When I was in my early twenties, I was learning Chinese martial arts from a Taoist teacher (known as a "Shr Fu"). In addition to teaching us how to seriously maim anyone who might want to mess with us defend ourselves, there were also some lesser publicized teachings available to the student who knew to ask.

One of those was in "bone setting", which is where I learned some very handy tricks, including how to set my (and other people’s) joints that have gotten out of whack (ankles, shoulders, wrists, fingers, etc.). Very handy to know in a pinch. Another was meditation.

Here (unlike bone setting), the instruction wasn’t all that detailed. Basically, I was told to sit, focus on a certain point in my body, and breathe. And, as best I could, empty myself of thought.

But, as anyone knows who has tried to meditate, it’s much easier said than done. I futzed through a few months of trying, but gave up not long afterward. Not surprisingly, most people I talk to about meditation have found themselves in the same boat.

Fast-forwarding a couple years, I got involved in energy healing and spiritual development, and in the school I went to, we meditated together every morning for about 45 minutes. Some were silent, and in others, we were guided through a process. And all of it was fantastic.

Having my teacher up in front of us all made it so easy to connect, to quieten, and to relax into the process.

But then, I went back home…

And again, I floundered.

Whenever we were at school, meditating became simple. On my own, though, it was a supreme challenge to stay with it for more than ten minutes.

Luckily for me, I wasn’t the only student in this situation, and we asked our teacher if we could record him leading us through a meditation session, so we could listen at home. He agreed, and the resulting tape became a well-worn favorite of mine for years. It helped me get and stay focused when I was on my own, and it made a world of difference in the depth of my meditation, and in the progress I made in developing my self-awareness.

Since that time, I’ve seen a number of "meditation aids" out there, and sampled a few myself. Once you get used to a particular audio recording, it can be a huge boon to your individual practice.

The moral of the story, of course, is to seek help when you need it. Also easier said than done at times, I realize, but consider the alternative.

Question for you: When have you tried something and floundered, and then found help from an unexpected hack? Leave a comment and share it with us.

(for those of you not-so-internet-lingo-savvy folks, a "hack" is a way of doing something that’s not typically known, or thought of, but saves your bacon big time once you’re shown what it is.)

Brand Spanking New:

I’ve just completed a set of helpful audio resources myself — but not just meditation-centered. Because there are times when meditation doesn’t float your boat, or scratch your itch; sometimes, your soul is needing a different kind of soothing. For example, you might be needing:

• a deeper sense of connection, of spiritual intimacy, of nurturing
• to clear an issue that has come up and is keeping you from feeling peaceful
• clarity about a decision you need to make, but can’t decide which path to take
• awareness about the kinds of signals you’re sending "under the radar" — but are dramatically affecting your life, your work, etc.
• to stop procrastinating and get back to productive work
• to relax, unwind, and let go of stress at the end of the day

Rather than turn to outside help, or pay for a healing/therapy session, you may want a solution that allows you to get through it on your own (and, for a lot cheaper, I might add).

Enter: Inner Peace Audio!

Inner Peace Audio is a set of seven recordings that can help you in a variety of situations… for more details about what’s included in Inner Peace Audio, click here to be taken to the just-unveiled website.

UPDATE: I’ve added (by popular request) an affiliate program to Inner Peace Audio, so if that’s your cup of tea, you’re on. The link to sign up is at the bottom of any page of the site. 

Want a podcast of this? Press play, or click here to download.

Image by 顔なし on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, my buddy Alex Shalman, from AlexShalman.com (Practical Personal Development), recently launched his "Happiness Project." After hearing Tim Ferriss recommend Dan Gilbert’s book, "Stumbling On Happiness" (which I read, and whose TED video I’ve set up for you at the bottom of this post), I’m very, very curious about people’s findings about one of the most sought after prizes in life: good, old-fashioned happiness.

So, I’ve accepted Alex’s proposition, and here are my answers.

1. How do you define happiness?

Continue reading…

Totally Random Post: I had a friend ask me for my legendary pancake recipe this morning, and as luck would have it, SpongeFish is having a recipe contest at this very moment. So, I sent it to my friend, and I submitted it to SpongeFish for all the word to enjoy.

If you want to try it yourself, you can get it here (and please vote for me, too, while you’re there – what a blast it would be to win!).

Update: I won! The Spongefish team made my pancakes at their cocktail party, and my recipe got judged as the winner. How cool is that? Thanks to everyone that went to see my recipe and voted on it… I got over five times as many views as any other recipe, and I had to think you all were a part of that. Thanks again!

Image by digiyesica on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

Ever have a time in your life that looked something like this?

Back in college, Trina got so busy with her academic schedule, she found that she wasn’t reading the notes she scribbled furiously in lecture. And when she did, she realized she just needed a quick point or two, and all the material would come back to her. So, instead of writing sentence after sentence of notes, she started drawing pictures and diagrams that represented the core ideas of the lecture. Then, two years later, she saw a book on MindMapping — and it was exactly what she’d figured out on her own so long before.

Doesn’t it just rock your world when it hits you that there are entire movements out there, based on things that you’ve just been doing naturally, and you’ve been completely oblivious to it?

Well, according to Seth Godin (and I agree with him), "three things are true":

1. Digital technology, especially computers and cell phones, can dramatically increase productivity.
2. More and more users of digital technology are small firms or individuals.
3. The vast majority of users of digital technology are totally lame in getting the most out of the investment of their time and money.

Does this mean people are lame? Of course not; as Holly Buchanan of GrokDotCom says, it’s a matter of priority. Some people would rather focus on other aspects of their work, rather than spend time debugging the processes involved in how they do it.

Well, sometimes.

Sometimes it’s a matter of custom (as in, Joe isn’t accustomed to doing the dishes by hand), and, sometimes it’s a matter of fear.

Continue reading…

Quick update: The response to the last post has been wonderful; the comments left have been broad-spectrum and a joy to read, and I even got a few responses via email, both with suggestions and sympathy.
The good news is, the question in question is resolving nicely. I shouldn’t be surprised, of course, because I’ve been around long enough to see that the Universe/Divine/Orchestrating-force-of-creation (or whatever you want to call it) has a way of sending the solutions along with the challenges, and is always more than responsive to our requests.

Not our spoken requests, of course…

… but our unspoken requests always seem to be received loud and clear, don’t they?

As the New Year approached, I made a deeply conscious decision/intention/request to face whatever I needed to face, in order to become the person I truly am. (get this: I even specifically requested to come face-to-face with whatever I need to in order to achieve my goals, to challenge assumptions and let go of conventions in the name of growth and success… talk about asking for it, eh?)

Continue reading…

In just about every post on Monk at Work since its inception, I’ve presented ideas, problems, concepts, and scenarios, all about ways that people (i.e. you and me) can lose sight of our hearts as we work. I’ve also done my best to provide solutions, based on my years of experience as a spiritual and energetic healer, business consultant, and teacher.

Today, however, you’ll get none of that (or, very little). Instead, today is about questions. My questions.

Because yes, I still have them. I have questions all the time, about how to do things, what to say, what to create… I have way more questions than I’ll ever have time to find solutions to, no matter how intuitive I am.

Bulldozer Questions.

Some questions are small, some are large. And some, like the one I’m dealing with right now, is huge. Gorilla-huge. Boulder-huge. Construction-equipment-huge. And as much as I don’t want to admit this to the question… I don’t have an answer for it.

But here’s the rub: When I get a question stuck in my mind that I can’t answer, it sits front and center in my consciousness, like a splinter under a toenail, unable to be ignored.

It’s rough; I can’t focus on any other work when a question sits in my mind like this. It’s like an insistent three-year-old, who just can’t understand, "not right now; can you see that Daddy’s trying to focus?" The question just keeps saying, "look, man… look at me. Look. Now. Hey, I’m talking to you. Pay attention to me. Hey. Look. Look at me, man, because I’m not going away until you do."

And so I look. And I listen. And I ask it what it wants, what the real question is. But the problem is, even when I hear the question, I have no answer for it. It’s not a question that can be answered right now, at least not with a meaningful answer.

But it doesn’t like that.

No answer is not an answer.

And so it waits, with all the patience of that three-year-old. Look. Look. Look. Look at me.

(How can I not look at you, you mean? How can I deny you, the spike in my forehead, the salt-and-lemon-juice-cocktail in the wound of my uncertainty?)

All normal thoughts of productivity go out the window in times like these. I’m forced to attempt patience, to pull all the stops out of my repertoire of self-healing techniques, and deny all my self-protective impulses that tell me to ignore it, cover it over, distract myself, and maybe, just maybe, it’ll go away on its own.

(Heck, why do you think I’m writing this — for glory? Goodness, no; hoping that writing would provide catharsis was my latest, best idea to bleed the pressure out of my mind, after a day spent tapping, talking, praying, pacing around my office, and soul-searching to the best of my ability…)

My last question — and this one’s for you:

What do you do in times like these? When you’re faced with a question, a decision, even one that isn’t formed enough that it has words yet, but you just know you have to change something… what do you do?

UPDATE: I just had to add this… my muse-of-writing, the Communicatrix, recently posted about her own travels into what I call "The Pit" — she calls it "The Black Hole." And her post also mentioned another by An Amateur’s Manifesto… both are outstanding. Highly recommended.  

Want a podcast of this? Click here.

Image by scottfeldstein on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

And thanks to all those who commented on the previous posts so far: Matthew, Tom Volkar, Dylan

What seems like an eternity ago (but was really only last April ), I wrote about David Armano’s concept of “Sun-Shaped People”, and after getting a chance to watch him present and shake his hand at SOBCon07, I’ve been more than impressed with his uncanny ability to take tip-of-the-spear concepts that most people are just starting to wrap their heads around, and explain them—visually, no less—in ways that make you say, “oh, of course… that makes so much sense.”

Well, David has done it again. Pure brilliance.

How do you manage all the ways you could be spending your interacting-with-others-online time? You know; social media, email, blogging, posting photos of your family online, all that digital jazz. You’ve probably got lots of “channels” for interacting with the world, and if you’re like most people I’ve been in touch with lately (and tons of others), there are some channels that you subscribe to wholeheartedly, and others that may have once been important, but now are fading away.

Enter: The Social System.

Doesn’t that just make perfect sense? On his post about it, DA explains the whole thing, but I think the picture does a pretty good job on its own.

As I’ve spent more time in social media circles, and tried balancing the time that sites like Facebook require with all the other responsibilities of life, work, etc., I’m coming to see that I want a lot fewer planets in my social system than before.

Now, the time may (will) come when I need to expand this; there are strategies that require more of a presence on some planets than others, and there are some planets I’ve yet to set foot on that I know will move very close to the middle of my system, when the time is right.

My social system could go from “Me -> blog -> mastermind -> email -> Facebook -> LinkedIn” to, “Me -> blog -> StumbleUpon -> email -> mastermind -> YouTube -> VideoSticky -> Facebook”, or something like that, all depending on what’s necessary and important to my strategy.

In the meantime, though, it sure is liberating to realize that I don’t need as much interplanetary travel as I once thought… after all, it can be tiring to spend so much time on (and traveling to) all those distant planets! And that’s why I got lit up about this topic enough to write a post about it: finding the balance—in every aspect of our lives—is living “monkishly” (hey, it’s my site; I can invent a word if I like, right?). Because are we going to make the kind of impact/live the life we want if we’re spread too thin, or exhausted from doing so?

Now, two steps for you:

1) What’s your social system look like?

Don’t worry about creating a graphic (although don’t let me stop you from it, either); if it’s easier, just use the “one -> two -> three” diagram, and plot out your social system. Share it in the comments, too.

How’s it look? Is it serving you? Is it giving you enough contact with others, or too much? Or, not enough of the right kind? Make adjustments as needed; after all, you’re the creator of this universe, so make it right for you.

2) Apply the analogy elsewhere.

Where else could this kind of system-thinking help you in your life? Work projects? Family responsibilities? Home maintenance? Personal development “practices” (meditating, praying, reading/learning, service, healing)? Fitness/health?

For example, you could come up with all kinds of systems for keeping you on top of your goals, in the right proportions:

• eating healthy -> exercise 4x/week -> supplements -> bodywork
• do the dishes -> laundry -> sweep/vacuum -> mow the lawn -> clean out the gutters
• play with my kids -> read to them -> build stuff together -> take mini-vacations
• write articles -> networking -> work with clients -> write book -> joint ventures

Sky’s the limit. So, what’s in your universe(s)?

Want a podcast of this? Click here.

Image by pingnews.com on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

And thanks to all those who commented on the previous posts so far: Karl Staib, Tshombe, Judy Murdoch, Nathan Ketsdever, MichelleVan

When you started your business, you probably had all kinds of visions of throngs of fans, mobs of people who just can’t get enough of everything you do, say, and sell. After all, you get it, right? You see the uniqueness, the specialness, and all the wonderful things about what you’re doing.

But, the question is: Do they?

To help create the bridge between what you know you have to offer and what the rest of the world sees as what you offer, here are a few major areas that, once solid, will go a long way towards bringing those throngs of fans your way.

1. Be an Attractive Person

No, you don’t have to look like Matt Damon or Jessica Biel; it’s not about that kind of attractive. It’s about being attractive in the way Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela are attractive; they are people with such a strong inner light that they become magnetic to others. The power of their hearts drew (and continue to draw) people in… call it charisma if you like, but it’s less about your appearance and your personality as it is the (to quote MLK), “content of your character.”

2. Have a Clear, Resonant Message

Why do so many people shop at Whole Foods? Is it just because they have good produce and good presentation? Or is it because they stand for something that we can unite behind? And why was Blog Action Day so successful? Outstanding marketing? Or a Message that was so morally ubiquitous (I mean, who doesn’t love the planet?) that people signed up in droves? If the message behind your business is a clear, strong, and compelling one, people will sign up because it inspires them, it harmonizes with their values, and it makes them feel more like the person they want to be.

3. Care For Your Patrons

I know this one sounds like a “no duh!” statement, but think about it. How do you take care of your people? How do they know you care? How do you relate to people — as customers, clients, or as true patrons? Are you selling them something, providing a service for them, or championing their cause? I’m not talking about sacrificing yourself for them, but I am talking about relating to them not as peons or just cash sources, but as living, loving people with concerns, priorities, and considerations of their own.

4. Create Remarkable Experiences

For this one, you need go no further than name-dropping: Apple. Disney. IKEA. Harley-Davidson. Mini Cooper. (okay, I’ll go a little further… what do all these have in common? They create amazing experiences at every turn for their patrons. They don’t just hawk product; they craft encounters, create adventures, and promise excitement and rich experiences.)

5. Add Enormous Value To Their Lives

Think of a business that you love: now, what have they done for you? Has your life been measurably improved since you met them? My guess is that your answer is yes. If it isn’t, then I doubt you would have thought of them at all. It’s not that we love a business simply for our own self-serving reasons, but for the first four Reasons to stick, it all has to come down to a bottom line, and that’s Value (example: I don’t just love my Mac (iMac G5) because it’s gorgeous; I love it because it adds tremendous value to my work every day, by making it easy to do my work in a way that’s efficient, aesthetically pleasing, and a joy to interact with it).

Of course, each of these Reasons has a lot of nuances, strategies, and ways to implement them (and in the Create a Business People Love (CBPL) workshop, we delve deeply into each of them), but this should be enough to get your brains a’churning with ideas for revolutionizing your own business, eh? And, as always, if you’ve got ideas to share or questions to ask, that’s what the comment box is for.

Enjoy!

Want a podcast of this? Click here.

Image by MegElizabeth on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

And thanks to all those who commented on the previous post so far: Jean Browman, Slade Roberson, Michael Skowronski, Mark, Spike, Sarena