Wednesday Whiteboard Quote - February 11

"The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling." Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance

I met one of my best friends while in New York City with the Mets. The thing is, I really disliked him at first. Dislike to the point that I repeatedly asked my bosses (Jake and Max) to move me to a different part of the office to get away from him (I later found out he was making the same request).

That rocky start has since evolved into a friendship that, though separated by multiple states and hundreds of miles, has included a standing Sunday call for the last 3 years, during which we've probably missed only a handful of Sundays chatting for an hour or two (or three). It's insane to think we could have ended up on such solid ground after such a shaky start.

I wanted Howie to go away, just like we want the problems, the difficult conversations, or the seemingly unsolvable problems to go away. But each of these is in front of us to show us a new truth. Lucky for us, the truth is a persistent friend. As much as we may try to push it away or lock it out, its unconditional nature requires it to return once more to knock. We can change jobs or change where we live, or who we are married to, or date, or how we look, and it will still, like the annoying neighbor who won't leave us alone, show up again and again.

This is not something to fear, but something to be grateful for.

What truth is knocking on your door? Are you going to ignore the constant knocking you feel deep inside, or will you harness the courage to approach the door and sit with whatever truth is there? I learned to sit with Howie, and it paid dividends in a lifelong friendship of which we may only have a few during our brief stint on earth.

Listen to what truth is knocking and open the door. If you ever feel overwhelmed by what's knocking, I recommend reading "The Guest House" by Rumi.

Whiteboard Wednesday Quote - February 4

"Between stimulus and repsonse there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom." Victor Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning"

My road rage used to be BAD! I eventually figured out that it wasn’t the slow or seemingly inept, non-blinker-using driver who was upsetting me. I was upsetting myself. I was wasting my energy reacting and losing all control based on something I had no ability to control. 

We are granted with opportunities to practice with “smaller” things, the weather, the driver in front of you, the fact that you have a pimple the day before your event, so we are better able to RESPOND to the bigger things. We see the disturbing stimulus. We acknowledge the turbulent emotions that come up. We take a breath. And then we respond (yes, this response could still include honking your horn). All of this practice is really expanding the space that Victor speaks to in the quote above.

The game is about catching ourselves before our automatic reaction takes over. It's our responsibility not to let the outside control us. That's true freedom.

Whiteboard Wednesday Quote - January 28

"We suffer more in imagination than reality." - Seneca

I discovered one thing worse than the dentist this week: worrying about going to the dentist. "It's never as bad as it seems" is a lesson we are told growing up (ok, maybe it is as bad as it seems sometimes, but definitely less than .01% of the time), but one that I inevitably forget over and over. What did Portia Nelson say? “I am astounded at how long it takes to discover… for the first time, the things I have learned… over and over again all my life.” True.

It turns out my tooth wasn’t chipped beyond repair, and that my gums aren’t receding so fast that I'll be lucky to have teeth by 35; both slippery slopes my mind had been taking me down.

It’s never as bad as the mind tries to convince us. I know that. But do I understand? Do I remember? It turns out that understanding is remembering in the moment.

Remembering that the mind is often an incompetent consultant spewing seemingly research-backed risk-management advice. This information may have kept us alive when we were kids, but we aren't kids anymore. We can learn, through remembering more and more, that it's within our power to drop the ceaseless worrying that drains us and makes our days difficult.

I'm not saying we have to reach a point where we enjoy going to the dentist, but we certainly don't need to waste our days dreading it in imagination.