight of having to continuously live up to being you—the responsibilities, the expectations you feel driven to meet, the need to maintain the image people have of you. What if you were able to release your sense of you and all the things you feel you’re supposed to do in your life? In the very moment that you would make this choice, your whole world might open up so that you could ﬁnally meet the real person inside of you that is just waiting to be born. Choosing momentary amnesia when we are feeling upset, stressed out, or otherwise less than our optimally sane self

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might offer us at least three potential advantages as a peace(s) strategy: 1. It would allow us to forget the past. Letting go of the past—regret, remorse, the sense of being wronged— and living fully in the now is an important theme throughout this book. 2. It could take the sting out of painful experiences in the present. If we don’t remember who we are and what’s expected of us, it’s as if that person that is being so pushy, critical, or demanding has become a fellow actor in a harmless play. That is not to say that we should forget what is important in our life and make reckless choices. But, with a sense of temporary amnesia, at least for the moment, things are not so dire, threatening, and provoking of our lower reptilian brain that is so ready to call for another round of temporary insanity. 3. It might open a space that could be ﬁlled with a sense of who we most feel compelled to be as our best self. It is this third deeper and more potent aspect of momentary amnesia that I want to especially focus on.

It is important to keep in mind that this peace(s) strategy is not intended to encourage psychological denial or avoidance of constructively dealing with life issues that need to be faced. Also, true trauma and terrible memories for victims of events, such as September 11, physical abuse, and so forth, 55

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may best be addressed through counseling centered on working through these psychological scars with a competent therapist. Nevertheless, the ability to at times strategically choose temporary amnesia can be a powerful tool. Consider some questions. If you were able to undergo temporary amnesia and for the moment wipe your memory slate clean, and you could choose to replace it with the memory of a whole new life, what would you choose recalling that you do now and have already experienced? Initially, your thoughts may go to images of wealth, power, or pleasurable activities in their various forms, but push your thinking a little deeper. What kind of work would you choose to remember if you could choose anything you wanted? What kind of impact would you be having on the world? What kinds of skills and knowledge would you have? Beyond just initial short-term gratifying experiences, what in the world would you choose if you could remember being and doing anything that you wanted? What would your life be like if you could live your ultimate calling for what your work and activities would be? Of course, the teachings of many of the world’s wisest spiritual writers (especially from the far east) point out that there is much value in our choices about our state of being (being wise, at peace, caring and loving, whole, etc.), as

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opposed to the potentially mindless busyness implied by considerations of what we would like to be doing. Nevertheless, perhaps the most meaningful consideration for people when thinking about these kinds of challenging questions is “What would your ideal life work be if you were able to choose whatever you feel most inspired to do?” The bestselling author and inﬂuential contemporary poet, David Whyte, who has consulted and made presentations for many Fortune 500 corporations, declares that when we ﬁnd work that is simultaneously good for ourselves and the world, it is a great human triumph. Work that is challenging and helps us grow, while at the same time serving others, can provide us with a wonderful sense of empowerment.17 A few years ago, a TV commercial was airing regularly that showed children talking about what they wanted to be when they grew up. Instead of saying things like I want to be an astronaut or a doctor, they said things like “I want to work for years in a middle management position, work endless hours, and never be recognized for my efforts.” Of course, the contrast of what these kids said relative to what we expect in this tongue-and-cheek commercial paints a disturbing picture of the reality for many people, even when they rise above the dead-end path of many blue collar jobs. Instead, being able to do work with a sense of purpose, conviction, and belief could offer a great deal of promise for 57

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our personal effectiveness and fulﬁllment in life. And locating these feelings within ourselves may be a useful way to ﬁnd our sanity in the moment. A senior vice president in a large utility commented that he believes if employees were doing their true life work, they would be more creative, resilient, self-reliant, loyal, and self-renewing.18 The good news for each of us personally is that we can potentially connect with these feelings through our heartfelt images of what we would most like to be doing—letting our minds wander and considering our strongest longings for our lives. The content of what we would like to choose to experience, once we have cleared our head by choosing temporary amnesia, can be a potent source of personal guidance in the moment. It can provide a key map for discovering a meaningful route to feeling good in our lives right now. When you ﬁnd yourself discouraged and questioning the meaningfulness of your life, simply choose temporary amnesia. Forget the little you that your memory is stirring up in your mind. Imagine that you just sustained a bump on the head and have forgotten everything about your life. Now ﬁll your mind with memories of the person you feel most compelled to be and of having work that has deep purpose and signiﬁcance for you. And then make a choice to behave constructively in a way that moves you toward that new image of who you are. It’s that

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simple. Forget, remember the new chosen you, and then make a choice that helps to manifest it. At the intersection of our most genuine, heartfelt sense of what we could be doing, who we could be at our best, and what we actually do in our life lies the potential for experiencing the most deeply gratifying feelings of our human journey. So, if you sometimes feel like your life is too shallow and unsatisfying, like you are wasting in your work and not realizing the potential fulﬁllment you are capable of, try purposely choosing temporary amnesia and then ﬁll the space left in its wake with that deeper, more meaningful, and fulﬁlled you that is patiently waiting inside of yourself.

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JUST CONSIDER LETTING GO

“H

old on tight” is advice we might hear when

we are about to encounter a difﬁcult situation. Yet so much of our pain, frustration, and suffering in life are brought on by our clinging to what has already happened or our tight grip on the frustration we are having with what is happening now. Ironically, it is in letting go that we are able to hold onto our sanity in the face of signiﬁcant challenge and change. And it is in the simple act of considering the possibility of letting go that the actual process of letting go is catalyzed.

Sergio had just received the bad news. His application for promotion into the Division IT Manager position had been turned down. As he hung up the

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phone, the sting of the news he had just heard continued to sink in. The Vice President had explained to him that, although the selection committee was very impressed with his performance record, they felt he needed just a bit more experience under his belt before being promoted to the Division IT Manager level. This was a major disappointment because Sergio had really been working hard over the past few months in anticipation of a pending retirement that had now opened up the position. Nevertheless, Sergio made an immediate decision to get beyond this seeming setback and recover his motivation. He had learned a trick from a previous mentor of his—that by simply considering the possibility of letting go of any disappointment, he could largely release the negative emotional energy that might otherwise infect his outlook. Sergio was initially upset, but he also realized many other opportunities would be available in the future if he continued to work creatively and persistently. So he focused his attention on consciously considering the question “Could I consider

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letting go of this disappointment?” Soon he was back on track and continuing the outstanding performance that had become his trademark. And it was not long before his constructive response paid off … four months later Sergio was promoted to the position of special assistant to the Executive Vice President, which provided him with a great deal of visibility and was to become a key step in his very successful career.

Many books and popular personal development speakers emphasize the importance of letting go in our lives. The river metaphor shared in Part I provides a strong visual image of this challenge. Indeed, we can cling to past setbacks and disappointments or to current frustrations. But this only feeds their energy. Usually the most constructive choice we can make in the present is to try to let go of our emotional attachment to what’s bugging us. Unfortunately, especially when faced with major frustrations, this often turns out to be awfully hard to do. One way to reduce the magnitude of this challenge is to not worry about letting go. After all, you don’t want the need to let go to turn into one more thing hanging over you. Instead, rather than concerning yourself with actually doing 62

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it, just consider letting go. Ask yourself, “Could I let go of this worry, concern, or frustration?” Just considering the possibility of letting go can signiﬁcantly lessen the grip your concern has on you. That’s because when you simply consider the possibility of letting go, your mind naturally searches for a part of you that has already let go. Don’t try to let go; just consider it. As a result, you can ﬁnd yourself naturally letting go and open a portal to temporary sanity and peace of mind. The classic serenity prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr has been a source of peace for generations. Try reading the prayer slowly as though encountering it for the ﬁrst time. Especially embrace its implicit call to stop resisting what is and either allow things to be as they are or honestly acknowledge them and then take constructive action for change. Heed its call to relax your grip on life. Can you consider letting go?

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Serenity Prayer Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference. —Reinhold Niebuhr19

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RIDE MENTAL STORMS The mightiest storms in our lives do not happen outside our homes or in far lands that we travel to. They do not consist of howling winds, ﬂaming lightening, booming thunder, or buckets of rain or snow. Rather, the greatest storms rage deep in our minds when we allow them to become who we are and feed their fury with attention and exaggerated importance they don’t deserve. By simply acknowledging and watching these storms with interest and curiosity rather than dread and hopelessness, we become true masters of our inner universe.

Karin was feeling very down. Since becoming a partner in her ﬁrm ﬁve years earlier, very few of the inspiring goals she had set for herself had been realized. It’s

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true that the ﬁrm was doing better than ever and much progress was being made, but the industry leadership position and product and service breakthroughs she had visualized were still a long way off. As she felt the weight of her somber mood, she noticed a steady rain pounding on her large ofﬁce window. She recalled that an hour earlier, the sun had been shining brightly, and it looked like it would be a beautiful day. “Interesting,” she thought to herself. “This weather front sure changed the way the world looks. Maybe that’s what I am experiencing on the inside—an inner storm.” She couldn’t help but smile a little at this thought. Her company had just completed one of its best quarters on record, and a few days earlier, she had received feedback from her colleagues during a peer review that they viewed her contributions over the past year as being “outstanding.” “So why am I feeling down? Just a passing inner bad weather mood, I guess,” she thought to herself. And at that very moment the rain let up and sun broke through the passing clouds. As sunlight

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once again streamed through her window, Karin laughed quietly to herself.

This peace(s) strategy is similar to a previous one— “watch yourself!”—but with an important twist. Moods and troubling thoughts can be a powerful force in our lives, especially if we feed them by resisting. If, on the other hand, we simply watch them with curiosity, their disruptive power can be reduced substantially. The mental and emotional forces that howl inside of us can be fascinating if we consider them in creative ways. One of the most effective ways to create temporary sanity—to create instant peace of mind in a turbulent world—is to view the content of our minds as we would the weather. Sometimes dreary mental weather moves in, and sometimes powerful storms rage inside. Why ﬁght your inner weather? Watching a thunderstorm through a large bay window can be quite fascinating—the wind, the rain, the lightning, and thunder. For example, we can watch the monsoons of August in the Southwest build all day in the desert until around 4 or 5 in the afternoon, and then the rain, lightning, and loud thunder come rolling in. We can also watch the gathering storms of our own horizons. Taking inner weather-watching seriously 67

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could even save us our overreactions and needless surprise at predictable inner storms, such as those that roll in for many of us on Monday mornings. Learn to appreciate your inner storms. Don’t always ﬁght them. Learn to ride them out. Don’t allow your inner weather to take you over by trying to ﬁght it head on. Remember, it’s just inner weather that will pass. See where it takes you. Notice how difﬁcult it is to be bored and apathetic when an inner storm is howling. Simply remind yourself, “It’s a storm that will blow through. I will study it and view it with fascination. While it is here, I will observe it and ride its wind currents to see where it takes me.” With practice, you may learn to ﬁnd the ebb and ﬂow of your thoughts—including the turbulent ones—entertaining and even a bit reassuring. After all, they could be evidence of a full and challenging life that is ﬁlled with surprises. Learn to rethink your inner weather and to appreciate how it, like the outer weather, has many fascinating features. Consider the following story about a little boy’s unique view of threatening weather as an exemplary metaphor for how even the most threatening inner storm might be viewed from a different, less debilitating perspective.

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The Big Day This was a big day for the little boy. He was very excited as his mother helped him get dressed up and neatly comb his hair. Today he was having his class picture taken for the very ﬁrst time. The little boy walked to and from his nearby elementary school daily. The weather that morning was a bit threatening. Large clouds were slowly forming as he walked, but the boy didn’t notice. As he left school that afternoon, he was still excited about having had his picture taken. Meanwhile, at home, his Mother noticed that the winds were whipping up, and when she heard distant thunder, she rose quickly from her chair. She thought her son would be frightened, and maybe in danger, so she climbed in her car and drove to meet him. As she pulled out of the driveway, she noticed that the storm was quickly becoming more severe. After each roar of thunder faded away, another ﬂash of lightening would cut through the sky like a ﬂaming 69

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sword. As she drove, she expected any moment to see her son scared half to death and running at a full gallop for home. Soon she spotted the little boy, but to her surprise, instead of running with fear, he was walking along slowly and doing a peculiar thing. With each ﬂash of lightning, he would stop, look up, and smile. As she drove closer, thunder boomed and lightening ﬂashed several times, but the boy kept stopping and then looking up at the ﬁery lightening with a smile. The mother was very confused and when she ﬁnally drove up alongside of him, she rolled down her window and called to him, “What are you doing? Why do you keep stopping and smiling instead of hurrying to get out of this storm?” He answered simply, “I’m trying to look nice. God keeps taking my picture.”

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MENTAL KUNG FU

D

iscouraging thoughts and the feelings they

cause do not have to be a destructive force in your life. The trick is to use their energy to your advantage. Any energy can be a source of positive power if it is converted into something useful. By choosing to convert the force of your difﬁcult thoughts and feelings into raw power for producing breakthrough insights and motivation for making creative leaps, you can become a Kung Fu master in your most sacred kingdom—your own world within. In the 2,500-year-old Tao Te Ching (known as the Tao), Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher, pointed out that the gentlest martial arts are the greatest ones. He prescribed avoiding the urge to rush in to battle opponents but rather allowing attackers the opportunity to fall down as a result of their own force.20

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Similarly, in Kung Fu, an ancient Chinese art of selfdefense, emphasis is placed on using any attacking force to your advantage. Instead of directly resisting an assault, the practitioner averts and redirects the energy. For example, if someone were to try to punch you at chest level, you might ﬂuidly turn 90 degrees to avert the blow while adding an additional push or pull, “helping” the attacker to proceed in the direction he was already heading. Instead of pitting strength against strength, you can use any force thrown your way to actually help you accomplish an outcome that you desire, such as sending opponents to the ground with the energy of their attack. The Tao Te Ching explains that a person who initiates an attack will be off balance and can thus be thrown. It also prescribes respecting and having compassion for an attacker and not needlessly harming others.21 The same logic can be applied to mental conﬂicts. For example, rather than resisting what might be thought of as attack from the ego within the mind (self-criticism, pronounced thoughts of regret or frustration), we can use this mind energy to our advantage. Instead of directly resisting these often-upsetting thoughts, we can sidestep and deﬂect the force of the attack to use its strength to serve our ends. You might try welcoming the internal criticism and exploring its implications that might reveal a solution to a current area of challenge and

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emotional conﬂict. Recast the thoughts as an attack on the problem rather than you. Ask yourself questions rather than directly wrestling with the otherwise disturbing train of thought. For example, imagine the following thoughts that Lisa is experiencing after making a difﬁcult presentation.

“I can’t believe that I messed up my summary of the key points for my new service plan. That was the whole reason for me being put on the agenda for the division meeting to begin with. It seems like I make a mess out of everything,” Lisa thought to herself as she settled into a signiﬁcant bout of self-doubt. Then she caught herself and realized that she was wasting energy resisting what had already happened rather than using the experience for learning and development, something she had recently made a personal commitment to do as she advanced in her career. “Actually, the presentation went well up until my ﬁnal summary,” she admitted to herself. “I was surprised by how attentive everyone seemed to be,

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and I know I effectively conveyed my enthusiasm for the plan.” “So, what did I learn? What could I do differently? I think if I used a PowerPoint slide for my summaries in the future, I could do much better. Remembering 12 points was just a bit too much. But overall, the presentation still seemed to come off pretty well, and I did receive a lot of positive feedback. Maybe if I follow up with everyone by sending an email that reviews the key points, it will reinforce my presentation.” “Hey, this is a great idea!” she thought. “There is a tendency for people to quickly forget what happens in these meetings once they get back to the realities of their own work. That’s funny … I think being a bit rough with my summary was a blessing in disguise. Had it gone smoothly, I wouldn’t have thought to do this, and the positive momentum I started today might have been lost.”

Note that the same kind of approach can be used for a variety of discouraging mental reactions. Rather than being 74

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overcome by negative thoughts and ﬁghting the feelings they cause, you can acknowledge the importance you place on whatever it is that’s bothering you. You can also use the energy and potential insights of the thoughts and emotions to place more focus on the problem and ask yourself how you might be able to improve the situation. The key is to avoid ﬁghting the strength of the mental and emotional energy directly but rather redirecting its strength to work toward a desired end. The idea is analogous to the experience of a group of young swimmers that were caught in a riptide off shore. They realized that trying to ﬁght the force of the tide to swim straight to shore would have exhausted them so they rode its current to the north for a couple of miles. Rather than ﬁghting the tide, they chose to swim with it, and eventually it subsided. It was a frightful experience, but they kept their heads about them and responded with “temporary sanity” rather than allowing the fear to plunge them into a bout of temporary insanity (which probably would have led to a panicked attempt to ﬁght the tide’s tremendous force), and it may well have saved their lives. Mental Kung Fu not only offers an effective internal self-defense process (helping to protect you from discouragement and damage to your self-conﬁdence), but it can be a positive source of development for your life. With practice,

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much of the seemingly negative mental and emotional force that you experience can instantly become an important energy supply for positive change. Choosing to use this energy to your advantage, rather than ﬁghting it, can be a key part of establishing temporary sanity in the face of trying situations and mental activity and, consequently, feeling and being more calm and effective in your work and life.

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THE IDEA THAT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE

M

eeting well-known or powerful people or

being called on to state our view in a meeting at work can be rather intimidating at times. Perhaps it is the judgmental eye and the critical scrutiny that others direct so intently on us that is so unnerving. Or, do we falsely ﬂatter ourselves to think they are so interested in us … to think that they are perhaps even more interested than we are in ourselves?

Marisha was scheduled for her ﬁrst formal presentation as the new branch ofﬁce manager since joining her company three months earlier. Public presentations made her very nervous, and thinking about the fact that the president of her division was going to be

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attending had her stomach in knots. In an attempt to avoid being judged critically, she had carefully tailored her presentation. She emphasized what she thought her audience wanted to hear, rather than focusing on what she felt the real issues in her ofﬁce were, but this had not helped reduce her fear. She was so nervous that she really wasn’t sure if she could go through with it. By the time the meeting rolled around, she felt nauseous and exhausted from all the stress. “What is the president going to think if I can’t even handle a 15-minute presentation? Everyone’s going to think I’m unﬁt for the job!”

One of the biggest challenges to our inner peace is worry about how we are judged by others. This concern is central to why public speaking often shows up on surveys as the greatest fear of all … even greater than death. Because advancement in many careers requires increasing levels of visibility, this challenge area is particularly important to address. The good news is that there is hope for those of us who especially struggle with this heavy mental burden. One powerful realization can help restore a sense of peace when we

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become preoccupied with what others think. When we feel anxious about people judging us and being critical of what we are doing, what we are saying, or the way we are as persons, this idea can bring us instant relief. I highly recommend that you commit this idea to memory and remind yourself of it often. If you have a strong tendency to worry about what others think of you, this idea can be life changing.

What is this powerful idea that can all but release us from uncomfortable self-consciousness? Here it is: “You have little need to worry about what others think of you because they rarely, if ever, actually spend time thinking about you.”

You see, people spend most of the time thinking about themselves. In fact, they are more likely to be worrying about what you think about them rather than the other way around. You may have encountered this idea before, but have you really taken it too heart? Do you really believe it? Perhaps people will, from time to time, have a critical thought about you or even voice a criticism, but that is the exception, not the norm. You can bet that their thoughts will

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quickly shift to someone else and especially back to a focus on themselves. During her training, a therapist was frequently reminded by a fellow clinician “You’re not that big in their world.” This clinician understood well this life-changing realization. The truth is that people rarely spend much time focusing on you or anyone else. A key corollary to this powerful idea is that the one person whose thoughts about you are actually worth worrying about will not be found among your acquaintances in life. It is someone with whom you have a far more personal relationship. It doesn’t matter if you please others or receive their approval if you do not earn the respect of this one key person. But to do so will mean that you will sometimes need to make choices that others will disapprove of—that is, if they are even interested enough to notice. Consider the following poem. The anonymous poet wrote it about a man, but I think you will agree that it very much applies to both genders.

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The Man in the Glass When you get what you want in your struggles for self And you think you are king for a day. Just go to the mirror and look at yourself And see what that man has to say. For it isn’t your father or mother or wife Whose judgment upon you must pass, The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life Is the one staring back from the glass. He’s the fellow who counts—never mind the rest For he’s with you clear up to the end.

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And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difﬁcult test If the man in the glass is your friend. You might fool the whole world down the pathway of life And get pats on the back as you pass. But your ﬁnal reward will be heartache and tears If you’ve cheated the man in the glass. —Anonymous, Boston, MA

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MENTAL FLOW…CATCH YOUR INNER WIND

L

ife can be so hard. Especially when we spend

our moments resisting all the things we don’t approve of, that unfold outside our control, or that reveal our weaknesses. It’s like pushing a heavy object across an impossibly rough surface. But when we ﬁnd a deeper connection to our work, so that we become immersed in the sure pleasure and challenge of what we are doing, the surface of the whole world becomes smooth, downhill, and beautifully satisfying, and time stands so still that eternity is truly held in an hour. I once heard a presentation that emphasized the importance of turning off our JCR—Judgment, Control, and need to be Right. Each of these represent forms of resistance that can create distress and ineffectiveness in our lives. Life can feel

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so much lighter and more natural if we are not ﬁghting it all the time. This is especially important when we encounter emotionally challenging situations. And carrying the general attitude of acceptance of what is (not resignation but acceptance), we are in a much better position to ﬂow smoothly throughout our life experience. Author Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has researched and written at length about a concept that he calls “ﬂow.” Flow refers to a state of harmonious consciousness that is goaloriented and in which people want to pursue an activity for its own value. Attention is devoted to the task at hand with a sense of timelessness, and other concerns and even pain are forgotten.22 It creates a kind of joyous self-forgetful involvement that often includes stretching personal skills in the pursuit of overcoming meaningful challenges.23 When people are fully and completely engaged in work they believe in and feel passionate about, they are in a state of ﬂow. When we recognize that our current work challenges are upsetting us, and we are caught up in a desperate need to judge, control, or to prove ourselves right, and all the resistance these entail, a remedy is available—ﬂow. Seeking ﬂow in the moment can be a useful peace(s) strategy. We can experience more ﬂow by looking for something in our immediate work that we can genuinely perform for its own value rather than concentrating on our immediate frustrations or

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hoped-for external rewards or outcomes. This can trigger the related experience of timelessness.24 By transcending our sense of time and our upset reactions and becoming fully immersed in our present moment activity, both a sense of joy and our deeper creativity can be released. A sailboat catching the wind is an apt metaphor. Picture a boat struggling to move forward as its sails ﬂap limply in the breeze and the crew struggles to paddle the boat ahead through the choppy resistant water. And then the boat catches the wind. Its sails become full and smooth, and the resistance of the rough ocean surface is quickly forgotten as it seems to simply disappear. The oars are put away, and the bow of the boat effortlessly knifes through the water as the craft ﬂows speedily ahead. When we are in a state of ﬂow, our emotional difﬁculties seem to vanish. We are so fully engaged in our immediate activity that worries and concerns fade out of our consciousness. By focusing on activities that we can enjoy for their own sake, where our main goal is engaging in the task, we can ﬁnd the temporary sanity we need to carry on effectively. Consider the following story as an example.

The three men were called crafters and worked sideby-side. The ﬁrst man thought that the sun was too hot, his tools were too old, and that his arms got 85

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too tired. He frowned and grumbled as he worked. The second man thought of the money and praise he would receive for his work, and of being promoted to chief crafter one day. He did not think about his work much at all—only of his better future ahead. The third man focused on the creativity of his design, the feeling of power and strength he enjoyed as he worked his tools, and of the admiration he felt for the ﬁnely shaped item he was creating with his own hands. He smiled, for he was not working at all.25

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IDEAS FOR OTHER MIND-CENTERED TEMPORARY SANITY STRATEGIES Here are some more ideas for potential temporary sanity strategies that you can develop to ﬁt your speciﬁc needs. ◆

Have a time out. When you feel yourself becoming anxious, angry, frustrated … being sucked into temporary insanity … give yourself a time out. Just like a sports team does when it is faltering during a game, take time out to regroup. Stop what you are doing, take a deep breath, and clear your mind. Then, with a bit more calm and clarity, “get back in the game.”

◆

Meditate for 30 seconds. Take a few seconds to stop what you are doing and focus on your breath, a simple word such as “relax,” or simply watch (and not react to) your thoughts. Do a very brief meditation to regain your sanity.

◆

Reframe the situation. When things are looking very bleak, step back and mentally reframe the situation. Ask yourself, “Is there an opportunity nested in this situation? What can I learn from this? What challenge have I uncovered that, if creatively addressed, could resolve some deeper issues in my life and work?” When faced with discouraging and upsetting circumstances, simply view the situation from a different, more creative angle that reveals any advantages that it offers.

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◆

Change your current role. If you are unhappy with what is happening and the way you are responding, make a conscious choice to change your role. View the situation as though it were a role play and simply adjust the part you are playing. For example, if you ﬁnd yourself defending a choice you made to others, stop and ask them how they would have handled the situation and follow up with more questions. Instead of defensively justifying yourself, play the role of an inquisitive learner.

◆

Let go of unhappiness. If you are unhappy with your current situation, instead of searching for things that you think will bring you happiness, identify what you are holding onto that is making you upset and let go of it. Is it a regret? A resentment? Whatever it is, consciously choose to let it go, if only for the moment.

How might you adapt the aforementioned ideas to create helpful peace(s) strategies that you can apply when you need temporary sanity? What other mind-centered strategies can you think of?

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PART · 3 Body: Physical Peace(s)

I

n this part, a beginning set of peace(s) strategies

will be offered that focus on the body. These strategies can be applied with the three-step temporary sanity process (either for “normally” challenging situations or for highly challenging situations). The strategies are only intended to be a starting place for creating a set of physically focused tools for regaining your clarity, calm, balance—your temporary sanity—when your circumstances and mind seem to be pushing you

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toward temporary insanity. I strongly encourage you to adapt these strategies and create your own to ﬁt your unique life situation.

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STOP! … AND RELAX

G

o faster. Go farther. Go longer. Go, go, go.

There is such an emphasis on keeping moving, talking, reacting. Sometimes one of the sanest choices you can make is to “give it a rest” … especially when you feel yourself barreling toward an insane reaction. It’s not always good to say how you feel when you are upset, to state your opinion, or to try to manage the situation. One of the best ways to ﬁnd your temporary sanity in insane times is to stop what you are doing. Stop fanning the ﬂames, stop feeding the conﬂict, stop escalating the struggle. Just Stop! … and Relax. One of the simplest temporary sanity strategies is to STOP! When you ﬁnd yourself getting upset and your level of balance and clarity are declining, just tell yourself to “Stop!” while picturing a colorful stop sign with bold letters reinforcing this message. And then really do stop what you are 91

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doing, and just go still and silent for a few moments. Next, remind yourself to “relax” and let go of all your concerns for the moment. Allow your mind and body to reset themselves at a calmer and more conscious level. The key to this strategy is accepting that you can stop. Ask yourself some questions. Can I stop at red lights even when I am running late or feeling particularly impatient and I really want to keep going? Can I wait for a walk sign, or at least for trafﬁc to clear, when I want to cross a busy street? Can I wait for a store to open when I need to purchase something the ﬁrst thing in the morning? Or, instead, do I feel so driven that I can’t help but run red lights and get into terrible trafﬁc accidents, walk into trafﬁc and get run over, or break into the stores before they open and get arrested? Well, you get the idea—you can stop when you decide to, even though your ego may want you to keep going. There are at least three important anchors that you can use to support this straightforward peace(s) strategy. The ﬁrst two are advocated by best-selling author Richard Carlson in his book Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff at Work—the importance of taking breaks to maintain your effectiveness and peace, and the need to remind yourself when you are moving toward disaster “Don’t go there!” The third is the classic call to listen to improve your effectiveness and relationships.

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1. Take breaks. You may feel like you are being a disciplined, more productive hard worker when you don’t take breaks, but this is usually not the case. When you are working hard on a project, solving a problem, or coping with a difﬁcult situation, it is important to periodically stop and relax … give yourself a break. This will keep your mind and body fresh, help you prevent burnout, and foster continued motivation and interest. Carlson emphasizes that skipping breaks is a big mistake that will not only exhaust you but will keep you from accomplishing as much as you could if you kept yourself fresh.26 2. “Don’t go there.” Again, Richard Carlson offers some sage advice, this time based on the classic saying: “Don’t go there.” This to-the-point phrase can serve as a reminder that if you continue your current thinking, behavior, arguing, or whatever else you are doing, the results are going to be predictably bad. It may be that you will cause your spouse to stop talking to you for the next couple days or that you will have an extended feud with a co-worker. Maybe it’s just that you will become very upset, frustrated, and stressed out yourself. Often you can probably see it coming. You’ve been there before, and you are right back on that predictable road to doom. So STOP! Let the other person be right this time, decide that you don’t need to know everything about the issue, remain silent, and do nothing. Just let it go. “Don’t go there!”

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3. Listen. If you want a powerful temporary sanity tool for intense moments, and also want to really learn, be more attractive to others, and optimize your effectiveness in the face of interpersonal conﬂicts, choose one of the sanest things you can do—Listen! There are many prescriptions for effective listening, such as, maintaining good eye contact, concentrating fully on what you are hearing as opposed to framing your reply, repeating back what you heard the person say … but a key part of the process is to, at least for a time, Stop! Stop talking, strategizing, imposing your will. Stop judging, dwelling on past memories, or thinking about what you want. Instead, be there fully for the other person. Just relax and listen. This strategy can be invaluable in the heat of an argument, when receiving bad news, or when interacting with someone who tends to make you a bit crazy. The implicit message of respect, presence, and calm attention that stopping, relaxing, and listening communicates can often make the difference between insane escalation of an issue and a peaceful resolution. And that’s not to mention the increased understanding and helpful insights it can offer.

So, when you are in a challenging discussion, you feel things moving toward temporary insanity, and your automatic ego-based self is pushing you toward dysfunctional choices, simply remember one of the foremost battle cries of temporary sanity—Stop! … and Relax.

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BREATHE

I

t’s such a great way to relax, capture the moment,

and restore your calm focus. It is easy to bring to any meeting, on any trip, to any intense event or conﬂict. It can be a wonderful companion and a great source of oxygen and life. Try doing it deeply and slowly. Focus on it, feel it, enjoy it. Breathe. It’s time for a pop quiz. Imagine that you are in a very difﬁcult situation, you are becoming increasingly upset, and you can tell that you are quickly moving toward a state of temporary insanity. Out of all the temporary sanity strategies available, what is the most basic choice you can make to restore your balance, peace, and effectiveness? The surprising answer is “Breathe!” Most Westerners don’t seem to realize what those in the East have known for years— healthy breathing, such as the deep slow breathing associated with yoga and meditation, can reduce stress, induce relaxation, and even support seemingly unlikely activities such as self-defense, as is emphasized in the martial arts.

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Unfortunately, when you become stressed and anxious, your breathing tends to become shorter and shallower. As a result, you take in less oxygen, which signals the brain to release more adrenaline. This causes more anxiety, further suppressing breathing, leading to more oxygen depletion. A perpetual selfdefeating loop is set into motion.27 In fact, consciously practicing good healthy breathing, rather than allowing this essential source of vitality to be at the mercy of the challenges of living, is arguably the most powerful choice you can make to increase your health and improve your life in general.

Nina was still taking in the news that she was being transferred to another division. Her boss had tried to explain in detail how her background and experience were so badly needed for a special new venture that was currently ﬂoundering. He added that the ultimate success of the effort was very important for the future strength of the company. Despite the explanation and some encouraging words that went with it, all Nina could think about was having to leave behind her close colleagues and many months of effort on her current project that was ﬁnally on the

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threshold of coming to fruition. Nina was quickly becoming very emotionally distraught. A few minutes later, as she was sharing the difﬁcult news with Erich, a close colleague and friend, it was obvious that she was losing her perspective as a cycle of stress was overtaking her. Instead of offering a predictable response such as “Look on the bright side…” or “It’s all going to work out ﬁne, you’ll see…,” Erich offered unexpected to-the-point advice. “Breathe Nina,” he said simply. And when Nina, with some confusion and a bit of irritation said, “What are you talking about? I am breathing!,” he added more detail: “Yes, Nina, you are breathing, but you aren’t really breathing. (He said these ﬁnal two words slowly and with emphasis.) We all breathe, but we don’t do it in the natural healthy way we were meant to. As babies, we do it instinctively but somewhere in the course of growing up, we learn to breathe in a restricted unhealthy way, especially when we are upset. And this is not only detrimental to our relaxation and health,

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but to our ability to think clearly and to be effective when we face signiﬁcant challenge. We need to relearn healthy breathing and build it into our work and life skills so that we can be at our best.”

Breathing exercises and techniques have been prescribed as health remedies or treatments for a wide range of emotional challenges and physical problems. Some of these include anxiety, stress, panic attack, emphysema, insomnia, and Parkinson’s disease.28 Many health experts, including Dr. Andrew Weil, author of The New York Times best-selling book, Spontaneous Healing, points out that healthy breathing can empower us to regulate some of the most fundamental functions of our bodies. Many are functions that were previously thought to be beyond our conscious control, such as digestion, heart rate, circulation, blood pressure, and consequently, enhancement of our healing system.29 It is very difﬁcult to respond in a calm, clear-minded way when we become emotionally upset and feel lousy physically. The good news is that healthy breathing can help us to get back on track—it can create a positive foundation for temporary sanity during upsetting challenges and beyond. There are many healthy breathing techniques

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available. If you do even a modest search, you will discover an abundance of helpful resources, such as Dr. Weil’s aforementioned book. The key is to ﬁnd practical breathing strategies that work best for you, especially when the going gets tough. Now let’s return to our example. Erich didn’t just leave Nina with nothing to go on but a short lecture about the importance of healthy breathing. After Erich convinced Nina that he really was trying to help her and that he had learned that breathing was absolutely crucial for effectively meeting the many trying challenges that life throws our way, she became more receptive.

“Nina, let me talk you through a powerful technique that I use personally when I am upset that combines multiple types of breathing. First concentrate on your exhalation as the beginning, rather than the end, of your breath cycle. Because your musculature is stronger for controlling your out breath than for breathing in, by concentrating on pushing as much air as possible out of your lungs, you will automatically take in

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more air on the in breath without even trying. This gently deepens your respiration. And it increases your oxygen intake, which will calm you. Try to consciously draw in even a bit more air on the in breath (ﬁrst into your belly and then into your chest) to make the breath especially deep. Finally, just let go. Allow the air to rush out with a relaxing sigh.” After Nina tried this, she was amazed at how just one complete breath cycle had such a powerful impact on how she felt. She became much more calm and was able to begin to put her situation in better perspective and to explore how she might best respond. Andrew Weil describes this kind of breathing as a tonic for the nervous system and prescribes a similar technique to many of his patients. As a result, his patients have reported that this breathing has cured a wide range of physical ailments from stress to anxiety to high blood pressure to cardiac arrhythmia. If you are serious about learning how to build your capacity for choosing temporary sanity in the turbulent moments of your life, don’t overlook this fundamental build-

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ing block. Learning and practicing healthy breathing methods is arguably the most important strategy you can apply when you are upset. When you ﬁnd yourself struggling to keep your cool, when a difﬁcult situation is pushing you toward temporary insanity, make the simple but powerful choice … breathe.

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PERCEIVE IN 3D

I

t is all too easy to be looking at something with

our eyes wide open and not really see what is there. We may see the shapes, the activity, the problem before us but without the dimensionality that creates the sense of connection and meaning we need to respond sanely, let alone optimally. If we can instead use a softer focus that allows us to see not only the central object of interest but the context and relationship it has with everything else, then a miracle happens. Though we were blind, now we see. There is a common human tendency to get so caught up in our immediate concerns and our unconscious responses to them that we view our three-dimensional world as far less than it is … as if it were composed of isolated parts that exist in only two dimensions. We can become narrowly ﬁxed on one point of focus, such as one single problem that is nagging

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us at work, and consequently experience our surroundings in a very limited way. When problems arise and our emotions begin to heat up, whether in an argument with a colleague, an unexpected setback on a project we are working on, or simply because our mood takes a bad turn, two-dimensional perceiving can blind us to the larger, less bleak, picture. This narrow kind of view can also rob us of the forward-looking thinking that is needed in organizations today.

One day I was walking down a hallway with a highranking executive of a large corporation when he stopped in front of a manger’s open ofﬁce door. The manager appeared to be in deep reﬂection, I thought perhaps wrestling with a signiﬁcant issue for the company. The executive broke his silence with an accusatory tone, “Don’t we give you enough to do around here?” The manager instinctively reached for some papers on his desk with a startled look. As we walked on, the executive turned to me and said, “Got to keep them on their toes, you know.” I thought to myself that this was a rather sad reﬂection on our information age. The manager was a knowledge

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worker in a complex and dynamic industry. The executive viewed him through a narrow lens—if he wasn’t shufﬂing paper, he wasn’t really working. Yet the executive’s insistence that the manager stay busy in an obvious way reﬂected a ﬂat, two-dimensional view that precluded the kind of innovative thinking that was needed to optimally meet the challenges of his work.

There is a simple trick you can use to recapture threedimensional perceiving whenever you feel you are falling back into a two-dimensional perception of your environment. Simply locate a point near you (a piece of furniture, a person in a meeting you are attending, or even your thumb held up at arm’s length in front of you) and simultaneously look at one or more points farther away. The simple act of focusing on something near and farther away at the same time instantly broadens awareness and restores your sense of three dimensions. It is as though the whole world instantly expands. To add even more power to this exercise, try closing one eye and note the two-dimensional view that results as you look around. Then repeat the near/far simultaneous focus as you open your closed eye. Notice how dramatically your perspective changes.

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Once you’ve done this with the physical world, you can extrapolate this kind of perception to your mind and emotions. Consciously choose to see your immediate problem while simultaneously being aware of the many other, especially positive, things in your work and life. Once you are able to view your current problem and what surrounds it, more broadly as though in three dimensions, you will restore a more balanced perspective. This can seemingly shrink your challenge right before your eyes and establish the temporary sanity you need to respond effectively. As a result of this more balanced view, problems that might otherwise seem quite daunting can be shrunk down to surprisingly manageable size. Consider the fascinating “extra high-tech” example that I discovered circulating on the Internet.

When NASA ﬁrst started launching astronauts into space, they encountered a troubling challenge. They discovered that ballpoint pens would not write in zero gravity, which posed a signiﬁcant problem when astronauts needed to write down information. Given NASA’s successful history with technological know-how, they applied the same rigorous scientiﬁc approach that they had used in the past. A decade

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and one billion dollars later, they developed a pen that could not only write in zero gravity but could write upside down, under water, on almost any surface including glass, and at a very wide range of temperatures. Indeed, NASA took on a large and complex challenge and skillfully expended signiﬁcant time, energy, and resources to triumphantly overcome it … right? The Russians used a pencil.

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SMILE AND LAUGH Temporary Sanity Quiz30 Take a moment to exercise your sanity muscles. Answer the following short quiz. 1. If you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant, what should you do? 2. If a police ofﬁcer arrests a mime, should she say he has the right to remain silent? 3. Vegetarians eat vegetables so: (a) Should vegetarians eat animal crackers?, (b) What should humanitarians eat? 4. If you open a new container of cotton balls, should you throw the ﬁrst one away? 5. When a turtle loses its shell, is it homeless or naked?

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6. How does it make you feel when doctors call what they do to you and other patients their practice? 7. Is it true that the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese? 8. Does he who laughs last laugh best or does he think the slowest? 9. What is another word for synonym? 10. Is it true that 43.852% of statistics used by 58.235% of the people are made up? One of the simplest and most effective ways to ﬁnd instant peace of mind, even in the middle of a very trying workday, is to stop what you are doing and sincerely smile. Just let go and smile. Don’t just try to force a smile while you continue to struggle with immediate problems (although even this can be helpful), but instead concentrate on smiling like you mean it. Think of a time when you were happy, reconnect with that experience in your mind, and then smile. Smiling can actually change the blood ﬂow and chemistry of your body and elevate your mood. It’s even better if you can laugh. Keep humorous reading material and audiotapes (even movies when you have access to equipment to

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view funny scenes) nearby that you can use as practical tools to help you ﬁnd your smile and a good laugh. Log in your memory your funniest life moments (especially the times when you enjoyed a real belly laugh) to draw on when you need them. As the old saying goes, “I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen a tense situation transformed by ﬁnding some humor in the moment.” I’ve seen these transformations in business meetings, training sessions, and during conﬂicts between colleagues. I’ve also witnessed the positive power of humor in school classrooms, in families, in churches, and in many other settings that are often ripe with emotion. If even one person can stay “sane” enough in tense moments to keep things in perspective and to use humor to dissolve some of the emotional tension (when appropriate, of course), a dramatic release can occur. Why not choose to be that person at least some of the time? In the early part of this book, I shared just a glimpse of the growing research that demonstrates how much more effective we can be when experiencing positive emotion as opposed to negative emotion. Through positive emotion, we have access to more personal and social resources, are better able to reach creative solutions, can integrate information better, and can enjoy better health. Not only can we become clearer thinking and more effective people, but we also can

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experience more satisfying and fulﬁlling lives. To the extent that humor can help trigger our positive emotional capacity, we can reconnect with our sanity even in upsetting and potentially “insane” situations. One inspiring example is provided by author Norman Cousins in the face of one of life’s greatest and most disturbing challenges. In his book, Head First, he recounts how he used humor to thrive in the midst of a life struggle with cancer.31 Rather than choosing hopelessness and despair, and instead surrounding himself with a variety of humorous programs and materials, he overcame his personal health challenges with the powerful healing affects of humor. When you take your work and life seriously enough to choose to smile and laugh, if only for a moment in stressful situations, you create an opening to peace. In doing this, you can establish the temporary sanity you need to move forward constructively and to help you become more effective in your career and build a better life for yourself.

When the work team leader stood up in front of the group, he wanted to make a point. Even though his team had made a signiﬁcant mistake and the mem-

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bers felt down on themselves, he believed it was one of the brightest and most creative teams around. He knew his people, who normally worked with a cheerful and playful morale-boosting attitude, could think of a way to ﬁx the situation if only he could help them lift their spirits. “Despite this setback, I believe our team is one of the best in the organization,” he began in an enthusiastic tone of voice. But the members continued to hang their heads and didn’t seem to be responding. In his determination to get through to the team, the leader then heard himself saying, “A mistake was made, but we all know we are competent, don’t we?” The group continued to stare at the ground in a very uncharacteristic demoralized state, so he continued, “Anyone here who thinks he or she is stupid, please stand up!” After a couple moments, the leader was surprised to see Shoshana rise very slowly. “Do you think you are stupid, Shoshana?” the leader asked in a bewildered tone. 111

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“No,” answered Shoshana, now with a playful smile on her face. “I just hated to see you standing all by yourself.” After a brief surprised silence, one by one the whole team broke out into laughter, and from that moment regained their perspective. Soon thereafter, they reached a creative solution that very effectively solved the problem.

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SENSE YOUR SENSES

H

ave you ever thought the best way to ﬁnd

peace within yourself is by freeing your mind from the distracting sensations of the world, perhaps with the aid of alcohol or sedatives? Or by somehow using a meditative technique to be fully in the mind so as to experience a bodiless existence? This may sound compelling but it is a misleading view. A soothing caress, a delicate scent, a succulent taste, a melodic sound, and a beautiful sight can release us in the moment from our imprisoning worry, stress, anxiety … from the bedrock of fear that undergirds many a life. Being lost in the full experience of our sensations, being fully and effortlessly in the body, and being momentarily released from the ceaseless activity of our minds can serve as a bridge that allows us to

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pass over the turbulent temporary insanity that so often seeks to pull us down into its depths. Our senses offer us amazing power. Not only can they release tremendous pleasure into our lives, but they also can focus our attention fully in the moment. All too often we go through our days without experiencing our bodies in the moment. We gulp down our food as we rush to be somewhere else, and we miss the wonderful variety of tastes. We pass through ﬂowered walkways and miss the wonderful scents of the blossoms that surround us. We miss the gentle breeze that strokes our hair and the delicate sound of rustling leaves or a bubbling fountain. We miss the colorful leaves as they prepare to ﬂoat to the ground in anticipation of winter or the intricate patterns of pure white clouds that have formed in the deep blue sky. And we too often miss really seeing and hearing the potentially passionate, loving, and kind people we work and live with. When we miss all these senses, in a very real way we miss our lives.

Marisa arrived at the retreat late Friday afternoon. She was in a frazzled state after yet another long and stressful week in the ofﬁce. The retreat had

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been recommended by the company’s Human Resources department, and she knew her attendance would be recorded in her personnel ﬁle as part of her executive development training credits, but Marisa was skeptical. “A Retreat for Reconnecting with Our Bodies and Our Spirits for a More Fulﬁlling Career and Life” she read off the cover of the brochure as she settled into her room at the retreat center. “Sounds awfully strange to me,” she thought to herself. But later she would describe the weekend as one of the most meaningful experiences of her life. Here is a sample of what happened. Meals were eaten as a conscious sensually rich process. Participants were asked to eat their food silently, using their opposite hand (e.g., right handers would use their left hand), and completely and slowly chew their food and swallow every bite before reaching for more food. After eating this way during the weekend, Marisa realized that she had barely tasted or smelled her food, nor felt the motions involved in eating, for years.

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Another retreat activity was a conscious high- sensation walk in a beautiful meadow. People were invited to remove their shoes and walk silently and very slowly (as though in slow motion), feeling every muscle and sensation in their feet, legs, and the rest of their bodies. They were also invited to open all their senses to the sight and smell of the beautiful ﬂowers and the lush green grass and to enjoy the sight and sounds of the graceful birds as well as all the other rich sensations of the meadow. Marisa let go into this experience and was very taken by how her whole body connected with this natural setting that she might normally have quickly passed through with little notice. In the end, Marisa was very impressed with how much peace she was able to experience through her body. Up to this point in her life, she often had been dissatisﬁed with her physical appearance, and as she aged, she was dismayed at how many more aches and pains she was feeling. To reconnect with her body in a positive and nurturing way opened for her

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a surprising pathway to peace. The physical sensations she enjoyed during the retreat created a source of peace and sanity that she would reconnect with, both in her memory and through the actual choices she made, during difﬁcult and upsetting times back in her workplace. In difﬁcult moments, she would open up to her surroundings—the sights, smells, sounds— and almost always there was something she could enjoy and appreciate. As a result, her body and all its senses became a wonderful resource for peace and balance in her life.

One of the more striking experiences in my own life was both taking classes and then assisting my wife with the Lamaze natural childbirth process in connection with the birth of both of our children. A key part of Lamaze involves ﬁnding a visual focal point (a ﬂower, a dot on the wall) and concentrating on that point while using deep slow breathing to relax and cope with labor pain. The visual focus and the physical sensation of the breathing can be powerful aids for dealing with perhaps the greatest challenge a woman can face in her life.

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I also vividly remember watching a seemingly unimportant TV travel show and being struck by the comment made by a young girl. Sounding beyond her limited years, she looked out from her small boat off a beautiful island setting and said in effect “Just one look, and you forget all your troubles and worries.” Truly connecting with our senses can be very freeing. For example, it can release us from the limits of our minds that might see our co-workers as competitors for a raise or promotion, and that might see our competitors as threats to our health, happiness, quality of life, and to our very survival. Instead, transcend the mind by connecting with the sensations of the body. Through the pure sensations of our bodies, we are offered a smorgasbord of potential peace(s) strategies that can reintroduce temporary sanity in turbulent times.

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SOUND MANAGEMENT

W

hen you are stressed out and anxious, don’t

reach for a Valium or a drink. There is another calming force that you can easily ingest in the moment. Instead of a drug, reach for a CD. Beautiful music and peaceful natural sounds can be like a tonic for your body and soul. Choose Mozart over Prozac and see what happens. When you apply sound management, temporary sanity is just one soothing symphony or serenade of a babbling brook away.

Ira was feeling more and more stressed. It had been a crazy morning, and he had just learned of two more client problems that needed his attention. Instinctively, he reached for a CD and popped it into his computer while he put softly padded headphones

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over his ears. Soon he was listening to the relaxing sound of beautiful baroque classical music. He was already feeling more relaxed and centered by the time he reached for an important ﬁle on his desk to begin working on his next task.

It’s such an easy thing to do. Choose the sounds that your body is exposed to. Slow, rhythmic beautiful music is one of the more powerful tools that you can use to relax your body and mind. Nature sounds can also help you feel a connection with the peace of the natural world, especially when you listen to sounds that are associated with previous relaxing and pleasant life experiences. You can reconnect with the sound of the surf that you so much enjoyed at a beautiful beach just a couple months ago. Close your eyes, and you are there again. Or play that favorite Mozart album, close your eyes, and you are at the wonderful concert you attended last week. In fact, the effect of sound on the body can be so powerful that huge amounts of research and writing have been devoted to the topic. As a quick sample, the following are three books that offer helpful insights that could literally change your life if you follow their advice. Note in particular

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the promise that their titles convey about the power of sound for healing the body and enhancing your life. 1. The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit, by Don Campbell (New York: Quill, 2001). 2. Tune Your Brain: Using Music to Manage Your Mind, Body, and Mood, by Elizabeth Miles (New York: Berkley, 1997). 3. The Power of Sound: How to Manage Your Personal Soundscape for a Vital, Productive, & Healthy Life, by Joshua Leeds (Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 2001).

The sound that enters our ears can have a profound affect on our well-being. Research in the ﬁeld of sound therapy suggests that it can affect our mood, ability to learn, motivation, creativity, and many important health considerations as wide-ranging as our stress level, blood pressure, heart beat, and sensitivity to pain. It has even shown promise for addressing a variety of ailments from dyslexia to cancer. I encourage you to explore resources such as the aforementioned books if you want to more fully master how you can put sound management to work for you in your life. To effectively use this strategy for instant self-leadership, the trick is to discover and keep handy the music and

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other sounds that are especially helpful to you. For example, inspiring movie sound tracks can be helpful for lifting your spirits and stimulating the motivation you need to tackle a difﬁcult task. On the other hand, classical baroque music performed in a slow steady beat has been found to be particularly calming and conducive for learning. The more relaxing compositions of Mozart, in particular, are a good example of music that consistently produces this kind of positive effect. Keeping CDs and a CD player handy, along with headphones if you need privacy, can provide a ready temporary sanity tool to be instantly called on when needed. Feeling lethargic and uninspired right when you need to work on a challenging project? Listen to your favorite inspiring movie themes to lift your spirit and fuel your motivation. Feeling growing anxiety about a presentation you will be making in a few minutes? Listen to your favorite relaxing classical music and allow it to calm and tune your system. There are many other sound choices to choose from, too. Listen to ocean waves, a bubbling stream, a gentle waterfall, or the soothing call of loons on a northern lake. Sit back, close your eyes, take a deep relaxing breath, and listen.

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Relaxation and temporary sanity is available right now if you put sound management to work for you. If you want to get more scientiﬁc about it, you can intentionally use sound to affect brain wave frequencies much like traditional meditation does. The brain generates wave patterns that, when going deeper into meditation, can become progressively slower and longer. These wave patterns have been scientiﬁcally measured in Hz (short for Hertz, which are cycles per second). Four levels have been identiﬁed including 1. Beta (13-100+ Hz): The fastest pattern associated with alertness, arousal, and concentration (including more pronounced levels of anxiety and stress on the high-frequency end). 2. Alpha (8-12.9 Hz): A slower pattern associated with relaxation and introspection and ranging from a state of accelerated learning at the high end to the peace and contentment often associated with traditional meditation at the lower end. This level is typically the slowest pattern achieved with normal meditation (such as sitting quietly and repeating a mantra). 3. Theta (4-7.9 Hz): A still slower pattern associated with REM (rapid eye movement) dreaming sleep, and memory, creativity, and integrative experience.

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4. Delta (.1-3.9 Hz): The slowest pattern associated with deep dreamless sleep and a feeling of unity and oneness.

A process, sometimes referred to as brain entrainment, involves playing slightly different sound frequencies into each ear (through headphones) so that the brain reconciles the differences by creating one rhythm that directly alters brain wave patterns. This means that, at least in theory, you can induce deep meditative states by listening to carefully developed stereo recordings designed for this purpose. If you would like to read more about one application of this technology, consider reading Bill Harris’ book, Thresholds of the Mind (Beaverton, OR: Centerpointe Press, 2002), the primary source used for the aforementioned description. As with any technology that is designed to alter states of consciousness, it is recommended that you carefully consider this approach before deciding to try it. Music, nature sounds, and brain wave entrainment represent only a small sample of the potential ways that sound can be used to help you ﬁnd and maintain your sanity in stressful or otherwise challenging situations. When you are becoming upset, frustrated, or anxious, applying sound management can be a powerful vehicle for ﬁnding your temporary sanity.

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STRETCH YOURSELF

W

hen we lose our perspective and allow our

emotions to ﬂy out of control, we become smaller and less capable human beings. We contract, tighten, and become constricted. It can be hard to breathe, to think, to move. When this happens, we are in no condition to respond sanely to challenges. First, take the time to restore your physical state to one of healthier balance. Gently stretch and breathe. Focus on this remarkably simple yet exceedingly wise choice. By gently stretching yourself, you can resuscitate the miraculous creature that you really are and for whom no challenge is too great. When we become upset there is a tendency for us to contract physically, and this can cause our thinking to tighten up as well. Not only do we end up feeling worse, but we tend to

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make poorer choices when we are in this state. One way to help ourselves escape from this unfortunate reaction is to purposely choose to stretch. For example, we can gently stretch our neck to either side and forward and backward. Or, we can roll and stretch our shoulders. We can pull ourselves out of a defensive slouch and instead sit up straight, gently pulling our shoulders back and allowing our lungs to take in a full deep breath. One simple stretching technique is to stretch your hands toward the sky and then gently lean to one side and then the other. It’s like a bit of instant yoga. Standing, if possible, gently stretch your hands overhead as far as you can comfortably reach. As you do, allow your whole body to stretch and extend upward. Let the crown of your head rise up as far as possible. Even go a little onto your toes as you concentrate on lengthening your whole body upward as though you were trying to grow another inch or two taller than you are. Easy does it. Don’t overdo it. Then, settling back ﬁrmly on your feet, and maintaining your stretch, drop your left arm to your side and gently lean to the left. Then raise your left arm and drop your right arm and lean to the right. Again, easy does it. Don’t force your body to do anything that feels uncomfortable. And breathe easily and deeply as you do this. Simply stretch gently up and then side to side.

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This simple act can help release a lot of tension from your body. And it can have a very positive effect on your thinking, especially when you are upset, if you fully concentrate on every sensation and movement involved in the stretch. It can be a form of instant body-focused meditation that clears your mind of your current frustrations, concerns, anxieties. It can restore your sense of focus and calm. And it can replace emerging temporary insanity with temporary sanity right in the moment.

Mary felt a sense of panic as she watched the hightech stock, which she had convinced several of her clients to invest in, drop 30% in price within a half hour. She had been a broker for seven years and had faced many difﬁcult investment scenarios in the past, but this was the quickest and steepest drop in stock price she had ever encountered on one of her stock picks. Her immediate reaction was to begin calling her clients and unloading the stock right away before the stock lost more value. She recognized, however, that she was not thinking clearly or completely sanely at the moment. So, as

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she often did at times like this, she rose up out of her chair and slowly stretched her hands high over her head and rose slightly on her toes as she took a slow and deep breath. Then, she let the breath out with a sigh while settling ﬁrmly on her feet and, while maintaining her stretch, took another deep breath as she dropped her left arm and leaned ﬁrst to the left and then repeated this sequence to the right. She focused her full attention on this physical act and allowed it to clear her mind of her temporary panic. Now, feeling more centered and clear, she recalled a favorite quote made by a legendary stock investor: “Never let fear chase you out of a stock … fear is the number one obstacle to successful investing … moving in and out of stocks based on your momentary feelings is a sure recipe for failure.” With this in mind, she began researching the situation more carefully. She discovered that a recently released news story about a persistent rumor that had been plaguing the stock for months—that one of the ﬁrm’s

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touted new Internet-related products did not really work—was the primary cause of the price drop. She realized that the stock had dropped on old news that had no grounds in actual data. In fact, it was this same news that had circulated six months earlier that had caused the stock to drop to the point that she recommended it to her clients in the ﬁrst place. With the stock almost back down to the original purchase price, it appeared that the same opportunity was presenting itself again. She ﬁnished her research with a couple of phone calls. First, she called another broker who followed the stock and whose opinion she highly valued. Then she called the company’s investor information line, which released news to the public. Both sources shared her view—this was old news, it was not based on any substantiated data, and the stock had fallen without justiﬁcation. Soon Mary was on the phone calling her clients, not to recommend selling but buying more shares. Two weeks later the stock had risen back to its previous price. And Mary had

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some very happy clients, all because she had chosen temporary sanity while other investors and brokers had given way to panic.

Stretching is such a simple strategy. It’s something we might have done in a physical education class back in high school. Yet if it is done slowly and deliberately with full attention and calm relaxed breathing, it can be a potent strategy for regaining your sanity in the moment. Stretch yourself.

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IDEAS FOR OTHER BODY-CENTERED TEMPORARY SANITY STRATEGIES Here are some more ideas for potential temporary sanity strategies that you can develop to ﬁt your speciﬁc needs. ◆

Walk consciously. When you are confronted with a difﬁcult and upsetting problem that has thrown you out of balance and clouded your mind, take a short walk before you choose your response. Focus on your walking—the sensation of your muscles working, your sense of balance, and so forth. Let your mind clear by fully centering your attention on walking.

◆

Use Acupressure. Learn different places on your body that, when pressed, can release tension. For example, gently but ﬁrmly pressing your thumb in the center of your inner wrist (between your two forearm bones) and two ﬁnger widths from the crease in your wrist is a technique for releasing anxiety. Continue this pressure for one minute and then repeat on the other wrist.

◆

Go outside and enjoy nature. If it is a nice day and you are in a pleasant setting, just take a moment and go outside. Take a deep breath and look around. Feel the sun on your face and the breeze in your hair. Imagine that you are one with nature just for a moment.

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◆

Take a 30-second nap. For just a few seconds, close your eyes and imagine you are napping. Let your whole body go limp. Take a deep breath, clear your mind, and relax.

◆

Do a body scan. Mentally scan your body from head to foot searching for any places that are holding tension and consciously relax and let go. You can even concentrate on just one part of your body. For example, scanning and relaxing all the muscles of your face— your jaw, around your eyes, forehead—can help clear your mind and relax your body when you are beginning to feel stressed.

How might you adapt the aforementioned ideas to create helpful peace(s) strategies that you can apply when you need temporary sanity? What other body-centered strategies can you think of?

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PART · 4 Spirit: Transcendent Peace(s)

I

n this part, a beginning set of peace(s) strategies

is offered that transcends the ego and focuses on the spirit (your more authentic self). These strategies can be applied with the three-step temporary sanity process (either for “normally” challenging situations or for highly challenging situations). The strategies are only intended to be a starting place for regaining your clarity, calm, balance—your temporary sanity—when your circumstances and mind seem to be pushing you

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toward temporary insanity. I strongly encourage you to adapt these strategies and create your own to ﬁt your unique life situation.

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WATCH, DON’T BE, THE EGO

D

o you know how to spot empty persons? Simply

look for people who are full of themselves. When the ego takes over, and we become caught up in our wants, frustrations, and opinions, our experience can become an emotional roller coaster. And our life can become empty indeed— devoid of a deeper purpose, meaning, or sense of caring toward anything beyond the small self that the ego tries to convince us is who we are. It is all an illusion. Watch the ego at work. It can be very illuminating and help us to understand why people can be so thoughtless and cruel toward one another. Watch it, but don’t allow the ego to be who you are. You are far more than the ego could ever understand.

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The “ego” is a handy catch-all concept for the source of not only our strongest human wants and desires but of our disappointments, anger, indignation, frustration, and the bulk of our other troubling feelings in life. It resides within, but it can powerfully shape how we see things outside. “It’s not fair!” “I don’t deserve this!” “How dare he say that to me!” “Why does everything always happen to me?” When the ego gets worked up, life can seem awfully bad. Most lives are ﬁlled with ego. Even when we believe our resistance and upset reactions are justiﬁed, the deception of the ego is usually involved.

Theresa was struggling with her growing feelings of betrayal and anger. She had just learned in conﬁdence, from a close and trusted friend, that Wren, a colleague of hers, had been openly critical of her. At ﬁrst her friend was hesitant to share this with her but decided it was something she should know because Theresa sometimes worked on projects with Wren. Theresa’s name had come up in a three-person conversation that included her friend. The third person

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had suggested to Wren that he might want to talk to Theresa about something he was working on because her background and experience were a good ﬁt with what he was doing. And that is when Wren responded by saying, “You’ve got to be kidding! Theresa’s work is sloppy, her personal abilities are poor, and I don’t like working with her. In fact, I wish she would just leave me alone at the ofﬁce.” This surprised Theresa because her work had frequently been recognized as among the best in her department, and she worked very hard and had a high commitment to quality. It was even more surprising to her that it was Wren who had said these things. She had thought that they had a very good working relationship, and that is why she had shared things more openly with him about her work and ideas than she had with her other colleagues. She had even praised Wren’s work in previous meetings and recommended him for special assignments and recognition on more than one occasion. Now she felt betrayed and could feel her anger building.

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Then she stopped herself and realized it was just her ego that was getting bent out of shape. She had prided herself in her good standing with her ﬁrm and her colleagues and enjoyed being thought of as an outstanding performer. Apparently Wren did not share this view, but that was no reason for Theresa to get crazy about it—she had a choice. As she paused to reﬂect, she realized that a part of her was very capable of just watching her ego react and that she did not have to buy into all the drama and let it take her over. Instead, she could simply watch it at work and see it for what it was—just her ego feeding on temporary feelings of insecurity. She realized that her ego was not who she really was and consciously chose to watch it rather than let it take control of the moment. It’s true that what Wren had said behind her back was a kind of betrayal and was disappointing, but that was no reason she should allow her ego to go on a rampage. Perhaps it was just as her friend suggested, that Wren resented the amount of recognition Theresa had received and felt bitter and jealous. She 138

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wasn’t sure what Wren’s problem with her was and perhaps she might try to discuss this with him at some point. For the time being, she decided she would give him more space. And, more important, she would watch her ego’s reactions rather than feed them and allow them to deﬁne who she was in this situation. This allowed her potential temporary insanity to simply pass on through and fade away.

The ego is always looking out for Number One—making sure it gets what it wants and judging as bad anything that does not reinforce its self-centered view of itself. It wants praise, rewards, its share of an inheritance, and even the biggest piece of chocolate cake. If it is allowed to take over, the ego rules. The key is not to change what others think or what is going on in your life but to step back and just watch the ego. This is similar to the peace(s) strategy presented earlier— Watch Yourself!—but it is speciﬁcally focused on dealing with the stuff of the ego. It is perhaps one of the most important universal truths of world religions, spiritual leaders, and of the wisdom teachings throughout history: Rising above reactivity (above the ego) and choosing a patient, peaceful, 139

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and sane response in the face of challenge and conﬂict can not only preserve relationships, health, and effectiveness, but even prevent the insanity of intolerance, violence, and war. When you ﬁnd yourself in upsetting circumstances and you notice your ego trying to take charge, don’t feed it by taking it too seriously and exaggerating its importance. Don’t let it throw you. It is hard for the ego to go on a rampage for long if you closely observe it at work. It needs that negative, angry, or panicky energy to sustain itself. Watch, don’t be, the ego.

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THE QUESTION: CAN I FEEL INNER PEACE RIGHT NOW?

T

rue peace can only be found within. We may

long to escape to a beach on a beautiful tropical island or to gaze on a serene mountain stream, but if we can’t ﬁnd peace within ourselves, it is useless to seek it outside. When we are anchored to a peaceful core, even a raging cyclone of troubles cannot move us … and we can stand in the moment on the solid rock of temporary sanity.

Desmond’s company was not doing well. Sales were down, and a major customer had just been won away by a competitor. All salaries had been frozen for three years, and no raises were planned until the business turned around. Yet Desmond’s daughter needed braces, his 8-year-old car was not running

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very well anymore, and his rent had just gone up again. He couldn’t help but worry about what he felt was a growing personal ﬁnancial crisis. After being lost for some time in his concerns, Desmond thought back to something he had learned in a stress management class he took a year earlier. It was called the “peace search.” The technique involved asking himself the question “Can I feel inner peace right now?” The simple act of shifting his focus away from his automatic upsetting worry thoughts, which seemed outside of his control, to a conscious search for feelings of peace, made an immediate profound shift in Desmond’s thinking. It was as though he had stepped outside himself and was now observing any possible pocket of calm and peace he could ﬁnd inside himself. A few moments later, he was surprised at how much better he felt.

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This strategy centers on a penetrating question that is capable of drawing temporary sanity into even the most difﬁcult moments. “Can I feel inner peace right now?” There is great power in this question. The very act of asking this draws attention to the deeper peace that always exists within. It moves us toward conscious experience and appreciation of what life can feel like at its best. It moves us toward happiness. Whenever you feel difﬁcult thoughts and feelings building within you, ask the question and ask it often. It can create the ﬂash of consciousness that is needed to allow instant peace. The question can open a portal to pure peace of mind, if only for a moment. But change a moment, the only moment (that exists right now), and you change your life. Can you feel inner peace right now? Meditate on this question. Where does it lead you? Try it when you ﬁnd yourself drifting into worry or other upsetting emotions in a troubling meeting, conversation, or when you ﬁnd your mind bent on manufacturing disturbing thoughts. Use it as an anchor point to pull you back from the clutches of “temporary insanity.” When you become upset with a colleague, family member, or friend, ask yourself the question before you respond. Use it to regain your sanity in the moment.

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A young girl approached her social studies teacher after class. “I am very upset,” she said. “But why?” her teacher asked. “Because there is so much danger and suffering in the world.” “That is in the world, but it is not what is really inside of you.” “What do you mean?” she asked with obvious interest. He looked her in the eyes and asked, “Think for a moment … Can you feel peace deep within yourself?” The girl reﬂected on this odd question for some time, watching her thoughts and feelings rather than being them, while she searched for any feeling of peace. “You don’t look upset now … what happened?” her teacher asked.

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This broke the girl’s concentration and she looked at him in surprise. “I don’t know. As I tried to feel peace, I guess I stopped worrying and I forgot I was upset. And the only thing left was…” she paused, looking a little confused. “Peace,” her teacher said for her.

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THE STATEMENT: THIS IS THE WAY THINGS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE

M

any people vehemently protest the injustices

that have been done to them and resist what has happened in their lives. Yet this only uses up energy that could be better applied to improving conditions from here on. What is, is. It is not just submission when you accept what is. Rather, it is deciding to openly recognize what exists now so that you can clear your mind for choosing how to best respond. I once heard a story that made a signiﬁcant impression on me. As I recall, it was an ancient Chinese folktale that went something like this…

There was a farmer who lived in a small village, and he owned a ﬁne young horse. One day his beautiful

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horse escaped from the corral and ran away. When other people in the village heard about this, they said to the man, “You have lost your valuable horse. How awful; this is very bad!” They were very surprised to hear the man respond in a calm voice that showed little remorse, “Maybe it is bad, and maybe it is not bad. Who is to say?” A couple days later the horse returned, leading a whole herd of wild horses right into the farmer’s corral. When the people heard the news, they were excited and came to the farmer and said, “Now you have a whole herd of ﬁne horses! How wonderful! This is very good!” Again, the farmer responded in a calm voice “Maybe it is good, and maybe it is not good. Who is to say?” Later his beloved son, who was a young man, broke his leg when he fell off one of the wild horses while trying to tame him. Once again, the people from the village came to the farmer and exclaimed, “Your son has broken his leg. How awful; this is very bad!”

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And again they were surprised when they heard the farmer’s reply, this time about his own cherished son, “Maybe it is bad, and maybe it is not bad. Who is to say?” A few days later a terrible war broke out. Soon soldiers came to the small village and took all the ablebodied young men, forcing them to be soldiers in their army; but the farmer’s son was not taken because of his broken leg. Later, all those taken were killed in a terrible battle.

Most of life’s pain is caused by resistance. When we resist what exists in our lives, we create tension, frustration—a vast array of negative emotion. We also create unconsciousness and insanity. The truth is “What is, is.” Resisting it only gives it more power. Taking constructive conscious action to foster positive change can be very helpful, but ﬁrst, accept life as it is. How can we do this when our head is ﬁlled with unsettling chatter that feeds our resistance— “It’s not fair!”“It’s not right!” “It shouldn’t be this way!” Purposely choose to view life in a different spirit. Thoughts that may seem like an

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acceptance of defeat on the surface can actually disarm selfdefeating resistance—“This is the way things should be.” “This is how things must be, ought to be, have to be.” “This is the way things are supposed to be!” Imagine how much easier it would be to cope with the uncertainty of a pending merger of your company, yet another round of downsizing, or news that the new process your team worked so hard to develop has now been thoroughly tested and doesn’t work. Once events have happened, accepting that “what is, is” can be the ﬁrst positive step for preparing to deal with life effectively. Maybe a merger will bring with it whole new career and business opportunities, another round of downsizing will bring with it optional severance packages and outplacement resources that could help you move into the kind of work you’ve really been wanting to pursue, or discovery of a process that works far better than the one you developed is just one more creative idea away. As was the case in the folk story, maybe these situations are good or maybe they are bad. Who is to say? And besides, resisting what already exists just uses up energy that you could devote to constructively meeting the challenges you face. Draw on the spiritual view that everything and everyone are connected. Things that may seem bad when viewed in isolation are essential parts of a larger universal whole.

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(Note: This is powerfully true of what is often perceived of as sacriﬁce when we give to others of our time, money, and personal support—because everything is connected, all that we sincerely give to others we give to ourselves.) What exists already forms the conditions of your life, at least on the outside. Once you accept this, you are free to make healthy choices that shape your moment-to-moment experiences going forward As you choose your response to your current life conditions, you are shaping your future. That means that right this moment, you can begin choosing a great future (which, of course, only exists in the way you choose to live in each present moment). These are the circumstances of your life right now, and resisting what already exists only defeats you. Instead accept “This is the way things are supposed to be!” and then choose to live this moment wisely.

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Water is ﬂuid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is ﬂuid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. … yielding overcomes resistances, and gentleness melts rigid defenses. —The Tao Te Ching32

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WAKE UP IN YOUR DAY/LIFE DREAMS The You Your Dreams Can See In the meadow of a forest I heard a bird sing tales in rhyme. She called me forward to a crevice in the solid rocks of time. She sang of many faulty blunder of the ones who were so bold. From their mishaps rose such thunder of the dreams they dared to hold. They strived not fully unto duty under skies of cloudless night. Instead they strove toward utmost beauty and found within a stormy might. Onward, outward, upward rose they until they reached the healing balm. With the cry of “seize the new day!” they served the world with inner calm.

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Alas, amid a ﬁery dawning rose the tales yet left to tell. From their striving grew the spawning that soothed the sting of human hell. And then the bird sang one last chorus, a stirring hymn of dignity. “The real power of this new place is the you your dreams can see.” A call to life was in the crevice. I heard it sing my soul to do. “Give to life your only true self. Unfold the beauty that is you.” —Charles C. Manz

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Dreams are a fascinating part of life. Every night we enter a magical realm where almost anything is possible. We can gain the whole world and lose it again without even opening our eyes. We can face our greatest fears and meet our biggest challenges, either be victorious or be crushed by them, and still awaken to a whole new day. And we can live separate lives in our daydreams during our waking hours as well. Our minds possess the power to grant our wishes, take us on exhilarating and sometimes terrifying adventures, and produce miracles through our dreams. One of the more striking subjects I have encountered in recent years is the topic of lucid dreams. Lucid dreaming is a fascinating kind of dream process in which we essentially awaken while we are still asleep. That is, if we have a lucid dream, we are able to realize that we are in a dream state while we are still asleep, and then potentially control the content of our dreams from that point on. Some writers and researchers have focused on this phenomenon as a learnable skill. For example, a recent book Lucid Dreams in 30 Days provides guidance on how to condition ourselves to have lucid dreams through self-study and self-training over the course of a one-month period.33 It suggests a variety of exercises, such as keeping a dream journal to track our dreams, using self-talk to program our minds to produce lucid dreams, and practicing forms of mental imagery (sometimes assisted by popular,

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especially animated, ﬁlms) that we carry into our dreams, I have personally experimented with these techniques and experienced some success. For example, in more than one dream I have been able to ﬂy without any mechanical help, and in another I overcame an infamous murderer by using advanced Kung Fu skills that I lack in real life. Lucid dreaming in itself is an intriguing subject that offers the potential to entertain and enliven our dream world, but what does it have to do with establishing temporary sanity in the present moment? When we are faced with difﬁcult and upsetting situations, the idea of lucid dreaming can be used as a powerful launch platform for connecting with constructive feelings and responses. Even in the absence of ever having the ﬁrst-hand personal experience of lucid dreaming, we can still imagine what it would be like and how we would respond if we had the power to choose whatever we would like. Consider some questions. If you were to have a lucid dream that felt completely real, and in it you faced a major challenge—something that would normally be very intimidating or upsetting—and you could choose to respond any way you wanted, what would you choose? Let your imagination soar. Think of those most trying moments in your life (e.g., an argument with your boss or spouse, making an important presentation to a very large professional audience,

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facing that person that you ﬁnd so intimidating). How would you choose to respond? Very calmly with a clear mind and a cool conﬁdent demeanor? Would you choose such a relaxed and sure attitude that you could even ﬁnd a little amusement in the potential ego-based emotion that the situation would normally provoke in you but that this time you simply choose to rise above? What would your ideal emotional state and most constructive response be? What would your life be like if you could choose this ideal for yourself in the midst of situations that would normally send you spinning out of control? This peace(s) strategy offers you a powerful choice when you face challenges that you can feel moving you toward temporary insanity. Simply choose to think about how you would react if you were in a lucid dream. It only takes a moment—stop reacting, imagine you are dreaming, and then think of how you would like the dream to end— feeling great, responding with calm effectiveness, making choices that help heal and elevate the situation rather than feeding its negative energy. In the very moment that you make this choice, you have changed the momentum of the situation and let in the light of temporary sanity that can change everything.

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4D PERCEIVING

W

hat is the biggest illusion? It is that we are

separate from one another … that the many creations of the world are not connected. This illusion causes us to defend, protect, attack, and to look out for #1. For us to win, others must lose; for us to rise, others must fall. It is so misleading. Whatever I do to you, I do to me. Whatever I give to you, I give to me. Wise spiritual leaders have taught this through the millennia. The message is not delivered simply to impress us. It is offered to open our eyes to a basic truth that can release us from our self-imposed prisons that are built brickby-brick when we imprison one another. In an earlier section, I discussed the peace(s) strategy of purposely perceiving in 3D. The idea is to perceive our physical and psychological environment with depth—with an

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expanded conscious awareness of the other elements in our ﬁeld of perception. This can help keep things in perspective and help us avoid becoming overly ﬁxated on one pressing problem or concern. It allows us to see the remarkable forest, in all its splendor, despite any pull we feel to overly focus on one odd, even rotting or diseased, single tree that tries to dominate our attention. Now I want to introduce what I believe is an even more striking and powerful source of temporary sanity—4D perceiving. At the outset, however, I want to be clear that I am probably using this term in a different way than you may have thought about it to date. First, I am not looking at time as the sole focus of the fourth dimension. Nor am I trying to emphasize a parapsychological view that brings to mind images of ghostbusters or TV shows that dramatize paranormal events. I am simply trying to convey the importance of the interconnection of all things. For example, the new sciences reveal that every person and object shares the same fundamental building blocks (overlapping energy and micro particles), and modern physics makes clear what spiritual leaders have been saying for centuries—everything is ultimately one. Of course, all this can be hard to grasp and appreciate in our three-dimensional world and requires some mental gymnastics to achieve a satisfying image of what we are talking about. One might, for example, picture a three-dimensional

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graph that includes a vertical axis, a horizontal axis, and a third axis that adds depth (like a three-dimensional picture that reveals how far objects are away from us). Now, imagine that each axis reaches a point where it curves 180 degrees and then reconnects with another axis on the graph forming a continuous, interconnected ﬁeld. I also like to picture a mobius strip (named after the German mathematician of the same name), which is a continuous one-sided rectangular surface (such as a ribbon) that reconnects with itself by twisting one end 180 degrees about the longitudinal axis and then attaching to the other end. The point is that, despite the normal limits of our perception to the three dimensions that we see most readily and that often leave us with the sense that we are separate, and perhaps isolated—from everyone and everything else—we are all interconnected. That means that everything we do to and for others we do to and for ourselves. My personal opinion is that the most powerful human relations strategy ever conceived in the history of the world is the golden rule—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A main reason it is so powerful is that it reﬂects the reality that you do in fact do unto yourself when you do unto others. This can be a wonderful tool when you encounter any situation that is bringing out in you a desire to attack or otherwise take hurtful action toward others. This suggests that

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when you feel the urge to judge, condemn, or harm someone else, you are in a sense experiencing temporary insanity because as you choose these responses, you are also directing them at yourself as a part of the oneness of the universe. Consider the following summary of a somewhat humorous but challenging story that is included in the book 101 Healing Stories by psychologist George W. Burns.34

Four colleagues temporarily shared a house in, what was for them, a foreign country. During their stay they kept a bottle of brandy on an open shelf. Over time they noticed that the bottle was slowly being emptied, even when they were not drinking its contents. They suspected their housekeeper, who was doing the cooking and cleaning for them, was helping himself to drinks. Returning one evening from a diner where they had already consumed a fair amount of alcohol, they went to the bottle to enjoy a ﬁnal nightcap. Noticing the brandy was now even lower in the bottle, they decided to teach the housekeeper a lesson. They partially reﬁlled the bottle with urine and returned it to 160

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its normal place. When the contents of the bottle continued to drop over the next few days, they felt guilty about their trick. Finally they confronted the housekeeper and asked if he had been drinking their brandy. He responded with a simple no, but that he had been using it in the food he cooked for them.

Admittedly, the story is a bit repugnant. Nevertheless, I like it because it strikingly emphasizes the so-often overlooked lesson of 4D perceiving—we are all interconnected, and whatever we do to and for others we do to ourselves. Fortunately, this same principle can work in positive ways as well. Personally, I have been very surprised at how even very small acts of kindness are sometimes so fondly remembered. On many occasions I have been approached by people (students, professors, authors, consultants, executives, employees, etc.) who I had long since forgotten having helped in some small way. Perhaps it was responding to a simple request for information; offering a word of support, praise, or sincere advice when it was asked for; agreeing to speak to a small group; or brieﬂy lending a hand when help was needed. Discovering how important these small acts of kindness have been to others (e.g., people have recounted to me in signiﬁcant detail

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some minor positive gesture I may have made many years before), and the kindnesses they so often seem ready to return to me, has really driven home the reality of 4D perceiving for my life. Remembering 4D perceiving, especially when we believe someone is giving us a hard time or rubbing us the wrong way, can make all the difference in how we respond. In my various readings, I have noticed that one of the Dalai Lama’s main pieces of advice, which he has shared on many occasions, simply boils down to feeling compassion for others by being able to perceive them as we do ourselves— someone who is in need of acceptance, forgiveness, afﬁrmation, and caring. With this kind of empathy, we can strive to really see that our actions toward others are also directed at ourselves. By purposely recalling this in challenging moments, we truly have a strong peace(s) strategy that can help us sanely handle the inevitable conﬂicts we will encounter in work and life.

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DIE BEFORE YOU DIE

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ormally death is thought to be a very bad thing

and something to be avoided and put off for as long as possible. We think of loss of our own human life or the sorrowful passing of a loved one. Yet there are many kinds of death. For example, we might make healthy choices so that a part of us dies that has been in the haunting grip of fear, anger, and greed. Or, we might choose to positively connect with others in a way that allows the isolation of egotistic self-centeredness to die in our life. The truth is that lasting temporary sanity requires these kinds of deaths. Most of all, it requires letting your little self—the one that is ﬁlled with fear, anger, greed, and ego—die in the very moment that it tries to weave its poisonous insanity for yourself and the world. For it is in this

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life-giving death that real living of your big (beyond) self—the one that knows it is connected to and part of everyone and everything else— begins. In many ways, the hardest parts of this entire book really boil down to this one especially challenging and potent strategy. There is a formidable tendency to cling to our views and approaches to life, even if they work against us and trigger repeated bouts of temporary insanity when we encounter difﬁculties. If our ideas are challenged, we become defensive and insecure. If our way of life is challenged, we are ready to ﬁght to maintain the status quo. Paradoxically “dying before you die” over and over again to self-defeating thoughts and reactions in potentially insanity-provoking situations is the key to really coming alive. The important lesson is that, at some level, we must die in order to really live. It is the key to “permanent” temporary sanity. This strategy captures important themes suggested by the many other temporary sanity “peace(s)” offered in this book, including ◆ ◆

Die to the past and future—Live in the moment. Die to resistance—Flow with the winds of life rather than ﬁght them.

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◆ ◆

Die to clinging—Let go and let be. Die to the fear-based low road—Relax, even in the midst of turmoil.

We are talking about dying to the ego and coming alive in our deeper spiritual self. This involves looking beyond our personal self-serving motives and seeing that everything is ultimately connected—everything is one. It is a powerful application of 4D perceiving, as described earlier. As a result, our need for the idea of “self ” is signiﬁcantly diminished, and the well-being of everyone and everything becomes the central concern. If we can gain this perspective, even for the moment, we can achieve the ultimate level of temporary sanity, and our life and those we come in contact with stand to beneﬁt greatly.

Thomas had ﬁnally reached bottom. His difﬁculties with his brother Simon were severely affecting his effectiveness at work and souring his attitude toward life. Thomas had been running their family-owned business by himself for nearly two years but, at the request of his father, Simon had recently joined him

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at the helm. They had just completed several sessions with a consultant to work through their differences, and Thomas had also read a book on sharing power and inﬂuence in family-owned businesses. Finally, Thomas took the lessons he had learned to heart and faced himself squarely. It was not his brother’s fault, as he had been so ready to believe, despite Simon’s many attempts to compromise and adjust to Thomas’s wishes. Rather, it was his own resistance to really sharing leadership with another person after being in charge for so many months. As Thomas stared at himself in the mirror, he ﬁnally realized that he had been used to having things his way, and because Simon had different ideas about how to run the business, he had to let go of some of his old patterns. Now there was someone else whose ideas and judgment had to be considered, and Thomas’s ego was frustrated and angry. Without realizing it, he had been feeding it and allowing it to run wild. This led to the repeated periods of frustration and loss of perspective that had resulted in not only

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destructive arguments with his brother, but also impaired effectiveness at work and in life. As Thomas continued to face himself, he now understood that if he wanted to regain his composure and peace of mind, he had to let go of the real source of his frustration and resentment. He needed to let his automatic reactions that were feeding his ego die away. Unless he let his dysfunctional reactions die off as they arose, rather than allowing them to take over, they would continue to poison his working relationship with his brother. By letting these dysfunctional patterns die, his new shared leadership role could begin to live in a healthy and meaningful way.

Norman Vincent Peale, best-selling author of The Power of Positive Thinking, shared a wise insight when he suggested that to be happy we should live life by purposely striving to give much while expecting little.35 At ﬁrst glance, this seems like a potentially self-sacriﬁcing, even somber, prescription. But the reality is that when we freely give to the things we believe in and the people we learn to love, we receive a great

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deal in return. If we can learn to let our self-centered motives and desires die and instead embrace life and meaningful service to something greater than ourselves, we will come alive in surprising ways. This idea was perhaps never put better than in the Prayer of Saint Francis that ends with these moving words.

…grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console, To be understood as to understand, To be loved, as to love: For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; It is in dying to self that we are born to everlasting life.

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MAKE PEACE WITH LOVE

H

atred, rage, violence, addiction, depression …

there are many negative forces in the world that can seem overwhelming. There is only one energy powerful enough to overcome them all—LOVE. Yet we fear that love may make us weak, vulnerable, irrational, … soft in our heads and our hearts. It is one of the lessons that the universe takes great delight in surprising us with. There is nothing stronger, more powerful, and more potent and ennobling than the purest energy that we so mistakenly connect with weakness. It is what St. Paul declared, “is patient … kind, rejoices in the truth … bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things … never ends.” … Love.36 It could be argued that our only basic primary feelings are fear and love. According to Dan Baker, of the Life Enhancement

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Program at Canyon Ranch, and his co-author Cameron Stauth, fear, at best, can promote our survival under dangerous conditions, but love can help us to thrive.37 Fear makes its primary home on the low road under the rule of the amygdala. Persistent anxiety, defensive reactivity, and insanity are its companions. Love, on the other hand, resides on the higher road and promises a satisfying and meaningful life. Love, of course, has been assigned many meanings. Some connect it with romance, physical intimacy, and marriage. Others view it in the light of family relationships such as between a parent and a child or between siblings. This kind of love is associated with a desire to protect and nurture. Still others see love through the selﬂess lens of agape—love that cares deeply for others without expectation of return. Sadly, the term love has often been misused in destructive ways. Sometimes people mistreat and abuse each other in the name of love. In such situations, it ends up that ego and self-centeredness, not love, was the driving force. Sometimes misuse of love can even take on comic attributes such as when it is described as a kind of afﬂiction that is readily cured by marriage. Baker and Stauth, however, argue that when it comes to happiness, there is really only one aspect of love that really matters—appreciation. They declare that appreciation is the purest and highest form of love, and that it can neutralize the 170

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amygdala and fearful instincts of the brain. This can enable us to access the more rational, constructive, higher part of the brain that has been associated with the spirit and intellect— the neocortex. Appreciation can be our ticket to trade in the fear-based temporary insanity of the lower reptilian brain for the temporary sanity of the neocortical higher brain. All this suggests that appreciation, which does not depend on romance or family relationships, can insulate us from fear and temporary insanity. Appreciation has even been found to alleviate pain. In the end, in their book, What Happy People Know, Baker and Stauth draw an interesting conclusion. That is, no matter the circumstances, happy people always ﬁnd something to love (appreciate), and that love can always overcome anything it faces. The good news is that there is no limit to potential appreciation. The more we learn to appreciate the people and blessings in our lives, the more appreciation seems to grow within us. It is such a wonderful gift to give to others—to let them know how much we appreciate what they do and who they are—and our own appreciation, and consequently happiness and wellbeing, stands to grow signiﬁcantly as we appreciate others.

Rachael had been very unhappy with her job for months. No one seemed to recognize or appreciate all she did for the company. And, once again, at 171

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today’s division meeting, she received no praise when accomplishments and high performers were recognized. But this time she decided to take a different stance. Instead of lamenting her own neglect, she made a conscious choice to appreciate the good work and recognition of others. She made a point to thank people for their efforts and to praise others the way she had always wanted to be praised. She was very surprised how much better this made her feel and, once she shifted her focus to feeling appreciation rather than jealousy, how naturally and sincerely she was able to reinforce her colleagues. Interestingly, without expecting it, from that moment on she felt much better about her job and started to notice many ways that people did in fact express appreciation toward her that she had been missing.

Love can be the foundation for the most potent temporary sanity strategy there is. No matter what insanity you face in the moment, always search for something you can appreciate. Victor Frankl, mentioned earlier in this book, wrote about this in the death camps of Nazi Germany during 172

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World War II. The prisoners that survived were the ones who found meaning in caring for and supporting others. In a very real sense, they rose above the hell of despair, hopelessness, and futility through the power of love. Try it in your own work and life challenges. In the face of challenge and difﬁculty, gird yourself with the protective armor of love. Bring to mind those things you can appreciate in your life. Think of someone you love or a blessing in your life. Look for any kind gesture or opportunity that is part of your current circumstance. Let your spirit rise to any occasion with the greatest power on earth—love— that is always available through the simple act of appreciating something in the present moment.

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IDEAS FOR OTHER SPIRIT-CENTERED TEMPORARY SANITY STRATEGIES Here are some more ideas for potential temporary sanity strategies that you can develop to ﬁt your speciﬁc needs. ◆

Choose empathy. When you ﬁnd yourself in frustrating opposition with others, such as an argument, or in cut-throat competition, try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. What are the current pressures and insecurities that are driving him or her to oppose you? Take the view that “What I do to and for others, I do to myself ” and then search for ways that everyone might beneﬁt from the situation. Try to understand and then work toward collaboration, or at least compromise.

◆

Ride the spiritual roller coaster. Become aware of the cycles of life. Sometimes you are up and life seems very good. Sometimes you feel down and life can seem pretty bad. It’s like riding a roller coaster that goes up, down, fast, and slow. In your difﬁcult moments, reﬂect on the bigger picture of your life and how you can learn and progress as a spiritual being from all of your experiences. Don’t always ﬁght it. Instead, ride the spiritual roller coaster.

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◆

Find sanity in silence. When you are thrown off balance and things seem to be running out of control, tap into the power of silence. Just go silent. Let go of the urge to say and do more. Stop arguing, ﬁghting, and feeding the negative energy of what is happening. Take a moment and allow temporary sanity to enter the situation through the doorway of silence.

◆

Appreciate subtlety. When things look particularly difﬁcult and hopeless, it is easy to lose sight of the good in the situation. For example, it may be that your opponent is ﬁnally reaching out with a compromise or a gesture of reconciliation. It may not be what you wanted, but it is still signiﬁcant. Don’t allow your growing temporary insanity to blind you to the many subtle positive aspects that surround you—at least you are ﬁnally talking to this person, or you have ﬁnally identiﬁed what the problem really is. Reconnect with sanity by appreciating subtlety.

How might you adapt the aforementioned ideas to create helpful peace(s) strategies that you can apply when you need temporary sanity? What other transcendent spirit-centered strategies can you think of?

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CREATE LIFELONG TEMPORARY SANITY

T

here is a tendency for us to go through life

waiting for difﬁculties to pass and for things to be “okay” before we make the choices that we know deep down we should be making. We may think we will start the career, pursue the education, or begin the service we feel called to do once we get past our current pressing issues and past the challenges that we face.

“Of course, I am upset right now. Yes, I’m out of sorts and I’m not progressing in my life. But what do you expect given the many problems I am facing? Once I am beyond these difﬁculties, I will begin to

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pull myself back together. I will really work to make a great life for myself once I get past my current challenges.”

Temporary sanity is more than a process and set of strategies for effectively meeting our life challenges. It is also a fundamental philosophy and a practical approach to life that can turn difﬁcult, upsetting, and potentially insanityprovoking situations and discouraging thinking into key moments of our life journey. As we meet challenges with constructive choices that help us unleash the positive energy of our mind, body, and spirit, we can turn times that threaten to toss us into a bout of temporary insanity into the deﬁning moments of our lives. Perhaps most notable of all is a life decision to recognize that the only real moment is the one we are in right now. By fully embracing the truth that the past and the future are only mind-constructed illusions, we take a crucial step toward making the calm, clarity, and effectiveness of temporary sanity a permanent part of our life and work experience. Ultimately, we are confronted with a fundamental lifelifting realization:

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The challenges that I keep waiting for to pass so that I can begin living are in fact the real substance of my life. As I encounter each of these challenges, I have a choice. I can choose temporary sanity, perhaps with the aid of the three-step process and other “peace(s)” strategies, or I can descend into temporary insanity, including postponing my life until the current difﬁculty is over. By recognizing that the challenges I face are my life and consistently choosing instant self-leadership strategies for turbulent times, temporary sanity and fulﬁllment in the moment will become the permanent character of my life.

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ENDNOTES 1. Much of the information provided in this section is based on the articles “Fear” by Steven Johnson, Discover, Vol. 24, March, 2003, 33-39; and “Our Bodies, Our Fears” by Geoffrey Cowley, Newsweek, February 24, 2003, 43-47. Also, Daniel Goleman’s books Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam, 1995) and Working with Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam, 1998) served as additional helpful sources. 2. “Investigating the Mind: Exchanges between Buddhism and the Biobehavioral Sciences on How the Mind Works.” Conference held at MIT, Cambridge, MA, Sept. 13-14, 2003. 3. See the book Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them?, a scientiﬁc dialogue with the dalai lama, narrated by Daniel Goleman (New York: Bantam Books, 2003), p. xiii. 4. For more information on the work of Barbara Fredrickson and her colleagues on positive emotion, visit: www.umich.edu/~psychdept/emotions. There are also many publications that you can read, including Positive Emotions and Upward Spirals in Organizations by Barbara L. Fredrickson in K. Cameron, J. Dutton, and R. Quinn (Eds.), Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Discipline (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003), pp. 163-175.

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5. Dan Baker and Cameron Stauth. What Happy People Know: How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life for the Better (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2003), p. 90. 6. Martin E. P. Seligman. Learned Optimism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), p. 16. 7. This quote is from A User’s Guide to the Brain by John J. Ratey (New York: Vintage Books, 2002), p. 223. 8. Peter J. Frost. Toxic Emotions at Work: How Compassionate Managers Handle Pain and Conﬂict (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2003). 9. This personal example was shared by an anonymous reviewer of a draft of this manuscript. 10. These statistics are included in the book Fitness After 50 by Walter H. Ettinger, Jr., Brenda S. Mitchell, and Steven N. Blair (St Louis, MO: Beverly Cracom Publications, 1996), pp. 30-31. 11. Viktor E. Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984). 12. Brieﬂy, the ﬁve-step process includes the following: Cause. Identify the issue or event that provokes a certain emotion. Body. Identify the location and intensity of the physical reactions your emotions are causing. Mind. Identify the thoughts that accompany the feelings and the beliefs that support them. Spirit. Determine what part of yourself is being revealed (your fearful ego, healthy spirit, etc.) and what is hidden.

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Choice. Apply an Emotional Discipline strategy to choose how you feel. These choices range from mental reframing (maybe losing your job is really a disguised opportunity to pursue a forgotten dream) to physical action (diet and exercise can have a huge effect on your mental wellbeing). Other creative strategies include purposely feeling your feelings, inner jogging, tapping the power of silence, tuning into the drama of subtlety, and emotional Kung Fu, to name just a few. For additional information on this more comprehensive approach, see the book Emotional Discipline: The Power to Choose How You Feel by Charles C. Manz (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003). 13. Polly LaBarre. “The New Normal: From Boom to Bust to War to Whatever Comes Next,“ Fast Company, May, 2003, p. 74-83. 14. Rosamund Stone Zander and Ben Zander. The Art of Possibility (New York: Penguin, 2000) pp. 5-6. 15. Two of Daniel Goleman’s books on the subject include Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam, 1995) and Working With Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam, 1998). 16. One straightforward overview of NLP and guidance on applying some NLP strategies, which features several different authorities in the area, is provided in the audio tape program “NLP: The New Technology of Achievement” (Niles, IL: Nightengale-Conant, 1991).

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17. From the book by David Whyte. Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity (New York: Riverhead Books, 2001) p. 4. 18. This quote is published in the essay “Spirituality in the Workplace” by Martin Rutte, included in the book Heart at Work by Jack Canﬁeld and Jacqueline Miller (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1996) p. 247. 19. This prayer is included in the book The Book of Positive Quotations, compiled and arranged by John Cook (New York: Gramercy Books, 1999) p. 33, as well as in many other publications. 20. This quote is taken from the book The Tao of Leadership, a Translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, by John Heider (New York: Bantam, 1986) p. 135. 21. bid, p. 137. 22. See the book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 1997) pp. 46-47. 23. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990) p. 6. 24. For a more detailed discussion on the idea of timelessness and it’s relation to creativity, see the article by Charalampos Mainemelis. “When the Muse Takes it All: A Model for the Experience of Timelessness in Organizations,” Academy of Management Review (Vol. 26, 2001), pp. 548-565.

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25. This passage is adapted from material in the book by Charles C. Manz and Christopher P. Neck. Mastering Self-Leadership: Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence (2nd ed.) (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999) p. 51. 26. Richard Carlson. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff at Work (New York: Hyperion, 1998) p. 55. 27. Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte. The Resilience Factor: Essential Skills for Overcoming Life’s Inevitable Obstacles (New York: Broadway Books, 2002) p. 192. 28. “The Medical Advisor: The Complete Guide to Alternative and Conventional Treatments” by the Editors of Time-Life Books (Alexandria, VA: Time Life, 1997). 29. See especially pp. 203-207 of the book by Andrew Weil. Spontaneous Healing: How to Discover and Enhance Your Body’s Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself (New York: Fawcett Columbine Books, 1995). 30. Note that the questions included in this quiz are of the same vein and inspired by those that have been attributed to Stephen Wright, which have been making a mad swirl through the Internet. 31. Norman Cousins. Head First: The Biology of Hope and the Healing Power of the Human Spirit (New York: Penguin, 1990). 32. Excerpted from The Tao of Leadership, by John Heider (New York: Bantam Books, 1985) p. 155.

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33. Keith Harary and Pamela Weintraub. Lucid Dreams in 30 Days (New York: St. Martin’s Grifﬁn, 1989). 34. George W. Burns. 101 Healing Stories (New York: Wiley, 2001) p. 183. 35. Norman Vincent Peale. The Power of Positive Thinking, Centennial Edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1952, 1978). 36. New Revised Standard Version, Corinthians 13, 4-8. 37. Dan Baker and Cameron Stauth. See What Happy People Know: How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life for the Better (Rodale, 2003), especially Chapter 4.

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